'What about the plotters?' Cappen inquired.
'Ah, those. The matter's been kept quiet, as you'd await. Still, while the temple of Ils can't be abolished, seemingly it's been tamed.' Jamie's regard sought across the table and sharpened. 'After you disappeared, Danlis agreed to let me claim the whole honour. She knew better - Rosanda never noticed - but Danlis wanted a man of the hour to carry her redes to the prince, and none remained save me. She supposed you were simply worn out. When last I saw her, though, she ... um-m ... she "expressed disappointment".' He cocked his ruddy head. 'Yon's quite a girl. I thought you loved her.'
Cappen Varra took a fresh draught of wine. Old summers glowed along his tongue. 'I did,' he confessed. 'I do. My heart is broken, and in part I drink to numb the pain.'
Jamie raised his brows. 'What? Makes no sense.'
'Oh, it makes very basic sense,' Cappen answered. 'Broken hearts
tend to heal rather soon. Meanwhile, if I may recite from a rondel
I completed before you found me -
'Each sword of sorrow that would maim or slay, My lady of the morning deftly parries. Yet gods forbid I be the one she marries! I rise from bed the latest hour I may. My lady comes to me like break of day; I dream in darkness if it chance she tarries.'
A FEW REMARKS BY FURTWAN COINPINCH, MERCHANT
The first thing I noticed about him, just that first impression you -understand, was that he couldn't be a poor man. Or boy, or youth, or whatever he was then. Not with all those weapons on him. From the shagreen belt he was wearing over a scarlet sash - a violently scarlet sash! - swung a curved dagger on his left hip and on the right one of those Ilbarsi 'knives' long as your arm. Not a proper sword, no. Not a military man, then. That isn't all, though. Some few of us know that his left buskin is equipped with a sheath; the slim thing and knife-hilt appear to be only a decoration. Gift from a woman, I heard him tell Old Thumpfoot one afternoon in the bazaar. I doubt it.
(I've been told he has another sticker strapped less than comfortably to his inner thigh, probably the right. Maybe that's part of the reason he walks the way he does. Cat-supple and yet sort of stiff of leg all at ,once. A tumbler's gait - or a punk's swagger. Don't tell him I said!)
Anyhow, about the weapons and my first impression that he couldn't be poor. There's a throwing knife in that leather and copper armlet, on his right upper arm, and another in the long bracer of black leather on that same arm. Both are short. The stickers I mean, not the bracers or the arms either.
All that armament would be enough to scare anybody on a dark night, or even a moonbright one. Imagine being in the Maze or some place like that and out of the shadows comes this young bravo, swaggering, wearing all that sharp metal! Right at you out of the shadows that spawned him. Enough to chill even one of those Hell Hounds. Even one ofyou-know-who's boys in the blue hawk-masks might step aside.
That was my impression. Shadowspawn. About as pleasant as gout or dropsy.
SHADOWSPAWN by Andrew Offutt
His mop of hair was blacker than black and his eyes nearly so, under brows that just missed meeting above a nose not quite falcate. His walk reminded some of one of those red-and-black gamecocks brought over from Mrsevada. They called him Shadow-spawn. No compliment was intended, and he objected until Cudget told him it was good to have a nickname - although he wished his own weren't Cudget Swearoath. Besides, Shadowspawn had a romantic and rather sinister sound, and that appealed to his ego, which was the largest thing about him. His height was almost average and he was rangy, wiry; swiftly wiry, with those bulgy rocks in his biceps and calves that other males wished they had.
Shadowspawn. It was descriptive enough. No one knew where he'd been spawned, which was shadowy, and he worked among shadows. Perhaps it was down in the shadows of the 'streets' of Downwind and maybe it was over in Syr that he'd been birthed. It didn't matter. He belonged to Sanctuary and wished it belonged to him. He acted as if it did. If he knew or suspected that he'd come out of Downwind, he was sure he had risen above it. He just didn't have time for those street-gangs of which surely he'd have been chieftain.
He was no more sure of his age than anyone else. He might have lived a score of years. It might have been fewer. Had a creditable moustache before he was fifteen.
The raven-wing hair, tending to an indecisive curl, covered his ears without reaching his shoulders. He'd an earring under that hair, on the left. Few knew it. Had it done at fourteen, to impress her who took his virginity that year. (She was twoscore-and-two then, married to a man like a building stone with a belly. She's a hag with a belly out to here, now.)
'The lashes under those thick glossy brows of his are so black and thick they look almost kohled, like a woman's or a priest over in Yenized,' a man called Weasel told Cusharlain, in the Vulgar Unicorn. 'Some fool made that remark once, in his presence. The fellow wears the scar still and knows he's lucky to be wearing tongue and life. Should have known that a bravo who wears two .throwing knives on his right arm is dangerous, and left-handed. And with a name like Shadowspawn ...!'
His name was not Shadowspawn, of course. True, many did not know or no longer remembered his name. It was Hanse. Just Hanse. Not Hanse Shadowspawn; people called him the one or the other or nothing at all.
He seemed to wear a cloak about him at all times, a thoughtful S'danzo told Cusharlain. Not a cloak of fabric; this one concealed his features, his mind. Eyes hooded like a cobra's, some said. They weren't, really. They just did not seem directed outward, those glittering black onyxes he had for eyes. Perhaps their gaze was fixed on the plank-sized chips on his shoulders. Mighty easily knocked off.
By night he did not swagger, save when he entered a public place. Night of course was Hanse's time, as it had been Cudgel's. By night ... 'Hanse walks like a hungry cat,' some said, and they might shiver a bit. In truth he did not. He glided. His buskins' soft soles lifting only a finger's breadth with each step. They came down on the balls of the feet, not the heels. Some made fun of that not to Hanse - because it made for a sinuous glide strange in appearance. The better-born watched him with an aesthetic fascination. And some horripilation. Among females, highborn or otherwise, the fascination was often layered with interest, however unwilling. Most then said the predictable: a distasteful, rather sexy animal; that Hanse, that Shadowspawn.
It had been suggested to him that a bit of committed practice could make him a real sword-slinger: he was a natural. Employment, a uniform ... Hanse was not interested. Indeed he sneered at soldiers, at uniforms. And now he hated them, with a sort of unreasoning reason.
These things Cusharlain learned, and he began to know him called Shadowspawn. And to dislike him. Hanse sounded the sort of too-competent young snot you step aside for - and hate yourself for doing it.
'Hanse is a bastard!' This from Shive the Changer, with a thump of his fist on the broad table on which he dealt with such as Hanse, changing loot into coin.
'Ah.' Cusharlain looked innocently at him. 'You mean by nature.'
'Probably by birth too. A bastard by birth and by nature! Better that all such cocky snotty stealthy arrogant bravos were stillborn!'
'He's bitten you then, Shive?'
'A bravo and a lowborn punk he is, and that's all.'