The City (31 page)

It was Frayling.

Hours before, Frayling had stood leaning on his crutch, looking up at the merchant’s house, determined not to leave empty-handed after such a long struggle to get there. He knew he had barely the energy to get back to the House of Glass that day, and he feared crossing the City at night. But he could not admit to himself that he was beaten.

He drank some water from the fountain, then sat down on the far side of it, where he could not be seen, his back against its warm stone wall.

He tried to concentrate on the problem at hand, but his thoughts kept drifting to Emly. The day he had first seen her had been the first day of his life. Among the wretched and downtrodden, the halt and the lame, of Lindo she had seemed to him like the girl who lived on the moon, in the stories he was told as a child, who stepped down from her home in the sky at night to walk among the poor giving gifts to children. Emly was dark and quick as a bird, graceful and strong as the ghost cats who patrolled the rooftops. Her small fingers were nimble, and his favourite days were those when he was asked up to
her workroom to help her bind the glass pieces with lead calms. She was the kindest person he had ever met, for he had met very few in his difficult life. He had been working at a stonemason’s, helping shift the heavy stones for the master carvers to make their marks on. It was hard work, but it was all he could get, and when he was finished for the day he could do no more than sleep until it was time to work again. His leg pained him constantly and he was paid barely enough to keep body and soul together. He was limping home to his hovel late one day when he heard that the new occupant of the house opposite Meggy’s was looking for a servant. By the time he got to Blue Duck Alley there were thirty or more men outside the tall crooked house, and arguments and scuffles were breaking out. Frayling stood at the back of the crowd, leaning on his crutch, cursing himself for wasting sleeping time on a fool’s errand. Then an old man stepped out of the house and surveyed them all. He was a tough old boy, Frayling thought, with hair gone grey, and light green eyes.

‘I want an honest man,’ the old man announced, looking around him, ‘a veteran who will serve me as he once served the City. In return I will pay a fair wage and meals.’

It turned out that every man there had served in the army, even Frayling, who didn’t know a broadsword from a branding iron. The old man started moving among the group, asking questions, his speech sharp, his pale eyes quick to seek out dishonesty. At last he came to Frayling.

‘Your name?’

‘Frayling, lord.’

‘What regiment?’

Frayling blushed and looked at his feet. ‘The Forty-second, lord.’

The old man frowned. ‘Forty-second what?’

Frayling tried desperately to remember anything that sounded military, but his mind remained empty, and he stared hopelessly at the ground.

‘Are you honest, Frayling?’

‘Yes, lord,’ he replied wonderingly, having just been caught in a lie.

‘How did you injure your leg?’ the old man asked.

‘A childhood accident,’ Frayling confessed with shame.

‘Can you manage stairs? This house is built mainly of stairs,’ the man said.

‘Yes, lord,’ Frayling answered, his heart leaping. ‘I can do anything as well as a man with two good legs.’

‘Come with me and prove it,’ the old man told him. ‘And don’t call me lord.’

The sun was going down on the warm quiet square when Frayling scrambled clumsily to his feet. He had decided to have one more try, one last attempt to earn a look of gratitude and admiration on Emly’s face. He limped across the square and, pushing down his fears, rapped firmly on the door again. After a very long time the same servant opened it.

Frayling cleared his throat and spoke his rehearsed words. ‘I wish to speak to your master.’ And, in an inspiration which sealed all their fates, he added, ‘The veil I am seeking is priceless, and if it is not returned to my lord’s house he will seek redress in the court of the Immortal.’

Emly took her work shoes off and, holding them in one hand, flew down the stairs to the hall. She did not want Bartellus to hear, and add to his worries. She quietly eased open the door. Although she was in a hurry, her years of hardship had made her cautious, and she locked the door behind her and pocketed the key before running up the pitch-black side alley. She heard pitter-pattering sounds in the lane at her feet and imagined rats running alongside her, keeping pace with her. She had not been out in the hours of darkness for several years: the cool night air was stimulating and she felt her spirits lifting.

She found Frayling still in the same spot, the wall holding him in a sitting position, although he seemed to be asleep.

‘Frayling,’ she whispered, and he stirred. Recognizing her, he gathered his crutch under him and tried to stand. Then she saw the blood on his face and body. She tried to help him to his feet. She was too small to put her shoulder under his, but she supported him with her arm around his waist as they slowly limped homeward.

‘What happened?’ she asked. One side of his face was a bloody mess, the eye closed. There was blood on his jerkin, but she did not know if it was from the face injuries or other wounds.

‘Merchant’s men,’ he whispered, eyes downcast, ‘two of them, beat me. I asked for the veil.’ He groaned, from pain or frustration.

In her mind’s eye Em saw herself going to the merchant’s house, perhaps with militia hired by her father, and demanding the veil and
redress for Frayling’s injuries. Then she remembered they were to disappear that night, and she realized they could not take Frayling with them, for it would be too dangerous for the crippled man. She knew he adored her, this tall shambling man with his useless leg and kind heart. He wanted to be her protector, and she wished that he could. She had seen too much of men’s savagery, and understood something of the hideous lives suffered by many women, the poor and the unprotected. All her short life she had relied on others to keep her safe, first her brother, then Bartellus. It frightened her that just one old man’s life stood between her and a possible future of pain and misery.

When they reached the House of Glass she unlocked the door and let them in. In her head she had rehearsed a little drama to conceal from Bartellus the fact that she had been out in the night. She put a finger to her lips. Frayling frowned and nodded. Then she rapped hard on the inside of the door, and waited until she heard her father moving about upstairs. Then she flung open the door, grinning back at the servant.

‘Frayling!’ she cried dramatically, more loudly than was necessary.

Then she fell back in terror, trying to close the heavy door again. But the three big men looming in the darkness merely pushed her to one side and walked in. Two had swords drawn; the third, a stout ruffian with a grey beard, carried a nail-studded wooden club. He pushed the door closed behind them.

The leader, a dark-faced man with an eyepatch, grabbed Em by the arm. ‘Where is the old man?’ he asked. He glanced up the stairs. ‘Up there?’

She shook her head and he threw her down. She fell hard against the door and her head bounced off the oak. The world went dark for a moment and her limbs lost their strength. The one-eyed man turned his back, while the second swordsman raised his weapon to stab her. Then the swordsman fell as, with a shout, Frayling hit him round the head with his crutch. The one with the cudgel laughed briefly as his friend went down, then he casually swung the club at Frayling. The crippled man tried to get out of the way, for the club moved slowly, and it hit him a glancing blow on his bad hip. Frayling gave a scream of agony and collapsed at the foot of the stairs. Em shook her head clear and scrambled across the floor to him. The servant’s eyes were open but he seemed paralysed by the pain.

Then there was a shout from above and everyone looked up. Bartellus had appeared at the top of the stairs. He took two steps downwards. Em watched him take in the scene below, then retreat back to his room.

The one-eyed leader, known as the Wolf, did not call himself an assassin, although he could not argue with anyone who did. He simply followed the orders of his protector, and if he was told to kill, well, he did so as efficiently as possible, without hatred or cruelty. He had no idea why he had been ordered to kill this old man who scurried up the stairs away from them, but he doubted it would take all three of them.

The Wolf was once known as Casmir, an infantryman of the Eighteenth Serpentine, who fought loyally for his City for more than fifteen years, first under the legendary Grantus, then his successor Victorinus Rae Khan. His final battle was a trivial skirmish in a small tribal village south of the Plakos. Afterwards the City warriors moved on, leaving at their backs a village of corpses. They also left Casmir, for he had taken a deep wound to the stomach and a blow to the head and he lay as if dead in his own blood. There he suffered for two days or more, dying slowly, too slowly not to be aware when an impatient carrion crow took out his eye. Casmir was at last discovered by another troop of City fighters and, against all probability, survived. When he had recovered from his wounds, which was after many weeks, he took time to hunt down all the former comrades who left him to die, those whose names he could remember. There were still some left to find, but he suspected they were dead already from other causes and his rage was less potent now, quenched by blood.

His protector’s orders had been clear. ‘Kill the old man … and make sure he is dead!’ This last was something of a joke between them. ‘And anyone else in the house, if you see fit.’

The Wolf did not see fit to kill the girl. He did not kill girls without good reason. He was annoyed that Derian had stabbed at her, and amused that the cripple had downed the swordsman with his crutch. But he could not blame Derian when he leaped up and stabbed the cripple in the chest. The girl squealed like a rabbit on a stick.

‘Let’s see if there are any more mice in this hole,’ the Wolf ordered. And, pointing at the girl, he said, ‘Bring her along.’

Leading the way, sword raised, he stepped lightly up two flights
of stairs to the landing where he had seen the old man. He looked swiftly left and right. There was no movement. He could hear the stair treads creaking and the sound of Ragtail’s laboured breathing. He turned and put his finger to his lips. The girl opened her mouth to shout, and Ragtail dropped his grip on her arm and grabbed her round the head, muffling her mouth with his great hand. There was silence. The Wolf gestured to Derian to go to the left, while he slid into the right-hand room. A table, a chair and a threadbare rug. No one hiding.

He stepped out on to the landing again and looked up the next flight of stairs. How many were there?

He cleared his throat and, pitching his voice at a conversational level, said, ‘Come down, old man. We have already killed the cripple. We will slit the girl’s throat if you don’t appear.’ He had no idea of the relationship between the old man and the girl. She could be a serving maid and her slit throat a matter of indifference to her master. Still, it was worth a try.

Then the darkness on the landing above them thickened, and the old man was standing there. He held a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. By his stance the Wolf guessed he knew how to use them. But it would make no difference. They had the girl, and it now seemed that she was the old man’s weak point. So it was all over, really.

It was not clear quite what happened then. One moment the old boy was standing, defiant but already defeated, at the top of the stairs. The next there was a whirl of movement. Ragtail went down, a knife in his throat. The pommel of the thrown sword, spinning end over end, hit the Wolf on the side of the head and he staggered and went down on one knee, dazed for a moment.

‘Run, Em!’ the old man shouted, and the girl leaped up the stairs, racing past the Wolf, kicking him in the face with a flying heel. He stood up, shaking his head to clear it, and started up the stairs in her wake.

The girl had disappeared into the darkness of the upper floors. The old man still stood in the same spot, only now he was unarmed.

But then he charged.

He took several running steps down the stairs, reckless as a child, and launched himself at Derian and the Wolf. Both men had their swords up, but the staircase was narrow and Derian was behind.
With a jolt the Wolf realized the old man was going to hit him with the force of a runaway cart. He put both hands on the sword, bracing himself. At the last moment he saw that the old man had padded his forearms with a coat and was going to hit the upraised sword arms first, head down. Then he cannoned into him, and the three men crashed down the stairs to the lower landing, the old boy on top.

Angry now, the Wolf scrambled from under the melee and leaped to his feet. His sword was lost, but Derian was up too and he was still armed. The old man lay on the wooden floor, winded by his fall, helpless.

‘Kill him!’ snarled the Wolf.

Derian grinned. ‘A pleasure,’ he said. He stepped forward, then fell to his feet, howling in pain.

The Wolf realized the cripple was not dead, and had crawled up the stairs and grabbed his lost sword. He had hacked it across the back of Derian’s leg, drawing blood, perhaps severing something. The Wolf shook his head. What a shambles! After his joke about making sure the enemy was dead. He almost laughed. He took out his dagger and, grabbing him by the hair, cut the cripple’s throat. Then he turned to the old man.

‘He was harder to kill than I thought,’ he commented pleasantly.

The old man watched him from the floor. He was pale and breathing heavily. He had found a dagger from somewhere, Ragtail’s perhaps, and held it by its hilt. A tough old soldier, the Wolf thought. Despite the shambles, it was a shame to kill him.

Taking his time, keeping an eye on the dagger, in case the man reversed it for another throw, he retrieved his sword from the cripple’s dead grasp, glancing sourly at Derian, who was moaning and clutching at his injured leg.

‘I should have come alone,’ he commented.