The walls of the city rose like teal tombstones from a pallid landscape, its snow-coat torn and bristling with brown, stubby growth, parts worn clean away in great ugly stripes. A handful of peasants tilled in the fields before the walls, a couple trying to drive an ox-plough over the rocky ground, others spreading fresh muck and marl from a steaming cart, their flimsy shovels bending with each stinking load. Unseen animals lowed and stamped in the shack-like barns that nestled at the feet of the looming walls, while poultry pecked at the crusty earth in pens surrounding them. Occasional guards, watchmen most likely, paced the ramparts between blocky turrets, the steam of their breath rising into the silver morning, merging and lost. A knot of mail-coated heavies, their dark colours emblazoned with a silver many-petalled flower, stood before the great gatehouse, jostling and menacing any who tried to enter or leave the city. The same silver flower adorned the long pennants that fluttered from the turrets, their points curling and snapping in the cold breeze.
‘Merenghi is the closest thing to a free city left in this part of the world,’ Rennic said as if reading Chel’s thoughts as he gazed down at the city across the hollow. ‘Loveless reckons there are people here who could be of use.’
Over the city wall, a looming blue curtain of dark stone, poked a dark, corrugated church, seeming oddly squat from their hillside elevation, its angles diminished. Around it lay slums, heaving and smoking, and beyond the other districts of the city, rooflines and construction varying by area, punctuated by the great erections of blue-grey stone that littered the city, the towers, the temples, the blocks. It dawned on Chel that nowhere did he see any of that pale, northern stone so prized by their Taneru forebears. Merenghi was its own.
Chel looked beyond the walls, at the distant hill that rose behind the dark block of the city, wreathed in swirls of morning mist and the shimmer of the city’s emissions. Through the haze, he picked out tiered stockade walls and terraced gardens, dotted with domed buildings, grander structures at the hill’s summit lost in low cloud. It seemed both part of the city and apart from it, overlooking it and distinct in appearance and construction … overseeing it.
‘And what do you think?’ he said.
‘I think our options are sorely fucking limited. There are three other townships on the list after this place, all smaller, all colder, and I don’t know a bastard in any of them.’
‘How do we get in? The gate guards take a pretty friendly interest in the passing traffic.’ He watched as one of the mailed heavies at the gate emptied out a trader’s hand-cart and kicked the contents through the frozen slush of the roadway. Beyond them, a group of robe-clad pilgrims of some kind were remonstrating with another guard as he pored over what seemed to be a blackened tree trunk lashed to a donkey cart.
‘Don’t fret, little man, there’s a system. The right words in the right ears, a greasing of palms, a little light off-market commerce and we’ll be through with no questions asked.’
Chel’s mouth pulled to one side in an expression of wry scepticism. ‘You sound like Lemon. Does that mean you don’t know what you’re doing?’
Rennic bristled. ‘Get fucked. See that cluster of huts over there, round the wall? We go there, ask for a specific name, exchange some of our remaining coin for a little leaf, do the handshake on the guards at the gate and gambol through like lambs. Understand?’
‘We bribe the guards with leaf? Why not just give them the coin?’
Rennic shook his head, a little light in his eyes. ‘Bribing an agent of the city is a capital offence, little man. But if they were to discover contraband and confiscate it in performance of their duties, well, they’d simply be doing their job, wouldn’t they?’
Chel groaned. ‘And I suppose the leaf makes its way back to the folk in the huts in fairly short order, ready for another go-around?’
Rennic cuffed his shoulder. ‘Count yourself lucky, little man. If the stuff were fresh, we could be strung from the battlements for bumping the wrong person. The City Wards come down pretty hard on anyone engaging in the medicinal trade within the walls.’
‘The who?’
‘The Wards.’ He nodded at the settlement on the hill overlooking the city. ‘Merenghi’s proprietors. Now can we get moving? I’m freezing my tits off.’ He turned in the direction of the huts, some hundred strides around the span of the walls from the gatehouse. Chel saw odd shuffles of movement within them, a suggestion of lean and hungry figures inside. The more he stared, the less he liked them.
Tarfel tapped at Rennic’s shoulder. ‘Is it safe? Where we’re going.’
The big man’s eyes were wide and incredulous. ‘Safe, princeling? I doubt there’s a square foot in this corner of the kingdom you could call safe. Maybe if we dug a pit deep enough, but then the water would get in …’
‘If it’s not safe,’ Chel said, ‘should we really be bringing Tarfel along? I’m guessing there’s no mercenary law of hospitality in play down there.’
Rennic nodded. ‘That’d be a fair guess.’
‘So you and Whisper go and sort this leaf out, the prince and I stay out here?’
‘Fuck that, little man, the two of you’d be fatally mauled by rogue marmots the moment my back was turned. If anyone stays out with him, it’s Whisp. At least then he’d be in safe hands.’
Whisper offered an apologetic shrug.
‘Hey!’ Chel could hear the pitch of his voice rising like the traitor it was. ‘I can handle myself, and I’ve kept him more alive than any of you!’
Rennic simply stared at him, eyes narrow and crinkled at the corners, then stood. ‘Coming then, fuck-stick?’
Chel felt cornered by his own bravado. He turned to the prince. ‘Will you be—’
Tarfel nodded, although the smile he managed was narrow and drawn at the corners. ‘As the man says, Vedren, I’ll be in safe hands. Just don’t … don’t take too long.’
***
‘Remember, little man, this is a free city. It’s not part of the kingdom, at least as far as those living here are concerned. They have their own way of doing things, and they don’t like people like us.’
‘Rebels?’
‘Mercenaries. Officially they’re not allowed within the walls, along with visible weapons and armour. So once we’re in, keep that cloak tight and your head down, and don’t start any shit with anyone who looks at you cross-wise, understand?’
‘You worry about yourself,’ Chel grumped. He was already feeling like a fool and a traitor for abandoning Tarfel, and had to keep reassuring himself that the prince was indeed safe with Whisper. ‘Who are we going to see in the city?’
‘Some old friends of Loveless’s. People in the trade.’
‘Ah. The “leaf-merchants and poppy-peddlers” you mentioned.’
‘It’s “poppy-merchants and leaf-peddlers”, dick-head, and yes. Our beloved Loveless has a long and varied association with colourful characters in many walks of life, and she seems to think this bunch can be of use. As she tells it, they exert a rotten if extensive influence over the region, not just in the free cities and townships but into the winter garrisons as well. If they get even a fraction to declare openly against the crown, others will follow, then we’ve got a corridor from the south all the way through to the capital. Corvel will shit his breeches at the very thought.’
‘And they’ll help us out?’
‘If we promise them that princeling will relax some of the prohibitions when he’s king, they might.’
Chel came up short, mouth open in protest, and Rennic cuffed him along. ‘We can work out the details when the time comes, little man, but first of all we have to get into this stinking city, and for that we need some leafy gate-tokens. So, head down and up shut for time being, yes?’
Chel did as ordered, muttering in silence, until they reached the ring of huts, tucked beneath the looming blue-grey stone of the walls. The sounds of the city beyond drifted over them, the ringing of bells and bustling of crowds around the outer thoroughfares despite the early hour. Somewhere a chicken squawked, fluttering and panicked by the pursuit of unseen children. The place smelled strongly of dung.
The hut Rennic led him to was low, unremarkable and severe, nestled between a row of similar constructions and backing directly on to the city wall. Rennic consulted the note in his hand one final time then advanced, and Chel followed. The smell hit him a pace from the door: thick, cloying sweetness, that stench of sickness curled within it like poison. ‘This is a poppy den!’ he hissed.
‘We need leaf for the gate guards, princess, and this is where we get it. Else we’re not getting in, no meetings, no southern corridor of breech-shittery.’ Rennic kept his voice low. ‘You can wait outside if your delicate sensibilities are offended.’
Chel stepped back, well clear of the door and its drifting stink. The smell revolted him, and now he could hear little moans and murmurs from within, delirious and disturbing. The void of the doorway had taken on new depths, suggesting the interior was far larger than its external frame implied; perhaps it tunnelled back into the city wall, or down into the hard earth below. ‘Just … be quick.’
‘Don’t wander off,’ the big man muttered, then hunched to squeeze beneath the doorway and into the darkness beyond.
Chel waited, uncomfortable, counting his heartbeats in the cold. The longer he waited, the faster his counting became. Heartbeats became minutes, and Chel started to sweat.
At last, Rennic emerged from the gloom, hands empty, brows low. Chel felt his relief like a hot rush, and almost skipped over to meet the big man as he came ducking through the doorway. Rennic’s eyes were distant, and Chel noticed spots of blood on the big man’s fists.
‘What happened in there? Did you get what we need?’
‘You know,’ Rennic said, his tone devoid of its customary hard edge, ‘just once … if I could have a way to make people tell the fucking truth about their intentions, or just do what they said they would.’ He looked out over the broken fields, flexing his bloodied knuckles. ‘Do you think the Nort could make something like that?’
Chel tried to follow his gaze, seeing nothing but snow-streaked mud. ‘That’s what an oath is. That’s the whole point.’
Rennic snorted, the hard light returning to his eyes. ‘To the weak-minded, maybe. No words professed, even with great eagerness, can ever focus a man’s actions like physical coercion.’
‘My father always said we could be better. We could make our word as strong as steel, as solid as rock. You say you’ll do something, you do it. No matter what.’
Rennic turned and gestured back through the open doorway to where a figure lay in half-light, its gurgling indistinct. ‘There’s your better, little man. Wonder how rock-solid her intentions were this morning. There’s a reason they say never make promises to children or kings, you know,’ he continued, hands stuffed back into his coat. ‘Eventually the world will make you break one. And when you do, you break yourself in their eyes. No coming back from that.’
‘Rennic, are you all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘Did you get the leaf?’
Rennic patted the breast of his coat. ‘Let’s get inside this wretched place and do what needs doing. The sooner we’re away from this hole, the better. We’ve got other stops to make.’
With relief, Chel turned his back on the poppy den and took careful steps into what passed for the fresh air of Merenghi’s shadow, anxious to flush the syrupy stench from his lungs, and with it the concomitant edge of nausea. He took a couple of deep, dung-flavoured breaths as they reached the edge of the hut-row. Movement caught his eye, a small boy crouched in the mud between the opposite huts, digging at the old mortar with a pair of short sticks. The child looked up and froze in utter terror on seeing him, then scrambled back between the huts, his trembling gaze locked on Chel.
Nonplussed, Chel raised his palms. ‘What’s up with this kid?’ he muttered over his shoulder to Rennic. Rennic made no reply.
Upset at the notion a child might fear him, Chel walked slowly toward the boy, attempting a calming motion, but the boy shied as if he were about to strike.
‘Hey, relax, kid, I’m not going to hurt you.’
The boy’s eyes were impossibly wide, his voice tiny.
‘You always say that.’
His gaze flicked over Chel’s shoulder, then he bolted, scrambling away through the narrow gap between the banked mud walls. Chel called after the boy, then turned in baffled frustration, hearing the crunch of Rennic’s footsteps behind.
Rennic was not there.
A beast of a man stood before him, no taller than Chel but twice the width, his jutting chest draped in a dark, gold-trimmed cloak, emblazoned with a single golden flower. A long baton, silver-tipped, hung from his belt on the cloak’s open side. It was his face that drew Chel’s attention, however; the two of them stared at each other in surprise. The man had long, straight black hair, bound tight at the nape of his neck and interwoven with gold filigree, and he stared at Chel from above a broken nose with eyes of blue-flecked grey. The same grey as Chel’s own.
‘Who in hells are you?’ Chel said, then started as another man, almost identical, sidled into view behind the first. They could have been brothers. They could all have been brothers.
The man said something Chel didn’t understand. He repeated it, his growing frown matching Chel’s own, then finally said something Chel caught.
‘Come with us, please.’ His accent was thick but oddly familiar.
He reached out a heavy hand and clamped down on Chel’s shoulder. There was no sign of Rennic, the row empty behind the two new arrivals. His options seemed limited.
The man pulled, and Chel followed.