Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (56 page)

“They are seeking answers. Or someone to blame,” said Caenith.

Surly and preoccupied, the companions slipped out into the streets again. As a man of odd customs and habits who did not age, Caenith had been run from many a settlement of man. When he became too reclusive, outlived one too many elders, or refused the wrong hand in marriage, the people’s tolerance for his queerness predictably came to an end. He could well imagine what infamies were brewing in Eod regarding his name. With Morigan’s consent, his next home might have to be beyond the great mountains. Perhaps in a land of snow, ice, and solitude, where loneliness was a part of life, he would be less questioned and more widely welcomed.

Striding fast, they were soon high upon Blackforge’s hill among the grimy market tents and smoking outdoor kilns, ovens, and hearths that gave the city its reputation. At one time, metals surely simmered over these coals, yet today the travelers saw only bland foods, clayware, and the occasional jewelcrafter; no jolly bellows or aproned strongmen singing to the day with their hammers and anvils. As a city founded upon smithies, they were surely in short supply. Thackery recalled the rumors that in the last decade, Menos had bled the mineral veins under the city dry, and the absence of metal outside of scrap hauled by weary oxen in carts—
for what purpose?
wondered Thackery—confirmed this suspicion. More folk wandered around the market, though there were as many merchants as there were customers, which was not symptomatic of a healthy economy.

How far the iron hand reaches
, thought Thackery.
Do you have any idea how much cruelty you spread, Gloria? All for an ambition that feeds itself like
a monster. Do you blame our mother’s weakness, or do you blame our father’s sin? Do you still hold your husband’s death against me? He was wicked well before you decided to outshine his evil. Either way, the poison stems from you. Into your children, too. Did Sorren act on his own? It seems unlikely, attached to your teat as he is. No, you share the blame as much as he does. I would pray to our Menosian ancestors that we do not meet, Gloria. For all my grievances flow back to you, and I shall see you pay for every one of your treacheries, wretched sister of mine
.

If he were a little less involved in himself, Thackery would have noticed the contingent of charcoal-cloaked warriors gathered before a table of poultices and tinctures before bumbling into the largest of them, who turned. The appalled sufferance with which the tall stranger beheld Thackery suggested that he was a man of mortal power, and his brocaded garments supported this thought. He was thick, but not fat, with a beard and hair that were sleekly groomed and a weaselly cunning to his eyes. One of the man’s hands went to a hilt at his garish silver baldric and the other pushed against Thackery’s chest.

“I would remove that, if I were you,” cautioned Caenith.

The man sneered. “I am Augustus Blackmore, the master of Blackforge, and I shall do as I please in my realm. No wanderer or his oversized manservant will say otherwise.”

A quartet of gruff whiskery warriors, all aged beyond their youth by scowls and frowns, attended the master of Blackforge, and they unsheathed their weapons in a flourish of steel that sent folks running and hiding behind barrels or under their tables, like the merchant tending this particular venue. As quickly as the blades flashed, Caenith’s arm passed about him in a circle, the limb as vibrating and indistinct as a struck tuning fork: perhaps to key the chorus of yelps that followed. The men and the master all dropped their swords from his slaps. Caenith had moved too quickly for Thackery to interfere, and as the severity of the slight dawned on the old man and the astonished but rapidly reddening master of Blackforge, he stepped in to mitigate the worst of the offense.

“Do excuse my guard’s swift hands,” begged Thackery. “He is a martial disciple of the southern lands. A man of instinct, who only acts in the interest of my protection and is unfamiliar with the decorum of central Geadhain.”

“He’s rather large for a Southerner,” said Augustus, pouting and nursing his wrist. “Rather dark of skin and heavy of frame for those reedlike yellow bastards. I could have him beaten for his disrespect.”

Caenith’s eyes darkly shimmered.
Try
, he thought.

“I would ask that you don’t,” said Thackery, who knew that such threats would end poorly for the master. “And that we put this unpleasant misunderstanding behind us. We have pressing business elsewhere and must be on our way. A thousand pardons to you, Augustus.”

“Business?” asked Augustus. “What manner of enterprise are you involved in, old man?”

“Spices and exotic materials.”

“Exotic materials? Sounds suspicious.”

Having just retrieved and stowed their swords, Augustus’s men were clearly debating whether to pull them again. Augustus nodded for them to still their hands.

“You are an apothecary, then?” asked Augustus, flicking a bundle of dried herbs off the table and into the muck. “With better goods than this hedge-healer’s tripe?”

“I am a trader, mostly,” Thackery replied, smiling shakily. “I do not practice the art of healing, myself. I merely provide the tools.”

“I am at my wit’s end, trader.” The master sighed. “I have seen every physician and sorcerer passing or summoned to this realm, and I am still without a cure for the condition of someone I value. If I can borrow you for an hourglass or two, I would have you look at a patient and tell me if any
tools
you know of can assist in her condition. Perhaps that is where I have gone wrong, in seeking specialists instead of the medicines and their peddlers themselves. Perhaps the simplest midwife’s draft will cure this problem.”

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“Your courtesy would make it easier to forgive the insult to my house,” said the master, smiling without kindness. “I shall see you speedily set on the road afterward. You are not invited to feast with us, so you needn’t stay.”

After sparing a silent curse to Caenith, Thackery bowed his agreement. He was grateful when Caenith didn’t simply sprint off to Menos and allowed the men to circle and herd them like livestock down the road. In fact, much
of Caenith’s manner was sullen and subdued, though what stirred under that cool mask was what worried Thackery the most. For the Wolf would not be indefinitely delayed in his quest. Soon the beast would tire of these games of men and would bite at whatever hands tried to thwart him.

“I never did catch your name,” said the master from up ahead.

“I never gave it,” replied Thackery.

“You should,” said Augustus, again laughing without mirth. “Only a fool invites strangers into his home.”

Only a fool trusts a lapdog of Menos
, thought Thackery. “Jebidiah Rotbottom,” he replied.

Only the barest pause was taken, though Caenith noticed it, and the odor of sweet strawberry mulch—the stench of corruption—around the man grew greater. Any ideas he had about knocking these wicked men around were stalled by the shadows gliding through the deepest clouds that Thackery, or most slow-walkers, could not sense: skycarriages of Menos.
Crowes
, patrolling the border of the Feordhan. They were not in familiar or hospitable lands anymore, and he must be wary—even if that meant bending to the whims of this insignificant slow-walker. Or at least he should wait until they were in a more private location to release any violence.

Folks shied away from the passage of their company, women pulled their children from the road, and the few who were caught in their path stopped their wagons and bowed their heads at Augustus. Beaten souls, all of them, noted Caenith. He pondered what cruelties they had suffered under the master’s hand and felt a rare moment of compassion for slow-walkers, as these were so terribly broken. What, then, could break a man to a cowering dog? he wondered. Caenith received an answer as they came to the palisade that protected the master’s longhouse. From beyond the wall rolled a sour wave, and Caenith’s ears were teased by the faint bleating of mortal woe. With this forewarning, once they were marched past the churlish gatemen and into a mucky enclosure, what the Wolf saw did not surprise him. Thackery, however, gasped at the wooden platforms and their cluttered stockades: each prison filled with an emaciated figure, some dead for so long that the birds and flies had picked them to half-white corpses. The ones that were alive moaned, more of delirious agony than true pleas.

Augustus was mad, the companions realized.

So ghastly was the scene that Thackery’s feet froze and he had to cover his mouth to catch the bile. The Wolf maintained nothing more telling than his usual glower. Gently, Caenith pushed his companion forward; he kept his hand to the man’s shivering back for a time. The gesture and its warmth were comforting. The master’s words were not.

“Criminals, all of them. Spare them no pity,” said Augustus. “Do not think me cruel, for I cast the sentence that put them here, and I know the name and crime of every offender.” He pointed to a skinny wretch on one of the platforms as they moved by. “That man there, Twyn Barlay: a bread thief, whose food allowance was not enough for his greed. Tough times are these, and the stores must be protected. War is on the horizon, and the people must be strong, lean, and ready to obey their masters. A hungry man is a willing man, and Barlay crossed the line between willingness and desperation. I make these decisions for the endurance of the house of Blackmore, and I bear the burden of these souls’ penance as much as they.”

Thackery was hard-pressed to believe that the master found any of this to be a
burden
, for such misery could only be gleefully inflicted.

“War?” asked Thackery.

“Have you not heard?” said Augustus, puffing himself up. “It seems you have been far away not to know. The Iron Queen has at last struck against Eod. An incendiary in King’s Crown. Dozens dead. The first arrow fired, so to speak. The time of hidden alliances is at an end. All men must choose where to cast their lot. Who would you choose, merchant? The West or the East?”

“As a trader to all nations, it serves me best to claim neutrality,” said Thackery. A heavy quiet fell over the group, until he added, “Yet as a man who must choose, I would side with those most likely to win. I would choose the Iron City.”

Augustus clapped. “Wisely said. And even the simplest man can see the victor. A nation of peace-loving philanthropists and poets? Or a people who are born and bred to conquer without compassion? I know who is more likely to slay the other, sorcerer kings aside. Menos has its own technomagiks that can peel the soul from a man at a thousand paces or melt flesh like lard in a fireplace. I would like to see how a sorcerer king, mighty as the legends say, can withstand
that
. Legends are stories for children and campfires. History,
however, is fact. Fact written by man. Immortal Kings have no place in our history. They should fade as stories, with the faeries, wyrms, and other relics of the past. House Blackmore will side with the Iron City. We shall make history. Already the Iron Queen extends the hand of their protection to our skies, and soon we shall—”

The master’s boastfulness was running away with his tongue, and he said no more as they crossed the mud. They entered the longhouse, and the smells and oppression of the stockades were left behind a curtain of heavy pelts. Straightaway, the space stretched into a long wide corridor with many fires along the beaten floor. While much of the smoke escaped through holes in the roof, enough of it remained to haze the area. They walked through the dreamy mist, haunted by crying children and hushing wives, who were sensed but only seen as ghosts around the campfires or hidden in alcoves draped in hides. Whomever they encountered did not shy from greeting their master, but ceased whatever they were doing to honor him. Toward the back of the longhouse, steel screeched as it was sharpened or sparked as it was tested in drills between warriors. These martial activities were as vigorous—if far sloppier—than the graceful exercises of the Silver Watch, and Caenith sensed that there was a motivation to their training beyond the simple upkeep of a warrior’s edge.

Thackery detected this readiness as well, though not as acutely as Caenith did. He considered that this was tied to what the master had abstained from voicing earlier about a war.
An outright alliance between Blackforge and Menos. Is it from this black port that Menos will funnel through into the West?
Strategically, he could think of no better place from which to launch a war.
And those oxen in the market…where were they taking all that metal? Is there another port I don’t know of, one that builds ships or armaments? Perhaps the smiths have not left this town, after all. I wonder how long you have been planning this, Gloria, and how deeply rooted this plan is?

“What fine swords your men have,” praised Thackery. “Though I confess to being swayed by rumors that Blackforge was no longer the foundry for which it was famed.”

“Do not believe henswives’ gossip,” replied Augustus.

“Where are the forges, then? I saw none—worth note—in the market or within the city.”

To the far north
, thought Caenith, who could hear the dim clangs and huffs of men toiling over great fires and machinery somehow within the earth, now that Thackery had planted the notion.

Augustus halted before a mighty rafter hung with sails of tanned flesh that swayed in sensuous ways and blocked off what remained of the longhouse.

“Metalcraft is in the blood of every man, woman, and child in Blackforge,” declared Augustus. “We are nursed on bottles of molten milk. We are bred strong and stubborn with bones of lead, and our spirits are as honed as the strongest blade. Our greatness is not diminished simply because you do not see it. Soon the whole of Geadhain will know the song of our steel and the glory of our work. That is not why you are here, though. Come.”

Now Augustus swept forward through the grand curtain, and the companions followed, caressed by layers of dead skin. Queer smells lured the Wolf from where they were headed: scents of freshwater lake mud and mint leaves that were incongruous with the hickory reek of Blackforge. He was anxious to see what lay ahead. Augustus’s magnificent hall was an affront to the gloomy destitution of his city; that a master should live in such splendor or lecture about starvation while his people suffered was despicable to the companions. Especially in view of the huge stone table prepared with a cold and wasted feast; or the carpet of shining pelts, thick enough to keep any shivering wretch warm; or the chests spilling with wealth and jewels that were nestled among the furs. Among the treasures, Thackery spotted chronexes, astrology instruments, and a detailed globe affixed to a metal arm that could only be gifts from the artisans of Menos. Past the table was a splendid hearth. Here, the fire burned clean and the smoke was drawn out a wide gable. Beneath the opening was a pair of thrones made from polished pale wood, and a young lady as gray and melancholy as the light that fell upon her sat in one of them.