Scourge of the Betrayer (39 page)

I looked around, unsure if I’d heard correctly. “Where… where shall I go?”

His eyes flickered open at my question. “You’re in a city hosting one of the finest fairs in the land. Full of wonder. Delight. Go. Explore it. I have no more need of you today. You won’t run. You’re with us now, Arki. Irrevocably. Your fate, knotted with ours beyond untangling. You won’t run. And even if you should forget that for a flicker of time, I’m sure you’ll remember what befalls those who flee. So… to the stalls and the sights. Back to your room. Go where you will. Just leave me.”

I didn’t obey right away, until I saw his eyes narrow. Then I nodded, though still didn’t move, unsure where I would head. His eyes were nearly slits, so I took a few directionless steps, figuring I would determine the destination en route. Behind me, Braylar asked, so quietly I barely heard the words, “You were fond of her, yes?”

I half-turned to answer, but didn’t trust myself to keep my voice from quivering, and so stopped and only nodded quickly.

“Good.” He sighed deeply. “Then you’re that much closer to living a complete life—you finally know something of grief at last.”

I faced him, but he was already striding away, which made me both angrier and suddenly bold. “If I’m such a vital member of the company now, then maybe you can finally tell me what’s in that mysterious crate we’ve carted over half of creation.”

He spun and advanced on me quickly, and I immediately wished I’d held my tongue. You would think I’d have mastered that by now.

His nose nearly touching mine, the captain said, “Your ability to record won’t be hindered in the slightest if I rip out your tongue and nail it to a post, which is precisely what I mean to do if you spill our secrets in the street again. Do you understand me, scribe?”

Though I was still angry, I was more terrified, and so I nodded.

“Very good.” He took a single step back. I expected him to spin on his heel and leave again. But he paused, as if considering something. Then, unexpectedly and quietly, he said, “It is full of the coronation clothes of the boy king. Or what he would have worn if we hadn’t stolen them.”

I was as stunned by the revelation itself as by the fact that he chose to reveal anything at all. “But… why? Why did you steal them? Wasn’t he crowned some time ago?”

“The young monarch’s ancestors have worn the royal robes, collar, and smock for every ceremony going back for time immemorial. He has not. We managed to steal them before the coronation, though it did take us some time to smuggle them out of the capital.”

Suddenly things, some things anyway, began to make sense. “That’s where you went after you hired me, wasn’t it? When you took to the road after the interview. But I still don’t understand why? Why go to such lengths? Do the Anjurians place that much stock in simple vestments?”

Braylar smiled, though with a predatory curve. “They place more stock in ceremony than any people alive or dead. There are a fair number who were dubious of their new monarch or his regent as it was. They pledged only the weakest of support. When word got out that the coronation trappings had disappeared, well, to them, it is simply one more indication that his reign is destined to be a short or disastrous one. Absence can be as powerful a sign as spectacle.”

The Anjurians were a strange lot. What he said did make sense of a sort, at least from their perspective. “And what will you do with them?”

His scarred lip twitched. “You are finally beginning to think like a Syldoon. An excellent question, and you can be sure, when I have an excellent answer, you will be the fifth to know.” He heard someone approaching, and without another word, turned and headed back in the direction of the inn.

My legs carried me forward, leaden and slow. I wound my way through the narrow streets, following the sound of the crowd, eager for any kind of distraction to keep my mind off birthmarked torturers, bedeviled captains, dead crippled nomad mystics, and Syldonian conspiracies and power plays.

After a dead-end and some backtracking, I finally made my way out of the warrens and into the plaza they called the Belly Bazaar. The smells reached me before I turned the final corner, and they were so rich and varied they even managed to overpower the human stench. Food carts and tables were scattered everywhere, and the sheer number of people was staggering. Thick slices of fresh baked bread—wheat, rye, barley, oat—abounded, sometimes adorned only with honey butter, other times serving as a plate or makeshift trencher for roasted bacon, pork, or carp (or at least the grease, for those who couldn’t afford the meat proper). There were wooden bowls of pottage, thickened with everything imaginable—peas and grains, leeks and spinach, bits of cod or eel, eggs and yams. I saw small baked hens stuffed with grape leaves, meatballs dredged in flower and fried in olive oil, mutton on wooden skewers, and countless tarts, large and small. Baskets of fruit, local and exotic, drew the eye, and there were so many different kinds of nuts on hand I couldn’t keep track. It was a dizzying assortment of food from all over the land, and an equally diverse group of people enjoying it.

My stomach churned, and I realized I was really hungry. After walking among the stalls, I settled on a mug of strong ale and a hunk of dark rye with several juicy-looking butter-and-garlic scallops on top. It seemed as good a place to start as any, though I was sure I’d be sampling something else after. And something after that.

I leaned against a barrel, eating my food, completely stunned that I was actually alone. It seemed like ages had come and gone since I had become entangled in the Syldonian intrigue and all the death and fear and betrayal and plotting that went with it. I was at one of the world’s greatest fairs, finally out of my room and left to my own devices, and had some small coin in my pocket—I was going to do by best to enjoy it, if even for a day.

As I chewed a plump scallop, I was thinking about what I might like to see or do. Peruse all the goods in the marketplace? Perhaps head to the docks to watch the flat-bottomed ships sail past in the broad canal? Just find a place to watch the people go by? I was considering the merits of each, and actually warming to the idea of exploring, unimpeded, uninterrupted, just caught along in the current of the Great Fair. To be one of those tiny people I’d both envied and disparaged from the castle on the hill.

And then I felt the sensation of being watched. My first thought was that Braylar was testing me—he’d sent someone to make sure I didn’t run, either out of Alespell or back to the baron. I scanned the crowds, wondering if I was simply imagining things, but then I saw it, across the plaza. Only it wasn’t a Syldoon. The face was a sunset over war-torn lands, shiny purple and yellow, with a nose that had been brutally broken, and flesh that was still badly swollen. We locked eyes, to be sure we were seeing who we were seeing. While the odds weren’t completely against us both being at the Fair—it was the largest attraction in the barony—we both seemed equally shocked at the recognition.

And then the boy spun and disappeared into the crowd, as if he’d never been there at all. He wasn’t wearing a gambeson, and didn’t appear to be armed, but there was no mistaking the young Hornman I’d spared in the grass.

I nearly choked on my scallop, tried to wash it down with ale, and then bent over sputtering and coughing.

I obviously just wasn’t meant to enjoy the Great Fair. The moment of peace and contentment disappeared as if it hadn’t existed at all. The Captain was right, my fate did seem to be irrevocably knotted to his.

I desperately hoped I might’ve been mistaken, but it was folly. I had seen the boy and he had seen me. Suddenly, my mercy didn’t seem quite as noble as it had on the Green Sea. I tried to weigh my options, but the possibilities were colliding too quickly. I could do nothing, simply pretend I hadn’t seen him. But if he reported me to a senior Hornman? I could rush back to the inn, but I knew what Braylar’s reaction would be, and dreaded being on the receiving end of it. I could try to catch up to the boy, speak to him, but I’d already dawdled as I stood there debating, and even if I somehow caught him, what would I say? You swore an oath—please keep it? Show me to your superiors so I can turn in my cohorts, and please don’t hang me? I could even head to the baron, appeal to the highest secular power in the land to extricate myself from the whole thing. But that idea lasted only long for me to remember the gurgling, screaming guard strapped to a table, his face soon to be flayed apart if it wasn’t already. There was no untangling this mess.

I tried to convince myself I accepted this commission because it was an opportunity to witness something unlike anything else I’d ever see, so far removed from ledgers and revenues, dowries and upjumping. But the truth was I was the worst kind of upjumper. I took the job for the most mercenary reasons of all—fame and fortune. Attaching my name to something large and grand and extraordinary and milking that association to better my own status.

But there was nothing large or grand about the things happening here. They were small and shadowy, punitive and bloody, occurring in the middle of one of the busiest centers of trade in the world, and yet unknown to all but a few key players who seemed intent only on deceiving or destroying others. If this was how history was made, I was a fool to want to be part of it.

Leaning against a wall, I breathed deep, steadied myself, and tried to imagine what Lloi would do. And the answer was obvious. She would do what needed doing. That’s what she would do. And as if acting of their own volition, my feet were carrying me back to the Grieving Dog, where I would do just that.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Countless people helped Scourge of the Betrayer along its winding way here. So if you were one of them and I neglected to mention you, hit me up for a beer later.

There were several folks who saw the earliest iteration of the manuscript and cheered me on, despite probably being tempted to suggest ice sculpture (or ice dancing) as alternate pursuits. So thanks, Josh Stevens, Eric Gubera, Kris Choma, Doug Folger, and Grant Keiser for excessive tact.

Many thanks to my agent, Michael Harriot, for believing in fantasy more intimate than epic, and for invaluable advice and feedback. Jen Brown uncovered countless gremlins lurking in the text and exterminated them with extreme prejudice. The posse at Night Shade Books also deserve special praise: Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, Ross Lockhart, Liz Upson, Amy Popovich; and surely others who contributed in ways I’m completely oblivious to. I bombarded them all with far too many questions and suggestions, and they handled them all with aplomb as they kept me from having panic attacks.

The artist, J.K. Woodward, and designers, Federico Piatti and Victoria Maderna, killed it—they did an exceptional job on the cover and really captured the spirit of the book. While we’re talking aesthetics, Gabriel Macintosh also built a great website despite my incessant waffling.

And to my lovely wife, Kristen… more gratitude than I can ever say, for putting up with my tempests, moods, and the Moose Pants Depression, and steadfastly encouraging me all the while. She is truly my better half, and inspires me to try to keep pace every day.