Making Peace Page 3

  And so, in this way did I come to my new home away from home.

  CHAPTER 4

  VED PRECEDED ME out of the carriage again as I gathered my writing supplies into my pack and slung it over one shoulder. I set foot in the city of Tiers for the first time. Eyes closed, I drank it all in and steadied myself. Blessedly dry stone under my feet, carved and smoothed in centuries past. Cool air swelled my lungs and filled my nose with a smell of pine so powerful it threatened to overwhelm me. The distant sounds of a human city rolled over me from far below us over the tier edge, people hawking and shouting and laughing. Not a whisper sounded on our street except the wind, blowing through my hair and rustling my shirt collar. Satisfied, I opened my eyes, brushed Ved aside, and strode to the door.

  What does one do in this situation? Walk on in like it’s a shop, or knock? Knocking seemed like the more civilized thing to do. The massive pine door surprised me by giving not at all under the weight of my pounding, no rattle or wobble to it, not unlike knocking on solid stone. Ved began unloading my luggage.

  The silence stretched on without an answer. I had resolved to knock again when there was a crash behind me. “Ved, that’s a suitcase, not a damned—“ I stopped when I heard a latch inside the door spring open and turned back with my best smile in place, but the latch sounds went on. Five separate latches opened before the door finally swung open.

  A woman in the middle of her life greeted me with one arched eyebrow. She had a round, plump face and wore a brown and green dress covered by a lengthy apron that was mostly white. Her blonde hair was drawn into braids that swept up around the sides of her head to form a crown.

  Her eyes gave me the once-over. I was glad to have brushed most of the dust and blood off my new shoes, but I wondered what she made of me. Typical of Garden, my outfit was all of one color (teal, my favorite) paired with a white shirt and accented with one metallic color (silver, my other favorite). I had left my long overcoat to drape off my shoulders and hang over my handmade leather satchel (a gift from an Iris City lady, an admirer of my work). With my slim frame and tendency to favor layering, most folks in the publishing office joked that I looked like a walking scarecrow. The woman in the apron remarked on no such comparison, not aloud at least.

  Apparently satisfied, she met my eyes again. “You’ll be Belkan, then?” she asked in a deeper voice than I was expecting. No “Mister Candor”; no “Master Author”. Her accent, which I guessed to be the local one, was full of ups and downs in vocal tone; very expressive rather than the flatter and more refined tones of Garden.

  It occurred to me that for all I knew, this woman could be the lady of the house. I decided to err on the side of caution and sketched her a courtly bow right there on her doorstep. “Indeed, I am Belkan Candor. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Awful fancy for our house, Belkan Candor,” she said, but I’d won a smile. It lit her whole face as bright as a lantern. “My name’s Cora Fields. I keep this house, and all the folk inside it. Come in and find your place, then.” She stepped back and gestured for me to come inside. I turned back to tell Ved to finish with the luggage, but it was piled neatly behind me. He stood back beside the carriage, one hand on the door.

  I must have looked confused, because he answered my unspoken question. “Safe delivery, Bel. That were the arrangement.” He scuffed his foot, like he was expecting I’d argue the point.

  How does one bid permanent farewell to a journey companion? “Well then. Goodbye.” I tossed him a wave, to which he nodded. He swung himself up inside the carriage, and moments later it was out of sight. I turned back to follow Cora into the house.

  Despite the building’s plain exterior, the interior was rather nice. Carved and polished wood of a rich, dark hue made up every floor, wall, and ceiling. The entryway itself was a large hall filled with pillars and short tables, wooden chairs, and flower vases overflowing with the local flora. Simple tapestries covered patches of the walls, but it would have been a crime to cover up too much of such beautiful woodwork. Cora walked ahead of me through a door to the right, and I followed.

  The door opened into a mess hall, and the savory aromas of grilled meat and fresh coffee filled the room. This was more like what I expected in a pseudo-military barracks. Wooden tables and chairs filled the room, with folks of all colors and sexes seated seemingly at random, many in obvious servant uniforms. Every table seemed to have some activity going on, from eating and drinking to card and dice games to folks just reading books. Cora led me to a table with three people seated at it, indicating I should take the fourth seat, which I did.

  She moved to stand over me before I could inspect my companions. “What do you like to eat?”

  I shook my head and cleared my throat. “Something to drink, please. Anything will do.” I gave her my best smile, which she returned. She patted me on the shoulder and headed toward another door at the back of the room.

  I turned to take in my companions. One of them was a woman in a highly conservative dress of cornflower blue, with a strong jaw and pointed chin. She had a mole like a tear under her left eye, and her chestnut brown hair was wound into two tight buns at the base of her head behind her ears. Hazel eyes gave me a kind look of greeting, crinkled into a smile. I guessed her to be my age or only a little older, perhaps her very early thirties at most. She had pale skin and a slender neck without adornment, all the fashion in Garden ten years ago. She was sitting with her legs folded neatly to one side beneath the chair. She held out her hand as a lady of Garden would do and gave me a smile so radiant I almost had to blink spots from my eyes. I took her hand delicately in my own, suddenly feeling like a fool slumped into my chair as I was.

  “I’m called Shield,” she said in a perfect Garden accent. “I do much of the healing for our cell, though I don’t possess much magical ability beyond that.”

  “Belkan Candor,” I said, “and I’m immensely pleased to hear the accent of my homeworld even in a place as far removed as this.”

  She looked momentarily surprised but covered it well and gave me another smile, though not as radiant as the first. What nerve had I touched?

  Next was the man seated to her left, opposite myself. He was an older man, with grizzled black hair cropped short, a square face, a bushy mustache with a trimmed beard, and with what I understand to be the minimum of scars required for military men. He wore a plain white shirt and dark pants, all pressed and starched to perfection. This man was my contact. He held out his hand but in the Sivern fashion, his fist lightly closed with the back of his hand slanted toward me. “Captain Dancer, First Keeper,” he said in a deep voice. I touched the back of my closed hand to his, letting it rest there with medium pressure for two heartbeats as I’d been schooled in preparation for this trip. He withdrew his hand and seemed pleased at my manners.

  I turned to the last man seated at my right and waited for him to introduce himself. Cold gray eyes met mine in a face right out of nightmares. How one man could accumulate so many scars in forty years and survive, I had no idea. A black beard mercifully covered the lower third of his face except where the wounds had left narrow pathways through the hair. His head was shaved completely bald, displaying more puckered scars. Thick black chest hair jutted out of his brown shirt, and my eyes traced the scars down his neck and into the open V of his tunic.

  I must have recoiled a bit, because his mouth crooked into a humorless half-smirk. I tried to cover for my lapse and held out my closed hand. He eyed it, and for a moment I had the terrifying image of him sinking his teeth into my hand. Instead he reached out and tapped my fist with his own, just short enough to give offense if I chose to take it. There was no way I was about to pick a fight, and he knew it.

  “Ugly,” he said, his voice like gravel grinding underfoot.

  It took me a moment to process what he had said. Was he insulting me? What could a walking mass of scar tissue find objectionable about my appearance? I cast about for some deeper meaning, my hand still held
out in the open air where I’d forgotten to withdraw it.

  Wait a minute. “…That’s a NAME?”

  He arched an eyebrow at me, and his lip curled almost imperceptibly. He reminded me of Ved: brutish and laconic. I doubted he knew how to express himself without violence. I took an instant disliking to him, and from his sneer it was clear he felt the same toward me.

  I finally realized my hand was waving around and pulled it back as quickly as I could. We all sat there in silence. Cora walked up a few seconds later and set down a mug for me. I flashed her my best smile and thanked her, for which she patted me on the head and left. I sipped what must have been the local beer and looked at the captain for guidance. He pushed his chair back with a scrape and rose. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  I stood and started to follow him, remembering almost too late to bow to Shield. She giggled behind her mug. I turned and hurried to catch up to Captain Dancer.

  He led me back to the main hall where I saw someone had dragged in my luggage, and we went up a wooden staircase tucked away behind another door. We climbed up to the fourth floor where the staircase ended. Without speaking, he led me down a long wooden hallway to a door at the far end. This led to what looked to be an office, with one other door leading off it.

  The office was paneled in the same dark wood, but with many more decorations lining the walls: large maps, small paintings, scrolls holding everything from poetry to local proclamations, some of them dating back several years. A thick gray carpet covered the floor and led us to a carved oak desk large enough to stretch out and sleep on. He pointed at one of the two chairs in front of the desk and dropped himself into the large wingback chair behind it. I settled into one of the smaller chairs shaped like a half-cup, what we called a teatime chair on Garden.

  I half expected him to put his feet up on his desk, but he did not. Instead he rested against the back of the chair and gave me a calculating look. “You’re here.”

  I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. “So I am.”

  We studied each other in silence. I knew this trick, waiting until the other party felt too uncomfortable and had to say something. I used it a lot in my own interviews.

  At last, Captain leaned forward and fished around in a drawer of his desk. He pulled out a book and tossed it, letting it skid across the desk to me. It was a dog-eared copy of my latest novel. I’m always both pleased and sick to see my work so well used and yet so poorly treated.

  “I’ve been catching up on your work. I like it. Of course,” he said, leaning back into his chair, “none of that is real.”

  I waited.

  He arched one brow, letting me know we both knew this game. He waved one hand, setting the game completely aside, and started speaking. “I like what you’re here for, writing about the politicking that goes on here on Sivern. When your publisher approached us, I wasn’t sure. But the more I think about it, the better this embed idea becomes.”

  I shifted in my seat, wishing I could stand up. I’d been sitting in that carriage for two weeks. “What do you like about it?”

  “Exposure.” He rapped his knuckles against the desk. “The Houses here, their deeds are done in secret. Knowing someone is recording them and will distribute that work across the empire, it heightens the stakes.” He leaned forward again. “I’ve got some conditions.”

  “Naturally.”

  He held up one finger. “No personal details. My people aren’t here to become famous. Many of them are here to hide and still perform a service.” I thought back to Shield downstairs, and Ugly. Lady’s light, what a name.

  Captain seemed to be expecting my input, so I nodded to indicate agreement. “No personal details, in the final document. Names changed, identifying details omitted. Agreed.”

  He nodded, apparently satisfied, and held up a second finger. “Honesty. Complete honesty in all things. Both in writing, and in reporting to me about writing.”

  With nothing to add, I nodded.

  Third finger. “Stay behind my people. Let them do their work. If it gets dangerous, hunker down. Any combat training?” I must have looked alarmed, because he waved his hand. “We’ll give you some survival basics tonight. Enough to keep you out of the way. That’s it. Questions for me?”

  I thought about it. “I’m to be quartered here?”

  He nodded.

  “Same barracks as everyone else?”

  He nodded again.

  Time to give him my own conditions, then. “I need access to each Keeper for interviews, to ask questions of them. And the ability to go on every excursion, no matter how trifling or dangerous. Not to be kept in the dark or shielded from anything, no matter how embarrassing for the Keepers or any House.”

  The captain nodded and waved one hand, indicating consent.

  I considered, looking out the only window in the room. The sun was still high, and I could see out over the rooftops of the buildings around us. Because of the sheer drop, only blue sky filled the rest of the view.

  I turned back to the captain. “You’ve collected quite a group here. What guides your selection?”

  “People select themselves in or out. I just listen and make it official.”

  “You must have some sort of criteria, though.”

  “I do.”

  I waited, but he didn’t offer to explain it, so I decided on a different approach. “And all of the members of your cell meet those criteria?” I thought about Ugly.

  Captain smiled, maybe guessing my thoughts. “They do, or they will. A leader’s job is not only to see who someone is, but what direction they want to go, and how to help them get there. Sometimes they just need to learn it’s possible to get there at all. Faith in someone is a powerful thing. People will rise or fall to meet your expectations.”

  “And what made you take this position?”

  He seemed surprised for a moment. He certainly seemed to give it serious thought, stroking his mustache as the two of us sat together in silence for several long minutes. Finally, “Peace.”

  “You took a job as leader of secret police to get some peace?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “To make peace. The people of this city, most of them have very little. Even wealth doesn’t give you peace. It has to be won, and it’s won hard. Few people here are willing to do what it takes, sacrifice what is necessary, to get that peace. So the majority goes without it, and they suffer. You probably saw plenty of that on your way up here, I’ll bet.” I nodded, thinking back to the kids mobbing my carriage, the girls for sale, the boy killed over a stolen money pouch.

  We sat quietly again, listening to the sounds of the house. Floorboards creaked somewhere, and he closed his eyes, listening to the natural reports of his home.

  I hated to interrupt him, but he did ask if I had questions. “How much is this peace worth to you, Captain Dancer? How far are the Keepers willing to go to attain it for the people?”

  He grinned, his eyes still closed. He opened them and relaxed into a smile, and all his years seemed to settle on him at once. “That’s the question you’re here to answer, right Belkan? Give me an answer when your book is finished. For now, I’m sending you out with Shield, Ugly, and a third Keeper you haven’t met yet. There have been reports of bandits preying specifically on members of the Second House, and they’re going to look into it. When it’s just one House over and over, we check it out just in case.” He gave me a stern look. “Try not to get hurt on your first trip out, Belkan.”

  I held up my hands. “Trust me, the last thing I want is to get stabbed. I’ll stay well away from the excitement.”

  And this, reader, is where you came in. Yes, I got stabbed. Ha ha. Let’s move past it, shall we, to where we walked back into Keeper headquarters afterward…

  CHAPTER 5

  THE KEEPERS DEPOSITED their wounded prisoners in the jail underneath the house, while I went upstairs to change out of my tragically ruined favorite shirt. I came back downstairs and walked into the mess hall
of the barracks to find the Keepers at their various pursuits.

  Ugly and Shield were sitting at a table just inside the door. Ugly’s elbows rested on the table, holding a mug of ale a few inches from his chin. Shield, as per usual, was pumping an iron dumbbell to keep her muscles primed between jobs. I heard her say, “You could have taken him alive,” before they caught me entering and fell silent.

  Vapor was not present, but Tavel and Sen were. Tavel was a young man and tall, easily clearing six feet. He had a face like an advertising model, and his mocha skin and long sandy blond hair with large ringlets marked him as a native. He moved with the grace of a deer, flowing and agile. He was perhaps the friendliest of the Keepers and he always had a smile ready for anyone and everyone.

  As for Sen, his skin was more tanned than olive, with shoulder-length wavy black hair. He was handsome where Tavel might be called pretty. I liked Sen, at first. Everyone did until he opened his mouth.

  “Her tits were out to here!” Sen held his hands out a disturbing distance from his own chest as I settled in beside him at their table. Getting only a noncommittal grunt from Tavel, Sen turned to me. “You’d have done the same.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Paid her price.”

  “Ah.” I took a mug, filled it from the pitcher on the table.

  “It was pretty high.”

  “I’m sure it was.” I looked across the table at Tavel. “Could have used you today on patrol.” Tavel smiled back at me, a big toothy grin. He pointed at my head, raised his eyebrows. “Feel much clearer now, thanks. She does good work.” I jerked my head to indicate Shield across the room, already back into her conversation with Ugly. She was leaning in toward him now, talking earnestly. He was turned toward the fire, and I couldn’t tell if he was listening.

  Captain walked through the door, carrying files under one arm and a mug of steaming coffee. No jumping to attention, I noted. Everyone quietly took stock of his presence and waited to see if he wanted to be noticed. He did. He strode to the table in one corner, the table at which no one else ever sat. He dropped his folders, turned to appraise the room, took a sip, and waited.