Lessek's Key

THE REDSTONE TAVERN

Brexan was drunk again, enjoying her second evening beside the fire at the Redstone Tavern. Tonight’s gansel leg – they roasted them perfectly here – the potatoes, bread and glorious cheese (she had eaten another half-block today), combined with the wine to warm her from within, while the fire blazing away ensured there was no trace left of the Ravenian Sea.

The Redstone Tavern was the sort of place Brexan enjoyed; with friends from home, she would be drinking, carousing, making jokes about sundry sailors, stevedores, maybe even a few of the Malakasian officers. But now she ignored the other patrons, a cross-section of Orindale society as, blanketed in sweet tobacco smoke, they yammered loudly to be heard above the din. Periodically they abandoned their conversations to bellow the refrain of some popular song or roar their appreciation of a well-told joke.

Crossing her legs beneath the heavy woollen folds of her new skirt, Brexan sipped at the last of her wine and considered ordering another half-bottle. She had spent her first free day since conscripting herself into the Malakasian Army strolling idly through the city, wandering into shops near the old imperial palace. One wing of the building had been demolished in an unexplained explosion several nights earlier, but the crumbling walls and shattered stained-glass windows didn’t mitigate the beauty of the surrounding boulevards.

She had found her skirt before the end of the midday aven, in a shop several streets away from the waterfront, though it hadn’t been her first choice. A delicate flowing skirt with an embroidered floral pattern and a hem of lace had caught her eye, and, tempted for a moment, she had held the skirt up against her body, against the sailor’s ill-fitting clothes. It was the most feminine article of clothing she had ever seen, let alone worn, and in the middle of a pirouette she had thought of Versen – not that she had forgotten him for a moment, for he was always there, if not in the forefront of her mind. Sometimes he would interrupt her thoughts, cause her to stare distractedly for a moment or two, maybe even make her stumble. Brexan couldn’t decide whether she wanted to live the rest of her life with such a boldly intrusive apparition haunting her, but whenever she thought it might be less unsettling if he were simply to fade away, she found herself reaching out as if to retrieve him, bring him closer.

Versen had been with her that morning, but not until she had twirled the pretentious skirt about the shop had he made his presence felt.

It’s lovely.

‘It’s not me, though,’ she had answered in a whisper, fearing the shopkeeper might overhear the one-sided conversation and toss her into the street.

No matter… things are different now. You should buy it. Versen’s voice had been comforting as she fingered the luxurious fabric.

‘You think so?’

I would love to see you in it – the murmur not of a voyeur, but a lover.

‘But you can’t, can you?’

I can’t. No.

Brexan stood still, hoping that if she remained motionless she would be able to hold him a moment longer. She didn’t have to get back to work yet. This day, the whole day, was for her. It was the midday aven now and she didn’t have to be back on Sallax’s trail until tomorrow. She didn’t have to track down and kill the fat merchant until tomorrow. Today was supposed to have been a gift, a moment’s grace, and the fact that Versen had come was all the more reason to make it last as long as possible.

Pressure built up behind Brexan’s eyes and her head started throbbing. She pinched the bridge of her nose and felt a tear on her wrist. The skirt dangled limply from her hand.

Now, as she leaned into the fire’s warmth, Brexan flinched when she recalled what had happened next.

Standing in the shop, a handful of fabric clutched close to her face, she had suddenly become revolted: the print was unnecessary, the lace hem too feminine – it was all too vulnerable. Her knees threatened to buckle and she had dropped the garment as if it had been on fire.

‘Hey, pick that up,’ the shopkeeper shouted, already on his way across the front room.

Ignoring him, she had reached for a utilitarian garment hanging on a rail: the woollen skirt she wore now.

‘Get out of here. I don’t have time for your nonsense. These pieces are expensive-’ His voice faded as he caught sight of the sailor’s silver piece Brexan was displaying. She gave the coin a flip, a gesture that might have said, go scratch yourself, horsecock.

In a breath, the shopkeeper’s demeanour had changed, switching to grovelling obsequiousness as if a second personality had unexpectedly elbowed its way into his head. ‘Sorry, ma’am. It’s just that sometimes… well, you know… with the Occupation-’

Brexan cut him off. ‘I’ll take this one.’ Rubbing the thick fabric across her cheek, she fought to clear the image of Versen from her mind.

‘But that’s just a skirt. Wouldn’t you rather-?’

She cut him off again. ‘This one – and some leggings, something tough, woollen, I think.’

The shopkeeper gave up. ‘Fine, wool.’ The floral print hung over his arm and he waved her towards a shelf.

‘And I need some shoes.’

‘Shoes?’

‘No.’ She changed her mind. Her one day of freedom ended there. ‘Boots. I need boots.’

She paid for her purchases and changed into them before leaving the shop, making the merchant a gift of the sailor’s stolen garments. At the Redstone Tavern, Brexan slept until the aroma of grilling meat and simmering stew woke her for dinner beside the fire.

Now she tossed her head, shifting her too-long hair away from her face. The strange pain had returned, pressing against her sinuses; she felt like a tempine fruit squeezed too hard. She allowed her vision to blur as she looked into the fire, trying to relax.

The clatter of tankards roused her and she held a hand aloft to get the attention of the serving boy; he finally looked over, his eyebrows arching in a nonverbal enquiry, What would you like?

She picked up the empty bottle and he nodded in understanding. I’ll be right there.

Brexan half-smiled. I’ll be waiting.

She had lost enjoyment of her day to memories of Versen, the wrong memories, but she had to take the bad with the good; she couldn’t just have the disarming look of his green eyes, the feel of his legs against hers when they were imprisoned in the darkness of the schooner’s hold, or the way he had dropped his weapons to take her hand when the Seron were upon them: she had to remember his shattered image as vividly as she recalled the brightness of his smile.

In the vertiginous recesses of her mind, the cordoned-off section that remained sensible regardless of how much she managed to drink, Brexan promised not to drown her sorrows every time the anguish grew too grim to face head-on; in return, she silently agreed to get back to the business of hunting and killing at first light the following day.

With her decision, knowing she was not going to spiral into an alcoholic coma every time she felt sad, the weight seemed to ease. She would pick herself up at first light and get back on track – but this evening she would let herself fall apart. The second bottle of wine seemed as good a place as any to get started.

Morning arrived with all the delicacy of a battering ram assault on a stone keep. Brexan made an effort to get up, felt her vision tunnel and fell back into the expensive feather mattress, one of the Redstone’s more luxurious features. When she realised the incessant pounding was going on inside her head, not outside, she rolled to the edge of the bed, hung the offending appendage over the side and waited – when nothing happened, she drew herself into a foetal ball and tried to go back to sleep – but the throbbing pain was too much.

Brexan, realising she would need to extricate herself from the bed, make her way across the room and drink the contents of her water pitcher dry if she hoped to quiet the band hammering away inside her skull, threw back the coverlet – and discovered that she was naked. The events of the previous evening came back to her in a flood of embarrassment: awkward invitations and clumsy drunken sex with the young man from the kitchen. ‘Oh, you whoring rutter,’ she groaned and looked back at the bed, begging him to be gone. Thankfully, all that remained was a lingering aroma of beef and gansel stew. She wrestled her aching body into a sitting position and dropped her head down to her knees until she felt she could breathe without vomiting.

She dragged herself across the room to the armoire and grimaced as she caught a glimpse of herself in the glass: skin the colour of city snow, and her mouth hanging open. Her breasts seemed to sag more than they had the last time she had seen them so thoroughly exposed. Brexan stood up straight, despite the cramp in her lower back, but it didn’t help as much as she’d hoped. Her eyes looked like she’d been punched.

‘You did this to yourself, young lady,’ she said in a hoarse whisper, regretting her decision to engage in improvisational alcohol therapy.

Stepping closer to the glass, Brexan examined herself. Although still sore and discoloured from the deep tissue bruising, her ribs appeared to be healing slowly. Her cheek worried her more; the Seron, Lahp, had cracked it with a vicious punch and then the scarred Seron, the horsecock with the ruined face, had re-broken it, knocking her unconscious and leaving Versen to battle him alone. Brexan hadn’t been anywhere near a mirror in the past Twinmoon, so this was the first time she had seen how crookedly it had knitted together.

‘Damaged goods. No matter.’ She shrugged at the worn figure in the mirror. ‘You were never much to look at, anyway.’ She rubbed her throbbing temples and considered her options. She had new clothes, a pocketful of money and a warm, safe place to sleep; that was a good start. Despite the hangover, she shot herself a grin. ‘Next time try to stay sober enough to have more than just a fuzzy recollection, my little slut. What’s the point of having an encounter if all you remember is falling over while trying to get out of your leggings?’

The morning was bright, filled with the telltale aromas of low tide: the tang of seagull guano, tidal rot and decomposing fish innards. Brexan left the Redstone for some fresh air and shortly afterwards found herself spilling the contents of her stomach into a muddy alley running from the street down to the river. It wasn’t the foetid smells of the wharf blowing in on the morning breeze, but the fierce early-aven sunlight that pushed her over the edge.

Once she’d finished heaving, she went to find water, stepping across the threshold of a nearby cheese shop. Almost immediately, she regretted her course of action. ‘Demonpiss,’ she muttered as the pungent smell hit her, and backed out as quickly as she could. Mould cheeses of varying shapes and sizes dominated the wooden shelves and as she started dry-heaving, she wondered who in all Eldarn would pay money to eat spoiled cream with plants growing out of it. She cursed, spat out a mouthful of discoloured saliva and grumbled, ‘Everything in this town makes me puke. I’ve got to do something about this. The other day it was Sallax and this morning, it’s the slobbering cheese.’

She stumbled back towards the waterfront, searching for a tavern, a produce stand, any place where she might get something to quiet her raging stomach. She felt the ground shifting beneath her feet as sweat dampened her forehead, armpits and back. Several streets later she came to a boarding house with a large tavern downstairs. She pushed her way through the door and squinted while her eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness.

As she bumped and shuffled towards the bar, a gruff voice asked, ‘You all right?’ With her eyes still not focused, Brexan wasn’t sure if the bald man had an open sore on his forehead or if he had been injured in a fight.

‘Fine. It’s just a bit bright out this morning.’ Brexan tried not to sound like a woman on the verge of collapse. ‘I’d like some water, please.’ No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted making the request.

‘Water?’ the bartender squinted at her.

‘And a beer,’ Brexan added quickly, ‘in a tankard, please.’ She dropped several copper coins on the bar, unconvinced she would be able to smell the beer without retching right there onto the man’s boots. Pretty sure her stomach wouldn’t be able to handle even the smallest sip of the local brew, she leaned against the bar, her back to the tankard, while waiting for the barman to bring her water. Brexan rubbed her eyes, but when she tried to focus on the tavern’s sprawling front room, she saw stars, tiny sunbursts of yellow, red and white.

Then she saw him.

He was sitting alone near the window; he hadn’t seen her come in, or if he had, he hadn’t recognised her. He certainly hadn’t marked her as the soldier he’d spoken with in Estrad Village, more than a Twinmoon ago. Lafrent, Jacrys- whatever his name was, he was a Malakasian spy and Lieutenant Bronfio’s murderer – and there he sat, enjoying a mug of tecan and a loaf of what smelled like fresh-baked bread. The well-dressed man appeared to be watching the street.

Brexan blessed her good luck – one stroke this morning, anyway – that the killer had not been facing in the other direction.

‘Your water,’ the barman said sarcastically, placing the goblet next to the untouched tankard of beer.

Brexan turned back to the bar and emptied the goblet, then lifted the tankard, grimacing at the thought of more alcohol – but it was the excuse she needed. She turned back to the window, leaned against the bar and watched Jacrys.

*

Jacrys Marseth tore off a chunk of bread, dripped it into his tecan and savoured the flavours: a reminder of home. He didn’t actually miss home, but by having the same breakfast every day, he was able to bring some predictability to his life in the Eastlands. No matter where he woke, whether it was in a feather-lined bed or behind a stack of crates, breakfast was Jacrys’ daily offering to himself. Bread and tecan was spy food, quick, sustaining and readily available.

As he watched the street outside, Jacrys thought of his home. He had not been back to Malakasia in thirty Twinmoons or more; he didn’t even know if his father was still alive. His mother had died long ago – Jacrys remembered his father’s clumsy attempts at baking bread and the discarded loaves – some overdone, some undercooked, some not risen, emerging as hard as logs. Growing up without a mother had been difficult, made worse by his father’s frequent absences – a tradesman in search of a trade, the old man had travelled from town to town throughout northern Malakasia, sometimes going as far as Port Denis to take work on the docks. There had never been much money in the house and Jacrys was often left alone to fend for himself. He had learned to fight among Pellia’s street people, how to use a knife without flinching, and he even picked up a few spells from a conjuror living below a brothel. The magician had been young, but sickly; it was much later that Jacrys realised the sorcerer-turned-carnival trickster had been so ruined on Falkan fennaroot that he was surprised any of the spells worked at all.

Jacrys had found the magician’s decomposing corpse one summer’s day, and in return for disposing of the stinking body off the Pellia wharf, the madame who operated the whorehouse upstairs had given him the dead man’s apartment. Jacrys ran errands for the women, sometimes fetching a particular vial of perfume, sometimes slinking through dark alleys to slip a dirk between a stranger’s ribs. The madame, while open-minded about sexual engagements, did not tolerate violence or abuse to her girls. Jacrys, although younger than most of the men frequenting the brothel overhead, had grown skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and was even more deft at moving through Pellia undetected; he was the perfect errand boy for the whorehouse. From time to time one or more of the girls came to thank him personally for his services.

At the age of one hundred and thirty Twinmoons, Jacrys had been badly wounded, stabbed twice and slashed across the abdomen by an angry customer who was just as skilled with a short blade. Jacrys was nursed back to health by the whores, then packed quietly one evening and slipped away. He had realised that although talented, he would not last long here; no matter how deliciously the girls rewarded him, it was time to go.

He had enlisted in the Malakasian Army, being promoted to sergeant after only eleven Twinmoons in the Prince’s service and making master sergeant before turning one hundred and fifty. One night, while patrolling the border between Averil and Landry, Jacrys’ platoon had been attacked by a crowd mostly of Pragan students. The angry, inebriated mob had decided that together they could march, unarmed, through Averil and north all the way to Welstar Palace. Strengthened by too much Pragan wine and fennaroot, the mob had taken a border station, killed several guards and begun moving through a residential area of southern Averil, lighting fires and attacking Malakasian citizens as they went.

Jacrys’ platoon, one of three, had been ordered to show no mercy, and to send a powerful message by bringing back prisoners for a public display of Prince Malagon’s disapproval. His lieutenant had ordered Jacrys to move his squad into position alongside the mob’s exposed flank, using the narrow alleys as cover. Anticipating a quick – and bloody – victory, his soldiers had hurried into the fray, in their eagerness breaking formation. Screaming orders, Jacrys had tried to keep his squad together, but the scent of blood and the promise of carnage was too much. Though unorganised, drunk and disorderly, there were now hundreds of Pragans: they had taken heavy losses, with scores of them dead or dying, hacked down, knifed, some even set alight with torches – but they had not retreated.

A gang of the rebels had rushed Jacrys’ position, killing or maiming several of his men and effectively cutting them off. The lieutenant ordered a charge through the enraged revellers to rejoin the remainder of their platoon, and with a shout, the handful of Malakasian soldiers had brandished their weapons and charged.

Less than a third of the way through the crowd, Jacrys had realised that he and his lieutenant were alone, the soldiers with them were missing, killed or injured. Knowing he was about to die, the young master sergeant had grown furious at the notion of dying under the boots of a band of drunken students, and the weight of his anger lent weight to his arms: Jacrys, swearing like the proverbial trooper, cut a swathe through the crowd, pulling his lieutenant with him – until the man had stumbled, felled by a sword stroke below the knee, and crashed to the ground. Jacrys hadn’t hesitated: he rushed to the lieutenant’s side, threw himself over the man and summoned one of the spells he had learned from the fennaroot addict in the whorehouse basement, praying this one would work.

Jacrys knew their lives had been saved when the mob’s collective attention shifted away from the two forms huddled quietly in the dirt. Jacrys once again thanked the dead sorcerer for teaching him the simplest of magic, for it had taken only a moment to utter the curious, ancient words, then the mob eddied and swelled around the two men. His little suggestive spell had them convinced that he and the lieutenant were already dead.

Much later, Prince Malagon’s magicians had helped Jacrys refine this spell; he used it to keep from being detected even by the great Gilmour, the Larion Senator, who had periodically searched for him, casting his gaze back over the partisans’ trail with irritating unpredictability.

Returning to save his lieutenant’s life – only Jacrys knew it had been an act of rage rather than compassion – earned him the respect of the officers and the ambitious master sergeant took advantage of his elevated status in Prince Malagon’s army, however temporary, to secure himself a transfer to the Eastlands and a chance to train with a covert corps of Malagon’s personal spies and information specialists. One hundred and sixty Twinmoons later, Jacrys was a master of intelligence and espionage.

The prince himself called upon Jacrys for some of his most nefarious plans, and the spy had never disappointed – not until now. He dipped the last of the bread and pushed aside the empty mug. There was work to be done today – although he was not looking forward to another five avens roaming through Orindale searching for Steven Taylor, the foreigner with the stone key Malagon wanted so badly. With Gilmour dead and the bowman, Garec, badly injured, Jacrys thought it would be relatively easy to retrieve the key from Steven – if only he could track the partisans down. He was fairly certain he had not killed Garec, so they must have gone underground.

It had been days since he had seen any sign of them and he was beginning to grow frustrated with his lack of progress, particularly as this group was about broken: their leader was dead; Sallax, the traitor with an axe to grind, was either missing, found out, or killed, and Garec had at least a few cracked ribs, maybe even a punctured lung.

He muttered a curse, recalling the night he had been forced to choose between Garec and Steven. Jacrys had been huddled in the shadows behind the warehouse for over an aven waiting for the two so-called freedom fighters to return. Then when they came, their cloaks had been pulled closed and their hoods lifted to cover their heads. There had been rats, lots of the ugly little demons, scratching about at his feet – ironically, it had been the rodents that had given him the answer: the boots. Steven Taylor’s boots looked like nothing Jacrys had ever seen; it was easy to spot them, heavy with leather and silly crisscrossing bits of twine holding them together.

But the horsecock archer had been wearing them.

For days Jacrys had wondered why the two men had exchanged boots – were they a disguise? Or were the two men softies, sneaking away to exchange who knew what else? Yet again he felt anger welling at his wretched luck. If only he had chosen right, he could have killed the staff-wielding foreigner, then retrieving the stone would have been so much easier.

Now they were all missing and he had to brace himself for another futile day of asking questions and paying off Orindale whores, barmen and criminals for any information leading to the Ronans’ hiding place. He didn’t know how they had managed to make their way into the city, given the array of forces blockading Orindale from Falkan and Rona, but Jacrys was certain they had managed to spirit themselves past the Malakasian picket lines and that they were still in the city. With Garec injured, they would not have risked a retreat through enemy lines; it would have been too dangerous. They had to be inside city limits, and Jacrys would continue searching until he found them.

The one piece of good news was that the dark prince hadn’t appeared, even after the explosion at the old imperial palace and the unexpected sinking of the Prince Marek in Orindale Harbour. His carriage hadn’t been moved and there was no talk of anyone coming or going from the Falkan ancestral residence. The army remained entrenched and no one moved in or out of the city without attracting Malakasian scrutiny. Without Prince Malagon seeking him, Jacrys was free to move through Orindale as he pleased.

These things, considered together, gave Jacrys hope. ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ he said quietly. ‘I will get that key and the dark prince will owe me – well, whatever I wish.’ He chuckled, stood up and tossed a coin on the table, then stepped out into the brilliant morning sunlight.

He didn’t notice the young woman, white as a corpse, pay her own tab at the bar and unobtrusively follow him out.