The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (4 page)

It was a war that had not yet ended.

Jarman lost his footing as the cutter jarred into the pier. Lucas grabbed his upper arm, steadying him. Men cursed, ropes lashed like whips, and then the
Sleek Maid
settled. Jarman looked about. No one seemed flustered. There was no damage, it seemed.

“We have reached our destination, sir. Safe and dry,” Ship-master Arimo said, grinning.

Jarman knew what was expected of him; his father had told him about the unhygienic continental habits. Somewhat hesitantly, he extended his smooth, scholarly hand and rubbed the skin of his palm against the rough, callused hide of the ship’s officer. The man’s fingers twitched, tried to make that contact stay, but Jarman slipped his hand back.

The shipmaster did not attempt the same thing with Lucas, Jarman noticed. He realized it would take time before he gained the same intimidating presence as the master wizard. Having your skin pricked a hundred thousand times with ink needles also helped.

“Thank you,” the young man said and headed for the gangplank. It seemed narrow, and he wobbled on carefully, the
lack of the seesawing motion, after days at sea, playing silly with his inner ear. Lucas followed, his strides steady. A knot of sailors trailed after them, carrying their luggage.

Solid ground
, Jarman thought. Well, almost. Rotten wooden planks, bleached white with salt and the sun, slick with spray. He looked around: kegs, piles of nets with their white buoys, boxes stacked neatly, cages with birds inside, flapping, making noise. Then, he saw the crowd of dockworkers, waiting their turn to approach the maid and ravish her. They looked coarse, with skin full of wrinkles and grime outlining every one of them, faces that never really got shaved, only trimmed, meaty bodies with extra fat they had to have to be able to lug the cargo all day long, eyes squinting, suspicious, and hostile.

And that was only their own ship.

The same scene unfolded to the left and right, stretching without end. Quickly, the majestic glory of Eybalen truly assailed him. He waded through the mass of sweaty, stinking men with his arms half raised, trying to avoid touching them. One of Shipmaster Arimo’s men walked ahead, never quite bothering to check if they kept pace. The fish market almost made Jarman gag. He tried to block the almost physical punch of offal from his eyes and nostrils, but it did not really work.

Twenty or thirty paces was all it took to clear the dock front and get into the calmer harbor area, with squat warehouses and whorehouses blocking the view of the city. Jarman breathed deeply, as much as he dared. Behind him, the piers seethed. It was madness there. So unlike home.

He stared at the narrow streets worming toward inner Eybalen. He did not like the look of those streets; they were too dark, too filthy. Refuse ran down the sides in rivers of brown. It spilled into the harbor, just beneath their feet, slopping through
cracks in stones and slits in the rotten planks. No wonder the cove was so murky.

How can people live like this
, Jarman wondered.

“We will not be staying here long,” Lucas tried to reassure him.

“That’d be all, gents,” the sailor said, saluted casually, and walked back toward the stench.

Jarman did not like this place. He didn’t like it at all. But then, he had spent his entire adult life in a place where order ruled—order of things, order of thought. You might not like everything at the temple or agree with some of the customs, but you could appreciate the certainty of them. You knew that you would not be randomly punished; you knew that luck and chance had nothing to do with how well you did in your tests and how quickly you progressed in the temple’s cadre. This…was chaos.

“What now?” he asked, feeling lost. The train of sailors was stacking their things, wooden cases and hide bags, too many for two people to carry.

Lucas watched the ship’s crew carefully, as if seeing things that the plain eye could not detect. “We must get transportation. A carriage.”

Jarman pointed dramatically. A brothel, some sort of an inn, the customs office, another brothel, another, a warehouse, a brothel, a building with its windows boarded. “Here?” A steady trickle of men was going about its business, in and out of various doors. This was chaos, it seemed, but it worked somehow.

“I will take care of it,” Lucas said. “Wait for me there.” The wizard pointed at one of the inns.

Armin’s son sighed. Well, he had known the price of his journey before setting foot on the
Sleek Maid
. There was no
point delaying the inevitable or commiserating about his own choices.

“What about our things?”

“No one will touch them,” Lucas promised.

Jarman headed for the tavern. He looked behind him. The luggage heap stood out like a lighthouse, begging to be picked by the street vermin the moment the owners left it without guard. But as Jarman walked farther and farther away, casting quick glances back, the heap remained untouched. A swarm of dock rats came and went about; grubby children, sly characters, ordinary workers, they all saw the prize and casually walked around it, not one pausing to reconsider his good fortune.

Jarman smiled weakly. Magic. They didn’t like it here in the realms.

That was about to change, he knew.

Jarman walked into the establishment without bothering to check the name on the swinging plate. And then he realized—shutters smeared in oil paint, all of the same color, all intact, faded but monotone facades, strips of solid cobbles, city watchmen patrolling the crowded waterfront. This was the more prosperous part of the city’s harbor, he noted sadly. He could hardly imagine what went on in the poorer districts.

“One?” someone asked him.

Jarman frowned, getting his tongue to flick in Continental. “One what?”

A man stood in front of him, bearded, thickset. “Are you alone, sir?”

“Oh, I see.” Would Lucas join him? “One.”

“After me, sir,” the man said and led him to a tiny table fixed to the side wall of the large common room.

Jarman sat down. He noticed the man had asked him something else. “Pardon me?”

“Drinks? Food, sir? We have fresh squid.”

The young wizard rubbed his chin. Did he dare eat here? These people were filthy; there was no knowing what they would do to their food. But then, he would be spending the next few months, maybe a whole year, maybe a decade, in Caytor, so he had better get used to their cuisine. The sooner, the better, it seemed.

“Something deep fried, crisp, almost black. And wine.”

The man wrinkled his nose. “We have more than a hundred dishes on our menu, sir.”

Jarman shrugged. “Anything really, sir.”

As the proprietor walked away—or maybe he was just a waiter—Jarman looked about the common room, exploring, recalling hours after hours of study on the culture and customs of the continental people. He looked for the telltale clues of class and wealth and found them easily enough. This seemed to be a place for the rich. Men wore thick rings with jewels on their fingers; others weighed their necks with heavy gold chains. Some had polished boot buckles, or silver filigree on the hilts of their swords.

They sat usually in pairs or threes, discussing business, it seemed. A violent affair, with a lot of gesturing and shouting, but Jarman saw through these displays of bravado easily enough. The Caytoreans were trying to hide their worry and anxiety behind big words and jerky motions.

Not all were locals. He spotted another Sirtai in the crowd. He almost waved, but then refrained. That would be foolish. A pair of Parusites entered, their shirts embroidered with the royal coat of arms. There were no women present.

Just as that thought dissipated, one came and flopped a wooden platter full of sea things in front of him. She was a large girl, with freckles across the bridge of her nose and plump
cheeks. The waitress curtsied, the tiniest motion—you might mistake it for a misstep—and smiled. Jarman was inclined to smile back, but then he saw her teeth, almost the same color as his plate, and his enthusiasm withered. She lingered for a moment more, as if expecting something from him, but he just stared at her. In an instant, her smile vanished, and she sauntered away.

Jarman looked down at his food—mussels, scallops, a coil of squid. None of it looked deep fried. He realized he should have ordered meat or vegetables.

He tried a few of the clams and found them slippery and tasteless. He gave up after a while. There was no sign of Lucas. He wasn’t worried, but he was definitely bored.

An hour ticked away, and Jarman decided he could not stand this place anymore. He was irritated from staring at people doing business and reading their lips or trying to guess what they were dealing in. He rose and headed for the door. Someone called, a vague yell, and he turned to see who might be making that noise. Then he realized the stocky man was waving at him.

“You haven’t paid, sir,” the man explained patiently, but his tone was sharp.

Jarman slapped his forehead. Of course. He had forgotten. “Yes, my apologies.” And he remembered that he carried no money on his body. Lucas and he had agreed that the life slave would carry all the gold, because Jarman might lose it to cutpurses too easily.

Now what?

“I don’t have any money with me, sir. But my slave will be about any moment.”

The innkeeper did not seem sympathetic. “We don’t charge money up front like some shitholes out there, true, as
this is a respectable place here; we got honest customers coming in.” He gestured around him, left and right. “But you still gotta pay before you leave. One silver, sir.”

The freckled waitress joined the man’s side, her lips sealed shut. Jarman might have liked her if he hadn’t seen her teeth, and he was painfully aware of the fact he had lived for a whole decade without any female company whatsoever. At the moment, though, fear and embarrassment and the horrid image of her mouth made him forget about his sexual deficit.

“We must wait for my slave,” Jarman explained.

“We will not wait for long,” the innkeeper said.

Some of the clientele were staring at him now, frowning, wondering what some Sirtai might have done to invoke the owner’s wrath. They could see his silk clothes and couldn’t quite grasp the fact he was penniless.

The door banged open, and Lucas walked in. No drama, no fuss, just perfect timing and an ominous presence that made everyone in the room become suddenly busy with the contents of their bowls, plates, and pipes. The innkeeper deflated almost instantly.

Lucas approached. “How much, kind sir?” he said patiently.

“Eh…one silver, my lord,” the local stammered.

The Anada wizard flicked his fingers and offered two coins. “For your trouble.”

Jarman was glad to leave the inn as quickly as he could. He didn’t stop walking until he reached the luggage heap. There was a large carriage waiting. It was impressive, painted black, with eight horses in the front, shitting on the cobbles. A bored man sat behind the reins, and two men were getting ready to load the chests and bags onto the back and roof of the carriage.

“Our transport,” Lucas explained. “Sorry about that. I should have reminded you about the services and payments.
And here.” He gave Jarman a small purse. “Just in case. Keep it safe.”

Jarman considered slipping the coins into his back pocket, then reconsidered and placed them in a front one. The bulge chafed when he walked, but he would not allow himself to be embarrassed again, not so easily anyway.

“It will get better once we leave Eybalen,” Lucas promised.

Armin’s son nodded almost automatically. Better? Maybe. Their task was perilous, fatal. “All right. Let’s leave as soon as we can.”

They would be heading north and west, toward Pain Daye, where they expected to find and meet with Emperor James of Athesia and convince him to help them save the world.

CHAPTER 3

A
malia stared at her brother. He was a bastard.

Not just a bastard in the simple sense of the word. Yes, his mother might have been some Eracian woman, and they might have shared the same dad. But he was a bastard in his soul, a ruthless and vain fop who always smiled and had people dancing at the ends of his strings.

Amalia hated him. And envied him.

The empress of Athesia was still not fully convinced they were kin. When she looked hard enough, she thought she saw her father, younger, softer; she could glimpse some similarities in James’s features, the cheekbones, the jawline, the lips. Still, she wondered if this man were nothing more than a very skilled trickster, created by Caytor in order to topple her. Well, it sure had worked. Her subjects followed him now, without any doubt in their hearts. They called him His Highness, they talked to him about the future of the realm, and they never once mentioned her.

She had ceased to exist.

And for the better, she felt. Because she didn’t know what to do yet.

“Jerrica!” someone called.

It took her a moment to realize they meant her. Amalia looked up and saw Agatha approaching, grinning, carrying a bundle in her arms. Jerrica, it was a good common name, and her way of honoring the bodyguard who had smuggled her out of Roalas.