Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (15 page)

Bastio was the very definition of a sore thumb. He was an eye-offending splash of colour in the middle of Castle Tayn’s palette of greyscale stone and tired wood. He had the look of a skinny rat that had been doused in paints and left to dry. His attire wasn’t out of choice, no, of course not; a castle’s jester always wore what he was told. Or else. In this case, he had been given a headache-inducing one-piece outfit of lemon yellow, spattered with a sky blue and moss-green diamond pattern. His pointy hat was a dark red, and his shoes the same, only muddier. It was almost as if a rainbow had vomited upon him.

Farden grabbed a stool in passing and sat down next to the man. Bastio was the type of fellow that always moved in quick, jerky increments, like a rodent, always snatching, twitching. It wouldn’t have been a problem had it not been for the fact that his hat and clothing were festooned with tiny bells. Every time he moved they tittered and chimed with him, making every little movement annoyingly musical. To make it worse, the jester also had a habit of humming. No wonder Bastio spent most of his days alone, thought Farden. More than an hour in the man’s company could have driven anybody to a level of madness.

Farden looked at the book, and then back to Bastio. His mouth moved as if trying on the words for size. The mage leant forward. ‘You know it’s upside down, don’t you?’

Bastio stopped humming for a moment. He gave the mage a suspicious glance, and then turned the book around so he could assess the truth of that statement. On seeing that the title of his book was lingering near the bottom of the cover, he huffed and flipped the book the right way up. ‘What d’you want, Four-Hand?’ he asked. ‘Cannae a man read in peace?’

‘That usually depends on whether he can read or not.’

‘I can read.’

Farden reached out and snatched the book out of his hands ‘What’s the book about?’

Bastio crossed his arms with a jingle. ‘What’ll it be then, Farden?’

‘Double what I had last time.’

Bastio winced and rubbed his hands together. ‘Double? Might wanna have a think ‘bout that, Four-Hand. Prices ‘ave gone up.’

Farden scowled. ‘What?’

The jester tried to look as innocent as possible. ‘Taxes, see.’

‘Taxes? What taxes?’

‘My taxes, Four-Hand. For reading lessons.’

‘Don’t test me, clown. I’m not in the mood. I’d hate to see you try to play the lute with a pair of broken hands.’

If Bastio was worried by that threat, he didn’t show it. ‘My prices are what they are. ‘Less of course, if’n you want to try findin’ another like me in this town, one that’ll do business with the likes o’ you.’

Farden stared hard at the skinny man. Bastio stared right back with his beady little eyes. This game was loaded in the jester’s favour and they both knew it. Farden hadn’t ever been clever enough to hide the intensity of his habit. Bastio knew this very well.

Farden stood up. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that.’

Bastio simply chuckled, jingling.

The mage clenched a fist, briefly contemplated beating it out of the man, and then sat down again. ‘How much are we talking?’

‘Two bags. Fifty.’

‘Silver?’

‘Gold.’

‘Gold?! If you think this is funny…’ growled Farden.
What else had he expected from a jester?
He dug deep into his pocket and let his hand hover there, finger and thumb pinching the coins to count them. Fifty was half what the Duke had paid him. ‘Thirty. I should get a discount. Nobody else buys as much as I do.’

‘You say it like it’s a good thing, Four-Hand. I ain’t ever seen a man like it as much as you. Rot your brain one day, you will.’

‘And that would be my business, not yours.’

Bastio rubbed his chin. ‘Forty-five.’

‘Thirty-five.’

‘Forty.’

‘Fine,’ Farden consented, eager to leave. He could almost smell the scent of the nevermar escaping the jester’s pocket, taunting him. Farden licked his lips.

Bastio reached inside his multicoloured collar. Farden looked around warily. He needn’t have bothered, but old habits died the hardest. Nevermar wasn’t forbidden in Albion like it was to the Arka. In Krauslung, Manesmark, or Essen, the rules had always been that anybody found with it had the nevermar confiscated and burnt, and a black eye or worse to show for it. Mages were lucky if they spent a few months in the Arkathedral cells. Written faced a hanging from the gates. No exceptions. It was a wise approach from the magick council: a completely intolerant approach meant nevermar and its ilk were very hard to come by in Arka lands. Temptation was a foreign thing. It was a fine idea if a mage never left Arka lands, but as Farden had discovered very early on, the rest of Emaneska had never been so strict.

Bastio produced a cloth bag from his pocket. Farden snatched it quickly. He teased apart the neck of the bag and peered inside to assess his spoils. He let the bitter-sweet, oleaginous tentacles of its scent fill his nose and his forehead.

‘Hâlorn’s finest that is,’ said Bastio, proudly. Farden wasn’t listening. His mind was already halfway out the castle and filled with smoke.

‘Mhm,’ the mage hummed. He got to his feet and tucked the cloth bag deep into the inner pocket of his cloak. ‘It better be. Now if you’ll excuse me…’

‘I wager that I’ll be seeing you soon enough, Four-Hand,’ Bastio sniggered.

‘Any time would be too soon.’

The little man smiled. ‘Enjoy.’

Farden didn’t reply. Feeling slightly cheated and yet strangely satisfied at the same time, he left Bastio to his book and made for whatever door could lead him out of Castle Tayn. The mage wasn’t in the mood for any more of today. Farden had often contemplated buying a hawk to relay his orders and bags of gold to and from the Duke. That way he wouldn’t have to see anyone at all besides the people he killed, and they wouldn’t bother him. Not for long anyway. Farden could be what he wanted to be, a ghost. Farden shook his head. Gold via a hawk. He hadn’t even touched the nevermar yet.

The mage strode down the halls, barging some of the slower people aside. Their yelps and cries of surprise were music to his ears. Once he had descended to the lowest level of the Castle, he spotted a purple square of torchlit sky sitting in the gap between two open doors, and set a course for it, like a ship escaping a storm.

He was almost free when he heard a high-pitched shout from behind him.

‘Farden!’

Farden stopped inches from the doorway. The guards stared dully at him. Farden knew exactly who was calling him, and that knowledge made him smile just a little.

The mage turned around to find a woman, slightly grey of hair, slim, and somewhat attractive, walking towards him down the corridor. She had a small smile on her lips. There was a small rusty-haired boy by her side, his expression as vile as the little trickle of snot that was slowly making good its escape from his left nostril. It was Kiltyrin’s son, Timeon, and already every inch his father and growing more every day. He had his hands firmly clasped behind his back. He couldn’t have been more than eleven years old, yet he was glaring at the mage as if he held an ancient grudge against him.

‘Farden Four-Hand. Here at my father’s bidding, are you?’ he piped out, voice squeaky in its youth. Farden made a point of snorting at him, and looked to his mother, the Duke’s lonely wife, Moirin.

‘Leaving already?’ she asked him.

Farden let his shoulders rise up, helpless. ‘Orders are orders.’

‘Only if you follow them,’ she smiled, a vacant sort of smile, sad, resigned, yet one that still curled in a way that was reminiscent of brighter days of wit and charm. Farden found himself smiling back, but it was then that he noticed a slight smudge of yellow on the angle of her jaw. Half a week old maybe. He reached out a hand to examine it, but she flinched away. The brat by her side coughed noisily.

‘I thought he had stopped coming to see you?’ Farden asked, ignoring Timeon. The boy was one big scowl. He spared a quick glance at him, and spied the faint shadow of a bruise on his pale wrist too.

Moirin made her excuses. ‘A banquet for one of his Fidlarig friends. He was drunk.’

Farden clenched his fist so hard that one of his knuckles clicked. Moirin moved her dark hair forward to hide the bruise. Farden had first met her a long time ago, a year or so before Timeon had been born. She had been a striking, sharp-tongued lady of Kiltyrin’s court, well-known for her activities during banquets, and after them too. In the first few years, when Farden had been invited to accompany the Duke to banquets with more than a dubious guestlist, he had often found her outside, roaming the gardens. They had spent the nights talking. Only talking. It had been all Farden could manage at the time. The thoughts of Cheska were still rawer than a battlefield. He had long suspected that his past inaction nettled her, but they had never spoken of it.

Now, however, Moirin was more like a rusty trophy than a wife, one that had been assumed gold, but found to be brass, and thus locked in an attic. Kiltyrin usually ordered her confined to the sanctuary in the eastern corner of the castle, kept out of sight, just as he liked her to be. That way she could be ignored, summoned when needed, and in the meantime keep Timeon out of the way until he was old enough to be interesting. The little brat might have been a boil on the cheek of Castle Tayn, but giving birth to him had been Moirin’s saving grace.

Farden looked at the stairs he had come down, as if contemplating going back up them, but instead he just grunted, and shrugged. ‘Drunk,’ was all he could say. Moirin pursed her lips, almost as if disappointed.

‘Gods, Farden, it’s not the first time in this world that a husband’s taken his hand to his wife,’ she said.
And not the last
, Farden inwardly hissed.

Timeon piped up again. ‘So, Four-Hand, what’s my father making you do now, hmm?’

‘None of your bloody business, Dukeling.’

Timeon went as red as his hair. ‘You can’t speak to me like that.’

Farden contemplated flicking him in the face, hard, just on the bridge of his nose where it would make his eyes water. The idea of the wailing wretch fleeing down the corridor almost made him smile. But he didn’t. He restrained himself, out of respect for Moirin. He prodded the boy in the chest instead. ‘You aren’t Duke yet, Timeon. ‘Til you are, I’ll speak to you how I please.’

‘One day…’ Timeon burbled. ‘One day you’ll… you’ll…’ but he lacked the cerebral wherewithal to finish his threat. This time, Farden did smile.

Moirin pointed her son up the corridor. ‘Timeon, go wait for me on the stairs.’

‘But…!’

‘Go!’

Timeon sullenly did as he was told and stalked off, stumbling for a moment over his own laces. Farden heard the faint hiss of a snigger from the guards behind him.

Moirin watched her son stamp across the floor. ‘He will be Duke one day.’

‘Now there’s a scary thought.’

There was a moment. Moirin leant a little closer. ‘So what has my husband got you doing this time?’

‘You know he’d beat you for asking me that. Better if I don’t say. Better if…’

‘…If I don’t know.’ Moirin nodded. ‘I understand. Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed doing my husband’s dirty work. Somebody might miss you,’ she sighed, and slowly turned to walk away. Her long velvet skirts made it look as if she were floating across the stone. Farden’s eyes followed her to the stairs. She didn’t turn back to look at him. Only Timeon looked back. He had the gall to flash a pair of fingers at the mage before his mother slapped him across the cheek. Farden grinned at that.
Make hay while the sun shines, why not.

He heard more sniggering from behind him. The guards again, up to something. Farden turned around to find one of them busy humping the shaft of his spear, making his armour rattle, while the other was trying, and failing, not to laugh.

The sight of Farden marching towards them soon put a halt to their little joke. They tried their hardest to ignore the stony-faced mage as he walked up to them, lips tight, holding back the laughter. Farden brought his face within a hairsbreadth of the nearest guard’s face, so close their noses almost touched. Farden’s eyes flicked to the man’s spear. ‘How about we shove that thing up your arse, and see how funny you feel then?’ he growled. ‘Fancy that?’ The guard quickly shook his head, his laughter dead as a stone. ‘I thought not,’ Farden said, jerking his hand up to brush a stray bit of hair from his face. It made the guard flinch, and Farden walked away, chuckling.

Farden walked out into the twilight of the town and the timid stars. As his boots hammered the endless, knee-jarring steps that led down into Tayn, he found a little calm in the buzzing of the fattened insects and clatter of the town. Music spilled from the open windows of taverns. Alleys and streets murmured with hushed conversation. He passed a house, and heard somebody screaming, in the throes of passion by the sounds of it. Alittle idea blossomed in Farden’s mind then. He gnawed his lip at the thought of the nevermar in his pocket.
No. It can wait for now.
Perhaps he would make one quick stop before he left town.

When he took the next turning, so did the silent shadow lingering behind him.

1569 years ago

A Dagger
.

Fast and blunt yet bright as sunlight, it slipped behind the tendons of his knee and deftly pulled the earth out from under him.

Korrin hit the sand with a crunch and a wheeze. He wasn’t surprised to find the same dull blade tickling his windpipe when he lifted his head to breathe. The scarlet-headed woman squeezing its handle threw him a contemptuous look and stood up. Exasperation glinted in the russet shards that were her eyes. She gazed down, lip curled, at the wan figure sprawled at her feet.

Korrin had rolled onto his stomach. He lay there like a beached whale, tasting sand. It tasted of disappointment. It tasted the same as the last time.

‘Again?’ brayed a nearby man, a giant of a figure, and even more so looking up from the sand. ‘Estina, I owe you a mug of valtik after all!’

‘Peasant,’ snorted Estina, from a little distance away. She had gone to fetch a white towel from a barrel by a door.