The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (7 page)

Sam decided that he wasn’t going to sit about the law house all day while men he paid worked in the streets. He took Donnal and Findaran, made sure there was a knotted rope in the wagon, and drove it round to Gulltown again.

The dock was gone. Where it had been the day before was a blackened, twisted ruin. The warehouse where the fire had started was gone, too, and the old shop, and a couple of warehouses that had stood nearby. Everything smelt of smoke.

The tide had been in a couple of times. A lot of the burnt wood that had fallen into the river had been swept away, leaving a black residue and a jumble of unrecognisable shapes on the mud. Sam stood for a while and looked down at the mess. There might be something down there. Arla had said that there was a metal cage, and metal wasn’t so subject to the whims of the tide. If it had managed to get stuck in the mud it might still be there.

He took the rope out of the cart and tied it onto the back axle, threw the rest over the wall and looked down. The last few feet coiled on the mud. Sam had always been good with ropes. It came of being a fisherman for so many years, he supposed. He nodded to the two guards and slipped over the edge, quickly shinning down to the river bed.

There was more down here than he’d thought. Broken bits of wood stuck out of the mud at odd angles, nails twisted out of them, and the mud was black with ash. It was going to be hard to find anything. Sam drew his sword and began to prod at things, looking for metal, listening for the ring of steel on steel.

After a few minutes he realised that he was going to have to be methodical, so he drew a square in the mud that contained all the areas he wanted to search, and then divided that up into sixteen smaller squares. He returned to the furthest from the shore, the one the tide would reach first, and began again.

He cleared seven of the squares without finding anything at all. It was all charcoal. In the eighth his blade clanked against something and he squatted down in the mud to see what it was. He stuck his hand into the mud and it came out gripping a round object. A stone. He was about to toss it aside when something about its shape made him stop. He wiped it with his sleeve, scraped off the river filth, and revealed a regular shape. It was like a cylinder, but instead of round it was eight sided, about half a foot long and half a hand wide. He spat on it and polished it some more. There was a hint of blue when the light got at it.

Sam tucked the stone into a pocket and resumed his search.

He found the cage in square twelve. He flipped over a partially burned plank and there it was, sticking out of the mud like the hull of a wrecked ship. It was distorted, crushed and warped by the fire and the collapse of the building, but it was still a cage.

Sam took hold of it and pulled. It didn’t move. He tried again, bracing his legs on either side and using them to pull. It did nothing but settle his feet a little deeper. He should have brought a spade, he thought.

He began to dig with his blade, loosening the mud around the cage and flicking it away.

“Found something?”

He looked up. Donnal was sitting on a rock watching him. The man was beginning to annoy Sam.

“Get me a shovel,” he said.

“Where?”

“A shop, I should think,” Sam said.

“But we’re here to guard you,” Donnal said.

“I need a shovel more than I need a guard.”

Donnal looked at him for a minute as though trying to guess if he was being serious, then he shrugged and walked away. Sam hoped he was going to fetch a shovel. He didn’t wait. He set about the mud with his blade again, sliding it down the sides of the cage, trying to loosen the mud’s grip. He gripped the cage again and tried to rock it to and fro’. It moved.

Sam stood up and stretched his back. It was hard work digging, and he was hot. There was no sign of Donnal or Findaran.

There was a man watching him.

The figure was along the shore, perhaps a hundred paces towards the sea. He was wearing a cloak with the hood raised which was odd on such a warm day. Sam stared at him. The man was very still. The only movement was the lazy flapping of the cloak in the sea breeze.

“Findaran!”

There was no answer. Sam stared at the cloaked man again. He was still there. It was possible that he was just a Gulltown idler, someone wasting a bit of the day watching the lawmaker of Samara digging up a lump of metal. It was possible, but Sam didn’t think so. He couldn’t see anything but the cloak. It could even be a woman.

“Findaran!”

Still no answer. The question was what to do. He could climb up the rope and try to chase the watcher, but Sam wasn’t a runner. The time he’d spent in chains had seen to that. He walked well enough, but his legs were damaged. Even if he caught the man he’d probably only get himself killed.

A hundred paces. He wished Arla was with him. An archer of her quality could probably hit him from here. He gritted his teeth.

“Findaran!”

He walked towards the rope. He had to try.

“Chief?”

Findaran’s head poked over the top by the rope. Sam pointed down the shore. “That man, the one in the cloak. Go and get him. Arrest him.”

“What man?”

Sam backed up a couple of steps. The figure in the cloak had vanished.

“There was a man down the shore there, wearing a cloak. Run down there and see if you can see him. I think it was the killer.”

To Findaran’s credit he was off like a shot, sword drawn, sprinting down the river bank towards the sea. Too late, though. Sam climbed the rope and clambered over the top onto the bank. He was in time to see Donnal walking back with a shovel over one shoulder. The guard saw Findaran running down the dock and looked at Sam.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“I was being watched,” Sam said. “I think it was the killer.”

Donnal looked sceptical. “People will watch a donkey shit in Gulltown,” he said. “What makes you think it was the killer?”

It was a question that Sam couldn’t answer. The way he’d stood – completely still. The way his head had been shaded by the cloak so his face couldn’t be seen. The way he’d vanished. None of it was evidence

“Something about him,” he replied. “I don’t know.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“His face was hidden,” Sam replied.

“I see.”

“Give me the spade.” It was over. The chance had gone. Sam knew without knowing that Findaran wouldn’t find the watcher. He would be gone, vanished again into the warrens of Gulltown. He threw the spade down onto the mud and climbed down after it.

But had the chance really gone? If the killer wanted to watch then they could give him something to watch, hide men along the shore so that they could trap him. It was an idea.

He began to dig. It was much easier with the spade. The mud was actually quite sandy and came away very easily. In a couple of minutes he managed to drag the cage clear and hauled it over to the rope. It was still heavy. There was a good deal of mud still inside it. He tied the rope to one of the bars.

“Donnal!”

A head appeared.

“Haul that up and put it in the wagon, then throw the rope down again.”

The rope tightened and the cage lifted into the air. The weight didn’t seem to be troubling Donnal much. A minute later the rope came snaking down again and Sam climbed it. Findaran was walking back along the river bank. When he saw Sam he shook his head.

“No sign,” he said. “There’s some sort of market going on down there. You could hide a platoon.”

Sam had hardly expected anything different.

“Back to the law house,” he said. He climbed onto the wagon and flicked the reins. Findaran and Donnal stepped up into their saddles and trotted to catch up. Sam slowed as he drove the wagon away and looked one more time over his shoulder.

The river bank was empty.

At the law house he found Arla and Gilan back from Morningside and empty handed. It was clear that they’d had an argument of some kind.

“My office,” he said before either of them could speak. He walked through and sat down. The stone in his pocket stuck into him, so he pulled it out and put it in one of the boxes. “What happened?”

Arla didn’t say anything. She allowed Gilan to tell the story. Sam listened. He was impressed that Gilan didn’t try to justify his decisions. He told the tale as straight as he could, just facts, what was said and who did what. When Gilan finished he shook his head.

“Arla was right,” he said.

“The fault was mine,” Sam said. “I should have sent one person, not six armed lawkeepers.”

“We don’t have the right,” Arla said. “If we want to search places and seize people who have committed crimes we need to have the right under the law to do so. Otherwise men like Tarquin will simply bar their doors.”

Sam thought about that. It seemed a problematic thing to him. If you give men a chance to abuse power, they will, or some of them will. He’d seen it in Gulltown during the chaos there. In the same way the council softened the more tyrannical impulses of the king, so the lawmakers needed a body that would rein them in. Sam would not always be there, and even while he was he couldn’t know everything that went on.

“A man should be able to bar his door,” Sam said. “Unless there are good reasons to speak to him or search his house.”

“There are!” Gilan protested.

“And who says so?” Sam asked.

“I do,” Gilan replied.

“And you are to be the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong in Samara? We’re law keepers, Gilan, not law makers.”

Arla frowned. “They didn’t foresee this, did they? They thought we’d patrol the streets and keep order, nothing more than that”

Arla was right, again.

“A man cannot bar his door to escape a charge of murder,” Gilan said.

“Not in my city,” Sam said. “I will raise it with the council, and if we have no joy of it we will seek another way, but Tarquin will answer our questions.”

Sam sat back in his chair and gazed out of the window towards Gulltown. The idea of a trap still appealed to him. It would not do to march over the bridge and station his few men in daylight. There must be stealth. There must be surprise, and darkness would make that possible.

“You may take the afternoon off,” Sam told them. “Your lawkeepers, too. But I want you all back here after nightfall. There is some business we must do in darkness. Do not come until the sun has set. Do you understand?”

They nodded.

“Tell your lawkeepers the same. They must arrive here after dark, and come in via the yard, and quietly.”

“Is that all?” Arla asked. She expected more, but he had none to give her. The afternoon would provide a plan as he sat here and thought.

“Until tonight.”

Sam watched them go, quieter now, nothing between them. It was clever of Arla to let Gilan speak. The man was no fool, but he favoured action over thought, and speaking meant thinking, and so he learned his error by telling his tale.

He looked at the bell that Ulric had left on his desk. He was supposed to ring it when he wanted anything. It would save him time, Ulric said, if someone came to him. He could smell something cooking at the back of the law house where Ulric had installed a cook. Sam wasn’t hungry, but he could certainly use a hot cup of jaro to keep him awake.

Why not?

He rang the bell.

*

Arla had seen the physic while they were waiting for Hekman to come back from Gulltown. There had been no potion, but the physic had rubbed more salve on the burns and declared herself satisfied with the progress of the healing. Arla confessed that the pain was not so raw.

The free afternoon was unexpected. There were a number of things that she could do, but an officer of the lawkeepers could afford to live somewhere decent, and she decided that she would seek out better rooms than her current bolt hole.

Finding rooms was a simple enough process in the old town. Most taverns had a board outside where renters nailed up places for rent. There was no shortage. Samara had once held twice the number of people it did today, and it still had the same number of buildings. Some were in poor repair, it was true, but there were plenty of fine rooms to go around for those that could afford them.

Arla walked from tavern to tavern, browsing. It was a pleasure she had never experienced. Choice. As a guard her quarters, her duties, almost everything about her life, had been assigned, chosen by others, and she had never railed against it. That was how it was. Now she had an alarming and unprecedented freedom of choice, and she wallowed in it.

She read the descriptions, the sums demanded, perused the handwriting, looked at the addresses. One or two were in streets she didn’t know, and she amused herself by walking around the old town asking folk where King’s Boon Street lay, or where she might find Island Lane. In the end she found them all, and the renters were glad to show her what they had, which told its own story.

In the end it was place on Riverside that took her fancy. The rent was posted as seven silvers a week, which she thought exceptionally high, but the address was equally exceptional, and when she stood outside the building and looked across the river she found that she was close enough to the harbour for the odours of commerce to be swept away by the romance of the sea.

The renter, a stout woman of middle years, looked her up and down a few times before showing her the property. It was above a bread shop, which was a bonus. The smell of baked bread hung about the place, and Arla thought it among the finest aromas in the world.

She climbed the stair behind the renter and stopped briefly at the door. It was a strong door, and had both a bolt on the inside and a lock on the outside. Past the door she stepped into a spacious room with a large bay window. The sun was out and beyond the glass there was a broad view of Gulltown and the sea to the south. She stood and enjoyed it for a minute. The sun gave the room a warm glow, and failing that there was a fireplace on one wall and a pair of leather bound chairs positioned in front of it. Arla ran her hands across the smooth surface of the table that dominated the rest of the room. This was a good place, and now she could afford it.

“The other room, Ima?” the renter said.

Arla followed her into the bed chamber. It was smaller than the sitting room, and darker, but that suited her fine. She sat on the bed, which was larger than she was used to. It felt soft.

“These are good rooms,” Arla said.

“Aye, and seven silver a week, in advance” the renter said.

“Will you take a gold for three weeks?” Arla asked.

“In advance?”

“In advance.”

“I will.”

Arla pulled out her purse and took out a single gold coin. She handed it over and the renter made it vanish somewhere inside her voluminous dress. She smiled. Apparently now that money had changed hands she was disposed to be friendly.

“We own the bakery,” the stout woman said. “I’m Catia, and my husband is Rolf. Your rent includes a loaf every day.”

It was a small benefit, but it pleased Arla. She guessed that Catia and Rolf had once lived in these rooms themselves, but prosperity had brought a better house, and now they had this place empty.

“Thank you,” Arla said.

Catia produced an iron key and handed it over. It felt smooth and solid in Arla’s hand. It gave her a feeling of being substantial, of being part of the city. She had never quite felt like that before. Now she had a home, a job, friends. She was, truly, no longer just a former guard.

She stayed in the rooms for a while after Catia left her, sitting in one of the chairs with a window open. She could hear the whispering of the river, and the faint noises from the docks around by the Shining Wake. Perhaps she would dine there again. She had liked the place, even if all they served was fish.

Arla felt the faint stirrings of happiness. She had never trusted happiness. At Ocean’s Gate there had been the ever present evil of the Faer Karan, and the guilt that came with serving in their guard. It had been a decent enough life, but it was gained at the cost of other people’s lives and happiness. This was different. Now she could look in the mirror and forget what she had been.

There were a few things in her old rooms that she should fetch. There wasn’t much. She had a winter coat, a sack of other clothes, spare boots, a knife. They were things she needed. She left her new home, locking the door behind her.

It took a while to walk across the old town. As she walked she fell to wondering what Hekman had in mind for tonight. Perhaps when she’d fetched her property she’d ask Catia to wake her when they closed the shop and try to get a few hours sleep, even if she didn’t feel tired. It would be better to be fresh.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t see the men until they made their move.

They could have done it better, though. They moved too early. She saw a drawn blade, the glint of armour, and a moment later there was an arrow on her string and she’d turned to face them.

There were four of them. King’s men by the look of them. Arla reckoned she could take two of them before they closed, but that was all. They stopped when they saw the arrow. They knew who she was, and knew what she could do with a bow.

“Arla Crail, you must come with us.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

She could see the leader was eyeing her arrow. She made sure that he could see it was pointed at him.

“We are arresting you on the direct order of the king,” he said.

“I work for the council,” she replied. It was nonsense, of course. The council operated at the king’s sufferance. If the king wanted something badly enough the council did it. She wondered how badly the king wanted her. Badly enough, she guessed. After all, she had killed his son and heir.

She wondered how they’d found her. She didn’t think that Hekman would have told anyone. Ella Saine, perhaps? She was supposed to be friends with the Princess Calaine.

The soldier licked his lips. Having her arrow pointed at him made him nervous.

“Put the bow down,” he said.

“No.”

There was no way she could win this. If she put the bow down she was dead meat. If she shot two of them the others would kill her. Better to go down fighting – that was the guard way and she saw no reason to change it. She drew the string back a fraction. She refined her aim. If she shot first she might just get three of them. Maybe.

The leader sheathed his sword. It was such a surprising gesture that she held her shot back.

“Look,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “We’re not here to kill you. The king wants you taken alive.”

It didn’t really sound like something the king would do. He wasn’t exactly known for his restraint – hence the council, insisted on by the Mage Lord, she’d heard. The Mage Lord was one person the king had to listen to. But being taken alive might mean something less pleasant than death.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear it on the king’s life,” the man said. It was a grave oath. Not a man of the king’s own would break it. They were loyal to him.

“And the king’s hospitality?”

“I can’t answer for that,” the man said.

There was a chance here. If she could get word to Hekman he would do something. It might not be enough, but it was a chance, and a chance of life trumps the certainty of death every time.

“I’ll surrender to you if you swear again,” she said. “Swear that I’ll be alive in a day, and swear that you’ll take this bow back to Hekman. It belongs to him. On the king’s life.”

The man looked at her. It was a difficult thing for him to promise. It meant that he would be bound to protect her for a day, and that Hekman would know that one of his own had been taken by the king. It was Arla’s price for sparing his life and saving her own, perhaps. She could see it all in his eyes, but he had no choice. If he refused to swear he would die, and so would Arla. If he swore they might both live, though the king might be displeased and Arla’s life extended by no more than a day. She did not see that it was a difficult choice.

“I swear it,” the man said.

“Say the words.”

The man looked annoyed. Perhaps, after all he had thought to trick her. But Arla knew that once the words were spoken he would be bound by them, though she had never thought to trust her life to the honour of a king’s man.

“I swear on the king’s life that I will preserve your life for a day, and that I will immediately see the bow you bear returned to Hekman the law keeper.”

She could not ask for more.

Arla replaced the arrow in its quiver with a fluid movement and offered the bow to the king’s men. They approached with caution. Their leader did not draw his blade again. He did not sneer or gloat, though he had half expected it.

“Arla Crail, will you swear to me that you will come with us without resistance?”

She looked him in the eye, and she saw nothing there to alarm her. Perhaps she even saw respect.