The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (13 page)

“You wanted to talk to me about symbols?” At the same time she gestured to a chair. Arla sat.

“Yes,” she said. She pulled another scrap of paper out of her pocket and passed it to Ella. It held the six broken lines that Hekman had given her. Ella sat opposite, close enough that Arla could have reached out and touched her shoulder. It felt strange to be so close to someone who was so different, but Ella made it easy, even comfortable. The Saine girl was young, and she looked so fragile. Her hands were soft, her hair fine and clean, her skin perfect and unblemished. Arla was suddenly very aware of her own rough hands, the chafing on her wrist, her rough cut hair, and that she hadn’t bathed for two days.

Ella smiled.

“I know this,” she said. “It’s Saratan. Look.” She turned the paper round again, and leaned closer. Arla could smell rose water. “Each line represent a stick. They use them in Sarata for a game. The sticks are painted either all white or with a black bar across the middle.”

Arla looked at her, it made no sense. “A game?”

“Yes.”

“This was tattooed on the chest of our killer – the one who walked out of the station house after Gadilari killed him.”

Ella frowned down at the symbol again, then nodded. “It makes sense,” she said. “Each symbol has a meaning. It’s not part of the game, but traditionally they all have meanings. I can look it up.”

A servant appeared and put a tray down on the table next to Arla. Ella stood up. “You stay here and eat,” she said. “I have to fetch a book.” She turned and walked out, leaving Arla with the servant.

“Wine?” the servant enquired. He seem a dry stick of a man, tall, but not as old as she’d first thought. He was dressed in black. Arla liked wine, but not getting drunk.

“A cup, yes.”

The servant hesitated, then produced a glass and set it on the table. He poured the wine. The glass must have been worth about the same as everything Arla owned, including her new bow. It was beautifully cut and looked like a giant gemstone with the wine in it and the light from the sunset passing through.

“Thank you,” she said. The servant inclined his head, a slight gesture of acknowledgement, and withdrew, leaving Arla to examine her unexpected fare. There was a meat stew of some kind. She picked up a piece with a fork and ate it. The meat was tender, and as it dissolved in her mouth it released a medley of flavours. She could detect some kind of berry, and mild spices. It was delicious. Three bowls of vegetables were identifiable enough, and another plate held three kinds of bread. She touched them and found that they were warm.

She began to eat. It was probably the best meal she had ever eaten. Everything was fresh. Nothing was simple. Even the vegetables, which she might have expected to be boiled, had been dressed with potions to make them more delightful to the tongue. The wine, too, was exceptional. It was a rich, deep colour, and the flavour was dark and mellow.

She looked out of the window. Lights were coming on in the city below and a breeze brought the scent of the hot day through the open side of the room. What a charm it would be to live like this, Arla thought, to want for nothing. And what a curse, for such wealth must be the very thief of purpose. If you had everything you wanted just for the asking, what would you do all day?

“I have it!”

Arla swivelled in her seat. Ella sat down next to her, a book held in her hand, a finger among its pages. She opened it and pointed, and there in ancient ink was the symbol that Arla had brought with her on a scrap of paper.

“What does it mean?”

“Persistence,” Ella said.

“Persistence?”

“Yes, as in duration, perseverance, lasting a long time.”

Arla looked at the symbol in the book. Yet again it made no sense to her. Why would a murderer have a thing from a game tattooed on his chest? How did this relate to magic, to killing?

“It means nothing,” she said.

“It means something,” Ella said. “You may never find out what, but it means something – perhaps the persistence of life. You said the man walked out of the station after he was killed. There’s certainly persistence there.”

“He couldn’t have been the killer,” Arla argued. “Or not the only one. He was too young.”

“A group, then. Perhaps others bear this mark?”

The same thought had occurred to Arla. “You may be right,” she said. There was nothing more to be gained here, though. She glanced reluctantly at her unfinished meal, and stood.

“Stay,” Ella said. “Finish your food. We can talk.”

“I should be going,” Arla said. “I have to meet the chief.”

“The chief?”

“Hekman. He wants to meet me two hours after sunset.”

“Then you have two hours, or the best part. Do you really call him chief?”

“Aye, we do.”

“He must hate that.” Ella was smiling.

“He insists on it,” Arla replied. “Ulric said…” and she stopped. Ulric had told them he insisted on it. She had never heard Hekman say anything about it. Ella laughed.

“Stay. Really. Don’t waste the food.”

Arla couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Ulric had every new recruit calling Hekman chief. She’d heard him give the talk a couple of times, but if he didn’t like it…

She sat down. She picked up her fork. “Have you known him a long time?” she asked.

Ella shook her head. “A year. I first saw him on Samara Plain when the mage lord was here, but we didn’t really talk much.”

They lapsed into an easy conversation, and Arla found Ella so easy to talk to that it was as though they had been friends forever. At the same time she realised that under it all this was a demonstration of skill and character by the young trader girl. This was why she was what she was. Her power was that people liked her, and they liked her easily, naturally. It was because she listened, prompted, treated you like you mattered. There was no awareness of a social hierarchy with Ella. They were just two young women passing time. She was clever, too. She never said the wrong thing, never pried too deeply in places that were private.

The food was long gone and a second glass of wine had followed the first by the time Arla left the Saine house. She stood on the dimly lit street and listened to the echo of the closing door and wondered for a moment why life could not always be so, then she turned and started walking back to the old town, towards her new rooms and her meeting with the chief. She smiled again as she walked. Chief. And he hated it.

*

The streets of Samara were not especially well lit, but most houses had a lamp outside the door, and so the streets were quite navigable in the dark if you didn’t need to read the street names at the corners. Arla didn’t hurry. She had plenty of time. She walked down to the river and turned left, knowing that her new rooms were on the waterfront and would be easy to find. Gulltown was a dim constellation from here, the reflections from its scattered lights writhing on the uneasy surface of the river. The stars themselves were brighter and tonight there was a sliver of moon just risen among them, lending its light to show her the road.

There were a few people about. She passed a tavern and its happy noise. Other people were on the waterfront, waking or sitting, singly, in pairs and groups. It was still early enough for the city to be alive. She could smell cooking, but it didn’t tempt her. She had eaten her fill at the Saine house, and better fare than any of these places could offer.

She came to her rooms. There was a private stair that ran up beside the shop and she climbed this, fitting her key to the lock. It turned with a satisfying click and she stepped inside. There was a faint smell that she recognised as string wax for her bow. She lit an oil lamp and put it by the window, then a couple of candles which she put on the table. She unstrung her bow and inspected the string. It was still perfect as far as she could tell. She put her sword on the table beside it and tested the edge. It could do with a little honing, she decided, and so spent the next few minutes running a stone along the edge until she was satisfied that it would cut just about anything.

She would normally be thinking about sleep now, but there was still some time to kill before Hekman was due to arrive. The rooms were tidy and clean, so she had nothing more to do. She sat in the comfortable chair by the window and closed her eyes.

She had a name – Gerin Pitshalk – and a description. She was confident that they would find the smith that had made the cage, but not so certain that this would lead anywhere. The emerald hilted sword was probably the best line of enquiry. She would make sure that all the lawkeepers knew about it, and that they put the word out to anyone they knew. They also knew that it was about magic, about men who stood up and walked away after being run through with a good blade, about endurance, or persistence or whatever Ella had said. That seemed less important. It was only a word. What might be more important was that the symbol, the tattoo, might be a way of identifying anyone involved in the killings. But how could you get every man in Samara to take off their shirt?

Not only men. It was possible, though she didn’t think it likely, that women were also involved. She had known women in the Ocean’s Gate guard who were as hard and cold as any man.

A footfall on the stairs outside opened her eyes. She sat still, looking past the lamp at the night, waiting for another step.

A fist banged on her door, six times, loud and urgent. Arla was on her feet at once. She picked up her sword.

“Who is it?” She remembered that she hadn’t locked the door behind her.

“Hekman.” It didn’t sound like the calm, thoughtful Hekman that she knew, but it was Hekman.

“It’s open, Chief,” she said.

The door sprung open, and the man who stood there was barely recognisable as Samara’s chief lawkeeper. He was shirtless, spattered in blood, wild eyed. He stamped inside, slammed the door behind him. Now she could see why he had no shirt, he was carrying it in his hand wrapped around something. It was almost completely soaked in blood.

“Are you all right, Chief?”

“Not my blood,” he said. “Lock the door.”

She did as she was told, not entirely sure if she wanted to be locked in a room with this mad faced version of her commander. She kept a distance between them and she didn’t put down her sword. “What happened?”

Hekman smiled, but that didn’t help. “Let’s see the bastard get up and walk away without this,” he said, and dumped his shirt on her table. It fell open to reveal a severed head. Arla stared at it. She couldn’t tell if this was the same man Gadilari had killed. She hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the body.

“Is it the same man?”

Hekman shook his head. “No,” he said. He sat down in one of Arla’s chairs. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“I don’t keep anything here.”

Hekman cursed.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Arla said.

Hekman nodded. “I thought I’d be free of it when I killed him,” he said. “But it didn’t let me go. It just changed.”

“What are you talking about?”

Hekman told her. He told her about finding the crystal in the mud below the dock, about looking at it and what it did to him, the battle of wills and the confrontation at the end of the strand just an hour ago. She glanced at the head.

“Chief, there’s something wrong with that head.”

They both stood. Arla brought the candle closer so that they could see it better. It wasn’t really a head anymore. The skin had dried, the flesh withered, the eyes shrunk back. As they watched the skin split and they could see the white bone underneath, the lips drew back from the teeth.

“Blood and fire!” Hekman said.

“It looks like you dug it up,” Arla said. “But when you brought it in I’d swear it was newly cut.”

“Magic,” Hekman said. “Or the lack. You’re seeing his true age, I think.”

“What?”

Hekman sat down again. He rubbed his face with his hands, smearing it with blood. He looked tired.

“You can’t trust me, Arla,” he said. “Not completely. This thing, this magic crystal is trying to make me into what he was.” He indicated the withered head with a flick of his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like a song,” Hekman said. “You know, when you sit in a tavern and someone plays the same song over and over. After a while you end up humming the cursed thing whether you like it or not.”

“You can resist it.”

“For a while. Even now it makes it hard for me to do what I want to do, what I know is right.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“There are six of… them, six left.” The words seemed to cause him pain, and it had taken Hekman a moment to choose the word ‘them’. It was a bad sign. “The room at the house of Tarquin was a blind, a false trail.” He paused and looked around. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to drink?”

“Nothing,” Arla said. “Do you know their names?”

Hekman shook his head. “No, just that they’re… there, here, somewhere.”

“Anything else?”

“Much. The word that Ella gave us – Teroganacy – it means pain, magic driven by pain. They draw power from the agony of the tortured children. The dagger spike that you found, they drive it into the head because there’s a place they know that causes more pain than anything, somewhere inside the head.” Hekman was sweating with the effort of speaking. “And the reason,” he went on. “I know why they do it. They don’t die, Arla, they just go on and on – like the Faer Karan. You saw the proof – that head. You have to kill them by cutting off the head. Ella’s book said so.”