IM 1010 Pt 3 ~ Deathly: The Final Dawn

[Sire Halfblack]

Deathly IM 1010: The Final Dawn

By all appearances it might never have suffered Blackjack and restored as ever in Deci (with whatever other parts of the city were not nailed down) the Braided Fox did not look up when he entered. The iron wood and panelling were grained deep from old fires. The sturdy shutters were double-barred and closed. The smells of the city he did not notice and those here were of damp, of tallow fat and a fat pig turning half-cut and carried away over the fireplace. His boots left no wet marks for a potboy’s broom and his cloak neither dripped nor batted at those closest to the door. The Sleek walked between the raindrops even tonight when the rain fell hard to appear through the disturbed smog only a good jump higher than most rooftops and clinging to those of Guild and Gather. Some did not see him because he wished them not to, some did not see him because this was the Braided Fox and a man could ever see to his own business here. Catskinner saw him because Catskinner would say he saw everything. But masked and cloaked and a whisper amongst low conversations he sat and was surprised by a decent Gothiel in a clean if thick bodied glass.

“Well then,” he said. This is nice.

*

“Is it symbolic?”

“It’s an iron-banded club,” said the most urban looking shaman Gideon could remember. The mayor of Forgetown looked wilder and more wind torn than the decidedly worried little man with the bushy ears and his dark coat all frayed at the cuffs from being worried at by the opposite hand. This shaman wore a Guild patch and had arrived with his wife – a local girl even more wetly worried than he – under escort by a pack of rats who had hurried off with a squeak when the day just going into hiding had now ended with the clouds clearing away.

“Ah, the iron then as a working metal and symbol of man as master over the base earth is and also here, poison to the imp?”

“If you like, squire - just you make sure to thingy it when it runs by. And not me, as I’ve ‘eard about this place and what it means to be funny,” so saying and wanting this over with the sleeves were rolled up and the shaman vanished within the alchemist shop with a little prayer and one quite surprisingly to the ‘Great Serpent’.

Mayor Gideon walked tall in Forgetown and well might he having had the toymakers fashion bellows and a funnel to one of his own braziers. The big one. For parties. Fashioning his popping engine had been easy, and indeed much of the work had been Gideon’s. Finding corn had been harder here in the wet heart of the Deathly and it had taken a word with Big Anath to produce nearly a month later a wagon laden deep with withered ears that he had then himself dried and toasted by deep and secretive Alchemical arts. Also Dry Postle’s (the baker) big old stone oven three doors down. Such thoughts distracted the mayor who was pondering the method of sweeteners in a territory where tar was added to taste and honey meant something other than to do with bees, when with a flash something burst from his shop. Startled Gideon yelled for it to stop like the Watch were said to do in funny stories, and which did not work in Gothiel - let alone Deci.

“Gerrim!” said the shaman.

Gideon was already hoofing it into the night.

Bloody shaman.

*

None of them were sure what to make of Forgetown but certainly it was not Alguz and markedly so in that so far no one had kidnapped them and given them a fascinating run down on the history of torture through the ages. And the fascinating strides being made in these more modern times. They sat together and about the fireplace where well gone the time for bed most of the town was already there.

“We don’t pry anyone’s nails free,” said Anath.

“You charge them?”

“I see you’re already fitting in, jolly good. No and whilst there might be the odd unfortunate head-blowing-up and our Sleek when feeling idle is not averse to hanging people up by the hundred to see which way blows the wind – we have none of that here. Here you can breathe the... air, of...” said Anath. Not of freedom, not as such. To impress them with his presence he trimmed his nails with a curved mirror in the shape of a nose-removing knife.

Beyond the now shuttered windows fires would still be dying down both from the timber supplied at Anath’s largesse and that imported by traders who knew a good time of year to sell stuff that burned. In their own rooms Anath’s faithful core of loyal henchmen had been granted their yearly bonus and looked forward to a slap-up feed on Sneertwice’s suggestion. Not cheap but Anath was a man that did not pay to be advised only to ignore it. Nothing said he had to act on it, but he would never ignore it. Cruet would on the morrow take Master Pluck in hand but for the now and whilst holidaying Anath was unable to sleep, having given his debtors a reprieve.

Master Pluck had been in Forgetown for several weeks and at first had taken to roaming the territory – this no longer Alguz and so whilst horribly wet still a land not he had believed troubled by a conflict-hungry neighbour. Bloody great wolves, many with swords and spears but certainly wolves – then aye, but such were natural threats at least and Pluck had allowed that away from road and river nowhere should be considered tame. And if Deci had a lot of roads, then it certainly too seemed to have a lot of werewolves, “Big ones, too.”

“Where what now?” said Anath.

*

There was too much sky and though streaked with cloud in the dark that only served to clot a night too bright, too distant and again – too damn big. They hid from the too-low roofs all crowded together for comfort, feeling the Season and wishing for a burrow, most particularly Cheapside the biggest burrow of them all. They did not look up though without the comfortingly low (if poison slick) smog they could feel the weight of the world above them. They sat and snuffled up the rice and gristle from the tin trays, here in the lanes, here beyond the main drag where even so late the noise was Ishmaic, loud and the air wet with steam and invective. They had stayed up the night because they were from Deci. They had been here before and with each visit the differences grew more marked. There seemed to be a lot more rural territory now. Known, named and travelled it was not just a generic sort-of outside any longer.

It was coming on to light by the time Sire Berry joined them. Still wet from a long rain that stopped barely short of Forgetown he picked at the cold Ishmaic grub – quite literally that – rubbing the grease from his fingers on a fine new Thimon waistcoat that did not fit, but which made by their cousins was roundly admired by the Stepsons.

“Gamblin’..?”

Here and with the rats their only customers many of the Ishmaics – and to Trundleberry’s eye an awful lot of these ‘Ishmaics’ came from Tin Pan Lane back home – were gambling, and ferociously. In a few days it would be the Ratfink tournament. People would bet on most things and shove holes served that as places to bet and shout and lose grulls. But games of chance were old hat and Sire Berry who knew about hats was not about to start anything so done-already as dice, cards and fakely-appointed grandeur. It was all too reliant on chance, the excitement that of desperation. There was no spectacle and he remembered his days as a young goblin in the fighting pits of Gobbal, mostly as the ball. The game had long flared and passed away, out of fashion, memory and possibility - but there was something there and something indeed that was lacking here. And where there was a lack, there was a knife – or so it said in some dusty charter in Deci, or should have done anyway (which to Sire Berry’s mind was much the same thing). Troll baiting, bloomer races, big-fecking-punch-ups-with-some-thin-excuse-for-being. No, shove holes and casinos were for fools without the Hat’s vision. This was Deci or at least Forgetown, and there was a need for spectacle.

With odds.

And how did one bait a troll? Ah, with a goblin...

*

Braw was a man so hairy about neck and face that the Governor worried that beneath the rank leathers and soiled wool he wore in layers under his apron he might be some sort of bugbear. Disliked by the faithful of the Temple Braw was a smith, but one that had less time for prayers to the metal and little offerings to Jander than he did for the bottle. A drunk and a sullen one his manners as bad as his breath neither offended Selgard who’s Barony was hardly home to limply waving lace.

“You’ll have your own smithy and work your own day, but you’ll be smith for the Barony and for your work we’ll settle you in at the Inn,” said the Governor.

Braw scowled but nodded once Selgard had paid off a debt the big smith had run up, and left Forgetown that morning for the distant estate. Selgard walked with him to the thriving limits where people despite the rain and the cold had crossed the land for the Festival. There were amongst them members of a number of small, rather tatty tribes and a pair that remained by their mountain ponies with curved swords to hand in concern over rustling. They had good cause Selgard knew, the first attempt at pony theft had come five minutes after entering the town and whilst they had still been in the saddle.

These he had passed an early breakfast with, making polite whilst they had given a little to the wind and a little to the earth and little more besides to the world and spirit both. Selgard who had for his own reasons been learning of the Netherman was roundly cursed for even mentioning such to them. They were travellers, akin to adventurers but thought such sleepers and worse – for they had their own path to travel and it did not involve being paid to kill. The lack-shadow were devils and worse, the slayers and the stalkers for the invader or they so reviled and so without glory that their vileness was for all to see, their shadow having deserted them or been ripped away in mark of their filthy deeds. Neither was a spirit talker and certainly not a shaman but still they were of the old tribes, the mountains in their case, and thus of the world, of the waking. The lack-shadow was the worst of all things, and both spat on iron to ward off the eyes of such as they doubtless hid in the wakening crowds.

“Not fans then?” said Selgard.

*

Capstone’s finest he had been assured and whilst not a rich man as he told anyone that wondered (though the weight of his flocks contributions was a halter to his faith about his neck) the Preacher had secured and purely for reasons of the people’s best interests the tools for his task. There was wine made from fruit (of all things), and more but candied to go with the honeyed nuts. He had come upon salty-treats from Port Miere, cheese from Sellaville and spicy Special Pickle from Thimon. Best of all perhaps and assured so by a trader (himself of swarthy and pointed-ear appearance) still-blooming flowers from Halgar – these last in a bubble of whispering glass. So armed and with the hundreds preparing for the mass, many-faith wedding to come Tirack sought for faeries. The Good Wives Of Forgetown that commonly did for him greeted the sight gladly, sure he was to call on some plain girl with thighs like an ogre to plight his honour. It was right for the Preacher Man to be married as several said to him for the fifteenth time that day. “No, no,” had said Tirack, “I’m looking for faeries.”

Oh. Well that was priests for you.

Whilst not the fair Ladies or gossamer Lords of distant myth Crotchburn and Liverlips were without doubt still faeries. Here and later where they sat by a fire of ox dung (somewhat cheaper than the wood) toasting a dog and passing a jug of green milk they greeted Tirack with all the suspicion that their kind had for any sort of priest. They noticed the treats only shortly thereafter and with Tirack then their best and longest of long-lost chums they listened to his tale with nods and grunts and much noisy licking of their horrid fingers. Neither having any time or regard for their Lords and Ladies whatsoever they were happy to spill what they knew, which was not a great deal and here in which Tirack was the expert.

“It’s all just a lot of tosh and tales!” he protested.

Crotchburn resembling a shaved badger chuckled at the Preacher Man but Liverlips a fat and baggy faerie of otherwise more common countenance sympathised. This was what the hidden places were like, and best they stayed that way for all he cared. The meaning of it was probably not as hidden as it seemed, just that it referred to things Tirack did not know of. Such as the tales that once Faerie and man had fought, man had for all intents and purposes won and peace had been with a ‘Covenant’, one that now was enforced by Turnscrew - a faerie, an ogre of the heart, and a gaoler without peer. “Do you wanting to know what it means or what it is to be done?”

“I’m due to play cards so between you and me, the second...”

*

He smelt dragon.

The unlikely helm turned only when his chest did with it. Within he heard nothing but the winding Street Of Green Eels rang to the rain upon the black armour that steamed softly, a bare cherry-red iron to the bucket. The charger snorted. People did not look up, parting about him as they would for a statue or a preacher something immovable, something that was scenery. He in turn entirely ignorant of little rainy knots that were forming up and angrily spreading the news, he spared not a glance for the very worried Diviner with the black eye that tried not to catch anyone else’s in return.

He smelt dragon, faint and dank on the faint north wind that stirred the smog it seemed not all. Dragon, and ripe sap fires. He smelt dragon and like a shell on a clear beach when held to the ear in his great and tip-snouted helm he heard battle and beatings and all about as if the city unaware, was not there at all. He sat upright, for he smelt dragon on the turning wind.

The Black Knight’s voice boomed and with a jerk the charger clattered off to where before the Spire he dismounted and followed where now here heard chanting in a low, slow and dully comforting note.

*

All about and especially before the Cart & Hammer the main drag was logged solid by great carts built up from the already great ox wagons and whose colourful sides and hoardings made up it seemed a small Quarter of its own. Here and people played games or under sailcloth and slatted covers drank, took a pipe or stamped alongside flirtatious women and dancing goblin girls, more of whom and the more obvious by trade leaned from balconies in the bigger wagon to call down to passers-by unable so to do.

Rex who was always here anyway, was here to play cards and with his hair slicked back with wyvern-grease and dressed to display sat whilst his new boots were polished to within a hair so that buffed they shone like a Jander bending over. He smoked the best of his cigars and quite against what his lackeys were used to, Rex seemed not only eager – but nervous. “Every day above ground,” said Rex as if to reassure himself, “is a good day.”

And hereabouts and until the border for the most part much of the ground blew about the rock, clay and chalk of the land as so many clouds. Rex was prepared and Rex was ready, he was feeling expansive and time was that only elves used words like expansive. He said, “You’re born, you take nuts. You get out in the Empire, you take more nuts, You climb a little higher, you take less nuts. Till one day you’re up above the poison clouds and you’ve forgotten what nuts even looks like.”

Rex’s words saw a passer-by pause, travel weary and stained. That man looked up with eyes that had seen worse and said, “Welcome to the Deci cake, son.”

Rex chuckled and waved with hands freshly pruned at the funny man, “Someone tell me who this fool is? Find someone who can spell it,” then to the traveller, “for your grave.”

“That’s Gabriel Drake, Mr Randall sir.”

Rex’s whole demeanour changed. He jumped down and pumped Drake’s hand. He snapped at a leaf boy to fetch the best of his newly rolled. He shook his head, obviously astonished.

“You lining me up, son?”

“Mr Drake, truly – an honour.”

*

“The game gentlemen, is Ratfink,” said Big Anath. For an open game it had attracted only a certain level of player, and nearly all of them the noteworthy and the bold of Forgetown. Also, Selgard. There were no spectators and so whilst Merchant and Guild Master were rather involved in the city (the last with the change in leadership as was common for the time) a goodly number had been shown into the smoky den of the Cart & Hammer, tossed their stakes on the table and helped themselves to drinks. Most had no intention of playing assuming they’d be cheated anyway and more importantly did not want to be dragged into the cards. As it were. They had left orders back in the city, and were for their own reasons being seen here.

The room had been needed as both Sire Berry and Rex The Face had ponied up all their followers to take part. Anath with a pair of delicate Glassblower’s smoked goggles set upon his nose dealt through the packs one handed. He said, “Three card fink, gentlemen. Traders are highest, then three Nobles then running down accordingly. Then it’s a running away, a hide, a lie and then a pair. A Guildsman can’t see a Drow. It will cost twice the ante to see your opponent. Don’t feck around, fellows. You know the rules. You know I won’t stand for it. Yes, you – Mr Whiskers?”

“Pawstickly.”

“Pawstickly...” Anath threw the cards into the air so that for a moment everyone flinched so unexpected had been the gesture. With a ruffle and a soft bang the pack landed shuffled and ready but for Pawstickly’s card. He and nearly a hundred rats crowded together. It was the 1st of Pots

“You’ll need that young Pawstickly, if we’re going to take the piss gentlemen let’s at least make it easy to carry.” said Anath and who over the next minute dealt and disposed of everyone not a Founding Father - or Selgard.

Ever a good sport Sire Berry chuckled as the room seemed to move back a bit. If it came out pointy then he at least had a concealed warband in the room.

*

This knight wore horns and his armour red wet and crude left a long shadow. Where he walked the sound of gathering crowds and Guild (safe behind door and gate) faded alongside the bells that began to chime to call and to clatter as the year came to turning. One louder but more distant tolled with long, peeling notes unheard the knight thought where the city was indistinct and the last of the city cats was caught at long last by the snake Wezendor. That bell peeled and what it peeled was the city where the red knight stepped through puddles soot muddied and tar slick. The last and poorest of the sack-stuffers here kept inside the warmth of their coats and caps, it was safer there and the Deci Knights were long and dark this time of year.

*

There was a silence under the play of the game where everyone talked in turn and there Selgard tried to hide unseen because people were ganging together and as was typical - not with him. Somehow he had fifteen cards in his hand which was normally a good thing but they were all common cards without a royal amongst them. They were good cards in a game where bad meant the opposite for this was Deci Ratfink, and whilst each wasn’t worth a great deal they each added up to a run much greater than the parts. He could see that Gideon and Tirack were about to blow into one another, divided by Sire Berry who had quite literally made a little fort of his cards and was using the orc bonus rule that meant anyone attacking him had to do so within the circle of pasteboard made. Knowing it to not be a common move Selgard nonetheless physically slid under the table and shuffled towards the door. If they could not see him they could not play him and he worried that Anath had the Governor and the King in his hand.

The door opened with a bang. Drake in the company of Rex stomped in and blinking, bent down to where Selgard had frozen still and wishing everyone would just plain stop looking now at him. In order to pass off his position Selgard said, “Late?”

“Can’t be late if the game...” Drake said but only long enough to notice that his worn old pack had already been dealt and judging by the pot at least twice. “...you started without me, son?”

Selgard scratched his nose before replying, “We thought you’d gone home?”

“Home, son?”

The Governor was at heart a good person. Hereabouts and he did not care to show that for the fashion was very much in appearance the opposite. He cared for his commoners and he liked the city because and still much to his suspicion the city liked him. So he meant no ill when he picked at the words that had long formed a good sized scab whilst all about him everyone else got very involved in something very small and private. He said, “Thimon? You’ve not been around. Your undead buddy..?”

“My wife?” he said, he bit into the stub of his cigar. “My wife is dead, son. She ain’t in Thimon.”

Selgard coughed, then again. Someone had flicked the upright card across the floor to rest right in front of him. It was the dead-battered-pickle-woman. Of course. “Aye but the thing is,” said Selgard. “The thing is, she ain’t here either?”

“Deal me in.”

*

It was comfortable to be trading tall tales and dubious stories with others that like he appreciated that to boast outrageously one had to live likewise! The buttered tea had brought a flush to his cheeks and between them and crowding their table were the remains of fish, crab and a half side of heron that they had eaten with vinegar, spicy pepper and their fingers. The noise was a wall between each table with laughter, crashes and howls of outrage. The air was thick enough to be knighted and fat enough to baste boar. Dirk could not remember entering the meeting hall, Inn, whatsoever it might be but was sure he had and falling in with the likeliest company cheered along too as bowls of milk and honeycomb were pushed before them.

“It’s’a’bout war, eh, eh?” said Dirk to his new special best friend.

His comrade in feasting agreed roundly and belched appreciatively. For a leader of men Gorander Crude seemed fit mostly to do so from the comfort of a very well padded chair. A man not given to refusing the pleasures of life his war stories were ripe, rotten but not entirely made up. Dirk who did not want to go all the way to Halgar again in the hope that he could fence-up his leadin’ offered later when the patrons were being bustled out that he knew where he and Gorander could find a bottle even so late as it was.

“Good man!”

“Dirky’s a’best,” he said. He looked about but the normally dominant Spire was no longer to be seen, nor indeed half the rooftops. They were stood not far from the river, which had bridges and across the wet more buildings again. Dirk was not put out and gesturing went off to find where he had left the archaic helmet that when replaced would doubtless lead him back the way he had come.

*

An Alfar his experiences of the dead plains of rust-dusty Deci had never been favourable ones. Nature was a poor man kicked into a hole where pissed on by the city’s laughter he trembled close to death hereabouts. Where the city had for centuries violated the land now they enslaved it under a net of snake-silver roads. There was no life to the air and even the clouds that hung low were as much the work of man as any Goddess.

Yet and here there were trees and he supposed that was why the fort had been raised here. Young trees to be fair, pine and spruce and sharp-needled mountain conifer that in the spitting rain that had followed him from the city smelled of a heady sap despite the Season. It took a mile to notice the absence of animals and where the trail here was broken so the road was dropped porcelain. A journey of several days already he wanted he and his Held in the shelter of the fort, the rain was reaching their souls and the cold was scarring cheeks and fingertips. They pressed on but quiet already in the insidious cold the young woodland seemed to suck at even the smallest sounds remaining. Eyes met eyes with the same thought. This woodland once so welcome was feeling less hospitable with every half mile.

And the Jaegers were alone. Alendari had been one of those to put together the requirements for the Angelgate and the Guilds to their study had produced what had then been built, and a very Deci sort of place it was too. It was not so much a sturdy fort where men of good heart might stand against the tide of evil, so much as a shelter from which reivers and salters-of-the-earth could dominate a land through legalised terror! The perhaps ill-aptly named Upright Men had been there for a while but were already back in the city. Alendari knew that because he had seen their Reeve and when on enquiring as to when they might be gathering to come with his Jaeger had been treated to a good laugh. It was a nasty old Season and the Uprights were in the city spending their pay it seemed, and not eating one another. They were a Mercenary Held in the truest sense and whilst they would probably fight if the odds were not too bashful then they were buggered if they were going to spend the Deathly out in the badlands.

Which had put a burr up Alendari’s arse, all the way here and where the young trees now made them spread out as almost deceptively they went uphill. Lord Gowerl’s Hill was meant to be about here and atop it the fort. The trees muddied the eyes, but the Jaeger’ eyes were sharp so that with an infectious shout curses went up and shields about as Alendari heard his own voice cut through the clamour so that soon the only sound was the hasty banging of one shield rim to the other.

*

“You need to play,” said Gideon.

Tirack the focus of the mayor’s ire only grunted. The room still everyone could hear however muffled the faint strains of a dozen different wedding marches, dances, parades and escorts outside. He and the mayor had business but like everyone about the table they were evenly matched. Everyone that played was nearly even, especially Anath who by his vastly superior luck and skill was exactly no better than anyone else - but certainly no worse. The others though and perhaps sensing that the Preacher Man and the Mayor had to be elsewhere had ganged up on them cutting them into a rural draw whilst ensuring that only one of the royal cards was out of their control, and that one the Alchemist. Argoths were wild and not once had it been played, so the pack was still full and hard for one man to hold.

“Church...” Tirack played the card with its tiny steeple just visible behind darker, emptier buildings. Everyone fidgeted. Religion was different in Deci. All very well and tremendously important to the game of course, but Gideon countered the Church with a Forge, reached over to twitch the Town card from Anath where he protected his first with this second and would have won the round and that before him had not Rex booted the Mayor’s chair out from under him to run the alchemist’s face into the table. Astonished Gideon sat up with a start, a bloody nose and the Caverns stuck to his forehead.

Drake coughed and by the time he had finished telling everyone off (most especially Anath for letting things drop to Cheapside so quickly) he had replenished his own hand from those others had hidden and seen Tirack and Gideon empty fingered and hearing the music now louder hurrying out. Drake banged the cards he had confiscated from everyone together, thus ending with the biggest hand and by the nature of those concealed, the best cards.

Drake was a rotten gambler but he was superb Watch Captain. He said, “Halfblack...”

Big Anath nodded quickly and then to Rex, “A word outside...”

The game broke briefly.

*

He had assumed that when the city’s bazaar had risen where that in Alguz had faded, closed and separated that the whole had been transplanted here. Each shop, stall and most especially person like some vast and trinket-heavy tribe but this was of course not the case and that here resembled that there not at all. One day all things would be magical, he swore.

Oh, the streets and sprawl spread widely and the noise was similar but few people were looking for ritual and as the ritual poles of cities could have told him near most every practising ritualist was possessed of vitae. Certainly towards the upper tiers (for those that practised ritual most often would only ever look most commonly at the most powerful no matter if that meant a broadsword for a blister). He swept here and if he expected a welcome, some friendly face then he a horror all rotten, haunting and malign received none. People shied away and where he went others left. He was the King’s Wizard and if he was not as dead as many might have presumed then his appearance could bode nothing good.

There were darker delights in Deci but nothing that suggested a respect for a man’s privacy and less for a monster as word spread of his return and people asked if afar as to whom he sought, why and with what aim? Where little was known it was made up as gossip would and in an attic amongst the husks of other wizards old ears stirred as it heard that name once again.

*

“Just step through the door?”

Rex The Face, loudly dressed bravo of Forgetown and a man whose eggs were bad when still in the hen, nodded. The door to the cellar stood open.

Anath who had spent his almost every waking moment in Deci could not help but be aware of the man crouched on all fours behind him. The stairs were high, narrow and treacherous. It would hurt to fall down them. Doubly so if pushed. He spared a quick look at the door and satisfied that all was still as he had specified long ago answered and much to Rex’s surprise, that he would indeed do as requested. He did so by stepping over the man there to trip him, but still by pretending that he was not there at all. Rex closed his eyes in satisfaction to the sound of bolts being thrown and locks turned, engaged and solidly sealed. In the corridor the worst of his bruisers had waited in case of trouble.

Rex said, “Sounds like that lot would hold off a gang of robbers three months in the badlands and two hours too late for the sleeper house.”

“Rex,” said a bruiser.

“What is the feck is happening?” a rat in bandage-rags dry for the first time in two years and returning from the outside jakes looked at the ruffians.

“You don’t want to look ratty, and you use language like that again and you’ll wish you hadn’t!”

“Rex!”

“What is it?” he spun about as the rat picked its way by with sharp little eyes to snarl into the faces of those ruffians by the cellar door. “Halfblack’s locked in, in’t he?”

“Halfblack?”

“Big Anath – what is it, you want to be counting the fingers you no longer ‘ave? Halfblack.”

“Locks, Rex. Yes, Rex.”

Rex threw his hands in the air and left to return to the card game. Behind him and his ruffians looked at one another but decided to say nothing. The cellar door was indeed locked, but on the inside. Anath had seen to this places design and construction...

*

“Is it not that revealed to one of your particulars? When you look out over the land and the last light and first dark shine silver, making a road if travelled swiftly?”

“I knew that...”

Scape was not convinced clearly but other than the raising of a particularly expressive eyebrow did not voice the thought. Instead he raised a cup to his lips to blow. Scape’s shop that stood between and at an angle to two grander affairs was crowded, small and faintly illuminated through horn screens so that they sat amidst a silvery light. Scape was not an artisan of the silversmiths for to practise such would be to invite death. He had not the status of grander men whose silvery arts were recorded in the Guild on each use until a line of tally was full. He had travelled too, the fruits of which lay about them whether collected by his hand (his shop was open – or even present, only half of each year) or what he had taken in exchange. And Scape was just whom the King’s Wizard sought because nearly everything was tied together in one neat little bundle, as so many things were if one had the wit to notice the string.

He said, “Timeras is a traveller. He does not come from this world or if he does then some time ago. I met him,” much to Twirl’s surprise, “perhaps seven, eight years ago? A little more but not much. Beside the river, Alguz – and on his way to the Oeldwych Isle. Timeras is one of his names. He aids people or rather by doing so lets them do certain things of benefit to him. He is a cursed albeit rather charming fellow. He is under some sort of geas, some quest lies upon him thought he attends to it slowly to my mind. I believe it involved a woman.” Scape said with a finality that strongly suggested there was little more to be known on that particular subject.

“He is a wizard?”

“As best as we might describe it, though somewhat too indolent to really master anything. He was for the most part widely travelled and had a big bag of tricks, metaphorically speaking,” said Scape adding the last in case Twirl thought to steal a physical bag and wonder thereafter at its paucity of magic.

“And Ragravagh?”

“I know no more than most I’m sure and less than your vaunted Council.”

“I would prefer if we could speak...”

“...alone? No, you are a devouring horror and one worse than you is now coming here to do similarly. He will have you no doubt in the weeks to come whilst you remain. I wish you no ill will personally but my children will watch and,” he nodded to where two men and a woman had entered and to Twirl’s surprise so intent had he been on Scape. “And, my customers. We have no shame here.”

Twirl snorted for Scape only seemed to remain whilst the Guild could pretend he did not. Scape related the common knowledge that Ragravagh had come here with the Amora’s in exile. That he had been a rogue and a miscreant, a thief and one of the founders of the Rooftails. How he had wined and sleeperd and fought and dirtied his soul. How he had been taken to the Guild. How he had been used to make the Fury. How that had wrecked him and how that still drove him insane at times, such as right now, but which would pass so that soon he would recover and act in his old ways in the slave town of Ishma as a the guest of the brothers. Not his brothers, obviously.

“He might have had children?”

“They were a fecund House,” said Scape, “though none I recall from that particular line ever acknowledged. But aye, doubtless and all grown up now of course.

Of course, the last two words stressed.

*

“You missed a hand, Mr Randall,” Anath was saying (having emerged from under the table to the sound of, strangely, creaking stairs hurriedly negotiated) as Drake had played a hand that had seen he and the goblin match bids and play until Berry had played it smart and gone conservative when Drake had thought him likely to make a grab for the whole deck.

“Nice play, kid.”

“Luck is all Mr Drake,” said Sire Berry now ahead. Selgard sat to one side and well in the shadows was holding tight to the Governor that no one was in the process of taking from him, and bolstered by a splay of Nobles had seen off a tentative probe with the Three Knights. Drake saw all this though the game as moving too quickly for him, and he with his bad back. He pushed out a chair for Rex who staring hard at Anath otherwise made not a sound. Indeed and the gaudily dressed figure seemed more intent on the sounds of celebration outside, so that when one of his ruffians came to whisper to him for the third time even the normally equitable Drake banged the table to startle and send the bruiser on his way. He said to Rex, “What you got, son?”

“We’re three hands shy of the show, Mr Drake.”

Anath placed the Sleek, a Wheel and threatened to swallow the game with the Prince of Sacrifices. He did not like the cards and wished rid of them quickly, the play suited to the old Deci. Sire Berry chuckling ducked the almost-perfect move but only sufficient for himself by chucking in his whole pack to buy the slightly older and more worn of the two alchemists out of the played hands and set the Nine Rats behind it, and thus safe.

Rex was out with almost suspicious rapidity. His hand had been the first half of the Mine, the Squared Grass, the Seamstress, the sleeper, and the Turned Corpse. He stood but with cards remaining handed them to Drake who still surprised by the ruffians respectful attitude nodded in return. Rex The Face thumbed his nose and bade them a good game. Not seemingly put out he and his ruffians left the remaining players to it.

*

“You’ve all done very well,” said King Majius. The rain saw the crowd shudder as their true monarch came amongst them. Here in the Invisible Quarter at least these were his people. They had gathered already and without announcement and he thought that just lovely, why – they were hanging on his every word.

Cheapside was doubtless loyal in a rumbumptious way as long as no King told them what to do, the Slurries was where the work was done, Hightown was not a place for public speaking and the north quarter was becoming somewhere that no same man liked to go. If people had business there such as to pay their respects at the Cathedral they went in bands. “My Queen and I, Berina The Magnificent And Cruel appreciate all your hard work. He shook a few astonished hands.

“Your Great And Fell Night Majesty?” asked what looked to be someone well dressed.

“A little over silvered, oh faithful peon – but aye?”

The man looked terribly embarrassed but Troy urged him to speak. The fellow said, “This talk of the city being put to death..? Is that to do with you?”

“Of course not!”

“Good, good,” he bowed hastily as did the rest of the crowd that now Troy saw looked to have something of the backstabbing mob about them. So he nodded, finished and turned away and the people rightly expecting that this was some colossal fingered their knives before something just awful happened to them. Everyone knew that the Vizier, Sire Berry and their Governor had made themselves absent from the city and many presumed so that nothing that happened here could later be attributed to them.

*

The Bound Man had been placed over the City. King’s were high but with some mucking about and a little arguing over the meaning of Mountains, Rivers and Clouds when placed in twos. Drake pushed back his chair so that it scraped loudly on the flagstones of the taproom. He stretched too old for any of this and stiff about the neck.

“Me den,” said Sire Berry. He turned to Anath who also remained in but who was turning his cards over in consequence to the play, not to sweep them aside as the pair remaining at first thought but only to clear his hand. He had and quite surprisingly just exactly the wrong cards to take the pot, but exactly the right ones to be only a nod short and still retain his own stake. Sire Berry peered at the old, stained and damp edged pasteboard. A proper deck he knew and had expected that nothing of the kind would mark the cards for that was not how they fell. He said, “Gold and coins?”

“Indeed,” said Anath.

“People?”

But over gold and coins, even Anath frowned a little. A sign, and here over the river that was made dominant by the two later cards. In the end the Malcontent had shorted the evening’s play and Sire Berry pushed through the last of Drake’s cards, typically carrying them for others. “Wossit dis crown?”

Anath placed it over the pile made in the table’s centre, not the King but something else and only a crown held in a certain way, it a badly drawn spider. He scooped the cards together with ease and smiled faintly as Drake and Sire Berry shook hands. They had all of them played the game well enough and if Anath was the sharpest then perhaps only because he was expected to be.

The room stank of old smoke and lost beer. The lamps had nearly all burned out but few had actually wanted the light, the last Anath left to its self. He wrung his hands. It had been a fine game. Alone he looked about the room and then towards the shuttered window from where Tirack could be heard. He blew out the last lamp and left to wearily join the festivities outside.

Sat then alone at the table Selgard looked up. Dark he could no longer read his last card. He said, “Hey...”

*

The noise had been a distant thing whilst he had hammered and held up, heated and plunged the ornamental mace into the barrel of water drawn from the River Alg. Made for that city, or Galdor anyway and here in Deci the Forge despite the rain was hot by the light of the coals. Younger by far than the fellow that stood by to perform the simpler tasks still that man was a knotted rag of muscle, albeit grey haired where not white-dotted by old smithing spot-scars. The man was outgoing from the Guild, having tried the politics of it and tiring especially of the Hundred he had been suggested for Jander’s mark by Quirt. As if summoned by the thought he appeared in the open side of the smithy, his regalia damp and shortly thereafter steaming.

“Sunstar!”

Jander grunted and took up a rasp. He swept it three times over a flange and went back to a ball of silver taken from that meant for the tribes. He took up a gold cloth and wished that the city though good to hear could keep it down a bit. Jander noticed what the Forge had not. He said, “That doesn’t sound like cheering?”

“No Jander,” said Quirt.

“Did he just roll his eyes?” Jandar said to Tuss who did the same. Putting the ornamental mace to one side for the moment and covering the pieces of the ragged seal on which he was working Jander exchanged his apron for a more suitable tunic of slashed yellow. Outside and now he was here and Jander again and the celebrations he had been ignoring had the sound of the mob about it, and in Deci that was a very bad sound indeed. He was gratified to not see anything broken and he stepped so far over no particularly unusual bodies, which showed that Deci was growing up at last. That he only a little later was also the problem. Walking swiftly in step with Quirt the crowd even hereabouts large and despite the rain angry quietened as he came to and went by. Jander did not like the look of this new Deci mob. This was no murder cult and worse, they weren’t angry with one another. He had been the Governor once long ago and now the Forge he knew the metal that ran dirty and unseen down the city’s spine. The last thing King, Governor or Council wanted was for the people to see one another as allies – in the nicest and most Jander way possible...

“...the general opinion of the people is, and now we’re so very good at blurring the Quarters is that, here at least... the Invisible, the Slurries, already bits of Cheapside but they aren’t exactly surprised...”

“Spit it out, Quirt.”

“Well nowadays, what with all the Guilds and having a life and not just robbing one another to be Prince for-the-moment, well nowadays, what with all the bad sorts dead, gone or moved into the markets – well nowadays...”

“Quirt!”

“We’re not prepared to see a tenth of us marched off to these new ‘death mines’. People half expected something like this, what with everyone but the King, and you – and of course The Sleek... absenting themselves.”

“The Sleek? And how do you know... the Hundred have blocked this haven’t they?”

“I rather think the Hundred have less to do with it than the city.”

“King Troy...” said Jander softly.

“Oh no, no, no – our Faceless King dragonkeephimfromArgoth would have hauled us up a few at a time and rightly cut off our feet and nipples. No, aha, ha...” Quirt mopped his wet head with a chamois rag. “But this...”

Jander had heard something else he did not like. People were talking. Shouting was one thing, screaming even better. They could both be dealt with and no one could hear what anyone else was saying, but talking now? Talk was dangerous. And they were talking now, and amongst them traders who had seen this sort of thing before. And of course there was a man selling brands and two more Jander noted were cornering the market on good throwing rocks before they gained a price. He did not like this one bit. They had all worked to change Deci, to drag into the Third Age by its bootstraps, and not least by making sure there were boots to be had. The days of killing a noticeable chunk of the people it seemed were over.

And Jander could hardly disagree with that now could he? Especially when he heard words like ‘just like Trollsville’ and ‘even you with a knife Mr Buttercup?’. The people were gathered here in mobs made of gangs because even the nicest, fattest most settled Guildsmen, traders or shopkeepers had once been in a gang, and those gangs were still around. They might well have already been killing the Watch, the Sleek’s boys or anything they suspected of such and it was miracle Cheapside had been slow to catch on, but then the word and the action had not and for once started there.

Jander offered a prayer up to himself that he had been around but he was too busy to answer. If the King had not been in town then... he actually felt himself shudder. He said to Quirt, “These mines...”

“The Hundred have decided in this instance that they don’t wish to see them built. Apparently some of the lads have got mums, for whatever that means,”

*

They had come and in some cases from a good two weeks journey at least into strange parts of the badlands from their own bits of the badlands. Mostly wretched and some that had barely even heard of the city and into whom those that passed for scribes kept on, figuratively, walking. They had come ahead of danger but no one was listening to such moody mutterings had they even be spoken by the taciturn wild folk, which they rarely were. The town was crammed and leaked out into the surrounding area. The smells were like the city now, albeit fresher.

Tirack had led them all in the marriages of their many forebears and with a masterpiece of conglomeration whereby he managed to imply a great deal about whose favour he called upon, with the important word being with every breath imply.

Three times the armies of fiddles, drums and horns suffered false starts until at length and with the Preacher Man eventually satisfied they struck up as Forgetown despite the rain blew into celebration.

Amongst the cheers bangs could be heard. At first only flakes and then a veritable rain the mayor beamed as not so far away volunteers served up his largest cauldron. Colourful (and in some cases flaming) snow fell amongst the people. Great armies of popped corn blew about the main drag. The delight went on for several minutes until larger and ever puffier fireballs shot up. Gideon cursing pushed through the throng to where though helpful, still the drunks having run out of corn were now shovelling the next best thing onto the shaking, gasping and cracking popping engine. Gideon ducked as something whipped by his head, pushing drunks aside now as the last of the fuel dumped on the cauldron banged and flew up.

The last flaming cabbage went into the night and though Gideon watched at first alone and then with a growing crowd he never saw it land. He turned when taking advantage of the situation Big Anath was announced the winner of the ratfink tournament. The revered and greatly-grateful-at-being-normally-dangerously-elsewhere Sire Berry!

“Nice for him,” said Tirack joining Gideon. He too was looking up. They were going to have trouble with that cabbage one day.

“Oh no...”

There was a kerfuffle on the wagon used for a stage which was to be expected as the kerfuffle was the owner of the cart. Rex Randall pushed forward to the cheers of the nearest crowd and with a surprisingly sweet voice made the announcement that the winnings for the tournament – Sire Berry’s winnings – were to be given out as gifts for the people!

Who cheered and stamped their feet.

And waited.

Eagerly.

By Alan Morgan