A Sword From Red Ice (57 page)

He said, "A hundred horses and I'm keeping
the clansmen."

"A hundred and fifty and I keep the
clansmen."

She was nothing if not fast. Marafice looked into
her small black eyes and told her, "The clansmen are not
negotiable." He barely knew why he did it, for up until that
point the clansmen had been negotiable—they were captives,
their purpose was to be pumped for information and then sold. It even
made sense that she, as a clan chief, would want to buy back members
of her liege clan, Blackhail. Yet he did not think her purpose here
was a moral one. Anything this woman gave you would end up costing
more than its worth.

Just as Yelma Scarpe opened her mouth to speak,
Marafice stopped her. He had remembered something about the Scarpe
roundhouse and thought, To hell with it, I'll let if fly. "I
heard there was some burn damage to your roundhouse. Must make it
hard to defend."

That closed down her pinched little face. She had
just been about to insist on the clansmen, he was certain of it, but
now she paused for a moment to rethink. Around the glade, two hundred
swordsmen shifted their weight from foot to foot. Some let their
sword points dip, others exchanged brief glances.

"A hundred and fifty. Done." Yelma
Scarpe rose to her feet. "I'll send out a bargeman to run the
ropes. Be ready with your tribute within the hour."

Tribute, that was a nice word for it. Marafice did
not bid her farewell, indeed said nothing as he watched her bony rump
slip away between the trees. She was a weasel all right. He did not
think he had bested her, but at least he had held on to something.
Fifty horses and five clansmen to be exact.

The thought gave him some pleasure, and when a
lone cloud puffed across the sun he actually smiled at the man who
had been trying to blind him with the reflection from his sword.
Apparently the Eye's smile was not a pleasant sight for the swordsman
looked quickly away. Blinded you back with ugliness, Marafice thought
with satisfaction.

"Come on, boys," he said to Tat and the
mercenary. "Let's get out of this weasel's den and make our way
home." Spire Vanis was calling his name.

Stormbringer

Wet and low, that's what they were, and Crope
didn't like it one bit. Whoever had said that thing about not
appreciating what you had until you lost it was wise enough to be a
king.

Or a thief. Crope tried not to think bad things
about Quillan Moxley, he really did. Business was business and a deal
had been struck and Quill had fulfilled his part of the
bargain—moving Crope and his lord out of the Rat's Nest and
into a second location where they were bound to be safe as long as
Crope kept his big stupid self out of sight—but it seemed to
Crope that the spirit of the agreement had been underserved. With his
lord supplying Quill with information leading to profit you might
have thought that the thief would have arranged a move up for them.
Not down.

Crope frowned at the two tiny and perfectly square
windows high above him. He did not like being down. Down meant mines
and diamond pipes, groundwater, sludge, mold, gases, dead mice and
fear of being trapped. He could tear down a wooden wall—it was
dusty and a bit dangerous and it made his back ache—but when
you were underground the walls were made of stone, and even if you
did knock one down you wouldn't find freedom on the other side. You'd
just find earth instead. It was the kind of thought that could lead a
man to panic, and Crope had spent considerable mental energy
attempting to set it aside.

In fairness to Quill he had provided several
luxuries. Crope's lord now had a proper horsehair mattress and
pillows filled with pigeon down. And the blankets the thief had
brought three days back were so soft that when you slept in them it
was like taking a warm bath. Stools, candles, clothing, a pine chest,
tin bowls, pewter spoons, a flowery blue pitcher for water, chamber
pots, an hourglass, dice, sheepskin slippers, a sheepskin rug, a
wooden thing with hinges of uncertain purpose that Crope was too shy
to ask about and a small pig-shaped stove had all been smuggled down
to the cavernous depths beneath the Quartercourts.

"There's a world of rats down there,"
Quill had said that first night as they made their way southeast
through the back alleys of the city, fleeing the red blades, "and
the very few individuals you're likely to encounter will have more
reason than yourselves to keep their distinguishables hidden."

Pulling the handcart containing Baralis, Quill had
led them toward the center of the city where the legal wranglings and
public executions took place. Quill had ordered Crope to walk behind
him at "a distance no less than thirty paces." That way,
Crope supposed, passersby would not mistake them for a group. It had
been a difficult journey, for Crope had feared losing sight of his
lord. Every time Quill rounded a corner, Crope's five-chambered heart
would thump against the inside of his rib cage like a reverse punch.
He trusted Quill—nearly, almost, completely—but danger
could strike around any bend and wipe both men out. At least he'd had
the dogs to calm him.

Town Dog and Big Mox had spent most of the journey
quiet as lambs, content to let the slack in their leashes flop
against their backs. It was only when Town Dog, with her considerably
shorter legs, decided quite suddenly she was done with walking and
plonked down her rump in the mud that Big Mox had started acting up.
Crope didn't think Big Mox realized he was just too big to be picked
up and slipped inside the space between a man's tunic and his
undershirt like Town Dog. Big Mox was a fierce and oversized match
bull who became grouchy when he thought he was losing out. Crope had
had to spend the final quarter of the journey yanking on his leash to
prevent him pissing against every hitching post and barrow leg they
passed.

Crope already knew the Quartercourts by sight, for
he had walked around the giant limestone edifice several times in the
days before he rescued his lord. It was a place where instinct told
him not to dally. A circle of gibbets lay directly across from the
courts' wide and impressive steps, and whenever Crope had passed by,
bodies in various states of mutilation had been hauled up like ragged
flags. By day the courts teemed with red blades and finely dressed
men who were so rich they had no need to hitch their horses. They
were either carried there in covered chairs lined with cushions, or
had servants stand outside and hold their horses' reins while the
lords went inside to conduct business. A lot of men wore thick
chains of office draped across their shoulders. Quill said those men
were grangelords dressed for session. Crope wasn't quite sure what a
session was but he had a feeling it was something to do with lopping
off men's heads.

It had seemed a strange choice of hideaway, but
that night when they had fled Quill's townhouse Crope had been in no
state to ask questions. Besides, at least they weren't heading north,
the direction of all terrible things.

It had been a relief to get off the streets. The
area around the Quartercourts was strangely quiet at night; the grand
halls and places of learning closed up. There were no street vendors
plying their trade on corners or street girls huddling around
charcoal braziers for warmth. It wasn't that sort of place. Business
was done by day here, and when darkness fell all the fine men in
chains, and the judges, officials, armsmen, ushers, scholars and
grooms moved elsewhere, out of sight of the gibbets and into those
parts of the city where you could sup cool ale and feast on
sweetmeats and linger over life. Walking the empty and echoing
streets, playing tug-o'-war with Big Mox while trying to keep his
lord and Quill in his sights, Crope had felt exposed. Actual paving
stones had been laid underfoot and his footsteps retorted like
crossbolts. He felt only relief when Quill had executed one of his
rakish turns into an arch sunk deep into the shadows of the
Quartercourts' western facade and rapped lightly on a miniature door
carved from a single chunk of hickory. After a brief exchange of
whispers, Quill and his motley band of misfits and dogs was allowed
entry into the limestone halls of Spire Vanis' public courts.

Quillan Moxley was the sort of man who had friends
in all kinds of places. Associates, he called them, men and women who
owed him favors, were involved in various illegal activities with
him, or were the sort of people whose silence could be bought for a
price. Crope did not know which category the night warden of the
Quartercourts fell into, but he did know that the man had gone to
considerable lengths to ensure he had not seen Crope.

"Self-protection," Quill had told Crope
later, after the thief had led them to the second under-level beneath
the limestone compound. "What a man doesn't know for certain he
can lie about with impunity."

Crope didn't know what the word impunity meant but
he figured it had something to do with being interrogated by
bailiffs. They couldn't force knowledge from you that you didn't own.
Crope had seen the back of the night warden's head a few times over
the past days and concluded that he had clean hair.

"I used to store fruit and vegetables down
here at one time," Quill had said, walking through the series of
dank stone cellars that would become Crope's home. "It was a
good little earner until the Lord of the High Granges opened his
passes to cheap produce from the south."

Crope had frowned and nodded, attempting to
demonstrate to Quill his understanding of the finer points of
business.

"Better off without it, really. Carts loaded
with cabbages were getting difficult to smuggle past the watch."
Quill shook his small head with feeling. "And God help you if
you made the mistake of taking possession of perishables. They had to
be up and out within a day."

More frowning and nodding was called for, though
in truth Crope had got stuck on the word perishables and was no
longer quite certain what the thief meant.

Quill had appeared to appreciate the sympathy
regardless, "Well I'll be off for now. You have the use of all
the space right up to the icehouse door. Only time anyone comes down
here is to pick ice so when you hear footsteps move sharpish and lock
yourselves in the big stockroom at the back. Night warden's the only
one besides yourself who has the key."

The big stockroom had turned out to be the best
room out of the lot of them. It was situated against the
Quartercourts' exterior western wall and although it was
low-ceilinged like the other cellars, two wind shafts provided light
from the ground-level windows in the room overhead. If you stood just
underneath the shafts, which Crope was currently doing, you could
look up and see the sky through iron bars. Sometimes Crope saw
flashes of people's feet and legs as they hurried down the street.
Once he'd looked up and seen a raven tapping against the bars.

It was good to be able to keep Town Dog here. The
small room at the top of Quill's townhouse had not been big enough
for master, servant and dog, so Town Dog had had to go and stay with
Quill. Crope had missed the busy little creature with her off-white
coat and stubby tail. She'd followed him around a town he'd once
visited far to the east of here, and when he'd had to leave in a bit
of a hurry—owing to an unfortunate incident concerning the
removal of a support beam from a tavern—she'd trotted through
the gates, right on his heels. Town Dog had been with him ever since.
She'd even been with him the night he'd gone to the pointy tower to
free his lord.

She hadn't been allowed in this room at first, of
course. His lord slept here, in the best, driest and airiest spot,
his mattress raised off the floor by a wooden pallet and separated
from the damp wall by a nailed-up sheepskin. Crope had been nervous
about how his lord would react to the dog for he had no memory of
Baralis treating any animal beside his horse with kindness. Plus,
Town Dog was an energetic scrap of dog-ness, disinclined to sit and
with a tendency to smell. Deciding it was best to keep them apart,
Crope had made a point of keeping the stockroom door shut so that
Town Dog couldn't gain access to his lord. This had meant that Town
Dog spent a lot of time at the door, scratching, digging and mewling
suspiciously like a cat. Crope had been mortified. How would his
lord ever sleep? Measures had to be taken, and Crope had begun to
leash Town Dog to one of the many iron rings that lay rusting against
the cellars' walls. Then a strange thing had happened.

Every night in the darkest and quietest hours
before dawn, Crope slipped out of the Quartercourts to walk the
streets. He knew what he risked, yet he could not stop himself. For
seventeen years he had been chained inside the mines and he had a
hardness in him now that would not bow to anyone in matters of his
freedom. Going outside each night was his sign to himself that he was
a free man and that his comings and goings were his own.

As a precaution against detection he had taken to
wearing the special cloak Quill had commissioned from the tailor who
created clothing for the Surlord's secret intelligencers known as
darkcloaks. Gray for day. Brown for sundown. Falling all the way to
his feet, it was longer than he liked in a cloak, and its wool was
unaccountably itchy, but if it could help him steal across the main
courtyard in Mask Fortress without raising an alarm it probably
wouldn't do any harm to wear it on his outings around the
Quartercourts. Crope had an inkling that it made him more . . .
shadowy than he normally was. Not invisible or anything fancy like
that, just a tiny bit more difficult to see, like a brown lizard on a
brown wall.

He didn't like to put the hood up—itchy arms
were one thing, itchy ears quite another—but forced himself to
do so during those tricky moments leaving and returning to the
Quartercourts. Ingress and egress, that's what Quill would have
called it. The thief knew many fine and impressive-sounding words. To
leave the Quartercourts, Crope had to open the door to the ice house
where big blue blocks of lake ice were stored between bales of hay
and pass through to the other side. Next he had to climb the steps to
the servants' level that was used by the Quartcrcourts' staff in the
daytime to service the finely dressed lords. This was the tricky
part, for sometimes potboys and scrubbers would hide from the night
warden during his rounds so they could stay in the courts overnight.