The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (14 page)

An arrow wouldn’t be much use, then. It could stop them, though, like Gadilari’s blade had stopped them.

“Is there any way we can identify them?” Arla asked.

“I don’t know.”

“The tattoo,” Arla said. “Ella says it means persistence.”

“Perhaps, but you can hardly ask everyone in Samara to take their shirts off.”

“And what about you, chief? Will you be all right?”

Hekman shook his head. “I don’t know.” Arla could see that his hands were shaking. He really didn’t know, and he was a mess, spattered with blood, wild eyed, uneasy.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” she said. “There’s a bowl and a jug of water in the bedroom. Wash off the blood and I’ll find something you can wear.”

Hekman did as he was told, and Arla looked through her things. She didn’t have much, and she needed everything, but in the end she decided on a winter coat. She could replace it, she supposed, before winter arrived. It was lucky that Hekman was such a small man. Her things would fit him well enough.

Hekman emerged from the bedroom looking more like the man she knew. His short hair was wet and his body clean. She gave him the coat and he put it on.

“What are we going to do with you?” she asked.

“Lock me up.”

“I can’t do that. If we lock you up at the law house I don’t know what the others will think. It would look bad. Nobody would trust you.”

“They shouldn’t.”

“They need to. Especially after we get through this.”

“Will we?” Hekman asked. He seemed to doubt it.

“Of course.”

“Then lock me up at the citadel.”

“No, that won’t do. It’s still too obvious, and word will get out that you’re a prisoner. That would be bad.” She looked at him. Hekman looked beaten. She had to remind herself that it was he who had killed the killer and not the other way round. “I know,” she said. “We’ll lodge you in the Saine house. They must have a secure place where you can rest, and we can say that you’re not well.”

Hekman nodded. “You’ll have to explain it to Ella,” he said.

“She will understand,” Arla said, and she knew that Ella would.

That very night they went together through the darkened streets and knocked on the door of the Saine house, and Ella lodged Hekman deep beneath the building in what Arla could only have described as cells, barred and locked, and yet big enough not to be an affront to the chief lawkeeper of the city.

Now Arla was truly alone.

The physic had put him back on his feet, and though the wound still hurt him when he exerted himself Gilan insisted that he was in a fit state to walk the streets of the city and do his job. With Hekman absent he found that he had to persuade Arla. It was not difficult.

“I need as many legs out in the city as we can get,” she said.

Somehow Arla had inherited Hekman’s mantle of authority, and though it occurred to Gilan that he might challenge this, he knew that he had missed a lot, and he was bright enough to recognise that Arla was better at the thinking side of lawkeeping.

“I’ll look for the sword,” he said. Gilan knew swords. He knew how they were made, and he knew that special pieces like the flower bladed weapon that Arla had described to him were collectors’ items. There were men in Samara, in every city, who dealt in such blades.

“How will you do that?” Arla asked. She hadn’t moved into Hekman’s office, but seemed to have acquired a room of her own, and they were sitting in it. There was no desk, just two chairs and a door that could be closed.

“Blades like that get noticed,” he said. “I know a lot of people who might have seen it, or heard of it.”

Arla nodded. “Good,” she said. “I’ll keep looking for the smith who made the cage. Make sure you take your people with you. I don’t think it’s going to be safe out there now that one of them is truly dead.”

Gilan found Ifan in the big room with a few other lawkeepers. They were eating. Ulric had told Gilan that he’d been assigned another, an archer called Diara. She turned out to be from Far Delve, and older than Gilan. She must have been forty summers, but she looked tough and lean as a whip.

“We’re going hunting,” he said.

He took them up to the edge of Morningside, to a house that stood in a modest street yet showed all the signs of prosperity. It had a small garden, and all the woodwork was freshly painted. He knocked on the door. After a pause it opened.

The man that stood in the doorway was not a servant.

“Gilan,” he said. “Haven’t seen you for a while. How long is it?”

“Two years and then some,” Gilan said. “Not since the city changed hands.”

“You here for a blade?” The man’s eyes strayed to Ifan and Diara.

“Information,” Gilan said.

“Nothing here is free.”

“We should talk about that,” Gilan said.

The man stepped back, an invitation for Gilan to enter. They went into a large room, expensively furnished and well lit. A large window looked out onto a private garden behind the house. The walls of the room were decorated with blades. Swords with every pattern of blade looked down on them, though almost all of them were recent, Gilan noted. There was one, though, that caught the eye. It was mounted above the dead fireplace, and though the pommel was quite plain the blade caught the light with a ruddy glow. Gilan went over and looked at it. The blade was etched with exquisite skill. It was as though flames burst forth from the hilt and raced up the steel. As he had first thought there was a colour to it, and each etched line was red, as though fresh blood rested in the shallow groove.

“You always had a good eye,” the man said. His name was Zumaran. Gilan didn’t know if that was a given or family name. Everyone he knew who knew the weapons dealer knew him only as Zumaran. Gilan had had business with him on behalf of Ocean’s Gate, certain pieces that the Faer Karan were looking for.

“This must be mage steel,” Gilan said.

“Aye, it is that. Seven hundred years old, by my reckoning. Two hundred gold, if you want it. It’ll never break.”

“Lawkeeping doesn’t pay that well,” Gilan said.

Zumaran shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

Gilan told him about the sword, the emerald in the hilt, the lily etched blade. Zumaran listened carefully. He asked questions that Gilan couldn’t answer. His description was third hand.

“I’ve never seen it,” the dealer said when he finished. “But there was word of such a blade being offered on the market two years ago, about the time of the fall.”

“Do you know who was offering it?”

“Aye, I did hear a name, but it wasn’t here in Samara.”

“And the name?”

Zumaran smiled. “Nothing here is free,” he said.

“And everything here is legal?” Gilan asked.

“I buy and sell weapons. It’s not against any law.”

“Unless some of them are stolen,” Gilan said. “I’d have to see paperwork on every one, and check with the former owners.”

Zumaran said nothing. He just stared.

“Of course we’d have to take them all away with us,” Gilan added, looking pointedly at the almost priceless mage steel blade over the fireplace.

“You’d really do that?” Zumaran asked.

“Children have been killed,” Gilan said. “You must have heard about it. This is connected.”

“If I do tell you, you’ll owe me a favour. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Zumaran nodded. “All right. It was a trader from Pek. He collects blades, but he was selling this one, the lily blade. It’s not mage steel, or so the word went, but white steel. It lasts as well, but can be broken.”

“I know what White Steel is,” Gilan said.

“Yes. Well. The man’s name is Pelorus. Jem Pelorus. He styles himself captain, and owns and sails a couple of ships. He visits Samara from time to time, but not recently.”

“Pek?” Gilan had never been to Pek. It was a few days sail along the coast, and in spite of having served at Ocean’s Gate with the sea on his doorstep he had never been in a ship. They had always looked unsafe to his eyes, frail wooden toys upon a great ocean.

“Aye, Pek. It’s a pretty enough place, but different. You know they choose their king?”

“I’d heard that,” Gilan said. “But they don’t name him king, and he serves a limited time, a year or two.”

“Three years, and they call him Mayor.” It was Diara who spoke. They turned and looked at her. Gilan had almost forgotten that Diara and Ifan were in the room.

“You’re not from Pek,” Gilan said.

“No, but my father was, and proud to be.”

“And the Faer Karan permitted these Mayors to rule?”

“Of course not, but they could hardly stop them choosing someone to wear the title.” Diara looked suddenly uncomfortable to be the centre of attention. She looked sat the floor. “So my father said.”

“Be that as it may,” Zumaran said. “I have told you all I know about the lily blade. What you make of it is up to you.”

They left the weapon dealers house and walked back towards the law house. Gilan didn’t talk to his lawkeepers, but brooded. It was clear that the sensible thing would be to visit Pek and speak to this Jem Pelorus and find out who bought the blade. He could send a letter, he supposed, but that might not elicit a timely response.

The truth was that Gilan did not want to take a sea voyage. He could send Diara, or even Diara and Ifan together, but it would be shirking his duty. He would have to tell Arla what he had discovered and see what she said.

At the law house things were quiet. Gilan found Arla in her room frowning at a pile of papers.

“I found someone who knew the blade,” he told her. “It was owned by a man in Pek who sold it two years ago.”

Arla looked up from the papers. “You must go to Pek and speak to him,” she said.

Gilan thought of suggesting that he ride, but riding would take a week each way and he would have to rest his mount when he got there. It was three days by sea. “I will see if a ship is leaving soon,” he said. “If not I may have to ride.”

“With your wound still half healed? Take a ship, the rest will do you good.”

Sam sat in his cell and sweated. The strength of the blue crystal’s charm waxed and waned. Sometimes he felt almost like himself, and others he felt almost lost in the insistent roar that filled his head. This was one of the bad times, and he sat still in the half darkness, his eyes closed, forcing himself to remember who and what he was.

He was tired, but he feared sleep.

He needed to be busy, to have some thing other than this to think about, and it occurred to him that he had a ready made problem. Del had mentioned coin clipping, that it was a form of stealing from the city, and those that did it must be rooted out. Sam knew nothing about money, other than it was paid to men and women and they spent it. He supposed that it must be more complicated than that.

When he thought about it, the clipping of coins must be a poor enterprise indeed. The men who did it must only be able to take the smallest fraction of each coin – perhaps a twentieth by weight, so that they would need to have twenty unclipped coins to make a new one. If you had twenty gold why would you risk the wrath of the king to have twenty one?

The answer was slow in coming to him, but when it came it seemed as clear and obvious as anything. The coins that were clipped did not belong to the men who clipped them. This, in a way, made the crime worse. Sam could almost have understood clipping your own coins. They were yours, after all, and what a man did with his gold was his own business. To clip another’s coin was outright theft.

But did it really make a difference? If you clipped coins and then spent them you were stealing from the merchants you bought from.

So a crime, then, justified in his own mind. A crime, but not murder.

He was struck by a similarity between the crimes. These men, the ones who took children, they clipped the lives of the young and took them for themselves, extending their lives beyond the natural span. In a way it was what any man would want, to live a longer life, and so in a way it was a form of theft.

Sam shook his head. No it was quite different. Murder and theft were quite different, and the murder of children the most heinous of all crimes. This equality was one the crystal had tried to foist upon him, and he rejected it.

Lack of sleep was giving him a headache. He stood and went to the door.

“Hey!”

Ella’s militia guard, the one she had posted outside his door, looked up.

“What?”

“Can I get a cup of hot jaro and something to eat? Bread and cheese?”

The militiaman stared at him for a moment. His reluctance was almost palpable. “It’s well into night,” he said. “There’ll be no one in the kitchen.”

“Even I can make a hot drink,” Sam said. “You can get one for yourself, too.”

That seemed to sway the man. He nodded and left. Sam waited until the footsteps had faded along the corridor. He stepped back from the door and picked up one of the chairs. They were simple, hard, straight backed chairs. He paused, listening for any noise, and hearing nothing brought the chair down hard on the floor.

It broke. The left back leg snapped off, which is what he had intended. He propped the chair against the wall so that the absent leg could not be seen from the door, then he took the broken leg and examined it. The leg had sheared at the top, giving it a sharp end. It wasn’t sharp enough to use as a stabbing weapon.

He pushed the leg under the bed where it, too, could not be seen from the door.

Sam stood in the middle of the room. Why had he just done that? He had no need for a weapon. He pulled the chair leg out again. Should he push it through the bars of the door? He didn’t think it would help. The chair he’d broken still had three legs and there was another chair.

He could ask the militiaman to take both chairs away, but he didn’t trust himself any more. He might attack the man when he came into the cell. Sam was scared. He was losing control of his own body. When he’d broken the chair it had seemed a natural, sensible thing to do, but it wasn’t.

He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands.

With his eyes closed it seemed that the darkness behind his eyes had become tainted with blue, as though the crystal was inside his head and glowing against the back of his eyelids. He tried to push it away, to bring back the customary dark. He imagined a pool of ink, and to his surprise it appeared, a speck at first, and then spreading out like ink on cloth, creeping towards the edge of his vision. He focussed on it, fed his will into it. As the blue faded he felt himself restored. He was Sam Hekman again.

“Got a headache?”

Sam looked up, startled. The militiaman was at the door. He’d opened a small hatch and was pushing a plate through. Sam thought of the broken chair leg under the bed, but pushed the idea away. He stood and took the plate. There was a steaming cup of jaro on it, and a good sized hunk of bread with a thick slice of yellow cheese.

“Thanks,” he said. He noted that there was no knife on the plate.

Sam sat down on the bed and took a large swallow of jaro. It was sweetened with honey, which he liked. He felt the hot liquid inside him. On an empty stomach the wakefulness would come more quickly, but he was hungry, too. He tore off a mouthful of bread and chewed it. It was good bread, soft and brown, the crust decorated with seeds. It was the sort of bread that came from expensive bakers shops in the old town.

The cheese crumbled when he broke it, and he cupped the crumbs in his hand and threw them into his mouth. Again it was good, a rich, thick flavour. It filled his mouth and made him want more bread, and the dry bread, fresh as it was, made him want more jaro.

It seemed only moments before the plate was empty. Sam put it down on the floor next to the door and sat on the chair that wasn’t broken. He closed his eyes again and imagined the pool of ink. It seemed to help.

He returned to the problem of the clipped coins. However trivial it might seem beside his current predicament it was a lever to keep his mind away from other things. The coins that were being clipped, he had decided, did not belong to the clipper. But that might not be so. Many traders, while not being especially wealthy themselves would see a lot of money pass through their hands. They had to buy as well as sell – that’s what trading was. If they were paid with good coin, clipped it, and they bought with the reduced currency it could be highly profitable.

That widened the field of suspects to anyone with a sizeable business.

The truth was, he couldn’t solve the crime sitting in this cell in Ella’s basement. He needed to do what all lawkeepers did – ask questions.

But Sam was here for a reason. He knew that, even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember it. He was dangerous. His mind was being perverted from its normal sensible course by the blue crystal, and he could not destroy it – not only because he was locked up, but also because destroying it would unleash so much pain and suffering on Samara that people would die. Perhaps a lot of people would die. He didn’t know.

Really, he didn’t know anything. He was a simple man who had been given this job because he was sensible and methodical, and because he was honest. None of these qualities could be counted on any more.

The one thing he did know was that he needed help.