The Warrior's Bond (Einarinn 4) (11 page)

A gaunt girl staggered out of a nearby alley, green-tainted eyes vacant. I could smell the sickly sweet sweat of the tahn enslaving her clean across the street. I ignored her outstretched hand and hurried on, clapping a hand over my mouth and nose as I passed a dead dog motionless but for the seething of maggots. Even with the sun riding high, shadows were held captive by tall buildings three and four stories high, and I kept an eye out for anyone lurking in hopes of cutting a purse to pay for whatever vice had them in its claws.

I was heading for the tongue of higher land that forms the northern side of Toremal Bay. When I’d first come to the city, little older than Temar and proud of my newly sworn status, it wasn’t a district D’Olbriot’s men would go to in anything less that threes, daylight or no. Any Name with property thereabouts balanced the rents they might collect against the blood it would cost them, and most reckoned the game not worth the candle. Then a new storm had blown up in Lescar’s interminable wars and the ebb and flow of battle washed fresh flotsam up on to Tormalin shores. This was the only place the dispossessed wretches could get a foothold, and they’d dug in their heels, refusing to be knocked on their arses again. It’s easy to despise the Lescari, to mock their dogged persistence over claim and counterclaim, their obsession with land title and vengeance, but there’s no denying that single-mindedness serves them well at times.

I walked along streets where broken shutters had been replaced with new wood, bright with paint. The children might be grubby from playing in the dust but had started their day with clean if patched clothes and lovingly brushed hair. The clack and creak of working looms floated out of open windows high above, and women chatting as they kept an eye on their offspring sat on balconies with distaffs busy in their hands. The Lescari may have arrived without half a lead Mark in their pockets but they had skills in their hands and knowledge in their heads. These days more than half the noble dwellings in the upper city have North Bay tapestries gracing their walls.

I pulled the perfumed letter from my jerkin and realised I had missed a turn. Retracing my steps, I found the narrow flight of stone stairs. Counting doors along the soiled walls, I saw I wanted the one marked by an earthenware pot bright with scarlet flagflowers. I knocked, wondering how long the brilliant splash of colour would last before some drunken reveller kicked the blooms down the steps, either from accident or exuberant desire to see how far they might fly.

The door opened a scant hand’s breadth and I saw a shadowy figure within. “Yes?”

“Ryshad Tathel.” I held up the note. “For my lady Alaric.”

The door closed as the wedge securing it was kicked aside. It opened to reveal a gawky youth whose nervous energy kept his hands in constant motion. He was no stripling though, much my height and with shoulders broad enough to promise strength when he filled out. He wiped sweat from his forehead before running a hand over the beard so many Lescari affect. His beak of a nose and wide set eyes reminded me of seasons spent about Messire’s business along the border with Parnilesse. I’d had a friend from there, Aiten, whose death was a score I vowed to settle with the Elietimm.

“This way,” the lad said curtly. Tormalin was much his mother tongue as my own so some earlier brush with Lescar’s recurrent catastrophes must have swept his wretched forebears here.

I followed him up uncarpeted stairs dimly lit by an inadequate skylight. The lady I had come to visit proved to rent the entire first floor. A demure maid in an expensive silk dress sat on the landing and rose to greet me.

“I’ll let my lady know you’re here.” Her accent was unmistakably Relshazri, seldom heard in Toremal for all the trade plied across the benign waters of the Gulf that separates the two great cities.

She disappeared and the lad clattered noisily down the stairs to his kennel. I ran a contemplative finger over the inlaid swags of flowers decorating a table where the maid had put her sewing. This piece would grace the boudoir of any wife of D’Olbriot.

“My lady bids you welcome.” The maid ushered me into the front room. I swept a bow fit for the Imperial presence.

“Good day to you, Master Tathel.” The woman seated serenely on a richly brocaded daybed gestured me to equally costly cushions gracing an immaculately polished settle.

I stifled an impulse to check my boots for filth from the streets. “My lady Alaric.”

She smiled demurely as the maid reappeared with a tray carrying a crystal jug and fluted goblets with white spirals frozen in their glass stems. My hostess studied me openly as the girl served us both water, as is Lescari custom, so I returned the compliment.

There are many women who look perfection at twenty paces but fewer than half look so enthralling at ten, when the counterfeits of powder and paint, cut and drape are revealed. This was that rarest of beauties, a woman who would still be flawless when you were close enough to taste the scent adorning her graceful neck. Her complex coiffure, not a hair out of place, was the deep rich chestnut of a prize horse. Her lightly powdered skin glowed like the palest ceramic, broad high forehead and elegant nose above lips with the colour and velvet softness of rose petals. Her eyes were a blue-violet deep as an evening sea and dark and wise with experience, one of the few things giving a hint of her age. I guessed her older than me but couldn’t have said whether by two years or ten, and that suggestion of superiority made her allure both more tempting and more daunting. She smiled slowly at me as the maid left the room and the heat I felt round the back of my neck had nothing to do with the weather.

“You can call me Charoleia,” she said; lifting her glass in a brief salute.

“Thank you.” I raised mine but didn’t drink. A man might wish to drown in the depths of those peerless eyes but I wasn’t about to risk water from any north side well. “That’s how I think of you,” I admitted. “Livak told me your various travelling names but I don’t think I kept them straight.” I hadn’t imagined I’d ever have business with a woman Livak said had a different guise for every country and another for every complex scheme she devised to separate fools from their gold.

“No matter. And you can drink that.” Her smile widened to betray an entrancing dimple in one cheek. “I send the boy to buy water from the Den Bradile springs every morning. You won’t spend your Festival stuck in the privy because of me.”

I took a sip. The water was cool and untainted, black fig sliced in it for freshness. “I trust you had a good voyage?” I wasn’t quite sure how to get to the point of my visit. Charoleia was one of the many friends Livak had scattered across the Old Empire, all living on the outside of law and custom. I’d met a few of them and had found them mostly shabby, straightforward to the point of bluntness and be cursed to the consequences. But Charoleia was a lady fit to adorn an Imperial arm.

“The trip was uneventful.” She set aside her glass and smoothed the skirts of her pale lavender gown. Fine muslin was appropriate for the heat, but it’s cruelly unflattering to so many women. On Charoleia the delicate cloth simultaneously enhanced and discreetly blurred the sensuous curves beneath. “How is the young D’Alsennin? I hear you had some trouble in Bremilayne?” Her musical voice was as beautiful as her face but I couldn’t hear the ring of any particular city or country.

“Some goods were stolen but we don’t know who was behind it,” I said frankly. “Could you help find out?”

Charoleia arched a delicately enquiring eyebrow. “What makes you ask that?”

I leaned back against the cushions and matched her gaze for gaze. “Livak says you’ve a network of contacts in every city between the ocean and the Great Forest.” Livak also openly admired this woman’s intelligence and my beloved isn’t given to empty praise of anyone. “I imagine you’ll get news from places no Sieur’s man would get a welcome.”

That enchanting dimple fleeted in her cheek. “I’ll expect to be paid for my trouble.”

I nodded. “That would be only fair.”

Charoleia rose with consummate grace and crossed to a stout cupboard set in a far corner. She unlocked it with a key on a chain at her wrist. “And there’s my courier’s fee for this to settle.” She removed a small wooden box and opened it to show me a battered copper armring. So she had it.

Similar to the one I wore in form only, this one had been made in the last days of the Old Empire, had crossed the ocean on the arm of one of Temar’s still sleeping companions and by whatever route had come back to end up in a Relshazri trader’s strong room. When Elietimm enchantment had overwhelmed my waking mind, Temar’s sleeping consciousness had woken and gone in search of this ancient piece, whoever was trapped within it calling out in a voice only he could hear.

“What is your usual fee?” I kept my feelings hidden behind an expressionless face. Truth be told, they were a fine mixture of satisfaction and apprehension.

Charoleia smiled with feline grace. “How much is this trinket worth to you?”

I pursed my lips. What would be a fair price, for me and for her? Living this elegant didn’t come cheap after all, and I had some personal resources to draw on before I’d need to make an appeal to Messire’s coffers, but there are rules to every game. “Its value’s not so much a matter of money.”

“No,” she agreed. “It’s far more important.” She spun the ring on one perfectly manicured forefinger. “This holds the essence of a man in thrall to enchantments generations old.”

“If it’s the right piece.” I’ve played out games of Raven from hopeless-looking positions and won them before now.

“It’s the right piece,” she assured me. “I got every detail from Livak when she passed through Relshaz at Equinox.”

“I do hope so.” I raised a hand in demur as she offered it to me. I wasn’t about to lay a finger on the thing.

“So what is it worth to you?” she repeated softly.

“What’s your price?” I countered.

She took her time replacing the armring in the battered box before leaning back against the cupboard, her face lively with mischief. “A card for the Emperor’s dance on the fifth day of Festival.”

I blinked. “You don’t want much! Half the Demoiselles in the city would sell their little sisters for that.”

“That’s my price.” Charoleia laid a hand on the little box and smiled sweetly. “I’m sure Esquire Camarl would oblige.”

“You want an introduction?” I’d been expecting to haggle over gold but this wrong-footed me. “What would your name be?”

“Lady Alaric will do,” she shrugged. “Dispossessed and orphaned in the battles between Triolle and Marlier, she’s here to try and build a new life for herself, you know how it goes.” Now her accent was flawlessly western Lescari.

“Why does she warrant invitation to Imperial entertainments?” I asked a little desperately.

“Isn’t her matchless beauty sufficient?” she enquired, wide-eyed. “Then again, perhaps she has some family secret, some key information to assist Imperial efforts to halt the warfare brewing between Carluse and Triolle?”

“Do you?” I demanded.

“What do you think?” She dimpled at me.

“I think you’ve a scheme in hand that’ll leave some poor goose well plucked,” I told her bluntly. “If half what Livak’s told me is true, you’ll be gone by the first day of Aft-Summer, leaving empty coffers and shattered dreams littering the city. That’s your affair and Dastennin help all fools, but I’ve no intention of being your whipping boy. I’ll be the first person the Duty Cohort would come asking after if I’m seen introducing you to D’Olbriot.”

Charoleia’s laugh was surprisingly hearty, a full-throated chuckle with a sensuous edge to it. “I see you have something in common with Livak. But you’re right to cover your own flanks.” She lowered luxuriant lashes for a moment. I let her take her time and drank my water.

“I’ve no game in hand, Halcarion be my witness. I’m here playing a speculation.” She resumed her seat on the daybed, tucking her skirts demurely around sculpted ankles white above silken slippers. “Your Esquire D’Alsennin, his ancient colony, this new land across the ocean, it’s the talk of Relshaz, Col and every other city between Toremal and Solura. All the runes are in the air at present and I want to see how they fall. Half the mercenary commanders in Lescar are working with understrength corps because every third mercenary is hanging round Carif hoping to take ship for the rumoured riches of Nemith the Last’s final folly.”

She wasn’t about to share any more than that, I realised as I watched her drink her own water. “So you’re waiting to see how the game plays out?” Livak had told me information was more precious than gold to this woman.

Charoleia nodded. “All the major pieces will be on the board at the Emperor’s dance. I want to see their moves for myself.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said slowly. “I make no promises, but Dastennin’s my witness, I’ll try.”

“Livak tells me your word is a solid pledge.” Charoleia smiled amiably.

“How was she when you saw her?” Charoleia’s charms notwithstanding, it was a future with Livak that my own game aimed to win, I reminded myself sternly.

“She was well,” nodded Charoleia. “Tired from the sea crossing, but then she’s never a good sailor. They rested for a few days and then took the Great West Road for Selerima.”

I didn’t envy Livak that journey, clear across the old provinces. I frowned. “Usara said they’d be heading for Col.”

Charoleia shrugged. “Livak said she was looking for Sorgrad and ’Gren. I knew they were going to be in Selerima for Equinox.”

I stifled a qualm. Livak had told me precious little about that particular pair of long-time friends and I suspected that was because she knew I’d take against them. Livak stealing to keep food in her belly as an alternative to earning her keep lifting her skirts—that was something I’d come to terms with. These brothers had no such justification, and when me and Livak had been fighting for the lives of Temar and the colonists they’d been robbing the Duke of Draximal’s war chest, that much I did know.

Charoleia was studying me with interest and I kept my face impassive. “Do you know if she found them?” If so, Livak might well be finding ancient lore to earn us the coin to choose our own path together. Then again, going back to a life of travelling and trickery with old accomplices might be tempting her astray.