The Beggar King (10 page)

He hoped to see Grizelda, but it was also possible Piccolo might walk in. Piccolo was expecting a black velvet sack bearing the weight of silver Cirran candlesticks that Sarmillion hadn't been able to get hold of just yet.

The mongoose had begun his game of strike and retreat, tiring out the cobra, biding his time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to kill. He was smart, and he was faster and more agile than he looked. But would he be a match for this snake? Slowly the cobra moved around the pit's perimeter. Every time he drew close to people's legs there was a collective “aah” and the sound of shuffling as the spectators edged away and then back again.

Sarmillion hunted for a stool to perch on at the bar, but they were all taken. He kept feeling something slithering around his legs, but it was only Shasta's bejeweled tail. She had her paws on a leather-clad underrat named Marco who stood on the other side of her. Marco liked to play with knives and he had this way of not paying attention while he was doing it that made Sarmillion nervous.

The beads jingled and Sarmillion swiveled and saw two Brinnian Landguards stagger in. They held each other steady and almost stumbled into the pit ropes before someone guided them back to relative safety.

Now here might be a stroke of luck. While Sarmillion had been charged to eavesdrop on any Landguards that showed up in the Omarrian taverns, he'd discovered that most of them were tight-lipped and kept to themselves. Sneaking into the palace was proving to be unfeasible. Every time the Loyalists had attempted it, they'd been caught. Many were in prison. A few had been hanged. The upshot was that no one had found out anything about High Priestess Arrabel and the other prisoners.

“You make a decent Elderberry Blaster in this place?” one of the Landguards shouted to the bartender above the hollering crowd.

“I gots mug-wine and billy beer — bloody or not,” said the bartender. “Them's your choices. Place your bets and take your drinks,” he said with an icy glare. Sarmillion glanced at the mongoose darting in and out of people's legs, and then edged his way towards the Landguards.

“I'd put my money on the mongoose tonight if I were you boys,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Buy you a drink?”

The two exchanged a look, and then shrugged. Sarmillion called for mug-wine, and the bartender took their bets.

“Off duty tonight?” asked Sarmillion as the mugs of greasy brown liquid slid across the bar towards the Landguards' burly hands.

The rounder, pock-marked Landguard burped and said, “Gonna have to work double time round that Cirran feast day, so the Emp give us some extra days off now.”

“Before things heat up, like,” said the taller thinner Landguard, who had a particularly long face and protruding front teeth. The unfortunate combination gave him the appearance of an idiot. It was this that buoyed Sarmillion's confidence.

“I suppose all the men have to do a tour of duty guarding the Cirran prisoners, huh?” he asked casually.

“Yeah, what a pain in the butt that is,” said Pockface with a groan.

They're alive
, thought Sarmillion.
But where? Where are
they?

There was an eruption of boos as the snake struck out at the mongoose and missed. Sarmillion winced.

“I hope you haven't lost us our coin there, undercat,” said Buckteeth.

Sarmillion gave a sly smile. “I've got a feeling about the mongoose tonight. I think he'll get his man, so to speak.” He pretended to take a sip of his drink as the two men gulped theirs.

“Tastes sort of meaty,” said Pockface.

“You get used to it,” said Sarmillion. “So, what's so bad about guarding the prisoners? You get to travel.”

“Damned hot down there,” said Buckteeth. “Nothing to do. Skunked if I know why the Emp sent them to the desert. We're the ones gotta go down and watch ‘em there. He gets to stay in that fancy palace.”

The desert. It could only mean one thing: Ut. This was bad news. Ut was a vast land that was notoriously hard to cross because of the challenges of weather and distance. There were nomadic tribes that knew how to survive in such conditions, but none of them was Cirran. Or Brinnian, for that matter. Brin was, for the most part, a land of cold snowy winters. Sarmillion wondered how the guards were handling the heat. Perhaps the prisoners were being held near one of the coastal towns.

“When you come back from that desert you got sand in places where sand ain't meant to be, if you catch my meaning,” said Pockface, and Sarmillion pretended to think this was hilarious, banging the table and calling for more drinks. He felt something at his feet and startled, thinking it might be the cobra. The mongoose scrambled across his two-toned leather shoes and darted back towards the snake.
You go, little fellow
.

“I hear Elion is lovely in the winter,” said Sarmillion. He waited for the response with the tensely alert patience of a mongoose. And just as Buckteeth opened his mouth to answer, Sarmillion felt a hand on his arm and looked up to see the greasy hair and bulbous red nose of his boss, Piccolo.

“Sorry to break up the party,” he said, elbowing his way between Sarmillion and Pockface. He plunked his forearms onto the sticky counter, his gut pressing against the bar, and the bartender handed him a Bloody Billy.

“On the house,” he said, and Piccolo grunted.

“Who's winning?” Piccolo pointed to the pit with his grizzly double chin.

“Anyone's call tonight,” said the bartender.

“So, Scribbler? You got something for me?”

Sarmillion's stomach clenched. The last thing he wanted was for those guards to find out he'd once worked as a palace scribe. He turned his back to them and lowered his voice. “I'm working on it.”

“Working on it? Working on it would mean you're hangin' around the place waitin' for the lights to go out. Working on it would mean ye gots the key in yer pocket, or better yet, the loot in yer sack. What the hell, underkitty, work harder. You don't wanna gets yer name in my big books, now, do ye?”

Sarmillion cleared his throat. “Of course not, feirhart. You'll have your . . . items by tomorrow afternoon. My word. I'll bring them by your tavern.”

“I know where ye live, underkitty.”

“Indeed you do, feirhart.”

“I'll hunt ye down.”

“I know that, feirhart.”

Suddenly the room exploded in boos and cheers. The mongoose had struck and the cobra was dead.

“Your lucky day, I reckon,” said the bartender, as the Landguards slapped Sarmillion and each other on the back.

Piccolo fixed him with his dark piggy eyes. “I'll see you tomorrow, underkitty. And I'll tell ye this: tomorrow, it's my lucky day. Eh? Eh?” He laughed and his chest rattled with phlegm and he coughed and spat onto the dirt floor. Sarmillion grimaced in disgust. His hands shook as he gathered his winnings into a velvet sack.

The Landguards drained the last of their drinks. They were steadying themselves when the beads jangled and in strode Grizelda. Sarmillion cursed her timing because he knew he couldn't stay. He gave her a wave and a wink and as she purred past he took in the rosewater scent of her and whispered, “Buy you a drink later?” and she said, “Later I might not be here,” and he said, “Wait for me?” and she said, “Are you worth waiting for?” and he said, “You bet I am,” and her red-painted claws skimmed his cheek. “I'll wait,” she said.

The Landguards stumbled out the door and into the fresh night air. Sarmillion slowed his pace to theirs.

“So, where are we off to now?” he asked.

“We're staying just around the corner,” said Pockface. “The what's-it-called.”

“Here On Inn,” Sarmillion said. “Try their pickled herring for breakfast. It's the best in Omar.” Blast Piccolo. His conversation with the Landguards had been picking up momentum.
Strike
and retreat. Here goes.
“Riverboat leaves from here down to Utberg, I hear,” he said. “Gets you down south in ten days' time. Nice ride, folks say.”

“Who'd want to go there?” said Buckteeth. “The place is a dead zone. Nothing but clay huts and dust and a couple of straggly trees. Talk about getting ripped off on leave. Emp can't put us up in a fancy resort in Elion? No, he's gotta send us five miles away from the damned prison camp for R&R. Utberg — steaming goat dung, that's what I say.”

So the prison camp was five miles from Utberg, was it? There it was. The cobra was dead.

“Brinnian coast resorts are cold even in the summer,” Pockface was saying. “Man, we come to Ut, we want palm trees and pretty girls and all the Elderberry Blasters we can drink.”

Buckteeth began describing the girls he was particularly interested in, but Sarmillion wasn't listening. Utberg was about as far away from the Holy City as you could get. At least now they knew what they were up against. He would meet with Mars tomorrow and give him the news. They could dispatch spies immediately to Utberg to assess the situation. It might be the beginning of redemption for the Scribbler.

He'd done his duty this evening — perhaps he'd make a good spy after all. Now a white Persian undercat with red-painted claws awaited him and he wouldn't have to think about Utberg or Piccolo's blasted candlesticks until tomorrow.

Nine
P
RIVATE
R
EBELLIONS

J
ORDAN STRUTTED THROUGH THE
C
IRRAN MARKETPLACE,
his pockets filled with stolen tomatoes. On this day, in the year that bore the Brinnian designation 1329, it was finally his sixteenth birthday. He did not deserve to feel so happy. Sometime this month he would have to take his robes, and he still had no idea what his gift might be. But today he would fulfill a different purpose.

Beyond the market, Jordan passed one of the enormous portraits of Emperor Rabellus that had been painted onto building walls all over the city. Jordan hated that smirk, those hooded eyes scrutinizing you whenever you walked by. Checking to make sure there were no Landguards, he faced the likeness and crossed his forearms in a curse.

Today was the first anniversary of the Brinnian coup. It was also the Cirran Feast of the Great Light, but there was no question of holding a traditional celebration. It was forbidden.

Besides, the Brinnians were using the Meditary that night for another one of their Fire and Feasting parties that some Cirrans planned to attend. For those who were disgusted by the scent of once-sacred deer roasting in their once-sacred hall, there was nowhere to go except the Common.

Rabellus had doubled his Landguard patrol, expecting trouble. Jordan's jaw tensed: he would personally ensure that the emperor was not disappointed. When he'd confided his plan to Sarmillion, the undercat had pretended to disapprove, but the way his whiskers had jittered Jordan could tell even he was excited about it.

Finally he reached the Alley of Seers, a crooked narrow passage made up of the attached stone homes of the Seven Seers of Cir. Each door was painted a different colour, though according to Ophira, the dwellings themselves were connected by back stairways and hidden doors and rooms you'd never guess at. Jordan had never been farther than Mama Petsane's kitchen, and it was at her bright blue door that he knocked this morning.

“Ach, come in already, Jordan,” she called from the other side of the door. As Jordan entered, he was met with the fragrance of countless herbs simmering in one of Petsane's famous stews. The smell made him think of shade trees and Cirsinnian pastures just before harvest.

“Good morning, Mama,” he said, flashing her a grin and producing, with a flourish, a tomato in each hand.

Mama Petsane stood before the big black woodstove in the kitchen, a green apron around her waist, her head bare. She waved her long-handled stew spoon in the air with a grimace. “Where'd you get those, boy?”

“I grew them in my garden,” he said with a wink, and won for himself one of Petsane's rarest gifts, a brown-toothed, big-gapped smile.

Mama Manjuza, who had been seated at the kitchen table, rose awkwardly and took the tomatoes from Jordan. “At least he brings something worth stealing,” she said.

“You sixteen today,” said Mama Petsane. “Big day, uh?”

“Big day, no robes in sight,” Grandma Mopu piped up from the divan. Mopu was a tall woman with long teeth and a horse-like face. She was the one whom everyone called the Monkey-Maker, on account of her tendency to make fun of things. It was amusing, as long as you weren't her target. While Petsane and Manjuza giggled at this comment, Jordan's face fell.

“Maybe I just won't take any robes,” he said. “I'm not obliged, you know. Lots of people aren't bothering with them anymore.”

“Yeah, maybe you just be a tomato thief for the rest of your life,” said Petsane.

“Your father will be so proud,” said Mopu.

“You all know which robes I'm going to wear.” Jordan hadn't meant to whine. He cleared his throat. “Why won't you tell me?”

“Maybe we don't know,” said Manjuza.

“Maybe we already told you but you don't listen,” said Mopu.

“Maybe I don't have a gift,” he said. He stood beside Mama Petsane and lifted the lid on the stew. Petsane tapped his hand with her wooden spoon.

“Sit, Jordan,” said Mama Manjuza, gently patting a wicker kitchen chair. Jordan came and sat across from her.

“You be good with goats?” she asked.

“No. They chase me and bite at my shorts.”

“You ever try carving, like your father?”

“He says I was born with two left hands.”

“But you sure be good at dreaming away an afternoon beneath the cedars,” said Petsane, her large backside facing them as she attended to her stew.

“Yeah, but there are no robes for that,” said Mopu, shuffling over and sitting down. While all of the seers were obliged to wear their saffron robes whenever they left the house, at home Mopu insisted upon wearing a multi-coloured dress because, as she claimed, she was good at everything.