The Ale Boy's Feast (9 page)

“Nothing fit for us to drink.”

“Remember those days? You’d bring juice to the top of the wall. I’d bother you for something stronger.”

“I remember.”

“You were a torment, flaunting wines and liquors and even the king’s blasted hajka. Thought I had it bad back then. But now … to have just one more day pacing Abascar’s wall—that’d be grand as a birthday party. Wish I could stuff King Cal-marcus’s skull with—”

“Don’t go blamin’ the king for Abascar’s collapse,” the boy growled.

Kar-balter quieted for a moment, then cupped his hand into the dark soup, sniffed it, and cast it back. “Ballyflies! I’d suck down water like it was sweet cream if I could find some.”

“Throw yourself into the abyss, and you’ll find some.”

“What’s that, boy?”

“If we stick together, maybe we can find some.”

They drifted along the river’s edge, leaving daylight behind. Kar-balter began
to weep. The ale boy understood. This was like falling back down the throat of a monster that had just coughed them out.

“Tell me again why Jordam can’t come to us.”

“He’s at the dock collecting what we need to save the rest.”

“The rest? They’re dead! The only slaves alive in this hole are Bel Amicans and …” Kar-balter pulled his hat of branches slowly off his head. “No. We’re not gonna risk … no. We couldn’t even save our own!” Kar-balter sank lower. “Not even Cal-raven could manage a rescue.”

“It wasn’t Cal-raven’s fault!” the boy shouted. “Don’t ever say that!” Then he seized the pole and attacked the water as if it had offended him. “It was me. Don’t you remember? We’d almost escaped. The rafts were moving out. I tried to slip away. I didn’t expect Queen Jaralaine would come after me. But she wasn’t right in the head. She thought I was her son.”

The raft spun slowly.

“Then Cal-raven came after her. And you all got caught by beastmen. Everything was spoiled except for them that got away in time. And now …”

Kar-balter awkwardly embraced the boy, branches on his arms and legs crackling and poking. “No, no, Rescue. It’s not your fault. Sometimes your heart’s so big it gets in the way, that’s all.”

The raft carried them quietly until a soft splash turned their heads.

The river’s skin, barely visible in the soft shine of glowstones, seemed troubled to a cold boil. Waves splashed the banks. A tentacle broke the surface, spiny and tall as a cloudgrasper. It strained to touch the ceiling, then slid down the wall until it slapped the stony bank opposite them.

“Prowling,” said Kar-balter.

“Shh,” said the boy. He could almost swear he heard it sniffing.
Beastmen aren’t guarding the Core anymore. So the feelers are rising to protect this place
. He grabbed Kar-balter’s wagging beard and held a finger to his lips.

They let the current carry them.

The tentacle slowly retreated into the water. Then a swarm of limbs rose and slithered against the current back toward the tunnel’s entrance.

The raft rounded a bend. Kar-balter reached into the sludge and hauled up a two-ended oar. He snapped it over his knee and gave half to the boy. Without a word they paddled, propelling themselves into the Core.

The river broadened, and they drifted into a swirling pool, then came to rest against the edge of a stone plate that jutted out over the water. Jordam waved a torch from the edge of it. The ale boy could see that the beastman had recovered two of the damaged boats from their failed escape.

He kept his eyes on his scowling friend. He did not want to see what torchlight revealed in the shadows. As Jordam had carried him up from the river at the bottom of the abyss, he had glimpsed the stacked bodies of those who had fallen when the red-armored Strongbreed attacked.

One image burned in his mind’s eye—a white face and a white arm, fallen outward from the bodies as if reaching for him. Nella Bye’s golden hair spilled down. Nella Bye, who had moved among the Cent Regus slaves as a gentle comforter.

He had seen her arrested in House Abascar. He had come to collect hajka peppers from the garden alongside her house, only to find a duty officer stuffing his pockets with them. The officer fled, but Nella Bye pursued him, demanding that he empty his pockets in front of onlookers. Instead, the officer arrested her for growing the peppers in plain sight—he insisted that the colorful array was an open act of rebellion against Abascar’s “wintering.” Due to his high rank, he was given permission to cast her outside the walls to live as a Gatherer, condemned until she could earn her way back into safety.

Living among the Gatherers, Nella Bye might have withdrawn in bitterness. Instead, she had served the others with motherly grace. Now she was cast aside like rubbish.

As Jordam secured the raft, he saw their anxious backward glances. “rrTrouble?”

They heard a rumble like an avalanche upriver. Black dust wafted downstream, and they shielded their faces.

“Feelers,” Kar-balter squealed.

Jordam’s teeth gleamed in the torchlight. “rrNeed a new way out.”

A feeble sound like a cough silenced him. Kar-balter turned and squinted toward the darkness where the dead were piled.

“Don’t look at the bodies,” whispered the boy. But then the cough recurred, and there was a rustle of cloth.

Kar-balter’s emaciated face twitched as he tried to make sense of what he saw.

Jordam knelt beside the boy. “rrDon’t run.”

“Nella Bye?” Kar-balter said.

When a feeble voice answered “Yes,” the ale boy turned, astonished.

Like weary travelers rising before dawn, shapes were crawling from the pile. Nella Bye’s hands were flat on the stone, her hair trailing to the floor. As she crawled toward them, she patted the floor before her cautiously, unseeing.

“It’s the Curse,” hissed the boy.

“No,” said Jordam.

Nella Bye raised her head. Her eyes were bright, and while her face was still grey as a fish, a thin and ragged breath escaped her lips. Then she came to her knees and clasped the arrowshaft protruding from her belly, looking surprised.

“rrWait!” Jordam shouted. He thrust the heavy torch at the ale boy, then hurried to kneel beside the struggling woman. “rrWait.”

“Beastmen. Arrows.” Her hands closed on Jordam’s forearm. “Save us.”

Others—the boy counted eleven—squirmed and wheezed, trying to rise. They stared in confusion at the arrows bristling from their bodies and their bloodied rags. They fingered the edges of deep gashes. Some sucked in air as if they had been drawn from drowning. And they looked about with the bewildered expressions of infants trying to make sense of the world.

“Jordam,” said the ale boy. “Jordam, what’s happening?”

The beastman lifted something, then sent it skidding across the floor to the boy’s feet. It was the flask that had contained the well water from the Bel Amican bastion of Tilianpurth.

“How …”

Kar-balter picked up the flask and shook it. It was empty.

“rrGood water from O-raya’s well,” said Jordam, shrugging. “Woke you up.”

For a moment the boy had an unsteadying sensation. A flicker of memory—of being slipped back into his body as if it were an old set of clothes.

The waking bodies reached for one another, voices faint in whispers, groans, and laughter. One had a hard case of hiccups. Jordam lit torches he had collected and gave them to those who could hold them. The ale boy felt sick. “Jordam, what have you done?”

Jordam took hold of Nella Bye’s arrowshaft with one hand, raised a heavy knife with the other. “rrBreathe out,” he growled softly. As Nella Bye exhaled, Jordam reached around behind to where the sharp end had emerged from her back, and brought the knife down hard. The barbed end of the arrow clattered to the floor. Without hesitating, Jordam pulled hard and fast, and the arrow came out of her belly with a splash of blood. She shouted, then slumped against him, shaking. He put his hand over the wound.

“rrPromised,” said Jordam through clenched teeth. “Promised Bel. Promised Abascar’s king. rrBring prisoners free.”

The boy heard a squeak of disbelief, then a thump. It was Kar-balter’s turn to sprawl silent on the floor.

“Jordam,” the ale boy gasped. “Where’s the queen? If we—”

“rrGone,” the beastman moaned. “rrSearched everywhere.”

Shuffling barefoot from the crowd, a man stout as a wine barrel, lumpy and bald as a toad, with an arrowshaft jutting from his neck like a flagpole from a tower, passed the ale boy. He knelt and lifted Kar-balter’s head and shoulders to wake him. The ale boy recognized him at once—Em-emyt, who had often argued with Kar-balter on Abascar’s wall.

Kar-balter’s eyes fluttered open, and when he beheld Em-emyt’s grinning face, he leapt up. “Get away! Get away! You’re dead!”

“Am I?” Em-emyt opened his arms, standing. “Amends. Gotta make amends.”

“A-what?”

“I got you arrested. ’Member, Kar-balter? Back in Abascar. I revealed your drinking to the captain. He beat you worse than you deserved. Sorry ’bout it all.”

Kar-balter shook his head. “I saw you die.”

“And I tell you, just after I stepped into the air, it hit me hard. Regrets. So before I slip like a butt-gust into the air again, I gotta set this straight. I don’t expect your pardon. But I’m sorry for all of it.”

Kar-balter covered his face with his hands. Em-emyt guffawed. “Lookit you. Scared like you’re seeing a ghost.”

“Aren’t I?”

“I know just what you need, brother.”

Kar-balter’s face brightened with feeble hope. “A drink?”

“And if I had one, I’d sell it to you!” Em-emyt punched him in the shoulder.

He remembers being dead
. The ale boy was amazed. He closed his eyes as that dizzying feeling returned. Whatever had happened to him, he was forgetting.
There’s a reason I came back. I found out something. What was it?

Cold hands gripped his shoulders. “Rescue?” It was Nella Bye, remembering him and pulling him close. He knew her by the smell of her hair and skin. Her cheek was warm against his. “It’s so strange,” she whispered. “I was somewhere … somewhere easier.”

All around him the murmurs were growing clearer. Rumors of boats, of Northchildren, of strange lights and a feeling of flight. He put his arms around Nella Bye. “What’s happened to us? We were somewhere else. I saw shining people. Gentle, shining people. We were telling stories.”

“I didn’t ask to come back,” she said. “Help me. I can’t see.”

Jordam was at her side to catch her, to ease her back to the stone. “rrMust get stronger.” He turned to the ale boy, fear in his quivering features. “Where did they go? Was Mordafey there?”

The chamber shuddered. Dust and crumbling stone rained down all around them.

“Feelers will find us,” said the ale boy. “We need another way out.”

He looked out across the rising, at these bodies learning to move, these legs struggling to stand, this breath finding a rhythm again. And there was laughter, a regretful sort of laughter, as if they had all awakened from the same glorious dream
and wished they could get it back. He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids he saw faint, swirling lines of light like fraying threads of color. He felt again as if he were floating. He heard the sound of distant, crashing water.

“I think I know the way out.”

Jordam shook his head. “Nowhere is safe now.”

“You’re forgetting the deep river. Jordam, we were alone down there. The air was better. The water was cleaner. This river won’t help us, but if we follow the deeper river upstream, who knows where it will lead us?”

Jordam looked too exhausted to lift such heavy hope. “How? Can’t carry them down. Too many. Too far.”

The ale boy stared at the far end of the cavern where the pool narrowed and became a flowing stream again, pouring into a lightless corridor. Slender wisps of mist wavered all about that passage. “Jordam, when we were down on the deeper river, we heard waterfalls. Do you see the fog there, in that tunnel? If this current eventually falls into the river far below us … you can keep your promise. We’ll get them all out of here.”

“But … when the river falls … how far will it fall?”

The boy smiled feebly. “One way to know.”

arney remembered how the stories had whispered through House Abascar’s streets, implausible as they were. Krawg the Midnight Swindler of House Abascar could break into the king’s unbreakable vaults. He could make off with treasure even if all who knew its secret location had died. He could be in two places at once. Nothing could stop him.

Lonely, desperate, and wanting so much that was out of reach, Warney had come to see Krawg as a figure of hope.

When the two had become partners in robbery, most of those claims had proven untrue. Krawg was an awkward, anxious, aging thief; he looked like a fool and sounded even worse. But the myths had worked in his favor. People did not see the legend when he walked into the room, and they all but handed him their belongings. Still, the legends lived on in Warney’s mind, increasing his courage.

His days of thievery were ancient history now. But on the morning of the day that Tabor Jan and the Abascar company set out from House Bel Amica, Warney found himself the victim of a theft. Consumed with rage and desire, he set out to regain what was taken. He forgot all about Krawg until it was too late. Captain Tabor Jan’s company had gone, leaving Warney lost for days in a world of trouble.