Steel Sirens Read online

  Backwater? I mouth, and Emeree stifles a laugh, then turns back to the merchant. “Anything more you know about them?”

  “Not much. Just that if you mess with them, they’ll boil the bones off yer body. I seen it, last time I was here. Group protesting the new taxes outside the Duke’s gates. His son points a finger, and that black-robed monster’s hands start glowin’. Next thing you know, near twenty people are nothin’ but a puddle on the ground, all bones and blood.” The merchant swallows, looks a bit green. “People ‘round here ain’t happy,” he says, casting a glance at the fighting merchants. They roll around, throwing punches in the dirt next to the road, and as we pull even with them, a wiry tinker with what must be a thousand knickknacks swinging from his voluminous pack buries his fist in his opponent’s face, breaking his nose with a crunch that banks the murmuring crowd.

  Our guide tsks. “Never would have seen such in the old days.”

  Emeree is stock still, aside from the roll of her horse. “Did you say black robed? Was there a symbol anywhere, as well?”

  The merchant screws up his face, thinking. “Aye, they all have one, though I’ve never been brave enough to try to see one up close, thank the Father. But I’ve heard ‘em described: A silver dragon with ruby eyes, hanging on a chain from their neck. Why, I’ve heard that you can get one from the Black Exchange in Cor…”

  He drones on, stealing glances at Emeree, but she’s not listening. Her face is pinched, and she’s red with banked fury.

  I question her with a brow.

  “Not here. When we’re alone.” Her voice is so quiet I have to glean the words from her lips.

  Our companion still talks, his words almost mumbled from between thick lips as his poor, scrawny mount strains under his bulk. “...and since Arundel had the first report of it matters have only grown worse, though I think it’s just peasant superstition.”

  I turn my attention back to him, realizing the topic has shifted. “First report of what?”

  A thin, stoic, grey clad couple stares at the merchant with pooling eyes. How could you? their looks say.

  The merchant catches their eyes and gulps while the grey-clad man searches out something inside his tunic. His wife stands mournfully serene, her face soft, plain, but beautiful like a holy statue. Is she praying for the merchant? I wonder if her husband plans to gut him. I half wish he would.

  But instead of a knife the man produces a scrap of foolscap. He leans away from the merchant to hand me his paper.

  “Missing girls?”

  He nods. His wife turns her face away and dabs the tail of her headscarf at her eyes.

  Six scrawled names at the bottom of the scrap identify themselves as village elders and attest this man’s claim. Three missing girls.

  I pass the note to Emeree and elbow the craning merchant away. “Girls must go missing.” We had those tragedies in Braemar. A drowning, an early unburrowing of a bear. “Most of these people seem to be here because of a lost someone.”

  The villager trades a look with his wife. They’ve been completely silent, and their reticence seems to deepen.

  “This is more than slavers,” says Emeree, studying the pair.

  “Is it?” declares the merchant. He lowers his voice, conspiratorial, shutting out the worried couple. He addresses us both, but his eyes never leave Emeree. His eagerness is pathetic. But his chattiness? I suppose there’s one advantage to having a beautiful woman by your side. “These silly rumors began almost the moment Carven took his father’s place. And I grant you he has many faults and vices, but honestly…”

  He tsks and glances back at the pair. “A duke stealing village girls? Hah! Seems to me it was a convenient way for backward peasants to draw attention to their surprisingly comely daughters. And when bad men took notice? A brigand has no money, but a duke...of course one would demand compensation from the fattest purse.” He shakes his head.

  Emeree’s mouth is a thin line, the stain in her face darker. Her rage matches mine. “This says fifteen, sixteen.”

  “What would a nobleman want with an illiterate girl? Imagine the women he has pick of!” He shrugs. “Besides, why are these...people...just now coming to the city? Why not scream bloody murder as your daughter’s being…” He trills his fingers, “dragged away?”

  Emeree looks at the couple.

  Their sad expressions have been remodeled by veed brows and clenched jaws. They open their mouths in unison.

  Aged white teeth, and then nothing. Beyond, twin hollows of red vein-corded tissue glisten until they reach white thick-scarred stumps.

  The merchant swallows again. This time maybe he thinks he’s said too much. “Anyhow. I hope the girls are recovered.”

  Emeree hands the letter back white knuckled. “I’m very sorry for your loss. If we hear or see anything, we’ll send word to your village.”

  The man and woman nod their gratitude and in moments, although this bloody line doesn’t seem to move, they’re separated from us by a new mix of forlorn faces.

  Emeree and I turn our focus on the merchant.

  “Ah, anyway. Pleasure. I see they’ve opened a trade gate.” He gestures to his wagon. “Can I offer you a bottle of Cor Torvan red as a kindness?”

  A kindness for what? Not reporting him? Not gutting him?

  “No,” answers Emeree, he back to him. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “I am.” I hold out my hand.

  His smile tightens in surprise. “Oh, oh.”

  Not used to being held to trite offers. He huffs and stumbles his way into the wagon and hands down a cobalt glass bottle.

  “Should you ever crave another bottle of Cor Torvan, or some other vintage, I am just off the guildhall square. Master Tagan’s.”

  I turn my back on his proffered hand and stay this way until his wagon lumbers off onto the side road.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell Emeree, pressing into the tight, hotly kindled mass. The couple are taller than most everyone else; it doesn’t take long to spot them.

  “Here,” I say, thrusting the wine into the man’s soft pale hands. He has gentle fingers, like a monk or a scholar; I’m terrified to think of these two on the road alone for days. “This must sell for five silvers. Maybe more. Enough to pay for your journey and a merc to see you home.”

  He tries to press it back, but his wife lays her hands over both of ours. He stills.

  She nods her thanks and takes the bottle.

  I look back at them twice as I head back. They make me think of my parents, and that terrifies me.

  “Can we detour a bit once we get Siri?” I ask Emeree. “A wine merchant. A bit of arson…”

  Her smile is bright and grim.

  The walls loom ahead after what feels like forever. It’s not that progress has been made; the hired men are siphoning off the refugees to ‘interrogation camps’. It’s clear by the number of huddled, sobbing people in a nearby field that no one is meeting the criteria for entry.

  The mercenaries don’t ask a word when we reach the gates. They stare down at me and Emeree and wait for stammered excuses, or pleas.

  “We have business with a wine merchant near the guildhall,” says Emeree with a regal draw to each word.

  “Long way to come for wine,” answers one of the men, arms crossed and boots planted.

  “No vintners in Bellagorg.”

  The pair laugh. “That’s not even a place anymore. Abandoned ruin occupied by one crazy witch.”

  Emeree bows low with a flourish of her hand. “And that crazy witch is thirsty.”

  They freeze. Their arms slide open, hanging. “You her protection?”

  I laugh; it’s genuine. “Look at me. I hired her. Now I have to buy her a damned bottle of wine.”

  Their laughter is a tremulous, nervous sound, bat screeches hoping to bounce off humor and not truth. They don’t want to look weak and they don’t dare risk angering Emeree.

  “You lads don’t need protection!” she declares, patting the
ir arms and slipping through the bulwark of their bodies before they’ve given us the slightest permission to pass.

  She lets go of Falnir’s reins and does a little pirouette, seeming girlish and mad. “You’re doing such a sound job I think you ought to have something from the vintner, too. My companion will pay.”

  They smile and murmur and clap me on the back. And just like that, we’re inside the gatehouse passageway. We lead our mounts into relative darkness.

  Our way is lit only by poor tallow lamps, hardly enough to make out the path, but braziers blaze inside the guard room.

  These could be Arundel’s men, and if they are, I worry that I ever thought he could aid me. They wear boiled leather, and faded crimson tabards that bear a rampaging lion. One ruddy faced soldier has cut his side laces to accommodate a bulging gut. Weapons in the rack are mismatched, dull. The men look bored, their laughter idle. They throw dice with weak wrists, habit more than interest. What’s happening beyond the walls, and even at the gatehouse, is of no interest. The gate tunnel reeks of piss, but there’s no chamber pot inside the guard room, not that I can see. Arundel’s men don’t give a shite.

  “They’re paying the mercs to do their job,” I guess, whispering this to Emeree.

  Emeree peers in at them as we pass. mouth pinched. “This may be easier than we thought. Or harder.”

  Voices are hushed around us. People pass us in the wide throughway, but they’re shades. Light pours in at the far end, but so does noise. A blacksmith’s hammer, a sermonizing monk, a baker’s boy, hoof beats.

  My breath comes faster. I fight the urge to mount Glaer and spur my way to someplace slow and still. I’ve never been so close to so many people.

  Emeree rests her hand on mine. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t console, doesn’t even look at me, but she’s here. It’s perfect.

  We stumble out into the market square, and despite the odor of offal, horse dung, tannery, and sweat, I breathe easier.

  There’s space, movement. It’s not so bad.

  Twilight has fallen since we entered the gatehouse. Lamp lighters scurry along walks like mad men; up the ladder, down the ladder, repeat. Buildings crouch at the square’s edges like hunched old men with golden candlelight eyes.

  Merchant-officials clad in the universal green and orange coats direct traffic with languid waves of their hands or pikes – traffic that shows no sign of slowing despite the hour.

  Wagons and draught horses trundle toward a main artery that splits the buildings, while finer carriages divert north, toward finer districts. Stalls are shuttered, but hawkers wander through the crowd shouting out their wares: dried fruit, skewers of steaming meat, silk stockings. Their cries battle each other like a chorus with a thousand members each singing their own hymn.

  I turn a full circle, taking it in. There are half as many people in this square than I have known in my whole life. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

  “Come on.” Emeree tugs my sleeve. “This way, before you get trampled.”

  We pass out of the square into one of the more minor roadways, one without much evening traffic. The district seems mostly devoted to minor merchants and hawkers, and empty vendor stalls hunch in front of two and three story buildings that tower above us. They’re ramshackle, with peeling paint and rickety doors. Broken windows are hastily patched with stretched hide, and thin torchlight flickers within most houses, weak and sputtering. The road isn’t cobbled, and I’m grateful that it hasn’t rained in a few days, as traversing it would be a nightmare of mud and manure.

  Everything outside the market square feels run down. Not destitute, but...weary. “It’s as if everyone’s stripping the city ahead of demolition.” In Braemar we took pride, or imposed pride, on those the aldermen felt didn’t possess any. For the most part each man helped. Here, it’s as if –

  “No one cares,” Emeree finishes my thought, then glances at the lampmen trailing behind us. “Or they care about all the wrong things. Who needs lamps when the road cobble’s too fraught to drive on after sundown?” She snorts. “Tagan was right: This place is rotten.”

  The street widens again, and we enter a smaller square. It takes a second in the lamplight to realize that it was once a park or garden. The dead brown expanse isn’t missing stones, it’s missing plants.

  At the center towers a limestone statue, three times the height of a man, even minus its missing head. He stands proud, sword extended. His robe has the texture of velvet, a testament to the craftsmanship I assume used to exist here in Minster Lowe.

  Portions of it wink back at us as if wrapped in gold thread.

  Gilding. Its gold leaf has been scraped away by greedy hands.

  Emeree circles the plinth. “Iver Arundel, Champion of the Cordren Wildlands.” She brushes her hand over a scored and dented plaque on the plinth’s face.

  It thuds to the dirt.

  “The old Duke.” She sets the bronze piece atop his feet.

  “Where’s his head?”

  “Maybe we should ask Carven.”

  “Barely a year; isn’t that what the vintner said in his blather?”

  “Ten months,” Emeree agrees, glancing back at the statue.

  “Minster Lowe is massive. Why don’t the people...petition?” We slip single file to pass our horses through a narrow alley. “Why don’t they –”

  “Back or I’ll bludgeon your face in!”

  The words are masculine, heavy as stone and biting as a wolf. They slam me as we emerge from the alley. A man dressed like those in the guardhouse rests a club atop a thick shoulder. He’s ringed by a small horde of bedraggled commoners clutching saplings, tongs, brooms. Their faces cast in sinister hollows by their torches. Despite the ratio, the soldier looks ready to yawn.

  “Revolt…” I breathe, finishing my rant at barely a whisper.

  “Lowlands trash pounding at the gates!” screeches a boney woman nearly swallowed by her stained dress.

  “Horse shite, polluted wells, pillaged crops!” This complaint is shouted by a man; he has polished authority like the monks in our village. His words rise in pitch, each concluding in a point to prick the soldier’s nerve. He’s what my mother called a Troublemaker. “Punishing the Church by interfering in charity. Stealing tithes! Taxes are the highest they have ever been!”

  “You got no proof.” The soldier smirks.

  “Tax records are kept at the Public Exchange, but I don’t need to read them. Look at you!” shouts the ringleader, igniting murmurs of agreement from the mob. “Fat, well-drunk and well-fed. Well-whored.” He raises thin arms like a choir master, urging the others to grumble. “We can see what our coin pays for, and it’s not our welfare.”

  The soldier pivots his stout body and brings down his club on the ringleader’s head. “That’s for your welfare,” he sneers.

  It’s not a warning thump, a reminder of obedience. The sound is hard and wet. His blow takes the top third of a skull as it goes.

  Everything freezes. I still, and Emeree stops flowing inside me. Not so much as a flicker of the torches. My head and my gut feel ill in the same way.

  The man collapses and slides in the grit; it’s a seismic event. This, I feel in a chill of premonition, is the first pinpoint raindrop that becomes a flood.

  “Off now! I’ve took your faces and what names I know to memory.” The soldier wags his cudgel like a bloody finger. “I see one of you out here again agitating…” He emits a thin whistle and jabs the corpse with his boot. “Have to dig a deeper pit, that’s for sure.”

  Emeree and I skirt the cul de sac’s dark edges as the mob scurries off.

  “Stolen girls? Magical murder?” I say to Emeree.

  “We have our work cut out for us.”

  We walk with the sound of horse hooves and little else. This part of the city is not the company side. This was my mother’s term for something that had been damaged or broken, but that no one wanted to part with. You’d just turn the item around or place it so the
good side showed, at least when company came. The other days everyone lived with and accepted the damage and brokenness. This part of Minster Lowe is where trade, wealth, and law pass through but don’t stop.

  I duck under a loose shutter that flaps like a broken bird’s wing. My mind replays the man’s broken head, his body abandoned like trash.

  This is not the company side of Minster Lowe.

  We maneuver Glaer and Falnir through an alley blocked by a broken cart. Judging by faded marks in the road, someone dragged it here days ago. I’m so awed by the neglect that I haven’t asked where we’re headed.

  A group of children sit on the steps of a long institutional building with dark windows. Their weary eyes raise to us as we pass, but they don’t stand or greet us, just watch silently as we approach.

  I feel a tug at our bond. Emeree’s hand blurs, fast enough that I can’t see what she’s doing. When she releases her power a heartbeat later, a few coins glint in her fingers. Her move is so quick that if I hadn’t been turned to her, I wouldn’t have known she’d used her power.

  One of the children, a smudge faced girl dressed in ragged clothes, perks up. Emeree hands her three of our coins. “Something hot to eat, for all of you.”

  The eldest girl nods. I wait for a smile or thanks.

  She rounds up the others without a word and they shuffle back the way we came. None of them wave or show a hint of gratitude. I guess they can’t afford it.

  I turn and give them a last look as we pass around a corner, trying to reconcile them against the children of my village. “This fucking place…”

  “Exactly,” says Emeree, her words brittle. “Anyway, we’re almost there,” she adds when we take the next seemingly random turn. “At least I hope we are.”

  The buildings morph. Better kempt, and our horses’ hooves clatter against unbroken cobbles, now. There isn’t much human traffic, but the people who wander from tavern to home in groups of twos and threes are better dressed. Middling merchants and tradesmen. These are men who don’t feel the sting as deeply as those people in the alley.

  “Closer to the palace, now,” Emeree says, acknowledging my unspoken observation.