A Gathering of Fools Read online

  Tired now, and with the start of a headache forming behind his eyes, Marrinek stretched his fingers and picked up Needle, focussing small amounts of power into the tool to open the wood beneath the wire of the copper net. He worked his way steadily along the staff from top to bottom, opening tiny channels in the wood, pushing in the copper net, checking that it was surrounded fully by wood, then closing the channels to seal the staff.

  At the bottom end of the staff he used more of the copper wire to link the net to the reservoir and, as he did so, the weapon finally began to come alive. With no further effort, the copper net began to drag power from the atmosphere and dump it into the reservoir.

  “Excellent,” murmured Marrinek, grinning to himself despite his fatigue. He picked up Quill again and closed the last of the channels and the gap above the reservoir, sealing the staff completely.

  He paused again, running his hands along the length of the staff, feeling the transformed ash and copper, learning the shape of the wood and the position of the plates and switches. He played with the slide panels, checking that they worked smoothly and that he could find them quickly and without looking. Then he took up Quill and focussed more power into the tool, running it along the length of the staff again and again, making ever smaller tweaks and changes until he was satisfied with the finish.

  Finally, with everything now enclosed and working and solid, he worked Twig the length of the staff once more to check the hardening and to make sure there were no flaws in the tuning. Then he put down the tools and again ran his fingers over the surface of the staff, checking that the wood was completely sealed and thoroughly hardened.

  At last happy with the staff, at least for the moment, he packed away the tools and stretched again. Then he kicked off his boots and removed his shirt and stood on the roof of the barge with his eyes closed. He hefted the staff in his hands, checking the way that it sat and the feel of the switches and the copper plates beneath his fingers, then silently he worked the staff-fighting forms he had learnt as a child.

  For two hours, he moved smoothly from low-guard to mid-guard to high-guard, flowing through the strikes, thrusts and lunges that made the short staff such a dangerous weapon. His months of captivity had slowed and weakened his body and by the end of his practise he was sweating heavily, wearier by far than he had expected but also happier and more content than he had been for months.

  Sitting once more on the roof, Marrinek laid the staff across his knees. It wasn’t yet finished but even now he could feel the potential beneath its skin as the lead power reservoir absorbed the energy that the copper net was pulling from the atmosphere. Lead was a reasonable material for a reservoir and could absorb a lot of power but gold or iridium would hold vastly more.

  For now, though, there was nothing more he could do. He ran his fingers over the surface one last time, then repacked his bag and lay down to sleep.

  By the time he woke, the sun was up and the barge was already making good progress down the river. The overnight rest stop was out of sight and the master was at the wheel, guiding the barge to one side of the river to allow a faster vessel to pass.

  “Even a blind man could see you’re not a regular traveller. What brings you out this way?” asked the master.

  Marrinek stood and stretched as he considered his answer.

  “I’m looking for my brother. Last anyone heard, he was heading for Vensille, so that’s where I’m going.”

  “Big place, Vensille. Hard to find someone amongst all those people, ‘less you know where to look, of course. He from the Empire, like you?”

  “Was it the accent?” asked Marrinek.

  “Aye. Had you pegged as soon as you opened your mouth. Might be easier to find a foreigner but a lot of folk in Vensille got no love for your Emperor. They might spill blood, given the chance. You any good with that staff you carry?”

  “I can swing it around a bit, if I have to.”

  “Well, keep it handy, that’d be my advice. Might be you never have any trouble, if you stay in the decent parts of town, but unless you’ve got a load of silver you ain’t showing my guess is you’ll be sleeping in less friendly quarters.”

  “How long till we reach Vensille?”

  The master look at the sun, gauging the time.

  “Tomorrow, around dusk, all being well. We should get to the locks tomorrow afternoon and as long as there aren’t too many boats going through we should be tied up and enjoying the pleasures of the city before sunset.”

  Marrinek nodded.

  “Good. Wake me if anything interesting happens.” And he laid back on the roof of the barge, folded the hood of his coat over his eyes and went to sleep.

  Marrinek woke around midday and ate a little more food. Then he spent most of the afternoon exercising, desperately chasing away the demons of captivity by working the forms with his staff.

  He slept again in the late afternoon then woke, hungry, as the sun sank toward the horizon, and pulled the rest of his food from his bag. He finished the bread then nibbled the cheese down to the hard rind before tossing the last of it over the boat’s low rail into the river and watching it slip below the surface. Then he pulled out a length of sausage he’d picked up on the quayside in Catshed and began to munch, staring out at the farmland laid out across land beyond the riverbank.

  “I know that look, son,” said Trant, sitting down beside him, “you’re running away from something and you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing.”

  Marrinek glanced at the old man, surprised that he should demonstrate such perception and suddenly worried about what else he might have seen.

  “Aye, don’t you worry, ’tis no business of mine. Sometimes a man just needs someone to talk to, someone who can hear his tale without judging.”

  Marrinek took another bite of sausage then offered it to Trant.

  “No, thanks. That stuff they make in Catshed don’t agree with my belly. I prefer proper Vensille sausages. They make sausages in that city like you’ve never seen before. I swear, the gods themselves would beg for the merest morsel, if they ever tasted a real Vensille sausage.”

  “I didn’t always live like this,” said Marrinek quietly, staring forlornly at the sausage, “I had the best food, fine wines, people to fetch and carry for me, beautiful homes to live in and a wife to love.”

  “Sure. And you gave it all away? Chose to walk the highways earning money as, well, as whatever you are?”

  Marrinek sighed and tossed the sausage down on his bag, no longer hungry.

  “No, I didn’t give it away. It was taken, stolen, by a man I called friend. He destroyed me. Took my liberty, my reputation, my property and my wife. Everything except my life and even that he reduced to a pale shadow of its former self.” Trant heard the bitterness and coughed.

  “You’re not joshing? You had all that and lost it? How?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I got fucked, that’s about all I know for sure, royally fucked.”

  “Aye, well. I know how that feels, right enough,” said Trant, nodding sympathetically.

  Marrinek looked sideways at him then shook his head.

  “Not like this you don’t, not like this.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” said Trant with some passion, “I wasn’t always a broken down old man with nothing but a ragged old boat and a crew of three. I was a ship’s captain. The Undaunted Ardour, she was called. Beautiful ship. Sleek and fast. Gorgeous. I used to trade along the coast and across the sea. Spice, alcohol, silks. You name it, I carried it. And I was good at it, too. Never once did we get caught by the Excise men or by pirates. Too fast, too careful.” Trant sighed and took a slug from his hip flask then passed it to Marrinek.

  “That’s good stuff,” said Marrinek through gritted teeth as he handed the flask back. He wiped his hand across his mouth.

  “So what went wrong? Gambling? Alcohol? A woman?”

  Trant took another pull on the flask and grimaced.

  “Nothing
like that. Could have understood all that, enjoyed it as it was happening, even. But no, weren’t like that at all. I had a partner. Known him all my life, best friend a man could ever want. He handled all the dockside stuff in Vensille, managed the warehouse, the deals, everything. Then one day he just ups and leaves, disappears into the wilderness, doesn’t even tell his wife where he’s going. Turns out the company had some pretty big debts by then, debts he hadn’t told me about. God knows how, but all the money went with him, every last penny. I docked in Vensille, hold full of scented oils, wine, spices and liquor, and these people just storm up the gangplank with the Watch and throw me off the ship. Tell me they’ve got a court order to seize everything on board for payment of debts.”

  “And that was it? that was the end?”

  “Like fuck it was. Fought ‘em, I did. Spent two years arguing and fighting and arguing again. Took it right to the Duke, in the end, argued my case. Lawyers’ fees took everything I’d saved. My wife left, took the kids with her, said I was obsessed. And she was right. I couldn’t let it go, had to get my ship back. Didn’t, of course, and by the time I realised it weren’t going to happen I’d spent almost everything I had and borrowed more than was sensible. By the time I stopped, it was all I could do to get a place as crew on a river boat.”

  Marrinek shook his head and took another swallow from the flask.

  “Very sad. Nothing like as bad as my tale but still sad.”

  Trant wasn’t listening. He took the flask back, drained it and stuffed it into his shirt.

  “Twenty-five years I spent hating my former partner. Looking for him, never forgetting what he’d done and how he’d destroyed my life. Twenty-five wasted, stupid years.”

  “Did you ever find him?”

  “Well, yes, as it happens. Ran into him in a bar in some godforsaken town up near the mountains, miles from the sea and from this fucking river.”

  He paused to spit over the side of the boat.

  “He was drinking. Almost didn’t recognise him without his hair and with his beard so grey it was almost white. But those eyes. I’d have known them anywhere and he recognised me just as quick as I recognised him. And he knew he’d done me wrong but there was no escape. I went straight over and smacked him between the eyes, knocked him right back off his seat. Made a real noise, stopped everything in the place. I’d have killed him there and then, had my knife out ready to do it, but somehow he managed to get back to his feet and he hit me right back. Never knew he had it in him.”

  Marrinek picked up the sausage again and took another bite. It looked like Trant was settling in for a long tale.

  “That surprised me so much I dropped the knife and fell back onto a table, knocked everything flying. That was about the end of it, far as I remember. I woke up later that day in the town gaol, just me and my partner in the cell. Seems the watch arrested us for brawling, so we got a good opportunity to talk.”

  “Awkward,” said Marrinek, “but still not really like my situation.”

  “No, well, maybe not. Still, we got to talking. Nothing else to do and twenty-five years of living to catch up on. I shouted a good deal at first, ranted even, and he just let me get it out of my system. Then, when I subsided, he just told me what really happened.”

  “What really happened? You mean he hadn’t stolen the money?”

  “Oh yes, he’d stolen the money all right, every last penny. Then he’d mortgaged his house, the warehouse, the ship, everything. Borrowed everything he could, liquidated all our assets, and given it all to some fucker called Tlome.”

  Marrinek blinked, surprised.

  “He gave it away? Why?”

  “Turns out I’d made an enemy, somewhere. Hadn’t even realised it at the time but this mad bastard took offence at something.”

  Trant waved his hand and scowled.

  “Don’t matter now, not important even if I could remember. The point is that he came looking for me, in Vensille, him and his people. They couldn’t find me ‘cos I was at sea but they found my partner, found him and squeezed, squeezed so hard he had no choice. Tlome took the money, left behind a promise to kill me if he ever caught up with me, then left.

  “And then when the banks came looking for payment my partner had nothing to give them. His only hope was that I would turn up before the debts came due but I’d found myself a woman, down the coast, and was enjoying some personal time.”

  Trant paused and shook his head.

  “Not proud of that, gorgeous though she was, not proud at all. But for that, I would’ve been back in time to make the first payment. We might have worked something out, found a solution, turned things around. But no, I was thinking with my cock again and this time I’d fucked us all.”

  “So your partner wasn’t to blame?”

  “Nope. Completely innocent, fucked over by my offence and then screwed again by my fucking around. He couldn’t pay the debts and only just managed to get out of Vensille ahead of his creditors. They had him formally exiled so he couldn’t ever go back. By the time I arrived home, the story was that he’d taken the loans and done a runner with the cash. Nobody ever knew about Tlome.”

  Marrinek whistled and shook his head again.

  “That’s a sad, sad tale.”

  “It is what it is. No use dwelling on the past, however bad it was. Better to forgive and forget, although if I ever meet Tlome I’ll gut him and feed him to the fish. Even got a description - tall, dark-skinned, tattoos - just in case.”

  Trant stood up and looked out over the river.

  “You’ve gotta be grateful for what you’ve got. You’re alive, safe and fed. What more could you ask for?” Then he ambled off down the deck to check on the crew.

  Marrinek sat there thinking and chewing on the remains of the sausage. His situation was different, of course. Arrested, imprisoned, tortured, drugged. Of course it was different.

  Only he couldn’t help but think about Trant’s partner, a man manoeuvred into ill deeds and misfortune by a malevolent third party. Could he have been the victim of something similar? No, it was ridiculous.

  But then he’d known Tentalus all his life; was it really possible that his friend could have betrayed him? Marrinek shook his head. If not Tentalus then who? No, it must have been him. Nothing else made sense, nothing else explained what had happened.

  Except. Marrinek couldn’t shake the feelings of doubt that now assailed him. He’d never really thought about it in this way before. What if his position was more like Trant’s than he knew? What if Tentalus had been tricked or deceived? It was impossible, surely?

  But the more he thought about it, the less impossible it seemed. The evening was warm but Marrinek sat and shivered at the implications. His arrest had always felt strange, rushed, desperate even, especially as he knew he’d done nothing wrong. He just couldn’t believe that Tentalus would have moved against him without strong evidence but that meant…

  Marrinek swallowed nervously as he ground his way down this new path of thought. Could he have been wrong? Two years locked in a cell with little to no contact with anyone except his gaolers had given him a somewhat warped perspective; what if that perspective was wrong? What if Tentalus hadn’t moved against him, at least not in the way it had seemed? What if there was someone else pulling the strings and Tentalus was just the tool to remove Marrinek?

  He turned that thought over and over, unable to think of anything else. The only thing that explained all the facts, such as they were, was a conspiracy against both him and Tentalus, playing one against the other in a game that neither of them had spotted.

  Marrinek sat there a long time, thinking it through, until, finally, he decided that Trant was right. Their stories were similar. He had been fucked over by person or persons unknown. He’d lost everything as a result, he was now convinced, of someone’s scheming.

  He was properly angry now, angry like he hadn’t been in years, angry enough to burn down the world to find the truth.

  And scar
ed. The fear came suddenly, a familiar feeling of cold dread and worry. Where was Adrava? What had happened to her when he had been arrested? Was she alive, imprisoned, on the run? He didn’t know, couldn’t know, and there was no way to find out, not without contacting someone inside the Empire.

  Contact meant danger but Marrinek had faced death before. He stood up and paced the deck, full of outraged, indignant energy.

  For the first time in months he thought of something beyond his own revenge, someone other than himself. Tentalus was in danger, it was the only possible explanation, and out here, poor and ill-equipped, far from home and branded a traitorous criminal, there was nothing Marrinek could do.

  Adrava too was out there somewhere and his soul yearned to be with her again.

  He bit down hard on those thoughts, drove them away with his new-found anger, forced himself to focus on the present.

  His wife was lost, beyond help for the time-being and he could only hope that she had survived. She was tough, far tougher than he was. Yes, he decided, Adrava would be out there somewhere, waiting for him.

  He might not be able to help Tentalus either, not right now, but he could consider, he could plan, he could scheme and build.

  And then, when he was ready, he would return to the Empire, find his wife, help his friend and bring down upon his enemies the most complete revenge he could conjure.

  He stood there, alone on the deck as the crew settled down for the night, and swore a silent oath of vengeance, swore it in the most terrible terms he could imagine, swore it to every god and spirit that might be listening. And now that sense of purpose burned within him and he could barely sit for the need to be doing something.

  Finally, it was time to go to work.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARRINEK SAT ON the roof of the barge as Vensille came into view. He whistled quietly, impressed despite himself, and stared around, taking in the view.