Assassin's Edge Read online

  Pered took her through the house and closed the front door behind her. He turned. “You needn’t laugh, ’Sar. You’ll have half the hall wanting to know why you’re packing up.”

  Usara set down a small portrait he’d picked up from Pered’s desk. “We’re leaving for good then.”

  Pered looked at him and then at Shiv. “You don’t seriously imagine you’ll be coming back? Not after all that’s been said?”

  Suthyfer, Fellaemioris Landing,

  19th of Aft-Spring

  Are you awake?”

  “I barely slept.” Naldeth roused himself, heavy-eyed and dishevelled. “What is it?”

  “Food, I imagine.” Parrail sat creased and grimy beneath the shelter of the stockade’s wall walk. He hugged his knees as the heavy gates swung open just wide enough to admit three men and a woman lugging a basket.

  Naldeth looked nauseous. “I’m not hungry.”

  Parrail’s look of grim determination sat oddly on his boyish face. “We have to keep our strength up, if we’re to get out of here.”

  “How are we to do that?” Naldeth looked around hastily in case anyone had noticed his incautious despair but everyone else was already forming a sullen line. Parrail returned with a soft loaf of bread tucked under his arm, hands occupied with a slab of yellow cheese and a succulently meaty haunch. “This is what they were smoking. It’s some beast from the woods.”

  “Ugly as an unwed maid but good eating,” a voice above them remarked. Startled, they looked up to see a pirate on the parapet. He nodded a cordial greeting. “We don’t do so badly.”

  Naldeth and Parrail exchanged a wary glance and applied themselves to their food.

  “You two with your soft hands and new-bought clothes, I don’t reckon you’ve gone hungry too often.” The pirate raised his voice and caught the eye of three lads huddled some way beyond the magic wielders. “Join Muredarch and the ache of an empty belly’ll be but a memory, my oath on it.”

  “Where do you hail from?” Parrail asked cautiously.

  “Me?” The pirate leaned against the splintered bark of the stockade. “A village called Gostrand, three days up the Dalas from Inglis and just where the hills reach high enough to keep your feet out of the floods.”

  “You’re a long way from home.” This wasn’t the Gidestan who’d dragged them out of the hold the day before, Naldeth realised.

  “Fifty times richer than I’d be on my deathbed if I’d stayed. A man in Muredarch’s crew sees full value for his work.” The pirate gave the three youths another significant look. “I’d had enough of breaking my back for whatever pittance some silk-gowned bastard in Inglis would pay for a year’s digging, and of watching him sell it off down the coast for ten coin in gold for every silver he paid for it.”

  Sudden activity drowned out the man’s words; bellowed commands, obliging shouts answering and the thud and crash of casks and bales outside the stockade. Parrail nudged Naldeth and nodded towards a ladder that another pirate was setting firm in the trampled ground so the prisoners could get on to the wall walk. Naldeth looked doubtfully at the scholar but followed him up.

  The looted contents of the Tang had been piled beneath rough shelters of sailcloth and raw lumber in the open space in front of the stockade. Muredarch surveyed the booty, strolling along in a scarlet linen shirt over black breeches, gold chains braided around his waist and catching the sun. A dark-haired woman in dull green walked at his heels, a ledger cradled in one arm, pen poised.

  Muredarch’s whistle carried clearly across the encampment and summoned women and pirates who’d been busy about the scattered tents and huts.

  “Can you hear what he’s saying?” Parrail asked Naldeth in a low tone.

  Naldeth shook his head.

  “It’s all written up, so there can’t be no quarrelling,” said the pirate with approval. “Them as drew the tail end lots last time around step up first.”

  A man and woman waited for Muredarch’s nod before taking a bolt of cloth and a barrel. The woman in green made a note in her ledger as the man wheeled the heavy barrel carefully away, his companion balancing the cloth on her shoulder. Both were smiling broadly. The next man stopped to speak to Muredarch before departing with a heavy casket whose rope handles strained at the weight within it.

  “That’ll be my uncle’s tools,” said the lad glumly. “And my apprenticeship gone with them.”

  “Swear your oath to Muredarch and earn something to trade for them.” Another pirate came up, a saturnine man with scars on his forearms both long healed and freshly red. “Indentured to your uncle? No masters here, my lad, to take all the coin and begrudge you half the pay they promised you. Anyway, I wouldn’t go back to a journeyman’s full day rate.” He laughed and flourished a lavishly beringed hand marred by filthy nails. “I earn thrice the coin in half the time!”

  “You’d be Tormalin, by your accent,” Naldeth commented cautiously.

  The pirate looked at him. “Savorgan bred. What’s it to you?”

  Naldeth shrugged. “Nothing, just making conversation.”

  The pirate turned back to the apprentice lad. “You’ve got an answer for Muredarch yet?”

  The lad looked scared. “I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll be asked once the shares are made.” The pirate nodded at the patient knot of people waiting with pails and pannikins as barrels of salt fish and dried peas were broached. The woman in green had joined a sandy-haired pirate who was opening a succession of small bottles and flagons. He took a cautious taste of one before holding it up. “Green oil.”

  A woman raised her hand and hurried forward to take it. Spiced vinegar and mustard oil were claimed with similar alacrity but the woman in green waved away a man wanting a jar of physic oil. The sandy-haired pirate rinsed his mouth from a waterskin at his belt and spat before continuing his sampling.

  “Who’s she?” Naldeth watched as a growing selection of condiments and luxuries were stacked at the woman’s feet.

  “Ingella.” The scarred pirate sounded wary. “Muredarch’s woman.”

  The woman looked around and shouted to a grey-headed man in the rags of a sailor’s breeches. His feet were bare, lash marks criss-crossing his naked back. He flinched as if he expected to be hit when the woman pointed to her new possessions.

  “That’s your lot if you don’t take the oath,” the pirate commented with friendly concern. “Every man’s slave and no man’s friend.”

  Parrail tugged at Naldeth’s sleeve and they edged away along the wall walk. “What are you going to do?”

  “Swear, I suppose,” the mage whispered uneasily.

  Parrail paled beneath the dirt on his face. “It doesn’t bother you, being forsworn?”

  “I don’t suppose Raeponin will hold it against me.” Naldeth’s feeble attempt at a smile failed.

  A new flurry of activity caught everyone’s attention. A burly pirate was dragging a youth up from the shoreline. The lad tried to hold on to his unlaced breeches but lost his grip and stumbled as they fell down around his ankles. He was pulled along regardless, naked buttocks pale in the sun, humiliation burning his face scarlet.

  His captor dumped him prone before Muredarch, expression eloquent of outrage even if the gusting wind snatched his words away. Muredarch listened with close attention and then turned the lad over with a booted toe, bending over to talk to the cowering youth.

  “Which hand will it be?” chuckled the Tormalin pirate.

  “What’s he done?” asked Parrail.

  “Shat in the wrong place.” The pirate sucked condemnatory teeth. “Muredarch says no one’s to foul the sound. You drop your breeches where the tide’ll clean the rocks or that’s what you’ll get.”

  A heavyset man came up, shirtless beneath a buff jerkin and swinging a five-stranded whip. Parrail recognised him as the one who’d nailed Gede to his own mast and winced as the lad was stripped of his shirt and tied to an upright spar planted down by the water. Muredarch held up a hand
for everyone to see. It was the four-fingered hand, prompting a general murmur of approval.

  The Tormalin pirate nodded. “That’ll learn the lad without crippling him.”

  But the man with the whip still set to with a will, barbed lashes ripping into the boy’s skin, blood spattering in all directions. Naldeth and Parrail both turned away, sickened, but saw more pirates had come into the stockade to chat apparently idly with their captives.

  “Do you suppose many turn pirate just for the chance to dress like whoremasters on market day?” The mage watched a bald-headed pirate in an incongruously lace-trimmed shirt advancing on a meek-looking girl.

  Parrail watched the raider’s expansive gestures, doubtless offering all manner of inducements. All smiles, he wasn’t about to let the girl escape him, rough fingers stroking her hair and her cheek.

  “Muredarch did say rape was forbidden.” Parrail looked sick as the girl’s feeble protests waned. She stood mute with misery as the pirate put a proprietorial arm around her shoulder.

  “Holding a lass down and ripping up her petticoats, maybe.” Naldeth rubbed his hands together as if his fingers pained him. “Scaring some poor poult into laying herself down seems allowed.”

  A ship’s bell rang and the pirates amiably socialising inside the stockade abruptly changed tack.

  “Down the ladder,” ordered the Tormalin on the wall walk, sharp face brooking no argument. Naldeth and Parrail hastily obeyed, hurrying to the back of the huddle of captives as the gates opened wide.

  Muredarch stood in the centre, his smile welcoming, his height forbidding, eagled-eyed henchmen stern on either side. “You first.”

  He summoned a middle-aged man nervously twisting a kerchief between his hands. “I’m just a miller, your honour,” he blurted out.

  Muredarch nodded. “And now we’ve got wheat, thanks to your ship. Will you grind it for us? I’ve a fancy for fresh bread after a season and a half of twice-baked biscuit.”

  The miller’s face creased with confusion. “I can’t think what’s best—”

  “Take all the time you need.” Muredarch laid a reassuring hand on the cowering man’s shoulder before nodding to a flat-faced brute with tattoos all down one arm. “In the meantime, you can start paying your debts.”

  The tattooed pirate held the miller fast while the man who’d flogged the boy stripped him of gown, shirt, socks and boots. The tattooed pirate knotted a thick leather strap securely around the miller’s neck and, using it as a handhold, hauled him away. “If you won’t grind the wheat, you can carry the sacks, old fool.”

  “Let me know when you’ve made your mind up,” Muredarch called genially before pointing at the next man who met his eye.

  The erstwhile sailor ducked his head in a hasty bow. “I’ll swear but I won’t go raiding.”

  “Fairly spoken,” said Muredarch in an oddly formal tone. He drew himself up to his full height. “Do you swear to obey me in all things, to treat all so sworn as your brothers and sisters in oath? Do you put your fate in my hands according to the vow we all trust in?”

  “Yes.” The sailor managed a strangled whisper.

  “I so swear,” the whip man prompted with a ferocious scowl.

  “I so swear.”

  Muredarch looked at his new recruit for a long contemplative moment. “Go see Ingella. Set your mark or your thumb to your name in the muster book and she’ll sort you out a pitch.”

  The next few all swore the oath, some with visible reluctance, two women stammering through their fear to insist they wouldn’t take part in any piracy. Muredarch treated them both with exquisite courtesy. The defiant few were stripped and either dragged off to some toil or thrown to the back of the stockade. Naldeth and Parrail watched glumly as pirates came to pick over the heap of clothes and boots on offer. Some of the apprentices who’d sworn Muredarch’s oath with suspicious enthusiasm joined them.

  “Do you swear to obey me in all things, to treat all so sworn as your brothers and sisters in oath? Do you put your fate in my hands according to the vow we all trust in?” Muredarch was smiling at the woman who’d nearly been dropped in the water the day before.

  “I so—” She broke off and swallowed hard. ”I so—” She tugged at the neck of the chemise below her bodice but the collar was neither high nor tight. “I so—” The woman coughed, face scarlet as she choked. She fell to her hands and knees, struggling for breath as Muredarch looked down impassively.

  “Mama!” Her daughter screamed and would have run to her but the tattooed pirate caught her, one broad hand slapping over her mouth.

  The woman collapsed, panting like a stricken animal, lips fading to a deathly blue.

  The remaining prisoners stood frozen with shock but few of the raiders, men and women alike, spared more than a passing, regretful shake of their heads.

  Parrail’s eyes were wide with horror as he nudged Naldeth. “Artifice,” he mouthed silently.

  Naldeth was trembling, fists clenched, sweat beading his forehead.

  “It’s her own fault.” Muredarch explained in conversational tones. “She tried to take the oath without meaning it. Oh, didn’t I say? We’ll have no falsehoods here. Try it and you’ll die like this poor fool. Think on that before you decide.” He smiled at the dead woman’s daughter whom the tattooed pirate released to sob out her heart over the corpse.

  After that, the prisoners gave their oath or refusal with terrified speed and, finally, there was no escape for Parrail or Naldeth.

  “I cannot swear to you.” The scholar shakily pre-empted Muredarch’s question.

  The pirate chief assessed the scholar with merciless eyes, examining him from head to toe. “You might like to reconsider. Ingella tells me she wants a clerk.” He nodded and Parrail was handed over to the tattooed pirate and the lash man. They stripped him with ungentle hands and flung him into the dank shadow of the parapet where the other prisoners cowered.

  He’d barely got his breath back when Naldeth landed on the trampled grass beside him. The mage winced, easing the leather collar away from the weal it had scored on his neck. “Bastard didn’t give me a chance to stand up.”

  “On your feet.” The tattooed pirate surveyed the cowering prisoners. “You’re nameless and friendless and that’s how you’ll be unless you swear to Muredarch. You take any order you’re given and you’ll eat. No work, no food. Right, you can start by gathering firewood.”

  Parrail reached out to help Naldeth up but a vicious stick smacked his hand away.

  “If he can’t stand, he can sit there till he starves.” It was the Gidestan pirate, no hint of friendship in his eyes now. “It’s every slave for himself, soft hands and all.”

  Parrail retreated, hugging his arm to himself.

  Naldeth watched in wary silence until the Gidestan advanced on the dead woman’s daughter who was vainly trying to preserve her modesty in her torn shift, the mark of the tattooed pirate’s hand still scarlet on her ashen face.

  “If they’re using Artifice, we have to let Guinalle know,” the wizard whispered urgently to Parrail.

  The scholar’s face was tight with pain. “I’ll try tonight.” He winced. “But I think that bastard broke my wrist.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  To Keran Tonin, Mentor at the University of Vanam

  From Rumex Dort, Archivist to Den Castevin, Toremal.

  This is all I can find of recent record about pirates but we’re seldom involved in such things. I’ll ask around and see what else I can have copied for you. Next time you’re passing through this way, you can buy me a drink and explain what all this is about.

  R

  Roll of the Autumn Equinox Assize held in Chanaul

  in the second year of Tadriol the Provident

  Esquire Burdel Den Gennael presiding as Justiciar beneath the Imperial Seal

  Attestors to the Assize drawn by lot from the tenantry of Den Hefeken, Den Fisce and Tor Inshol

  Summary of cases relating to maritime concerns
brought to judgement and attested as fairly dealt by those called to that service

  The captain of the ship Periwinkle was brought before the court after being taken by vessels of Den Fisce on the 35th of Aft-Summer on suspicion of piracy. The captain refuses to give his name and it cannot be ascertained from the crew, even after such prolonged close confinement. Three names have been given for the man but none can be found to be reliable. The ship contained goods proven as stolen from the docks at Blacklith and as looted from the wreck of the Shearwater, a ship owned by Tor Inshol and cast away on the rocks below Oyster Head. Captain and crew are sentenced to branding on the right hand as thieves and flogging on the dockside at Blacklith, that all ships’ masters may learn their faces and spurn them in future. Those who can prove title to their goods may reclaim them from Den Gennael’s Receiver of Wrecks. Any property remaining will be turned over to the Shrine of Dastennm, to be used by the fraternity for the relief of seamen’s widows and orphans.

  Malbis Cultram was brought before the court by Den Hefeken’s Sergeant at Arms, arrested after three separate accusations of his involvement in piracy were laid. Silks, wines and fine spices were found in his cellars but Cultram can provide neither accounts nor yet trading partners to prove his title to such goods. He claims they were purchased for his own use but can show no trade or profession to justify either the quantities of coin found in his strongboxes or such excessive stocks of luxuries. Witnesses from Blacklith examined separately have identified Cultram as associating with known pirates. A series of coastal charts drawn up by the Pilot Academy of Zyoutessela were found among his private papers. Cultram has never been entered on the muster of the academy and his possession of such charts is therefore unlawful. Further, the Master of Pilots has sent his affidavit that these particular charts were issued to the helmsman of the Brittlestar. This ship of Den Rannion was lost to pirates in the tenth year of Tadriol the Prudent with all aboard put to the sword but for a few surviving by chance and Saedrin’s grace. One such sailor, Evadin Tarl, was brought to the court and identified Cultram as one of those same pirates. Cultram is sentenced to be hanged in chains on the dockside at Kalaven at Solstice, his body to be tarred for its better preservation and the continued warning thereby to any tempted to follow his example.