The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (5 page)

Thessalyn shook her head. “What is wrong with
him? Doesn’t he see that you’re both on the same side?”

Gerard hesitated. He’d never told Thessalyn
all of the rumors about Silveo. “They say he clawed his way up from
the slums around Slag on Sern.” He watched Thessalyn’s face. The
harbor town of Slag was perhaps the roughest and ugliest in
Wefrivain. The town had a reputation for brothels that catered to
all tastes, and foxlings were especially prized because of their
fine features and child-like proportions. Gerard would have pitied
any such creature, except that Silveo had a way of dissipating pity
as a summer sun dissipates dew. In Gerard’s experience, Silveo
would have been more likely to sell such children than to have been
one.

Thessalyn was quiet a moment. “Poor
thing.”

Gerard made a face. “No one can say whether
it’s true, as he seems to have killed nearly every shelt who knew
him as a child.” He hesitated. “However, it might explain his taste
in clothes.”

“Gerard!”

“He is cruel, Thessalyn. He hasn’t the honor
of a mud leech.”

“And
you
are intimidating, especially
to someone like that.”

Gerard drew a hand across his eyes. “Alsair
can talk of nothing but eviscerating him since that business with
the
Foam
. I don’t want to talk anymore about Silveo
Lamire.”

She smiled. “Then let’s not. Judging from
what Marlo Snale had to say, you’ve taken on a dangerous job,
love.”

“Frightened for me?”

Thessalyn stood and walked to him, fearless
now that she’d memorized the layout of the room. Gerard took her in
his arms. “My dear,” she said, “you could vanquish hydras and cross
the deserts of fire.”

Her boundless optimism was one of the many
things he loved about her. “You have more faith in me than I do.”
Gerard started to kiss her.

“I want to hear about the Police,” said
Thessalyn. “What’s got you so curious about Montpir and Maijha
Minor?”

They curled up on the bed, and he told her
about the office and the stacks of paper. “Something wasn’t right
with that office,” said Gerard. “Every document I found was dated
at least three red months ago. Montpir only disappeared last month.
Judging by what I saw, he kept meticulous records. I even found
evidence of a filing system, but nothing was in order.”

“You think someone searched the office?”
asked Thessalyn.

“Yes,” said Gerard. “I think someone stole a
lot of paperwork. They hoped I’d confuse ransacked with messy. I
went through the fireplace, and I think a lot of paper was burned
there recently. I found a bit that had fallen under the grate, a
list.” Gerard took the charred fragment out of his pocket and read
it to her.

Sky Town

Misnomer?

Tea cups—tea leaves?

Who is Gwain? At the center of the web

Cowry Catchers—the winged wolves

Maijha Minor

The diving spiders

Thessalyn grinned. “Cryptic!” Gerard could tell
that her minstrel’s mind was already making poetry or prophesy of
it.

“Yes,” he said, “but that list meant
something to Montpir, and I’m going to find out what.”

Chapter 5. A Traitor and A
Child

Maijha Minor is home to all kinds of
creatures that have been eradicated from most other parts of
Wefrivain. The exact nature and habits of these creatures are kept
secret by the gamekeepers of the island in order to preserve the
mystery of the place. The diving spiders are one of the more feared
elements of Maijha Minor. They can grow a quarter the size of the
average griffin, and they make their homes in coral reefs. The
kings of Maijha Major claim that the spiders prevent the islands’
inhabitants from escaping by sea (small boats are easy prey in the
spider-infested reefs). Air traffic is forbidden and monitored from
the watchtowers around the island. The only safe and legal approach
is overland from Maijha Major during low tide. The journey requires
a skillful sand pilot with knowledge of the tidal flats.
Ironically, many of these sand pilots are fauns from Maijha Minor,
who receive a level of protection and trade goods for their
services.

—Gwain,
The Truth About Wyverns

Gerard arrived at his office early the next
morning. A new guard stood at the dungeon entrance. At the desk in
the anteroom in front of his office, an older shelt, whom he took
to be a warden, was sleeping. Gerard pretended not to notice. “I
want you to bring the prisoners to me one by one,” he began in a
loud voice. The warden jerked awake and blinked up at him. Gerard
was still talking. “But first, send someone out to get hot
food—something that smells good, something a faun would eat.” He
looked down at his officer’s bewildered expression. “That means no
faun meat,” he said in case it wasn’t clear.

“Prisoners?” repeated the warden. Gerard
could smell alcohol on his breath.

“Yes! Prisoners! The ones who arrived
yesterday. Their cell is a bloody mess. I ought to know; I made it.
Get food, get prisoners. Can you handle that?”

In spite of appearances to the contrary, the
officer had the good sense to nod and lurch to his feet. Gerard
strode past him into his office.
I was here late last night.
They probably didn’t expect me this morning.

He sat down to another stack of papers—this
one a catalogue of shelts the Police had interrogated six years
ago. These were the Police of Gerard’s memory—the ugly stories he’d
heard growing up.
They don’t seem to have been as active in
recent years. Is it because they had more humane captains? Or have
the constant assassinations been slowing them down?
He
suspected the latter.

Some time later, one of the younger guards
came in with a tray of steaming meat pastries from a street vendor.
Gerard thought at least one of the little pies looked suspicious.
He ate that one, judged the rest suitable, and sent the guard for
the first prisoner. They had languished all night in the dark
without food or water, with the bodies and blood of their comrades
all around them. They’d been in the hold of a ship for four days
before that, during which time they’d had nothing but a little
water.
They ought to be hungry enough and frightened enough by
now.

The first prisoner they brought him was the
little gazumelle. His hands had been tied, which annoyed Gerard.
Do they think I can’t protect myself from a starving, unarmed
faun, barely grown, and half my size?
He had straightened the
office, put all the loose paper in drawers. The place was clean and
well lit, and it smelled pleasantly of food.

“Sit,” he commanded the faun. The chair in
front of the desk was small, uncomfortable, and plain, while the
desk chair was an angular throne of leather and blocky wood. Gerard
had no doubt it had been designed to intimidate. However, he
preferred to stand. He loomed over the unfortunate gazumelle, whom
he guessed to be no older than fourteen. “What is your name?”

The faun said nothing. He had the dark hair
and olive skin of his race. He was wearing nothing but a white
linen shirt, much stained. His fur, too, was matted with half-dried
blood. He stared straight ahead, trembling like a rabbit in the
claws of a hawk. He was so bony that Gerard wondered whether he’d
been getting enough to eat even before he was captured.

“You have a choice,” said Gerard quietly.
“You can eat some food, talk to me, and leave here alive. Or you
can refuse to talk to me, and I’ll give you to my officers and
their griffins.” Griffins had a cat-like love of sport. The
gazumelle shuddered. Gerard thought, belatedly, that he should have
brought Alsair along for this exercise. “Or perhaps the temple is
running short of sacrifices this month,” he continued. “The gods
seem to have an insatiable appetite for tender young things. They
love variety, and they can’t have enjoyed many of your kind.” The
faun leaned forward suddenly and retched. He had nothing but bile
in his stomach, and the spasms wracked his small body like a hand
wringing out a rag. Tears of pain and terror stood in the corners
of his eyes against his long lashes.

Gerard didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so
frightened, and the sight made him feel ill. He walked around
behind the chair, so that the prisoner could not see his face. He
leaned close to the faun’s quivering ear and put claws into his
voice. “My point is: once you leave my office, your fate is sealed.
If you want to live, now is the time to tell me.”

“I don’t know!” wailed the faun, his voice
breaking.

“You don’t know your name?”

“I don’t know where Sky Town is,” whispered
the gazumelle wretchedly. “I’ve never been there. They never told
me. I only worked on a ship. That’s all. I only worked on a ship.”
He was sobbing now.

Gerard wanted to put an arm around his
shoulders and give him a meat pie. Instead, he said, “I haven’t
asked you where Sky Town is. I repeat: what is your name? I already
know the answers to some of my questions, so you had better not
lie. The Police have many resources.” In truth, he had no idea of
the answers to any of his questions, but he’d seen his father use
this technique with diplomats, often to good effect.

“My name is Paiter,” said the gazumelle
faintly.

Gerard cut off a small wedge of one of the
pastries and gave it to him. The faun devoured it, hiccupping
through his tears. His fingers were clumsy, and Gerard saw that his
wrists had been tied tightly enough to restrict circulation. He
resisted the urge to cut them loose.

“How old are you? How long did you work on
the ship? Who ran it?”

Paiter was twelve. (
So,
thought
Gerard,
I have stooped to tormenting children.
) He had
worked on the ship for two years. He had been born on Maijha Minor,
and the pirates had offered him an opportunity to escape the fate
of all but the craftiest fauns on that island. “It is forbidden to
kill fauns under ten,” he explained. “But most are killed by a
hunting party before they reach thirty. My mother wanted me to join
the pirates. She wanted me to live.”

So when he turned ten, Paiter was bundled off
in the dark to join a pirate ship. Gerard interrupted him, “Which
side of the island did you sail from?” The waters around Maijha
Minor were considered all but un-navigable, due to the combination
of reef, diving spiders, and rough sea.

Paiter shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t
understand how we got there.” He had been taken into a tunnel, in
which he and several other fauns traveled for what seemed like more
than a day. They had surfaced in a place that he did not recognize,
walked to a beach he did not know, and found a rowboat waiting to
take them to a ship—the pirate ship,
Foam,
which Gerard had
helped to capture. In the next two years, the ship had taken seven
prizes—four merchant vessels and three Temple treasure ships laden
with offerings for Lecklock. “The pirates target Temple ships,”
said Paiter. “We met many merchant ships that we left alone. I
never learned how the captain decided which to attack and which to
let go.”

The captain was a shavier faun, and Paiter
had never heard him called anything except “Captain.” Gerard had
killed this person himself, and he remembered the fight on deck
with the ship pitching and burning all around them. Samarin Mel had
been his second in command.

Gerard questioned Paiter closely about the
tunnel and the beach from which he sailed, but Paiter had nothing
to add, although he tried. “No light was permitted in the tunnel.
It was tall enough for us to stand, and we walked very rapidly for
a long time.”

Could the fauns of Maijha Minor have dug a
tunnel to another island?
It seemed utterly fantastic.
Or
did they sail from some secret cove on Maijha Minor? Could the
tunnel have been a ruse to impress and confuse recruits in case
they were ever caught?
He even wondered whether the entire
story were a fabrication, memorized for such an occasion. He
couldn’t bring himself to believe it, though. The young gazumelle’s
desperate, frightened eyes and babble of information seemed
authentic.

Throughout the tale, Gerard handed him pieces
of pastry, and at one point he gave him a large mug of water, which
the faun drank greedily. At last, Gerard cut his hands free. When
Paiter had told everything and was beginning to repeat himself,
Gerard went to the door and told the guard outside to bring a tunic
and pants. “I don’t care where you get them,” he said in response
to the guard’s question. “If we don’t have any here, buy them on
the street. Give them to this prisoner, and put him in a cell by
himself. Give him a meal and all the water he can drink, and when
it’s full dark, release him.”

Gerard wasn’t sure where Paiter would go or
how he would get there. That wasn’t Gerard’s problem, but releasing
him in the daylight in Lecklock would be cruel. Gerard would at
least give him the small comfort of darkness to find his way to
safety.

He glanced over the tray of food.
If they
all talk to me at this rate, I’ll have to send for more.
However, his worry proved premature. The next prisoner was a
shavier of perhaps twenty-five—Gerard’s own age. He had the marble
stare of a shelt who had already resigned himself to die. No amount
of threats or promises could induce him to utter a word. At last,
Gerard walked around behind the chair, took the faun’s head quickly
in his hands and broke his neck with one snap. He’d seen cooks on
Holovarus do this to fauns intended for the pots. It was harder
than it looked. In spite of his threats, Gerard had no real
intention of giving any of the prisoners to griffins or
wyverns.

Gerard had no better luck with any of the
next four.
They have been well-schooled,
he thought, and
found that he respected them immensely.