Authors: Anthony Ryan
Vaelin had never been drunk before. He found it an unpleasant sensation, not unlike the dizzy feeling he got when taking a hefty blow on the head during practice, just more prolonged. The ale was bitter in his mouth, his first taste making him screw up his face in disgust.
“You’ll get used to it,” Barkus had assured him.
The tavern was near the western section of the city wall and frequented mainly by off-duty guardsmen and local traders. For the most part they seemed content to leave the five brothers alone, although there had been a few calls of congratulation to Vaelin.
“Best bet I ever made,” a cheery faced old man called, lifting his tankard in salute. “Made a packet on you today, brother. Got odds of ten to one when it looked like you’d get the chop…”
“Shut up!” Nortah told the old man flatly. His left arm was cradled in a sling, the forearm heavily bandaged, but his visage held sufficient menace to make the old man blanch and sit down without further comment.
They found a vacant table and Barkus bought the drinks. He was limping from a cut to the calf and spilled a fair amount of the ale on the way back from the bar.
“Clumsy sod,” Dentos grunted. “Let me get them next time.” He was the only one to have got through the test unscathed, although his gaze had a bright, frightened look and he blinked rarely, as if scared of what he would see when he closed his eyes.
Caenis sipped his ale, frowning in puzzlement. “From the way men lust after this so I’d expected it to taste better.” The line of his jaw was marked by a row of eight stitches. The brother from the Fifth Order who tended the cut had assured him he would carry the scar for the rest of his life.
“Well,” Nortah said, lifting his tankard. “We’re all here.”
“Yeh.” Dentos lifted his own mug, clacking it against Nortah’s. “Here’s to… being here I s’pose.”
They drank, Vaelin forcing the ale down, draining his tankard.
“Easy brother,” Barkus warned him.
He felt them exchanging uneasy glances across the table as he stared at the dregs at the bottom of the tankard. There had been an ugly scene with Master Sollis back at the Circle when Vaelin had demanded to know the identity of the tall man and received only a curt response: “A murderer.”
“He was no murderer,” Vaelin insisted, a mounting anger dispelling his normal deference. The tall man’s face as he slipped into death was fresh in his mind. “Master, who was that man? Why was it necessary for me to kill him?”
“Every year the City Guard provides us with a selection of condemned men,” Sollis replied, his patience nearing its end. “We choose the strongest and most skilled. Who they are is not our concern. Neither is it yours, Sorna.”
“It is today!” Vaelin took a step closer to Sollis, his fury mounting.
“Vaelin,” Caenis cautioned him, his hand on his arm.
“I killed an innocent man today,” Vaelin spat at Sollis, shaking off Caenis’s hand, advancing further. “For what? To show you I could kill? You knew that already. You chose him didn’t you? Knowing he was the most skilled. Knowing I’d be the one to face him.”
“A test is not a test if it’s easy, brother.”
“EASY?” A red mist was staining his vision, he found his hand had gone to his sword.
“Vaelin!” Dentos and Nortah stepped between them, Barkus pulling him back and Caenis keeping a firm grip on his sword hand.
“Get him out of here!” Sollis commanded as they hustled him towards the exit, near incoherent with rage. “Take the rest of the evening. Help your brother cool off.”
Vaelin wasn’t sure if ale was the best way to cool off. His anger hadn’t dimmed at all, if anything the way the room seemed to move around of its own volition was extremely aggravating.
“My Uncle Derv could drink more ale in a sitting than any man alive,” Dentos said after his fourth tankard, his head lolling. “They’d ’ave a contest every shummertide fair. Folk from miles around’d come t’challenge ‘im. Not one of ‘em could ever beat ‘im. Grand ale drinking champion five years running. Woulda’ been six iffen he ‘adn’t drunk hisself t’death in the winter.” He paused to issue an extravagant burp. “Silly old sod.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be enjoying this?” Caenis asked, both hands gripping the table as if scared he was about to tip over.
“I’m happy enough,” Barkus said, grinning merrily. His shirt was damp with ale and he seemed oblivious to the rivulets that coursed down his chin every time he took a drink.
“Two brothers…” Nortah was saying. He had been rambling about his test for over an hour. From what Vaelin could gather two of the men he had killed were brothers, both apparently condemned outlaws. “Twins… I think. Looked just the same, even made the same sound when they died…”
Vaelin’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch and he realised he was about to vomit. “Going outside,” he mumbled, rising and making for the door on legs that seemed to have lost the ability to walk in a straight line.
The air outside chilled his lungs and made his nausea recede a little, but he was still obliged to spend a few minutes heaving into the gutter. Afterwards he rested his back against the tavern wall and sank slowly onto the cobbles, his breath steaming in the frigid air.
My wife,
the tall man had said. Maybe he had been calling to her. Or summoning a final memory as he struggled to take the image of her face with him into the beyond.
“A man with so many enemies shouldn’t make himself so vulnerable.”
The man standing over him was of average height but well built, with a lean, deeply lined face and a piercing stare.
“Erlin,” Vaelin said, releasing the hilt of his knife. “You don’t look any different.” He gazed blearily around the empty street. “Did I pass out? Are you here?”
“I’m here.” Erlin reached down to offer him a hand. “And I think you’ve had enough for one night.”
Vaelin took the hand and levered himself to his feet with difficulty. To his surprise he found he was at least half a foot taller than Erlin. When last they met he had barely come up to his shoulder.
“Thought you’d be a tall one,” Erlin said.
“Sella?” Vaelin asked.
“Sella’s fine, last I saw her. I know she would want me to thank you for what you did for us.”
I’ll fight but I won’t murder.
His boyhood resolve coming back to him, the promise he had made to himself after saving them in the wild.
I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents.
It felt so hollow now, so naïve. He remembered his disgust at Brother Makril’s tales of murdered Deniers and wondered if there was truly any difference between them now.
“I’ve still got her scarf,” he said, trying to force his thoughts in a more comfortable direction. “Could you take it to her?” He fished clumsily inside his shirt for the scarf.
“I’m not sure I could find her if I chose to. Besides, I think she would want you to keep it.” He took Vaelin’s elbow and guided him away from the tavern. “Walk with me for a while. It should clear your head. And there is much I would like to tell you.”
They walked through the empty streets of the western quarter, tracing a route through the rows of workshops that characterised this as the craftsman’s district. By the time they reached the river Vaelin knew from the ache building at the back of his skull and the increased steadiness of his legs that he was starting to sober up. They paused on the towpath overlooking the river, gazing down at the moonlight playing on the currents churning the ink black water.
“When I first came here,” Erlin said. “The river stank so bad you couldn’t go near it. All the waste of this city would flow into it before they built the sewers. Now it’s so clean you can drink from it.”
“I saw you,” Vaelin said. “At the Summertide Fair, four years ago. You were watching a puppet show.”
“Yes. I had business there.” It was clear from his tone he wasn’t about to elaborate on what type of business.
“You risk much coming here. It’s likely Brother Makril is still out hunting you somewhere. He’s not a man to give up a hunt.”
“True enough, he caught me last winter.”
“Then how..?”
“It’s a very long tale. In short he cornered me on a mountainside in Renfael. We fought, I lost, he let me go.”
“He let you go?”
“Yes. I was fairly surprised myself.”
“Did he say why?”
“He didn’t say much of anything at all. Left me tied up through the night whilst he sat by the fire and drank himself unconscious. After a while I passed out from the beating he’d given me. When I woke in the morning my bonds were untied and he was gone.”
Vaelin remembered the tears shining in Makril’s eyes.
Maybe he was a better man than I judged him to be.
“I saw you fight today,” Erlin told him.
Vaelin felt the ache at the base of his skull deepen. “You must be rich to have afforded a ticket.”
“Hardly. There’s a way into the Circle few know of, a passage under the walls that affords a good few of the arena.”
Silence stretched between them. Vaelin had no wish to discuss his test and was increasingly preoccupied with the suspicion that he was about to throw up again. “You said you had something to tell me,” he said, mainly in hope that further conversation would distract him from the burgeoning nausea in his gut.
“One of the men you killed, he had a wife.”
“I know. He told me.” He glanced at Erlin, noting the intense scrutiny in his eyes. “You knew him?”
“Not well. My acquaintance was with his wife. She has assisted me in the past. I count her as a friend.”
“She’s a Denier?”
“You would call her that. She calls herself Quester.”
“And her husband was also part of this… belief?”
“Oh no. His name was Urlian Jurahl. Once he had been called Brother Urlian. He was like you, a brother of the Sixth Order, but he gave it up to be with Illiah, his wife.”
Little wonder he fought so well.
“I took him for a soldier.”
“He took the trade of a boat builder after leaving the Order, became highly regarded, ran his own yard building barges, the finest on the river some say.”
Vaelin shook his head in sorrow.
I have served the Faith by killing an innocent builder of boats.
“What was he doing in the arena? I know he wasn’t a murderer.”
“It happened during the riots. Some locals got wind of Illiah’s beliefs, quite how I don’t know, mayhap her son spoke of it when at play, children can be so trusting. They came for her, ten men with a rope. Urlian killed two and wounded three more, the rest ran off, but they came back with the City Guard. Urlian was overpowered and taken to the Blackhold, his wife too.”
“Their son?”
“He hid at his father’s bidding as the fight raged. He’s safe now. With friends of mine.”
“If Urlian was defending his wife then it wasn’t murder. The magistrate would have seen that surely.”
“Surely. But the magistrate had some wealthy friends with an eye for an opportunity. Did you know the odds that you would survive your Test were hardly worth a bet? The odds against were long indeed. With Urlian in the arena it would be worth risking some gold on the long chance. They offered him a proposition, confess his crime and be chosen for the Test, an easy thing to arrange as your Masters would be quick to spot his skill. Once he had killed you he and his wife would be free.”
Vaelin realised he had sobered completely, the nausea fled in the face of the cold, implacable compulsion. “His wife is still in the Blackhold?”
“She is. By now she will have heard of her husband’s fate. I fear what her grief will make her do.”
“This magistrate and his wealthy friends, you have their names?”
“What would you do if I gave them to you?”
Vaelin fixed him with a cold stare. “Kill them all. That is your intention isn’t it? To set me on this course for vengeance. Well, you’ll get it. Just give me the names.”
“You misunderstand me Vaelin. I have no wish for vengeance. In any case you couldn’t kill them all. Wealthy men from noble families have many protectors, many guards. You might kill one, but not all. And Illiah would still be waiting her fate in the Blackhold once you have been cut down.”
“Then why tell me this when I can do nothing to set it right?”
“You can speak for her. Your word will carry much weight. If you went to your Aspect and explained…”
“She’s a Denier. They won’t help her unless she renounces her heresy.”
“She won’t do that. Her soul is bound to her beliefs more closely than you could imagine. I doubt she could renounce them even if she wished to. I know your Aspect to be a compassionate man Vaelin, he will speak for her.”
“Even if he does the Blackhold is no longer guarded by the Sixth Order since the last conclave. It falls under the control of the Fourth. I have met Aspect Tendris and he will not help an unrepentant Denier.” Vaelin turned back to the river, frustration raging in his chest, Urlian’s pale face asking for his wife over and over again in his head.
“So there’s nothing you can do?” Erlin asked. He sounded resigned and Vaelin knew his visit and been a desperate act, undertaken at considerable risk.
“You put great trust in me coming here,” Vaelin said. “Thank you.”
“I’ve lived long enough to judge a man’s heart.” He stepped back from the river, offering Vaelin his hand. “I’m sorry to have burdened you with this. I’ll leave you in peace now.”
“As I grow older I’m learning that the truth is never a burden. It’s a gift.” Vaelin shook his hand. “Tell me the names.”
“I won’t set you on a path to your own death.”
“You won’t. Trust me. I’ve thought of something I can do.”
He chose the gate on the eastern wall, assuming it would be the least busy. Even given the lateness of the hour the main palace gate would be too well guarded, too many mouths to speak of how Vaelin Al Sorna had appeared demanding an audience with the King.
“Piss off boy,” the sergeant at the gate told him, not bothering to emerge from the shelter of the guard house. “Go sleep it off.”
Vaelin realised he must smell like an ale house. “My name is Brother Vaelin Al Sorna of the Sixth Order,” he said, forcing authority into his voice as if he had every right to be here. “I request an audience with King Janus.”