Bloodspate Page 3

  Corin looked around. The room was empty of furniture except for a large table and benches and some chairs. Around the table sat several thieves and manglers, and all the vassals, some drinking, all eyes smiling at Corin’s predicament. The Lord of Law spoke again, this time as if to an erring child, but not like an authoritarian father, more like a kindly father, concerned at his child’s hurting himself: “You see, there are all sorts of advantages to joining. You don’t want to be all alone in this big dangerous world. And life can be painful…” Randy grinned, thwacking the club in his hand. “…but you know that. You’ve lost so much. You have no family.” The Lord of Law smiled kindly, paternally. “But with us you will always have a family. With us you will never be alone. With us you will always be safe.” His gaze and his tone became injured. “But you throw yourself upon the dangers of the world. Without protection. Without family. Without our special care.” His gaze hardened. “You are a wayward child. And wayward children are…” “To be punished?” Randy grunted with a leer. The Lord of Law frowned at the interruption. “…to be pitied. But…the prodigal son returns.”

  There was a commotion down the stairs. The thieves turned their eyes in that direction. The Lord of Law, narrowed his albino eyes, but didn’t turn to face the man who huffed his way up the stairs, bringing with him a stench that overpowered all smells of sweat and stale beer and tobacco in the room.

  The huge beggar hobbled into the room, his great shoulders hunched like the branches of a twisted ancient oak. Pustules on his nose-less face oozed; scabs, scratched by his clawed hands, tore and bled. From his mouth, opened to reveal black stumps of teeth, came a reek more foul than any decaying corpse. His bloodshot eyes glared, an accusation against the world of wealth. As the son of a beggar, Corin knew that the beggars had their own cruel guild, and that this man, the King of Cripples, ruled over them with terror.

  Despite his attempted self-control the Lord of Law recoiled from the smell and shuddered when the King of Cripples grabbed his arm. Randy backed away, screwing up his nose. The vassals rose as one and drew their blades, advancing on the King of Cripples with threatening looks. The King of Cripples glared back at them, and coughed loudly. It was a sound of bubbling, rancid liquid such as only a dying man should make. There were screams and gasps of revulsion from the inn’s kitchen beyond the bottom of the stairs. A pounding of feet like an advancing army approached, and with it all the smells of the sewer came. And with the pounding of feet came a slithering sound, as if bodies were being dragged behind that army. All the thieves in the room, from the lowliest mangler, to the journeyman thief, to the masters at law to the vassals to even the Lord of Law himself turned revolted eyes towards the stairs and held their breaths.

  Soon the room was filled with the ragged, tattered, piss and shit and rancid sweat perfumed bodies of so many beggars that the vassals could not move. Corin’s eyes stung with the acridity of the air. The beggars pressed their foul unwashed bodies against their adversaries and breathed in their faces, farted and burped and moaned and limped. The legless dragged themselves across the floor and grasped the ankles and feet of the thieves as if for want of food they would eat them.

  “You may not take what is mine,” the King of Cripples said, glaring at the Lord of Law, and breathing repulsively on him.

  The Lord of Law gagged, but held his ground. “He is a thief, not a beggar; by the laws of the three Courts his life is mine. Only I can grant dispensation from obligation to my court. You have no power here. The treaties are clear.”

  The King of Cripples coughed again and with the sound came the smells of a thousand crawling things, and more things that would never crawl again other than with maggots. And with his cough the beggars pressed in towards the Lord of Law, groaning, coughing, snuffling, snorting, grunting; closing in like an irresistibly spreading decay. And the King of Cripples spoke again. “His father was a beggar, and the Court of Cripples takes all its sons into its halls.”

  “What his father was is irrelevant. The boy doesn’t beg; he steals. And he has great talent.” He looked at Corin, with affection or envy Corin couldn’t be sure. “And we have always let those with talent choose their guild.”

  “There is precedent,” the King of Cripples agreed, “but is this of his choosing?” He fingered the ropes with which Corin was bound.

  “Whatever his choices, only the guild can grant him the right to do thieves’ work in the city. Those who steal without licence are subject to our law.”

  “He is a wayward son,” the King of Cripples agreed, then turned to Corin. “Do you wish to join the Courts of Law, Corin?”

  Corin shook his head.

  “You see?”

  Some thieves behind Corin were succumbing, retching or vomiting and struggling to force their way out, but trapped behind an impenetrable wall of putrescent, broken, noisome bodies. Although the Lord of Law clearly wished to argue more the smell in the room was overwhelming him as it was all the other thieves. He plucked a scented silk handkerchief from within his tunic and held it to his nose. The King of Cripples smiled evilly. With this simple act the Lord of Law had shown the extent of his adversary’s power and the limits of his own.

  “Very well,” he mumbled reluctantly through the handkerchief, “but he will not steal in my city. As long as he begs he is yours. If he takes the work of honest thieves again he will either join us or pay with his life.”

  Arthritic fingers scraped at the ropes until they came loose. Corin was lifted to his feet and found himself dragged along by the tide of beggars as they flowed down the stairs, through the kitchen, through the tavern, up the stairs to the foyer of the brothel and out into the dark streets. Knowing where they were taking him he tried to edge his way out of the crowd, but despite his dexterity found himself irresistibly forced back to the heart of the mass of rotting, stinking flesh and along dark muddy alleys. Their path led ever down.

  He saw it now. Surrounded by a pile of rotting meat, its stench ripe almost beyond bearing from the summer heat, the gaping maw of the sewer. While the city itself relied on carts and barges to carry away whatever waste they didn’t throw into the streets or the caldera lake, the suburb of North Bank had once had a functioning sewer system. It was said that the city too had once had pipelines across the lake, that had emptied into these sewers. Though North Bank’s residents, like those of the city and bridge simply threw most of their waste into the streets, these sewers remained as evidence of a more hygienic age. This opening was one of several through which the runoff of the suburb flushed when it rained. But deep within Corin knew there were passages that could be shut off against flooding, where life could survive. He also knew that the beggars guild knew how to open certain passages and flood the tunnels at will. No one could survive here against the will of the King of Cripples.

  He was drawn forward, with seemingly never a shove or dragging hand. He could not escape as he was drawn into and along the sewer tunnels. As a beggar’s son he knew these tunnels well, though he had avoided them for years now. From one side to the other were ragged clothes, hung to dry, and absorb what stench they could not take from the pores of the beggars who wore them. Even washing here was but another way of becoming more dirty. A beggar woman, with wrinkles that hung from her like layers of fat, scrubbed a bowl in the foul water that trickled along a side tunnel. They passed a row of shutters in the stonework of the tunnel out of which looked the dirty faces of beggars hawking their broken and tattered wares or half eaten or decaying food. They turned through this side tunnel and that, a confusing labyrinth that only the beggars wouldn’t get lost in. Reed torches guttered in places, their smoke like impotent incense against the stench of the beggars. At each turning, a pile of stinking shit and refuse and dead animal bodies was piled, to guide any who might penetrate so far away from the path the beggars took.

  The tunnel they were in suddenly widened and they were in a vast cavern. It was walled with stone, like the tunnels. Perhaps once it had been a giant cess
pit. Perhaps it had been made by the beggars from the leavings of others. Though there were no visible openings the air was clearer here. Most of the beggars stopped. Corin was shoved forward. The sturdiest of the beggars followed their king into his court. Though Corin was no longer surrounded, behind him at the opening into the cavern the beggars crowded. He allowed himself to be roughly shoved all the way to the foot of the dais.

  The dais was like a strange sculpture fashioned from the refuse of the city. Bricks, stones, a cart, a market stall, a trestle table leg and a thousand other things had been jumbled together in a heap, up which led precarious steps, of iron or copper or brass or wood or stone to a remarkably flat, finished surface, on which stood a huge, velvet covered chair. The velvet was worn, the colours faded, and food stains had re-coloured it in places. Its legs were elaborately carved, though the images had been chipped in many places and worn down in others. One arm was missing, and crates had been piled on that side to provide a makeshift armrest.

  The King of Cripples, having shuffled and limped and groaned his way this far, suddenly found extraordinary dexterity as he shot up the steps of his dais, his feet sure on every precarious lodging, his movement swift and as balanced as a raven on a gravestone. He sat on his throne as his closest advisors climbed by more circuitous routes to stand at his side. The king picked up his crown from the arm of his throne, a ring of beaten brass, fashioned by a tinker from an old pot with its bottom cut out, and adorned with cracked and misshapen gemstones, and placed it on his own head. Two beggar men-at-arms, one with yellow, jaundiced skin, the other with one eye and a matching scar on the other side of his nose; both with fragments of leather armour patched on their rags, and clubs carved roughly from rotted tree branches; shambled to either side of Corin.

  The King of Cripples, his crippled and befouled courtiers assembled about him, now spoke. Gone was the bubbling cough. He spoke with authority, and he glared. “Corin,” he shook his head sadly, “Corin, Corin, Corin. We have seen little of you in our court these several years past.” He waited as if for an answer, but none came, so he continued, “You were always a talented little beggar, and yet you waste yourself on these…criminal activities, this picking of pockets and hiding in shadows and climbing in windows at midnight. It is not honest.”

  “Like your injuries.”

  The King of Cripples coughed like a dying man, more liquid despair than air in his voice as he gasped as if at his last breath. “We show what we must to the world so they might see what they will not otherwise see. Our ailments are as real as any. Our needs are real enough. And we ask so little. Don’t you agree? Only enough to live.” He swept his arm in an arc as if to demonstrate how little he and his hordes had taken from the world. “Only enough to care for our people and their needs.

  Corin knew that the King of Cripples was not given to providing for beggars. He took from them by strong arm what they couldn’t refuse him. So he said nothing, waiting for the inevitable demands.

  “But you make the world less forgiving with your ways. It is beggars like you who…”

  “I’m a thief,” Corin said proudly. One of the beggar soldiers stepped threateningly towards him, and as Corin expected the attack from that direction he didn’t see the other swing his club until it was too late. He tried to twist away at the last moment, but the first shouldered him into the other’s club and it caught him in the gut. He collapsed to the floor, gasping for air.

  The King of Cripples coughed again, another foul, strangled gasp, but his eyes glared at the interruption. “…who make the world think beggars nothing but thieves.”

  “I am a thief,” Corin reasserted when he regained his breath. But the burning sensation he had first felt when touching the strange gem now surged through his body and he gasped.

  “No,” the king roared, all sickness of his lungs forgotten, “you are a beggar. Your father was a beggar. I am your king.”

  “I care nothing for kings.”

  “But kings care for you.” The king smiled cruelly. “The king of thieves…”

  “Lord of Law.”

  “We all have our titles it is true, and much is said by a man’s titles. But whatever he is called he demands your fealty. We cannot allow that, can we, little Corin?”

  Corin said nothing, didn’t even shake his head. He wasn’t going to play into the king’s hands so easily as that.

  “He demands what you have no right to give, unless you would be a traitor.”

  “I own nothing to you.” He winced as the fire in his flesh intensified.

  “Oh, but, little Corin you owe everything to us. Without us you would not live. Without us you would never have reached this age. Who do you think let you take so much at so little cost to yourself, when we could have taken it all?”

  “I earned nothing through begging. I learned to steal long before my father died.”

  “Ah…such a beggar Felix was. Such talent. The wealthiest ladies took pity on him. That such a handsome man should have fallen on such hard times.”

  “He had many ways of getting their money from them,” Corin agreed, thinking of the many seductions by which his father had made his way, “But then he washed himself.” He wrinkled his nose. “Unlike you.”

  The guards attacked again, but this time Corin was ready for them. He timed his movement perfectly, and they collided with each other, falling to the floor. But his triumph was short lived. A moment later the burning sensation grew even stronger and he collapsed to his knees. The king smiled, mistaking the collapse for an obeisance.

  But his words were defiant. “I’m no beggar. Only beggars owe you, and that only because you take what they earn, and bash them if they refuse you.”

  “You may not be a beggar…” The king slammed his huge fists down. The arm of the throne cracked, and the top crate on the other side shattered. He stood up and roared. “…but you are subject to our laws. You will pay us our due.”

  Corin was tight lipped, but he glared back at the king. He refused to be stood over. Despite the burning pain he got to his feet again. He would pay this man nothing of what he earned with good honest thieving.

  “Will you pay?”

  Corin said nothing.

  “We consider you an errant child, but do not press us. We will deal with traitors to our rule. In our kindness we will only ask a little.”

  Corin’s own anger was mounting. “I’ll give you nothing,” he screamed.

  The king frowned. “We only ask…”

  “Nothing!”

  The king’s eyes blazed and the very pustules on his face seemed to blaze with them. “Very well. You have chosen. Let it be known…” His voice boomed and echoed about the chamber. “…that this beggar defies his rightful king.”

  “I have no rightful king but gold,” Corin muttered to himself. He sucked in air as another wave of fire spread from his fingertips up his arm and across his chest.

  “He is a traitor to our realm.”

  “So banish me,” Corin sneered.

  “No. You wish to be a thief. You will die the death of thieves.”

  “What?” said one of the king’s counsellors, “Your majesty, there’s no precedent. It isn’t our way.”

  The king turned his eyes to his counsellor. “We are king, are we not?”

  “Why yes, your Grand Repulsiveness.”

  “And do not kings set precedents?”

  “Kings make laws, to which even they are bound.”

  “And when they must they change those laws. Our word is law. Is it not?” He was glowering at the counsellor now, and his eyes carried a threat the other dared not defy.

  “It is, Most Foul Majesty.”

  “Then this is my word. Corin is to be taken to the lake, there to be tied to a heavy stone. There to die the death of a traitor to the guild he has allied himself to.”

  “I never…”

  Suddenly hundreds of beggars surged forward from a multitude of tunnels, converging on Corin’s position. He looked
every way, but saw no break in the wall of putrescent or crippled or scarred or burned flesh. Rags barely covered the skin of anyone, man, woman or child. Many of the men and women had been so starved since childhood that their bodies were little larger than a child’s. But whatever their size and strength, there were too many of them. And they pressed forward inexorably. Festering wounds oozed on every side. Mouths opened and closed silently, or with pitiable moans as disgusting emanations oozed from eyes and ears like diseased tears, hands reached forward as if with begging bowls, then turned to dirty claws that grasped him, broken dirty nails hiding blood and mould and foulness. He looked up but the ceiling was too high to propel a grappling hook, and there was no purchase up there anyway, and where would he go from there even if there was? He struggled against them, but soon couldn’t move at all. The stench of the diseased, unwashed bodies was overwhelming. Another wave of fire washed over him, blinding him for a moment. Then he was struck hard from behind in the head and mercifully lost consciousness.

  Chapter 3: Kiss of Life

  He awoke when he hit the water.

  He was bound tightly, and something was weighing him down. He recognized the piers of the bridge and the buildings on it. Only that evening he had seen another man dragged from this place. Now this was to be his fate. It was dark and lamps burned inside the buildings of the bridge. He could see the rectangles of light through the water, their outlines blurred, flowing as the water rippled above. Perhaps he had stolen from one of those shops once, or picked the pocket of its owner. But he was sinking rapidly. The light was fading. The underside of the boat the beggars had used to row out into the depths moved silently above him, back to the shore. Only the dull thud of its oars could be heard along with muffled voices.

  Since he had been unconscious he had not been able to take a deep breath before he was thrown in. The shock of hitting the water had made him reflexively suck in, but only half of it was air and as his lungs tried desperately to fill, they only filled with water. Soon he would be dead. There was no escaping this. He fought against the ropes, but they were too tight. He tried to wriggle his hands into a position where he could scrape at the knots, but without time he couldn’t find them. The burning sensation crippled him again. He relaxed. He had known he was going to die like this one day. Why fight it? Every man dies. The water was warm because of the midsummer heat. It seemed to wrap around him like gentle arms.