Fugitive Prince (29 page)
Authors: Janny Wurts
The gruff, ram’s horn bellow he used in the sawpits vanquished the taproom’s rank noise. “Beer for you, singer, and for your companions. You’ll need to get drunk to raise any tune through this racket.”
He barged himself a seat on an overcrowded bench. The redolence of pine resin and coal smoke from the boiler sheds laced through the fug, and earned glares from a foppish pair of soap merchants. Cattrick scarcely cared. Braced on his forearms in a loose, sailhand’s
shirt, he cut an enormous, rough figure alongside the bard, neatly clean in his flashy silk waistcoat and cap of feathered, pale hair. While the tankards brimmed over, his stilled, intense eyes took in Caolle’s scars and dismissed them. The weapons concealed by the clansman’s caped cloak merited no closer survey. His attention swept over the indolent, small frame of the singer he knew for the Master of Shadow, took note of Dakar’s closemouthed expectation beside him, then flickered back. “Demons take all, minstrel. Ye’ve scarcely the substance to bed a bony-arsed spinster. Are ye man enough, or should I have brought fresh-squeezed cider?”
Arithon grinned. “Man enough to deplore the childish need for contests involving strong drink.” That opening salvo cheerfully reversed, he stung back. “Best you stay sober for your launching next month. Or did the street gossips malign you for nothing? They say your last brig sailed hull down over the horizon and vanished. Sunk, no doubt, by her ill-fitted seams, if you rate a man’s wits by his bar habits.”
“Tongue like a viper, you have. Same as every other skinny warbler who can shrill sour notes to banish iyats.” Cattrick downed a vast swallow of beer, his settled bulk like an owl on a branch, his half-lidded gaze still hunting. “Beyond wails for fiend bane, what use is your milk-tongued caterwauling? Lure out my craftsmen to hang moonfaced in their cups, and I’ll have smashed fingers in the yard come the morning. Sprung planking too, if the lads get too muddled to sight north and south on a measurement. Mind your step. Go too bold, you’ll have enemies vying to spike your feckless head atop the gatekeep.”
A smile from the bard, then a challenge. “Let me play this taproom to a standstill, first. If by then you aren’t flopped beneath the trestle with the rest, let’s find out who’s effete over fine brandy in private.”
The burly master joiner palmed a belch and gave back a level, hard stare. This game was not new. Arithon chose his associates for excellence; if they came with quirks or unruly character, or balked at being nose led, he must expect to cross wits to extract the service he angled for.
“Well?” needled the bard.
Cattrick slammed the trestle with a fist, the same that had once tortured a man whose interests had thoughtlessly crossed him. He held no regret for that incident; nor would he lose sleep if this latest slick bargainer chose to bury the memory. “You want a contest? Said is done and Dharkaron take the hindmost.” The shipwright drained his tankard in cocky salute, shoved erect, and plowed his way back for a refill, while Arithon received an unsettled glower from Caolle.
“I thought you claimed you had Cattrick in hand,” the Mad Prophet murmured, voice muffled as he peered into the dregs of the beer the ship’s joiner had left him. “Those insults came barbed, or I’m a grandmother goat’s arse.”
Arithon shot off a sparkling run to retest the pitch of his strings. “It’s all jealousy,” he agreed, eyes alight with innuendo. “Somebody’s welcome was a shade too warm and that clerkish little guardsman behind us returned a bit too pointed an interest.”
Before Dakar could weigh evidence to tell if the threat was a glib fabrication to divert him, the bard rollicked into the reeling, first measures of a bawdy dockside ballad. His tempered voice cut the noise like struck bronze, suspending discussion and argument. Nearby drinkers erupted to their feet with yells of delight. Wolfish sailhands stayed their dice games, and merchants, their dickering, while barmaids caught the coppers flung onto their trays and bustled to the tap to fetch tankards. By the time the bard closed the last chorus, the common room rocked to the thrill of discovery. He gave his audience no chance to let down, but flowed seamlessly on to the fast, fired lilt of a hornpipe.
Town ministers started stamping, despite their immaculate velvets. Tar-begrimed deckhands whistled and leaped on the trestles to clog step, then dragged doxies along as the frenzied, wild tempo rocked up one key and took flight. A figure of calm amid heaving pandemonium, Arithon played, head bent and foot briskly tapping. His spirit led the dance, surrendered on demand to the weave of the intricate melody. Precise as stitched gold, each grace note splashed out in ecstatic execution. His was command of a masterbard’s style and to any with mage-sight, the air in his presence became charged into glittering brilliance. His listeners could not help but ignite in conflagration, while the trained snap and flex of his fingers wrought joy from wound metal strings and inspiration.
Through stamping applause, the landlord shoved in to extend his pledge of free lodging. “Whatever the house has to offer, it’s yours for as long as you’re minded to stay.”
“A year for one percent from the till, and the coin any well-wishers toss at my feet,” Arithon bargained.
“On those terms? Bless you, I’d fund your retirement and welcome!” Unable to contain his disbelief and good fortune, the landlord beckoned to his comeliest serving girl. “Give the minstrel and his two servants any damned thing they might ask.”
While her painted, sloe eyes gauged the way the singer filled his clothes and warmed into frank invitation, the landlord moved off, chuckling.
“Any damned thing?” Arithon awarded her lush favors the compliment of his smile and snapped a sprightly run from his strings. “Then keep my friend the tinker in beer. That’s work enough for a brigade.”
The Mad Prophet’s indignant riposte became lost in braw noise as the tap’s salty patrons clanked knives on the boards in demand of a repeat performance. Head tipped aslant, Arithon obliged them, song after song, until evening wore away and his listening crowd roared itself to exhaustion. While the standing survivors reeled their way homeward, the landlord gloated over empty casks and filled strong-boxes, his smile all but nailed in place.
The bard arose then, stretched, wrapped his lyranthe in no hurry. Caolle knelt unbidden and raked up the abundance of silver tossed down by generous admirers.
“Do you offer the plate scrapings to the street orphans?” Arithon asked.
The landlord bobbed up from the gloom behind the bar, a polishing rag in his hand. “I give the ones willing to scrub pots all the leavings. Do you want to save the small coppers for them? You needn’t. That custom’s lapsed since my grandsire’s time.”
Arithon shrugged. “I keep stubborn habits. Just make sure the girl who sweeps up knows how to count in fair portions.” The instrument slung from his shoulder, he seemed impatient to depart.
Dakar showed no inclination to move, settled as he was in brosy content with the barmaid cuddled in his lap. “It’s grown desperate late,” he complained in a beery slur. “Can’t you bear to forego the indulgence of sucking down brandy with Cattrick?”
“I daren’t,” said Arithon. “Caolle can watch my back.” His step ghost light before his liegeman’s solid tread, he picked a path through prone revelers to attend his match with the master of Riverton’s shipyard.
“Dharkaron wept!” The Mad Prophet groaned in low misery as he peeled off the doxie and apologized. “Before you ask, yes. We’re surely as moon mad as he.”
Desperate not to care how severely he was weaving, he crossed the puddled taproom in Arithon’s wake, to yelps and grunts from the inebriated bodies he disturbed on his course for the stairway.
Autumn 5652
The Laughing Captain’s best guest suite still wore its origins as a shoreside madam’s boudoir, bed hangings and dagged curtains done in gaudy, flame scarlet, tied back with gold-shot cord. Despite a casement cracked open to catch the sea breeze, an ingrained cloy of patchouli clung to the air and the rugs. The clothes chests were pearl and black lacquer from Vhalzein, new enough that they still smelled of citrus oil. The washstand supported an ewer of gilded enamel flaked with chips at the edges, two rails of embroidered towels, and a pair of pitch-smeared boots just kicked off and crammed with the wads of shed stockings.
Their owner had made himself comfortable on the bed, his back to piled pillows, a cut-crystal decanter propped between the knees of his patched canvas trousers. The brandy inside pooled pale amber in the glow shed by beeswax candles on prickets. Not mellow at all in the haze of soft light, Cattrick tracked Arithon’s entrance, slit eyed and primed for contention.
“Ye’re a master with that,” he opened as the bard tucked his lyranthe away in the wardrobe. “Heard all from here, and it damned well entertained me. Lysaer will be wild when he learns what’s afoot.”
When
and not
If;
the inference bristled like hurled insult.
Arithon folded himself into the least-cushioned chair, the deep pleasure instilled by his music yet with him. “Since Avenor’s a scant fifty leagues from this dive, shall we avoid the unpleasantness? If you’re too cowed to pour, I want to be brought up-to-date.”
“Well, here’s fine impatience.” Cattrick’s lip curled in sarcasm. “Four years is damned long to wait for the asking.”
When Arithon said nothing, he dug through the pillows and unearthed two enormous glazed tankards. The clink of Falgaire crystal and the trickle of neat spirits did little to soothe a stiff pause.
Cattrick recapped the decanter and poised the filled tankards on his thighs. “Since we’ve rebuilt and launched a replacement for every galley that burned in Minderl Bay, the crown’s been hiring on riggers like ticks. Two-thirds, and the best, are all yours. The caulkers recruited from Havish were no good.”
“Too little pay,” Arithon supplied. “King Eldir’s no fool. He funded his craft guilds to keep the well-trained ones at home.”
“Then that’s old news.” Cattrick shrugged. “Your own crews from Merior have gradually replaced any second-rate labor. Petty infractions did for the rest. The plankers and sawyers all have southshore accents. By Ath, we’re so infested with talent a man wonders why none of it’s local.” He extended an arm in an effortless stretch, passed the most brimming vessel to Arithon, then finished, “Ye ken how I spit on pretty boy hair.”
An undignified thump intervened from outside. Dakar clanged the latch and demanded admittance, and Caolle moved fast to let him in. Against a strung stillness, the clansman snapped the door closed, the hands beneath his cloak clasped to the hilts of his weapons.
Too drunken for tact as he sized up the tension, Dakar blundered on, snatched the second tankard from Cattrick’s preoccupied hand, and spouted his venomous opinion. “A friend might believe you wanted the thrill of seeing a sorcerer burned alive.”
Cattrick’s pelt of whiskers parted into a wolfish smile. “I prefer to speak to my associates firsthand.” He uncorked the decanter, rolled a long swallow of brandy on his tongue, and switched his regard to frame Arithon. “You’re not drinking, either. Does that mean we’re too careful to risk any untoward confidence?”
“There isn’t an abundance of confidence to share.” Arithon sampled his drink, grimaced at the sting to a throat stressed from singing, then tipped his head back in the chair and shut his eyes. He let go a small binding. The shadows he used to disguise his appearance ran off like singed silk in the candlelight. When next he looked up, his eyes were bright green and his hair the sheened black of a raven’s wing. His gift had done more than falsify coloring.
Now none in his presence could mistake his frank warning: the exasperation laid bare, or its unwanted corollary, written into the planes of bone pressed against hollowed, pale flesh. If such an
unmasking had meant to restore confidence, the mistake escaped salvage as Cattrick leaned forward, eager to test how far he might sway exposed weakness.
Dakar felt a sudden grue ream his spine. Hazed by some thwarted fragment of prescience, or maybe just spurious hunch, he blurted, “Cattrick, are you in Koriani pay?”
“Don’t answer that!” Arithon sheared in. “I don’t believe it.” He did not look settled or sanguine anymore. “Caolle, pass on what we brought from the tinsmith’s, if you please.”
The clansman slipped the sack from the thong at his belt. Never a man to forbear from sharp action, he hurled it full force toward the bed.
Cattrick fielded the catch without upsetting the brandy. Since its unwieldy bulk required both hands, he nipped off the thong binding and upended the contents in a caroling chime over the red velvet coverlet.
Dakar’s eyebrows shot up. The tinsmith had delivered in pristine gold coinage, struck in Havish’s fair city of Cheivalt.
Prepared when Cattrick’s lips hardened to contempt, Arithon said, “That’s no bribe. I thought we agreed. A man of your stature can be paid, but not bought.”
Cattrick lost all his angst to disbelief. “No! Don’t say we’re due wages. The crown of Tysan rewards our work well enough.”
“Lysaer’s pay is spoils.” Enthused beyond weariness, Arithon laughed at the shipwright’s flummoxed startlement. “If you can unbend on that fine point, let’s drink your nice brandy and celebrate. After all, the miserable galley work’s finished. You’re laying new keels for my fleet, now.”
“Ath!” Cattrick slapped his leg in a stymied explosion of temper. “Fiends plague us all, man, you could’ve sent some sort of word back after our previous launching! The lads in the yard are the devil to keep quiet, and I take unkindly to guessing.
Did
our new brig shake down in safe passage to Corith?”
“That much and better,” Arithon quipped. “The pay for your craftsmen was sent from the sale of the cider she carried as cargo. Now
could
we back off and swill spirits in earnest? You can sell me out to my enemies later if my nasty reputation makes you squeamish. But if we rise tomorrow undamaged by brandy, then all our brash claims to manly pursuit are going to lie forfeit by default.”
Dakar woke up to hazed pain, as though moths with steel hammers set to with rivets and fastened the inside of his skull to his brain.
His bladder was full, and his tongue, like furred lead. Well versed with the miseries that came entrenched with cheap beer, he groaned and shoved upright. With his throbbing head plowed facedown into a pillow, he fumbled to grab the first container at hand to catch what his body ejected.