Moon's Artifice (3 page)

‘Come to think of it, this is all the old man’s fault anyway.’ He ducked his head under the goshe’s arm and manoeuvred him until he was draped over his back.

‘All Enchei’s fault,’ Narin repeated as he tried to stand. ‘Stars in heaven you’re heavy !’ he gasped, wavering and almost dropping back down to the ground.

The goshe was a dead weight on his shoulders, all hard muscle and bone. Crab-like, Narin hauled the man over to the window sill and grabbed hold of it to drag himself up. For a moment his knees wavered before he at last straightened them with a gasp.

‘Damn you, Enchei,’ he continued through gritted teeth. ‘If I’d never met you I’d not be in love with another man’s wife. Not be dragging this Gods-cursed lump home for reasons that’ll probably get me killed – if my friend doesn’t find out about me and his wife first.’

The layout of the city unfolded in his mind, a broken wheel of streets and districts that followed the curve of the Crescent River around the Imperial Island. Narin’s home was on the near-side of the island, between the Tier Bridge and the vast Imperial Palace, but he would have to cross a lot of ground to get there.

‘The Harbour Warrant,’ Narin said to the weight on his shoulder, ‘That’s just a few streets away. I’ll take you there and find a patrol to help me. Lord Shield, if you’re looking down, steer me clear of House Dragon’s soldiers or I’ll never get him out.’

He started off across the street, staggering to the nearest alley to be swallowed up by the shadows there. Something pattered down onto his feet as he went. He looked down and saw the sparkle of glass fragments glint in the starlight.

‘Who is the moon ?’ he repeated under his breath. ‘What sort of a question is that ?’

Under the glare of Shield’s starlight he didn’t dare voice his thoughts entirely out loud. The God might still be watching him, might even be listening to anything he said.

The High Gods and their Ascendants had not figured largely in Narin’s life. There were traditions and rituals he knew as well as most in the Empire of a Hundred Houses, but the Lawbringers were the religion his father had taught him ; the ideals they stood for and the order they had brought.

‘When has the moon been anyone ?’ he wondered as he turned a corner and shifted the goshe to a more comfortable position. ‘The moon’s a lump in the sky where no God lives, and a Great House far to the west. Moon’s water is a drink I could do with a few of right now, but it’s no man or woman I ever heard of.’

The night seemed to grow colder, his breath casting clouds of vapour before him as the effort of carrying the man increased with every step.

‘I’m dead then,’ Narin muttered miserably. ‘Dead and buried one way or the other.’

Scowling, he shook his head and plodded on, trying to focus on his anger rather than the strain on his back.

‘I’ll be dead,’ he continued to the uncaring night, ‘and Enchei won’t have a friend in the world again. That might shut the bastard up for a while at least. Should’ve thought of it sooner really.’

In his dreams Narin walks home through the streets of the Cas Tere Warrant alongside a man he hardly knows. A tattooist of the Imperial House called Enchei Jen, he is a grey-haired man once of House Falcon, foremost of House Eagle’s subordinate nations. Narin has been surprised how quickly he has warmed to the man since they first met, just a few weeks before. Enchei’s ready smile and mocking humour reminds Narin of the bullies he endured during his years in the novice dormitories, but somehow he senses no malice in the man – only a quiet strength and peace Narin instinctively envies.

His arms ache from the effort of two hours’ hurling a leather ball with all his strength, only to see it batted back or deftly deflected away. They have played dachan once before so Narin is not surprised he has lost to a man two decades his elder. His thigh also hurts ; a straight blow from the fist-sized ball that hadn’t seemed intentional until Enchei had cheered the strike.

It is late in the evening, but the air is still sticky and warm. The summer afternoon heat is too fierce to play in so they played in the hours before sunset, then ate at a strange back-street eatery serving racks of griddled prawns. Narin carries his dachan stick in hands stained yellow by his food and they talk of inconsequential things, ambling along as men do after a good meal.

Crossing the Fett Canal into the Tale Warrant, they pause to admire the lanterns strung along the bridges and shopfronts even at that late hour – white, red and purple. The purple lanterns hang outside teahouses where men and women alike sit on the wooden decks and smoke cigars or pipes of balese, while inside the opium users have likely crawled onto a pallet to sleep and dream.

Tale is quiet this late. The occasional burst of noise comes from a tavern or gaming den, but nothing that Narin feels he should investigate. Moths and tiny flying lizards dance in the bright starlight of the Gods on a cloudless night. The entire Order of Shaman is displayed in all its glory, the stars of each distinct constellation seeming to cast a purer light than the aged moon.

They turn a corner and stumble to a halt. There is a body on the floor before them. It takes Narin a moment to fully comprehend the sight after a convivial evening, fatigue and wine both dulling his thoughts. Then the black pool of blood and brutal gash in the dead man’s neck snap into focus – as do the long braids of hair and white embossed holster that marks him as a warrior caste of House Wyvern.

At last he looks up and sees more dead men, two in labourer’s clothes and three more of the warrior caste. He is astonished by the sight ; the idea that trained warriors could be cut down by so few lower castes surprises him as much as the sight of slaughter.

The starlight shines down on a strange tableau in the middle of the street. Propped up against a stone water-trough is a nobleman, trousers cut away and lying in tatters around his ankles. Bent over him is a scarred man with a bloodied knife, while around him five others are frozen by the sudden appearance of Narin and Enchei.

Then the spell is broken and they surge forward together. Narin feels a cold knot of fear in the pit of his stomach, realising his Investigator uniform will serve as no defence here. He hurls his dachan stick over-arm at the nearest, causing the man to throw his arms up to protect his face. It gives Narin just a moment’s respite, but long enough for him to pull his stave from behind his back.

A darkened blur flashes across his view. His placid companion has not needed to think, has experienced no moment of uncertainty and fear – he has simply acted. He watches Enchei in the staccato movement of dreams, leaping towards the dead House soldier and rolling across the fallen man. Narin doesn’t even see him pull the pistol from its sheath. One moment Enchei is diving, the next he is crouching with one arm extended.

The crack of gunpowder breaks the quiet – the dirty yellow muzzle-flash casts a sudden light over their attackers, illuminating bloodied knives and cleavers. A man falls, one side of his face torn open by the shot, and the rest hesitate, realising they have left the prohibited weapons alone after killing their owners. One looks down for the body of the nearest soldier and Narin lashes out, hammering his stave into the man’s shoulder.

Enchei drives forward, dachan stick in hand. With the same casual flick that had the beating of Narin earlier, he shatters a man’s jaw. In the next movement he kicks forward to catch another in the midriff. As Narin readies for a second strike, Enchei spins and deflects a wildly-swinging cleaver. The weapon flies away and the butt of Enchei’s stick is driven into the owner’s throat.

Another lunges and Narin dodges, turning the movement into a shattering blow. Before the man he kicked can recover Enchei has made up the ground between them, striking down at the man’s head. Narin sees blood fly like a soul escaping and the man is dead before he hits the ground.

The man Narin hit staggers towards Enchei, weapon abandoned and clutching his shoulder. Enchei senses the movement and strikes as he turns, a near-perfect horizontal sword-stroke that the assassin never sees coming. Soon he joins his comrade lying supine and pawing feebly at a shattered throat. Enchei glances around and sees only the dying. He abandons his stick and runs to the humbled nobleman, assessing his wound then tearing away a piece of his shirt to staunch the blood.

‘Thank the Gods you came, Investigator,’ Enchei says in a strangely level tone – not even needing to pause for breath. ‘You’ve saved the life of a Wyvern lord.’

‘No,’ Narin finds himself saying feebly, still stunned by the deaths happening around him. ‘No, it wasn’t me.’

‘Of course it was,’ Enchei says, turning to look at Narin. Over many such dreams his eyes have become black and empty in Narin’s memory. ‘You saved this man’s life. Who else could it have been ?’

‘Emari ! Emari ?’

Kesh put her head around the door and surveyed the empty hall beyond. A long wooden table occupied the centre, over which hung a wide wrought-iron chandelier. The bright morning light streamed in through the open shutters off to her right, showing Kesh the chandelier had fresh candles in at least, though the floor remained unswept. The young woman paused to listen, head tilted to one side, but there were no sounds of sweeping from elsewhere in the boarding house either.

‘Honestly, that girl,’ Kesh said with a small smile. ‘Give her one job she finds boring and suddenly she’s as flighty as a butterfly. Lord Monk give me patience !’

Her eyes twitched to the left as she spoke, instinctively looking towards the grey sweep of the temple’s concave roof as she invoked its Ascendant God.

A muscular woman of twenty with a sailor’s tan and long plaited hair, Kesh stepped inside the doorway, brandishing her rug beater.

‘Emari ?’ Kesh shouted again, ‘I’m not so tired I can’t swing this a few more times !’

There was no response from the house beyond. Kesh gave a tut of annoyance and returned to the warm sunshine outside, as aware as Emari that her threat was empty until their mother, Teike, returned. Though the woman loved her adopted daughter no less than Kesh, she had fewer qualms about smacking Emari’s nut-brown behind if she slacked in her duties.

There was no one else in the house ; each of their five lodgers was out at work and Kesh was unmarried, having been promised to a young man who’d drowned alongside her father several years back.

The slow, sonorous clang of the wreck buoy beyond the harbour wall carried up to her on the breeze. From where Kesh had laid out the rugs, she could see its red-painted flanks bobbing on the tide. Further out, past the limits of the Harbour Warrant’s authority, floated the threatening shape of a House Eagle warship.

Kesh frowned at the sleek warship before returning to her work. It had been there for a week now, not interfering with trade yet, but a silent threat that the harbour folk recognised well enough. With a shake of the head she attacked the rugs again, hammering away with the beater until her arm was near-shaking with fatigue, then moving on to the next after a gulp of lukewarm yellow tea.

A smile appeared on Kesh’s lips as she took a second swallow. The spring sun was warm on her shoulders, the breeze coming in off the sea clean and salty. On such a day she could only enjoy the exercise as she put the strength of her thick arms to work. The courtyard faced south, catching the morning sun and affording her a fine view of the harbour’s three main wharves. The nearer two were long, wooden affairs for the fishing fleet and trading cutters that plied the Horn Coast – while the furthest was the old stone deep-water dock for ships ranging all across the Inner Sea and beyond.

Kesh crossed the courtyard and hopped up a few makeshift steps until she could look over the perimeter wall. Their house was on an outcrop that loomed above the road leading to the nearer docks ; a district of taverns and cramped markets that had been Kesh’s whole life until her father died. From there she could see the glazed blue tiles of the fishermen’s market and glimpse piles of yellow cockles gathered from the sandflats off the coast.

‘A good crop,’ Kesh muttered, looking around the various stalls for her mother. ‘Let’s hope Mother thinks so and brings a bag home.’

She sat on the top of the wall, brushing her fingers over the yellow petals of a flowering gull’s foot as she listened to the clatter and voices of the harbour. When she had gone away to sea to cover the last seasons of her father’s bond to the Vesis and Darch merchant house, which controlled the harbour and much of the shipping that used it, this view had been what Kesh had missed. The breeze over the wildflowers, the cries of gulls and the bustle of busy lives – not the unearthly sight of the Imperial Palace or the ice-white roofs of Coldcliffs to the east. As arresting as those enormous, ancient structures were, they never changed. The harbour was man-made and ugly to some, but it lived and breathed in a way the places of the old ones didn’t.

She returned to her work and finished the last few rugs before hauling the pile up onto her shoulder and returning inside. There was still no sound of activity from her little sister so Kesh dumped the rugs over her father’s chair at the head of the table and headed through to the corridor beyond.

‘Emari,’ she called ahead, ‘Mother won’t be long coming back.’

‘Kesh, come look,’ came Emari’s reply at last. ‘Come look at this !’

She followed her sister’s voice through to the stairs that ran up the centre of the house. Emari was sitting on the windowsill on the second floor, her favourite place to watch the busy streets of the Harbour Warrant and marvel at the Imperial Palace on its distant island hilltop. The street curved around the outcrop of their house so from that window Emari could see a hundred yards down the warrant’s public thoroughfare with the Palace rising behind. Today however, Emari was looking up towards the roof.

‘What have you found, little one ?’ Kesh asked, slipping an arm around her sister’s skinny shoulders. Emari was a bundle of scrawny arms and legs ; still of that awkward age where her body didn’t quite seem to fit together yet.

Emari turned to face her, big black eyes wide and questioning. ‘There’s a rope on the house.’

‘A rope ?’ Kesh laughed. ‘What do you mean ?’

She leaned out across the little girl. As she looked up, a seagull on the roof just above them cried loudly, making Kesh jump in surprise. Emari below her dissolved into giggles, prompting Kesh to laugh and tickle her sister into submission before again looking out. It seemed Emari was right ; there was a cable attached to the apex of their roof which ran taut across the street to the tavern there.

‘So there is,’ Kesh mused, ‘painted grey too – to blend in with the sky maybe ?’

‘Why’s it there ?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said with a shake of the head.

Kesh ushered her sister off the window sill and stood where Emari had been. After a few seasons on a merchant ship she had no fears about clambering around an open window and levered herself almost entirely out to inspect the cable more closely. Reaching up she could just about grab it and an experimental tug told her the cable was securely fastened to the main beam of the roof, tied with a knot that wasn’t meant to be undone easily.

‘Maybe this is what Master Greycloud heard a few days back,’ she called down to Emari. ‘Remember he complained about a cat or something making a noise on the roof ? That’s his room right there.’

Emari nodded, hands clasped together in delight. ‘It was someone tying the rope on ! But who ? Oh ! It could be Master Shadow ; I told you he was an Astaren !’

Kesh tutted at her sister. ‘Don’t be so silly, and don’t say such things where the guests might hear you, Master Shadow in particular. He’s not the sort to take kindly to idle gossip about him. As for this, I think it’s a thief’s road – an escape route over the rooftops.’

‘Really ?’ Emari squealed. ‘What sort of thief ?’

‘I don’t know !’ Kesh clambered down again. ‘How would I know that ? All I’m saying is everyone knows thieves use the rooftops to keep off the streets when the fog comes, but this road’s too wide for anyone to jump. You can get all the way to Dragon District from the tavern, but you can’t cross this road easily because we’re on the public thoroughfare – it has to be wide enough for nobles of different houses to pass without starting an argument.’

‘The thieves run across it ?’

‘No, but I used a cable like that a thousand times on board the
Piper’s Lament
. You hang under it by your hands and feet, and crawl like a monkey underneath. Even at night I’d be across in no time and ready to cut the cable if anyone tried to follow.’

‘Or a goshe !’ Emari gasped. ‘A goshe could run across and anyone following would fall !’

‘Not at night,’ Kesh said dismissively. ‘You’d need eyesight like a cat to see it on the run and balance better than the best-trained goshe could have.’

‘Do you think Master Shadow is a goshe, Kesh ?’

She ruffled Emari’s tangled dark curls. ‘How should I know, little one ? But it’s not polite to ask ; some people don’t like the goshe and might take offence. He carries himself like a fighter – I bet you he’s good too – but he’s not warrior caste, that’s for certain. Most likely he trains at a Shure, yes.’