The Plague Knight and Other Stories Read online

  The Cheat

  Falnac was nervous. I could tell by the way he kept swallowing.

  I put my hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Use what we practiced,” I said. “Leap into the distance, feint to the groin, and finish on the outside.”

  “Yes, Master Selden,” he whispered.

  “And if the two of you wind up close together, stay there and stab like a madman. Alsagad’s taller than you are. Close quarters will make him awkward.”

  I could have said more, but a swordsman about to fight for his life can only retain so much advice. Indeed, given that this was Falnac’s first duel, it was an open question whether he’d remember anything I’d just told him, or anything from his six years of lessons, either.

  When they deemed the light sufficient, the seconds called the duelists to a patch of ground where there were no tombstones to trip them up. As they advanced, Dromis caught my eye. He was Alsagad’s fencing master as I was Falnac’s, and the protocol of dueling required that we treat one another with solemn courtesy. Instead, the big man with the curling mustachios, pointed beard, and hair all dyed a brassy unnatural yellow gave me a sneer, as if to assert that my teaching and my student were so inferior to his that Alsagad’s victory was assured.

  For a heartbeat, it made me want to see Alsagad stretched out dead on the dewy grass, and then I felt ashamed of myself. Like many quarrels, this one had materialized over a trifle, and any decent man would hope to see if it settled by, at worst, a trifling wound.

  The seconds gave the principals the chance to speak words of reconciliation, and of course, being proud young blades of Balathex, they didn’t. So Alsagad’s second whipped a white kerchief through the air. That was the signal to begin.

  The duelists circled one another while waking birds chirped, a cool breeze blew, and dawn stained the river on the far side of the graveyard red. Then Falnac sprang forward.

  His blade leaped at Alsagad’s crotch in as convincing a feint as I’d ever seen. But the move didn’t draw the parry it was meant to elicit. Instead, Alsagad simply cut into Falnac’s wrist. Falnac’s blade fell from his hand.

  The seconds opened their mouths to shout for a halt, but they were too slow. Alsagad slashed Falnac’s neck.

  Falnac collapsed with blood spurting from the new and fatal wound. Dromis crowed and shook his fist in the air. “Yes!” he bellowed. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  “That murdering little whoreson,” I said. I reached to refill my cup and knocked the wine bottle over.

  Marissa’s scarred, long-fingered hand caught it before it could spill. The close-cropped hair framing her heart-shaped face was inky black in the dim candlelight of the tavern. “You’re drunk,” she said.

  “It was murder!” I insisted.

  “If no one had called the halt, then Alsagad was within his rights to keep fighting. And he was a boy, too, wasn’t he, no doubt as frightened and frantic as Falnac.”

  “Don’t bet on it. All of Dromis’s pupils are arrogant and vicious.”

  “And yours aren’t? Mine are, and thank the gods for it Otherwise, they wouldn’t pay good coin to learn to kill.”

  I shook my head. “There’s a difference, and you know it.”

  “I suppose. By all accounts, Dromis himself is a ruffian, and brutish fencing masters turn out brutish swordsmen. There’s no great mystery in it.”

  “The mystery lies in how they win duel after duel. If you’d seen that feint--“

  “Yes, you said it was very pretty.”

  “Better than pretty. Perfect. Even you would have gone for the parry. But Alsagad didn’t.”

  Marissa sighed. “I admit, I’d love to find out exactly what Dromis teaches that makes his disciples so formidable. Hell, I may need to find out to go on earning a living. Students have started leaving me to study with him. I imagine it’s happened to you, too.”

  “Now that you mention it.” I took another swig of the tart white wine. “And maybe my students are wise to desert me, if I can’t prepare them to defend themselves.”

  Marissa rested her callused fingertips on the back of my hand. “People die in duels for all sorts of reasons, including sheer bad luck. Falnac’s death is sad, but it’s no reflection on you.”

  “It is if Alsagad cheated and I didn’t catch him. I’m supposed to be an expert on every aspect of dueling, including treachery and sleights.”

  “Is that what you think? Dromis is helping his pupils cheat?”

  “They win and win and win, don’t they, even when facing duelists with more experience. How else can you account for it?”

  Marissa took a drink, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that Dromis’s system is really so much better than everybody else’s. Maestros may claim to know secret invincible techniques--I’ve done it myself to drum up trade--but you and I know that’s mostly rubbish. There are only so many ways to stick a blade in another man’s carcass.

  “But if Alsagad did cheat,” she continued, “I don’t see how he could have managed it except by magic, and I assume you were on guard against that.”

  “Yes.” For a moment, reminded of its presence, I felt the round shape of the talisman beneath my shirt. It should have grown hot if Alsagad were carrying a beneficial enchantment on his person or sword, and cold if anyone had cast a curse on Falnac. “Still, I’m not a wizard. It’s possible someone slipped something past me.” I suddenly waned to be sober, and took a deep breath in a futile attempt to become so. “I’m going to find out.”

  “Stick your nose into Dromis’s business, you mean.”

  “Yes. If he and Alsaagad conspired to deny Falnac a fair fight, then they truly are murderers according to city law, and I’ll see them hang for it.”

  “Thus mending our fading reputations and drawing our strayed students back to us. I like the idea in principle, and you do have a knack for solving puzzles.”

  Or at least I’d had some luck at it. Enough that, when people sought my services as a mercenary, a trade I still practiced from time to time to supplement the money I earned teaching, it was often as much for the sharpness of my eyes and wits as the keenness of my blade. “Why do you say you like it in principle?”

  “Because I’m sure Dromis is at least as jealous of his secrets as any other maestro. And if his methods empower his students to kill yours, then it’s possible they would enable him to do the same to you. So watch your back.”

  I tracked down Olissimal where I should have expected to find him: in the mansion of Falnac’s kin. I had no doubt that, supported by his ivory crutches, he’d hovered over the boy’s corpse for a long time, ogling the wounds. Now, eyes bright, twisted, stunted leg propped on a leather footstool, he sat in a corner savoring the more rarefied nectar of everyone else’s grief.

  My mouth and stomach sour from last night’s overindulgence, I felt an urge to grab him and drag him out of the room, but of course that wouldn’t do. Instead, I paid my respects to Falnac’s parents. Who didn’t reproach me, unless it was with their eyes.

  Afterward, I approached Olissimal with at least a semblance of the courtesy due a scion of one of the Ancient Kindreds. “Master Selden,” he said, the corners of his crooked mouth quirking upward, “I didn’t expect to see you here today. Come to collect for the boy’s lessons?”

  I took a breath. “I came to express my sympathy and talk to you.”

  “Truly?”

  “If you’ll favor me with a moment of your time.”

  “I suppose. It’s just that you surprise me. You are, after all, the same fellow who called me a degenerate, forbade me to observe the classes at your academy even when I offered to pay, and threatened to whip me if I ever dared watch one of your pupils fighting a duel.”

  So I had. Many men who are not themselves warriors are interested in the martial disciplines, and generally that’s all right. But it had always been plain to me that Olissimal’s fascination rose from an underlying thirst to witness killing and mutilation, and wh
ile such passive cruelty was relatively harmless, it repulsed me nonetheless.

  But now Dromis and his students concerned me more. “Help me,” I said, “and I’ll lift the ban. You can watch everything but the private lessons.” Those were where I passed along my own “secret” techniques, inadequate as they had begun to seem.

  “How generous. What sort of help do you require?”

  “Nothing difficult. I’m sure you’ve watched many of the duels Dromis’s students have fought. I want you to describe them.”

  He laughed, startling the mourners and offending against the solemnity of the occasion. “Trying to figure out what makes Dromis’s protégés so deadly? Maybe you should have done that before you sent poor little Falnac out to fight one of them.”

  Once again, I clamped down on my anger. “Will you do it?”

  “Oh, why not? After all, there isn’t much I enjoy more than chatting about swordplay.”

  To give him his due, the descriptions were clear and detailed. He was observant and understood dueling as well as a man born with a useless leg ever could. After he finished, I said, “So it’s mostly dodging, stop thrusts, and counterattacks. Aggressive responses to the other man’s attempt to score. They seldom take the initiative, give ground, or parry.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Damn it!” I said. “Only a truly accomplished swordsman can hope to fight that way and get away with it, and even he, only when facing an inferior opponent.”

  “Yet Dromis’s pupils invariably win. Even the novices typically fell their opponents at the end of the first exchange.” He smirked as though enjoying my mystification.

  “Their success aside,” I asked, “do they look like prodigies?”

  “No. They display the same defects of stance, balance, guard, and what have you as other students.”

  “Then...” I groped for a sensible follow-up question. “What about when they brawl in the cockpits and brothels?” Olissimal frequented such places for the same reason he haunted the dueling grounds: he hoped to see men who could walk unaided cut one another to pieces. “Are they similarly successful?”

  Olissimal frowned, his gray eyes narrowing. “Now that you mention it, it’s a strange thing. Unlike many other young blades, they rarely brawl, even though they’re as pugnacious a lot as you’ll find in the city. Whenever they give or take offense, they try to steer the dispute in the direction of a formal challenge.”

  “And what happens when the other fellow insists on drawing on the spot?”

  “They don’t display their accustomed superiority. Not consistently, at any rate.” He cocked his head. “Curious. What do you suppose it means?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I turned and left him to play the vulture.

  Clad in the nondescript garments he’d borrowed from a servant, the brim of his hat pulled down to shadow his sharp-nosed face, Tregan Keenspur smiled and looked with interest at the bustling life of the street. I realized he was enjoying walking incognito among the common herd like some eccentric prince in a ballad.

  That was just as well since I needed him disguised. Dressed in his normal rich attire with lackeys in attendance, a prominent noble and wizard of House Keenspur couldn’t go anywhere and do anything without attracting attention. And I didn’t want Dromis to learn I was making a study of him.

  “That’s the school up ahead,” I said. “The dark green building with the rust-colored door and shutters.”

  Tregan cast about. “I need a place to work. I can’t cast spells in the middle of the lane without somebody noticing.”

  “How about there?” I indicated the narrow, shaded gap between two houses. The space was a pace or two removed from the street traffic, yet still afforded a view of the fencing academy.

  “That should do,” the sorcerer said, so that was where we went.

  I kept watch and did my best to shield Tregan’s activities from view as he whispered incantations and crooked his fingers into arcane signs. The mystical force accumulating in the air made me feel feverish and sick to my stomach. Then it discharged itself with a soft sound like the pattering of rain.

  Tregan put his hand on my shoulder and shifted me aside to get a little closer to Dromis’s establishment. The wizard’s eyes now glowed with their own inner radiance, but the effect was subtle. No one could have seen it from any distance, not in the daylight, anyway.

  He peered for a time, and then said, “The top floor.”

  “There’s something magical there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it black magic?” If so, then Dromis’s possession of it was a crime in and of itself, and my aristocratic companion was just the man to call him to account for it.

  “No. I sense that the enchantment may have served a violent purpose, but it isn’t evil as the law defines the term.”

  I sighed. “Of course not. When were my problems ever solved as easily as that? What is it, then, exactly?”

  “I can’t say. Not at such a distance, with at least one wall in the way. I’m sorry, Selden. We Keenspurs owe you a considerable debt, and I fear I haven’t done all that much to repay it.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Not out loud, anyway. “At least I know more than I did before.”

  “But is our discovery relevant? I still don’t see how. Dromis may possess some form of magic, but if there were no mystical energies in play when Alsagad killed Falnac, how can the one thing pertain to the other?”

  “That’s what I have to find out. Now tell me: when was the last time you had a drink in an utterly sordid and disreputable tavern?”

  Tregan grinned. “Not since I was a wild young troublemaker myself.”

  “Then I’ll stand you one before we go back to Keenspur House.”

  Later, it was my turn to don a disguise. Clad in homespun with dirt beneath my nails, I became a prosperous but unsophisticated farmer from the Bronze River delta, dazzled by his first look at Balathex and eager for tales of her notorious fencing academies, duels, and blood feuds. Eager enough to buy wine, spirits, and supper for any knowledgeable local willing to regale me.

  As I expected, many of Dromis’s students were willing; they were as given to spendthrift habits as the other young rakes of my acquaintance, and thus often out of funds even when their families were wealthy. And once I had them talking and--I hoped--drunk enough to be indiscreet, I steered the conversation to their maestro.

  It turned out that before coming to Balathex, he’d been a soldier in the High Hills, forced to flee after he killed a noble in a duel over a courtesan. Or a slaver in Chontemay, a bandit in Stone Angels, or a zealot who wound up on the losing side in a religious war fought somewhere far to the south. It depended on who was telling the story, or, for all I knew, they could all have been true. It didn’t matter. There was nothing in any of them to account for his students’ extraordinary string of victories.

  Nor was their description of their training any more illuminating. Dromis seemed to teach pretty much the same techniques and principles as his rivals. When a student was about to fight a duel, he worked with him intensively, but the rest of us did that, too. If he used magic to enhance the efficacy of his instruction, his pupils didn’t appear to know about it.

  In the end, I decided I’d wasted both my money and my time, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I’d find a way to unmask Dromis’s perfidy eventually.

  I didn’t realize I was running out of time.

  The Silver Trumpet was just downstairs from my own fencing academy, and it served the best trout, perch, and crawfish dishes in Balathex. I ate there often, so I don’t suppose it was difficult for Dromis to find me there.

  I didn’t know he’d come in until the room fell silent, and Marissa, my companion at my corner table, turned in the direction of the door. “Damn it!” she snarled.

  I looked where she was looking. Sneering, Dromis was stalking toward me with half a dozen of his students and Olissimal following after. The cripple smirked.

  I
realized I’d made an error consulting him; I’d underestimated his capacity for holding a grudge. I’d hoped that by allowing him into my school, I could win back what passed for his good will, and in fact, he had answered my questions. But then he’d plainly hurried to Dromis to tell him I was making inquiries into his affairs.

  “Get up and draw!” Marissa said. I’d explained to her how Dromis’s protégés preferred a formal duel to an impromptu fight. Accordingly, she surmised that I’d be better off in the latter, and I suspected the same.

  Still, I didn’t move.

  “Do it!” she urged. “Lords Pivor and Baltes are your friends! They’ll keep you out of trouble with the law!”

  Possibly they would. But several of my pupils were in the room. If I drew, so would they, so too would Dromis’s followers, and the gods only knew who or how many would die in the chaotic melee that would follow.

  And even if I could prevent such a fracas by commanding my students to keep their seats, I’d labored to teach them that combat was serious business, best avoided whenever possible. If I jumped up and hurled myself at Dromis like a starving wolf, seemingly without provocation, it would make a mockery of all my homilies and admonitions.

  So I simply ate another bite of batter-fried perch and waited for the yellow-beard and his companions to reach my table.

  Once he arrived, he didn’t waste any time. Glowering down at me, he said, “Olissimal tells me you claim I teach my duelists to cheat.”

  I hadn’t, not to the cripple, not in so many words. Olissimal had figured out what I suspected for himself. Still, I saw no reason to deny it. It wouldn’t change what was about to happen. “That’s right,” I said.

  Dromis’s students glared and muttered.

  “Then I say you’re a liar.” Dromis pulled a daffodil-colored leather gauntlet from his belt and slapped it down on the tabletop. I picked it up and that was that.

  “Marissa will act for me,” I said.

  “And Olissimal for me,” Dromis replied.