Moon's Artifice (4 page)

‘He is goshe ! I’m sure I’ve seen him dressed like one, all in black. Do we like the goshe, Kesh ?’

‘Of course ! Whatever folk whisper about them, they cured your fever when you first came to live here, remember ?’

‘So why don’t others like them ?’

‘Money and tradition mostly,’ Kesh said with a sigh. ‘Some members bequeath their money to the Shure they trained at rather than their relatives and high-castes don’t much like low-castes being taught to fight at all. ’

‘So Master Shadow might take it as an insult if I asked him ?’

Kesh shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is think before you speak, understand me ? Don’t ask such things of folk you don’t know. If it turns out they’re warrior caste, you might get a slap for the insult.’

‘Or Master Shadow might turn out to be an assassin and kill us in the night to protect his secrets,’ Emari said gravely.

‘No ! Pity’s light ! Have you been listening to old man Pethein again ?’ Kesh demanded, wagging a finger in Emari’s face. ‘I’ve told you not to loiter in the tavern once they’ve got stuck in for the evening. Next time I think you have been, I’ll slap the brown off your legs, hear me ?’

‘Yes, Kesh,’ Emari replied in a quiet voice. ‘Sorry, Kesh.’

She grabbed the little girl and hugged her. ‘I know you are, but you’ve got to be more careful round these parts. Sailors come from all over and get troublesome when they’re out drinking. You keep clear after dark, you hear me ?’

‘I will,’ Emari promised.

The girl fell silent for a while, her lips pursed as she thought. Kesh saw she wanted to ask something, but the little girl was trying to be mindful of what she’d just been told about thinking before she spoke. It was enough to make the older sister laugh, but she fought the urge. Emari tended to blurt out every thought that crossed her mind ; it would be good for her to start controlling that before she got much older.

‘Kesh ?’ Emari eventually said in a small voice.

‘Yes, little one ?’

‘Is there going to be a war ?’

‘Between the Houses ?’

Emari nodded.

‘Well, I don’t rightly know,’ Kesh said, kneeling on the landing to look Emari in the eye.

When they’d taken Emari in, her father a shipmate of Kesh’s father, Kesh had promised herself she’d never lie to her new sister. Something about hearing their neighbours tell Emari her father had sailed off with the Gods had jarred with Kesh. The Empire was not a happy place to live in sometimes, and Emari needed to know what it was really like without fearing it.

‘The Houses like to fight,’ she said by way of explanation, ‘it’s what noble folk do a lot of the time. If you’re high-caste you’re not allowed to work or learn a trade – House soldiers are warriors trained from birth to do that job alone. Now it might be that Eagle and Dragon end up fighting, but the Harbour Warrant isn’t controlled by either and they have to respect the Emperor’s domains – otherwise the other Houses would step in against them.’

‘Master Steelfin said House Eagle could attack the harbour all the same, block us off so we can’t fish or trade.’

‘Pah, Master Steelfin’s a stupid old man,’ Kesh said quietly, ‘and he knows little more about the Empire than I do. If they do blockade us, it won’t be for long. The warriors have their own code for fighting ; they’re only allowed to kill other warriors. The Gods say it’s a sin to kill someone of a low caste – as you’d remember if you came to temple a little more often.’

‘Doesn’t stop them all, mind,’ called a voice from the bottom of the stairs.

Kesh turned to see her mother, Teike, leaning against the banister post and looking up at them, a wicker basket full of food slung over her shoulder.

‘But don’t you worry about the Eagles, my girl. It’d embarrass House Dragon if the city began to starve and Dragons don’t like losing face.’

Teike slipped her scarf off her head and brushed her hair back away from her face. Once order was restored again she nodded towards the common room, one eyebrow raised. ‘If you don’t hop to your sweeping however, you might have me to fear !’

Emari gave a squawk and jumped up, clattering down the stairs and barely stopping for a kiss on her forehead on the way. Teike smiled after her and beckoned Kesh down also.

‘Help me with the shopping ?’

Kesh pulled the load from her mother’s shoulder. ‘Emari’s seen a rope attached to the roof, it looks like a thief’s run.’

Teike made a dismissive face. ‘Tell her to look out for Master Shadow, not thieves. The man promised to give me the next week’s board by yesterday and has yet to show his face.’

‘He must have left very early this morning,’ Kesh said, ‘or he didn’t get in last night. I was up with the dawn and heard no one before you.’

Her mother scowled. ‘I knew he was going to be trouble, that one. Too full of himself was Master Tokene Shadow, all but propositioned me his first night here. I’ve seen his type before ; in debt or in trouble, and either way he’ll cost me money.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Kesh said as she headed for the kitchen, ‘his sea-chest is still in his room ; he’d have to be dead not to come back for that. It’s not like he’d just forget it.’

‘Well, boy, I’m inclined to agree.’

Narin narrowed his eyes at the older man. Enchei sat back and looked down at the long-knife in his hands. It was a street fighter’s weapon, not a soldier’s, yet it couldn’t have looked more natural in the man’s callused hands. Enchei tucked a stray trail of grey hair behind his scarred left ear and returned the weapon to the pile at his feet.

In front of him was the half-naked body of the goshe, still unconscious. The man was bound to a makeshift bed, ankles tied to the frame Narin had dragged out of his bedroom and a sheet wrapped across his chest to pin his bandaged arms. He had no idea if it would hold the man, but he was terrified the goshe would wake and disappear when his back was turned, leaving him to explain that to an angry God.

‘You think the tattoos are fake ?’

Enchei glanced up, a sly smile on his face. ‘I meant you really
are
buggered.’

Narin sank down in a chair, too deflated for any sort of joking. They were in his assigned quarters in the Imperial District ; a two-room affair on the first floor of an Imperial housing compound. Sunlight streamed in through the open windows, the brightness of spring after a long, damp winter. Enchei took a deep breath of the fresh afternoon air that raced through the quarters. He touched a palm to the injured man’s chest.

‘He’s hot,’ Enchei commented, ‘even in this draught.’

‘Fever ?’

‘Mebbe.’

Narin jumped up again and crossed the room to stand over Enchei. ‘But what about the tattoos ?’

‘Ah yes, the tattoos. Seems your Investigator instincts are gettin’ better.’

‘They’re fakes ? Truly ?’

Enchei squinted up at the younger man, silhouetted against the bright window frame. ‘Aye, they’re fakes.’

‘But how ? Magic ?’

Narin walked back to the table, unable to stay in one spot for long. By contrast Enchei slowly lifted himself up out of his chair and reached for his pipe to fill it.

‘Magic ?’ he said eventually, ‘mebbe.’

He jammed the pipe in one corner of his mouth and shrugged off his long leather coat. The old man wore it most of the year round ; it put Narin in mind of a fussy little boy the way he always kept the coat to hand, even on warm days.

Enchei had re-stitched the lining with dozens of patches ; some sort of protective charms, Narin guessed. Feeling like a child himself, he’d once sneaked a feel of the coat. Each closed pocket seemed to contain some sort of coarse powder or soil rather than padding.

Enchei draped his coat over an armchair and went to the iron stove in the far corner to fetch an ember for his pipe. Once it was lit he returned to the goshe, again picking up the long-knife in a way that looked as if it was more out of habit than for any real reason.

His skin was stained with ink from his trade ; blues and reds swirling around his tanned, greyish fingers. After years working as a sanctioned tattooist – in an Empire where every man, woman and child were marked with their caste and House – it was a mark of honour, one that showed his experience.

Like many looking for a fresh start in life, Enchei had joined the House of the Sun rather than been born into it. Every noble House had authority over its subjects ; to leave your nation of birth and join another would have been unthinkable before the power and domain of the Imperial House became more than nominal – before the Emperor’s authority had been changed from temporal to spiritual. Even now the act was not to be taken lightly. It meant placing oneself at the whims and greed of officials, but Enchei had a skill that was always in demand and little interest in advancement.

‘However they faked it,’ Narin continued at last, ‘that detail alone is enough of a scandal. The temples have been looking for an excuse for years to go after the goshe order, half the entire Empire’s warrior caste too. Treating all their members as equals is enough provocation, but changing the caste tattoos too …’ Narin shook his head. ‘They’ll see it as great a threat to the Empire as any merchant house manufacturing guns. Stars above, there are Shure training houses in every city you could name – the goshe order is probably bigger than any one merchant house !’

‘Quite a step from here to there,’ Enchei pointed out, ‘so I don’t reckon that’s your first concern. More likely it’s professional killers learning their skills from the goshe and you’ve pursued assassins before.’

‘Wish it was as simple as that.’

‘Aye, Lord Shield spoke to you. That’s interesting right enough. Bet you he didn’t bring up the tattoos though.’

‘I think Shield threw him from a damn roof !’ Narin hissed, trying not to shout in his alarm. ‘What in the name of Pity’s tears have I got caught up in ?’

Enchei puffed on his pipe, frowning. ‘Something, that’s for sure. Remember those spirit traps I set in the summer ?’

‘Spirit traps ? You mean those bloody bone charms I helped you hide ? I remember coming a hair’s breadth from falling off a bloody roof and you laughing about it. You told me they were protective wards.’

Enchei grinned briefly. ‘Aye, I did, didn’t I ? Well they’re there ta keep me safe, sure enough.’ His hand went to the fetish at his neck, an animal bone of some sort. ‘Anyways, they trap spirits ; knot ’em up good for a few hours they will, but they’ll also catch echoes.’

‘Echoes ? Echoes of what ?’ Narin demanded, startled that the spirit traps had been anything more than heathen superstition.

Enchei claimed to hail from the north-east, some obscure region of House Falcon’s sovereign land no one had ever been to. Narin knew such remote parts were of little interest to the ruling lords, so old superstitions and shaman magic quietly survived in the shadows. Compared to the Gods-fearing folk of the Imperial City, Enchei looked eccentric and anachronistic with his pagan trappings, but Narin had always assumed it was just a facade.

‘Calls, screams, warnings ; depends, really. What’s important is this – one o’ my spirit traps caught the echo of something big and noisy. My guess is that was your little encounter.’

‘Big and noisy ? Like a man falling off a roof ?’

Enchei waved dismissively. ‘Don’t be daft, nothing like that. It was nothing you’d hear yourself, but if this one’s not just some simple goshe, it’d have startled the shit out of him. Mebbe enough to make him lose his footing and fall – certainly enough to attract the attention of any nasty that happened to be in the area.’

‘Like a God ?’ Narin asked, already knowing the answer.

The old man nodded. ‘Shield was in ascendancy last night, no ? If he was looking down at the city, he’d have heard it, along with any spirit or demon in the vicinity. My spirit-traps can only tell me there were screams in the night, not what they said. Lord Shield would’ve heard it all clear as day.’

‘Shield asked me a question – “who is the moon ?” – he expects me to investigate this goshe and find the answer.’

‘So he don’t know what’s going on most likely, just caught a fragment of the screams and hopes you can provide him with a few pieces of the puzzle. Not good that a God’s involved, but it could be worse.’

‘Worse ?’ Narin exclaimed. ‘How, exactly ?’

The older man shrugged. ‘There ain’t a God at the heart of it. Shield’s late to the game and just taking an interest because he’s a God and can stick his nose wherever he damn-well wants. If this was his game though, or another God’s, you’d be more buggered than you know. As it is you’ve got a divine charge and mebbe even an ally if it all goes to shit. Not the finest hand a man ever got dealt, but not certain death either.’

Narin scowled as he recognised the truth in Enchei’s words and bent over the goshe. The man’s face was a little darker than Narin’s own, his stubble and hair almost black while his features were small and surprisingly neat, considering his fighter’s build. The man was heavily muscled, marked with more than a dozen scars in addition to a mass of bruises from the previous night. Narin had dragged a bonesetter he knew out of bed to tend him. The man had been furious at being woken so early in the morning only to discover no obviously broken bones – the result of Shield’s intervention, Narin guessed. All the same the bonesetter had wrapped the goshe’s left arm, ribs and right wrist and stitched the cut on his forehead.

On the goshe’s right shoulder were symbols tattooed in black, something required of every citizen of the Empire, but these ones had troubled Narin. He hadn’t been able to explain to Enchei exactly why that had been, but the two were close friends and Enchei had been happy to indulge a hunch.

‘House Shadow,’ Narin read, ‘military service, craftsman caste. No goshe mark, but I don’t think they all do that anyway.’

‘He look Shadow ta you ?’ Enchei asked.

‘I don’t know. You don’t exactly get many of them round here.’

The old man shook his head at his friend’s ignorance. ‘Well fortunately for you, one of us has left this bloody city and seen something o’ the Empire. Travelled a ways through Kettekast and can’t say I’d have guessed he was a Shadow.’