An Affinity for Steel, page 80
‘I’m sorry,’ the Lord Emissary said.
‘Apologies suggest that there is something you can do to alter my opinion,’ Bralston replied sharply. ‘I assure you, my reasons remain steeped far enough in history and philosophy that any such suggestions are ultimately a frivolous, and borderline insulting, waste of time and attention on your part and mine.’
‘That’s one interpretation.’ The priest bobbed his head. ‘There are others. For example, it can also imply a deep lament that history and philosophy have more to do with an opinion than character and personal experience do. It can also imply a subtle desire that said relations could be repaired, if only through two open minds meeting at the right time with the right attitude.’
Bralston snorted, crinkling his nose in a sneer. ‘That’s stupid.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Look,’ the wizard said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I get my fill of arguing philosophical trivia in Cier’Djaal. I was hoping that this mission would heighten my appreciation for simplicity.’
‘You hoped that a mission to track down people who shoot fire from their fingertips and don’t soil themselves with the effort due to glowing red stones would be simple?’
‘What did I just say?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Miron smiled and held up a hand for preemptive peace. ‘Excuse me. In truth, I had hoped that summoning you here would result in a greater enhancement of your desire for simplicity.’
Bralston merely grunted at that. Thus far, the two hours of contact that he had shared with the Lord Emissary had been anything but simple.
He had arrived in Port Destiny shortly after dawn broke on the blue horizon of the sea, as scheduled, planning only on lingering for as long as it took to find a meal. He had been surprised to find a bronze-clad, fierce-looking woman with raven hair and a long sword, standing exactly three feet from where he landed, wearing an expression as though she had been waiting there specifically for him.
His surprise had turned to suspicion when she, one Knight-Serrant Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates, had revealed that she was doing exactly that. That suspicion had convinced him to follow her lead to the luxurious temple in the city, and from there to the table where he now sat, across from a priest of Talanas – an apparently high-ranking priest of Talanas – who somehow seemed to know everything about his mission.
And, he thought with a twitch of his eyelid, who just won’t … stop … smiling.
‘You’ll forgive me for being less than willing to nod my head dumbly and accept whatever you say, Lord Emissary.’ Bralston all but spat the title on the table. ‘But given that the Venarium acts with at least a modicum of secrecy, I must be more than a little suspicious at how you know what my mission concerns.’
‘Suspicion is a wise policy, even in times of peace.’ Miron shook his head and sighed. ‘In times of turmoil … well …’
‘That doesn’t explain anything.’
‘No appreciation for dramatic segues, I see.’ The priest smiled, took another sip. ‘I can see why, of course. Drama tends to be a word in a forgotten language that roughly translates to “long-winded, unimportant babble purely for the sake of entertaining idiots.”’
‘I would not disagree.’
‘When “long-winded and unimportant” tend to be the exact opposite of the concise and sharp-witted pride of the wizard, no? Curtness, forthrightness, everything explained, everything understood. That is what you believe, is it not?’
‘Priests believe. Wizards know.’
‘Indeed. However, what you apparently don’t know is that everything is not quite so neatly explained as you might think. This supposed rivalry between the churches and the Venarium, for example.’ The priest’s smile seemed to grow larger with every mounting moment of Bralston’s ire. ‘It would cast such knowledge into doubt to learn that there might be one or two wizards out there who find the company of priests tolerable, would it not?’ He smiled and winked. ‘Even to the point of sharing the details on missions conducted with a modicum of secrecy?’
Bralston’s eyes went wide, mouth went small.
‘You’re saying …’ he uttered. ‘We have a leak.’
‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ The priest’s laughter was dry, like pages turning in a well-read book. ‘No, no, my friend. I simply meant that, where our concerns coincide, Lector Annis and myself are not above violating enmities steeped in philosophy and history.’
‘Coincide?’ Bralston raised a brow. ‘The Lector mentioned nothing.’
‘I suppose he wouldn’t, for fear that you might believe what I am about to tell you is an order, rather than a humble request, something you would no doubt resent.’
‘And that request is?’
Miron’s smile faded, and a look of concern, so familiar as to have been etched on the face of every soft-hearted grandmother and hard-working grandfather that Bralston had ever seen, spread over his face.
‘I would like you to find my employees.’
‘Surely,’ Bralston replied, ‘agents of the church are more than capable of performing your will, given the funding and support you undoubtedly boast.’
‘True agents, perhaps.’ Miron nodded. ‘However, for want of those, I instead hired adventurers.’
Bralston rolled his eyes and placed a finger to his temple, the reasoning suddenly becoming all too clear. ‘You hired some vagrant lowlifes to do your bidding, they broke their contract and they made off with your money or your daughter or whatever you wear under your robes, if not all three, and you want me to get them back?’ He sat rigid in his chair, uncompromising. ‘I’m not a mercenary.’
‘No, you’re a Librarian,’ Miron replied, unfazed by the sarcastic assault. ‘But more than that, you’re a good man, Bralston.’
‘I didn’t tell you my name.’
‘Annis did, amongst other things.’ The priest leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his table. ‘He told me many things about you, many foul things you did for the right reasons.’
The Librarian had prided himself on being difficult to surprise. But it wasn’t the words emanating from the Lord Emissary’s mouth that caused him to feel so small in his chair. Rather, it was the intensity, that instinctual concern that played across the priest’s face that suggested he had known Bralston all his life.
Only one person had ever looked at him in such a way before …
‘You know …’ the Librarian whispered.
‘I know that you love a woman,’ Miron replied. ‘That you spilled blood to protect her, blood that nearly brought the Venarium to war with the Jackals. I know you burned two men alive without question for the agonies they inflicted on a poor woman. I know that your duties go far, far beyond whatever the Venarium claims they do in the name of their laws.’
Bralston expected to feel cold, expected that such a revelation should seize him by the heart and twist. Instead, he felt warm, comforted by the reassuring smile that the priest wore. He felt a familiar urge, the same urge that when young would cause him to run crying to his mother when he had skinned his knee, or to hug his father’s legs when a dog had growled at him.
An urge that he thought he had hardened himself to.
‘That is why, Bralston,’ Miron whispered, ‘I want you to find my employees. There are six of them, four men and two women.’
‘And …’ Bralston swallowed hard. ‘You want me to protect the women.’
‘If it is in your power, I would ask you to protect them all. As it stands, these adventurers are a capable lot. The men are well-armed, and one of the women, a shict, is possibly even better-equipped to handle herself.’ Miron’s face wrinkled with concern. ‘The sixth member, however … she is not weak, by any means, but she is … untested.’
‘I see.’ Bralston scratched his chin contemplatively. ‘This woman … I assume she’s one of your own.’
‘Do you?’
‘As compassionate as even a Lord Emissary is, I doubt his charity extends so low as to reach adventurers. They live to die, do they not, to be used and disposed of?’
‘Perhaps some hold that attitude.’ For the first time, Miron betrayed a hint of sadness in his face. ‘Though you are right. She is sacred to Talanas, serving her pilgrimage with the others. A priestess.’
The Librarian didn’t feel the usual cringe that accompanied such a word. Enmity steeped in years was forgotten, replaced by a sudden surge through his being, the same surge that had called him to burn men alive.
‘A priestess …’ he whispered.
‘I know you do not agree with her calling. But she is not yet hardened enough to know that anything beyond her faith exists.’ Miron smiled. ‘She is the one I wish to preserve the most. I fear the horror that was inflicted upon the woman in Cier’Djaal would shatter her completely.’
The woman leapt to his mind, and he felt that cringe return. He recalled the bruises on her face, the way she folded into herself to escape the room. He recalled her eyes, so empty and distant as she watched two men burn for what they had done to her. He tried to picture what she might have been before the wizard, the heretic, had shattered her.
He found he couldn’t bear to.
‘Perhaps, if rhetoric does not sway you, we might see if personal experience truly does trump age-old loathing?’ Miron asked as Bralston looked up. ‘I am told you were one of the few members of the Venarium that assisted with transporting the wounded during the Night of Hounds.’
He nodded, slowly, loath to remember the event. A lesser man would have remembered images and sounds: fire, screams, felons running in the street, women begging for their lives, looting, carnage. Bralston, however, was a Librarian and had no choice but to remember the horror with precise chronology.
One hour after dawn: the Houndmistress, bane of the Jackals and champion of the citizenry, before there were statuettes of her in every place of business in Cier’Djaal, had been found in her bed with her throat cut, her adviser missing from his chambers and her child missing from hers.
Two hours: a man named Ran Anniq, small-time Jackal thug, had thrown the stone that struck the herald announcing her death.
Three hours: Bralston was strongly reconsidering his denial that hell, as men knew it, existed.
The Venarium had not been petitioned by the fashas of Cier’Djaal to aid until seven hours after dawn, when the wounded had become too great for the healers of the city to tend to. Bralston had not stepped away from the window of his study for all seven of the hours, save to file a request to visit a brothel, which was promptly denied. He had spared that building, still unblackened by the flames engulfing the city, only a glance as he and several other wizards filed onto a ship to use their magic to propel it toward Muraska and the healers there.
They arrived seventeen hours after dawn, exhausted. The priests of Talanas had offered succour to the wizards, in addition to the wounded they had brought over, and many had grudgingly accepted. Bralston declined with no thought to why he should; he simply could not sleep for fear that the brothel had been razed, its women defiled.
Twenty-two hours in, he had felt a hand on his shoulder. He had looked up into bright eyes, into a smile offering comfort. Hands flecked with dried blood had offered him a cup of tea. A woman in blue robes had placed her right hand around him and asked him what the matter was.
At twenty-three hours, he wept. At twenty-four, he slept. At forty-three, he watched her from his ship, taking her words with him. Two weeks later, he had returned to the brothel, still thanking her quietly.
Seven years later, he now thought of her again, of her god, of what she had done for him.
‘I know not much about the specifics of your mission,’ Miron continued. ‘Only that you seek a violator of laws, both wizardly and godly, and in this we coincide. I know what direction you head, and I know what direction I sent my employees … what direction I sent her.’
‘I … will do it,’ Bralston replied softly without looking up. ‘If I can find her … I will return her.’
‘I am sure you can find her … if someone else has not found her first.’ Miron cringed. ‘But I am not asking you to go without aid on my part. Your coat flew you here from Cier’Djaal, did it not? A journey that takes weeks by ship done in only a day and a half … its power must be exhausted.’
‘It will take some time to replenish itself, yes,’ Bralston replied.
‘Time, I fear, she does not have. A ship, however, is what I have.’ Miron pointed out the window of his room, toward the city’s harbour. ‘Seek a ship called the Riptide; you will find its captain not far away. Tell him that his charter requests that he deliver you to your destination.’
‘Our intelligence suggests that the outlaw is based near the Reaches,’ Bralston said. ‘But beyond that, we know little.’
‘There may be someone who knows more,’ Miron suggested. ‘A man by the name of Rashodd. He was involved in certain … peculiarities before my employees brought him low. We entrusted him to the care of authorities at Port Yonder.’
‘I shall seek him out, then. Your assistance is duly noted and will be reflected in my report.’
‘I trust that you will,’ Miron replied, nodding sternly. ‘Godspeed, Librarian.’
Bralston rose swiftly and stiffly from his chair and cast a look over the table at the priest. He sniffed, then placed his hat upon his head, running fingers along its brim.
‘I don’t need gods.’
The door shut with a resilient slam, as though the Librarian sought to make his discontent known through the rattle of porcelain as the impact sent Miron’s teacup stirring on its saucer. The Lord Emissary let it settle, listening for the sound of the Librarian’s determined footsteps over the hiss of the brown liquid.
When all was quiet once more, he gently took his cup in hand and smiled at the door through a veil of steam.
‘Idiot.’
*
The harbour of Port Destiny was lax, only a few ships bobbing in blue waters that kissed blue sands, rendering city and sea indistinct from one another. Their cargoes had been unloaded, their crews vanished into the city for wine, dice and women. Most would return destitute and broken, ready to serve at sea for further wages. A few would not return, usually paying for debts they had racked up with either their service or their kidneys.
That was a problem for a captain, Argaol thought as he lay back and shut his eyes against the morning sun. He would be one of those again someday, a captain with problems of unruly men and hostile seas and obligations to greedy men. But today, he was a man whose long, dark legs hung bare over the docks, a fishing line tied to his big toe.
His titanic ship, the Riptide, lounged as lazily as her captain did, bobbing up and down in the water beside him. They would both be called away before too long. But for now, each was content to lose themselves in their shared insignificance between the vast city and the boundless ocean, each content in the knowledge they could ask for no better company.
‘It just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’
He never asked for worse company. It always just seemed to find him.
‘Vast … endless …’
Argaol stifled a groan, attempting to pretend he couldn’t hear her. He remembered many an awkward conversation that had begun with this particular clichéd pseudo-insight.
‘I can’t even begin to fathom how enormous it is …’
Any moment now, this would turn to some horrible confession, probably one involving a pelvic rash or a request for help removing a fishing hook from a particularly tender area. He clenched his teeth, hoped quietly that she would give up before she said—
‘On and on and on and on and—’
‘Zamanthras’ loving bosoms, all right,’ he finally spat out. ‘What in the sweet hell that I so dearly prefer to listening to you is on your wretched little mind?’
Quillian looked down with disdain as he cracked one eye open from his lounging on the dock. Her face was hard, barely any more femininity revealed in it than was revealed in her bronze-swaddled body. She brushed a lock of black hair aside, exposing the red line of an indecipherable oath written beneath her eye.
‘What makes you think something’s on my mind?’
Argaol stared at her with disbelief that bordered on offended. ‘I suppose I’m just the sensitive type.’
Her befuddlement was short-lived, concern etching its way across her features as she turned her gaze back out past the docks and over the sea.
‘I heard what the Lord Emissary plans,’ she said, ‘before he met with the heathen.’
Argaol chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Is it wise to use the word “heathen” in reference to someone who can spit icicles into your face?’
‘Perhaps your faith extends only as far as your fears,’ she replied coldly. ‘The Knights-Serrant cannot afford such luxuries of sloth. Our sins do not allow it.’
Your sins apparently don’t allow anything less than a gods-damned theatre production whenever you say something, either, he thought with a roll of his eyes. To hear her speak would lead anyone else to believe she was more than human. He had seen the flesh underneath her bronze, however. He had seen the red ink that was etched into her side. He knew not the language of sin, but whatever hers had been, they had been many.
That fact made the Serrant’s temperament at least somewhat understandable, even if nothing else about her was.
‘You’re not concerned?’ she asked.
He glanced down at his naked foot, the fishing line tied to his big toe as the rest of his slight, dark build sprawled out across the dock. He shrugged, folding his hands behind his bald head as he did.
‘I suppose I don’t look it, do I?’
‘His plan is to head for Port Yonder.’
‘Yonder’s fine enough,’ Argaol replied. ‘A little light on entertainment, but a bit of sobriety is good for the soul.’ He snorted, spat over the edge of the dock. ‘One would think a Lord Emissary’s duties would demand his presence here in Destiny, though.’
