The Incorruptibles (6 page)

‘No, I reckon not, sir. But there’s some has got more resistance than others, depending on blood.’

He smiled. ‘True, of course. But I’m thinking your resistance isn’t that strong, is it?’

I nodded. ‘That’s right. I fall more on the
dvergar
side of the fence, I do.’

‘You come from the tinkers? Or diggers?’

To the eastern-born and the Rumans, there’s only two kinds of
dvergar
: tinkers – the smiths and farriers, the wheelwrights and carpenters, the folk with clever fingers and cunning tools – or the diggers, those
dvergar
suitable for only brute labour, digging and mining, burrowing and excavating. I’ll admit there’s mighty few others of
my
kind more than that. Haven’t yet figured out just where I fit in, though.

‘My mother was what you’d call a tinker, sir. She worked metal. Had a real knack for it too. Still does, I guess. Haven’t seen her nigh on fifty years.’

‘You have the look of a tinker, Mr Ilys.’ He placed a finger against his nose, winked at me, and said, ‘Raw intelligence, moderated deference, and tact. Definitely tinker.’

Don’t know how I felt about that, some engineer making personal judgments about me, filing me into his tidy little classification system that didn’t even take into account all walks of life.

It’s a miserable world we live in that places one man above another by virtue of birth. I’d like to see Beleth manage on the plains or the mountains for a fortnight and then see his judgments.

However, he
was
an engineer, so I nodded again and smiled. For a moment, I felt a great need to be off the boat and on the shore, by a fire, watching the camp smoke stir the stars and listening to the horses nicker and stamp.

Cornelius seemed even drunker than before. Livia, tense and pale, her lips tight and bloodless, sat watching her father thrash about. He attempted to rise on his good leg, waving a tumbler of whiskey in his hand.

‘Ah, Beleth. Beleth, tell them.’ He gestured with his glass, sloshing whiskey onto the floor. ‘Tell them you’ll have me patched—’ He fell back onto the pillows and slurped at his drink. ‘Have me patched up in a trice?’

Beleth walked around Cornelius’ divan. He stopped, put his hands on his waist, and then looked from the gore of his employer’s leg to Livia.

‘Looks bad.’

‘How very observant of you.’

I thought he might get ruffled, the little engineer, but he smiled. Didn’t go all the way to his eyes, though.

‘I’m no doctor—’ He paused, waiting to see if Livia would interject again. She didn’t. ‘But I think right here should suffice.’ He leaned forward and touched Cornelius right below the knee. Then he touched him again higher, on the lower thigh. ‘Or maybe here, if you can’t get that leg off soon.’

Cornelius’ tumbler shattered on the floor. How someone could lurch and wobble while reclining, I’ll never know, but the old senator managed it.

‘What?’ His voice was thick and slurred. ‘Can’t you … can’t you summon up …’

‘A
daemon
? Of course. And it can bite off your leg, if you’d like.’

‘No! No, to heal it. To fix it!’

Beleth laughed. Livia can mock and laugh, yet still convey love – I had learned this even in the short time I’d known her. But not Beleth. His mirth just sounded mocking.

‘
Daemons
do no healing, sir. They can only corrupt and weaken. But the fire of their hatred can keep you warm – heat water to cleanse the wound.’

‘No.’ Cornelius shook his head. He lay gasping, defeated. ‘No. No.’

Livia took charge. ‘Mr Fisk? Mr Ilys? Will you assist?’

I stepped forward. Blood and bone don’t bother me. Nor Fisk.

Secundus asked, ‘And me? Where should I … what should I do?’

‘Hold his head. Roll up that napkin, thick, and put it in his mouth. He’ll gnash his teeth.’

Fisk grabbed Cornelius’ uninjured leg. I took an arm; Cimbri moved forward to grasp his other. The man struggled, but only feebly.

I pulled out my flask of cacique, put it to his lips, and said, ‘Go on, Mr Cornelius. Drink it all down, now. All of it.’ Then I tilted it up and he opened his mouth and sucked at it like a calf at a teat.

When he drew away, I watched his eyes dissolve into watery pools, unknowing, brimming with oblivion. Livia withdrew from her medical kit the steel saw I had noticed earlier. She held it up to the yellow
daemonlight
, put it back down, poured acetum down its length.

She looked at us all, thought for a moment, and gestured at a nearby lictor and slave to come closer. She jabbed a finger at the lictor. ‘You hold his thigh. You—’ She looked at the half-
dvergar
woman. ‘You stand ready.’

‘Now that he’s bound and gagged, I’ll take his purse,’ Carnelia giggled. ‘For safekeeping, I swear.’

‘Sister, you think you’ll have free reign when Gnaeus is head of our house?’ Livia glared at her until Carnelia, still grasping her wineglass, turned and walked out of the stateroom in the overly precise way drunks have.

Not much more to say, really, unless you want to hear about the blood and gristle, how the Senator howled through the gag, how, even though he was as drunk as I’ve seen any man, he twisted and strained with surprising strength.

It was done. Miss Livia, spattered in her father’s blood, drenched the stump in tersus incendia – sending Cornelius into another writhing fit – and then wrapped it with as much linen as she could.

Two lictors, under Miss Livia’s watchful direction, placed him on a stretcher and took him back to his quarters. She followed them but paused briefly to address both Fisk and me, ‘Thank you, gentlemen. I cannot express how much I appreciate your help.’ She seemed about to say more, but then turned and left. The engineer nodded in our direction, adjusted his glasses, and stifled a yawn. After a moment, he followed in her wake. It was then I realized he was holding Cornelius’ amputated leg, raw side down and dripping.

I looked at Fisk. He wore an expression totally new to me: his face at once softer and harder than I’d ever seen it before. He wasn’t paying any attention to the engineer, that’s for damned sure.

We turned to leave, but Secundus held out a crystal decanter of whiskey.

‘Join me? We won’t be moving upriver for the next couple of days, so there’s no need for undue “spiritual” restraint, Mr Fisk, Mr Ilys.’ His solemn expression was broken by a quick smile, but I could see the tiredness lining his young face.

So we sat with the young highborn, and he asked questions about the land we were in, about the river, about the mountains, while I twisted smokes and Fisk poured the whiskey. It was early morning by the time we left and a bleary-eyed lascar took us back to the eastern shore.

No sign of Banty when we arrived. But his horse was still there, so I felt confident he’d turn up, much as I wished he wouldn’t.

It was cold and crisp, and my breath made crystal plumes in the air as I lay in my blankets by the fire, under the moon. A thin cloud passed across its face. Then I closed my eyes and I slept.

NINE

Fisk spent most of the next day, and the day after that, sleeping. I took Banty outriding and tried to dry the wet behind his ears. We scouted the eastern arc, a half circle starting a mile upstream the
Cornelian
and ending a mile down, out in the prairie, big sky above us, rippling grass all around.

‘Mr Bantam, a word of advice.’

He acted like he couldn’t hear. It
was
a mite windy.

‘You’re like to get ventilated if you keep squaring off with Mr Fisk, I reckon.’

He glanced at me, scowling.

I went on. ‘We like you fine, Mr Bantam. But respect ain’t just given, willy nilly. It takes time, needs to be earned. You keep your head down, do what Mr Fisk says—’

He kicked his horse off into a gallop and rode on ahead. I didn’t follow.

A pair of roosting quail, startled by his approach, burst from the ground in an explosion of sound and feathers.

Banty whipped out his gun, fast as lightning, sighted down his arm, and fired.

He fired again. I was far enough away not to feel the blast of the infernal. But
he
must have.

One bird dropped.

When I joined him, he sat still, holding his smoking pistol, looking down at the small body of the quail, brown, speckled, and almost invisible in the grass. He didn’t look at me.

‘That was some nice shooting, son.’ I stopped myself. ‘I mean, Mr Bantam. You’ve got a right talent there.’

He looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. Not a normal squint into the sun, or in anger. But like he was in pain or washed in remorse. His face, normally unlined and youthful – handsome, even – looked gaunt and pale. Gunplay does that to some men. And the boy was upset.

‘Let Fisk know I won’t be talked down to no more.’ He swallowed. ‘He talks down to me again, I’ll—’

‘Yessir, gotta say, that was some good shooting.’ I turned Bess and moved off, into the taller grasses. ‘Mr Fisk wouldn’t have wasted a shot, though. When he pulls his gun, what he’s aiming at—’

‘What?’

‘Dies. Never seen him miss.’

‘He missed them stretchers. I heard you say it yourself.’

‘That’s …’ I shook my head. There was just no talking to this boy. ‘That’s right. But the
vaettir
’re something else entirely.’

He snorted. ‘Tell him. I ain’t gonna be talked down to.’

I nodded. ‘All right, Mr Bantam. I’ll tell him what I saw.’

I took time to set a couple snares on the smooth, grooved entrance of a game trail dipping over the lip of an old creekbed. I’d ride back through in the morning, early, to collect whatever I’d snared. We’d gone through the tongue and livers and could use some more meat. Rabbit, I hoped. Or maybe something fatter. Coon ain’t half bad, if you know how to clean it right, which I do. I ain’t much for bragging, but there it is: I know how to clean coon.

Banty had a hard, angry slope to his shoulders, and he settled into his saddle like a tick digging into the soft white flesh of nether regions.

Nothing good would come of that one.

The damnedest thing is, everyone is born into this world on the edge of a knife. From the time you’re wet and squalling – the slightest tip of the balance and you go sliding away, consumed by remorse, or guilt. Or revenge. Or even love. Only Ia knows how it will turn out, and he’s not telling.

Faith is just believing he cares.

Livia was sitting by the fire with Fisk when I returned. Cimbri and a single lascar, too, sat on the logs next to it. Fisk had a pot of coffee stinking over the flames – he always burned it – and looked uncomfortable in the lady’s presence. He kept tugging the hem of his Imperial blues, trying to straighten his jacket. Cimbri looked pained, as though he thought she should be back on the boat. His whiskers seemed to bristle with impatience.

‘You’ve been requested at the palace,’ Cimbri said, jerking a thumb at the
Cornelian
. ‘Seems the Senator wants a dinner party.’

‘Ain’t that a little premature?’

‘You obviously don’t know the Senator. He wants what he wants.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow.’ He shifted, and then sighed. ‘Seems he’s quite taken with young Mr Bantam.’

‘Banty?’ I couldn’t help myself. It just popped right out there, like the words had a life of their own.

‘I know. Damned foolish …’ He coughed and looked at Livia. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean no disrespect.’

‘None taken.’

He coughed again and said, ‘Mr Cornelius seems to remember Banty “saving” him. Or at least being instrumental in his … er … his rescue and medical treatment.’

I laughed. Ia-damn that boy. He was gonna get into serious trouble one of these days. Between the patrician and Fisk, Banty’s days were numbered. Some folks just can’t help themselves.

Fire calls to fire, they say. I believe it.

Cimbri pulled a machine-rolled Medieran cheroot from his brushed vest, and popped it into his mouth through his copious whiskers.

‘Er. Yes. And he’ll be seated as the guest of honour.’

Fisk spat, and I laughed even harder. I raised an eyebrow at Livia. ‘How’s your father? His leg?’

‘Remarkably well, all things considered. He’d gone through quite a bit of liquor until one of the slaves found some poppy extract and we drugged his brandy. He slept for ten hours. And then was bellowing for red meat, eggs, and more spirits. Raw, preferably.’

‘Which?’

‘All of them. Raw.’

Fisk whistled.

‘Mr Cornelius must have the constitution of a bear,’ I said.

‘It’s Ia-damned impressive, the man’s will. He’s a monster, he is. The wound hasn’t even slowed him down.’ Cimbri stood up. ‘We’re gonna need more meat. And since Miss Livia asked if she could see a shoal auroch … I thought since you’re acquainted … she, and her sister, and Isabelle, the Medieran lass, might …’

‘You think that’s wise, Cimbri? Miss Livia? A hunt? With the ladies?’ Fisk squinted at Livia as though trying to see what she was thinking. She blinked slowly, deliberately, and stared back. A steady, cool gaze – fearless.

‘Your concern is?’ she said, after a while.

‘The womenfolk. I’m sure
you
know how to comport yourself, but those other ladies …’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll be frank.’

‘Please. It is what I wish from you.’

‘Those ladies are too damned foolish for a hunt. One of ’em will ride away and a
vaettir
will have her stripped way beyond her knickers before we know she’s even gone missing.’

‘We have faith in your abilities, Mr Fisk.’ She smiled and placed a fine hand upon his rough, tanned one. It was like I could see, right there, his brains getting scrambled.

‘Going out there, on the plains? Your father lost his leg. Just three days ago, a stretcher put an arrow through my leg. And there’s what happened to Orrin to think about.’

‘True. But we would have Secundus … and Gnaeus … and as many legionaries and lascars as you deem fit, Mr Fisk, each one bearing holly and silver.’ She inclined her beautiful head to me. ‘And you, Mr Ilys.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t carry much of either, but I wouldn’t miss this folderol for a sack of gold.’

Livia patted Fisk’s hand and smiled. ‘So, that’s settled. Tomorrow morning? We’ll assemble here?’

‘Looks like.’ Fisk glanced at Cimbri. ‘Have the lascars unlimber the Ia-damned wagon and port it over. We’re gonna need it.’

‘For the auroch?’

‘Or the corpses.’

No one laughed.

And so it was I rode east again that day, until I found signs of shoal auroch. I stripped myself of all weapons and even unsaddled Bess, riding her bridleless and with only a blanket, trusting to her good sense and the balance and ability Ia had given me.

There was a moment, when the sun, grown long in the sky, passed behind a grey cloud and the world went dim. In that moment I knew I wasn’t alone out on the great sea of the plains. I felt a diminishment. I was a flea, a spark, an infinitesimal mote on the face of the earth, but I
was not alone.

My mother would have said it was the old gods, the numen. I had half an inclination that it was a mite taller and toothier than them.

And then the cloud passed, and I scanned the horizon for indigene stretcher and shoal beast alike.

I didn’t find either. I was considerably relieved, I must admit – if I’m to go to my maker without a liar’s stain on my soul.

I looked at the mule, and she shivered her shoulder muscles and stamped the ground.

I wasn’t going to work myself into an Ia-damned tizzy if
she
wasn’t.

‘I’ll be skinned if you don’t have better sense than I do myself.’

Bess chucked her head, turned her neck to look at me, and bared her pink and black gums.

‘I know, girl. Ia help me, I know.’

Seeing that I agreed, she turned back to the plains, the mountains at our back, and walked on.