Death's Mistress

CHAPTER 6

After the sorceress went on her way, Bannon wiped blood from his lip and felt the bruise. He tried to fashion a smile, which only made the pain worse, but he smiled anyway. He had to smile, or his fragile world would fall apart.

His canvas trousers were scuffed and stained, but they were durable work pants, a farmer’s garment made to last, and they had served him well aboard the ship. His homespun shirt was now torn in two places, but he would have time to mend it once the Wavewalker set sail. There would be quiet listless days adrift on the water as they voyaged south, and Bannon was handy enough with a needle and thread. He could make it right again.

Someday, he would have a pretty wife to make new clothes and do the mending, as his mother had done on Chiriya Island. They would have spunky, bright-eyed children—five of them, he decided. He and his wife would laugh together … unlike his mother, who had not laughed often. It would be different with him, because he would be different from his father, so very different.

The young man shuddered, took a breath, and forced his mind back to the bright and colorful picture he liked to hold in his mind. Yes. A warm cottage, a loving family, a life well lived …

He habitually brushed himself off again, and the smile felt real this time. He pretended he didn’t even notice the bruises on his face and leg. It would be all right. It had to be.

He walked out into the bright and open city streets. The sky was clear and blue, and the salt air smelled fresh, blowing in from the harbor. Tanimura was a city of marvels, just as he had dreamed it would be.

During his voyage from Chiriya Island, he had asked the other sailors to tell him stories about Tanimura. The things they had described seemed impossible, but Bannon’s dreams were not impossible, and so he believed them—or at least gave them the benefit of the doubt.

As soon as the Wavewalker had come into port and tied up to the pier, Bannon had bounded down the gangplank, enthusiastic to find the city—at least something in his life—to be the way he wanted it to be. The rest of the crew took their pay and headed for the dockside taverns, where they would eat food that wasn’t fish, pickled cabbage, or salt-preserved meat, and they would drink themselves into a stupor. Or they would pay the price asked by the … special ladies who were willing to spread their legs for any man. Such women did not exist in the bucolic villages on Chiriya—or if they did, Bannon had never seen them (not that he had ever looked).

When he was deep in drink, Bannon’s father had often called his mother a whore, usually before he beat her, but the Wavewalker sailors seemed delighted by the prospect of whores, and they didn’t seem interested at all in beating such women, so Bannon didn’t understand the comparison.

He gritted his teeth and concentrated on the sunshine and the fresh air.

Absently, he pulled back his long ginger hair to keep it out of his way. The other sailors could have their alehouses and their lusty women. Since this was his first time here, Bannon wanted to get drunk on the sights of Tanimura, on the wonder of it all. He had always imagined that the world would be like this.

This was the way the world was supposed to be.

The white tile-roofed buildings were tall, with flower boxes under the open windows. Colorful laundry hung on ropes strung from window to window. Laughing children ran through the streets chasing a ball that they kicked and threw while running, a game that seemed to have no set rules. A mop-headed boy bumped into him, then rebounded and ran off. Bannon felt his trousers, his pocket—the boy had brushed against him there, possibly in an attempt to pick his pocket, but Bannon had no more coins for the would-be thief, since he’d already been robbed. The last of his money was safely tucked in the bottom of his boot, and he hoped it would be enough to buy a reasonable sword.

He took two breaths, closed his eyes, opened them again. He made the smile come back and deliberately chose to believe that the street urchin had just bumped into him, that he wasn’t a feral pickpocket trying to take advantage of a distracted stranger.

Searching for a swordsmith, Bannon emerged into a main square that overlooked the sparkling blue water and crowded sailing ships. A heavy woman pushed a cart filled with clams, cockles, and gutted fish. She seemed unenthusiastic about her wares. Older fishermen with swollen, arthritic knuckles worked at knotting and reknotting torn fishing nets; their hands somehow remained nimble through the pain. Gulls flew overhead, wheeling in aimless circles, or shrieked and fought over whatever scraps they had found to eat.

Bannon came upon a tanner’s shop where a round-faced man with a fringe of dark hair wore a leather apron. The tanner scraped and trimmed cured skins while his matronly wife knelt at a wide washtub, shoving her hands into bright green dye, immersing leather pieces.

“Excuse me,” Bannon said, “could you recommend a good sword maker? One with fair prices?”

The woman looked up at him. “Wanting to join Lord Rahl’s army, are you? The wars are over. It’s a new time of peace.” She ran her eyes up and down his lanky form. “I don’t know how desperate they are for fighters anymore.”

“No, I don’t want to join the army,” Bannon said. “I’m a sailor aboard the Wavewalker, but I’m told that every good man should have a good blade—and I’m a good man.”

“Are you now?” said the leatherworker with a good-natured snort. “Then maybe you should try Mandon Smith. He has blades of all types, and I’ve never heard a complaint.”

“Where would I find him? I’m new to the city.”

The leatherworker raised his eyebrows in amusement. “Are you now? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

The tanner’s wife lifted her hands out of the dye basin. They were bright green up near the elbows, but her hands and wrists were a darker color, permanently stained from her daily work. “Down two streets, after you smell a pickler’s shop, you’ll find a candle maker.”

The leatherworker interrupted, “Don’t buy candles there. He’s a cheat—uses mostly lard instead of beeswax, so the candles melt in no time.”

“I’ll remember that,” Bannon said. “But I’m not looking to buy candles.”

The woman continued, “Pass the dry fountain, and you’ll find the sword maker’s shop. Mandon Smith. Fine blades. He works hard, gives a fair price, but don’t insult him by asking for a discount.”

“I—I won’t.” Bannon lifted his chin. “I’ll be fair, if he is.”

He left the tanners and went off. He found the pickler’s shop with no difficulty. The tang of vinegar stung his eyes and nose, but when he saw large clay jars with salted fermenting cabbage, his stomach felt suddenly queasy, and unbidden bile came up in his throat. It reminded him too much of the stink of his old home, of the cabbage fields on Chiriya, of the bottomless prison pit that would have been his life back there. Cabbages, and cabbages, and cabbages …

The young man walked on, shaking his head to clear away the smell. He passed the disreputable candle maker without a second glance, then marveled at an elaborate fresco painted on the long wall of a public building. It depicted some dramatic historical event, but Bannon did not know his history.

He found the dry fountain, which was adorned with the statue of some beautiful sea nymph. Tanimura was so full of marvels, he almost didn’t want to leave here, even after being robbed and nearly murdered. Was that any worse than what he had left behind?

He had fled his home in desperation, but he also wanted to see the world, sail the oceans, go from one port city to another. It wouldn’t be right to remain in the first place he saw. But he was certainly impressed with that beautiful and frighteningly powerful sorceress, who was unlike anyone he had ever met on Chiriya.…

After spotting the sword maker’s shop at the end of the street, he sat on the edge of the dry fountain, pulled off his left boot, and upended it so that the coins fell into his palm; two silvers and five coppers. That was all. He had a blister from the coins in his shoe, but he was glad he had taken the precaution. He’d learned that lesson from his father.

Never put all your money in one place.

Bannon swallowed hard and walked up to the sword maker. Fine blades. Self-consciously, he touched his empty pockets again. “I need to buy a sword, sir.”

Mandon Smith was a dark-skinned man with a polished bald head and a bushy black beard. “I would imagine that to be the case, young man, since you’ve come to a sword maker’s shop. I have blades of all kinds. Long swords, short swords, curved blades, straight blades, full guards, open hilts—all the finest steel. I don’t sell poor quality.” He gestured to show an array of swords, so many types on display that Bannon didn’t know how to assess them. “What type of sword were you looking for?”

Bannon looked away, wiped at the bruise on his face. “I’m afraid you might not be able to provide the type of sword I need.”

Mandon palmed his bushy beard, but the hairs promptly sprang back out into its full brush. “I can make any kind of sword, young man.”

Bannon brightened. “Then, the sword I require is … an affordable one.”

The swordsmith was startled by the answer. His face darkened in a frown before he burst out laughing. “A difficult request indeed! Precisely how affordable did you mean?”

Bannon held out all of his remaining coins. Mandon let out a long, discouraged sigh. “Quite a challenge.” His lips quirked in a smile. “It wouldn’t be right to let a man go without a blade, however. Tanimura has some dangerous streets.”

Bannon swallowed. “I discovered that already.”

Mandon led him inside the shop. “Let’s see what we can find.” The smith began sorting flat blank strips of metal that had not yet been fashioned and forged. He rummaged through half-finished long swords, broken blades, ornate daggers, serrated hunting knives, even a short flat knife that looked incapable of anything more dangerous than cutting cheese or spreading butter.

The smith stopped to ponder one clunky-looking blade as long as Bannon’s arm. It had a straight, unornamented cross guard, a small round pommel. The grip was wrapped in leather strips, with no fancy carving, wire workings, or inlaid jewels. The blade looked discolored, as if it hadn’t been forged as perfectly as the other blades. It had no fuller groove, no engraving. It was just a simple, sturdy sword.

Mandon hefted it, held the grip in his right hand, tossed it to the left. He moved his wrist, felt the weight of it, watched it flow through the air. “Try this one.”

Bannon caught the sword, fearing he would drop it with an embarrassing clatter to the floor of the shop, but his hand seemed to go right to the hilt. His fingers wrapped around the grip, and the leather helped him hold on. “It feels solid at least. Sturdy.”

“Aye, that it is. And the blade is sharp. It’ll hold an edge.”

“I had imagined something a little more—” Bannon frowned, searching for words that would not insult the swordsmith. “A little more elegant.”

“Have you counted the number of coins you’ve got to spend?”

“I have,” Bannon said, letting his shoulders fall. “And I understand.”

Mandon clapped him on the back, a blow that was much harder than he expected. “Get your priorities straight, young man. When a victim is staring at a blade that has just plunged through his chest, the last thing on his mind is criticism about the lack of ornamentation on your hilt.”

“I suppose not.”

Mandon looked down at the plain blade and mused, “This sword was made by one of my most talented apprentices, a young man named Harold. I tasked him with making a good and serviceable sword. It took him four tries, but I knew his potential, and I was willing to invest four sword blanks on him.”

The smith tapped his fingernail on the solid blade, eliciting a clear metallic clink. “Harold made this sword to prove to me it was time he became a journeyman.” He smiled wistfully, brushing his spiky black beard with one hand. “And he did. Three years after that, Harold was such a good craftsman that he created a fantastically elaborate, perfect sword—his masterpiece. So I named him a master.” He squared his shoulders and leaned back with a wry sigh. “Now, he’s one of my biggest competitors in Tanimura.”

Bannon looked at the sword with greater appreciation now.

Mandon continued, “That just makes my point—it may not look like much, but this is a very well crafted sword, and it will serve the needs of the right person—unless your needs are to impress some pretty girl?”

Bannon felt a flush come to his cheeks. “I’ll have to do that some other way, sir. This sword will be for my own protection.” He lifted the blade, tried it in both hands, swung it in a slow, graceful arc. Oddly, it felt good—perhaps because otherwise he had had no sword at all.

“It’ll do that,” said the swordsmith.

Bannon squared his shoulders, nodding absently. “A man never knows when he might need to protect himself or his companions.”

The dark edges of the world infringed upon his vision. Marvelous Tanimura seemed to have more shadows than before, more slinking, dark things in corners, rather than bright sunlit colors. Hesitating, he held out the coins, everything that the thieves hadn’t taken from him. “You’re sure this is enough money?”

The swordsmith removed the coins, one at a time, the two silvers then four of the coppers, closing Bannon’s fingers on the last one. “I would never take a man’s last coin.” He gestured with his bald head. “Let’s go outside. I have a practice block in back.”

Mandon took him behind the smithy to a small yard with barrels of scum-covered water for cooling his blades, a grinding wheel and whetstones for sharpening the edges. An upright, battered pine log as tall as a man had been mounted and braced in the center of a dirt clearing strewn with straw. Fragrant piles of fresh pale wood chips lay around it on the ground.

Mandon pointed to the scarred upright log. “That is your opponent—defend yourself. Imagine it is one of the soldiers of the Imperial Order. Hah, why not imagine it’s Emperor Jagang himself?”

“I already have enough enemies in my imagination,” Bannon muttered. “We don’t need to add to them.”

He stepped up to the practice block and swung the sword, bracing for the smack of impact when the blade hit the pine wood. The vibrations reverberated up to his elbow.

The swordsmith was not impressed. “Are you trying to cut down a sunflower, my boy? Swing!”

Bannon swung again, harder this time, resulting in a louder thunk. A dry chunk of bark fell off the practice block.

“Defend yourself!” yelled Mandon.

He swung harder with a grunt from the effort, and this time the impact thrummed through his wrist, jarred his forearm, his elbow, all the way to his shoulder. “I’ll defend myself,” he whispered. “I won’t be helpless.”

But he hadn’t always been able to defend himself, or his mother.

Bannon struck again, imagining that the blade was cutting not into wood, but through flesh and hard bone. He hacked again.

He remembered coming home barely an hour after sunset one night on the island. He had been working as a hand in the Chiriya cabbage fields, like all the other young men his age. He had to work for wages rather than working his family’s own land, because his father had lost their holdings long before. It wasn’t even dinnertime yet, but his father was already out of the house, surely halfway drunk by now in the tavern. Getting drunk was about the only thing at which his father showed any efficiency.

At least that meant their cottage would be quiet, granting Bannon and his mother an uneasy peace. From his fieldwork in the past week, Bannon had earned a few more coins, paid that day—it was the height of the cabbage harvest, and the wages were better than usual.

He had already saved enough money to buy his own passage off of Chiriya Island. He could have left a month ago, and he remembered how he had longed to be gone from this place, staring at the infrequent trading ships as they sailed away from port. Such vessels stopped in the islands only once every month or two, since the islanders had little to trade and not much money to buy imported goods. Even though it would be some time before he had another chance, Bannon had made up his mind that he wouldn’t go—couldn’t go—until he could take his mother with him. They would both sail away and find a perfect world, a peaceful new home like all those lands he had heard of—Tanimura, the People’s Palace, the Midlands. Even the wild uncivilized places of the New World had to be better than his misery on Chiriya.

Bannon had walked into the house clenching the silver coin he had earned that day, sure that it would finally be enough to buy passage for himself and his mother. They could run away together the next time a ship docked in port. In order to be sure, he intended to count the carefully saved coins he had hidden in the bottom of the dirt-filled flowerpot on his windowsill. The pot held only the shriveled remnants of a cliff anemone that he had planted and nurtured, and then watched die.

Upon stepping into his cottage, though, Bannon had immediately smelled burned food, along with the coppery tang of blood. He stopped, on guard. Standing at the hearth, his mother turned from the pot she was stirring, trying to force a smile, but her lips and the side of her face looked like a slab of raw liver. Her pretense that everything was fine failed miserably.

He stared at her, feeling sick. “I should have been here to stop him.”

“You could not have done anything.” His mother’s voice sounded hoarse and ragged, no doubt from screaming and then sobbing. “I didn’t tell him where you hid it—I wouldn’t tell him.” She began to weep again, shaking her head. She slumped to the inlaid fieldstones on the hearth. “I wouldn’t tell him … but he knew anyway. He ransacked your room until he found the coins.”

Feeling an acid sickness in his stomach, Bannon ran to his room and saw his meager keepsakes scattered on the floor, the straw stuffing of his pallet torn out, the quilt his mother had sewn wadded against the wall—and the flowerpot with the cliff anemone upended, the dirt poured all over his bedding.

The coins were gone.

“No!” he cried. That money should have been a new hope, a fresh life for them both. Bannon had worked hard in the fields and saved a year to get enough for them to leave Chiriya and get far away from that man.

His father had not just stolen the coins, he had robbed Bannon and his mother of their future. “No!” he shouted again into the silent cottage as his mother wept on the hearth.

And that was how his father had taught Bannon never to keep all of his coins in one place, because then someone could take everything. It didn’t matter how good the hiding place was, thieves like his father could be smart, thieves could be brutal—or both. But when thieves found at least some money, then Bannon could make a convincing plea that it was all he had, and they might not think to look elsewhere.…

“By the good spirits, my boy!” The swordsmith’s voice cut through his dark haze of memories. “You’re going to break my testing block, break that sword—and break your arm while you’re at it.”

Bannon blinked and saw what he had done. In an unconscious frenzy, he had chopped great gouges into the pine log, spraying splinters in all directions. His hands were sweaty, but they squeezed the leather-wrapped grip in a stranglehold. The discolored blade thrummed in the air, but the sword was undamaged, the edge not notched.

His shoulders ached, his hands were sore, his wrists throbbed. “I think…” he said, then swallowed hard. “I think I’ve tested it enough. You’re right, sir. It seems to be a good blade.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last copper coin. “One more thing from you, sir. Would a copper be enough for you to sharpen the sword again?” He looked at the mangled practice block and suppressed a shiver. “I think it might have lost some of its edge.”

Mandon looked long and hard at him, then accepted the copper coin. “I’ll put an edge on it that should last a long time, provided you take care of the blade.”

“I will,” Bannon promised.

The swordsmith used the grinding stone to resharpen the sword, throwing off a flurry of sparks. Bannon watched but didn’t see, as his thoughts wandered through a quagmire of memories. Before long, he would have to get back to the Wavewalker so he could be there when they sailed out on the evening tide. The rest of the crew would be hungover and miserable, and just as penniless as he was. Bannon would fit right in.

He fashioned a smile again and touched his bruised lip, then ignored the soreness as he imagined everything he could do to the thugs if they ever bothered him again. Now he was prepared. He dipped briefly into his fantasy—no, his belief—in a satisfying life, a happy family, kind friends. That world had to exist somewhere. Throughout his childhood on Chiriya, during all the times his father had shouted and struck, Bannon Farmer had built up that picture in his mind, and he desperately clung to it.

By the time he had reconstructed the rosy image of how things should be, Mandon had finished sharpening his blade and handed the weapon back to him. “I give you this sword with my fervent wish that you never need to use it.”

When Bannon smiled, this time he did feel the sting in his lip. “That is my hope, too. Always my hope.” But he doubted that would happen.

Bidding Mandon farewell, he left the shop and made his way down to the docks and the waiting Wavewalker.