You
wouldn’t say that if I was Thirl.
‘Thank you. I’d appreciate
that. But I’ll be going to the Second, not the First. And I’m not
going anywhere until I have a few answers, Master Pickle.’ She
clutched the staff a little tighter, seeking reassurance.
Pickle spent a
moment gazing at her, then looked into his drink, considering. She
took the opportunity to glance around the common room.
Davron, Scow
and Meldor were together as usual, talking to another Unstabler.
They were all drinking some of the local spirit that was the end
result of a distilling plant in Pickle’s cellar, its basic
ingredient known only to Pickle, which was probably just as well.
Corrian had already disappeared upstairs with a toothless trader
known as Gasp the Smell. Graval Hurg and the Chameleon were nowhere
to be seen, and Portron, apparently remembering what Davron had
once said about kineses in his presence, had retreated to the stair
hall to hold a small devotions session. The only other occupants of
the common room were a group of Defenders morosely regarding their
glasses and eyeing—even more morosely—the tainted waitresses.
‘Why should I
give you any answers?’ Pickle asked finally. ‘You wouldn’t like ’em
if you heard ’em.’
‘Because Piers
was your friend and I’m his daughter.’
He stared at
her again, still considering. She stared back, refusing to be
intimidated. He leaned his bulk across the table towards her, and
the slab-top groaned. ‘Stubborn,’ he growled.
She nodded,
and did not lean away from him, even though his breath did smell of
tebblewitz yams and garlic.
‘Your Dad said
you had twice the gumption of your brother. Whatsisname—Tirl.’
‘Thirl.’
‘He stayed at
home, I suppose.’
She nodded
again.
‘All right,
lassie, I’ll give you the full story, but you won’t like it.’
Blandishments had not worked so now he was aiming to punish her
recalcitrance. At least she knew she was going to get the truth,
with no glossing over the unpleasantness of a messy death.
He settled
back in his especially reinforced chair. ‘Your Dad had dinner with
me the day he arrived, everything as normal, although he’d had an
unusually rough trip. After dinner, he went on up to his room to
avoid a kinesis session. Several of the ley-lit followed him up to
buy maps.
‘Some time
that evening, two ... creatures climbed the stockade wall into the
yard. A Minion and her pet Wild. My stableboy was killed. His head
was bitten off and his heart eaten out of his body. The guard at
the gate must have heard something and went to investigate. He was
killed too. Ripped open and all his guts spilled into the hay. The
intruder and the pet then climbed up to the second storey and
entered the building through a shuttered window, by ripping the
shutters off their hinges. Nobody seems to have noticed the noise.
The room was empty at the time and most of the halt guests were
still downstairs.
‘They then
sniffed along the passage until they came to a room occupied by an
unbound man called the Mantis. He was a stranger around here, and
we don’t know much about him. He opened the door to ’em, poor
fellow. What exactly happened after that, we don’t know. Certainly
he was tortured. His throat was crushed at some point, perhaps to
stop him screaming. Later, we don’t know how much later, he was
killed. His room was thoroughly ransacked.
‘Then the
bastards went to Piers’ room. Piers put up a bit of a struggle.
Nothing much, you understand, but by this time people had heard
things and were beginning to come out of their rooms asking what
was going on. I was called from down in the common room. I came
upstairs, and saw there was blood seeping out under the door of the
Mantis’s room. I opened the door and found him. By then the Wild
must have killed Piers as well. I’m not quite sure how. You can
take your pick: his neck was broken, his ribs were stove in, and
something had taken a great bite out of his neck—maybe after he was
dead—and drunk his blood.’
Keris looked
down at her hands. She had been moving a pile of crumbs left on the
table from one place to another.
He died,
she told herself.
How doesn’t matter. How doesn’t matter
—
But it did.
Terribly.
Her hand
strayed to caress the top of Piers’ staff again. ‘Go on,’ she said,
and the huskiness of her voice, the unbearable lump in her throat,
wanted to spill over into helpless tears.
Girlie be blasted,
she thought.
I won’t act the way he expects me to!
He went on,
‘After I found the Mantis, I looked around for Piers, not knowing
he was already dead. Damn good man to have in a fight with those
knives of his, Piers was, and I was pretty sure whatever had done
the Mantis in was still around. We were all out there in the
passage making enough noise to wake a hibernating puckleworm, yet
Piers’ wasn’t there. That wasn’t like him…’ He sighed. ‘That was
when that thing came bursting out of Piers’ room. The Wild, with
its maws all covered in blood. Piers’ blood, dripping down from its
mouth and matting its curls of wool. Horrible thing. Sort of like a
pear-shaped dog with talons and too many teeth for its mouth. They
were stuck out all over the place, I remember. Couldn’t close his
jaws over them...’
This time it
was Pickle’s voice that was husky. He took a drink from his mug.
‘The Minion came next. A bitch with reddish hair, the colour of
moggie fur. Name of Cissi Woodrug.’
‘You knew
her?’
‘Yep. Friend
of mine once, back in the days before she was corrupted. Ley-lit
daughter of a courier who took her with him on his trips after her
mother died. Hard as nails was Cissi, but cute. Very cute in a
brittle kind of way. Knew the Unstable like most people know their
own hearths.’
He paused but
she didn’t say anything.
‘She looked me
straight in the eye and said, “Lo there, Pick. Long time no see.”
Piers’ blood was all over her. If there was any justice in the
world she would have been struck dead, right there and then, just
with the look I gave her. “You going to kill me too, Ciss?” I
asked.
‘ “Nah,” she
said. “Next time maybe. I reckon you’ll suffer a bit over what
happened to your friend the mapmaker, so why cut short a man’s
suffering? That’s not the way of a Minion.” She was alive with ley;
it crackled all over her. Not that I could see it, mind, but that’s
what the ley-lit said afterwards, she sparkled with ley like
cracklewood in a fireplace. I reckon that’s what gave her
protection against the stability of the halt. She and that pet of
hers had somehow absorbed enough ley to shield themselves.
‘ “What did
the Unmaker have against Piers’?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.
“Gather everyone in the building in the common room,” she ordered,
imperious-like. Well, we did. We didn’t have all that much choice.
That pet of hers winkled everyone out of the rooms, right down to
the cookboy, poor lad. Several of the Defenders who were here then
tried to rush her and the animal. The bitch’s dog-pet was too fast
for most of them, and the man who almost got to her with his pike,
well, Cissi sort of swept him aside with the weapon in her hand. He
let go of the pike with a yell you could’ve heard halfway to the
Fist. His hands were burned to the bone.’
He gave an
involuntary glance at a spot in the middle of the room. ‘Men bleed
a lot when they’ve been tore apart,’ he said softly, ‘and she was
right. Sometimes you suffer more when you live to remember.’ He
sighed and shrugged. ‘What more is there to say? She lined us up
and asked us one by one if any of us knew anything about some map
or maps that the Mantis had, or that Piers had. Special maps, she
called them. Well, no one did, and I reckon that was the truth.
When a slobbering beast with his teeth still dripping blood looked
up from what he was eating and licked his chops, and that bitch
looked down into the depths of your soul with her red eyes, I
figure no one could have lied to save their old granny, let alone a
map.’
He took
another drink, draining his mug this time. ‘And that’s it, lass.
Cissi left us. Walked out with that beast, calm as you please,
although I think the stability was getting to them both a bit by
that time. She was fidgeting. That pet of hers took the cookboy
with him as a late night snack. He was the eighth. Oh yes, and
there was the baby too. Chaosdamn, how could I have forgotten? It
died as well, just because it looked tasty, I reckon. It was
swallowed whole, gulped down just like that, still crying its heart
out.’
They were
silent for a long time after that. Pickle ordered himself another
drink and sipped it, but Keris just sat, hands cupped around the
end of the staff, so nauseated she didn’t dare open her mouth.
‘Tell you one
funny thing,’ Pickle said after a while. ‘We found the ownership
papers for Piers’ horse in the Mantis’s room, and for the Mantis’s
horse in Piers’ room. Never did figure that one out. Anyway, I put
the scrip for Ygraine in with Piers’ things when I packed ’em up to
sent them to you. Piers’ things had been ransacked too, of course,
and the room itself torn to bits. Chaosblast of a mess.’
‘Did you ever
find out anything about the Mantis? Who he was, where he’d come
from?’
‘Well, of
course I asked everyone who passed through for the next few weeks.
I wanted to know if he had any family or anything; anyone who ought
to be told. An Unbound from down south said he’d known him. The
Mantis was a loner, he said, in service from time to time with a
mapmaker from the south. A man called Deverli. And that was all I
ever found out about the poor fellow. Not much of an epitaph, is
it? Maker knows what his real name was.
‘Tell you
another odd thing, though, Keris me girl, that little group over
there—’ he nodded towards Meldor, Scow and Davron ‘—they were
through here a day or two before either the Mantis or Piers
arrived, and they were looking for the Mantis. And they asked after
Piers too. I told ’em I reckoned Piers would have been heading back
to Kibbleberry by then. It was late in the season, after all. They
left; the Mantis and Piers arrived a day or two later. But I guess
they’ve already told you what all that was about.’
She felt the
muscles in her face tighten. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t say they’ve
mentioned it.’
‘They were
back a couple of weeks later as well. Asked me about what happened.
Wanted to go through the Mantis’s things. I let ’em—didn’t seem
much point not to. There wasn’t anything of value. Wanted to see
Piers’ gear as well, but I’d long since sent that off with Blue
Ketter. They also spoke to the Kitten. She’s the chambermaid here.
The one with the whiskers. It was her that packed up Piers’
baggage. I just didn’t have the heart. He was a good friend,
Piers.’
She looked up
from the pile of crumbs. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now, Master
Pickle.’
He nodded.
‘Told you that you wouldn’t like it.’
‘I didn’t
expect to like it. But I still wanted to know.’
‘We buried him
outside the stockade wall. But, you know how it is.’
‘Yes, I know.’
The Unstable would have wiped away every scrap of evidence there’d
ever been a grave. And, according to Chantry, Piers would never be
at one with That Which Was Created. Instead of being returned to
Creation, his body was now part of Chaos, and his soul—well,
whether it would ever find its way through to the Maker was a
question to which nobody knew the answer.
Chantry said
everyone must make their pilgrimage. Chantry excluded the unwanted
to the Unstable. Chantry refused to allow the Unbound back into the
stabilities, even for the short time they could bear to be there.
Yet Chantry also told you it was a terrible thing to die in the
Unstable. Damn Chantry, damn them all.
She stood up
abruptly and picked up the staff. She knew now she would never be
able to part with it. ‘Goodnight, Master Pickle.’
He nodded
sadly and began to play with the heap of crumbs she’d made.
To leave the
room she had to go past Davron’s table, but he reached out to touch
her sleeve as she passed. ‘Keris, there’s someone here I’d like you
to meet.’ He indicated the stranger at the table. He was a small,
bright-eyed man wearing the rough leathers so preferred by
Unstablers. ‘This is Rossel,’ Davron said. ‘He’s a peddler—’
‘—Of pins and
needles, string, thread, hobnails, charms, scissors, whetstones and
knives,’ the man said. ‘If you have any needs, lass—’
She smiled at
him. ‘Not at the moment. I’m Keris.’
‘—Kaylen,’
Davron added, ignoring her instinctive gesture of annoyance at his
giving her full name. ‘Piers’ daughter. I wanted you to hear what
he has to say, Keris. There is something odd happening to the
south, and I wondered what you, as a mapmaker’s daughter, might
make of it.’
Rossel nodded
and dropped his peddler’s demeanour as swiftly as his spiel. He may
be a peddler now, she decided as she listened, but once he was much
more than that. He spoke like an educated man; the cheery bonhomie
of a peddler had suddenly became the inquisitive intelligence of
someone more used to research than selling. She wasn’t surprised:
most of the excluded had held jobs vastly different to the ones
that earned them a living in the Unstable.
‘It’s good
news, we hope,’ he said, bright eyes fixed on hers. ‘There have
been a number of patches of stability, fixed features, popping up
out of nowhere. Seven to be exact, that we know of. Down near the
Eighth Stability.’
‘How big are
they?’ she asked and sat down on the chair Davron proffered. She
hadn’t intended to stay, but all her emotional fatigue vanished at
the idea that new stabilities were appearing.
Hope
, she
thought.
Hope, at last
—