They were hours late for their shift when they finally arrived at the watchkeep. Torval assured Rem that Ondego would understand, what with the attempt on their lives and all, but that gave Rem little comfort. He was new to his position and he wanted to prove himself trustworthy. Showing up late for one’s shift without a by-your-leave was a quick and easy way to get on the prefect’s cross side. And who knew what sort of trouble Frennis would make for Ondego, after having to threaten his men and chase them out of his ward?
As it turned out, Ondego seemed pleased to see them. “Here they are, my wayward sons!” he exclaimed, crossing the administrative chamber with a very strange smile on his face and a stranger light in his eyes. Rem and Torval, embarrassed by this show of interest and sure that it must be some plot to publicly chastise them, stood stock-still in the doorway to the great chamber and tried to keep from turning red as all eyes followed Ondego on his long walk to greet them. Across the chamber, by Ondego’s office, Hirk stood sentinel, his stony face an unreadable mask.
Ondego reached them. “Are you quite safe and sound, lads? Any trouble to report?”
“Someone tried to kill Torval,” Rem said.
“Probably would’ve tried to kill you too,” Torval said. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Kill you?” Ondego asked, brows rising. “Whatever for? Two such brave and resolute watchwardens as yourselves? Never errant? Always vigilant? Never three fucking hours late for their appointed shifts on the watch!”
There it was at last: the fury. Ondego’s face was bright red. A pair of thick, ropy veins bulged at his temples. His eyes looked like two hot ovens, stoked and ablaze.
“Steady on,” Torval countered. “You just heard our excuse.”
“It took them three hours to try to kill you?” Ondego asked. “Please tell me they kidnapped you first and rode you out to the countryside …”
“Well, after slipping the assassin,” Rem offered, “we had a lead we wanted to follow up on.”
“A lead!” Ondego exclaimed. “Bless me, that’s good news. Who was this lead, and pray, what did you learn from them?”
“It was the Nightjar,” Torval said. “And in truth, we didn’t learn a bloody thing from him.”
“The Nightjar?” Ondego said, crossing his arms and nodding his head deferentially. “Well, then, that makes everything all right. Questioning the Nightjar would require the two of you getting official leave to operate in another ward, after all, and since you never came to me for any such leave, I can only assume you realized that pursuing your investigation in this manner was folly indeed, so you hurried here, to get the proper clearances and explain your gods-damned tardiness.”
“All right, all right,” Torval grumbled. “You’ve made your point.”
“Have I, in fact?” Ondego said. “I’m still waiting for the stunning climax of your story. Spill it.”
“We went to the Nightjar’s and ran across that sneak thief again,” Rem said. “The fellow we found in Freygaf’s chambers. Ginger Joss.”
“Well,” Ondego said, planting his hands on his hips, “Just what did Joss have to say?”
“Nothing,” Torval spat.
“Aye,” Rem said. “Nothing. Once Frennis tossed him in with the sharks—”
“Frennis?” Ondego asked.
Torval raised his eyes, only briefly. “Aye.”
Ondego studied them both. Rem saw that his jaw was clenched and his eyes were vibrating with a terrible, shuttered rage. Behind their prefect, Hirk simply hung his head, shook it, and retreated into the prefect’s office.
“Frennis,” Ondego said again, not a question this time.
“Aye, Frennis, you heard us!” Torval said, sounding rather annoyed. “Are you going deaf now, sir?”
“Secure that,” Ondego shouted, and the entire room froze. “You’re lucky I don’t strip the both of you of your signets here and now and throw you in the stocks! Do you have any idea, either of you, the unholy rump-rutting I’m going to be liable for because the two of you tromped on someone else’s turf? Transacted business in someone else’s ward?”
“Aye, sir,” the dwarf spat back.
“And Frennis’s ward, no less! Bonny Prince, you’re ignorant as an inbred mule in this, being new—but by all that’s sacred and profane, Torval, you know better. You know that Frennis is a despot and a cunning toad and a cold-blooded killer. Why, why, why, knowing all of that, would you put yourself and your partner and my ward in danger by stepping on the toes of that rabid, slavering mastiff on his own turf?”
Torval lost his patience. “Because I’m trying to find out who killed my dead partner, sir, and in pursuit of that justice I will fear no man and step over any boundary that impedes my efforts. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Oh, well that’s a relief,” Ondego carried on. “That means that you dragged the Bonny Prince down there knowing full well what a fuck-all of hellfire and brimstone you were stirring up for me, since I could have sworn all my watchmen are expressly forbidden from operating in other wards without my clear permission!”
“It couldn’t wait!” Torval protested.
“Everything can wait!” Ondego roared. “Someone else’s ward, someone else’s problem. Do you have any idea what kind of tributes we might have to pay if Frennis complains?”
“Well, I’m bloody well tired of repeating myself!” Torval shouted back. “We told you why we’re late, but now we’re here. Kindly step aside and let us get about our business—sir!”
Ondego looked like he was about to pick Torval up in his arms and tear him limb from limb. His whole body shook, the corded muscles of his arms were taut, and veins stood out on his throat and forehead. Then, just as suddenly as the storm arose, it dissipated. Ondego threw up his hands, shrugged, and waved off the two of them like they were a pack of annoying flies.
“Fine,” he said. “Just get going.”
“Get going where?” Torval asked.
Ondego looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to remember something briefly forgotten. “Oh, that’s it. I forgot to tell you, since you were so gods-damned late for work and I was put out about it and all. You two sodden bastards have been summoned to the home of our most eminent citizen, Kethren Dall. It seems that he learned you were the two who found his little girl in that dross pile and he wants to thank you personally for seeing her returned to the family.”
“You’re joking,” Torval said.
Ondego raised one eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m joking, Torval?”
“Tonight?” Rem asked. “It’s late and—”
“The family is keeping a vigil through the night and accepting mourners. It was made clear to me that no matter the time, the two of you should be sent to Citizen Dall’s manse as soon as was possible. So, now that you’ve finally deigned to show yourselves hereabouts, what say you make my life easier and go see the man? Express the right obsequies and he might even offer a gift of some sort to the Fifth. So, remember, you’re not just representing yourselves—you’re representing all of us.”
“We can’t go into that man’s home, with his daughter lying in state,” Torval said. “You said it yourself, sir—all we did was answer a call and found the poor lass lying under the rubbish. Even Hirk and Eriadus were the ones responsible for seeing her cleaned and prepared—”
“Nonetheless,” Ondego said, “Citizen Dall asked for the two men who found her, and the two men who found her are you and the Bonny Prince here. So, on your way.”
“Must we?” Rem asked, horrified at the thought of facing the poor girl’s grieving family with no leads, no indicators that they were any closer to seeing justice done on her behalf.
“Yes, you bloody well fucking must!” Ondego shouted.
The Dall manse, like many of the city’s finer homes, was on the southeast side of the harbor, in the Second Ward, in a fine, well-heeled neighborhood of walled villas and gardens that climbed up the gentle slope of one of the city’s three hills. Rem couldn’t speak for Torval, but he felt strangely out of place the moment they entered the Second Ward and their surroundings became noticeably posh. Rem thought this a strange sort of irony, since he was from nobility himself, but it seemed that his month away from home, moving and living among the lower sorts, had truly changed him. The ostentation on display in the high walls, manicured gardens, and embossed front gates to all the estates they passed really did leave him a little sick to his stomach … especially since he now knew how simply the bulk of the city’s people really lived.
Still, it was an order, and they would follow it, no matter how uncomfortable it made them.
“I hate this sort of thing,” Torval confessed as they climbed the last rising street toward the Dall home.
“He just wants to say thank you,” Rem offered, not sure if that meant anything.
“Perhaps,” Torval said. “But honestly, what’s he thanking us for? His daughter’s dead and we just found what was left of her. For that we deserve thanks?”
Rem nodded. He understood what Torval meant. He didn’t feel like he deserved thanks, especially considering that they had found Telura Dall almost by accident, while they were busy with a separate investigation. But Rem also knew—from personal experience—that the rich and powerful were keenly aware of how their capacity for largesse and gratitude could be later used to their advantage by cultivating their associations and calling in favors when special aid was required. Even if Kethren Dall’s desire to show the two of them some gratitude was, for Dall himself, entirely genuine, there was probably some deeper, covert impulse in his character that quietly suggested that having a couple of good, reliable men on the city watch could, in the fullness of time, come in very handy.
Patronage. Favors for favors. Loans and obligations. These were the foundational relationships of the rich and powerful. Rem knew the game well, and had grown so weary of it that he had come all the way to Yenara to escape it.
But he offered none of that to Torval. He simply kept walking, mouth shut.
In time, a line of mourners appeared, some walking, some borne on servant-carried litters, all climbing the cobbled street toward the manse at the summit. Rem and Torval fell in with the many mingling parties and kept an even pace, eager to neither fall behind nor pull ahead.
As they stood in the long, snaking line of guests, Rem found his wandering gaze drawn to the servants that bore the finely chased litters bearing the richer acquaintances of the Dall family. All seemed foreign, their skin tones ranging from deep ebony to dusky olive, all of them had their hair cropped close to their heads, and all wore iron collars, as thick as a man’s finger, that seemed to have neither joint nor latch chain. At first, Rem assumed it must be some bizarre fashion accessory, but as he started to note the prevalence of the strange collar among all the shorn-headed men bearing those colorfully lacquered litters, Rem began to suspect there was another explanation.
He bent toward Torval. “Are those slaves carrying the litters?” he whispered.
Torval drew up on his toes and rocked back and forth, trying to see around the press of bodies surrounding him. Finally, he nodded. “Aye.”
“I thought,” Rem said, “that slavery was proscribed in the west?”
Torval shrugged. “For the most part. Your countrymen, in the north, never had many to begin with—though the Kostermen used to keep them, in bygone days. The kingdoms and courts farther south let the Panoply and the Temple of Aemon talk them out of the practice. Most of the free cities, like Yenara, forbid the taking and trading of slaves, and make it clear that every citizen born within their borders is free—but these sorts, the rich, they’re not forbidden from traveling east, to slaving cities, buying servants there, and bringing them back to Yenara with them. So long as they license their chattel and pay the proper taxes—”
Rem nodded, frowning. “The Yenaran way: it’s perfectly legal if the right authorities are paid.”
Torval shrugged. “Just so. There certainly aren’t many of them. It’s only the poshest of the posh that keep them, like some ugly trophy of their wealth and privilege.”
Rem realized his stomach was churning. The realization that he stood in a crowd with human beings that other human beings claimed to own, as property, had caused his body to react with visceral horror. Suddenly, the smug courtly life that he’d soured on and left behind did not seem quite so repugnant anymore.
“I wonder how they’d like it,” he muttered, “if foreign armies swept into their cities and villages and dragged their women and children away, to have their spirits broken and their bodies sold like farmstock on an auction block?”
“Give it time,” Torval said. “The wheel always turns, doesn’t it?”
Rem nodded. How very true.
As the mourners arrived at the main villa gate, their cavalcade slowed and the crowd gradually bunched up around them. Rem heard murmurs of sadness and reproach all around—rich families discussing how broken up poor Kethren Dall must be, how they couldn’t imagine what a terrible shock it must have been … and in some cases, how they were simply glad it was a disaster that befell him and not them. Rem understood that sort of talk, but that didn’t make hearing it any easier.
Torval seemed quite uncomfortable and far out of his element. There were no other dwarves on hand, for one thing, so even in his small stature, he stuck out like a sown-on thumb. He was not simply other than human, he was also a tradesman by training and humble by birth. Rem thought to try to put him at ease, but one glance at Torval’s squared, tense shoulder and his downcast eyes told him that nothing was likely to make the dwarf feel better about his present surroundings. Thus, Rem let it rest, and the two carried on in the slow line as it drifted toward the gate to the Dall home and, little by little, the mourners trickled into the main house as other earlier arrivals trickled back out.
They were challenged at the door, but a servant standing within earshot vouched for them, assuring the overearnest porter who asked the names of all the incoming mourners that the master of the house had, indeed, summoned these two scruffy-looking, clearly low-class watchmen. Rem and Torval were apologized to, then shown into the main hall of the villa, where the young Telura Dall lay in state on a silk-draped bier surrounded by mounds of flowers, bundled herbs, and funerary offerings. Rem and Torval joined the line of mourners waiting to move past the corpse so that they, too, could pay their respects. It took almost a full half hour for that line to inch forward, snaking around the great room to finally place them before the young lady.
Rem thought that young Telura looked as beautiful as any maiden he’d ever seen, either back home or in the city. Even her pallor seemed healthy and alive, her skin gilded gold by the many candles burning all around her, her cheeks rouged red to give some semblance of life. There were no signs of the wounds on her scalp, or on her wrists. Rem knew nothing of the funerary arts, but he thought the widows at the House of Waiting sorceresses indeed to have taken this poor girl—whose body had been found beneath a pile of rubbish in a bad part of town—and turn her once more into something resembling a peacefully-napping princess.
Beside him, Rem saw that Torval seemed deeply moved by the sight of the young lady. Perhaps he was thinking of his own daughter—or even his wife. Rem had spent enough time with Torval to know now when the dwarf was struggling to keep his deep and powerful emotions bottled. Though his countenance remained stony, the glint in his eyes and the trembling at the downturned corners of his mouth were unmistakable. Torval might play at being inured to all the terrible things he was privy to as a wardwatchman, but Rem could tell that all those myriad sins, whether blasphemous or banal, still had a profound effect upon him.
Once their time before the corpse was done, they moved into the gardens, where the guests all gathered to quietly mingle, drink, and eat of the buffet set out for them, and (presumably) to discuss their own fond memories of the dear departed. True, Rem overheard conversations of all sorts around him—gossip, business deals, plans for illicit meetings, and demands for restitution of debts—but he knew what the funeral of a high-born young lady was supposed to consist of in theory, if not in practice. He tried to screen out all the venality around him and simply enjoy the fine wine and free repast. He hadn’t eaten since he and Torval had breakfasted that morning, and he was quite hungry.
Torval did not mingle. He simply stood aside, waiting as though on guard, a stalwart little figure with squared shoulders and feet set apart. More than once, the guests turned and remarked upon Torval and Rem and their apparent crashing of the party, but Torval never seemed to hear them, and Rem never thought to make their conversations a topic of his own. He decided, instead, that it was best to wait. If Kethren Dall wanted to find them and thank them, he would do so. If he did not, then they could leave after a time.
Rem caught sight of a strange figure across the torchlit yard. He studied the figure for a moment, then bent to whisper to Torval.
“That one looks familiar,” he said.
Torval raised himself up on his toes, to get a better view, then nodded in agreement. “Aye. That’s the elf that delivered our watchkeep news of the missing girl.”
Rem snapped his fingers. “That’s it. The one who offered the reward. Strange company to find an elf among, isn’t it?”
“And why is that?” Torval asked.
Rem shrugged. “I suppose I never thought of the wood folk as … well, mercantile.”
Torval shot him a sideward glance, then let loose a heavy, exasperated sigh. “Just as not all dwarves live under mountains mining and polishing jewels, not all elves spend their lives smoking witchweed and snuggling trees. Look at this one’s forehead—that should tell you all you need to know.”
Rem did as he was told. It was hard to see clearly from a distance, but when the light hit the elf’s high, pale forehead just right, he thought he saw a strange scar there—a sort of star, right in the center of his brow.
“Thorned,” Torval said.
Rem waited for an explanation and got none. “What does that mean?” he finally asked.
Torval sighed. “In the old days, slavers sometimes snatched elven children for trade. The slavers didn’t want the children using their mind magic against them, or communicating secretly with their fellows, so they would drive a cold-iron spike through their foreheads. Not deep enough to kill them—just enough to kill the part of their mind that allows them to speak without words and read thoughts.”
Rem felt a chill run through him. It seemed a rather barbarous thing to do, considering elves were born mind readers—the terrible, irrevocable theft of a gods-given birthright. “Is it common?” Rem asked.
Torval shook his head. “Not so common anymore, as slavers rarely get their hands on elven children these days. But when they do, that’s how they make them compliant. Worse, even if the thorned children ever get free, they can never get the gift back. It means that their own sort want nothing more to do with them.”
“So they’re outcasts among men because they’re elves and former slaves,” Rem said, “and they’re outcasts among elves because they no longer have the gift that all their fellows share?”
“That’s it,” Torval said.
Rem sighed grimly. “That’s fantastically cruel,” he said. “I can’t imagine what that could do to a person.”
“I don’t know his story,” Torval said, referring again to the elf that had drawn Rem’s attention, “but I’m willing to bet he’s made a life among men because his own kind wouldn’t have him back. Probably a merchant of some sort. A man—or elf—can yank himself out of any pit of despair if he can find the right merchandise to trade.”
Rem studied the elf as he moved among the guests, speaking to some, being avoided and whispered about by others. “He dresses well enough. Those are Quaimish silks. And all those jewels …”
Torval shrugged. “Rare, to be sure. But there’s all sorts under the sun, in’t there?”
“I say,” a fellow exclaimed, suddenly approaching them. He looked well-to-do in a dark tunic and toga, a cup of wine in hand and more of his stripe following on his heels. “I say, may I ask who the two of you might be?”
Torval started to open his mouth. Rem saw from the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted that it was bound to be something gruff and uncharitable. Rem intervened.
“Watchwardens, milord,” Rem said, bowing the slightest. “Humble and out of place in these environs, I can assure you.”
The rich man and his equally rich companions all looked puzzled. “Well,” the fellow said, looking more embarrassed than indignant, “if I may ask, what brings you to the wake this evening?”
Rem smiled, trying to alleviate the tension in the air. “We were the men who found the young lady, sir. Apparently, his lordship Citizen Dall wanted to thank us personally for doing our duty and seeing the young lady returned to her family.”
The rich man and his companions all seemed strangely amazed by this, as though thanking a civil servant were the most bizarre and wondrous thing they’d ever heard of. They grumbled and muttered among themselves for a few moments before their leader finally offered his hand to Rem in greeting.
“Othren Osk, of the ancient House of Osk. I am most delighted to meet you, Master …?”
“Remeck,” Rem said, bowing again. “Of no particular ancient house. This is my partner, Torval.”
Torval nodded gruffly. He seemed quite shocked that Rem had taken it upon himself to speak with these men, even annoyed. Still, he kept his mouth shut and Rem was glad of it.
“So, the two of you are watchmen,” Othren Osk said, as though it were the most fascinating thing he had ever heard. “You patrol the streets, arrest criminals, that sort of thing?”
“Just that sort of thing, milord,” Rem said with a nod.
“Then I would imagine,” Osk said, “that such tragedies as this are part and parcel for you. All too common, I would think.”
“Death and murder are common, it’s true,” Rem said. “But the murder of one such as young Miss Telura Dall—one so beautiful and well-to-do—well, sir, there’s nothing common in that.”
“Is that right?” Osk said, looking to Torval for confirmation.
Torval’s face remained stony. “That’s right.”
“Such fascinating work,” Othren said, and he genuinely seemed to mean it, even though the men at his elbow were chattering among themselves now and ready to move on. Rem knew the type: this Othren Osk was the sort of fellow who had long been sheltered by his money and power. He honestly enjoyed conversations with people from other walks, simply because their lives struck him as curious and alien. If a flesh-eating plant or white tiger could talk, he would probably be equally as pleased to speak with them.
It was then that a servant approached, the very same bald and powdered eunuch who had saved them at the door and gained them admittance. “Good gentlemen,” he said, bowing obsequiously, “the master has asked for you and will see you now.”
“I beg your leave?” Rem asked Othren Osk.
“Freely granted. A delight, Watchman Remeck.”
Rem nodded. “My pleasure, milord.” Rem looked to Torval then. “After you.”
Torval scowled as though it were an insult and followed the eunuch out of the gardens.