Horvek’s nose looked as if it had been broken and reset several times, most of his left ear was missing and scars covered the muscular flesh of his arms. But it was his bearing that Frentis noticed, the set of his shoulders and the width of his stance. He had seen it many times in the pit. This man was Kuritai, a killer, like him.
“The Messenger is here?” she asked Horvek.
“He arrived two days ago.”
“Has he been behaving himself?”
“There have been no reported incidents in the city, Mistress.”
“That won’t last if he lingers.”
Horvek took the packhorses and forced a passage through the dockside throng as they followed, turning down myriad unknowable cobbled streets until they came to a square, rows of three-storey houses forming the four sides. In the centre of the square a large statue of a man on a horse stood in a patch of neatly trimmed grass. The woman dismounted and went to the statue, gazing up at the face of the rider. The figure was dressed in armour Frentis judged as somewhat archaic, the bronze from which he was fashioned liberally streaked with green. He couldn’t read Volarian but from the extensive list adorning the plaque on the base of the statue, this had been a man of no small achievement.
“There’s gull shit on his head again,” the woman observed.
“I’ll have the slaves whipped, Mistress,” Horvek assured her.
She turned away, walking towards a three-storey house situated directly opposite the statue. The door opened as she mounted the steps, a female slave of middle years bowing deeply. The interior was a picture of elegant marble and gleaming ornamentation, tall canvases on most walls, each depicting a battle of some kind, some showing a figure whose features resembled those of the bronze man outside.
“Do you like my home?” the woman asked Frentis.
Again the binding was loose enough to permit speech, but again he refused to do so. He heard the slave stifle a gasp but the woman just laughed. “Draw a bath,” she told the slave, turning to ascend the ornate staircase rising from the marble floor. Her will tugged Frentis along as she climbed the stairs and entered a large room where a man sat at a long table, a grey-clad somewhere past his fiftieth year. He was eating a plate of cured meat, a crystal wineglass at his side, and seemed to recognise Frentis instantly.
“You’ve put on some muscle, I see,” he said in Realm Tongue before taking a long drink from the wineglass.
Frentis searched his face, finding nothing familiar, but there was something in the man’s voice. Not the tone, the cadence. Plus he spoke Realm Tongue with no trace of a Volarian accent.
“Our young friend spent five years in the pits,” the woman said, keeping to Volarian. She perched herself on the tabletop, pulling off the calf-length boots she had worn in the desert to massage her feet. “Even the Kuritai only have to survive for one.”
“They don’t have the benefit of a life in the Sixth Order, eh, Frentis?” The man winked at him, provoking another surge of familiarity.
The woman gave the grey-clad a look of close scrutiny. “Older than your last. What’s this one’s name?”
“Karel Teklar, a wine seller of middling station, with a fat wife and five perfectly horrible children. I’ve done little else but beat the little beasts for two days.”
“The gift?”
The man shrugged. “Some small scrying ability he didn’t know he had. Always wondered why he did so well at cards though.”
“No great loss then.”
“No,” the man agreed, getting to his feet and coming closer to Frentis. The angle of his head as he studied him once again maddeningly familiar. “What exactly happened at Untesh, brother? I always wondered.”
Frentis remained silent until a flare of the woman’s will forced the words out. “Council-man Arklev Entril arrived to treat with Prince Malcius after the Alpirans laid siege, bringing greetings and offers of trade with the Volarian Empire. He shook my hand after I’d searched him for weapons. When the last Alpiran assault hit the walls his will bound me, forced me to abandon the prince. I ran to the docks and came aboard his ship.”
“That must’ve stung a bit,” the man said. “Losing the chance for glorious self-sacrifice. Another tale for Master Grealin to tell the novices.”
Frentis’s confusion deepened. How can he know so much?
“Don’t fret though.” The man moved away, casting his gaze about the room, taking in the racks of weapons lining the walls. “Malcius survived and returned to rule the Realm, though by all accounts, not remotely so well as his illustrious father.”
“Did Malcius see you run?” the woman asked.
Frentis shook his head. “I was commanding the southern section, he was in the centre.” I fled and left two hundred good men to die, he thought. They saw me run.
“So for all he knows,” the man said, “brave Brother Frentis, onetime thief raised to great renown by service in the Sixth Order, died heroically in the final attack on the city.” He exchanged a glance with the woman. “It’ll still work.”
She nodded. “The list?”
The man reached into his shirt and tossed a folded piece of parchment to her. “Longer than I expected,” she said, reading it.
“Well within your abilities, I’m sure.” He picked up the wineglass and took another large gulp, wincing a little as if he found it sour. “Especially with the help of our deadly urchin here.”
Urchin. Nortah used to call him that, Barkus too. But Nortah was dead and Barkus, he hoped, safely back in the Realm.
“Anything else?” the woman asked.
“You need to be at South Tower within a hundred days. Once there someone will find you. You’ll be tempted to kill him. It’s important you don’t. Tell him the Fief Lord alone won’t suffice. The whore must die as well. He should also have some word of our perennial foe, some stratagem to kill him, or at least make him vulnerable, the details are a little vague. Other than that.” He drained the wineglass and Frentis noticed a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Only the usual, eternal pain if you fail, and so on. You’ve heard it before.”
“He never was very original in phrasing his threats.” She got down from the table and walked to a rack of thin-bladed swords over the fireplace. “Any preference?”
The man flicked a fingernail against his wineglass, bringing forth a sharp ping. He smiled at the woman. “Sorry to disappoint you.” He dropped the glass to the floor where it shattered, slumping into the chair at the head of the table, face now bathed in sweat. His gaze grew unfocused, but brightened momentarily when he saw Frentis. “Give them all my regards, won’t you brother? Especially Vaelin.”
Vaelin. Frentis burned as the binding surged, keeping him immobile. He wanted to charge at the man, wring the truth from him, but could only stand in rigid fury as he grinned a final time. “You remember that last fight, that outlaw band the winter before the war?” he asked, voice fading to a whisper. “The blood shone like rubies in the snow. That was a good day . . .”
His eyes closed and his arms dropped, limp, lifeless, the swell of his chest halting shortly after.
“Now,” the woman said, shrugging off her clothes. “Time for a bath, don’t you think?”
CHAPTER THREE
Vaelin
I should have stopped her.
Reva took aim at the sack of straw they were using as a target, loosing an arrow which caught the edge of the charcoal circle in the centre. He saw her hide a grin of satisfaction. They had purchased a quiver and arrows in Rhansmill, gull-fletched with broad steel-tipped heads best suited to hunting. Every day she rose early to practice, at first scorning his advice but eventually accepting the guidance in sullen silence when she saw the wisdom of it.
“Your bow arm’s still too stiff,” he said. “Remember, push and pull, don’t just pull.”