Tales of the Old World (24 page)

“Oh, how is the duke?” Lafayette’s wife enquired sweetly. “Have you seen him
recently?”

“Two years ago, wasn’t it Griston?” her husband added.

“Yes,” Griston admitted. “I really should take more time for these social
engagements. But you know how it is when things are going so well, eh
Lafayette?”

Lafayette, who had lost an entire cargo of dates just the month before,
nodded. To change the subject he turned to the fifth man at the table. The
Harbour Master was working his way through his plate of oysters with the same
silent diligence which had taken him to his present rank.

He was hardly the most sparkling of guests, Lafayette thought. But then, he
didn’t have to be. Only a merchant who was a fool would risk offending the
Harbour Master with a missed invitation, and whatever else they were, the
merchants of Bordeleaux were no fools.

“How are you finding the oysters, Harbour Master?” he asked. The man grunted,
and nodded. Then he swallowed. “Passable,” he allowed. “Very passable indeed.”
Griston tried not to grin too widely.

“A toast,” he called, raising his glass. “To our host, and his passable
food.”

“Very passable,” the Harbour Master corrected, but it was too late. Lafayette
downed his wine in a single gulp, and scowled as he waited for the waiter to
refill his glass.

“What’s for the meat course, my dear?” his wife asked, hoping to lighten his
mood.

“Oh. I think that it’s porc au miel provencal.”

“Lovely,” Griston said. “Meat and potatoes. Haven’t had that since I was an
esquire.”

“Really? Then I can see that you’re well dressed for it.”

Griston flushed. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“What do you think I mean?”

“Gentlemen,” the Harbour Master sighed. “I wonder if we might talk about
something else instead of fashion? I am a simple man, and it makes my head
spin.”

“Yes, of course,” Lafayette said. There was a moment of thoughtful silence,
which Griston’s wife broke.

“Has anybody seen the latest play about Florin d’Artaud?”

“Oh yes,” Lafayette’s wife replied. “Wasn’t it good? Somebody said that he
even went to the opening night. My friend Myrtle actually saw him. She said that
he was wearing those new skin-tight Tilean hose.”

The two women sighed in unison. Their husbands frowned.

“D’Artaud.” Lafayette waved his fish knife dismissively. “The man’s a
complete fraud.”

“Damn right,” Griston said. “I knew his father once. A decent enough fellow
for a commoner. Hard working. Always paid the agreed price. Manann alone knows
what he’d think of his son’s gallivanting.”

“Gallivanting indeed,” Griston’s wife scolded him. “You’re just jealous.
Monsieur d’Artaud is the hero of Lustria. Everybody knows that.”

“Sounds more like a pirate than a hero to me,” Griston said, and Lafayette
nodded his agreement.

“Got it in one, Griston,” he said. “Turns up in a ship full of Tileans and
gold and tells everybody some story about cities in the jungle. Man’s a rogue,
simple as that.”

“I heard that he challenged somebody to a duel for insulting him last week,”
Lafayette’s wife said.

As Lafayette coughed on a slip of oyster, Griston came to his aid.

“What we mean, mademoiselle, is that nobody can be sure of the exact
provenance of d’Artaud’s wealth.”

Lafayette looked at him gratefully.

The Harbour Master relaxed. Now that he had navigated the conversation back
to safer waters he could turn his attention back to the food. And just in time,
too. As the merchants argued with their wives about Florin d’Artaud, the smell
of honeyed pork filled the dining chamber. This perfume was closely followed by
a huge silver platter of the fragrant meat itself.

These dinners were hard work, the Harbour Master thought as he tucked in, but
well worth it.

Later that night, Lafayette’s chef sat alone in his kitchen. Although the
stoves had burned low the furnace heat of these depths remained constant, the
masonry ever warm with the memory of fire. The chef remained oblivious to the
temperature as he poked about in the embers of the roasting pit. He had spent
his whole life in such infernos, and anyway he had other things on his mind.

Although he had left the entreeier battered and bruised, it had been no
victory. Not really. Tonight he had had the chance to prove his superiority over
every other chef in Bordeleaux. Yet all it had taken had been the stupidity of
one man and the chance to present the perfect entree had been lost. Despite his
promise to bring another batch the strigany who had sold them to him had
disappeared. As far as the chef knew that meant that the eggs were unique,
irreplaceable. Now he would have to pickle them. What a waste.

A fat tear rolled down the chef’s florid face and he poured himself another
goblet of wine. For a while he toyed with the idea of having the entreeier
murdered, but eventually he decided against the plan. He was too depressed.

He sighed miserably, drained his cup, and staggered off to the wine cellar to
fetch another bottle. When he returned he opened it, enjoying the greasy squeak
of the reluctant cork, and was about to pour himself another goblet when a
sudden, sharp report echoed around the deserted kitchen.

He stood still for a moment, his eyes glittering in the darkness as he
listened. He was rewarded with more noise, a series of sudden cracks that
sounded like breaking twigs.

The chef put down the bottle and picked up his rolling pin. This wouldn’t be
the first time that urchins or thieves had slipped in to steal a meal from this
dark labyrinth.

The chef squared his jaw as another volley of impacts rang out, and he
realised that they were actually coming from his own workbench. This time they
sounded more like breaking porcelain, and he was seized with a horrible
suspicion.

It was the eggs. Somebody was breaking those cursed eggs. And who could be
responsible for such vandalism but the entreeier, bent on revenge?

Pale with outrage the chef put down his rolling pin and picked up a cleaver
instead. The razored rectangle of steel had been sharpened that very evening and
shone with a murderous intent. He examined the edge approvingly then moved
stealthily forward towards his workbench.

In the gloom he couldn’t see the perpetrator, but he could already see the
crime. The wooden crate that the eggs had been in had been smashed open and
fragments of precious cargo lay all about, lustrous with colour even in the
gloom.

The chef hissed, eyes flitting around as he stepped forward. He peered into
the remains of the box and saw that every single egg had been broken. Every
single one.

His self-control snapped.

“Entreeier!” he roared, waving the cleaver in challenge. “Where are you, you
scoundrel? Where are you?”

But there was no reply. The chef, his breath ragged with the passion of his
wine-fuelled rage, peered into the darkness. For a moment he was afraid that the
entreeier had escaped, somehow slipping past him in the darkness. Then he saw a
flicker of movement in the cold store that lay ahead, and a predatory grin split
his face.

“Come here, Jacques,” he said, trying to keep the hatred out of his voice.
“Let’s have some wine and talk about this.”

There was a rustle of further movement, and the shatter of a pot knocked off
a shelf.

“Come out into the light,” the chef said. “I know that you’re in there. Let’s
be mature about this.”

He edged further forward, cleaver raised. There was a moment of silence, and
then the patter of approaching footsteps, rapidly approaching footsteps.

“Got you, you… oh.”

The chef’s mouth fell open in a perfect circle of surprise at the things
which had emerged from amongst the butter vats and cured hams.

For a split second he took them for cats. They were about the right size, and
they moved with the same sinuous grace. But even through the fog of wine and
rage, the chef could see that there was nothing feline about these things. They
were more like the house lizards that hunted through the kitchen in the summer.
Or maybe, he thought vaguely, the swamp frogs that graced so many of his dishes.

At the thought of such delicacies he hefted the cleaver. It was a mistake.
Moving with a blur of speed the strange intruders flitted about him, leaping
onto shelves or scuttling under tables to encircle his lumbering form.

“Get out of my kitchen!” the chef shouted at them, and waved his cleaver
menacingly. The creatures watched the makeshift weapon, heads cocked and eyes
aglitter. Gradually, with the slow assurance of a crossbowman winching back his
string, the crests on their heads rose and their tails twitched excitedly.

But it wasn’t until the chef tried to strike one of them that they attacked.

Although they were still sticky with the yolk of their birth, the creatures
moved with an instinctive viciousness. The chef screamed as he felt his tendons
torn out from the back of his legs, and even as he collapsed needle teeth were
ripping open the arteries in his arms. Blood spurted as he dropped his weapon,
and he raised his hands to defend himself.

It was already too late. The things were already sinking their teeth into his
throat, puncturing through the flab to bite into the arteries beneath. Blood
sprayed as the dying man thrashed around, too shocked to realise that he had
become offal in his own kitchen.

With his throat torn open it didn’t take the chef long to die. Seconds,
perhaps. But his assailants lacked even that amount of patience, and even as the
chef’s heart pattered its last they were feasting upon his still living flesh,
relishing the taste of their very first meal.

It was to be the first of many that night.

Three Months Later

“By Manann’s codpiece, I’m bored.”

Florin d’Artaud, hero of Lustria and proprietor of the Lizard’s Head, gazed
miserably around his domain. It was mid afternoon and the tavern was almost
deserted. There were a handful of drovers nursing their beers, a group of hooded
men talking intensely but softly in a corner, and a pair of silently drinking
longshoremen.

There were also two serving girls who were passing the time by braiding each
other’s hair. Florin watched them for a while. Then he sighed.

Lorenzo, who was busily gutting mackerel into a wooden bucket, looked up at
him.

“If you’re bored, then you can give me a hand.”

Florin glanced over to see his friend slice open a fish’s belly and hook the
innards out with a practiced thumb.

“Why don’t you let the girls do that?” he asked.

Lorenzo shrugged.

“I like to keep in practice. Anyway, it’s quite relaxing.”

Florin frowned and looked back towards the barmaids. Now they had changed
places, and the brunette had started working on the blonde’s hair. It looked as
smooth as mead in the dusty light of the tavern, and as he watched the locks
being teased out she looked up and caught his eye. He smiled at her and she
flushed and looked away.

Florin’s smile grew wider.

“Think I’ll just go and see how the staff are getting on,” he told Lorenzo as
he got to his feet.

But before Lorenzo could reply, the doors of the tavern banged open and a
squad of men marched into the room. Their boot steps echoed off the wooden walls
with a flawless rhythm, and their steel harnesses gleamed with the polish of
professional soldiers. Florin looked from the blank slates of their faces to the
weapons that were scabbarded at their belts, then looked back to their faces.

Whatever these men wanted, he decided, it wasn’t wine.

The room fell silent as the rest of the clientele came to the same
conclusion. Several of the customers were already scurrying out of the back
entrance. The squad of mercenaries watched them go and turned their attention to
Florin.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Florin said, nodding to them. They said nothing.
Instead they fanned out to form a crescent around him.

Florin balanced on the balls of his feet, let his hand brush against the hilt
of his dagger and glanced back towards Lorenzo. The older man had already risen
to his feet, his fish-slimed gutting knife now held underhanded.

“I said,” Florin said, his fingers itching to draw his weapon. “Good
afternoon.”

This time there was a reply. It came from behind the broad shoulders of the
mercenaries, and the man stepped forward as he spoke.

“Good afternoon, Monsieur d’Artaud,” the figure said. To the uninitiated he
would have appeared to be no more than a prosperous craftsman. A minor merchant,
at most. There was no adornment on his simple leather tunic, or on the canvas
clothes he wore beneath it. He wore a cutlass on one side of his belt, wooden
handled like most others, and his head was shaved, as was the fashion in the
messier professions.

Inconspicuous as he was, Florin recognised him immediately.

“Harbour Master,” he said, trying not to sound too surprised. It wasn’t every
day that the Harbour Master visited a tavern such as the Lizard’s Head. In fact,
it wasn’t ever. “How can we be of service?”

“I’m not sure yet,” the Harbour Master replied. He took a seat and pulled it
up to the table. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. You don’t mind
clearing your establishment for a few moments do you? Just while we talk?”

Florin looked at Lorenzo, who waved a hand towards the room. Somehow, beneath
the shadow of the Harbour Master’s enforcers, it had already cleared itself.
Even the serving girls were gone.

“I’ll lock the door,” Lorenzo said. The Harbour Master waited until Lorenzo
had bolted both front and back doors. Then, with a curt call, he ordered one of
his men forward. The man carried a stained hessian sack over one shoulder, and
Florin wondered what was in it.

He didn’t have to wonder long. At another command from his master the man
hoisted the sack off his shoulder and upended it over the table. There was a
soggy thump as a severed head fell out and bounced on the woodwork.