The Promise of the Child (31 page)

“We'll find it eventually, Chaemerion.”

Another voice, softer: “I
told
you—they come and get it, once a month. How many times do I have to say the same thing before you'll believe me? There's nothing here but stock.”

A third, nasal: “You have nothing left now, no family, no future—why not just tell us the truth?”

“What have you done with them?” Chaemerion's tone was suddenly livid. “Tell me where—”

“Your pretty little lady?” replied the first voice, silencing him. “Your little—”

“You can look!” Chaemerion interjected. “There's nothing here!”

“We're sick of people like you, Chaemerion—the time has come to cut you down to size.”

There was a snap and a scream. Lycaste shuddered, his limbs tingling.

“Leo!” The first voice cried. “Have you …?
Now
what?”

“That was nothing! All I did was bend it.”

“We're going to have to look for ourselves now! I don't want to see that, roll him over.”

Something clattered to the floor, objects being moved. Lycaste still couldn't see around the bend in the tunnel. He moved another two inches and a yellowish elbow became visible.

“What about the man we saw in the field?”

“He'd gone when I went back up. Why? You think he's still here?”

“He might still be in the bushes somewhere. We should have taken him when we saw him on the hill.”

“Messenger?”

“Maybe. Go up now and find him.”

“It's getting dark.”

The first voice was silent for a moment. “Then go
now
, Leo.”

They were talking about him. Lycaste shivered at the thought of being followed all that way.

Footsteps, heading towards the corridor, halting briefly.

“And be quick.”

Lycaste flung himself into the room, ringed fingers poised, yelling as loudly and incoherently as he could. Someone lay face down on a huge, ornate table between two startled young men. The one closest reached quickly for something out of Lycaste's view, so he thrust out his arm and fired the weapon, bursting open the man's stomach with a mighty roar and slopping the room with bright streaks of red. The other cringed and ducked as his friend fell thrashing to the floor, the scream of the ring echoing through the other chambers and tunnels. Lycaste swung his hand at him, trembling and blinking at the blood in his eyes, the disembowelled man convulsing below them in a stink of shredded guts.

Finally he lay still. The survivor stared wide-eyed at his companion, then at his own blood-splattered body, before throwing himself to the ground in front of Lycaste.

“Take everything!” he grovelled. “Take it all! I don't care!”

Lycaste tried to work out which of the voices he'd heard had belonged to this man.

“I know where the money is, you can have it!”

He'd killed the nasal one. The young man peeked at him through blood-sticky fingers. He had beady, slightly bulging eyes set in a thin, intense face the colour of a ripe pumpkin. Lycaste kept his shuddering fingers pointed at him, glancing about the panelled chamber. The man-shaped heap on the table was trussed and very still; he couldn't see the face. Straining wooden shelves loaded with elegant bottles and vials lined the curved walls, all labelled and stuffed with purple plant cuttings. The man he'd shot was a collapsed heap beneath the legs of the table, one eye staring sightlessly upwards. Through another passageway he could see a row of oil-shiny devices, like huge measuring scales.

“Money?” asked Lycaste with an uneven voice.

The young man took one hand away from his face and looked up at Lycaste, then at his fingers. “Money, yes! It's yours, just let me live!”

Lycaste glanced over at the dead man on the table. “You killed him to take his money?”

“No! Not me!” He shook his head viciously. “My brother did it. I didn't want him to die!”

“This one was your brother?” Lycaste pointed at the ruined corpse at his feet.

“Yes. Leonotis. Don't take another son from our old father, I beg of you!”

“You killed a man just for his money?” Lycaste edged away from the body, his feet sticky where they stepped in everything that had come from the brother's stomach.

“
I
didn't! I told you—it was my brother! He wasn't supposed to hurt Chaemerion, just frighten him!”

“That's this man's name? Chaemerion?” he asked, thoroughly confused.

The man nodded.

“You killed the woman outside, too?”

His bright eyes darted about the room. “She was …” He shook his head and gulped. “You don't understand.”

“What about the children? Are they dead, too?” Lycaste asked, beginning to gag at the stink. He hoped, shamefully, that they might be. Then he could leave.

The young man returned his gaze. “Children?”

“I saw toys and things.”

His eyes widened and he sat up slowly to a crouch, his large hands thrust out in front of him; he had one more finger than he should have, Lycaste noticed. “We didn't see any children, they might have run away—Chaemerion was a cruel man. That's why we came—he kept money that wasn't his, kept slaves who were far from their homes. He had to be brought to justice.”

“How much money?” Lycaste had some in a cabinet at home, but it meant so little to him that he'd forgotten to get it before he left.

The crouching man took his orange, blood-splattered arms down slowly, watching Lycaste intently, new hope in his face. “Enough to last a lifetime! A dozen lifetimes! Much more than
they
needed. You're a good man. We can share it, what do you say? I take my half, you take yours, we go on our way. What do you think?”

Money.
He barely thought of it, though it was true that the thin strips of coloured silk could be cut and exchanged for most things: an equivalent amount of plastic, metals or food, livestock and pets, even services. His father had explained to him how it worked, carefully bringing out the family's collection of ribbons as a demonstration one day, but Lycaste had hardly listened, already guaranteed to inherit land, possessions and property. The land gave you food and raw elements for a lifetime, enough to trade should you want more than you had, and his land, he knew, was particularly beautiful. But that had all changed now: now he was homeless, and that money might come in useful.

“So you know where it is?” Lycaste asked the man carefully.

He raised his eyebrows, an urgent look on his expressive face. “How do I know you'll let me go, eh? You might kill me like my brother!”

That was why he sounded familiar. He had a Seventh accent, just like Pentas and her sister. “You called me a good man, that's why,” said Lycaste, attempting to smile. “What's your name?”

His captive hesitated. “Melilotis. And you?”

“It doesn't matter. Just call me Good Man.” He considered Melilotis. “So—why do you think he might have been … lying about the money?”

Melilotis smiled, his eyes fixed on the ring. “It's here,” he said, spreading his hands like he'd explained some mystical secret only he could understand. “I don't know exactly where, but it's here—don't you worry. You could put that down first,
Good Man
. Then we can look.”

Lycaste sucked his lips, thinking. Perhaps there wasn't any money at all and they'd come here for some other reason. He knew he couldn't kill this Melilotis, that he'd hit his quota for the day already, but what else was there to do with him? The intense, unnerving man was quite clearly saying what he thought Lycaste wanted to hear. It wouldn't be safe to just leave him here; he'd follow Lycaste, cut his throat or something while he slept in the wilds.

He peered into the next chamber with his fingers still trained on Melilotis, looking at the lines of weighing machinery. The other adjacent room, to his left, was a soaking area or something, full of big vats of steaming water. Through a small door, standing ajar, was a comfortable-looking solar, its ottomans piled with embroidered cushions.

“I'd like it if you went into the other room,” he said through a mouth thickened with saliva, gesturing carefully with his fingertips and allowing Melilotis to stand. “We're going to start looking.”

“Anything you say, Good Man,” Melilotis said. He shuffled towards the weighing scales, their eyes locking until Lycaste followed. He was short, his body atrophied and malnourished like the armoured woman's. Lycaste saw that he had extra toes, as well.

“
I
look, is that it? While you point that thing at me? Not very nice, Good Man.”

Lycaste said nothing, searching for a place where he could sit with the man in sight. Whatever those leaves were, they'd made him feel extraordinarily ill.

Melilotis turned to him impatiently. “So? Where shall I start? Chaemerion didn't tell us anything useful, but we know he keeps all the money here.”

“How do you know that?” Lycaste felt weak, suddenly very thirsty, only half-concentrating on what Melilotis was saying. He needed food and drink.

“He never leaves, not even when his servants go out. And he keeps that wolf chained to the house.”

“
Wolf
?”

“Leon killed it while it was looking for you.” He trailed off and laughed slyly. “That's right. We saw you, Good Man. Did you enjoy yourself in the field? Eh?”

Lycaste remembered how it had affected him. “What is that stuff?” He looked again at the glinting rows of bottles in the room they'd left, their poisonous contents floating in thick, piss-coloured oil.

“That stuff's why Chaemerion's
rich
, that's why we're all here, Good Man.”

“That's not why I'm here,” said Lycaste, collapsing onto a chair.

Melilotis's eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his voice was louder, more confident. “Why
are
you here, then? That's what I'm wondering, while my poor brother is dead in the next room because of you. Why is this man, this
good
man, here at all?”

Lycaste tried to look uninterested, even bored by the question, despite the sweat running down his face. He waved his fingers gently. “I have this, and that's all you need to know.”

“All I need to know,” mumbled Melilotis, smirking. Behind his head, Lycaste saw a gleam of metal. It was a chart, mounted and framed. “Go and get that map off the wall.”

Melilotis looked to see where Lycaste was pointing and dutifully brought it down, handing it over. He watched Lycaste glance at it. “I think I understand you now, Good Man.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

Melilotis beamed, a tiny trail of tears, barely more than a glint, rolling down his cheek. “You're lost,” he said, shaking his head at the absurdity and wiping his eyes. “You don't know where you are.”

“I'm not lost, Melilotis.”

“You are. You don't even know what you're doing, do you?” Lycaste knew it was only respect for the weapon that kept them talking at all. He spotted a fold of material that looked like it might tear lengthways and went to it, keeping a straight line of sight between him and Melilotis.

“Turn around.”

After he'd tied Melilotis, Lycaste went in search of food. They had a lot of it, including some things he'd never seen before. Ornately wrought sugar sculptures and sweet pastries wrapped in waxed paper, all boxed in casks in the four larders that he found. Perhaps this Chaemerion really was as wealthy as the robbers had suspected.

He went up into the light breeze of the rustling plantation. Curls of smoke still whispered from the ruin, bright lime night descending as he stood there, the vivid moon almost full. It felt good just being away from the man. He scanned the black stubble for what was left of the wolf, but even that might have been a lie. Nothing prevented him from just leaving, blocking the cellar door, perhaps taking the food and condemning the trapped man to starve. A horrible end. The first things he'd eat would be those plants, then maybe the cushions in the sitting room as he quickly went insane, cursing Lycaste for eternity.
Cursing the Good Man.
He mulled the possibilities over in earnest, knowing that he might have to shoot Melilotis after all.

Melilotis sat back, observing him with a wary silence in the dim, cushion-piled sitting room. “You promise? You give me your
word
, Good Man?”

“I promise. Show me exactly where we are and tell me everything I ask about the maps. Then you can go, with your share of the money, and we never have to see one another again.”

The trussed man leaned his head against the shelf behind, closing his eyes.

Lycaste went and squatted beside him. “Do we have a deal?”

“Give that here,” Melilotis said, opening his eyes and looking at the charts spread between them.

Lycaste pushed the map over and Melilotis studied it briefly, locating where they were on the engraved border between the Ninth and the Eighth. He shifted his bound ankles and pointed a toe delicately at part of the chart. “This is the valley, Uzunpinar.”

Lycaste leaned over cautiously, keeping his ringed fingers pointed in the man's general direction. “I know that, what's up … here?” He indicated an engraved line leading eastwards towards the inland sea. “What's that?”

“An Artery.”

He waited for more. “What is it, a road?”

Melilotis nodded, his curious, beady eyes wandering to the ring. “If you take it north, you go all the way past Erbaa.” He raised his head quickly, pointing into the air with his nose. “All the way out past the sea.”

Lycaste looked at it, tracing its progress. “But it goes
through
the Black Sea—it can't be a road.”

Melilotis sighed. “It's a … route. Sometimes a road, sometimes you take a ship or whatever to cross the Karadeniz, the Black Sea.”

“A ship? You've been on this route?”