Mulldoos looked like he had an angry rebuttal, but called it back before unleashing it. “Mock all you want, but you know I’m right. Devils take you if you don’t.”
“I admit to no such thing, but even if I did, I ask again: What would you have me do with her? I welcome suggestions. Tie her to a horse and prop her up with a stick? Pass her on to the silk house that treated her with such kindness when she was among them? Give her bones to a battalion of drummers to follow us around, marking our passage in macabre rhythms? How do you suppose I honor our dead, crippled whore, who made you so nervous and still somehow stealthily earned your respect while you looked away? Eh? What is it you recommend?”
Mulldoos replied, without much enthusiasm or conviction, “Give her to the beetle masters, bring her bones back with us.”
“To what end? It was difficult enough to deal with her alive. Do you suspect I want to cart around her bones as well?”
I offered, “Why not send her to the grass?”
Everyone looked and me, and Braylar replied, “I suggest you consult your notes again—her own family sold her to the least reputable slaver they happened to meet. After lopping off her fingers. No, there’s no one for her there.”
Hewspear said, “I think Arki has a point.”
Braylar raised a single eyebrow. “Do you? Startling. Please, enlighten.”
“We don’t send her to anyone. But we could take her to the edge of Green Sea. Bury her there. Even leave her to feed the dogs, or whatever other creatures haunt the plains. She would’ve found some grisly justice in that. But the grass was the only thing she thought of as home, even if she was an exile. The grass rejects no one.”
Braylar’s eyes widened. “I never suspected I was surrounded by such insipid sentimentalists. With honeyed tongues, no less. Truly, a revelation.” He stood, a bit unsteady, but placed one hand on the tabletop and righted himself, then flicked one of the flail heads. “To the grass, then? And will you two rapacious romantics take her—you, your ribs grinding to dust, and you, with your leg buckling underneath you? Is that the plan?”
Mulldoos looked towards me before answering. “I hauled her a long stretch yesterday. Not taking her a step farther, even with two good legs. But somebody will. Coin buys good couriers. Merchants leaving the Fair, pilgrims, hells, even a greedy Hornman or two. Turn any corner, you’ll run into one of them. Somebody will take her there, we fill their pouches. Pains me to say it, but Brokespear over there has the right of it—Lloi would’ve liked that. She deserved that much, if nothing else. Send her to the grass and be done with it.”
Braylar walked across the room, slowly but with surprising steadiness, considering how much he’d imbibed. His back to us, he said, “So be it. To the grass, then. Let the dogs welcome home one of their own.”
He casually lifted a horn panel of the blinds and looked out. While it was still cloudy outside, they were thin clouds, and the brightness forced Braylar to take a step back. He dropped the panel and took another step, as if retreating from a foe, and then turned quickly, walked to the corner of the room, and vomited mostly in the chamber pot, hands on his knees.
The smell reached me almost immediately, harsh and sour and caustic, and I turned away, noticing that Hewspear and Mulldoos shared a quick look.
Braylar returned to the table, glaring at the flail heads as he did, as if the strength of his hatred might somehow cow them into submission. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he filled his cup again. “Hard to maintain a stupor, when the stuff won’t stay in your belly. And with Lloi gone, stupor is all that can help me.”
Hewspear took a deep breath and held his side, then said, “I know you’ve heard this suggestion before, Captain, but given present circumstances, perhaps—”
“Perhaps nothing, Hew. We can’t willingly invite a Memoridon among us. It’s impossible. For reasons you’re familiar with, so I won’t waste my breath reiterating them.”
Hewpsear didn’t relent. “With Lloi gone—”
“We must find another rogue. And soon. That’s my only recourse.”
Mulldoos filled his cheeks with air before blowing it out. “It was freak luck we came across her, Cap. I don’t know how you figure we’ll find another. Maybe the old goat here is—”
“You’re going to coordinate the hunt for another one, Mulldoos. So I suggest you devise a plan, and do so immediately. We’ll be here for some time, so begin your efforts in Alespell.” He looked down at Bloodsounder. “That is all.”
Braylar coughed and took another drink, looking carefully at the three of us. Several moments passed, all awkwardly. Finally, he said, “Out with it, you two bastards. What niggles you now?”
Hewspear continued slowly sipping his drink and so it fell to Mulldoos. “Don’t know that I’d call it any kind of niggling, Cap. Only that… that is, you know the men and me, even this old horsecunt, we’d follow you through feast or fire. Always have, always will.”
“Dispense with the pretty qualifiers, lieutenant. They only make me nervous.”
“Fair enough.” Mulldoos laid his palms flat on the table, stared at the backs of his hands for a moment, an abundance of fine hair barely visible in the shafts of light. Then he looked up. “This whole Alespell business here… it’s a huge heaping of shit stew, Cap.”
“We’re soldiers—we don’t often have the luxury of choosing our meals. But explain, what is it that’s so offended your palette?”
Mulldoos replied, “Well, we’ve been skulking about here for near two years now, laying plans, biding time, twiddling our cocks, all the men anxious for a little action, and we finally put something in motion just now, coddle the baron, spring the trap on the underpriest, spill some blood. All good, only it hadn’t exactly worked out like we thought. Seems the trap got sprung on us—the underpriest dead, good men lost, your dog, too, and not much to show for it, except that guard.” It sounded as if he intended to say more, his last word hanging, waiting for the next, but nothing else came as Braylar looked at him. Finally, after staring at Hewspear, then me, he said, “Shit stew. That guard—”
“Knows nothing. A pawn. Surely, he can’t reveal anything to confirm the drama we played out for the good baron. Is that your worry?”
Mulldoos didn’t respond immediately, picked up his mug as if needing something to do with his hands. “Guard’s a guard. Even the captain of the guard probably didn’t know much more than when and where the high priest shat, but that one we captured, no, he knows horseshit and less.”
Braylar nodded and smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”
Mulldoos turned to Hewspear. “Cap’s grinning. Can’t for the life of me unspool that one. You unspool that one? Because I’m thinking a dead underpriest and a guard that knows less than a cunt hair won’t be helping our cause none.” He looked back to Braylar. “Must be I’m looking at this thing sideways, though. Must be. Cap, you help me see it straight?”
Braylar said, “Not so much sideways, lieutenant, but you’re looking at only a piece of the thing, rather than the whole. The guard won’t reveal anything to confirm our version of events, it’s true, but it’s equally unlikely he can reveal anything to dispel our story. He doesn’t know anything, as you pointed out, so he can’t reveal anything. A neutral play. Had we actually delivered the underpriest into their hands,” he pivoted on me, “something that was nearly accomplished, thanks to the exceptional bravery of our little scribbler here—he very well might have introduced information that would have raised doubts, doubts we could ill afford. So, despite what it cost us—and it did cost us—it’s actually fortuitous we had only an ignorant guard as our bounty.”
Clarity not coming on its own, I asked, “What do you mean by ‘version’? Why did you go to the temple if you didn’t intend to apprehend the priest?”
Before Braylar responded, Hewspear gave me a look brimming with pity. “You really haven’t told him much, have you?”
“I told him what he needed to know, as he needed to know it. No more, no less. But now it’s begun playing out and he has been entrenched with us, his tent is in the middle of our camp, there’s nothing further served by being cryptic. He’s embedded now.” Braylar addressed me, “I’d hoped to see the underpriest dead. When the opportunity didn’t avail itself to me, I thought at least he escaped. Until you came down the hill, leading him by the nose. That brought me no joy, I can tell you. But then a Brunesman took care of things in the copse, and it couldn’t have played out better. Alive, he was dangerous to us, because he might have known or suspected some of Henlester’s shady dealings.”
“Forgive my saying so, but isn’t assassination more serious than shady?”
Braylar replied, “The high priest had no plans to assassinate the baron. Or if he did, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Once again, I found the ground shifting beneath my feet. I should’ve been used to it, sharing this man’s company, but I never seemed to learn. Mulldoos said something, and Hewspear responded, but I was too stunned to pay much attention.
Braylar said, “The alleged assassination attempt, that was something conjured solely for the baron’s benefit.”
I floundered. “I don’t understand. The underpriest requested the meeting. He showed up with payment. Didn’t he?”
“True. He bore a satchel with gold,” Braylar replied. “Very incriminating, yes? But the underpriest wasn’t there to pay us for doing anything. Quite the opposite. It was a blackmail payoff. At least, he was there with the pretense of paying us. Until the earth belched out guards, and our traps were simultaneously sprung. Then, all illusion was dispelled.”
“What was he allegedly paying you to keep secret, if not assassination dealings? His treatment of prostitutes?”
Braylar replied “While his depraved taste for disfigured whores alone might have been worthy of blackmail, we decided to keep digging. And so we waited until one of our own had penetrated the inner sanctum of his temple and discovered that, as suspected, his transgressions didn’t end there.”
Hewspear jumped in, “He’s been engaged in some very creative bookkeeping.”
I waited for clarification and Mulldoos added, “Hadn’t been paying his liege what he ought.”
“And when we sent word we would expose him unless he paid dearly, he laid his trap while we laid ours. Blackmail was the ruse to draw out an agent of the high priest. Assassination was the ruse to draw out agents of the baron.”
Mulldoos filled his mug again. “Still, it was a close thing, Cap. That Gurdinn, if he’d come down to the temple with us, he—”
“Couldn’t,” Braylar corrected. “He couldn’t accompany us. Not so long as there was a chance we were telling the truth. Much as it galled him, he had to wait and watch, see how events transpired in the ruins. And while he suspects us of being capable of telling naught but lies—rightly, as it turns out—what he saw confirmed our tale. So you see, Mulldoos, while Captain Gurdinn will likely report grave misgivings about how things transpired or orders I gave, he can’t say with any truth—and whatever else his faults, I suspect he’s freighted with an abundance of cold honesty—he can’t say that he witnessed anything to confirm suspicions that we were deceiving them at all. In fact, things could hardly have conspired better to give substance to our story.
“While I severely underestimated Henlester, the fact the underpriest came with a satchel of coins and planted an ambush of his own goes some distance to proving that the high priest was exceptionally guilty of something, and we have already supplied a likely enough reason. And as Brune demonstrated at the Three Casks, the baron sees treachery everywhere, and is willing to alienate his fieflords and even Hornmen to root it out. That, coupled with the fact that the one man at the temple who might have stood a chance of dispelling our little illusion was struck down in the brush…” Braylar raised his mug. “We sustained losses, but circumstances also worked to our favor. Now—”
Vendurro swung the door open, and called in. “Bruneboy come by.” He walked over and handed the captain a scroll. “Got a summons, Cap.”
Braylar sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He pulled Bloodsounder off the table with an awful scraping and clinking and secured it to his belt, then rose slowly. “Well. That was earlier than expected. Still… I can’t very well refuse an opportunity for a social call, can I?”
Mulldoos stood and said, “We’ll be coming with, Cap.”
Hewspear added, “It would be a shame to pass up baronial hospitality. Rude even.”
Braylar looked at his two lieutenants long and hard. “Perhaps you should stay. There’s a chance this won’t turn out well.”
Mulldoos shrugged. “Things always turn to shit, sooner or later. We’re coming.”
“Very good.” Braylar turned to me. I expected he would offer me the same reprieve, and given what I just learned, I would’ve been sorely tempted to accept, but he didn’t. “To the baron’s castle then.”
⊕
We passed Vendurro in the common room, and Braylar ordered him to remain at the inn. As we left the Grieving Dog, the streets were already bustling with fairgoers. Between the mud from the previous day’s rain and the horse and dog feces, it was impossible to keep my shoes clean, so I gave up trying. I fell in behind the Syldoon, and with Mulldoos at the point cursing and glaring, the throng parted for the most part, with him only occasionally shouldering someone to the side. We moved away from the plazas and main thoroughfare as quickly as possible, and the crowds thinned as we took side streets toward the castle. Up on its hill, it was impossible to miss, even if it disappeared behind a building for a moment.
The route was circuitous, as no two streets ran parallel for very long, and few among them were truly straight, but we finally cleared the last residences and found ourselves at the hill’s base. Now, that close and with no obstructions, the hill seemed much higher than it had from the other side of Alespell.
We approached the first gate, which was flanked by two large towers on each side. I looked up and guards in purple and gray livery looked down. While the tall wooden doors of the gate were flung open, there were guards milling at the entrance, and one with bloodshot eyes walked over. After a drawn-out yawn, he said, “State your business.”