They made him an offer: they would kill him quickly and painlessly, or he could brand himself a thief.
Kosar had done the cutting himself, sprinkling dried powdered Wilmott’s root into the wounds to prevent them from ever healing properly.
It had been harder for him to travel since then, more difficult to make friends. Even though he wore gloves, they grew bloody. Everyone knew what he was. Honest folk shunned him because he was a thief, and thieves shunned him because he had been caught. So he had traveled down the western side of Noreela, looking for a place to settle, realizing the farther he went that his life must now change.
He had stayed in Pavisse for several moons. His wounds had betrayed him there as well, yet in Pavisse that had seemed not to matter so much. The mining town had more than its fair share of criminals, and they formed something of an underclass, a society within a society. It was the last town he visited before finding and settling in Trengborne.
And now he was back, seeking to renew an old acquaintance.
SINCE LEAVING THEboy Rafe with his uncle, Kosar had wandered the bustling streets of Pavisse. Trengborne had sometimes numbed his senses with its blandness-the smell of dirt, the taste of cooked sheebok, the sounds of farming and families going about their mundane lives-but here they were opened up once again. The odors, the sounds, the sights of the streets amazed him for a while, worn traveler though he was, and he realized that his history had been gradually smothered by the constant glare of the Trengborne sun, and the idea that he had found his niche. The realization did not please him. He had been enjoying the life he had made for himself. There had even been a sense of reparation there, the idea that in a way he was making up for the damaged life he had been living. Not redemption, never redemption. Simply repair.
Now he was back in the world. He mourned Trengborne and its people, he was terrified and shocked by what he had witnessed and he needed to talk to someone friendly. This very fact proved just how far he had drifted from the life of a wandering thief.
He had spent only a few moons here but he had made friends, fellow rogues and vagrants who were happy spending their lives in taverns and food halls, exaggerating their exploits and commanding respect from like-minded exaggerators. Kosar had never embellished his past, nor glamorized it. Sometimes he had done his best to downplay what he had been, what he had done. Already, back then, he had been changing.
One of the friends he had made had been very special. He sought her now. He thought that she might know something about what he had seen back in Trengborne, the Red Monk that had slaughtered the village, what it all meant. She was a true traveler, a descendant of the Shantasi race that had been brought to Noreela in slavery thousands of years before. Their original home was long forgotten; some said it was an island to the east of Noreela, thousands of miles away across an uncrossable ocean. Others believed that the Shantasi had actually been brought into being by errant shades in the mountains of Kang Kang, their pale skins camouflage against the snow, their purpose to provide those incorporeal souls with premature flesh and blood homes. The Shantasi themselves were perpetually silent about their origins, but they could not hide one of their greatest gifts: knowledge.
A’Meer Pott had also been Kosar’s last lover.
The Broken Arm looked exactly the same as when he had last been there. The sign above the door showed a massive machine, its use or purpose clouded by the passage of time, its metal-and-flesh arm ripped and bent at one of its elbows. Bloodred wine flowed from the arm, or wine-red blood, it was not quite clear which. It continued to amaze Kosar that such an establishment had paid an artist a good amount for this piece of work. Inside, the absence of wealth was almost a theme.
Kosar nudged the door shut behind him and smiled slightly as the noise lessened, commotion slowed. He held his arms by his sides so that the patrons would not see his bloodied gloves, glanced around with feigned disinterest as if looking for the bar. He had hoped that A’Meer would call out from the darkness, but perhaps it was unreasonable to expect her to still be here.
As he took his first step the atmosphere in the tavern quickly returned to normal. He leaned on the bar and ordered a beer. The barman did not seem to recognize him from all those moons ago; there was a generous flow of travelers and criminals passing through all the time, and Kosar’s was just another face.
“Which one?” the barman asked gruffly.
Kosar raised his eyebrows. “You have more than one brew? You have gone up in the world.”
“Sarcasm will get you a face full of fist, thief. We have Port Brew, or Old Bastard.”
Kosar smiled and was pleased to see a brief response on the barman’s face. “Then a pint of Old Bastard, please.” As he poured, the barman-Kosar had never asked his name-launched into the endless stream of chat that Kosar remembered from his previous time here.
“So you been here before, then? I don’t remember your face, but then I wouldn’t, I’ve long since stopped seeing faces. I see tellans passed across the bar and that keeps me happy, that’s what I’m here for. I see the faces of pretty women, sometimes, but by the time they leave here they’re usually ugly. Always ugly inside, they have to be to come here, that’s what I’m told anyway. I don’t listen to a word. I like my customers, always have. No pretense amongst the downtrodden, no play at being civilized or rightful or law-abiding. Honest, that’s what these folks are. They know the way the world’s going and they don’t mind admitting it. And they get what they can out of it while they can, enjoy what they will. Like this.” He thumped down the jug of Old Bastard and stepped back, sighed, as if viewing a recently completed work of art. “That’s half a tellan for that. A lot, I’ll grant you, but wait till you taste it.”
Kosar handed over a coin. “One for yourself,” he said, and he enjoyed the flash of gratitude in the barman’s eyes.
There was a sudden burst of laughter from a corner of the tavern, and Kosar spun around. How can they laugh, he thought, when Trengborne lies dead, massacred? How can they laugh like that? But of course they did not know, nobody knew other than himself and the boy Rafe Baburn. Kosar looked at the group with envy. Three men, three women, comfortable in one another’s company, casual with their affections, their conversation easy and light. If only he had so few concerns, and so many friends.
“I don’t suppose you know A’Meer Pott?” he asked the barman. “She’s a Shantasi, used to come here three years ago.”
“Still does,” the barman said. “In fact, she works for me now and then.”
Kosar frowned, trying not to imagine what that work entailed.
“Don’t worry, thief,” the big man said. “Not that sort of work. I leave that side of things to the Twitching Twat down the road. The Broken Arm is a place to rest the mind, not exercise the body. No, she collects glasses, works the bar, makes food sometimes if there’re those here who’ll buy it.”
“Will she be in today?”
“She should be, come sunfall. Nice one, A’Meer. Very knowledgeable. A real traveler, so she keeps telling us. Though the fact that she’s stayed here so long seems to mar that image a little.”
“She is a real traveler,” Kosar said, smiling at the memory of her telling those stories, the disbelief of people when she openly proved them as true. “But for a Shantasi, a few years is nothing. They live a long time.”
The barman leaned over the bar and motioned Kosar closer. “She once told me,” he whispered conspiratorially, “that she’s been right to the end of The Spine.”
Kosar nodded. “She told me that too.”