Islands of the Inner Sea Read online

  ‘Out of nowhere, I had an unexpected opportunity. One of our customers became part of a larger co-operative. Our existing contracts would need amended, but it also gave our business a chance to propose a new deal for expanded distribution. One of our partners would need to travel to distant Markiva with our next shipment, for the negotiations. I volunteered to accompany him. Normally, contract paperwork would have been sent back and fore several times, accompanied by one of the partners, and that could take months or years. So of course he agreed: if everything could be settled during a single visit, then it would save him from making all those other trips.

  ‘There are cargo barks that travel the great rivers, each with its own route and series of stops: all the larger towns lie on one river or another, and these little boats shuttle passengers and freight between them. I remember we sailed with fifteen containers of grain, and we had already agreed a return shipment of farm equipment. We loaded up at Targidene and set off upriver to Markiva.

  ‘The journey took a week and a half, and for most of that time we were actually docked while cargo was loaded and unloaded. There was plenty time to explore each of the little towns along the way. It finally felt like my adventure had arrived. Each stop was mostly the same as Targidene, of course, since we had barely travelled any distance at all, but there were hundreds of tiny differences in the details, both expected and unexpected, and I’ve always paid attention to the details.

  ‘Our negotiations took three days and five contract revisions, but they were successful and after one final night in Markiva with our customers, to celebrate our new relationship, we boarded the next bark that was stopping at Immenar and loaded up our crates of equipment. In another week we would be home, and I had already started to plan my next trip. That whole journey had opened my eyes – I had realised that I didn’t need any reason to travel; no-one on these little boats cared what my business was. I could simply book passage to somewhere I’d heard of, somewhere different, travel there and stay for a few days. It would change my life.

  ‘On the third day out from Markiva, however, our little boat was hijacked. At a quiet stretch of the river, four of the passengers seized control at swordpoint. The crew resisted at first, and there was fighting: some people were hurt, and everyone jumped into the water to get away. But I had grown up on a farm, not beside the river, so I had never learned to swim. Instead of jumping over the side, I climbed into one of our crates and hid, hoping that the bandits wouldn’t notice me. I planned to escape when they left the boat, or docked somewhere.’

  ‘And?’ Lanvik had stopped playing and was listening to her story.

  ‘Well, they didn’t notice me. They took the boat to a high stretch of bank on the outside of a wide bend, where they had accomplices waiting with carts. Later I discovered that our boat was carrying a concealed shipment of stolen silver from distant Falkenvey. They didn’t know exactly what they were looking for, but they were in a hurry and keen to avoid the river police. So they used the boat’s crane to unload the cargo and headed inland with it, away from the river and its regular patrols. Naturally, that included our shipment of equipment, together with me inside, and I was too afraid to cry out.

  ‘They had no notion that I was inside until they opened the crate two hours later in an empty barn. I signed up with them of course, and since then I have experienced more adventure and more travel than I’d ever anticipated.’

  ‘That’s a great story,’ he nodded. He looked down at the board. They had been playing and talking for an hour, and he was now mainly focussed on mounting a pathetic defence to protect his Fugitive. By a simple count of captured disks, Karuin was leading by nine pieces to six.

  ‘I was terrified,’ Karuin said, ‘but they were just as surprised as me. It was … let’s see, it was Bane and Garran and Edron who opened the crate. They just stood there staring at me. They didn’t even draw their weapons.’

  ‘Who’s Edron?’

  ‘Edron used to be with the Company. He was killed last summer.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘We were escorting a wedding caravan across the Southern Steppes. It was attacked, there was a fight and he was badly injured. He died a few days later.’

  Lanvik didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He hadn’t really thought about it, but given the nature of their work it wasn’t surprising that sometimes things went wrong and people were hurt: killed, even.

  ‘It happens,’ Karuin echoed his thought. ‘It’s a part of this life that we lead: you can’t have one without the other. It’s a risk we all take. People die; and people leave as well.’

  ‘Leave to do what?’

  ‘Whatever they want. Go back to their families, back to their lives perhaps. Or find somewhere to settle down and fit in. Or perhaps strike out on their own and try something new. The kind of work we do is dangerous but it’s normally well-paid, and no-one leaves poor: not after you’ve done a couple of jobs.’ She looked down, and added: ‘You need to move your Fugitive.’

  ‘How often do people leave?’

  ‘Not often,’ she admitted. ‘Two since I joined. I think it’s easy to become addicted to this life: to ignore the risks, or to treat them too lightly.’

  ‘What about you? Do you ever think about stopping?’

  ‘Oh, all the time. Just because I’m here, doing this, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about where I came from. It doesn’t mean I don’t value my old life at all. From time to time I send messages to my family, so they know I’m still alive and here of my own free will: so they don’t worry. But they have no way to contact me in return; no way to tell me what’s happening at home.’

  ‘Don’t you miss them?’

  ‘Of course I miss them, of course I do. But they’re older now, they don’t need me. My pair-bond doesn’t need me, not really. I spent fifteen years raising my children: earning money to support them, trying to show them how to be adults. I was a parent all that time, ignoring my own life to make theirs better. But now I deserve some time for me.’

  ‘So this is a holiday for you?’

  She laughed. ‘I suppose it is. A long holiday: three years so far.’

  ‘Will you go back?’

  ‘I’m sure I will, when I become too tired for this. Or when Kiergard kicks me out because I’m just too old and it’s damaging his reputation. But like most of us, I’m grateful to be part of his Company. I don’t feel I’ve done anything to deserve being one of them. I’m pretty useless in a fight, and I have no particular skills. But I do what I can, and I do it the best that I can, and that seems to be enough. If you talk to everyone else we mostly feel like that, so don’t worry too much if you feel you have nothing to give.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘It’s fairly obvious, yes,’ she told him. ‘You’re desperate to have your memory and your magecraft back again, but I don’t know if that’s to discover who you really are or if it’s simply to please Kiergard Slorn and justify his trust in you.’

  ‘Both, probably,’ he admitted. ‘Without my memory, this is the only life I know and you’re the only friends I know, so I don’t want to let you down. But it’s difficult to tell whether I’m even here by choice, or just through lack of any alternatives.’

  ‘I understand what you mean,’ she said. ‘When I can’t do this or I don’t like it any more, it’s reassuring to know that I have another life that I can go back to.’ She reached down to the board, moved one of her Castles, and took his Fugitive. ‘Thanks for the game.’

  ‘I’m sorry it wasn’t more of a challenge for you, but it was my first game.’

  ‘This wasn’t your first game,’ she told him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were much better than you would have been if you’d just learned it. You didn’t forget how the pieces move, and everyone forgets that during their first game. And some of your instinctive moves, when you just looked at the board and moved a piece, were exactly the right moves to make. So you’ve played thi
s game before.’

  ‘Not very well, apparently,’ he chuckled.

  ‘That’s hard to tell. It was mainly when you were thinking about it that you played badly.’

  ‘Well, next time we play I’ll try to think less.’

  ‘You do that,’ she laughed. ‘Maybe it’ll help some of your memories come back, and then you can tell me a story.’ She scooped up the disks and dropped them into a little velvet bag with a drawstring.

  3

  The Assassin known as Foxblade returned to Arafel after a cramped and uncomfortable four-day journey on the stagecoach from Tawryn.

  It wasn’t the fastest way back, but it wasn’t the slowest. She could have travelled overland for the entire length of the Empire, through Emindur, and taken twenty days or more – maybe twenty-five during winter. Or she could have hired a fast boat directly to Tawryn, and then taken postal horses through the day and the night: six days or seven along the coast, and then perhaps two days overland.

  There was no right route to take and no right speed to travel, and speed wasn’t what had determined her choice.

  She had seven successful kills to her name, which was outstanding for her age, but now she was returning after her first failure. The Masters would look at everything, pay attention to every aspect of her behaviour, assess how well or how badly she had coped. If she returned too slowly, too leisurely, then it would seem that she didn’t care; too fast might appear panicked, desperate or nervous … and it would seem wasteful, difficult to justify the expense. What she did was a business, after all.

  So she had chosen something unexceptional. The public ferry along the Imperial coast plus the daily stagecoach from Tawryn had taken eighteen days in total, and was probably the route she’d have taken if her contract had been another success – if Lord Skollet of Urthgard had still been alive when she arrived in Lanvik: had still been alive, so that she could have killed him.

  The coach entered Arafel along the Great West Road, through the Eagle Gate, and she found herself unable to stop smiling as the noises and sights and smells of the city replaced the endless silence of the open road. After every job that took her away, it felt good to come back to huge, sprawling Arafel – the greatest city in the world. Its turmoil and confusion and sheer energy made it the opposite of dark, cramped Lanvik. She had spent most of her life in Arafel, and couldn’t help thinking of it as home, even though she knew it was temporary.

  From the outskirts to the centre took the stagecoach over an hour: the superior quality of the city’s roads was outweighed by the other traffic, the street vendors, the arguments and the accidents that made any journey through its streets an adventure.

  She stopped the coach before the centre, climbed down and slung one bag over each shoulder. She would walk the last mile and avoid the confusion, noise and chaos of the coach station as well as the pickpockets, conmen and other petty criminals that preyed on the newly-arrived.

  The Guildhouse in Arafel was the largest in the Three Lands: dormitories, headquarters, museum, library and academy, it filled a whole block. Its scale was partly a result of Arafel’s sheer size, of course, but it was also true that the employment of assassins had a popularity within the Empire that was unmatched elsewhere.

  She didn’t break her stride as she climbed the three broad steps and pushed open the inner door, the inner door that was always unlocked. She used false names while travelling, but as she crossed the threshold, she became Atterlie again. That was a false name as well, but she’d used it for so long that it felt like a part of her real self.

  She left her bags in the cloakroom. She would report to the Guildmaster before cleaning or unpacking: before returning to her Chapter.

  There was a small waiting room by the front door, with high ceilings and rich furnishings. By now, she would have been observed: there was always someone on duty, watching. And there was always a Master in the office to take reports, deal with emergencies and to accept and issue contracts. Even as she stood and waited, the Master would be in the room beyond the wooden door in front of her. She might be told to wait, or to go and await a summons at a more convenient time, or to return at a particular hour.

  In fact, she was told to go straight in.

  She opened the door and walked into the luxurious office, every detail designed to both overwhelm and reassure visitors. Competent, rich, deadly, remote: everything in the room broadcast those fundamental truths about the Guild – the ancient trophies and memorabilia, the gleaming weapons perfectly mounted on the walls, even the wood and fabric of the walls and the furniture.

  Sitting behind the broad desk was Master Shadowguard. She knew all the Guildmasters, of course, and Shadowguard had taught some of her anatomy classes: that would have been in her third and fourth years, when she was still a Novice.

  He had a contract open on the desk: she had no doubt that it was the contract that she was returning from. The office had three doors, and the door directly behind the Guildmaster’s chair led to one of the most secure areas of the Guildhouse – the library. In there was a copy of every contract that had been accepted by the Guildhouse for the past eight hundred years. The Guild had operated in Arafel far longer than that, but eight hundred years ago a fire had burned down the old Guildhouse and destroyed most of the older records.

  ‘Guildmaster Shadowguard,’ she bowed her head slightly.

  ‘Adept Foxblade,’ he greeted her in return.

  Did he know the outcome of her mission already? Had he heard, or could he somehow discern it from simply looking at her? She didn’t know and she couldn’t tell. As with all the Masters, it was almost impossible to read his face.

  He looked down at the papers in front of him, and asked: ‘Lord Skollet of Urthgard?’

  ‘Dead,’ she confirmed. She could not have honourably returned if he still lived.

  ‘By your hand?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t react – no surprise and no pause to reflect: ‘Has another taken the credit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you wish to claim it?’ It sometimes happened that a client’s death might have occurred in such a way that no-one would ever know that an assassin had not been responsible. In this particular case, however, the local Watch had identified and arrested someone else for the murder – albeit someone who had later escaped and vanished in much the fashion that an assassin might have. Or a mage.

  ‘No,’ she said, a third time. ‘The client should be informed that the target was dead before I arrived, dead by the hand of another.’

  ‘The retainer was ninety Crowns. Did that cover your expenses, or do you require additional funds?’ The Guild normally insisted on a retainer of between a tenth and a sixth of the agreed contract price.

  ‘My expenses were covered by the retainer, Master.’

  ‘Welcome back home, Atterlie.’

  ‘Thank you, Master.’ They were finished, but she hesitated for a fraction of a second.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Master, a request.’

  He waited.

  ‘If there are other commissions from the same client, I would be grateful if you could consider me for them,’ she said.

  ‘I will consider you,’ he nodded, but his voice had been a little hard.

  ‘Thank you, Master,’ she nodded and left, wondering if she had misjudged her own tone: been too assertive. For years now, she had been building a reputation. Early on, she had realised that she would have more freedom in the Guild if she was special, if she excelled, so she had set about carefully creating a legend. But she had to be careful that she wasn’t judged for hubris as a result: that perceptions of her didn’t drift from “confident” to “arrogant”.

  When she had applied to a Chapter, the Sisters of the Silent Blade had accepted her almost immediately. That was partly because of how she performed when they tested her but also partly because they had felt that her reputation – dedicated, proficient, deadly, almost a prodigy – would enhance the Chapter
.

  The Sisters had sponsored her examination and given her a guild name when she passed and became Adept. “Foxblade”, they called her, and they gave her a set of knives with a fox’s head on the handles. They had also given her four small matching tattoos, to help identify her body if they ever needed to.

  There were six Chapters: uniquely, the Sisters of the Silent Blade accepted only women. That conferred a certain mystique, a certain aura, and so they enhanced her reputation in the same way that they hoped she would enhance theirs. That particular Chapter made her a little more unusual, a little more memorable, perhaps a little more respected. She hoped that respect might make any favours she needed in the future more likely to be granted: might make her life easier. But that would only happen as long as she was successful, of course – as long as she lived up to her own legend and delivered on the contracts she was assigned.

  And that was one reason why her failure in Lanvik was troubling her much more than she would admit to anyone.

  She collected her bags, and crossed the courtyard to the Sisters’ Common Room.

  The Guildhouse in Arafel was home to over a hundred Adepts, two dozen Masters and forty or fifty Novices. It was built around a central courtyard of gardens and training spaces, and all six Chapters had representation and rooms here – dormitories and a Common Room. They said that you let your guard down when you entered the Guildhouse, but you only relaxed in your Common Room.

  She knocked, and the duty Sister let her in.

  ‘Welcome back.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister. It’s good to be back.’

  Half a dozen other Sisters were inside, sitting and relaxing: talking; reading; eating. She smiled and greeted them as she crossed the Common Room: a door on the far side led inwards, to the Chapter’s private rooms. She would have to brief the Sisters as well, for Chapter records, but that could wait until she was clean, unpacked and rested. The Guildhouse itself already had the details that were needed to report back to the client.