“He had a successor, of course. His third son Mah-Lol, the two older brothers having been quietly poisoned in early manhood when it became clear they lacked their father’s acumen. Mah-Lol was truly his father’s son, highly intelligent, exceptionally well educated and possessed of all the cunning and ruthlessness needed to sit on a Merchant King’s throne. But, to my great delight, he knew nothing of my gift. Lol-Than’s illness had left him in no state to enlighten his son as to the nature of my role at court. To Mah-Lol I was simply an unusually trusted secretary, and he had his own man for that. I was consigned to a bookkeeping position in the palace stores, moved from my fine quarters and paid a fraction of the salary I had received before. Apparently, I was expected to kill myself in shame at my fall from royal favour, as many of Lol-Than’s now redundant servants had already done. Instead, I simply left, telling the guard at the palace gate that I had an errand to run in the city. He barely glanced at me as I walked out. I was twenty-two years old and a free man for the first time. It was the sweetest moment of my life.
“Freedom brought a change in my song, made it soar, seeking out wonders and novelty. I followed its music across the breadth of Mah-Lol’s kingdom and beyond. It guided me to a stonemason in a small village high in the mountains, who, lacking sons or apprentices, agreed to teach me his craft. I think he was disturbed by the speed with which I learned, not to say the unusual quality of my work, and he seemed relieved when it became clear he had no more to teach me and I moved on.
“The song guided me to a port where I took ship to the east. For the next twenty years I travelled and worked, from city to city, town to town, leaving my mark on houses, palaces and temples. I even spent a year in your realm carving gargoyles for a Nilsaelin lord’s castle. I never wanted for anything, in lean times the song guided me to food and work, when times were fraught it sought out peace and solitude. I never questioned it, never resisted it. Five years ago it guided me here, where Shoala, my most excellent wife, was struggling to keep her late father’s shop going. She had the skills but richer Alpirans don’t like to deal with women. I’ve been here ever since. My song has never signalled a need to move on, for which I am grateful.”
“Even now?” Vaelin wondered. “With the Red Hand in the city?”
“Did your song raise its voice when you first heard the sickness was here?”
Vaelin remembered the despair he felt at Sister Gilma’s likely fate but realised it hadn’t been coloured by the blood-song. “No. No it didn’t. Does this mean there is no danger?”
“Hardly. It means that, for whatever reason, this is where we are both supposed to be.”
“This is…” Vaelin fumbled for the right words. “Our destiny?”
Ahm-Lin shrugged. “Who can say, brother? Of destiny I know little but to say I’ve seen so much of the random and unexpected in my life as to doubt there is such a thing. We make our own path, but with the song’s guidance. Your song is you, remember. You can sing it as well as hear it.”
“How?” Vaelin leaned forward, discomfited by the hunger for knowledge he knew coloured his voice. “How do I sing?”
Ahm-Lin gestured at the workbench where his partly carved block still sat, untouched since his first visit. “You’ve already started. I suspect you’ve been singing a long time, brother. The song can make us reach for many different tools; the pen, the chisel… or the sword.”
Vaelin glanced down at his sword, resting within easy reach against the edge of the table. Is that what I’ve been doing all these years? Cutting my path through life? All the blood spilled and lives taken, just verses in a song?
“Why haven’t you finished it?” Ahm-Lin enquired. “The sculpture?”
“If I pick up the hammer and chisel again I won’t put them down until it’s done. And our current circumstance requires my full attention.” He knew this to be only partly true. The roughly hewn features emerging from the block had begun to take on a disturbing familiarity, not yet recognisable but enough to make him conclude the finished version would be a face he knew. Perversely, the arrival of the Red Hand had been a welcome excuse for delaying the moment of final clarity.
“It’s not advisable to ignore one’s song, brother,” Ahm-Lin cautioned him. “You recall the harm I did when I called to you the first time? Why do you think that was?”
“My song was silent.”
“That’s right. And why was it silent?”
The king’s fragile neck… The whore’s dangerous secrets… “It called on me to do something, something terrible. When I couldn’t do it my song fell silent. I thought it had deserted me.”
“Your song is your protection as well as your guide. Without it you are vulnerable to others who can do as we do, like the Volarian woman. Trust me brother, you wouldn’t wish to be vulnerable to her.”
Vaelin looked at the marble block, tracing the rough profile of the unformed face. “When the Red Falcon returns,” he said. “I’ll finish it then.”
Twenty days after the Red Falcon’s departure the sailors rioted, breaking out of their makeshift prisons in the warehouse district, killing their guards and making for the docks in a well planned assault. Caenis was quick to respond, ordering two companies of Wolfrunners to hold the docks and drafting in Count Marven’s men to seal off the surrounding streets. Cumbraelin archers were placed on the rooftops, cutting down dozens of sailors as their attack on the docks faltered in the face of disciplined resistance and they went reeling back into the city. Caenis ordered an immediate counter attack and the brief but bloody revolt was all but over by the time Vaelin got to the scene.
He found Caenis fighting a large Meldenean, the big man swinging a crudely fashioned club at the lithe brother as he danced around him, sword flicking out to leave cuts on his arms and face. “Give up!” he ordered, his blade slicing into the man’s forearm. “It’s over!”
The Meldenean gave a roar of pain fuelled rage and redoubled his efforts, his useless club meeting only air as Caenis continued his vicious dance. Vaelin unlimbered his bow, notched an arrow and sent it cleanly through the Meldenean’s neck from forty paces. One of his better feats of archery.
“Not a time for half-measures, brother,” he told Caenis, stepping over the Meldenean’s corpse and drawing his sword. Within the hour it was done, nearly two hundred sailors were dead and at least as many wounded. The Wolfrunners had lost fifteen men, among them the one time pickpocket known as Dipper, one of the original thirty chosen men from their days in the Martishe. They herded the sailors back into their warehouses and Vaelin had the surviving captains brought to the docks. Forty men or so, all with the blunt and weathered features common to sea captains. They were lined up on the quayside, kneeling before him, arms bound, most staring up with sullen fear or open defiance.
“Your actions were stupid and selfish,” Vaelin told them. “If you had reached your ships you would have carried plague to a hundred other ports. I have lost good men in this pathetic farce. I could execute you all, but I won’t.” He gestured at the harbour where the many ships of the city’s merchant fleet were at anchor. “They say a captain’s soul rests with his ship. You killed fifteen of my men. I require fifteen souls in recompense.”
It took a long time, with boat-loads of Realm Guard hauling at the oars as they towed the vessels out of the harbour and anchored them off-shore, spreading pitch on the decks and dousing the sails and rigging with lamp-oil. Dentos’s archers finished the job with volleys of fire arrows and by nightfall fifteen ships were burning, tall flames fountaining embers into the star-lit sky and lighting up the sea for miles around.
Vaelin surveyed the captains, taking dull satisfaction from the grief in their weathered faces, some with tears gleaming in their eyes. “Any repeat of this foolishness,” he said, “and I’ll have you and your crews lashed to the masts before I burn the rest of the fleet.”
In the morning Vaelin found Governor Aruan at the mansion gate. There was no sign of Sister Gilma and an icy claw of fear gri
pped his insides.
“Where is my sister?” he asked.
The Governor’s once fleshy face was sagging from worry and a too-sudden weight loss, although he showed no sign of the Red Hand. His gaze was guarded and his voice flat. “She succumbed yesterday evening, much more quickly than my daughter or her maid. I recall my mother saying that was how it was with the sickness, years ago. Some last for days, weeks even, others fade in a matter of hours. Your sister wouldn’t let me near my daughter, insisted on caring for her alone, my servants and I were forbidden from even venturing into that wing of the mansion. She said it was necessary, to stop the spread of the sickness. Last night I found her collapsed on the stairs, barely conscious. She forbade me from touching her, crawled back to my daughter’s room on her own…” He trailed off as Vaelin’s expression darkened.
“I spoke to her yesterday,” he said stupidly. He searched the governor’s face for some sign he was mistaken, finding only wary regret. His voice was thick as he voiced the redundant question, “She’s dead?”
The governor nodded. “The maid too. My daughter lingers though. We burned the bodies, as your sister instructed.”
Vaelin found himself gripping the wrought iron of the gate with white knuckled fists. Gilma… Bright eyed, laughing Gilma. Dead and lost to the fire in a matter of hours whilst I tarried with those idiot sailors.
“Were there any words?” he asked. “Did she leave any testament?”
“She faded very fast, my lord. She said to tell you to keep to her instructions, and you see will her again in the Beyond.”
Vaelin looked closely at the governor’s face. He’s lying. She said nothing. She just sickened and died. Nevertheless, he found himself grateful for the deceit. “Thank you, my lord. Do you require anything?”
“Some more salve for my daughter’s rash. Perhaps a few bottles of wine. It keeps the servants happy, and our stocks are running low.”
“I’ll see to it.” He unclasped his hands from the gate and turned to go.
“There was a great fire in the night,” the governor said. “Out to sea.”
“The sailors rioted, tried to escape. I burned some ships as punishment.”
He was expecting some kind of admonishment but the governor simply nodded. “A measured response. However, I advise you to compensate the Merchant’s Guild. With me confined here they are the only civil authority in the city, best not to antagonise them.”
Vaelin was more inclined to flog any merchant who made the mistake of raising his voice within earshot but, through the fog of his grief, saw the wisdom in the governor’s words. “I will.” For some reason he paused, feeling compelled to add something, some reward for the governor’s kindly lies. “We will not be here long, my lord. Maybe a few more months. There will be blood and fire when the Emperor’s army arrives, but win or lose, we will soon be gone and this city will be yours again.”
The governor’s expression was a mixture of bafflement and anger. “Then why, in the name of all the gods, did you come here?”
Vaelin gazed out at the city. The light of the morning sun played over the houses and empty streets below. Out to sea the ocean shimmered with gold, white topped waves swept towards the coast and the sky above was a cloudless blue… and Sister Gilma was dead, along with thousands of others and thousands more to come. “There is something I have to do,” he said, walking away.
He found Dentos atop the light-house at the far end of the mole forming the left shoulder of the harbour entrance. He sat with his legs dangling over the lip of the lighthouse’s flat top, staring out to sea and sipping from a flask of Brother’s Friend. His bow lay nearby, the quiver empty. Vaelin sat down next to him and Dentos passed him the flask.
“You didn’t come to hear the words for our sister,” he said, taking a small sip and handing the flask back, grimacing slightly as the mingled brandy and redflower burned its way down his throat.
“Said my own words,” Dentos muttered. “She heard me.”
Vaelin glanced down at the base of the light-house where numerous lifeless seagulls bobbed in the water, all neatly skewered with a single arrow. “Looks like the gulls heard you too.”
“Practising,” Dentos said. “Filthy scavengers anyhow, can’t stand them, bloody noise they make. Shite-hawks my Uncle Groll called ‘em. He was a sailor.” He grunted a laugh and took another drink. “Could be I killed him last night. Can’t rightly remember what the bastard looked like.”
“How many uncles do you have, brother? I’ve always wondered.”
Dentos’s face clouded and he said nothing for a long time. When he finally spoke the was a sombre tone to his voice Vaelin hadn’t heard before. “None.”
Vaelin frowned in puzzlement. “What about the one with the fighting dogs? And the one who taught you the bow…”
“I taught myself the bow. There was a master hunter in our village but he wasn’t my uncle, neither was that vicious shit-bag with the dogs. None of them were.” He glanced at Vaelin and smiled sadly. “My dear old mum was the village whore, brother. She called the many men who came to our door my uncles, made them be nice to me or they weren’t getting in her bed, any one of them could have been my dad after all. Never did find out which one, not that I give a dog’s fart. They were a pretty worthless bunch.
“Whore or not, my mum always did her best for me. I was never hungry and I always had clothes on my back and shoes on my feet, unlike most of the other children in the village. Bad enough being the whore’s whelp, worse to be an envied whore’s whelp. It was common knowledge my dad could’ve been one of thirty-odd men in the village, so the other kids called me ‘Who’s bastard?’ I was about four when I first heard it, ‘Who’s bastard? Who’s bastard? Where’d you get your shoes from, Who’s bastard?’ On and on it went, year after year. There was this one lad, Uncle Bab’s boy, mean little shit he was, always the first to start shouting. One day him and his gang started throwing stuff at me, sharp stuff some of it, I got all cut up, it made me angry. So I took my bow put an arrow through that boy’s leg. Can’t say I was sorry to watch him bleed and cry and flail around. After that,” he shrugged, “couldn’t really stay there any more. No one was going to apprentice a whore’s bastard, a dangerous bastard at that, so my mum packed me off to the Order. I can still remember her crying when the cart took me away. I’ve never been back.”
Watching him swig from his flask, Vaelin was struck by how old Dentos looked. Deep lines marked his brows and premature grey coloured in the close cropped hair at his temples. Years of battle and hard living had aged him and his grief for Sister Gilma was palpable. Of all the brothers she had been closest to him. When we return to the Realm I’ll ask the Aspect to give him a position at the Order House, Vaelin decided, then realised that there was every chance neither of them would see the Realm again. All he had to offer Dentos were yet more opportunities for a bloody end. His thoughts turned again to the marble block waiting in Ahm-Lin’s shop and he knew he had delayed too long. It was time he did what he had been sent here to do. If he could achieve it before the Alpiran army arrived then perhaps another slaughter could be avoided, if he was willing to pay the price.
He got to his feet, touching Dentos on the shoulder in farewell. “I have business…”
Dentos’s weary eyes were suddenly bright with excitement and his finger shot out to point at the horizon. “A sail! You see it, brother?”
Vaelin shielded his eyes to scan the sea. It was the merest speck, a smudge of grey between water and sky, but unmistakably a sail. The Red Falcon was back.
Captain Nurin was first down the gangplank, his lean, weathered face drawn with exhaustion, but the light of triumph burned in his eyes along with the greed Vaelin remembered so well from their first meeting. “Twenty-one days!” he exulted. “Wouldn’t have thought it possible so late in the year, but Udonor heard our calls and made a gift of the winds. Would have been eighteen if we hadn’t had to tarry so long in Varinshold, nor carry so many passengers back.
”
“So many passengers?” Vaelin asked. His gaze was fixed on the gangplank, expecting a slender, dark haired form to appear at any second.
“Nine in all. Though why a girl whose head barely reaches my shoulder needs seven men to guard her is beyond me, I must say.”
Vaelin turned to him, frowning. “Guards?”
Nurin shrugged, gesturing at the gangplank. “See for yourself.”
The heavy set man descending the gangplank had a squat, brutish face, unleavened by the scowl with which he regarded Vaelin and the surrounding Wolfrunners. More disconcerting still was the fact that he wore the black robe of the Fourth Order and a sword at his belt.
“Brother Vaelin?” he enquired in a flat tone, devoid of civility.
Vaelin nodded, growing unease dispelling any urge to offer a greeting.
“Brother Commander Iltis,” the black robed man introduced himself. “Faith Protection Company of the Fourth Order.”
“Never heard of you,” Vaelin told him. “Where are Sister Sherin and Brother Frentis?”
Brother Iltis blinked, clearly unused to disrespect. “The prisoner and Brother Frentis are aboard ship. We have some issues to discuss, brother. Certain arrangements must be made…”