The City of Ice Page 6

  There was a pair of stone benches in the middle of the room, set back to back and sharing a common rest. One faced out to the trackless ocean of the south. The other faced the north. From there it was possible to look down into the monastery’s struggling vegetable garden and the grim walls enclosing it. The northern wing, forbidden to the Guiders, loomed over the yard. Pasquanty had only had the courage to look down once. The sight of vertical grey stone streaked with tears of dissolving mortar had made him ill.

  Upon the southern bench sat the Guider Aarin Kressind, Pasquanty’s master. Already rangy before they had come, Aarin had lost weight. He had put aside his rich Guider’s garb and jewellery, replacing it with the grey robe of a novice monk. The shaved back part of Aarin’s Guider’s haircut was growing out. He, like Pasquanty, looked permanently damp, chilled, and miserable. The relationship between the Guider and his deacon was strained at best, but Aarin appeared so glum that Pasquanty took an involuntary step toward him out of concern. The waiting here was hard on both of them. The slap of Pasquanty’s sandal on the wet stone made Aarin stir.

  “What does the sea fear, Pasquanty?” asked Aarin. He went back to looking at the southern view, the direction Aarin’s brother had taken his monstrous iron ship on his fool’s errand.

  “Guider?” asked Pasquanty.

  “The sound of the ocean rushing back and forth. It seems afraid.”

  Pasquanty gave a hunted grin. He hated Aarin’s abstruse questions, each one was a small trap. “I suppose it does, Guider.”

  Aarin sighed. “You have no imagination Pasquanty.”

  Pasquanty looked out over the sea. The green mound the monastery occupied was the only part of the Final Isle permanently free of the water. At the lower tides, a wide margin of pockmarked rock framed it. Then the rock seemed like a yoke, hung around a condemned man’s neck. When the sea was in and the island surrounded by boiling foam, he felt like the same condemned man chained to the Drowning Rocks waiting to join the legions of the Drowned King. Beyond the spume the limitless, rolling sea merged with the grey of the rain and clouds so that it appeared the monastery were pinned under a bowl lost underwater, and that great beasts might come upon him at any time, flip over the bowl and devour him. Or else he would drown, or suffocate, or simply forget who he was.

  Guider Aarin was wrong, Pasquanty had a surfeit of imagination.

  “No, Guider,” he said.

  “Are they ready?”

  “Guider Kressind?”

  Aarin rolled his eyes. “I am hoping that you have come up here to tell me that the Abbot Uguin has relented and that today, after three weeks of sitting around and being told this is forbidden and that is forbidden and that the time is not right, that the time finally is right and we may consult the oracle.”

  Pasquanty slumped. “No, Guider Kressind. He has not relented. I have not seen Abbot Uguin for days, and the brothers will not speak with me. I have come to inform you that our evening meal is ready. The monks go to the refectory. Did you not hear the gong? If we wish to eat, we must hurry.”

  “We have a little time,” said Aarin. He moved up a few inches on the bench and patted the stone. “Come sit with me and look at the ocean, there’s precious little else to do here. Even so late in spring, the days are short. Join me, and enjoy the remainder of the day before we are plunged once more into night.”

  “Yes, Guider,” said Pasquanty. The carved bench was cold under his backside, the wind blowing steadily through the unglazed window was wet. The two men were so close they were touching elbows. Pasquanty’s world filled with Aarin—of his smell, the slight staleness of his breath, the heavy scent of damp wool, the heat from his body. An unwelcome intimacy he dare not shuffle sideways to avoid for fear of acknowledging it.

  “Being here is, I imagine, very much what it is like to be dead,” said Aarin. “You have seen into the next world, during our guidings,” said Aarin. “Everyone sees something different. What do you see?”

  Pasquanty was surprised by Aarin’s question. He rarely spoke with him about such things. Get this Pasquanty, carry that, do stop snivelling. That was the most Pasquanty heard from him. Pasquanty relaxed cautiously, his posture losing some of his defensive stiffness.

  “Not much,” said Pasquanty. “My sight is worse than yours,” he gave a chuckle, an embarrassed recognition of his own inferiority. “My family is not so rich as yours in mageblood. I see glimpses, sometimes glorious, sometimes dark, always terrifying. They are difficult to frame in words.”

  “And when we fought the Drowned King, and the mage Vols Iapetus amplified my guiding?”

  Pasquanty shuddered at the memory. He had been cowering in a doorway when the drowned attacked, crippled by fear. At the combined magic of Aarin and Iapetus, the sky had opened onto a vista of darkness, green faces roaring across it. Their expressions had been anything but kindly or serene.

  “Quite,” said Aarin when Pasquanty did not answer. “Rarely have I seen the veil torn so fully back.” His face was heavy and lined.

  “You are not well, Guider. You should rest. It is this place, it is joyless, dark. My dreams are bad, my sleep broken.”

  “The boundary between life and death is thin here, that is why,” said Aarin. “If I look unwell it is not for sleeplessness. I can’t stop thinking,” he turned from the sea to look at Pasquanty. “What is it exactly we are guiding the dead towards?”

  Pasquanty blinked rapidly, he could feel his larynx bobbing up and down in that way that so infuriated his master, but he was worried. Aarin had aged since they had departed Karsa.

  Aarin gave a rare smile and gripped Pasquanty’s hand. The Guider’s own hand was freezing. “Being here has given me much time for thought, too much perhaps. I have become introspective, and a Guider should ever look outwards. Enough of the melancholy of the ocean. Let us go the miserable monks now, and find somewhere warm to eat.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  An Unexpected Gift

  LIKE MOST OF his siblings, Garten Kressind had shown his father’s aptitude for making money. Unlike his brothers, he also had the knack of keeping hold of it.

  Consequently, he had a large house of his own. Not so grand as the family manse in the Spires, but solid, fashionable, and situated in the best of the growing Karsa City’s new districts.

  In its selection he had given his wife Charramay her head, save in one regard. He insisted upon a practice salle, properly equipped with a bouting circle of hard clay. His wife had agreed only reluctantly, but knowing fencing was how Garten spent most of his free time, she conceded that he might as well do it at home.

  “I tell you, Sothel, I’ll not permit you to get that close again,” said Garten. He tapped Sothel’s blade with the flat of his own, making them both ring. They wore padded clothes to fence, but not full masks. Garten could never countenance that. At his wife’s urging, he and Sothel fought with blunted blades and wore heavy leather goggles, beaked over the nose, the eyes protected by a mesh of stout wires. He would have done without them if he thought he could get away with it.

  Sothel teasingly answered the tap with three of his own. “You’re getting slower, Gart. Where would you rank now if you still competed?”

  “Getting slower am I?” Garten pushed forward, feet spread perfectly. He drove two downward cuts towards Sothel’s cheek. His opponent parried them with minimal effort, his guard never drawn to expose himself.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” said Sothel.

  “I shall!” shouted Garten. He launched a blurring series of attacks that drove Sothel back across the bouting circle. Sothel parried each one with economy, but was hard pressed. He essayed only two ripostes, both dealt neatly with by Garten.

  “Very well, you are not slowing down.” Sothel was close to the edge of the circle. With a quick twist he disengaged, ducking under Garten’s sword to avoid a rap across the back of the head. He danced back toward the centre.

  “I’ve got plenty of fight in me,” said Garten, le
velling his sword point at his friend. “I may spend much of my time behind a desk, but I have not ceased improving, despite what my brother Rel might say.”

  “Yes, he did say that to me, last time I saw him.”

  “Well, we all know where his cockiness got him,” said Garten. “He’s going to have to be good where he’s gone.”

  “He is a good swordsman,” said Sothel.

  “Just because you can’t beat him does not mean he is better than me,” said Garten.

  “I can beat neither of you.”

  “Exactly.”

  They stepped carefully, both looking for an opening, circling in true warrior style. Garten preferred the older schools of defence.

  Upstairs, the front door bell rang.

  “Expecting anyone?” asked Sothel.

  “No,” said Garten.

  “Aren’t you going to answer? That could be the duke’s man.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” said Garten, executing a flawless attack from the second position. Sothel parried it with difficulty. “Whoever it is can wait a few more moments.”

  The door boomed unnaturally loudly.

  Garten and Sothel paused. “What the hells...?” said Garten.

  “Perhaps we should finish for the day?” said Sothel. “You must have a lot to do.”

  Garten swept his sword around. “Perhaps you should shut up and defend yourself. Besides, I can’t have that pissant little brother coming home from his military adventures a better warrior than me. Say I affectionately. He’s always bragging that I’m past my prime, and that he’ll best me one day. I’ll give him a shock when he gets back.”

  “I don’t doubt it. You are getting better. You should be teaching me.”

  “You’ve been a good coach, Sothel. It’s not your proficiency that I value, but your advice, your ability to break down each attack and to analyse it. I am a better swordsman than you, but you are a fencing master, I merely a skilled practitioner. I bow before your superior knowledge, if not your skill.”

  Sothel laughed. “So modest.”

  “Goodfellow, excuse me.”

  Garten put up his hand, Sothel lowered his sword. Garten pulled free his goggles. One of his maids waited at the foot of the stairs into the salle.

  “Gods return, Hellonay, I told you no disturbances. I shall not get to give Sothel here a beating for several months!”

  Hellonay curtseyed. Garten was jocular, vitalised by adrenaline. Ordinarily he was far more reserved. “Begging your pardon, goodfellow, there’s a goodman here to see you. He has a delivery. And a, and a... Well...”

  “Come on girl, I haven’t got all day.”

  “Well he has a Tyn with him. Dortian says one of the Mandelway band from the Weave. I think it’s a woman, but I can’t be sure. I’d have the kitchen take the package for you but he says you have to sign for it—the young man is very insistent. Shall I tell them to return later?”

  Garten left the ring, put his sword back into a rack and took up a towel. “No, no, I’ll deal with it. Sothel, you wait here. I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a moment, I won’t be long, you’re too damned expensive to pay to hang about.”

  “I shall come up, if I may. I could do with a drink.”

  “If you wish. Hellonay, see to the goodfellow would you? There’s a good girl.”

  Hellonay curtseyed again, and Garten bounded up the stairs past her, two steps at a time, mopping sweat from his face as he went. He thrust his towel at a footman and jogged the length of his hall to the front door. It didn’t do to be running about in front of the servants, but protocol be damned. His spirits were high from the bout. Warm, late spring air wafted in from the street, pleasant on his sweaty skin. In a few days he would be leaving on the most important assignment of his life; in his current mood he saw only the joy of the challenge, and none of the possible pitfalls. His butler Dortian manned the door, looking sidelong at the man in a drayman’s long coat topped by a short cloak waiting outside. By the man’s side was a trollish Greater Tyn. Hellonay had it wrong, it was certainly not a female. In the street, dog carts clattered by through bright sunshine, but the creature on his doorstep threw the day out of sorts. His skin tingled with its magic.

  “Well then, you’ve dragged me up here. What is it?” asked Garten, his good humour replaced by forced cheer.

  “A delivery, goodfellow,” said his butler, eyeing the Tyn disdainfully. The young man did not seem bothered by the creature in the slightest.

  “Yes, yes Dortian, thank you.”

  His butler bowed and withdrew.

  “I recognise you,” said Garten to the man.

  The drayman was young, but not callow. He had poise. Behind his legs was a leather-bound box, two feet in all dimensions. A pair of clasps a third of the way down the front held shut a foldaway lid, and there was a carrying handle upon the top. “We work for Arkadian Vand, and the goodfellow’s brother, Goodfellow Trassan Kressind. Perhaps the goodfellow has seen me at the shipyard, or at his brother’s home?”

  “We have a note,” said the Tyn. It held out a bulging envelope.

  “That’s a treatise, not a note!” said Garten. “What the hells is it?”

  “I am sorry. It is quite a list,” said the man.

  “Our little cousins are so very particular, goodfellow,” said the Tyn. Its smile was insinuating.

  “List?”

  The drayman picked up the box carefully. “Of geas. Your brother told me to bring her here.”

  “Her, who? What? Oh gods, he hasn’t has he?” said Garten. “Not that Tyn he had in the cage. Whizzy, or something. Why?”

  “I am afraid you must accept her care,” said the Tyn. “You are the chosen inheritor. We cannot take her elsewhere. You are bound by the nomination.”

  “Geas,” said Garten wearily. He tapped the envelope on his thumb. It was well stuffed.

  The drayman nodded, still proffering the box.

  Garten took it and held it out at arm’s length. “Dortian!” he called. “Take this through to the dining room. Be careful with it.” The butler reappeared and took the box. “I have been told you require a signature.”

  “In a manner of speaking, goodfellow,” said the Tyn. It held out a pin and a piece of paper.

  “Blood? In seriousness?”

  “I am sorry, goodfellow,” said the man, and gave the Tyn an admonishing look.

  Garten groaned, took the pin, pricked his thumb and pressed it to the paper. Glimmer laced ink impregnating the paper glittered and writing appeared around his print. The Tyn took it and hid it away inside its garish, filthy clothes.

  “Marvellous, now I am enchanted to boot,” said Garten.

  “I doubt it, goodfellow,” said the man.

  “I don’t,” said the Tyn. The man nudged it with his boot, bringing an evil look to the Tyn’s face.

  “I am sorry. Your brother’s wishes,” said the man.

  “Yes, very well. Good day,” said Garten. He made to close the door. The Tyn stuck its foot in it. Garten looked down at it with a frown, and opened the door again.

  “What is it?”

  “Now begging your pardon, goodfellow,” wheedled the Tyn. “What with work and bringing this over, I’ve been off my home ground too long. Feeling it now, goodfellow. Feeling cold even on so warm a day as this. Get the terrible aches in me shins when I’ve been out from me home ground too long. Take days to die, those pains do. It doesn’t do to take a bound Tyn away from his home ground for long, oh no goodfellow.” It looked up at Garten expectantly with big, brown eyes.

  The drayman had the decency to look mortified. “I am so incredibly sorry, goodfellow. Ludloss!”

  The Tyn Ludloss kept his hopeful face pointed at Garten. “Ever so painful, goodfellow.”

  “No matter,” Garten grumbled. He fished a coin from his pocket. The Tyn took it in a filthy brown hand and bobbed and bowed its way back down the steps into the street. Garten pulled out a second and handed it to the man.

  “Fo
r your manners, and your forbearance of the lack thereof on the Tyn’s part,” he said. The drayman nodded in gratitude.

  Garten shut the door and stalked off into the dining room, his mood quite blackened. The case had been set upon a cloth on his table so as not to mar the wood. Sothel lounged against the jamb of the door leading back to the kitchens, a large tankard in one hand.

  “Is that my best porter?”

  “Naturally,” said Sothel. He raised his tankard in salute. “Fighting you is thirsty work, and you’ll be gone soon. Better I have it than the servants, eh?”

  Garten approached the box. He weighed the envelope in his hands. His blood stained the corner.

  “What’s in the box?” asked Sothel.

  “I shall show you,” said Garten. He tore open the envelope, and found within a long list of handwritten instructions, wrapped in a letter penned in Trassan’s untidy hand.

  “A letter from my brother Trassan,” said Garten. “One moment.”

  Brother,

  Please accept this small gift, if gift it can be named. She is a delightful companion. A little demanding (I apologise for the list, a necessary evil), but useful nonetheless. I could not take her with me upon the ship, despite my future father-in-law’s intentions. On the first count, although she has proved herself a fine friend, she is bound to report upon my activities to Goodman Vand, and to be frank with you I could do without the additional pressures this would bring upon me in this most vital and demanding of ventures. As you are aware...

  “What does he say?” said Sothel.