TWELVE: Taking Aim
Ruslan Avard was big like Whitehold was big—trying to sum him up in one word just didn’t do the man justice with his round face, furry red cheeks and penetrating eyes. He stepped fully inside the house, ignoring all of the other onlookers. “This won’t take but a minute,” he said to his men outside before kicking the door shut and walking towards us. His blue and silver coat was swollen across his thick arms and chest, like he was too big for the uniform he was wearing.
“She has a brother?” I said, unable to hide my surprise.
Kale seemed puzzled by the question. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“I just figured she ate her way out of the womb at birth. Why anyone would want to be related to that she-devil is beyond me.”
The giant of a man took one of the chairs, turned it about and straddled it, crossing both arms over the back. He ignored me entirely. “Good to see you, Brother,” he said, giving Kale a hard clap on one shoulder before squeezing hard, as though trying to cause physical discomfort; it struck me as an irate, even spiteful sort of greeting. “What kept you away for so long? You never write, you don’t come home to visit—”
“Ruslan.” Kale didn’t shrink or pull back from the other man. “You’re interrupting our dinner.” He took a bite of his unfinished crab cake. “See?”
“Why didn’t you report in at the garrison when you arrived?”
“I’ve been busy,” Kale answered after finally swallowing. “I’m escorting a friend, showing her the sights.” He gestured at me. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? There’ll be time for all that other business before long.”
Ruslan Avard observed me and dismissed me with a single look. “So that’s what you’ve been up to all this time? Sullying yours and my sister’s reputation? And you brought her back with you?”
“Excuse me?” I said. I hadn’t crawled out of the haystack yesterday; I knew full well what he was implying.
The man continued ignoring me. “Let’s be off. I’m to escort you to the Fortress, now that you’ve returned.”
“I’ll go see Yenda when I’m good and ready.” If it was possible to watch a man’s hackles rise, I’m sure I saw Kale’s go up. “Not before.”
The larger man snorted. “I guess that running away from home didn’t do anything to improve your behavior. You’re still as bull-headed as ever.”
“That’s just part of my charm.”
“Brother, I’m ordering you to come with me.” Ruslan narrowed his eyes as he said it.
“And I’m ignoring you,” Kale answered, not flinching. “I said I’ll go see her when I’m ready.”
I could see Ruslan’s demeanor turning darker by the second. “Alright, Isrodel. Regardless of what my sister might think about you, you’re wearing an Avardi uniform now.” He sat up straighter, reaching out for Kale with one monstrous hand. “If you’re going to resist a direct order from a superior officer, I’m going to show you that I mean business—”
I pulled out my stolen Balalaika, raised it, pressed the barrel against Ruslan’s cheek and pulled the hammer back. The loud click made me realize just how quiet the common room had become—most of the diners and staff were watching us with still tongues and wide eyes, unwilling participants in the argument between both men. Ruslan Avard was probably a few things, but a fool wasn’t one of them: when I pressed my gun to his face, he stopped moving, and barely even kept breathing.
“You about done?” I asked, looking at Kale.
“Done with what?” he answered.
“Waving your giblets at each other.”
“Giblets?!” Kale sounded offended.
“Tell your friend the penalty for threatening an Avardi officer,” Ruslan said, his voice slurred slightly from trying to talk without moving his jaw.
“Shut up.” I pushed my chair back as I stood, keeping the gun in place, my finger hovering just above the trigger—I didn’t want to shoot, but he didn’t have to know that. Pyotr would not have approved. “Let’s go, Kale.”
For his part, Kale didn’t argue. He stuffed the rest of the unfinished cake in his mouth, pulled free of Ruslan’s grip, and stood up. “Where to?”
“How should I know? Just get us out of here!”
Kale seemed to hesitate, then nodded. “Right.” It seemed to me that he froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then, he picked up the metal tray the cakes were delivered on in both hands, food spilling over the sides as he hefted it, and struck Ruslan across the face with a loud clang. The motion was so sudden and surprising that I wanted to laugh out loud, but instead, I did the first thing that came to mind: I raised my gun and fired.
The still silence was broken with the sound of screaming and wild shouts, including the pained cry of Ruslan as he dropped to the floor, swearing and calling for his men. As more Avardi started to run inside, they were stopped by a crush of customers that were fighting to get out at the same time. Kale grabbed my sleeve and we raced across the room, shoving our way through the kitchen doors and sending a poor waitress spinning to the floor, throwing a mess of food and broken crockery everywhere.
“Sorry!” I shouted back at her.
“Make way, make way!” Kale called, waiving his hands as he dashed through the kitchen, past clouds of steam and the smells of savory things. He hit a door at the far end of the roomwith one shoulder, crashing through it with me on his heels.
The alley that awaited us was narrow and dark, with just enough light to show glistening pools on the bricks underfoot, rainwater sluicing down the walls. The stench of trash and other filth mixed together in the sudden storm, and the footing was treacherous as I followed Kale up a steep set of stairs. At the top, he stopped and pulled up a dark hood from inside his coat, offering him some protection from the rain.
“What is it?” I said, a step behind him.
Kale started to speak, then stopped himself. “Just follow me,” he said, looking back at me. “Whatever you do, don’t slow down.” With that warning given, he ran across the street at full speed. Following behind, I heard the sound of shouting echoing off the brick walls around me, saw someone standing in the golden light of the the eatery doorway pointing in our direction, and then I was into the alley, still clutching my pistol in a white-knuckled hand.
Running through Whitehold with the threat of armed soldiers behind me was hardly a pleasant experience, only now I got to see just how big the city was from up close. The streets and narrow passageways we explored seemed old and worn down to my eyes: decayed brick on all sides, stained and streaked with rain; cracked and peeling paint, once white, had turned grey or even yellow from age; open fires were burning in metal barrels or hanging from swinging lamps on wooden posts, throwing long shadows that flickered with the lightning. There weren’t any bright-steel lamps here—my surroundings seemed as rustic as Svolyn had been, as I expected most northern towns probably were. Most of the citizens living in that neighborhood had sought shelter from the storm and never even saw us as we passed by, save for a few barking dogs alerted at our splashing footsteps, or a couple of drunks who shouted after us.
We were getting closer to the harbor, given that I could hear the roar and rush of the waves over the sounds of the rainstorm. Kale took us down wide streets and narrow gaps between buildings, some so tight that I wasn’t sure he’d even fit through them. Before long my legs were aching, but I hadn’t had any exercise in days and aside from a slight stumble here or there from the slippery stones under my feet, I didn’t fall behind.
“Over here,” he said, his voice nearly lost to another crash of thunder that made the street shake under my boots. Kale grabbed one of those old lanterns, hanging from a post on its thick chain, wrapping it around his fingers as he lit the way for us. We passed under the shadow of some large building, which sat on the edge of a wide canal filled with sloshing dark water, turned black because of the hour and the pouring storm, or by whatever unpleasant things were lurking below the surface. I followed him down a narrow, hazardous set of slippery stairs onto an old boat dock, its wood turned green and spotted grey from age. Under that empty building, a long, dark tunnel stretched into the gloom, one too narrow for any sort of boat to fit inside.
“We’re going in there?” I said, wiping the rain out of my eyes.
“Yes. Stay close.” He pushed his hood back and held the flickering lamp aloft as he led us into the dark. Kale seemed to know where to go, so all I could do was continue to follow him.
I heard the old boards creak and groan under our weight as we walked. The stone walls were dark grey or black in color, stained with soot and some sort of oily secretion that oozed out of the stones and slid down into the black water below. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Somewhere under the old town square—they call the neighborhood ‘South Hill’ now; it’s a posh part of town, lots of old money and expensive houses. This tunnel is part of the old sewer system.”
While I didn’t consider myself particularly squeamish, I still took care not to touch the walls. They were covered with a black, glistening scum so thick that I was sure I could’ve slid my hand up to the wrist if I touched it. “Forget I asked.”
The man chuckled at me. “Relax, we’re almost there.” He stopped, taking his bearings, looking in all directions. Then he just stepped off the dock and seemed to disappear. At first it looked like he’d walked right into the wall, but as I came closer, I saw him standing on a small stone platform and push open a small door. Both door and platform were both painted black, blending in so well with the stones that I would’ve walked right past them without noticing. “Mind your step,” he said, extending a hand.
I took that offered hand and carefully stepped onto the platform and into the room on the other side of the doorway. There was a long, narrow hallway, lit at both ends; the walls were lined with X-shaped wooden scaffolding or shelving, each space large enough for a long-necked bottle to rest inside. The bottles were coated with dust and cobwebs, showing that they’d been resting there for quite some time.
Kale shut and bolted the painted door behind us, then doused his lantern, hanging it up on a hook on the wall. “This way,” he said. The doorway on the other side led into a wide space with arch-shaped ceilings and walls made of multicolored stones; the chamber was dimly lit, just enough so that I could see the way ahead of me. There were columns stretching into the dark, showing the chamber to be quite large. I also noticed it was cool, almost chilly, which made me shiver in my damp clothes. Huge casks as wide around as I was tall lined the walls that stretched into the darkness, stacked into pyramids three or four places high, and more of the X-shaped shelves stood in long rows, bearing more dusty bottles of old vintage. The casks were branded, showing a flower with six petals, as well as some shapes or figures that I recognized as writing, so I didn’t pay them any mind.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“This is one of Damian Kalinin’s wine cellars.” Kale tapped one of the flower brands. “That’s his crest.”
“Who’s Damian Kalinin?”
“Wine and hard spirits magnate. Richest man west of Cravale, probably; maybe even richer than Clan Avard. He’s got more money than a man like me could spend in my whole lifetime. More liquor than I could drink, too.” Something in his voice changed when he said it, but I wasn’t sure why.
“So…why are we in his cellar?”
“He’s a family relation,” Kale said, as if that actually explained anything. “I figured we could hide out here, figure out what to do next.”
I could see that he wasn’t telling me something. “And he’s not going to mind a ‘family relation’ and a complete stranger camping out in his wine cellar, then.”
“Well—”
“Damian Kalinin is sixty-two years old,” said a new voice at the far end of the room, “and he spends most of his days staring at the bay and snoring like a buzz-saw when he naps. Which he does on a regular basis.” I watched a woman descend a narrow stone staircase at the far end of the room. She carried a lantern in her hand, which made it hard to make out her face. “He doesn’t get many visitors in his cellars these days, though.”
“Who are you?” I said, resisting the urge to grab my gun.
“Another ‘family relation,’” the woman said, then added: “Last time I checked, anyway.” As she came to the bottom of stairs, the woman lowered her lantern and I finally got a good look at her: her hair was long, red or auburn in color. She wore a set of pajamas so ornate and fine that I could only call it a gown: it was cut at the neck a bit too low to look good on me, with flowing skirts and a silken wrap about her shoulders. Small, teardrop-shaped earrings dangled from both earlobes, both the color of fresh blood. She carried a pair of thick towels but was unarmed, yet had a confidence on her face that said she wasn’t the least bit afraid of me, gun or no gun.
Kale squared his shoulders and straightened his back. “Jaska.” I watched him look at her, saw something pass between them—I just couldn’t decipher what it was.
“You’ve got some nerve, coming back here,” she said to Kale; I wouldn’t have called her tone kind by any metric. Then, the woman looked at me. “Who are you?”
“Inga,” I said, not bothering with a surname. “Who are you?”
“Jaska Isrodel. This is my home: I’ve lived here with my husband of the last seven years, His Lordship Damian Kalinin—who you now know a little about now, at least.” Jaska showed a smirk, but there was an edge to her words, one that I didn’t miss. “And now, I have the unhappy fate of deciding what to do with the two of you.”
JASKA
“I’m going to murder him.” Jaska was pacing back and forth in the main parlor, wearing a trail through the throw rug she’d laid before the hearth. There was an unexpected chill in the air, but her housecoat was left open while she wound a slender silk belt around and around in her hands, like she was ready to wrap it around her brother’s worthless excuse for a neck.
“No, you’re not.” A familiar voice interrupted her reverie, a rumbling bass to her alto. It was accompanied by a creak of the wooden floors, and the turning of metal wheels. Damian was a tall man even while bound to his wheelchair, the unfortunate result of an accident that had happened before Jaska was even born. Damian’s oldest dog, a black-and-white long-haired hound named Germanus, sat on his haunches next to his master’s chair. He wore a harness and a short leash like a little four-legged soldier, momentarily at ease.
“Oh, just you watch me,” she countered, scowling at her husband. “Soon as I find out where he’s gone, I’m going to run him down and strangle him within an inch of his life. The nerve of that man!”
Damian folded his hands into his lap and tipped his head to one side. “And what was it that Kale did, exactly?”
Jaska was too busy with her pacing to look at him anymore. She started waving her hands as she raved, not even bothering to keep her voice down. “That no-good…stubborn…headstrong…ungracious…worthless little prick!” She was swearing like a common-born house maid, sprinkling profanities about like a farm wife throwing seed in her summer garden. Highborn folk weren’t supposed to talk that way; in that moment Jaska didn’t much care. “Sneaking off without so much as a word of warning or a goodbye. I should go out, find him and lay him out on his lily-white ass, that’s what I should do.”
“And that’s going to help how exactly?” Damian didn’t flinch at his wife’s language, nor when she stopped, turned and glared at him. On the contrary: he drummed the fingers of one hand atop the other, waiting patiently for his answer.
“Well…” When Jaska hesitated, Germanus tilted his head in the same manner as his master. “Now don’t you both go ganging up on me.”
“We’re waiting.”
“Why should that matter?” Jaska threw up her hands again. “Until his marriage is official, he’s my responsibility, part of my Clan. If he keeps everything bottled up, how am I supposed to handle whatever’s troubling him?”
“Do you believe that he wants to be your responsibility?” Damian was old, rich, and wily enough that he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind—not even to a Matriarch, or a Swordbearer. “Kale’s kept to himself for as long as I’ve known him. Whatever his reason for it, he thinks leaving was the right choice. And is your ranting truly making any difference at all?” He turned about in several directions, as much as his frail body permitted. “Odd—I don’t see him anywhere.”
Jaska wanted to huff and stick out her tongue at her husband. She didn’t, but still, the temptation was a strong one.
Damian urged his hound forward; Germanus pulled his master’s chair across the room, right up to where Jaska was standing. Once he was close enough, Damian took her hand. “This, dear wife, is my advice: learn to take your own medicine.”
“Excuse me?”
He sighed, a long-suffering sort of sound. “You’ve always been short-sighted when it comes to your brother. All Kale truly wants is your respect. He must do as he will, and when he returns, perhaps you might understand a little better about why he left in the first place. Eventually, the lad has to spill his guts out for everyone to see, and then you’ll know the truth behind it.” He smiled, pressing a tender kiss to her knuckles. “Trust me.”