The Dark Glory War (21 page)

I was hard pressed to restrain a smile at Leigh’s oratory, and Ryhope clearly abandoned her efforts. She smiled happily in his direction. The Duke nodded his thanks to us, then Prince Scrainwood stood. As he did so I saw his down-turned lips even out into a thin-lipped grimace.

“It is clear, Highnesses, that we need to undertake some serious discussions. These are not discussions for children, so these boys may be dismissed, but Bosleigh Norrington’s words cannot be ignored.” Scrainwood lifted his head and straightened his spine. “We face a crisis that has been in the offing for a century. Failure to address it now may mean we never have a chance to address it in the future.”

Lord Norrington tapped Leigh on the shoulder, and Leigh led us from the chamber. Outside, after the doors closed behind us, he slumped against a wall and would have sunk to the floor but Nay and I held him up. His hands shook and he licked his lips. “I can’t believe I said what I did.”

“Pretty speech.” Nay smiled. “The princess seemed impressed.”

Leigh smiled. “I did notice that. Did you think I did well, Hawkins?”

I nodded. “You reported the right of it. Seems they wanted to deny what your father said so they didn’t have to worry themselves about the future. You showed them that was wrong, and the prince picked up on it.”

“He did, didn’t he?” Some of the hopeful warmth leeched out of Leigh’s voice as he straightened up. “Interesting man, he-who-will-be-our-king.”

“Wanted us out of there fast enough.”

I shivered. “I don’t think he liked meat all.”

“I don’t think he liked us diverting attention from him.” Leigh flicked a finger against his temeryx feather. “You saw his mask, all honorary ribbons from units. He’s twice our age and hasn’t done a thing, whereas provincials like us have slain temeryces and other Aurolani beasties before our Moon Month is up.”

I frowned. “You’re saying he’s jealous of us?”

“Jealousy, envy; both are bad.” Leigh tugged at the cuffs of his shirt and smiled. “He’ll bear watching.”

“I’d rather watch his sister.”

Nay nodded. “My preference as well.”

“Yes, lads, I’m sure that’s true.” Leigh slapped us both on our shoulders and guided us down the hallway toward the door. “So I’ll have to see what I can do to secure that duty for myself.”

[ ord Norrington remained involved in the Council of Kings Lfor the next several days. The three of us kept ourselves busy wandering about town, visiting the festival, and going back to the Phoenix Knights’ halls to learn more about the history of the organization. The lessons we learned there had a decided League slant to them, but our tutors didn’t seem to have an anti-Oriosa bias. Instead they treated us as if we were from a backward province. We amazed them with our ability to learn fast, though, and devoured the materials Fledglings had to master before they could progress further in the organization.

The festival never again did rise to the level of excitement we’d seen on the first day, but there were a variety of reasons for that. Primary among them was Leigh’s mood, which soured with each minute since he’d last seen Ryhope. I’d seen Leigh go through crushes before—Nolda Disper being the most recent of a spate of them. I was used to the pattern of his getting sulky when the woman of his dreams was not in sight, so I did my best to ignore him. Nay had a harder time of it and got a bit testy, which created new frictions among us.

I continued to see new and different things in Yslin, and began to recognize things my father had warned me about. I spotted a lot of swindlers playing tricks on festival-goers— often cheating them in games of chance through techniques my father had warned me about. Alley-bashers also preyed on those who drank too much, fake-cripples begged money, and cutpurses wandered through crowds not even bothering with artifice to take what they wanted.

There was one amusing note. The booth where Leigh had shot the arrow blindfolded into the heart was doing a lot of business. The proprietor had moved the hart back a good twenty feet and had adopted a mask of his own. He spent his time challenging passing individuals to match the blindfolded feat of archery that only an Oriosan could do. Attempts at salving national pride put a lot of copper in his pocket.

Either he didn’t recognize us as we passed by, or chose not to recognize us, more like. Nay was of a mind to strip the mask off him and expose his fraud, but I held him back from violence. Leigh roused himself and agreed with me. “Think on it, Nay. He’s doing more here to impress the world with our skills than any story of harvesting gibberers will ever manage.”

One afternoon we all three split up and went our separate ways. It wasn’t out of any disagreement, though the split probably did let us bleed off some frustration. Each of us wandered away to find suitable gifts for the others. We were coming down to the end of our Moon Months, when we would get our first adult masks, and it was customary for friends to present a gift to those who were getting their masks. The gifts were supposed to be something more than trivial, but not totally extravagant—though Prince Scrainwood was supposed to have been given a title and castle when he lost his moonmask.

Money for buying gifts would have been a problem, but Lord Norrington took care of that. He gave each of us three gold pieces and said they were from Queen Lanivette herself, by way of thanking us for our service to the nation. Fully funded by her generosity, we headed out.

I walked a meandering path that took me all over Yslin. I wanted to buy each of them something that would last a long time, and that would be useful and memorable and remind them of the time we’d spent together. While a lot of things fit that description, I saw very few of them in my travels. The festival wares seemed picked over and the clothes manufactured in Alcida seemed unfit for Oriosa. The bright colors weren’t the problems; it was the lightness of the weave and the looseness of the cuts, which would mean a garment could only be worn for a couple weeks in the dead of summer.

Down in the docks area I found what I wanted. Sailors from the various ships that had docked had brought with them a few items from distant lands that they hoped to resell to make some money for themselves. One man, just arrived from Svarskya in Okrannel, had a sheepskin coat with black wool on the interior. I gathered from the quickening of the pace of those he offered it to that in Alcida natural black wool was not favored and might even be superstitiously avoided. The coat looked big enough for Nay, so I slowly circled the man and moved in when he seemed frustrated and desperate.

Now, having been to market with my mother many times, I knew how to bargain. I listened to his story of how he’d bought the coat for his dear father, but his father passed on while he was at sea, and now he needed money to give his father a proper burial and to make sacrifices at the Temple of Death in his father’s name. I affected an attitude of horror at his plight and evidenced a desire to help him, which brought us to haggling over the price.

He started at four gold and I talked him down to one gold, five silver, which I raised to two gold if he’d also give me a carved malachite pendant of Arel, the godling of Luck. He agreed and we made the exchange. The jacket hung on me so loosely I wondered if the sheep hadn’t been the size of a bear, and I made quick time back to the inn.

Once there I asked Severus to hide the jacket for me, which he agreed to do, albeit rather reluctantly. “In Alcida, young master, a black sheep is regarded as an ill omen.”

“Oh, I know.” I raised a hand to the luck pendant I now wore at my throat. “I only dared wear it this far because I had this amulet that makes me very lucky. Luckier than anyone here, I imagine.”

That remark, which I made loudly, pricked up the ears of a greasy little man sitting in the back of the common room. “Lucky, are you?”

“I am.”

The innkeeper shook his head to warn me off, but I flashed him a smile and touched the amulet again. “I was lucky to find that coat, and I’ll be lucky again today, I can feel it.”

“Perhaps you’d be willing to test your luck.” The man beckoned me over to his table and set out three small cups and a wooden ball the size of a grape. He showed the ball to me, placed it beneath the center cup, then began to mix them up. He did the switching very slowly and obviously, letting me follow the cup with the ball very easily. He stopped the mixing and said, “There, find the ball.”

I pointed to the cup on the right. He tipped it aside and there the ball was. “Very good. Try again.”

I smiled and fingered the amulet. “I won’t lose.”

Again he mixed things up and again I chose the right cup. “Child’s play.”

“Well,” he offered, “we could make it more interesting.”

“How?”

“We could wager on it. I’ll pay you three times what you wager if you are right.”

I blinked my eyes. “But all I have is this gold coin.”

He reached into his belt pouch, placed three gold coins on the table, then put mine on top of it. “Here we go, watch the ball.” He placed it beneath the center cup and started mixing them up. His moves this time were much faster, much more smooth. I did my best to keep my eye on the appropriate cup, but I lost it. Looking up at me he must have seen my eyes flicker as I searched, for he slowed the mixing, then stopped.

“Which cup is it, good sir?”

I stroked the pendant with my right hand, then began to point with my left. “Is it this one, no, wait, I … I think it’s this one, no, wait a moment.” I squatted down to put my eyes level with the top of the table. “Just a moment. I know which it is!”

Rising, I brought both hands up and flipped over the two outside cups. They were empty. “There, I knew it, the middle one.”

The man blanched and reached his right hand for the coins. I leaned forward and grabbed his left fist and pressed down with my weight on it, mashing it against the table. “I think, my friend, if I open your fist here, I’m going to find a ball in it, a little wooden ball. Wouldn’t that be lucky?”

“Lucky, perhaps, but not for you.” He glanced past me and nodded, which brought an immensely fat man up off a stool and waddling in my direction. “You’ve lost, boy. Go away while you can still walk away.”

“No, no, no, my dear man, you have it all wrong, completely and utterly wrong.” Leigh laughed as he sauntered toward the corner of the common room. “You’ve forgotten, my friend is very lucky.”

The weasel snarled. “And my friend is very big.”

“Indeed, he is, but not as ferocious as our friend.” Leigh glanced back over his shoulder as Resolute ducked his head beneath a rafter and stalked into the common room. The fat man stopped dead in his tracks, though his body quaked a time or two. Resolute gave him a feral grin that set the man back a step.

Leigh reached over and pried the four gold coins from the weasel’s hand, then reached up with his right hand and squeezed the man’s cheeks together. “I think that my friend is not only lucky, but I think he’s pretty much sucked all the luck out of you. While we’re here, I think your luck is going to be much better elsewhere. You agree, don’t you?”

Though Leigh started the man’s head nodding up and down, it continued under its own power when Leigh released his grip. The weasel gathered his cups together and ran out, clutching them to his chest. Resolute’s growl sped him on his way, and induced the behemoth to follow as quickly as he could manage.

Leigh handed me the coins. “Your winnings, Hawkins.”

“Thanks very much.” I nodded to Resolute. “Good to see you again.”

“Resolute found me and we were looking for you and Nay. Is he here?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

Resolute frowned. “No time to wait. Come with me.”

Leigh shrugged. “He won’t tell me what it’s about either.”

We followed wordlessly as Resolute led us through Yslin.

We angled north, toward the docks, but broke off to the west before we got too close to the sea. We began to move into an older, worn-down section of town, where sewage gathered into stagnant puddles warred over by clouds of insects. Mildew clung to the walls and many buildings showed cracks in foundations and the walls.

This was the section of Yslin known as the Downs, and it was anything but the bucolic sort of place suggested by the name. This section of the city was sinking and would flood with extremely high tides. In another city or nation an attempt might have been made to reclaim it, but the Vorquelves had made it their home.

And, even now, I suspect Yslin does nothing to save it in the hopes the Vorquelves will finally quit the city.

The moist air penetrated my skin and carried a chill to my bones, though I must admit it wasn’t just the moisture that did it. As we stalked through the streets, we saw all manner of individuals lurking about. All were elves and many retained the supple, lithe form of the other elves, though they seemed stunted, shorter, and not nearly as powerful as Jentellin. A few wore tattoos or had shaved their heads or wore their hair long in a myriad of braids. Their soiled clothes reeked of sweat, blood, and other things even less pleasant. All of them had pupilless eyes, with colors running from pure blind white through coal-black, and a few had metallic colors like Resolute.

Deeper into the Downs elven strumpets called to us and lifted their skirts to entice us. Bottles were passed between them, and elsewhere on the streets drunken elves slumped against walls or lay facedown in the mud. Some of the bodies twitched as they heaved up everything they’d drunk that day. Still others stumbled from smoky hovels with the acrid sweet scent ofmorphium clinging to them. Those lost souls drifted along oblivious to the world around them, heedless of the dangers of a dark alley or horse-drawn cart.

Many things were shouted at us, most of them in Elvish. The tone told me I didn’t want to know what was being said, and Resolute offered neither translations nor warnings to those yelling at us. It struck me that the elves seemed as angry with him for bringing men into the Downs as they were with us for being there.

Finally Resolute led us down an alley and into a well-lit building that served as a tavern. Across the way a bartender— the only fat elf I’d ever seen—drew frothy mugs of ale and serving wenches brought them to customers. Rather unusually, though, most all the tables had been moved to the back of the common room and stacked there. The chairs had been arranged in rows and a clear space separated the chairs from a single table at the head of the room. Elves of various stripes filled the chairs, including one striking female, with black hair, gold eyes, and enough tattoos to give Resolute competition.