“Dama, see here,” a warrior cried, leading a camel from Amit’s pen. “It’s been whipped recently, and wears leather pads on its feet.”
Amit’s eyes bulged, though it was hard to tell if it was from incredulity or the continually choking spear at his throat. “That’s not my . . . !” was all he managed to cough.
“Tell us who your accomplice was,” the dama demanded. The warrior at Amit’s back eased the choking spear so he could answer.
Gone was all the smug superiority from Amit’s voice, the security in his position in this world and the next. Abban listened carefully, savoring the pathetic desperation in his rival’s voice as he protested his innocence and begged for his life.
“Tear the black from him,” the dama ordered, and Amit screamed as the warriors took hold of his robes, ripping at them until the crippled man was lying naked in the street. The dal’Sharum took his arms and pulled back on his hair to ensure he made eye contact with the dama, who knelt before him.
“You are khaffit now, Amit of no lineage worth mentioning,” the dama said. “For the short, painful remainder of your life, know this, for when your spirit leaves this world, it will forever sit outside the gates of Heaven.”
“Nooo!” Amit screamed. “It is a lie!”
The dama looked up at the warriors. “Confiscate everything of value in his pavilion,” he said, “and bring it to the temple. Use his women, if you like, and then have them sold. Put any sons to the spear.” Amit howled, thrashing against the men who held his arms until one of the warriors clubbed him in the back of the head with his spear, dropping him senseless to the ground.
The dama looked down at Amit in disgust. “Haul this filth to the Chamber of Eternal Sorrow,” he told the dal’Sharum, “that the Damaji might take their time in flaying the skin from his misbegotten bones.”
Abban let the tent flap fall and retreated into his pavilion, pouring himself a cup of couzi.
A few moments later, the tent flap rose and fell again.
“The Par’chin nearly broke Dama Kavere’s knee,” Jamere said. “He wants more than couzi to account for it.”
Abban nodded, expecting as much. “You were supposed to volunteer to stall Kavere when I stumbled, not the Par’chin,” Abban reminded.
Jamere shrugged. “He beat me to it,” he said, “and would hear no protest.”
“Well don’t let it happen again,” Abban snapped. “The Par’chin is valuable to me, and I would be most displeased to lose him.”
“Do you think he’ll find Anoch Sun?” Jamere asked.
Abban laughed. “Don’t be stupid, boy,” he said. “Those maps have been copied and re-copied for three thousand years, and even if they still manage to point him the right way, the lost city, if it even exists, is buried deep beneath the sands. The Par’chin is a good-hearted fool, but a fool nonetheless.”
“He’ll be angry, when he returns,” Jamere observed.
Abban shrugged. “At first, perhaps,” he began.
“But then you’ll wave some other ancient scroll in his face, and he’ll forget all about it,” Jamere guessed, stealing a swig out of Abban’s couzi bottle, not bothering with a cup.
Abban smiled, giving the boy the various bribes he would need when he returned to Sharik Hora. He watched Jamere go with a mix of pride and profound regret.
The boy could really have been something, if he wasn’t set to waste his life as a dama.
Brayan’s Gold
By Peter V. Brett
324AR
“Hold still,” Cob grunted as he adjusted the armor.
“Ent easy when a steel plate’s cutting into your thigh,” Arlen said.
It was a cool morning, dawn still an hour away, but Arlen was already sweating profusely in the new armor—solid plates of hammered steel linked at the joints by rivets and fine interlocking rings. Beneath, he wore a quilted jacket and pants to keep the plates from digging into his skin, but it was scant protection when Cob tightened the rings.
“All the more reason to make sure I get this right, Cob said. “The better the fit, the less likely that will happen when you’re running from a coreling on the road. A Messenger needs to be quick.”
“Don’t see how I’ll be anything near quick wrapped in bedquilt and carrying seventy pounds of steel on my back,” Arlen said. “And this corespawned thing’s hot as firespit.”
“You’ll be glad for the warmth on the windy trails to the Duke’s Mines,” Cob advised.
Arlen shook his head and lifted his heavy arm to look at the plates where he had painstakingly fluted wards into the steel with a tiny hammer and chisel. The symbols of protection were powerful enough to turn most any demon blow, but as much as he felt protected by the armor, he also felt imprisoned by it.
“Five hundred suns,” he said wistfully. That was how much the armorer had charged—and taken months in the making. It was enough gold to make Arlen the second-richest man in Tibbet’s Brook, the town where he had grown up.
“You don’t go cheap on things that might mean your life,” Cob said. He was a veteran Messenger, and spoke from experience. “When it comes to armor, you find the best smithy in town, order the strongest they’ve got, and bugger the cost.”
He pointed a finger at Arlen. “And always…”
“…ward it yourself,” Arlen finished with his master, nodding patiently. “I know. You’ve told me a thousand times.”
“I’ll tell it to you ten thousand more, if that’s how long it takes to etch it into your thick skull.” Cob picked up the heavy helmet and dropped it over Arlen’s head. The inside was layered in quilt as well, and it fit him snugly. Cob rapped his knuckles hard against the metal, but Arlen heard it more than he felt it.
“Curk say which mine you’re off to?” Cob asked. As an apprentice, Arlen was only allowed to travel on guild business accompanied by a licensed Messenger. The guild had assigned him to Curk, an aging and often drunk Messenger who tended to work only short runs.
“Euchor’s coal,” Arlen said. “Two nights travel.” Thus far, he had only made day-trips with Curk. This was to be the first run where they would have to lay out their portable warding circles to fend off the corelings as they slept by the road.
“Two nights is plenty, your first time,” Cob said.
Arlen snorted. “I stayed out longer than that when I was twelve.”
“And came out of that trip with over a yard of Ragen’s thread holding you together, I recall,” Cob noted. “Don’t go getting swollen because you got lucky once. Any Messenger alive will tell you to stay out at night when you have to, not because you want to. The ones that want to always end up cored.”
Arlen nodded, though even that felt a little dishonest, because they both knew he did want to. Even after all these years, there was something he knew he needed to prove. To himself, and to the night.
“I want to see the higher mines,” he said, which was true enough. “They say you can look out over the whole world from their height.”
Cob nodded. “Won’t lie to you Arlen. If there’s a more beautiful sight than that, I’ve never seen it. Makes even the Damaji Palaces of Krasia pale.”
“They say the higher mines are haunted by snow demons,” Arlen said. “With scales so cold your spit will crack when it hits them.”
Cob grunted. “The thin air is getting to the folks up there. I Messaged to those mines a dozen times at least, and never once saw a snow demon, or heard tale of one that bore scrutiny.”
Arlen shrugged. “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there. I read in the Library that they keep to the peaks, where the snow stays year round.”
“I’ve warned you about putting too much faith in the Library, Arlen,” Cob said. “Most of those books were written before the Return, when folks thought demons were just ale stories and felt free to make up whatever nonsense they saw fit.”
“Ale stories or no, we wouldn’t have rediscovered wards and survived the Return without them,” Arlen said. “So wher
e’s the harm in watching out for snow demons?”
“Best to be safe,” Cob agreed. “Be sure to look out for talking Nightwolves and fairy pipkins, as well.”
Arlen scowled, but Cob’s laugh was infectious, and he soon found himself joining in.
When the last armor strap was cinched, Arlen turned to look in the polished metal mirror on the shop’s wall. He was impressive looking in the new armor, there could be no doubt of that, but while Arlen had hoped to cut a dashing figure, he looked more like a hulking metal demon. The effect was only slightly lessened when Cob threw a thick cloak over his shoulders.
“Keep it pulled tight as you ride the mountain path,” the old Warder advised. “It’ll take the glare off the armor, and keep the wind from cutting through the joints.”
Arlen nodded.
“And listen to Messenger Curk,” Cob said. Arlen smiled patiently.
“Except when he tells you something that I taught you better,” Cob amended. Arlen barked a laugh.
“It’s a promise,” he said.
They looked at each other for long moments, not knowing whether to clasp hands or hug. After a moment they both grunted and turned away, Arlen for the door and Cob for his workbench. Arlen looked back when he reached the door, and met Cob’s eyes again.
“Come back in one piece,” Cob ordered.
“Yes, Master,” Arlen said, and stepped out into the pre-dawn light.
* * * * *
Arlen watched the great square in front of the Messengers’ Guildhouse as men argued with merchants and stocked wagons. Mothers moved about with their chalked slates, witnessing and accounting the transactions. It was a place pulsing with life and activity, and Arlen loved it.
He glanced at the great clock over the Guildhouse doors, its hands telling the year, month, day, and hour, down to the minute. There was another great clock at the Guildhouse in every Free City, all of them set to the Tender’s Almanac, which gave the times of sunrise and sunset for the coming week that were chalked beneath the clock face. Messengers were taught to live by those clocks. Punctuality, or better yet early arrival, was a point of pride.
But Curk was always late. Patience had never been one of Arlen’s virtues, but now, with the open road beckoning, the wait seemed interminable. His heart thudded in his chest and his muscles knotted with excitement. It had been years since he last slept unprotected by warded walls, but he had not forgotten what it was like. Air had never tasted so good as it had on the open road, nor had he ever felt so alive. So free.
At last, there was a weary stomp of booted feet, and Arlen knew from the smell of ale that Curk had arrived before he even turned to the man.
Messenger Curk was clad in beaten armor of boiled leather, painted with reasonably fresh wards. Not as strong as Arlen’s fluted steel, but a good deal lighter and more flexible. His bald pate was ringed by long blond hair streaked with gray, which fell in greasy gnarls around a weathered face. His beard was thick and roughly cropped, matted like his hair. He had a dented shield strapped to his back and a worn spear in his hand.
Curk stopped to regard Arlen’s shining new armor and shield, and his eyes took a covetous gleam for an instant. He covered it with a derisive snort.
“Fancy suit for an apprentice.” He poked his spear into Arlen’s breastplate. “Most Messengers need to earn their armor, but not Master Cob’s apprentice, it seems.”
Arlen batted the speartip aside, but not before he heard it scratch the surface he had spent countless hours polishing. Memories came to him unbidden: the flame demon he struck from his mother’s back as a boy, and the long cold night they spent in the mud of an animal pen as the demons danced about testing the wards for a weakness. Of the night he had accidentally cut the arm from a fifteen foot tall rock demon, and the enmity it bore him to this day.
He balled a fist, putting it under Curk’s hooked nose. “What I done or not ent your business, Curk. Touch my armor again and the sun as my witness, you’ll be spitting teeth.”
Curk narrowed his eyes. He was bigger than Arlen, but Arlen was young and strong and sober. Perhaps that was why he stepped back after a moment and nodded an apology. Or perhaps it was because he was more afraid of losing the strong back of an apprentice Messenger when it came time to load and unload the carts.
“Din’t mean nothin’ by it,” Curk grumbled, “but you ent gonna be much of a Messenger if you’re afraid to get your armor scratched. Now lift your feet. Guildmaster wants to see us before we go. Sooner we get that done, sooner we can be on the road.”
Arlen forgot his irritation in an instant, following Curk into the Guildhouse. A clerk ushered them right into Guildmaster Malcum’s office, a large chamber cluttered with tables, maps, and slates. A former Messenger himself, the guildmaster had lost an eye and part of his face to the corelings, but he continued to Message for years after the injury. His hair was graying now, but he was still a powerfully built man, and not one to cross lightly. A wave of his pen could bring dawn or dusk to a Messenger’s career, or crush the fortune of a great house. The guildmaster was at his desk, signing what seemed an endless stack of forms.
“You’ll have to excuse me if I keep signing while we talk,” Malcum said. “If I stop even for an instant, the pile doubles in size. Have a seat. Drink?” he gestured to a crystal decanter on the edge of his desk. It was filled with an amber liquid, and there were glasses besides.
Curk’s eyes lit up. “Don’t mind if I do.” He poured a glass and threw it back, grimacing as he filled another near to the rim before taking his seat.
“Your trip to Duke’s Coal is postponed,” Malcum said. “I have a more pressing assignment for you.”
Curk looked down at the crystal glass in his hand, and his eyes narrowed. “Where to?”
“Count Brayan’s Gold,” Malcum said, his eyes still on the papers. Arlen’s heart leapt. Brayan’s Gold was the most remote mining town in the duchy. Ten nights’ travel from the city proper, it was the sole mine on the third mountain to the west, and higher up than any other.
“That’s Sandar’s run,” Curk protested.
Malcum blotted the ink on a form, turning it over onto a growing stack. His pen darted to dip in the inkwell. “It was, but Sandar fell off his ripping horse yesterday. Leg’s broke.”
“Corespawn it,” Curk muttered. He drank half his glass in one gulp and shook his head. “Send someone else. I’m too old to spend weeks on end freezing my arse off and gasping for breath in the thin air.”
“No one else is available on short notice,” Malcum said, continuing to sign and blot.
Curk shrugged. “Then Count Brayan will have to wait.”
“The count is offering one thousand gold suns for the job,” Malcum said.
Both Curk and Arlen gaped. A thousand suns was a fortune for any Message run.
“What’s the claw?” Curk asked suspiciously. “What do they need so badly it can’t wait?”
Malcum’s hands finally stopped moving, and he looked up. “Thundersticks. A cartload.”
Curk shook his head. “Ohhh, no!” He downed the rest of his glass and thumped it on the guildmaster’s desk.
Thundersticks, Arlen thought, digesting the word. He had read of them in the Duke’s Library, though the books containing their exact composition had been forbidden. Unlike most other flamework, thundersticks could be set off by impact as well as spark, and in the mountains, an accidental blast could cause an avalanche even if the explosion itself didn’t kill.
“You want a rush job, carrying thundersticks?” Curk asked incredulously. “What’s the corespawned hurry?”
“Spring caravan came back with a message from Baron Talor reporting a new vein; one they need to blast into,” Malcum said. “Brayan’s had his Herb Gatherers working day and night making thundersticks ever since. Every day that vein goes uncracked, Brayan’s clerks tally up the gold he’s losing, and he gets the shakes.”
“So he sends a lone man up trails full of bandits who will do mos
t anything to get their hands on a cartload of thundersticks.” Curk shook his head. “Blown to bits or robbed and left for the corelings. Hardly know which is worse.”
“Nonsense,” Malcum said. “Sandar made thunderstick runs all the time. No one will know what you’re carrying save us three and Brayan himself. Without guards, no one seeing you pass will think you’re carrying anything worth stealing.”
Curk’s grimace did not lessen. “Twelve hundred suns,” Malcum said. “You ever seen that much gold in one place, Curk? I’m tempted to squeeze into my old armor and do it myself.”
“I’ll be happy to sit at your desk and sign papers, you want one last run,” Curk said.
Malcum smiled, but it was the look of a man losing patience. “Fifteen, and not a copper light more. I know you need the money, Curk. Half the taverns in the city won’t serve you unless you’ve got coin in hand, and the other half will take your coin and say you owe a hundred more before they’ll tap a keg. You’d be a fool to refuse this job.”
“A fool, ay, but I’ll be alive,” Curk said. “There’s always good money in carrying thundersticks because sometimes carriers end up in pieces. I’m too old for demonshit like that.”
“Too old is right,” Malcum said, and Curk started in surprise. “How many message runs you got left in you, Curk? I’ve seen the way you rub your joints in bad weather. Think about it. Fifteen hundred suns in your accounts before you even leave the city. Keep away from the harlots and dice that empty Sandar’s purse, and you could retire on that. Drink yourself into oblivion.”
Curk growled, and Arlen thought the guildmaster might have pushed him too far, but Malcum had the look of a predator sensing the kill. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked a drawer in his desk, pulling out a leather purse that gave a heavy clink.
“Fifteen hundred in the bank,” he said, “plus fifty in gold to settle your accounts with whichever creditor is lingering by your horse today, looking to catch you before you leave.”
Curk groaned, but he took the purse.