Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (2 page)

‘Well, your luck nearly ran out on you here,’ said Wiggins, downing his tumbler. ‘Did some of that wandering myself when I was a pup. King’s Cavalry, posted in the east; bandits and marauders like weeds out there back in the day.’

Kerge bowed towards Jacob. ‘You are my balance. Fate led you to my path when my mean fell short.’ He showed them his little silver box, pointing to a small screen flickering with moving numbers. For the gask it was his tarot deck.

The equations didn’t mean a whole lot to Jacob. ‘Life has a way of sending you what you need, Kerge, not what you want. You can call that fate if you like.’

‘You are a priest in the church? I’ve heard there is some similarity of philosophy between the fates of the gask and the harmony of your god. May I have your name, manling?’

‘Father Carnehan,’ said Jacob. ‘The ugly fellow here is Constable Wiggins, and I’ll give you some more advice. In a town like Northhaven, you’re not testing your luck, you’re pushing it. You need to journey on up through the old town’s gates. Climb the hill. There are a few more constables and a lot less weapons behind the old city’s walls.’

Kerge sipped at the lemon juice, his bear-like eyes blinking in appre­ciation at the tartness of the liquid. ‘You are kind to a traveller. And your advice should shorten my journey.’ He slipped his abacus machine into a simple leather satchel hanging across his shoulder.

Wiggins shook his head as the young gask left the tavern. ‘Forest men blow into town as bare-assed as a monk with a begging bowl. Beats me how those leathernecks ever got so clever with machines, or find the money to make them. Reckon they’ve got an alchemist’s mill out in the glades of Quehanna turning wood into gold?’

Jacob finished his rice wine. ‘No police. No politics. No army. No brawling. No crime. No riots. No drinking or lighting up weed. The gasks put their passions into thinking and arts and invention, Mister Wiggins.’

‘Life as quiet as all that, you won’t live to reach two hundred years old, but it’ll sure feel like it.’

‘I believe that’s called serenity.’

Wiggins looked at the sailors clearing up the smashed-up tavern. ‘The forest people sure can gamble, though.’

‘That they can.’ The men of the forest didn’t have much to do with the rest of Weyland, that much was certain. They had been separate from the main branch of mankind for so long that any union between a gask and a Weylander resulted in children born insane.
Too many twists on the spiral
, that was the midwives’ old piece of wis­dom. Damned if Jacob knew what spiral they meant, unless it was the serpent wrapped around a staff, the old healers’ symbol, but he understood the sentiment. Forest people’s minds were too different now; the gasks’ prophetic gifts too dangerous to be held in common pattern flesh.

Jacob heard a train of horses pulling to a halt outside the inn and the pastor suspected
his
fortunes were about to take a turn for the worse. Confirming his premonition, one of the few men in town who could afford a private carriage with six horses on train came barrelling through the entrance.
Benner Landor.
The largest landowner in Northhaven. Probably the richest in the whole prefecture.
With enough ambition to propel him even further.

‘Father Carnehan,’ said Benner, his eyes settling on the pastor next to the constable. ‘Where do you think your son’s at?’

Jacob lifted the fob-watch on his tunic. ‘Well, I’m hoping he’s at work in the library by now.’

‘Try again,’ said the landowner. ‘There’s a duel being fought over at Rake’s Field this morning, and unless I’ve been misinformed, Carter and Duncan are both out there. Not—’ he sucked in his cheeks ‘—mark you, as seconds.’

Jacob groaned out loud. ‘Pistols or sabres?’

‘Given there’re two cavalry swords usually crossed above my fireplace that are missing, I would say the latter.’ He looked at Wiggins, the constable’s wizened fingers floating over a second whisky. ‘And I think you’ll find that duelling is still listed on King Marcus’s statute books as an offence, even in a town as out of the way as Northhaven.’

‘Only if someone dies in the duel,’ sighed Wiggins. ‘If they live… well, there’s nothing the girls find half so attractive as a duelling scar or two to mark that puppy fat.’

‘Father,’ growled Landor. ‘Do you think Mary’s going to share this ex-battalion roughhouser’s view of one or both of our children ending up on the surgeon’s slab?’

No.
Jacob’s wife would surely give him a few scars of his own if he let a duel involving their son go ahead.

‘Make sure reparations are made,’ Wiggins called back to Jay.

The constable hobbled after Jacob, looking to reach the coach. Wiggins sure wasn’t about to walk out to Rake’s Field at his age.

It was crowded in the carriage, bouncing along towards the woodland at the edge of town, rocking like a cradle on the rough roads. As well as Jacob, Wiggins and Benner Landor, they had the company of the landowner’s daughter, Willow. Her warning about the duel, it seemed, was the spur behind their speedy departure to Northhaven’s outskirts. Willow’s long red hair swayed with the carriage’s bumpy passage over the dirt track, the woman flashing little daggers of anger towards her father when she wasn’t biting her lip in worry about her brother’s plight.

‘I should’ve packed the two of you off to an academy in the capital,’ complained Landor, his words momentarily lost under the crack of the driver’s whip and the clatter of hooves outside. The footman at the back of the carriage called out warnings to those on the road to leap aside. ‘The promise I gave your mother on her deathbed was a mistake. Honeyed words about learning the running of the business here and staying close to the family.
This
behaviour is all that Duncan’s learned at Northhaven. Brawling like a river-boatman over a spilled glass of rum.’

‘It’s a girl they’re fighting over,’ corrected Willow.

‘Then you should’ve told me earlier,’ said Landor.

‘I only discovered the news from one of the staff an hour ago when I couldn’t find my brother,’ said Willow. ‘You knew as soon as I did.’

‘Which one?’ asked Benner Landor. ‘I mean which girl is the duel over, not which member of staff told you about this foolery?’

‘Adella Cheyenne.’

‘The daughter of old Cheyenne who keeps the minutes of the town’s aldermen?’ said Landor, his temper not best improved by the news. ‘A clerk’s daughter.
That’s
who he’s quarrelling over?’

Willow nodded.

‘Your brother,’ hissed Benner Landor, a finger poking the rich red upholstery of the carriage’s interior as if it was his boy’s ribs. ‘Your brother. And what does he think he’s going to do if he wins his duel? There’s a whole season’s worth of society beauties who’ll be throwing themselves at Duncan for just a sniff of our wealth. Earls, barons, counts – fancy titles, draughty baronial mansions down south that need their roofs repaired, and not two farthings to rub together. That’s the wife Duncan will be taking, not a
clerk’s
daughter.’

‘High hopes and great expectations,’ snorted the constable. ‘From a man that sweet-talked a timberman’s daughter into going down the aisle with him. You sure you been distilling your corn for fuel, Benner Landor, not drinking it raw?’

‘When I married Lorenn, we were starting out with nothing,’ said Landor throwing an angry glance at Wiggins. ‘We were equals and what we built, we built together. You think any nobleman’s daughter would have taken
me
when I was a farmhand? Swans swim with swans, ducks swim with ducks, that’s just the way it is.’

The constable spat out of the open window. ‘You should’ve told me that’s the way it is. I would’ve got the radiomen to send a message to King Marcus to set a princess aside for you. You don’t want all the royal family married off before your boy gets to court.’

Landor looked to Jacob. ‘What about you, pastor? You’ve not got an opinion?’

‘You know I travelled here after I married Mary.’
And it doesn’t matter how many years I’ve stayed. I’ll
always be an outsider.
‘Families want what’s best for their children,’ added Jacob. ‘That’s a natural yearning. It’s not for me to pontificate to anyone else on what their
best
might be. I’ve got trouble enough convincing Carter of what constitutes a good path.’

‘You could try letting himself find his own way,’ suggested Willow, tartly.

Jacob’s hand slipped down to a handgrip by the seat as the carriage twisted to one side. ‘When you know where the bends in the road are, it is an unkindness not to call a warning to someone driving too fast.’

Benner Landor nodded. ‘That’s the way I’m thinking too. I wish there was some of your wisdom in our young men, pastor.’

Jacob held his peace. It was exactly what the son
had
inherited from the father that had him worried.

‘And am I also expected to be married off to some earl’s drooling, half-wit heir?’ asked Willow. ‘Or is one coat of arms to hang above the fireplace enough to satisfy the family’s honour?’

‘We’ll see how that goes,’ growled Landor. ‘The Avisons of Grovebank have two sons who need to find matches, and the end of their land is only two hundred miles down the coast from the corner of our last farm.’

‘Of course, why go to the expense of sending
me
to court, when there’s a local idiot adjoining our corn fields?’

‘When you’ve got four fool-headed grandchildren arguing about whose gambling bills the sale of our estate is going to pay off first, you’ll be glad your long dead father had the sense to marry the Landors into a title they can’t trade away as easily as their land.’

‘You can always get your sons to marry a timberman’s girls,’ the constable winked at Willow. ‘At least that way they’ll always have wood for the fire as well as between their ears.’

The creaking of the carriage lessened as the six horses slowed. They were arriving by the woods. Benner Landor was out before the coach had even stopped, leaping down into the meadows in front of the woodland, the traditional setting for local duels. Far enough outside town that a stray bullet wouldn’t catch a bystander; near enough that a wounded man could still be carried back to Northhaven’s surgeons without bleeding-out more than a pint’s worth of blood.
Grass before breakfast
, that was what the tradition was called. A polite euphemism for a brutal settling of so-called honour among dunces. And here were two of them, surrounded by a crowd of their jostling, jeering peers… cheering on the clash of swords as Carter Carnehan and Duncan Landor parried and thrust at each other. A corded duelling line across the field was all that separated the pair, a boundary neither combatant was meant to step over. Nominally, it was to ensure the duel was to the first blood and not the death. Although much good that did the gallants frequently pulled wounded from Rake’s Field.

‘Thought those two were meant to be friends,’ said Wiggins. ‘Leastwise, it was always that pair trying to sneak into taverns together on the wrong side of the age ban.’

‘They’ve moved on,’ noted Willow, the sarcasm dripping from her voice. ‘Now they’re finding trouble with women who should know better, rather than at the bottom of an ale glass.’

Carter Carnehan and Duncan Landor might have been much the same in temper and temperament, but in looks they were poles apart – all they really shared was their height and frame – both tall and raised barn-strong by country living. Carter was dark-haired, his mane tending to unruly twists like his father, while Duncan possessed an untidy straw-coloured mop. Carter was dark-skinned and swarthy, a face all hard lines and as jutted as granite; Duncan’s features fairer, the angelic suggestion of his handsome countenance undermined by a slight curl of superiority that often crinkled around the edges of his lips. Duncan waiting for the whole world to be given to him on a plate, Carter with nothing but an ageing pastor’s hopes and worries. As dissimilar as they were, it had seemed natural to Jacob they had become fast friends growing up – two halves of a coin snapped apart and joined to make a whole. How had it come to this, their friendship spiked by the pressures of looming adulthood?
Well, their friendship might be skewered, but damned if I’m going to let these two young fools do the same to each other with sabres.

Jacob could see the young woman Willow had mentioned on the side-lines. From the flushed look on her face, her hands clasped together in anticipation as if she was praying, she seemed to think that it was terribly exciting to have two beaus crossing blades on her behalf. Willow had Adella Cheyenne pegged straight all right. At their age, men needed a good woman’s common-sense to stop them cracking antlers. A lady with as little insight as a man was as dangerous as a crowded inn on payday. Blockheads like Carter and Duncan needed civilising, not encouraging behind a duelling line.

Benner Landor was ahead of Jacob, bellowing his way through the onlookers, his large farmer’s hands seizing members of the audience and shoving them out of his way. Not all of the onlookers were contemporaries of the two young men… new apprentices. There were gamblers and roughhousers aplenty; the kind of rascals who would’ve turned up to any duel, morning, afternoon or evening, just for a chance to view spilled blood. They sounded angry curses at the exertions of the barrel-chested estate owner cutting a passage through their ranks but the mob quietened down quick enough after they saw Constable Wiggins trailing in the landowner’s wake. If this combat took a fatal turn, the audience could be locked up for incitement to murder. It took Benner Landor getting to the front of the circle of jeering brutes before the two participants realised that unwelcome company had arrived at their duel.

‘You fool,’ bellowed Benner Landor striding out, ‘you damnable young fool. What are you doing here? Have the stealers got into you this morning?’

Stealers
. Benner had used the old formal name for the demons that could worm a way into a man’s soul and twist it to evil. Give Duncan Landor his due; he seemed willing to brazen it out. ‘It’s a matter of
honour
.’ Duncan said the last word as though it had been passed down to him on a scroll by an angel to protect him from his formidable father’s wrath.