The Judging Eye (23 page)

A moment of silence, far too
thick to connote shock or surprise.

The Captain took a deliberate
drink, then fixed him with his narrow brown eyes. It was a look Achamian
recognized from the massacres and privations of the First Holy War. A look that
saw only dead things.

"I know you," was all
he said in a voice with a hint of a papyrus rasp.

"You will address the
Captain as 'Veteran,'" the silver-haired man exclaimed. He was diminutive
but with wrists thick enough to promise an iron grip. And he was old, at least
as old as Achamian, but it seemed the years had stripped only the fat of
weakness from him, leaving spry fire in the leather that remained. He was a man
who had been shrivelled strong. "After all," he continued with a
slit-eyed laugh, "it's the
Law
."

Achamian ignored him.

"You know me?" he said
to the Captain, who had resumed his study of his inscrutable drink. "From
the First Hol—"

"Sir," the small man
interrupted. "Please. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sarl—"

"I need to contract your
company," Achamian continued, staring intently at the Captain. Definitely
Ainoni. He looked archaic, like something risen from a burial mound.

"Sir," Sarl pressed,
this time with a cut-throat gleam in his eye.
"Please..."

Achamian turned to him, frowning
but attentive.

His grin hooked the ruts of his
face into innumerable lines. "I have, shall we say, a certain facility for
sums and figures, as well as the finer details of argument. My illustrious
Captain, well, let us just say, he has little patience for the perversities of
speech."

"So
you
make the
decisions?"

The man burst into a beet-faced
cackle, revealing the arc of his gums. "No," he gasped, as though
astounded that anyone could ask a question so uproariously thick.
"No-no-no! I do the singing. But I assure you, it is the
Captain
who
inks the verse." Sarl bowed to the Ainoni in embellished deference—who now
watched Achamian with something poised between curiosity and malice. When Sarl
turned back to Achamian, his lips were pursed into a
see-I-told-you-so
line.

Achamian snorted dismissively.
This was one thing he didn't miss about the civilized world: the addiction to
all things indirect.

"I need to contract your
Captain's company."

"Such a strange
request!" Sarl exclaimed, as though waiting to say as much all along.
"And daring, very daring. There are no more wars, my friend, save the two
that are holy. The one that our Aspect-Emperor wages against wicked
Golgotterath, and the more tawdry one we wage against the Sranc. There are
no
more mercenaries
, friend."

Achamian found himself glancing
back and forth between the two men. The effect was unnerving, as though the
division of attention amounted to a kind of partial blindness.

For all he knew, this was the
whole point of this ludicrous exercise.

"It isn't mercenaries I
need, it's scalpers. And it isn't war that I intend, it's a journey."

"Ahhh,
very
interesting,"
Sarl drawled. His eyes collapsed into fluttering slits every time he smiled, as
if blinking at some kind of comical grit. "A journey requiring scalpers is
a journey
into the wastes
, no?"

Achamian paused, disconcerted by
the ease of the man's penetration. This Sarl was every bit as nimble as he
looked.

"Yes."

"As I thought! Very,
very
interesting! So tell me, just
where
in the North do you need to
go?"

Achamian had feared this
question, as inevitable as it was. Who was he fooling?

"Far..." He swallowed.
"To the ruins of Sauglish."

Another spittle-flecked spasm of
laughter, this one carving every vein, every web of wrinkles in succinct shades
of purple and red. He even yanked his wrists together as though bound, shook up
and down, fingers flicking. He looked to the cowled man as though seeking
confirmation. "Sauglish!" he howled, rolling his face back. "Oh
ho, my friend, my poor, poor lunatic friend!" He reclined back in his
chair, sucking air. "May the Gods"—he shook his head in a kind of
astonished dismissal—"keep your bowls warm and full and whatever."

Something in his look and tone
said,
Leave while you still can...

Achamian's fists balled of their
own volition. It was all he could do to keep from burning the pissant to
cinders. Arrogant monkey-of-a-man! Only the Captain's Chorae and the indigo
Mark of his cowled companion stayed his tongue.

A hard moment of fading smiles.

Sarl scratched the pad of his
thumb with the nail of his index finger.

Then the Captain said,
"What lies in Sauglish?"

The words fairly knocked the
blood out of Sarl's ruddy face. Perhaps there were consequences for misreading
the Captain's interest. Perhaps the man had simply wandered too far out on a
drunken limb. For some reason, Achamian had the impression that Lord Kosoter's
voice always had this effect.

"What do you know of
it?" Achamian asked. He immediately realized this was a grievous mistake,
answering a question with a question when discoursing with the Captain.
Nevertheless, he felt the need to match, flint for flint, the man's unearthly
look, to communicate his own ability to see the atrocity at the heart of all
things.

He stared into Lord Kosoter's
shining eyes. He could hear Sarl breath, a shallow-chested sound, like a dog
dreaming. He found himself wondering if the cowled man had moved. A ringing
sidled into the room, high-pitched and hazy, and with it came a premonition of
lethality, a wheedling apprehension. The stakes of this contest, part of him
realized, involved far more than dominance or respect or even identity, but the
very possibility of being...

I am the end of you
, the
eyes in his eyes whispered. And they seemed a thousand years old.

Achamian could feel himself
wilt. Wild-limbed imaginings flickered through his soul, hot with screams and
blood. He could feel tremors knock through his knees.

"Go easy now, friend,"
Sarl murmured in what seemed genuine conciliation. "The Captain here can
piss halfway cross the world, if need be. Just
answer
his
question."

Achamian swallowed, blinked.
"The Coffers," some traitor with his voice said. Glancing at Sarl
seemed like breaking the surface of a drowning.

"Coffers," Sarl
repeated strangely. "Perhaps"—a quick glance at Lord
Kosoter—"you should tell the Captain what you meant by the Coffers."

Achamian could see the man's
implacable eyes, like Scrutiny incarnate, leaning against his periphery. He
found himself glancing at the cowled figure, then looking away, down to the
accursed floor.

It wasn't supposed to be like
this!

"No," he said,
breathing deep, then glaring at all three in turn. The way to deal with the
Captain, he realized, was to make him one of a number. "I shall try my
luck elsewhere." He made to leave, feeling faint and sweaty and more than
a little nauseous.

"You're the
Wizard
,"
Lord Kosoter called out in a growl.

The word hooked Achamian like a
wire garrote.

"I remember you," the
grave face continued as he turned. "I remember you from the Holy
War." He slid his wine-bowl to one side, leaned forward over the table.
"You
taught him
. The Aspect-Emperor."

"What does it matter?"
Achamian said, not caring whether he sounded bitter.

The almost black-on-black eyes
blinked for what seemed the first time.

"It matters because it
means you were a Mandate Schoolman... once." His Sheyic was impeccable,
bent more to some inner dialect of anger than to the lilting cadences of his
native Ainoni tongue. "Which means you
really do know
where to find
the Coffers."

"So much the worse for
you," Achamian said. But all he could think was
how
... How could a
scalper, any scalper, know about the Sohonc Coffers? He found himself glancing
at the leather-cowled man to the Captain's left... The sorcerer. What was his
School?

"I think not," Lord
Kosoter said, leaning back. "There's scalpers aplenty in Marrow, sure. Any
number of companies." He hooked his wine-bowl with two calloused fingers.
"But none who know
who you are
..." His grin was curious,
frightening. "Which means none who will even entertain your request."

The logic of his claim hung like
an iron in the air, indifferent to the swell of background voices. Truth was
ever the afterlife of words.

Achamian stood dumbstruck.

"I have this leaf,"
Sarl said, his eyes bright with just-between-friends mischief. "You place
it against your anus—"

The cowled man erupted in
faceless laughter. Achamian saw his left eye as he tilted his head back, a
glimpse of a pupil set in watery grey. But it was the guttural arrhythmia of
his laugh that told him what he was...

"Just
twooo
,"
Sarl howled, his purple brows nearly pinched to his apple-red cheeks.
"Tw-twooo
ensolariis!"

Achamian sneered as much as
smiled. The Anus Leaf was an old joke, an expression referring to charlatans
who peddled hope in the form of false remedies.

The Captain watched him with
imperturbable care.

They were right, he realized.
Derision was all he could expect here in Marrow—or even worse. The Skin Eaters
were his only hope.

And they had already struck him
down.

***

Achamian took the proffered bowl
in both hands just to be sure it didn't shake. He drained it and gasped.
Unwatered wine from some bitter Galeoth soil.

"The Coffers!" Sarl
crowed. "Captain! He wants to loot the
Coffers
!"

Achamian smacked his lips about
the burning in his gullet, wiped a rasp-woollen sleeve across his beard and
mouth. It was strange, the way a single drink could make you part of someone's
company. "It was
him
," Achamian said to the Captain while
nodding in the direction of the cowled figure. "Wasn't it? He told you
about the Coffers..."

Another mistake. Evidently, the
Captain refused to recognize even the most innocent conversational impositions.
Hint, innuendo, implication; all of it accused with a glare, then condemned
with onerous silence.

"We call him Cleric,"
Sarl said, tilting his head toward the man—a mock covert gesture.

The black, leather-rimmed oval
seemed to stare back at Achamian.

"Cleric," Achamian
repeated.

The cowl remained motionless.
The Captain resumed staring into his wine.

"You should hear him in the
Wilds," Sarl exclaimed. "Such sweet sermons! And to think I once
thought myself eloquent."

"And yet," Achamian
said carefully, "Nonmen have no priests."

"Not as Men understand
them," the black pit replied.

Shock. Its voice had been
pleasant, melodious, but marbled with intonations alien to the human vocal
range. It was as though the tones of a deformed child had been woven into it.

Achamian sat rigid. "Where
are you from?" he asked, his lungs pressed against his backbone.
"Ishterebinth?"

The hood bowed to the tabletop.
"I can no longer remember. I have known Ishterebinth, I think... But it
was not called such then."

"I see your Mark. You wear
it fierce and deep."

The hood lifted, as though raising
hidden ears to some faraway sound. "As do you."

"Who was your Quya Master?
From which Line do you hail?"

"I... I cannot
remember."

Achamian licked his lips in
hesitation, then asked the question that had to be asked of all Nonmen.
"What can you remember?"

An odd hesitation, as though to
the syncopation of an inhuman heart.

"Things. Friends. Strangers
and lovers. All of them heart-breaking. All of them horrific."

"And the Coffers? You
remember them?"

An almost imperceptible nod.
"I was at the Library of Sauglish when it fell—I think. I remember that
terror all too well... But why it should cause me such sorrow, I do not
know."

The words pimpled Achamian's
skin. He had dreamed the horrors of Sauglish far too many times—he need only
close his eyes to see the burning towers, the fleeing masses, the Sohonc
battling iron-scaled Wracu in skies wreathed in smoke and flame. He had tasted the
ash on the wind, heard the wailing of multitudes. He had wept at his own
cowardice...

This made him unique among Men,
to have lived the span of two lives—two eye blinks, Seswatha and Achamian,
flung across the millennia. But this Nonman before him, his life straddled a
hundred human generations. He had lived the entire breadth of those
nation-eating ages. From then to now—and even more. From the twilight of the
First Apocalypse to the dawn of the Second.