Bloodspate Read online

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  It is a dangerous time to be a freelance thief in Thedra, the Obsidian City. Corin Quick-fingers challenges the rule of the Lord of Law, powerful master of the Courts of Law, Thedra’s guild of thieves. Stealing should be fun, after all, not just another boring trade with extortionate taxes and killjoy rules. Soon, however, the young thief will find himself drawn into events both fateful and fantastic. The time of the Cusp nears, when even the immortals might fall and men become as gods. And deep within the capital of the kingdom of corruption an ancient evil grows.

  BLOODSPATE

  By

  FRANCES MASON

  Copyright Frances Mason 2018

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Contents

  Product Description

  Copyright Frances Mason 2018

  Bloodspate: A Song of Agmar Tale

  To Readers of Horn of the River God

  Chapter 1: Lord of Law

  Chapter 2: King of Cripples

  Chapter 3: Kiss of Life

  Chapter 4: Theatre of Lowlife

  Chapter 5: Men of Science

  Chapter 6: The Dark Tower

  Chapter 7: The First Language

  Chapter 8: Bard-song

  Chapter 9: Thief of Knowledge

  Chapter 10: Labyrinth of Leaves

  Chapter 11: Heart of Fire

  Chapter 12: Sword of Kings

  Bloodspate: A Song of Agmar Tale

  To Readers of Horn of the River God

  Though the beginning of the monumental Song of Agmar was originally scribed by myself, Mekel, master scribe of the Brotherhood of the Leaves, under the title Horn of the River God, the bard, the Song’s famous creator, and I have agreed, after not inconsiderable disputation, that the fragment therein most relevant to the title needed a fuller, more focussed treatment. Hence the revision that the reader will now, we hope, enjoy. While some of the tale will be familiar to readers of the original, elements have been reordered for narrative cohesion and much material has been added. Other parts of that original work will receive similar treatment in the near future. Beyond that, many tales not told in the original will be developed in a similar, more reader friendly style. For those who still wish to read the original edition despite all its flaws of directionless complexity, I will make a small number of scrolls of that available also, and will periodically reduce, for a short time, their price to zero copper pieces. These will be available in the aisles of The Temple, at the stall of Rutgar Venaquin, beside the shrine of the river god, a place most apt for the title.

  I must confess at this point – like a novice of the Brotherhood of Leaves to his patient father confessor, when the young monk has marred the copying of a justly admired manuscript illumination – that the blame for the scribed work is fully my own. Agmar, with his better knowledge of demotic audiences, had wisely warned me it was not likely to be widely appreciated. The relative merits of episodic and historic epic will perhaps never be fully agreed upon, especially by a monk as disputatious as myself and a bard both determined and famous, but we both hope that, whatever our disagreements, our final choice has resulted in the most satisfying way of developing a tale both complex and important to the history of our world and the disentangling of myth and fact whose confusion is so common in our times.

  Chapter 1: Lord of Law

  The air stank. The mud always stank down here, from the homes and shops along the bridge which carelessly emptied their chamber pots from their windows into the caldera lake, but there was something more to this stench and stifling atmosphere, which had descended over the whole city in the last few weeks. Even the stagnant heat of midsummer and the corpse floating under the bridge couldn’t explain it.

  Corin watched from the shadow of a pylon as the body was hooked and pulled from the water onto the refuse barge several yards from him. A bargeman held a lantern close. The corpse was bloated, like an overfull skin of sack. As water poured out of its throat in the flickering light of the lantern, the flesh seemed to crawl like feasting worms onto its limp, soggy ruff. Its puffy white complexion was blotched purple and black. Though the disfigurement made the face unrecognisable, Corin remembered the unique cut of the multi-coloured doublet. Reynaldo the Locksmith. A freelance thief, like himself. Both of Reynaldo’s hands had been cut off and tied by their thumbs to the ends of a garrotte of thin hempen cord. The garrotte, having served its primary function, now created a grotesque necklace that did little to flatter the looks of the dead man. The Lord of Law, master of the Thedran guild of thieves, was sending a message to all unaffiliated “low lawyers.” Without the protection of the guild you were as good as strangled by your own hands.

  Corin slid further into the shadows under the bridge. He had not been seen by any of the bargemen. Few thieves could blend so well into the shadows. Even without shadows he had an uncanny knack for not standing out. Not that he had any special need for anonymity here. But habit bred caution, and this warning to freelance thieves concerned him more than the usual bashing by the guild’s enforcers. Though he was young enough to be forgiven transgressions with a only a gentle kick in the guts as a warning he was old enough that they were pressuring him to join. He made his way from pylon to pylon until he reached and blended into the crowd, which was gathering at the waterline to watch the free entertainment. Further out, prentices jumped from the spaces between buildings on the bridge into the water. Gondoliers rowed tourists close enough to be entertained by the spectacle. Murder wasn’t exactly a remarkable event in Thedra, the Obsidian City. The beating black heart of Ropeua. “Capital of the kingdom of corruption,” as he liked to say. He thanked the gods daily for that corruption, which had made his fortune or saved his skin more than once.

  Corin climbed to the rim of the caldera, the glassy black battlements of the city’s outer ring looming in the dusk behind him on its high pylons, the spires of the central ring, the palace ring, climbing even higher into the rapidly darkening sky. And higher again spiralled a strange staircase, which Corin knew rose from the South Tower, one of the great towers of the Outer Ring that stood at each point of the compass. No one he had asked knew where the stairway went. Even on the brightest days its furthest reaches couldn’t be spied, its solid stones attenuated to an infinitesimal thinness that the eyes followed vainly beyond their ability to perceive, mountain eagles shrinking from horse size to man size to dove size to a diminishing dot that vanished as they tested their wings against that air of improbable heights.

  Corin Beggar’s-son to some, Corin Quick-fingers to himself and his friends, was sixteen years old, at least if his father had remembered his age right and told him the truth of it. He was small for his age, less than five and a half feet tall, but strong for his size, with wiry, supple muscle that could propel him up a wall quicker than a cat with a row of lit firecrackers tied to its tail. His movements were small and efficient, matching his muscles and ensuring that success always came with the least possible effort, something of which he preferred never to expend more than diligent dishonesty demanded. He had brown hair, cropped short to keep tavern lice from too affectionate an acquaintance, dark brown eyes, usually alert under beetling bushy brown brows and unusually sharp in discerning shapes and movement in darkness, strong chin and wryly twisted lips asserting a nonchalance about the dangers of his profession, and aquiline nose and dusky skin more like a southerner than a native commoner of these parts, and sure to provoke a combination of infatuation in girls despite his size, and distrust in their fathers, ever mindful of the reputed lechery of the warm blooded Kemetese and Navrelese. He wore brown doublet over brown tunic, brown breeches and hose, and supple brown leather boots with soft soles, scraped and dirtied to dull the polish,
which might otherwise reflect light at an inconvenient moment. Most of this was hidden beneath the brown cloak he now wore, with its conveniently loose sleeves and spacious hood, which gave him the appearance of a mendicant monk of Ilsa. The resemblance was apposite, since Ilsa was the god not only of beggars but also thieves.

  Despite Corin’s age, and though he was not a member of the thieves’ guild, he was already a master thief, or “master at law” as was said in thieves’ cant. Corin could pick a pocket hidden beneath several layers of clothing, even from one of those special “pickpocket proof” belts that held the money sacks right against the rich man’s skin. He could cut a purse and replace its weight so that the most sensitive target wouldn’t feel a thing. He could filch with a sleight of hand bordering on sorcery an item from a merchant’s stand even as the merchant suspiciously watched him. He could pick a lock with the ease of a master locksmith, and never asked payment for the favour, though he was sure to take it. He could sneak up behind a paranoiac. He could blend into shadows like a bad smell into the tanner’s village. If there was any way to relieve a man of the golden burden of success, Corin was its master, and would not hesitate to take what was rightfully someone else’s. His only weakness as a thief was his smugness; he would occasionally become complacent because he knew how good he was.

  As he reached the rim of the caldera he turned east and crossed North Bank Bridge. Here the waters of Caldera Lake flowed down to the mills that ground the grain of the city for its daily bread. Beyond the bridge the cobbled road continued down to North Bank, suburb of actors, bards, minstrels, clowns, jugglers, whores, beggars and assorted other scoundrels. Corin’s kind of people. The wood-frame buildings crowded together in squalid intimacy, many seeming only to be held up by leaning against equally dilapidated neighbours. Shutters were flung open to breathe in the stench of the summer-hot streets, some cobbled, some of dirt, all rank with shit and piss daily thrown out of windows, smearing the wattle and daub walls. Cantilevered second stories projected across most streets, making of them dank, repulsive tunnels in which a body would be sooner tripped over than disposed of. Rats glared with red eyes in the light of a bracketed torch outside a smoky tavern with a rotting unreadable sign. They would happily eat what men wouldn’t move. It would be easy for an outsider to get lost in this maze, but Corin knew every twist and turn. Here he was surrounded by the familiar sounds of domestic disputes and sentimental drunks and raucous prentices. A woman screamed in anger, and a crashing of crockery followed. A man roared in response and a door slammed, followed by the heavy stomp of boots. Occasionally the streets would open out into a square, where flea infested taverns or boarding houses would hang their signs: the Carters Arms, Hawk and Hollow, Banner and Spear, Traveller’s Rest, and many others. Here visitors to the capital, if unable to afford the more savoury establishments of the city, would pay a few coppers for bed and stabling. At the well in one square two men threw dice and wagered. Corin avoided them, knowing they were spies and enforcers of the thieves’ guild.

  He climbed to the rooftops. Up here he was in his element, and moved more quickly than in the streets. Rounding the square and its sentries, he dropped to the ground near where two streets met beneath a series of projecting second stories. A lamp shed dim illumination against the wattle and daub of the wood-frame houses, cracked and crumbling into the refuse of the intersection. A rat the size of a cat raised its nose and sniffed, bared its teeth, and glared with glinting red eyes, then ran off, disappearing into a hole in a wall. Right beside the lamp hung a decrepit looking sign on which the painted shape of a crowned lion snarled, the words that once said “King’s Rest” having faded beyond legibility. A king he was not, but it was a familiar haunt at which he frequently rested before a late night’s thieving. He adjusted his cowl to completely hide his face and pushed open the door.

  Inside the air was thick with tobacco smoke and the sweeter scent of opium and more acrid drugs. He crossed to the bar. The tavern keeper’s daughter, Adele, smiled familiarly, but before she could speak her father, Brengar, growled for her to fetch a plate of bread and cheese. She groaned and departed, winking at Corin as she turned. Before Corin could say anything Brengar said under his breath, “You shouldn’t be here,” and motioned with his eyes to the dark corner furthest from the door. Corin took the hint and threw a coin on the bench without a word. Brengar filled a mug somewhat cleaner than an un-rinsed chamber pot with a liquid that might have come from the same.

  Corin took the mug to a dark table. Two men diced amidst the swirling smoke. Ordinarily Corin would have taken part, discreetly introducing and removing loaded dice at the right times to guarantee he won more than he lost, or maybe picking the pocket of one or even both of the men when they became too engrossed in their game. From here he cast his eyes across the smoky tavern to where Brengar had discreetly indicated, and his heart almost stopped. There, in a circle, sat several members of the thieves’ guild. But not any old members. They were, to a man, vassals of the Lord of Law, his closest allies, counsellors and bodyguards; the only master thieves in the guild he trusted not to murder and supplant him. That wasn’t all. Amidst them sat a slim man, dressed like a dandy, with handsome pale face framed by long, raven black hair, and set with albino pink eyes, in which the fire of the lanterns danced. The Lord of Law himself!

  The Lord of Law was rarely seen outside of Ilsa’s Inn, the tavern attached to the theatre and brothel and, so it was said, via secret passages, to the thieves’ guild hall, known to the Thedran underworld as the Courts of Law. For a moment Corin thought he had been betrayed to the thieves’ guild by an unseen beggar. But it was a foolish thought. If the guild had got wind of this being a favourite haunt, they would have sent lowly thieves, “clerks of the court,” and manglers; at worst they would send an ordinary master at law. The vassals wouldn’t bother themselves with the trivial task of disciplining a freelance thief, the Lord of Law even less. Still, it took superhuman restraint to not give in to the urge to flee. They were dangerous men, especially to a freelance thief like him, but leaving too quickly would draw their attention. Besides that he wanted to know what the Lord of Law was doing here. Corin settled into the shadows and pretended intense interest in the game at the table, watching the Lord of Law obliquely enough that he wouldn’t feel eyes on him.

  The Lord of Law grimaced and his body tensed. His vassals respectfully ignored this. He reached into his jerkin and took out a silver phial, elaborately engraved and inlaid with gold. Taking a draught from it, his face and body relaxed.

  Shortly afterwards he stood up and went up the stairs to the rooms above. This intrigued Corin even more. While the beds in Brengar’s tavern had fewer fleas than most in North Bank they were hardly rooms fit for a wealthy guild master possessed of his own tavern and probably lavish private apartments. Corin emptied his mug and got up, not looking to the stairway. As he did so he felt the eyes of all of the vassals on him. He burped ostentatiously, wiped his lips with his sleeve and stumbled towards the door. Their eyes slid off of him as he stumbled out into the night, quickly regaining his sobriety and cat like balance the moment the door had swung to behind him.

  Corin slid away from the lantern light near the door, merging with the shadows. He hesitated. What was the Lord of Law doing here? He had to know. If you can’t find your way in by the front door, go through a window instead, he liked to say. He climbed towards the roof, and froze. Someone was prowling on the roof just above the eave from which he hung. He waited, breathing slowly, steadily, silently. Footsteps approached. Normal ears wouldn’t have heard them, and perhaps Corin’s ears didn’t either. But he sensed their approach. He held his breath. There was a swish of air. Someone leaping across the gap between one side of the alley and the other. But there was no sound of landing. Quickly, Corin dragged himself up and turned to look. A shadow was flitting across the rooftop. Pulling himself up to the roof he saw the window of the tavern room, shutters ajar. He knew who the thief was. He also knew how dang
erous it would be to be caught shadowing the Lord of Law. But he couldn’t resist the temptation. To prove he was greater than the Lord of Law! There was no time for hesitation. Already the Lord of Law was disappearing beyond the peak of the opposite roof. He followed. Several times the Lord of Law looked back, but every time Corin sensed the movement before it came and slid into deeper shadow. The Lord of Law was good, but, Corin congratulated himself, not as good as Corin Quick-fingers.

  The roofs here were not as consistently tiled as those in the circles of the city. On some tiles were missing, others slid when he placed a foot; many roofs were simple thatch. But given his quarry’s speed he couldn’t take care in his route or check before placing each foot. He had to rely on awareness and speed of reflexes. More than once he dislodged a tile that fell into the attic below. But he reacted quickly, adjusted his balance and, with some luck, kept his feet. While the Lord of Law wasn’t as sneaky as Corin would have expected, he was fast. He must have been negotiating these roofs for decades, and seemed to know in advance the worst patches. Corin took note of his path and tried to follow it more exactly. Doing so he soon found not a single loose tile slipping away. Then the Lord of Law vanished.

  Corin moved swiftly to the last point he had seen him. It wasn’t over an alley. He couldn’t have dropped to the cobblestones. Corin searched the rooftop. Was there a secret passage? But there was no indication of any unusual joins, or of any switches. Corin circled the exact position where he thought he had last seen him. There was a hole there. But it wasn’t a secret door. He stepped towards it. Kneeled next to it. Examined it. It was just a hole. But there was something strange about it. The moon was full in the sky above, its prismatic rays illuminating the rooftops in weird and shifting shapes that would challenge the eyes of those who didn’t love the night. But no shapes could be seen in the hole. It was just black. Not even black. Corin couldn’t decide what, if any colour it was. It didn’t move, it didn’t radiate, he couldn’t define it. It seemed to swallow all light that struck it. Not somewhere in its depths, beneath the level of the tiles, but right at the roof. Corin stood up, arms akimbo. Looked up at the moon. Looked across the roofs.