A Charm for Draius: A Novel of the Broken Kaskea (The Broken Kaskea Series Book 1) (3 page)

Wendell greeted her and re-clasped his drink with hands spotted with ink from keeping tallies in the warehouses. As usual, the corner of his mouth was smudged where he held his pen while he worked. Beside Wendell sat a City Guard lieutenant Draius didn’t recognize.

“This is Lornis, he’s new Guard and I’m buying him a Fairday drink. Always like to be on good terms with the Guard.” Berin winked. Down here in Betarr Serasa, “Guard” meant City Guard, not King’s Guard.

“Greetings, Lornis.” The lieutenant appeared to be about her age. “You’re a little old to be entrant, aren’t you? Where’d you transfer from?” She wasn’t usually so blunt, but her social skills were rusty after an eight-day of rough living.

Lornis’s eyebrows rose, but his bright brown eyes held humor.
Honest
humor, because she saw crinkling at the corners, quickly deepening into lines. The edges around Jan’s eyes never crinkled, which had been the first hint to realizing all the expressions on his pliable face were carefully molded. In contrast, Lornis had a face of sincere angles and high cheekbones, narrowing to a chin that was almost, but not quite, sharp. He wore his light brown hair pulled back in a clasp, which caused it to fall in a shining cascade down his back to his waist—the classic style of the Tyrran plains tribes, who only braided their hair for battle.

Berin laughed and clapped Lornis on the back. “I told you. Drives straight to the hilt, doesn’t she?”

“I’m not a transfer. My grandmother finally admitted I was never meant to be a goldsmith, so she gave her approval to apply to the City Guard. They let me test through to lieutenant.” Lornis adjusted his sleeves so the green displayed just enough white through the slashes. His sleeves were new and his collar crackled with starch. His buff jerkin was new and unstained, making Lornis as bright as a new coin.

His attention to his uniform seemed a bit excessive, and what was this option to “test through” to lieutenant? She’d never heard of anyone avoiding erins of training to jump into the Guard officer corps.

“More beer!” Berin roared, startling her. The prospect of smooth, light Tyrran beer distracted her and her stomach started rumbling.

“I’d also like soup.” She looked longingly at the empty bowl in front of Lornis.

“And soup,” Berin called to the serving girl, his voice cutting through the noise in the common room.

She looked down at her field uniform, stained and bearing no rank, which was customary for patrols. Her uniform sleeves were woven and plain. She wore breeches, acceptable for working women, but they showed considerable wear. She didn’t look too bad for having lived in mud for an eight-day, but she felt awkward sitting near the new dandy lieutenant. She rested her hands in her lap, fingers curled to hide her ragged, broken nails. Unfortunately, her light pewter-colored skin, the result of diluted blood from silver-skinned ancestors, wasn’t dark enough to hide the dirt embedded into creases and small cuts.

“Was it raining on the eastern plains?” Lornis asked her.

“No.” Remembering the maelstrom she saw from her perch at the northern point of the Dibrean Valley, she asked, “Any word on what caused the storm?”

“Oh, everyone has an opinion,ranging from Nherissa rising after five hundred years to steal our blood, our souls, or maybe our silver, to our ancestors punishing us for slighting them.” Lornis grinned, his eyes sparkling. “Alms at the reliquaries are up and everyone’s singing at evening star-rise, it seems.”

She shivered. “What do the Phrenii say? Surely the King asked them?”

“They’ve kept mum, which doesn’t help us sleep better. Of course, we’d have more damage if the Phrenii hadn’t conjured up those clever things to keep the river tamed.”

“At least the creatures are good for something,” Berin muttered. When they looked at him, he added, “They didn’t protect the warehouses from the rising canal waters.
We
constructed a shunt to divert the runoff and
we
saved our goods, not the Phrenii.”

Draius watched Berin grimace. When she moved back from Betarr Kain, she noticed her old friend had a darker, sharper edge to him. The Fevers had changed everyone, particularly Berin. Now he was prone to uncharacteristic moments of sullenness.

Lornis waved to a tall broad-shouldered Guard officer entering the common room. “Jan! Over here!”

The entering officer had an innocent and slightly rounded face, making him look younger than his real age. Falling over his shoulders in soft waves, his hair had glimmers of gold in the late afternoon light. Unlike Draius, Jan’s hair had never tended toward the silver of their Meran ancestors. His dark blue eyes searched the room, ignoring the female heads that turned in admiration.

Lornis saw the expressions of disapproval at the table and bewilderment lined his forehead. Jan approached their table.

“Greetings—Lornis, Wendell, Berin.” Jan clapped Wendell on the shoulder. Berin nodded, avoiding eye contact.

Jan turned to his wife last. “How was the patrol rotation?”

“Fine.” Conscious of her chapped face and dirty clothes, she took a sip of beer and tried to concentrate on the flavor. She clenched her other hand, still lying in her lap.

Jan’s angelic smile changed; he carefully balanced welcome with concern. “I’m glad you’re back. Peri’s been unhappy lately, having bad dreams.”

Her eyes narrowed. From someone else, those simple sentences could be taken at face value. Jan had managed to convey accusation, as if it could only be her fault.
I’m too tired to play “impress the audience.”
She still had a few unbroken fingernails, and she dug them into her palm. “Not now, Jan. We can talk later.”

“Certainly.” Jan’s tone and smile were vague. He was up to something, but she couldn’t summon the effort to care.

Jan scanned the room for a seat, apparently not willing to sit in the open seat between Lornis and Draius. By the windows, market stall owners were whittling down their earnings by drinking and dicing. At the next table, a councilman notorious for his womanizing worked on his next conquest, a barmaid. Across the common room was a table of mixed guard members, both King and City. Meran-Kolme Erik, Officer in Charge of Investigation, was just sitting down with them. Erik was currently Draius’s commander, but not for much longer. If he preferred her husband as his deputy, then she would soon be re-assigned. Again.

Jan said goodbye and like any politic bootlicker, headed straight for his new superior officer.

“I should get home to Peri.” Draius started to stand up.

Berin laid his large hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back into her seat. “Now, now. Last I knew, there wasn’t a school-master alive that let his students out early on Fairday.” Berin pointed at the clock standing by the fireplace, which marked four hours past noon.

Draius relaxed. Peri was still at afternoon lessons.

“Honestly, Draius, he manipulates you like a puppet!” Berin tried to use a low tone, but everyone at the table heard him. Wendell and Lornis studied their empty glasses.

She pressed her lips together tightly, hoping not to hear the same old refrain. When she was nineteen, her matriarch suggested a contract with the Serasa-Kolme, pairing her with the handsome Jan, of whom she knew very little. Did she have any objections? With her mother gone from the Fevers and her father barely interested in his daughter’s future, she turned to cousins and friends for opinions. Almost everyone approved of the Serasa-Kolme, a long-established lineage responsible for the construction of the original walls for Betarr Serin and Betarr Serasa.

Berin, however, was ten years older than her and the lone dissenting voice. “Self-serving, controlling, and a political climber” had been the phrase he’d used to describe Jan. “You’re Meran-Viisi, King’s lineage, you can do better than him.” She went forward with the contract anyway, brushing off his warnings as over-protective.

Berin’s refrain now added, “I warned you, didn’t I?” At this point, he thought she should petition Lady Anja for dissolution, but he didn’t know the depths that Jan’s revenge could go.

“Finish your drink.” The big hand on her shoulder loosened and patted her back.

So there wasn’t going to be a public scolding. Grateful for small favors, she sipped her beer and enjoyed one of her favorite pastimes: watching people. Unfortunately, she could hear Wendell whispering in the new lieutenant’s ear. “Another woman in the Guard… no comfort clause… matriarch’s his aunt…”

By the Healing Horn, why don’t I just hire a crier?
In a society of arranged marriages infidelity wasn’t unusual. What
was
unusual; she’d just brought a formal complaint against Jan before their matriarch, because no comfort clause was built into their contract. She and Jan had resisted such a clause, against his grandmother’s advice. That seemed so long ago, so many deceits ago.

The Sea Serpent’s common room was crowded. It was Fairday and everyone was celebrating the last working day of the eight-day. Tomorrow there would be little, if any, business done in Betarr Serasa.

The barmaid plunked down another pitcher. She’d forgotten the soup and Draius opened her mouth to mention that, but the barmaid whirled and waved at someone at the top of the stairs.

Draius looked up over her head to see Councilman Reggis leaning out from the gallery that accessed the upstairs “meeting rooms.” Reggis made signs for the barmaid to join him in the third room off the gallery. The barmaid responded with a toss of her blond curls that could mean either yes or no, and she moved to other tables before Draius could mention the soup.

Draius turned her attention to the group of mixed guard members across the room. Sitting next to Jan, Erik put away another dark ale and slapped her husband on the back. A life of excessive drinking was taking a toll; Erik’s puffy face displayed a spider web of red veins spreading outward from his nose, and he was only starting his fifties. He’d been promoted from deputy commander to OIC of Investigation a year ago, and so began her own slide into professional darkness.

“Draius, what do you think?” Berin asked.

She jerked her attention back to her own table as Wendell repeated the latest news: the
Horn & Herald
was extorting loyal Tyrrans to boycott Groygan silk to protest their privateering and piracy.

“Only a fool believes the
H&H
. There’s no proof the Groygans are financing privateers, or that they’re connected to Rhobar.” She raised her voice to be heard above the din.

“Groygans can’t be trusted. Those skirmishes near the Saamarin—“

Berin’s deep voice was sliced apart by the shriek from above, a high shrill sound that went on and on. Babble in the common room died down, overwhelmed. Wendell’s face went white and he glanced at Berin, who looked up at the gallery, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.

Draius sat closest to the foot of the stairs. She grabbed her sheathed sword, took the stairs two at a time and ran toward the barmaid standing at the last door on the gallery. She stopped so suddenly at the doorjamb that Lornis bumped into her. The lieutenant gagged, and Draius gritted her teeth at the smell of blood.

CHAPTER FOUR

Third Fairday, Erin Two, T.Y. 1471

Powerful men make fatal misjudgments because they underestimate everyone but themselves. The traitor had realized his deadly mistake, when he first felt the drug.

“Why?” he whispered as he lost control of his cup. Wine soaked his vest and the hammered goblet ended up on the floor planks, lightly ringing as it rolled from side to side.

I called my apprentice to catch him because I alone couldn’t handle his weight. Then, after we moved him between rooms, I needed help to lay him out. The boy blanched when I drove nails to fix his hands and feet to the floor.

“Don’t worry, he’s already dead,” I lied. There was no need to expose Nherissa’s secrets to my apprentice. “And there’s so much noise below, no one can hear. Go stand watch at the window.”

After the boy left the room, I answered the traitor’s question. I leaned down to his ear and whispered, “We know you sold the lodestone to the Groygans; we’ve checked on the ship. Now you’re our next experiment in Nherissa’s art.”

A quiver was his only possible response. The combination of drugs I’d used had paralyzed him and started slowing his breath and heart. I opened his vest and shirt and made my first cut, according to the instructions I’d read. Since I’d planned everything and rehearsed each surgical procedure, I barely had time to appreciate the results before we were out of the room and down the ladder.

I can savor the details now. An hour later, my hands still tingle from the sensuality of the procedure. There was beauty in the sharp blade as it sliced into his body, exploring deeper and deeper. Although the heart had stopped, the warm blood welled up like velvet and was nearly sufficient to complete the rite. I could sense the powerful death magic as I captured it within the circle and focused it into the amulets. The feeling became arousing, almost unbearable so, as the flesh was removed.

Beyond the magic, I discovered I also delight in danger. I refer not to the necromantic rite, which has its own risks if the power isn’t directed correctly, but of performing such a rite over the heads of the Tyrran Guard. While those arrogant members drank and ate with others who hold up their lineal names like shields, a nunetton (but
forgotten
and
nameless
by my own choice) killed someone they were honor-bound to protect.

CHAPTER FIVE

Insubordination

We’ve entered the age of the scientific method, so I ask what need has mankind for magic? The Society for Restoration of Sorcery appeals only to romantic fools and I, for one, think there is no place for magic in this world. Even if the King can control the Phrenii, they are no longer needed.

[Editor’s note: The views expressed by Rista are not the views of this paper, which expresses gratitude to the Phrenii for their protection during the recent floods.]

—Khalna-Nelja Rista, in Letters to the Editor, The Horn & Herald, Third Fairday, Erin Two, T.Y. 1471

The barmaid kept shrieking and Draius had to grab her by the shoulders. She hiccuped and started breathing with deep, wrenching gasps while her eyes stayed wide. Looking bewildered, she held out a key.

“Was the room locked?” Draius asked, taking the key from her limp hand.

The woman’s mouth worked, but nothing came out.

“Get a statement, written and signed, if you can.” Draius handed Lornis the key and pushed the woman toward him. The barmaid latched onto Lornis and, to his credit, he efficiently hustled her into the next room.

Draius looked over her shoulder and saw an overwhelming mass of people coming up the stairs to the gallery. A few of the quicker patrons had already made it to the doorway where she stood and most turned away, retching.

She had developed a strong stomach during her work with the Office of Investigation, but she’d never seen so much blood in one place. Meran-Nelja Reggis, popular member of the King’s Council, had been nailed to the floor by his hands and feet, and eviscerated. Strange symbols were drawn with blood on the floorboards and walls. With so much of his inner torso spread about and that amount of blood loss, he couldn’t still be alive. There was no possibility of phrenic healing.

With no more time to examine the room, she dealt with the surge of people pushing toward her. She drew her sword and held it high, causing those at the front of the crowd to scramble backward.

“You!” She grabbed a market stall owner she recognized. “Go to City Guard Headquarters at Number Ten High Cerinas Street. Tell the desk to send the watch to the Sea Serpent. Go!”

She raised her voice to be heard above the din. “This is Guard business now, people. I want all of you to go downstairs and wait, because you may be questioned.”

Prodding, yelling, and gesturing with her sword started turning back some of the clientele. The creaking of the gallery from the weight of the crowd convinced others they would be safer downstairs. As people began moving back down the staircase, she saw Jan and Erik wading toward her against the current. When they reached her, she was giving instructions to Mainos, manager of the Sea Serpent, regarding the sealing of the room. Erik held onto Jan’s shoulder and swayed.

“I’ll give the orders here, Draius. You’re overstepping your authority,” he said.

“The room’s secured, ser. Did you post someone at the exits to keep all these witnesses contained?” She looked down at the common area to avoid facing Erik. Below her was a boiling mass of people and she couldn’t see the doors.

Erik drew a deep breath; his face became redder and his voice more pompous and slurred. “This is why you’re not promotable, Draius. You have no sense for the conventions of rank. It’s
your
place to take care of such details.”

She glanced at her husband standing behind Erik. As the incoming deputy, this was Jan’s responsibility. His eyes slid away and wouldn’t meet hers. No help was coming from him. She leaned toward Erik and said, in as low a tone as she could manage, “Have you had too much to drink, ser? The captain himself will be arriving soon, considering who’s in that room. Go home, and I’ll have all the details you’ll need tomorrow.”

“You want me to leave so you get more time with the captain? At my expense, no doubt.” Erik enunciated his words.

Draius was grimly amused. Erik worried about schemes to take his position as OIC and his paranoia always focused on her. Now he’d given the deputy commander position to Jan, who had the natural male inclination toward politics and the talent to flatter and manipulate. If Erik worried about subordinates climbing over him, then he’d just given his worst threat a perfect position.

“Ser, maybe she’s right. If the captain is coming and you’re not in top shape, Draius can manage the scene.” Jan put exactly the right nuances in his words, now appearing to only reluctantly support his wife.

“I’m quite sensible and
I
haven’t just come off patrol!” Erik glared at her.

She returned the glare. Caustic comments fought to get out of her mouth. When she finally spoke, though, her tone was cool. “Commander, a member of the King’s Council is dead and you have a possible witness in the next room, but are you sober enough to question her?”

As Erik’s face turned purple, she knew she’d made a mistake.

“Curse you with phrenic madness!” Erik shouted, spittle flying. “If you don’t leave right now, Draius, I’ll have you thrown out! Be assured that I’ll be filing insubordination charges tomorrow.”

“Fine. Good evening to you, ser.” She punctuated her words with the whine of sheathing her sword.

She hoped Erik saw his ale a second time when he went into that room. She pushed through the crowd on the stairs and on the bottom floor. As she suspected, no one had been posted to control the exits. Her saddlebags had been trampled and shoved under the table. She didn’t know where Berin and Wendell had gone, or the multitude of witnesses who were inside the tavern at the time the body was discovered.

Outside the Sea Serpent, she took deep breaths of fresh air. She hadn’t realized how pervading that cloying metallic scent had been, sticking at the back of her throat like bad food. And there’d been too much blood—

“Draius, wait!”

Jan had followed her out of the pub. She looked up and mentally asked her ancestors, now visible in the evening stars, for patience.

“What is it? Shouldn’t you be inside, showing Erik what kind of deputy you’ll make?”

“He’ll be fine. Besides, I won’t be deputy until the new erin begins on Markday. Technically, I have no authority.”

“Erik should go home and sleep it off. He’s going to trip right over his own balls, and in front—” She circled to her right, and Jan turned with her so that the light from the tavern windows lit his carefully expressionless face. He was taller and she had to look up to meet his eyes.

“You’re
hoping
he’ll mess up in front of Captain Rhaffus,” she added.

She was rarely surprised by his maneuvers any more. City Guard and King’s Guard positions were stepping-stones to political positions, which was why there were few women in the Guard. After all, “women have the mind for business, while men have the passion for politics,” went the saying. Her husband, however, could be as cold and reasoning as any matriarch when planning his career moves.

“Commander Erik’s career is in his own hands, not mine,” he said.

“A deputy should ensure his commander doesn’t humiliate himself. Afterward, the commander is grateful and indebted to the deputy. Isn’t that how the game is played?” She’d given up on playing at politics. Instead, she worked as efficiently as possible with the hope of pleasing her commander, but all she managed to do was antagonize Erik. In the past year, he’d taken her off every case in Investigation and changed her tasks to drudgery that rarely impacted their duties. This wasn’t the first time he’d ordered her away from an investigative scene, but they’d never before ended up in public argument.

“Erik’s focus is on your insubordination. You made a mistake by losing your temper.”

“Which you’ll never let Erik forget. Is that what you wanted to tell me?” She suddenly felt exhausted. The surge of energy from finding the councilman’s body had drained away.

“No. I have a request for my wife.” Jan came closer and raised his hand to gently stroke her along her jaw line. It was an intimate gesture, from another time when she believed his gestures were spontaneous. Now she knew the gesture was calculated.
Was he ever honestly attracted to me?
Unwilling as her thoughts were, her body still responded and she was repulsed.

“Yes?” She stepped backward and out of his reach.

His hand dropped. “I’m asking you to withdraw your complaint, for your sake and for Peri’s. You’re only marking yourself as a troublemaker, and our son as well.”

“Has Lady Anja said that?” She watched his face carefully.

“She’s my aunt, I know her. She’ll do anything to keep our son.”

Draius was relieved. By the way he sidestepped her question, she knew nothing had changed while she was gone. His statement about Peri was true: no matriarch would willingly give up children to another lineage, not with the dwindling Tyrran birth rate. However, he’d also just told her that Lady Anja hadn’t rejected her formal complaint as trivial.

She shouldn’t be talking with him right now, not when she was tired. Jan lived by controlling others. He influenced his fellow Guard members to further his career, he easily swayed the emotions of his son and wife, and he’d even made the mistake of trying to manipulate a matriarch. She still remembered his face when he realized he couldn’t influence Lady Anja. He might have occupied a special place in his grandmother’s heart when she was matriarch of the Serasa-Kolme, but this was not the case with his aunt.

“Go back inside. Erik needs your help controlling the rabble.” She turned on her heel and left.

•••

“I know Groygan eyes when I see them,” Skuva said, his voice sullen and defensive.

Haversar watched the boy silently. He didn’t like Skuva’s tone, but he had to make allowances. Even
his
gut twisted at the bruises on Skuva’s head, neck, arms, and legs. The left side of Skuva’s face had swelled to black, purple, and barely recognizable. This evening, he’d been beaten until unconscious, then left like a bundle of trash in an alley in Betarr Serin, the upper city. Haversar’s men had found Skuva, and brought him “home” to the bolthole near the Betarr Serasa docks, where Haversar ran his organization.

He flicked his fingers, and someone hurried to put a wet cloth on the boy’s face and tend his wounds. Everyone relaxed. Skuva’s knees gave way as he was helped into a chair. He was a rarity: a true nunetton, a child who had slipped through the grasp of the matriarchs and their records, to be raised anonymously on the streets by Haversar.

“Why did you choose this mark?” Haversar asked Skuva.

“Dapper enough to carry gold, and walking like a gentleman who’d tipped back too much drink.” Late on Fairday evening, Skuva made the most obvious conclusion. He’d earned the elite position of working the streets of Betarr Serin with his light touch and quick fingers.

“What happened then?”

“I followed him a couple blocks, then got close enough to cut the strings on his purse.” Skuva gulped. “He was quick as a cat. Grabbed me by the collar and arm, so I couldn’t twist away.”

“Did he say anything? Did he have an accent?” Haversar asked.

“He said, ‘What ho, boy,’ and he sounded Tyrran as you or me. Then his hood fell back. He might have been Tyrran, ‘cept his eyes. They shone bright in the gaslight.” Skuva tried to shake his head, and winced.

Haversar believed Skuva, even though there weren’t more than ten Groygans inside the sister cities. Skuva was only twelve, and looked even younger because of his size—a Tyrran couldn’t hurt a child like that. An outraged Tyrran gentleman would have done no more than drag Skuva to the nearest watch post or give the boy a lecture; the offended adult thought their words could change the wayward child. Haversar had taught Skuva to listen respectfully and promise to set his ways straight. The boy took his training seriously because he couldn’t get afternoon lessons or apprenticeships; only Haversar could provide him with a future.

“So, at that point, he knew you’d outed him as Groygan?” Haversar asked.

“Yes, ‘cause I tried to get away. His grip turned to iron and his face—well, he got serious. He pulled me into the alley and started hitting me. I couldn’t do nothing ‘bout it, I swear by the Horn. He was too strong.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Skuva’s eyes went wide as he remembered, and one of his pupils appeared larger than the other. “Something ‘bout taking a message.”

Haversar understood. He waved at the two people who were trying to apply rudimentary first aid to Skuva. “Let him rest, but watch him. If he worsens, drop him off at the Betarra Hospital.”

There was murmured surprise at his words, but he frowned back and eyes dropped. He motioned Johtu over to his side. “Something’s afoot at the Groygan embassy, and we’ve been warned to back off.”

“Why? What have we done to the Groygans?” Johtu might be a little slow, but this time he’d gotten to the crux as fast as Haversar.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps we’ve seen something we shouldn’t. Talk to everyone assigned to Betarr Serin yesterday. See if anything strange—stranger than normal—has been happening.” Haversar chose the people he placed in the upper city carefully, to avoid drawing unwanted attention. The King and his counselors lived up there, but more importantly, so did the matriarchs of the most powerful lineages in Tyrra. He stepped lightly around matriarchs, because they had the resources to put him out of business if he became too much of a nuisance.

“Where, do you suppose, were the Phrenii? They wouldn’t let this happen.”

“You’re being Tyrran, assuming the boy is under their protection.
You
wouldn’t take the chance that they’d be close enough to sense his distress.” Yet another reason Haversar believed a
Groygan
had attacked Skuva. A Tyrran adult wouldn’t chance the madness they’d suffer if the Phrenii found them hurting a child.

“Well, the boy’s lucky he didn’t get his throat cut.” Johtu fingered his own knife hanging on his belt.

There it was again, the little twisting in Haversar’s gut. He was definitely too invested in Skuva. After a deep breath, he said, “Keep a quiet eye on the Groygan embassy. I want to know when they’re going in and out, and how—although I expect all the tunnels have been blocked.”