Bound by Iron

Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

Parting

Zor, the 5th day of Aryth, 998

Where’s your shield, Cimmer?”

“It had ‘Pomindras Lasker d’Deneith’ carved on the inside. I thought it particularly foolish to bring it along.”

Minrah, Four, and Cimozjen walked through the streets of Aundair, heading for the House Deneith enclave. The winds of the previous day had blown through, driving away the last of the rain clouds, and the cobbles glistened in the morning sun.

Four had replaced his battle-axe with a nearly identical one from the Deneith armory. He carried his weapon slung over one shoulder, a relaxed posture that both of the others noted but refrained from mentioning.

Cimozjen had Pomindras’s sword at his waist and his family dagger at his back, but had not worn his chain mail, for fear that the swishing sound of the links would cause them difficulties.

“So what is this about?” asked Four.

“I really don’t know,” said Minrah. “But it seemed best to take Rophis up on his invitation if we’re going to get any real answers.”

“I hope we are not making a mistake,” said the warforged.

“So do I,” said Cimozjen. “Unfortunately, there is only one way to find out. If we hide ourselves away, I’ll always feel Torval peering over my shoulder.”

The Deneith compound was a small city block of buildings that enclosed a gated courtyard. Each of the buildings was built with the solid architecture of a fortification, made of square-cut stone so keenly carved and fitted that no mortar had been necessary. The monolithic walls were broken only by narrow windows ideal for defensive archery fire, and crenellations ran along the rooftop. Thick wrought-iron fencing stretched from building to building, each vertical bar capped by a vicious dragonshard-embedded spearhead that continually gave off wisps of smoke, hinting at cruel magical enhancement.

“Well,” said Minrah, “we’re here. Let’s get this over with.”

They walked up to a smaller structure at one end of the compound. It was the only building they could see that had an exterior door in it, a heavy double door easily tall and wide enough to fit a covered wagon. A large statue of a chimera stood watch over the gate, its heads turned in each direction. Two guards stood outside, armed and armored. They wore the livery of House Deneith-yellow and green tabards with sharply cut angles-as well as very bored expressions.

After a moment’s hesitation to gather her composure, Minrah walked up to the guards with a businesslike stride, Cimozjen and Four just behind her. She flipped her hand in a supercilious gesture, snapping her paper open at one of the guards. He started slightly at the suddenness of the gesture, then reached out and took the proffered parchment.

“Appointment to see Lord Rophis d’Deneith, have you?” he said.

“Yes, we have,” said Minrah, stressing the word we ever so slightly.

“This says nothing of additional guests,” said the guard. “You may proceed. Alone.”

“It says nothing against additional guests, either,” said Minrah. “These are my bodyguards.”

“They are not allowed in.”

Minrah scoffed. “Is your mighty house afraid of them?”

“Not at all. I assure you that our compound is the safest area in all of Fairhaven.”

“And that just fills me to the brim with confidence,” said Minrah. “I mean, House Deneith looks veritably under siege here. She picked up a rock and threw it through the fence.

“Hey, watch it!” yelled a house servant walking across the court with a load of foodstuffs.

“Your courtyard isn’t even properly warded,” said Minrah, “and there are those who would see me murdered.” Her voice continued to rise in volume as her rant gained momentum. “Does House Deneith guarantee my safety against sling stones, missiles, and bolts of lightning while my bodyguards idle outside? And what if your house has been infiltrated, as has been recently suggested by the whispers on the street? What then? I demand my noble right to have my bodyguards accompany me, or by the gods you yourself can escort me and explain your actions to Lord Rophis personally,” she finished with a shout.

“My lady, I will be more than happy to escort you personally to your appointment,” said the guard, stiffening. He adjusted his scabbard and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. Then he nodded politely. “Along with your bodyguards, of course. I’ve no wish to offend the guests of the family.”

He led the trio through the gatehouse, across the flagstone courtyard, and into the grandest of the compound’s buildings.

“This is some lobby,” whispered Minrah as they entered.

Cimozjen glanced about at the polished marble floors, veined with gold. The exquisite magewrought illustrations of famous Deneith generals, animated and ensconced in free-floating gem-studded frames. And the massive chandelier, wrought of platinum and boasting well over a hundred magical glowlamps. “You speak the truth,” he said choking back his anger. “It is almost blindingly so. And it has been paid for by the blood of a hundred years of mercenaries that the house has sent to battle.”

They walked up a grand staircase to a short but elegant hall, carpeted in plush gold trimmed with green. The guard escorted them to a pair of doors artistically carved with the crest of House Deneith. Two more guards flanked the door, unarmored, but wearing extravagant silken uniforms with a herringbone patterns of swords embroidered in silver thread.

Their escort displayed the paper, and the two guards each rapped on their door in perfect unison, then unlatched the doors and swung them open, revealing an opulent room with six chairs and two end tables. The back wall was well stocked with a bewildering variety of wines, brandies, cognacs, and other spirits, as well as an extensive supply of glasses in all shapes and sizes.

“Wait here,” said their escort. “Lord Rophis will be with you in a moment. I trust your bodyguards know not to touch anything.”

The doors closed behind them with a nearly inaudible click.

“You heard the man,” said Minrah, imperiously flitting her hand. “Behave yourselves.” She walked briskly over the liquor board, grabbed a big glass, opened the first bottle that came to hand, and dumped it into the glass until it was nearly full. “Luckily, he didn’t include me in that sentiment.” She took a deep swig while pacing the room, and Cimozjen noticed that her nerves were causing the surface of the liquid to tremble.

A few minutes later, another door in the room opened, and Rophis d’Deneith walked in. “It’s grossly uncultured to fill a snifter that full, Minrah,” he said. As he crossed the room, he stuttered slightly in his walk. “Well. I most certainly did not expect my guest to have brought anyone else … let alone you, Cimozjen Hellekanus.” He smacked his lips in annoyance. “No matter. I will deal with you presently.”

Rophis walked over to the bar, took down a tall, thin glass, and poured himself a drink of something slightly bubbly, pale lavender in color. He swirled it in his glass, turning it at an angle to inspect it, then swirled it some more and held it to his nose. “You have to dispense with roughly half of the bubbles before drinking,” he said to no one in particular. “Otherwise it’s a little too full of bite.” He swirled it a little longer, then took a sip, and smiled broadly. “Perfect.”

He walked over to one of the chairs and sat, took another sip from his drink, then set his glass on the end table. “Sit,” he said with a gesture. “We’ve supped together, no need to be so stiffly formal. Although I would appreciate it if you sent your Cannith conscript out of the room.”

“His name is Four,” said Cimozjen.

“Ah.” Rophis picked up his glass and took another sip. “How quaint.”

“I remember you,” said Four.

“Do you? Well, I’ll have to take your word for it.” He looked back at Cimozjen and held up his empty hand in resigned apology. “They all look the same to me.” He took another sip. “But if you’ve gone and named it, that means you’re attached, and not likely to send it out.” He sucked on his teeth for a moment. Then he looked at Minrah and patted the back of the chair next to him. “Sit,” he said again.

“I’ll stand, thank you,” said Minrah. But she did walk closer and rest her arms on the back of the chair opposite Rophis.

Rophis set his glass back down. “I have been following your serial with quite some interest,” he said. “ ‘Bound by Iron,’ I believe you titled it? It’s quite good. You have talent, Minrah.”

“Thank you,” said Minrah. “It’s almost completed. But as a surety against anything ill befalling me before the morrow-I hope you’ll understand that I’ve lost much of my confidence in your sense of justice-I have the final installments in the hands of a reliable messenger, who will deliver them to the Korranberg Chronicle in the morning if I do not return.”

“Why, Minrah, whatever have I done to lose your trust?” said Rophis.

“Lied about your Karrn roots, for starters,” said Minrah. She took a deep draw from her snifter. “On the Silver Cygnet, you swore to be Aundairian in order to hide your heritage, and with it your ties to House Deneith. Or how about using Boniam to find out about us, and then having Pomindras ambush us? Kidnapping sweet old Cimmer and making him fight? Keeping Four in a cage for two years? And if that’s not enough, I’ll bet I can come up with a few others.”

Rophis held up his hands. “I must grant you those points as valid,” he said, “but if you had not boarded the wrong ship, I would have not had to resort to dissimulation. You were allowed to board because he was a warrior, and he looked as if he’d come to participate. Initially, I was excited to have such a grizzled, capable veteran aboard our ship. I quickly found out that that was not the case, but it was too late. You had paid your fare, and we of the Deneith are raised never, ever to break a covenant. We were wrong to have allowed you aboard. If I could have one mistake to undo, it would have been that one. I would have left you on the dock.”

“Don’t feign such charity,” said Minrah. “You only wish that because then your secrets would still be safe.”

“Indeed, that is true,” said Rophis, “and I wish them still to remain unrevealed, which is why I invited you here today.”

“What do you mean?” asked Minrah.

“As I said, I’ve been reading your work. It’s a story that needs a thrilling ending. Thus, while I could have you assassinated to protect my secrets, doing so would be wasteful of your talent, cruel to your readers, and ultimately would cause your publisher gnomes to start sniffing around your trail, which would make me most disconcerted. So rather than take that course, I have a mutually beneficial proposal.”

He reached inside his surcoat and pulled out a folded piece of parchment from a hidden pocket. He leaned forward and handed it to Minrah, who took it suspiciously.

“I have had some of my best minds working on this since the day you stopped in at the Blinking Hippo,” he said. “May I present to you an alternate ending for your story, one that suits your needs as a scribe, and my needs as a leader of this house.”

He leaned back and picked up his glass again. “You’ll find the salient points there. Naturally, we want you to rewrite it in your own particular style.”

Minrah opened the parchment and scanned it. She blinked several times. “This is good,” she said. She took another healthy sip from her glass.

“And I think the use of bitter Cyrans as the villains will evoke a better response from your readership.”

“Minrah,” said Cimozjen, “you’re not seriously considering this, are you?”

“Of course she is,” said Rophis wearily. “It’s a better ending than the truth, and instead of angering a dragonmarked house, she gains favor in one.” He turned to speak to Minrah again. “Such favor that we would be pleased to forward any suitable new stories for you to immortalize. Naturally, such assignments would be for pay-wages that we would remit in addition to your monthly stipend.”

“Monthly stipend?” asked Minrah.

“Seven galifars a month, if that suits your lifestyle. We want you to be able to focus on your art.”

Minrah sprayed her drink. “S-seven?” She giggled. “No more odd jobs …”

“Minrah!” said Cimozjen. “You cannot do this!”

“Can’t? I have to, Cimmer! This is seven gold a month! Do you have any idea how little I’ve lived on? This is a lot! And this is without doing anything! He said stories are extra! I could just … write! Anything I want!”

“You’ll be publishing a lie!”

“So?” asked Minrah, her hands held wide. “That’s what writers do. We make stuff up for a living to entertain the crowd. Do you think the commoners care if it’s true or not? Of course they don’t. Look at the theater. Do you think even a tenth of the plays are based on anything real? No!”

“Do you not see what he’s trying to do? He’s trying to corrupt you, poison your soul, purchase your freedom one month at a time. Each month you take their blood money is one more braid in the rope with which they bind you!”

“They can’t bind me,” said Minrah, “because they’re not making me do this.”

“You misunderstand, Minrah. You’re binding yourself for them!”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Minrah shouted. “They’re not making me do anything! I’m making them do this by the power of my pen! Mine!”

Cimozjen fought for words, but he saw that Minrah had been bought. He tried one last gambit. “What about Torval? Are you going to let him lie unavenged?”

“I was clear from the start, Cimmer, that you were in it for the revenge, and I was in it for the story. You yourself said I was only chasing ink, so don’t get all huffy now.” She folded the parchment and put it in her pouch. “At least I got what I was after. I got my story, and it’s a good one. But you … well, Torval is still dead, and by pursuing it, you made them kill the other prisoners they held, too. You’ve gotten nothing, Cimmer. You’ve gotten less than nothing. You even know who’s responsible now, but do you think you can stop a dragonmarked house? You and Four? Not a kobold’s chance. There’s no way you can stop it, Cimmer. At least I’m smart enough to profit from it.” She turned to Rophis. “If I can pick up my stipend the first day of each month at any Deneith enclave, you have yourself a deal.”

“Done,” said Rophis with a smile. “The charter is already prepared. It will be given you when you depart.” He swirled the liquid in his glass, and drained the last of it with a happy sigh.

“Now I know you, Minrah,” said Cimozjen. “I understand why you despise my oaths, and why you are proud of your ability to lie.”

“You don’t know me at all, Cimmer. You can’t see a thing through your eyes, because they look at the gods as goals, and they don’t see the real world at all. I see the world as it is.”

“I see clearly. But I also keep a vision of the world as it ought to be. And that includes you, Minrah.”

Minrah sneered at him. “Preach all you want. I have a story to write. And it no longer includes you. Too bad, though.” She licked her teeth and waggled her eyebrows. “You’ll never know what you missed.”

“ ‘Lo, thou shall know them by their words. Their own tongue shall reveal them, for they shall laud their sins, and their depravity they shall exalt, but thy virtue shall they mock as folly.’ ”

Minrah made a rude gesture at Cimozjen, then turned and left the room.

Rophis chuckled. “It looks like the information the gnomes gave us on her was well worth the price.” He rose and poured himself another drink. “Will you join me?” he asked, swirling his glass. “I thought not.” He walked back over to his chair and sat. “You’re a strong man, Cimozjen Hellekanus, and a fearsome foe. But she’s right, you know.”

“Right?” asked Cimozjen. “Right about what?”

“There’s nothing that someone even as determined as you can do to stop a dragonmarked house, or even to stop the arena.”

Cimozjen shrugged and scratched the back of his head. “Let me be honest, Rophis,” he said. “What has me most confused was how this started. It ill fits the reputation of House Deneith.”

“No, it’s definitely out of step for us,” said Rophis. “We-I, that is, for although the germ of the idea was unintentionally handed to me, I must give myself the full credit for brilliantly developing it and nurturing it to its present state-we were selected to deliver the most important of the prisoners home. By important I mean the elite of the enemy armies, the most dangerous generals, and the upper crust of the nobles … and Prelate Quardov made it as clear as he could that he would be most pleased if those people never quite made it back home. It seemed a reasonable suggestion. So I made similar overtures to the other nations, and they also found the idea of value. And lo, the day after the end of the Last War I had a sizeable stable of experienced veteran fighters, none of whom were to be repatriated.”

He took a sip of his drink to wet his throat. “At the same time, the nations were starting to stand down their armies. Thousands of veterans and, better yet, those who’d stood guard for years and never gone to war, all were turned loose with nothing to do. So I thought to bring the two together. Slowly but surely I eliminate the people entrusted to our … how shall I say, ‘hospitality,’ and I get to evaluate the former soldiers. The novices died. The very best, we recruited into our mercenaries. If they refused, we arranged for them to fight one of our best prisoners. And no matter what happened, we made money by means of gambling.”

“Ah,” said Cimozjen. “Death by commercial enterprise.”

“I suppose you could put it that way. But what is a mercenary house other than commercial killing?” He took another sip. “With my plan, I recruit away the very best of everyone’s armies, deaths erode away their manpower, and my house even gets gambling revenues. Over time, my enclave grows richer, and eventually there will be no army with any experience left in Khorvaire … but ours.” He spread his hands helplessly. “You see how brilliant it is?”

“I must admit, it has a vile beauty to its completeness,” said Cimozjen.

“I do not understand,” said Four. “I never fought in the War. Why was I used?”

Rophis waved a hand dismissively. “Please, there were plenty of your kind still warm from the forges at war’s end. No one wanted your kind any more, so the Canniths gave us a good price the day before emancipation. Now be a good little whoreforged and shut your jawbone.”

He set his glass on the end table and drummed his fingers twice on the polished wood. “As I said, I was not expecting to see you here today, but I hope I have shown myself to be hospitable. I am also forgiving. You fought quite well in the arena, Cimozjen Hellekanus. You are a valuable warrior, and I would be most pleased were you to choose to join one of my house’s mercenary companies. I do believe you’d have command potential, and your wages would reflect that.”

“I want the arena combats to end,” said Cimozjen. “That would be a suitable step toward justice for Torval.”

Rophis leaned forward. “Weren’t you listening?” he said reasonably. “Why do you think I told you all that I have? To show you that you cannot win. You cannot stop me or my plan. We have enough momentum now that we can continue the fights without the prisoners. Even if you were to bring everything I said to the chronicles, no one would believe you in the face of Minrah’s story. Plus, as I warned a few moments ago, you’d earn the wrath of a dragonmarked house, and that leads to a short and painful life.”

Cimozjen curled his lips into a snarl. “Then I shall kill you to and put an end to this.”

Rophis sagged, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “Your anger is blinding you. You can’t stop it. I can’t even stop it now, and I started the damned thing! The arena has been running for two years here in Aundair, a year in Sharn, and as you may have deduced, I recently introduced it to Korth. The wheels are well in motion, and it is far too late to stop the cart. Within five years, arenas will be in operation across the continent, and in ten years, I’m sure we’ll be able to operate in the open.”

Cimozjen’s hand twisted on the hilt of his sword. “If I cannot stop the arena, at least I can get revenge on you for the pointlessness of Torval’s death. Arm yourself.”

Rophis sighed, clapped his hands on his knees, and stood. “You still don’t grasp this, do you? This is has nothing to do with you personally, or even with your friend. But perhaps you can understand that your friend did not have the pointless death that Quardov and others like him wanted. I made sure of that. His fighting gave other veterans like him something to do. His fighting helped build my house. In fact, you yourself helped further my goals in the arena. By so rapidly becoming such a hated fighter, you increased attendance and gambling income. My house made a lot from you and your friend, whatever his name was.”

Cimozjen drew his sword.

Rophis shook his head. “I was afraid you’d feel that way. But according to Minrah’s writings, you’re an oathbound, aren’t you?” He walked over to Cimozjen and turned his back, his hands clasped placidly in front of him. “Go ahead, my fellow Karrn. I am unarmed. My back is turned. I cannot stop you. Strike me down.”

There was a short silence, the only audible sound that of Cimozjen’s breathing.

Rophis chuckled. “You can’t stop the arena, Cimozjen. You can’t even kill me, the one man you hate most. You may as well just leave and go home.”

“You’re right,” said Cimozjen. He lowered his head. “I cannot kill you.”

Cimozjen and Four backed out of the receiving room, bowed, and closed the doors quietly behind them. The door guards on either side scowled, but Cimozjen touched his brow in deference and said, “We know the way out.”

Nonetheless, one of the door guards escorted them down the hall to the stairs and across the lobby of the building.

The pair walked across the courtyard toward the gatehouse.

“I just realized something,” said Four.

“What’s that?”

“Do you remember the coins that the strange people gave me when they took me out of my home?”

“How could I forget?” said Cimozjen. “They sent you off with several hundred in mixed coinage dangling from a burlap bag around your neck. What of it?”

“Minrah bet them all on your victory in the arena the first night.”

“Did she?” Cimozjen snorted derisively. “At least she bet on the winning side.”

“She did,” said Four. “But she never gave me back my coins.”

“She kept-argh, I tell you the truth, Four, we are the better for her absence.”

Four looked at his hands for a moment, then curled them into fists. “I wish to have a new name now,” he said.

“Oh? What would that be?”

“Free.”

Cimozjen smiled wistfully and clapped the warforged on the shoulder. “It’s a good name, all things considered.”

They passed through the gatehouse and into the city’s streets. Cimozjen paused, unsure which way to go now that his crusade of the last few weeks had so abruptly ended.

“Pah! Some bodyguards you are,” called one of the gate guards. “Your patron left a good while ago.”

“She decided to contract with your house, instead,” said Cimozjen.

“Hullo, warforged,” called the other guard, “I thought you had a battle-axe when you came in.”

“I did,” he said. “I left it with Rophis.”