‘You won’t be with us?’ the sergeant asked, startled.
Mykkael turned his head. Not smiling, with teeth or otherwise, he said, ‘There’s a man inside I wish to interview. You’ll raid the bar and keep a lid on the bolt holes, while I bag my game in the brothel.’
‘You’re climbing in by way of the wall?’ someone broke out, incredulous.
‘What in the reaper’s thousand hells for?’ Eyebrows raised, Mykkael laughed outright. ‘Easier, surely, to use the front door and go in as a paying customer.’ Before Jedrey’s look of poleaxed astonishment, he said plainly, ‘Why else keep the splendour of my spoiled shirt, if not to wring a martyr’s applause from the riff-raff? On my chosen signal, Sergeant. Have the men ready’
Mykkael strode off, the hitch of his worsening limp masked under the alley’s clogged darkness. The men left in place by the windows, and the strike force poised under Jedrey watched their captain take pause only once, his sharp, desert profile outlined in the light that spilled from the Bull Trough’s taproom. That split second gave him the bearings he needed. A man on a mission far removed from the lusty pleasure of dalliance, Mykkael tugged his snagged shirt from the grip of a scab, resettled his sheathed sword, and strode in.
The smell and the noise assaulted the senses in an overpowering blast: the fat reek of tallow like warm glue, binding the miasma of heated bodies, spilled beer, yelling voices and shrieked laughter, underlaid by the pitch tang of sawdust. The wolf pack seethe of roistering patrons wore drab motley and homespun, or the worn leather aprons of craftsmen. Seated on benches, or leaned in fierce argument across the rough trestles, they spoke the tough dialect of woodcutters and drovers, and wore the sweat-shiny muscles of smiths. Dice throwers rubbed elbows with shirtless men, arm wrestling, while wagers were counted, and cheeky barmaids swayed through the press with trays laden with foaming beer steins.
Until Mykkael’s entry provoked a sharp recoil. Sight of his features cast a hush as dense as a thrown blanket. The heave of boisterous movement stalled. Pale faces turned, flushed red with stunned recognition. Here, his dark skin framed a shout that spoke louder than the crown’s falcon surcoat, or his vested authority as captain of Lowergate’s garrison.
One too many of tonight’s rabid gamblers had lost a year’s coin to the upset at last summer’s tourney. Nor had the insult subsided without strain. The changes flushed through the stews by the Falls Gate by Mykkael’s worldly experience had curbed the freebooting licence left ingrained by decades of slipshod enforcement. His steel-clad patrols redressed those inequities, which kept the smouldering sparks of old rancour well fanned.
‘Well, well! Look what an ill wind just blew in off the streets,’ ventured a heckler towards the rear. A man at one of the front trestles spat, while, staring challenge at Mykkael, a blowsy seamstress pushed the stained hands of a dyer’s boy into her gaping blouse. His surrounding friends hooted, applauding with drunken encouragement. Once past the shock of Mykkael’s entry, the Bull’s patrons realized they were a multitude, pitched against one.
Sparks ripe for dry tinder, they were primed to react.
Mykkael’s strategic review had assured that the horse thief he sought was not in the crush on the benches. Met on all sides by aggressive hostility, he broke into full-throated laughter. ‘Are you pigeons starving for cheap entertainment? Never saw any lot stare like green boys at a man who walks in to scratch the ripe itch.’ He reached out, snake-fast. While near bystanders flinched, his tossed coin rang on to a serving girl’s tray. His follow-through snagged a filled tankard. Mykkael sampled the brew. Eyes shut in a grimace of striking contempt, he returned the vessel in nearly unbroken motion. ‘The whores better have nicer kick than the brew, here. Which skirt’s got steaming magma beneath? Only one, I hear tell, is worth asking for.’
‘And which one’s that, mongrel?’ a roisterer shouted. ‘For you, she may not be in heat.’
But Mykkael had well hooked their male curiosity. He swaggered towards the railed gallery, where the establishment’s ringleted madam set her nubile collection on display.
Taskin’s left signature could not escape notice. ‘Looks like you been whipped out of one bed already,’ a doxy remarked from the sidelines.
‘Just frisky, first round,’ Mykkael disagreed. His tigerish smile went and resurged as his dark eyes roved over the mountainous form of the madam. Admiring her roped pearls and pillowed, pink bosom, he leaned over the railing, kissed her rouged cheek, then chided before she could speak. ‘Ah, mother, relax. The hard edge is sawn off. I’m nice for the women, tonight.’
The burst of coarse laughter shook dust from the ceiling beams. Limp notwithstanding, Mykkael disdained the stair and staged a fluid vault on to the platform. The onlookers were presented with his insolent back as he inspected the live goods, half naked and simpering as they flashed sheer lace petticoats, and preened in their ruffles and glass beads.
A few baited their prowess with cutting enthusiasm, the boldest ones fingering his soiled shirt, or jostling his stance with swayed hips.
‘I’ll cure that limp, soldier.’
‘You walking three-legged, boy? C’mon. Let me ride you.’
‘Let’s see how long I take to melt your hard muscles to jelly’
A coy redhead tucked a spray of daisies through the strap of his harness. Mykkael plucked out the flowers with a gallant’s bow, then shied them into the crowd. He moved on, measuring the line-up with jaded provocation, neatly sidestepping the vixen in scarlet who tried to rake her nails down his shoulder. Her glare of contempt fixed full on his face, she spat; and again, her stabbing spite missed its mark, turned aside by his stunning, fast reflex.
‘Try again?’ Mykkael goaded, then frowned towards the madam, his eyes shadow-dark and unreadable. ‘I prefer my fights with some steel in them, yes? So, how much for Vangyar’s hot favourite?’
The huge woman smiled. ‘Too late, randy dog. She’s already with him.’
‘Is she, then?’ Mykkael raised his eyebrows, tossed one, two, three crown sovereigns with the sweet ching! of gold, into the silk-covered trough of her lap. ‘In that case, second best will have to stand in.’ He shot out a hand, clamped the wrist of the hussy who had spurned him, and laid her fingers against the rough stubble of his jaw. ‘This one will do.’
The madam nodded her triple chins, granting obscene acquiescence.
His outraged selection screeched and spun like a cat. She tried to savage him, and lost her other hand to his iron grip. ‘Spit again?’ the desert-bred captain invited. His expertise peerless, harangued at each step by a shrieked tempest of curses and the glitter of snagged beads, he manoeuvred his catch up the stairway.
He flung her off at the top of the landing, then foiled her lunge for his throat by showering coins on the floorboards. ‘Which room is Vangyar’s?’
‘What? Are you crazy?’ Dropped to her knees, her fingers scrabbling under his boots to recover his scatter of silver, the doxy glared upwards through tumbled hair.
‘Dogs usually are.’ Mykkael flicked one last coin through the gloom, this one a gleaming crown sovereign. ‘You looked like you needed the night off the most. I trust you’re well paid? Then enjoy a good sleep.’ Downstairs, the noise in the Bull’s taproom resurged. The captain spoke through its boisterous roar, each word punched with urgent clarity. ‘Which door, right or left?’
‘The one straight ahead,’ snapped the whore, left kneeling and breathless at the speed by which her lush charms were abandoned.
Mykkael quartered the corridor with soundless strides, the wasp hum of steel as he drew his sword at one with the move that tripped the latch and eased open the panel. Slick as a wraith, he slipped inside. The door he had barged clicked closed at his heels, a triumph of timing, as Jedrey’s launched raid broached the taproom downstairs, to a thunderous burst of pandemonium.
For Vangyar the horse thief, the night’s pleasure turned sour between heartbeats. A callused hand grasped his naked shoulder, and flipped
him like a fish off the yielding, ripe flesh of his woman. Thrown on to his back amid twisted bedding, his roaring shove to arise was stopped cold by the edge of a longsword, touched against the shocked thrust of his manhood.
‘Stay put,’ demanded the demon-dark swordsman; then, ‘Be still,’ to the woman, whose painted eyes flew open as a draught chilled the throb of desire left unpartnered between her gaped thighs.
Before her last moan shattered into a scream, Mykkael snapped, ‘Cover yourself. Leave. Do as I ask. If he does as well, I won’t harm him.’
A rushed flurry of cloth, as the whore snatched a wrap, and fled on rouged feet through the doorway; then a bang on the floorboards, as something downstairs rammed into the ceiling in the course of the ongoing fracas.
Mykkael regarded the long face of the horse thief, dripping sweat off the trailing tips of his moustache. ‘My soldiers are raiding. They won’t come upstairs unless I change their orders. Nor do I bear a crown warrant with your name under seal as a criminal. Not yet,’ Mykkael emphasized, the relentless sword pressed to cringing, drooped flesh as Vangyar rebounded from shock into venomous fury. ‘You will answer some questions, first pass, with the truth. If you don’t, if you lie, on my word, I’ll draw blood you’ll regret for the rest of your useless life! Now, you don’t want to ruin your manly joy? All you need do is stay reasonable.’
Propped akimbo on braced elbows, Vangyar glared past his belly, and into those pitiless desert-bred eyes. ‘Ask, bitch-bred cur. Then bend your stiff neck looking over your shoulder for the rest of your days, which are numbered.’
Mykkael blinked, flashed white teeth through curved lips without smiling. ‘Fair enough. If I wanted to buy a particular black horse with silver leopard dapples, four white stockings, and a chevron-shaped star on its forehead, could you get him?’
Vangyar flopped backwards, the bristle of beard on his chin thrust against the damp pit of his throat. ‘I could,’ he said, sullen, ‘except the brute beauty’s been stolen.’
Mykkael tweaked the placed sword. ‘Elaborate. Quickly’
Through the shrieks of a woman, slashed through the chorus of male bellows from below, the horse thief reassembled his scattered wits and applied his professional knowledge. ‘Horse you want’s part of a steed wicket team, three blooded pairs who used to be pastured upriver, in the meadows behind Gurley’s cow farm.’
‘Owner?’ prompted Mykkael. The blade in his hand stayed, a needle of fire by the fluttering dip by the bedside.
Vangyar shook his head, swallowed. ‘Don’t know. The wicket team was assembled several months back, and set into training in secret.’ To ascertain the unpleasant foreigner understood, the horse thief took pains to qualify. ‘Rich folk like to do that, enter what they call “dark pairs” to tip the odds and enliven the betting. Sometimes they upset a favourite to humble a rival. Blood’s sometimes let, to keep such surprise challenges under wraps. The batch with your black was close handled, that way. Someone’s rich boy from the Highgate brought coin for their upkeep to Gurley His sons did the riding to fit them, under lists of detailed instructions.’
Mykkael absorbed the gist. ‘This black horse I’m wanting was stolen, you say?’
‘Not only him. The whole team of six was just lifted.’ Vangyar jerked his chin, snarling his resentment. ‘Let me free, you mad dog. I can try to find out who did the take. Wanted to anyway. Six culled off one pasture is ravening greed. Don’t need this territory stirred by the heat as crown law sets the countryside boiling.’
Mykkael narrowed his eyes. ‘When was this wicket team stolen?’
‘Last night.’ Vangyar glanced with exasperated rage at the sword blade, then assayed a broken-toothed grin. ‘I could get this horse, surely. With the princess gone missing, I much doubt the king’s magistrate has troubled to register the theft on the rolls. Likely fat Farmer Gurley never got through the hubbub to file his complaint.’
‘Then consider the incident registered, now.’ Mykkael lifted his sword blade. One fluid motion saw the steel run back into the sheath at his shoulder. Throughout, his hard gaze stayed pinned upon Vangyar, as though the man’s narrow nose and slab cheekbones could be engraved into permanent memory.
Downstairs, the noise rose in a crescendo, then fell back like spent surf towards order. Mykkael spoke at length. ‘I know your face, Vangyar. That says you’re a marked man. If you can’t make your way in an honest profession, I suggest you leave Sessalie tomorrow. Stay, lay your hand on another man’s livestock, and take my promise as your fair warning. Your nice lady will weep at your hanging and sleep with another the day of your burial.’
‘Bitch-bred mongrel!’ Vangyar kicked free of the sheets, shoved bandy legs to the floor, and snatched in blind rage for his clothes.
‘Might do well to bide.’ One moment more, Mykkael grinned over his victim’s stung pride. Then he strode to depart, all flaunting grace in his disreputable, bloodstained shirt. ‘Unless you want to be snagged in my raid? Somebody downstairs tags you for a horse thief, Sergeant Jedrey might haul you in.’
Hand on the latch, he sensed the sharp movement. He had already engaged on trained instinct, as the thrown knife parted the air. Dropped down, spinning back, even before the blade impaled itself in the door plank, he embraced the crystalline state that framed the reflex of barqui’ino awareness. Two blows of his hands: one placed to stun nerves, and the next to drop his attacker with a broken neck.
Vangyar reeled backwards, scarcely aware he was dying until his head thumped into the bed frame. Out straight on the floorboards, he realized he couldn’t be staring straight down at his own naked buttocks.
‘Damned fool,’ snapped Mykkael, voice like iron above him. Then metal spoke, whining clear of its sheath. The swift cut of the sword let in the night ahead of the throes of last suffering.
XIV. Strike
THE DOWNSTAIRS RAID HAD REDUCED THE BULL TROUGH’S TAPROOM TO THE TUMBLED WRACK OF A BATTLEGROUND. TALLOW DIPS STILL burned in the bar’s chandelier. Beneath their sultry glare, the upset trestles, spilled food, and smashed crockery lay scattered over the sawdust, poked through by the splinters of benches destroyed in the throes of combat. If not peace, then the semblance of order prevailed. The last protesting bystanders were being turned out by the fist of crown authority. Others, less innocent, were being detained. Their railing objections raised mayhem enough to keep Jedrey’s task force preoccupied. The man-at-arms posted on guard by the stair became the first to notice the captain’s reappearance on the landing above.
Paused at the newel post to rest his game knee, Mykkael surveyed the activity with professional acuity: the barmaids who knelt with damp rags to minister to the bludgeoned fallen; the alert cordon surrounding the bar, where, on the only upright stool, the garrison’s quartermaster scowled beside a salvaged candlestick, crosschecking the establishment’s books. The whores had all fled. Their provocative splendours had been replaced by a sorry collection of scofflaws, roped by the wrists to the platform rail, until an escort could be assembled to march them back to the keep.
The loose end still remained. Mykkael gritted his jaw, gave up his leaned stance, and pressed his limping step down the stairway. His order collared the attentive young guardsman. ‘Upstairs, soldier. An exceedingly stupid man threw a knife.’
The man-at-arms signalled to a companion, resigned. ‘Fetch a plank, Paunley. We’ve got a corpse to haul down for a pauper’s grave.’
‘Sadly’ Mykkael affirmed. The female shriek to his left spun him round, prepared for a fit of hysterical grief, or the mindless assault the bereaved sometimes launched to vent their outraged denial.
Yet no lissom sweetheart leaped to savage his face. Only the Bull’s indomitable madam stood her ground, unmoved as the mountain rooted to earth in her acres of flounces and skirts.
Eyes on her streaked face, the captain inquired, ‘Did Vangyar have any family?’
The madam shook her ringleted head. ‘None that I knew.’ Her dimpled hands blotted the stre
am of her tears with the wad of a sequined shawl. ‘Haul him out as you please. His girl won’t be claiming the body’
‘She was a professional, I saw that much.’ Mykkael gathered his balance to pass on his way, then stopped stiff as the madam’s sensuous fingers clasped the wrist underneath his loose sleeve.
‘You didn’t lay’ She sniffed, her sorrow replaced by a glare of ferocious offence. ‘Did my dearie in scarlet not please you?’
Mykkael laughed, not missing the wise, queenly dignity underneath her run paint and histrionics. ‘You have your pride; I see that also.’ Though in evident haste, he permitted her grasp long enough to address her question. ‘Your vixen has charm, but unfortunately, she also has grit and integrity. I suggest you retire her. Some are born with too much spirit for whoring. They’re the ones who always get hurt, no matter how forcefully you warn your johns you won’t allow their rough handling.’
The madam sighed. ‘I know that.’ She released her touch. Her searching pause reassessed him, blue eyes sharpened by an intelligence at odds with her surface display of distress. ‘But Maylie has nowhere else she can go. Her brother’s a halfwit who needs cosseting.’
‘Send the fellow across to the garrison keep,’ Mykkael said. ‘If he can sweep floors and not make useless trouble, he’ll earn his day’s bread. He can sleep by the fire with the cook’s brats.’
He moved on, then, without a glance back, and demanded a summary report from the man set in charge of the prisoners. The captain listened, as he had to the madam, with one hip braced to the railing to ease his bad knee. If his stance seemed too easy, his attention maintained its unswerving intensity. One wretch, he set free. If clemency ruled him, the sheeted burden brought downstairs on the plank refuted the presumption he might keep any slipshod habit of leniency.