The Empire's Ruin, page 49
The drunk from the tavern half turned—moving with the slowness of a man underwater—before his companion seized him by the arm, dragging him away from the door.
“I’m going back,” he insisted. “Getting my motherfucking money.”
“Leave the money, Andraz,” the other insisted. “You go back in there, you’re not coming out.”
“Fuck that. Fuck that. Spent twenty years in the legions, didn’t I? And this Captain. What’s he the fucking captain of? Just some pretty son of a bitch with a club and a lot of dogs. I’m going back in and I’m gonna get right up in his face, and I’m gonna say to him—”
The man’s friend hauled him back around.
“You’re not going to say anything to him, Raz. You know why? Because he’ll fucking kill you.”
Andraz wavered on his feet.
“Come on,” his friend said. “You’ll win it back tomorrow.”
It was the wrong argument.
“Fuck tomorrow,” Andraz growled, tearing his arm free and turning back toward the doorway. “Fuck—”
Akiil dropped down from the rooftop a few paces away. The two men stared at him for a moment, then stumbled apart, reaching drunkenly for their hidden knives.
“No need,” Akiil said, waving away the violence, showing his hands in the process. “I don’t want to rob you. Besides—I heard you already lost your coin.”
Andraz had fumbled a long, ugly dagger from a sheath at his back, thrust it out before him. The blade weaved back and forth, but remained pointed more or less at Akiil’s chest.
“The fuck are you?” he demanded. He squinted. “And what the fuck’re you wearing?”
“A robe,” Akiil replied, careful to keep his hands visible, his voice mild.
“A motherfucking robe.”
“A motherfucking robe,” Akiil agreed.
Andraz grunted, as though that settled the robe question.
“You one of the Captain’s men?” demanded the friend. His eyes skipped past Akiil toward the shadows beyond.
For a moment, Akiil heard Butt Boy’s screams in the greater chaos of the night. It wasn’t a quick death, being eaten by pigs.
“Hardly.”
“What’re you doing up on the roofs?”
Akiil smiled. “Safer up there. Cleaner. No shit to step in.” He nodded toward the wavering knife. “No one to stab you…”
“What’d’you want?” Andraz growled.
“What do I want?” Akiil pondered the words even as he spoke them. He could have been all the way to the southern edge of the city already, could have been free and clear of Adare’s goons and the Quarter both. Instead, he’d come here, like some stupid dog returning to the man who beat it. “What I want,” he replied finally, a smile carving apart his lips, “is to know whether or not you gentlemen would like to become partners.”
* * *
The Dead Horse smelled more or less like its name. The air inside the hall was so heavy with the heat and sweat of close-pressed bodies that Akiil pulled up short as the door swung shut behind him, fighting down the sudden urge to gag. Long trestle tables ran down both sides, but almost no one sat. Atop the nearest of them, a trio of Ghannan legionaries stumbled through some sort of dance, crouching low, hopping, whooping madly with each step, then slamming their boots into the splintered wood. Mugs and wooden trenchers rattled the length of the board, and after a particularly violent stomp one of them slipped over the edge, splashing something brown and chunky across the floor.
Behind the dancers, a man had a woman pressed up against the wall, her skirts hitched up around her waist as he thrust into her over and over. As Akiil watched, she grimaced, leaned back, then slapped the man across the face.
“If you can’t fuck it right, there’s plenty of others will do the job.”
Cheers erupted from a small knot of onlookers. Akiil couldn’t hear the man’s response, but he redoubled his thrusting. An impressive athletic display, although it didn’t seem to be giving the woman much pleasure.
Akiil had gone to Ashk’lan a virgin and left it the same way. After his first few cons down in the Bend, he’d spent a handful of coppers on one of the dockside whores. She made a great show of screaming and bucking and scratching his chest, but he didn’t need to have spent ten years with the Shin monks to see that it was just that—a show. In the moment, some animal frenzy kept him going, but when it was finished, after she’d taken the coin, patted him on the head, and scooted out into the night, he felt a vague disgust with himself. Which was strange. Stealing the coin in the first place hadn’t bothered him at all. He’d stared at the ceiling of the tiny rented room and blamed the Shin. Something about all those years sitting, fasting, denying the basic urges of the body had broken him.
He tried again the next night, this time with two whores, and this time, instead of diving right in, he left his robe on. They took it more or less in stride. Evidently there were plenty of men who weren’t interested in participating—weren’t interested or weren’t able—men who would pay good coin just to watch. For the better part of the night he sat cross-legged at the base of the bed, committing the entire scene to memory. At first it was just a show—all exaggerated writhing and moaning—but as the candle burned down and the bottle of rum ran dry, the artifice dropped away.
The two had worked together before—that much was obvious—but it was more than a working relationship. They knew each other, where to touch, how and for how long, when to speak, when to stay silent. He’d hired them expecting to find the cheat, the right series of physical tricks that would transform him from a celibate monk into a legendary lover. He’d been ready to memorize a set of techniques, only to discover that there was nothing to memorize. The intricate positions of hands, lips, fingers, tongues—it all mattered, but only because of something else that mattered more, something deeper, something he couldn’t see, even with his Shin-trained eyes. When they fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms, he left the coin on the mantel above the fire and slipped out without waking them. In the long years since, he hadn’t hired another whore.
“We come here to fuck?” Andraz demanded. “Or to play cards?”
Akiil pulled his attention from the grunting pair, turned to face his drunken companion. After a last, futile effort, the man’s friend had given up and retreated into the night, too smart or too sober to go along with any plan aimed at cheating the Captain. It was obvious from his eyes that he’d already given Andraz and the strange man in the robe up for dead. Akiil glanced over his shoulder. The half-open door was only a few paces distant. Easy to walk out, still. He could tell Andraz that his friend had been right after all, that trying to cheat at the Captain’s tables was suicide, that they’d find another tavern. He’d buy the man a drink, and they could part ways still enjoying the undervalued luxuries of unbroken bones and unsevered necks.
“You remember what to do?” he asked instead.
Andraz gave him a glassy stare.
Akiil put a hand on his shoulder. “You need to tell me you know what to do.”
“You blink, I bet.” The man shrugged off the hand, started bulling his way toward the back of the hall.
Hardly the ideal accomplice, but then, that was the point. Andraz was obviously an idiot, and he was obviously, spectacularly drunk. Whoever was at the card table would know both things—he’d left the tavern barely a quarter of an hour earlier—which meant none of them would suspect him of cheating. Akiil they would suspect, but then, Akiil wasn’t planning to win. Hence the need for the drunken idiot.
At the back of the hall, a tight spiral staircase ran up to a loft overlooking the madness below. A pair of guards with crossbows stood at the railing, looking down into the crowd with grim faces. Given the angle, Akiil couldn’t see the card game or the players, which made sense. The Captain hadn’t survived twenty years in the Quarter by giving his enemies a lot of clear shots at his back. Anyone who wanted to attack the man would have to fight past the two guards at the base of the stairs—a pair of bald, scarred, muscle-bound twins—and rush up the tight, circular staircase straight into the fire of the crossbowmen above.
Fortunately, Akiil hadn’t come to attack him.
As Andraz approached the base of the staircase, one of the guards frowned, shook his head, put a hand on the man’s chest. “You’re done, Raz.”
Andraz plastered on a smile. “You sure of that, Fori? The Captain doesn’t want another chance at my coin?”
“Captain has your coin.”
Andraz fished inside his shirt for his purse, newly replenished by Akiil. “Not this.”
Fori frowned, took the leather satchel, dumped it out into his palm: a dozen silvers and some scattered copper. Not a bad sum for a game in the Quarter, even the Captain’s.
The guard grunted, raised his scarred brows. “Who’d you stab for this then?”
“Found someone,” Andraz replied vaguely. “Someone who owed me money.”
Fori studied Andraz a moment, then looked past him, brow furrowed, as though he expected to see a dead body tossed across one of the tables. After a moment, he shrugged, dumped the coin back in the purse, handed it back.
Andraz made to move past him, but the big man pressed that meaty hand into his chest.
“You think about kicking up a fuss up there, you remember—the Captain’s hogs ain’t eaten yet tonight.”
“Not good business, Fori, threatening the patrons.”
“No threats. You take your losses like a man, you’ll walk out of here like one.”
Andraz winked at him. “Not planning to lose.”
Akiil smoothed away any hint of a smile. That, that idiotic confidence, was what made the soldier perfect for the job.
Fori snorted, cracked his knuckles in a way that suggested he expected to use them before too long, then turned his attention to Akiil, eyes narrowing.
“You want something?”
Akiil nodded. “I want to play cards.”
As he spoke, he undercut the words with his expression, his posture. He wanted Fori to see someone who desperately didn’t want to play cards, someone who had been driven there by a need or compulsion almost beyond his will. With both hands, he clutched his purse, as though he expected it to be snatched from his belt. When the guard reached for him, he cringed.
“Not gonna hurt you,” Fori said, shaking his head. “Not yet, anyway.”
“No,” Akiil said, refusing to raise his eyes. “No, I know.”
The man took him by the front of the robe, testing the rough fabric between his fingers as though he were some kind of merchant. “What’s this? A robe?”
Akiil nodded. “It’s a robe.”
“What’re you wearing a robe for?”
“It’s what I have.”
“Who wears a robe?”
“Monks. I’m a monk.”
Fori frowned. “This ain’t really a place for monks.”
Akiil nodded, held close his body’s heat, poured it into his face until he felt sweat stippling his brow.
“I know that,” he said. “But I heard there was a card game.…”
“Never heard of a monk playin’ cards.”
“I’m not,” Akiil said. “Not anymore.”
“Not playin’ cards?”
“Not a monk. I was … expelled.”
“Expelled.” Fori’s brows climbed. “What’s a monk do to get expelled?”
Akiil kept sweating, took a deep, unsteady breath. “Fornication.”
“Fornication!” Fori said, repeating the word for the benefit of his twin.
The twin, who had been surveying the crowd beyond, finally turned, cracked a yellow smile. “Means fucking.”
“I know what it means,” the guard replied. He turned back to Akiil.
“Who’d you fornicate?”
“What? No one.”
“No one?” Fori shook his head. “Tough break, getting kicked out of the monk house for fornicating when you didn’t fornicate no one.”
“No. I mean. I did. She just … she was just this woman.”
The guard narrowed his eyes, peered at Akiil’s brow.
“You sick?”
“No. No, I’m not sick.”
“You’re sweatin’ like you’re sick.”
The twin shook his head. “Scared is what he is, Fori. Scared out of his skinny monk bones.”
Fori nodded as though that made sense. “Best find a different game. Ain’t never busted up a monk before. Seems like bad luck.”
Akiil leaned on his heart, made it beat faster. He doubted the two thugs would notice, but that was no reason to get sloppy.
“You won’t…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You won’t have to … bust me up.”
“Yeah,” Fori replied. “Yeah. That’s the thing. Everyone says that. Then they lose too much coin. Owe the Captain. Then Fari and I,” he gestured to the other man, “have to go find ’em. Break ’em. Feed ’em to the hogs.”
“You won’t have to feed me to the hogs,” Akiil said. “I need this. I need the coin. Please.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Fari said, obviously bored by the conversation. “Just let him up.”
Fori frowned. “We have to break him, you’re doing the breaking. Bad luck, busting up a monk.”
“I’ll do the breaking,” Fari agreed. “Let him up.”
Fori shrugged finally, took his time patting down Akiil, checking every hem of the robe for hidden weapons, then stepped aside.
Akiil gathered himself, made sure to clutch his purse until his knuckles ached, then climbed the winding stairs.
A single table, wide and heavy enough to hold a slaughtered hog, dominated the loft. Andraz had taken a seat, splashed the contents of his purse out in front of him, not bothering to sort or stack the coins. To his right a short-haired woman—keen eyes, crooked nose, maybe in her forties—pursed her lips, raised her brows. Past her, a massively fat man—down to his last handful of silvers—scowled. Two seats to his right sat the Captain.
Akiil let himself stare. As a child, he’d never come near the man, never closer than a stone’s throw. And he’d never thrown the stone.
The Captain wasn’t from Annur, not originally. He’d been born in the south, sold into slavery shortly thereafter, and raised—if that was the right word—to work on one of the vast Ghannan horse ranches. When he was twelve or thirteen—according to the story most people seemed to believe, anyway—he’d been bucked off by a horse he was exercising. The fall broke his leg, but he managed to drag himself up by the bridle, then stab the horse in the neck with his belt knife, over and over and over, until it collapsed. The head trainer came after him, naturally—a Ghannan mare was worth more than a slave boy—began viciously whipping him until that slave boy dragged the man off his horse and stabbed him to death, too. He stole the living horse and rode for the hills, somehow eluding pursuit, even with his broken leg, rode the horse all the way to Annur, where he sold it and used the coin to open the first of his many taverns.
He didn’t look like the type of man to stab a horse to death. He was smiling mildly as he watched Andraz pile up his coin, then turned his attention to Akiil. One of his hounds—a massive beast with teeth like knives—gave a low growl, but the Captain rubbed it affectionately behind the ears and the creature settled back down.
“A new player,” the Captain said, his smile widening. “Welcome.”
He gestured to an open seat.
Akiil hesitated, let his eyes track past the man’s face to the truncheon hanging on a leather thong from the chair’s post, just over his shoulder. It looked like some kind of pale wood, but Akiil knew better. Everyone in the Quarter knew better. The club had once been a relatively important piece of Vicious Ryk—his femur, to be precise. According to the story, when Ryk refused to pay tribute, the Captain dressed as a whore and bribed his way into Ryk’s favorite brothel. When they were alone, he drugged the man, cut his leg off, then stripped the meat from the bone. According to the story, Ryk was still sobbing when the Captain beat him to death with it.
“I think…” Akiil shook his head. “I didn’t mean to come here.”
He turned back toward the stairs.
“Don’t be foolish.”
The words weren’t loud, but they stopped him in his tracks. He made sure his heart was pounding, poured a little more heat into his face, then turned back.
The Captain smiled. “You came for a card game, no?”
Akiil shuddered a nod.
“Fori and Fari must have checked you for coin or you wouldn’t be here.”
Another nod.
“Then sit down. Play cards. Are you some kind of priest?”
“Monk,” Akiil replied, lowering himself into a chair beside the short-haired woman. She wore no jewelry but smelled, unexpectedly, of expensive perfume.
“A monk!”
“I used to be a monk. I’m not…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“Where does a monk get a purse filled with silver and gold?”
Akiil pulled shame down over his face like a mask.
The Captain laughed. “A thieving monk.” He waggled a finger. The ruby in his ring glittered in the lamplight. “I’ll have to be careful of you!”
“No,” Akiil replied. “I mean, I would never…”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” the Captain replied smoothly. “Of course you wouldn’t. Do you have a name, monk?”
“Cham,” Akiil replied.
“Well, Cham”—his eyes twinkled, as though the false name were a joke that they shared—“meet Veva, Harbon, and Andraz.”
Akiil nodded to the table without meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Now,” the Captain went on, “we’re just waiting for our dealer. Great with the cards that woman, but a mouse-sized bladder. Two cups of tea and … ah! Here she is.”
A door at the back of the loft opened.
A young woman stepped out.
Akiil almost fell out of his chair.
As a child, Skinny Quinn could fit into spaces Akiil wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting—storm drains, half barrels, the hole cut into the shitter of some fancy stone privy. Once, when they were six or seven, she’d gone down a chimney. Akiil could barely fit his head inside the thing—Horan couldn’t fit his head—but Quinn insisted she could make it.
