fic - part 4
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last_herald_mage-i am not 100% on this chapter (there was a scene i kept taking in and out because I can't decide where it goes) but I wanted to post stuff before taking off for the weekend. aghfff this fic is enough of an unwieldy mess that I expect I'll do some doing-over before I ever drop it on AO3 anyway. Until then, more Exposition And Awkwardness it is.
He awoke to a slamming door and footsteps pattering up the creaking stairs in the hallway. Someone was shouting outside. There was a loud thump, and in the dull morning light he saw Stefen sit up in his bed. "Fuck," he muttered, crawling fully-clothed from under his blankets.
Another thump. It was coming from the front door, he realised. He sat up slowly, and Stefen hissed at him. "Hide. Now," and he pointed at the panels of silk around the room. Spurred by his urgency, Valdir rolled to his feet and tossed his tatty blanket in the corner over his pack, and slipped quickly behind one of the strange curtains - a panel of bright green silk. It was but slight cover, and even in the dimness likely obvious there was a man behind it. He readied an illusion quickly, as he heard Stef clatter out of the room.
He heard the heavy door open. "I heard you," Stefen said, words deadened by wood. "Can I help you, officers?" His voice, Valdir noted, had changed completely - it was as high and formal as if he were acting out a courtly romance on a stage. Valdir only caught a few garbled words of the reply - trollop plying wares in - before Stef's voice cut in again sharply. "Sirs, I believe you're referring to my wife."
The long silence indicated that Valdir was not the only one taken aback by that comment. He twitched in confusion, silk rippling around him.
He heard another grunted question. "Gladly," Stefen replied ostentatiously. Within moments, he heard the door flung open. Shadows, footsteps only yards from where he hid. "Hey there," Stefen continued. "I'd thank you not to disturb my home. My wife," he added indignantly, "has retired upstairs to rest her delicate feet."
The silk beside Valdir rustled, and he heard a hand clap against the wall. "Didn't look like no one's wife." He tried to see through the thin cloth - he could make out a shape, a helmeted head, but that was all.
"How dare you disparage her," huffed Stefen. "My Taja," he lamented, and a woman called down from the stairs. "Please forgive these most mistaken men -"
The farce moved back to the hallway, and Valdir dared to slip his head out from the edge of the silk. The door was closed, and he could hear tone more clearly than words - a woman, shrill, and Stefen placating their visitors. Soon enough, the front door slammed closed again and Vanyel heard the bolt slide home. "Damn it, Taj," Stefen muttered. His voice was all his own again. "Come here," and he tramped back into view, a woman hanging from his arm, smudging at her eyes with a handkerchief. She was striking; long-necked, half a head taller than Stefen, her gown an odd crisscross of panels, her face high-cheekboned and obviously foreign. Blonde hair escaped from an elaborate network of pins, falling over one bright blue eye. Just below her collarbone was a mark, in Cejan script. "Tajinet, Valdir," Stefen gestured, and she greeted him with what seemed like a polite term of address, though not one he had ever heard before.
"Your wife?"
Stefen snorted. "Though no god or priest know of it, nor either of the two of us. Tajinet and I are married only in the eyes of any nosy watchmen who follows one of us home. That's the first time they been here in a good while," he noted, as she departed with a bored wave. At Valdir's raised eyebrows, Stefen added, "She's a charwoman - starts early mornings when it's still dark and quiet out, gets ninepence from the baker, thruppence from the tannery, tenpence from the bookbinder, and soforth. Takes in needlework to while away the rest of the day. We don't bother each other much, but the bastard watchers get one look at her and think she's a whore." He scowled. "I don't mind playing along. She returns the favour if they ever come knocking when I'm - entertaining." He cast a meaningful look at Valdir.
He thought back to all he'd seen the previous night at the market that still throbbed with light in his memories. "I saw those Cejan marks on some of the prostitutes -"
"Runaway slaves, same as Taj. It's one way to turn a coin when the whole world knows you's not meant to be here," Stefen shrugged. "Them at the market, Scale protect them if anyone come looking. Poll has ways of dealing with the watchmen - ways that don't get anyone carried off over the river." Stefen grimaced and put a hand to his eyes, sceptically examining the daylight that came through the window. He reached under the upturned bowl on the table; the expected scrap of yesterday's bread appeared, and he tore it in half with his hands. "Should head out," he declared. "Got people to find. I wouldn't worry about your stuff, not with Taj home."
Protection against me taking off on you, he noted, and paused in the doorway. "Delicate feet?" he asked, doubtfully.
"Pretty sure Taj could open beer bottles with them toenails," Stefen replied cheerfully as he stepped out into the daylight.
By morning, Cul Aber was dappled with cloudshadow; pale grey stones bleached by sun, alleyways in dark grey shrouds. Stefen led Valdir through them nonetheless. Here and there, puddles of water lingered; it had rained again in the night. Birds circled above the rooftops, and in the gutters he saw two children gathering stones, ready for the moment one of the creatures landed.
It didn't take long. One webbed foot resting on a rooftop and a rock flew up, sending the bird careening one way and two roof-tiles the other. The air filled with a cacophony of laughter and avian screams.
As the agitated song died down, Stefen augmented it with one of his own. Valdir gritted his teeth, and began counting his own footsteps, attempting not to react to Stefen's choice of music. No. No, I can't keep ignoring his evident fondness for the Demonsbane song, not without looking very unpleasant about it. Conversation was the only readily apparent means to interrupt. "You like that song awfully much," he ventured. Now stop.
Stefen shrugged, and his eyes grew distant. "Yeah, I do. It's a good story, you know? Gets to me, that there'd be someone who'd just do all that. Got all that power, and instead of using it for himself, he put his neck out for some people who weren't even his sort," and he shook his head. "I first heard that song when I was a kid. Made me wish there were really people like Vanyel. Someone who'd do right by anyone as needed it." He stared throughtfully at the ground they tramped upon, and then looked sidelong at Valdir as he attempted not to squirm. "So if you was a soldier down by Karse," he said slowly. "Maybe you'd know."
"Know what?"
"Is he real?" Valdir's steps slowed to nothing. "I never thought so - but I met a man from Kettlesmith who swore that he was - he came through there once with all of his panolpy, going north from the border. I don't figure people in stories for real, though," he speculated darkly. "Saying Vanyel is real, that's like saying a phoenix is real, or a god."
Phoenixes are also real, he thought helplessly as he pondered what to say. A panolpy. What would I even do with a panolpy? Stefen seemed to shrink from him glumly - some of his discomfort must have shown in his face. "Herald-Mage Vanyel is real," he told him carefully. "The stories, I wouldn't put so much stock in."
"He's real? But he never saved no Hardorners?" Stefen sounded disappointed.
"I heard he did," stammered Valdir. "But I doubt it was so grand as all that. It's just a song."
"You ever see him?" Stefen asked, and his voice was full of awe.
"Ah - only from a great distance," Valdir hedged, feeling his voice rise.
"Oh my gods," and Stefen bounced a little on his toes. "Herald-Mage Vanyel. It's all true? I never believed that man from Kettlesmith, I thought Vanyel must at least have been dead for a thousand years, but you're saying it's all true?" I did not say it was all true. Valdir held his tongue in sour frustration. "Just think, if he were here to clear up Cul Aber..." and Stefen trailed off, staring at the gutters, flecks of sun in his eyes.
"What would he do?" Valdir asked into the silence, in spite of himself.
"Dunno. Dunno who he'd even want to take down first - the gangs, the lord mayor, the watchmen... Or the rest of us," he shrugged. "What I do know is, it would be like a story - there'd be something for a hero to do. Not this damn mess. Though if I got to see him here, I wouldn't care what else happened," and a transcendent smile rose on his face.
Valdir vaguely resented whoever it was that Stefen was smiling about.
Not me, that's for sure. I only ever did whatever damned messy thing I had to, and then some bard made it rhyme clean so I could never explain how it really -
Stefen reached a guarding hand to Valdir's arm, and pointed at the wall ahead of them. "See that?" he gestured. They were at the corner of a tiny crossroad; across from them, a jagged scratch marked the wall. "This is Rockharbour land," he said quietly.
"Is it dangerous?" A little danger might make a pleasant distraction right now.
Stefen shrugged. "Not if you stick with me. I wouldn't stray too far, though. Folks with light fingers and heavy cugels, you get me."
Valdir stared at the scratches they passed - scratches, scuffs, chipped walls, continuing along as they walked. Border disputes. Familiar signs, in any form. "So why are the Rockharbour called that? I might have thought the Lighthouse Market would be called a rock harbour..."
"It's a joke. And maybe Lighthouse Market is a joke on a joke, I don't know. Up here though," and he paused, considering the lay of things, and then headed down a narrow wynd that forked eastwards as it climbed to meet the top of the river wall.
The cold came on them fast as the Culway came into view, and Valdir huddled in his cloak. But after the decrepitness of the city, the sight of the river in daylight - vast and high and racing north toward the ocean at the top of the world, spray like diamonds scattering against the wall - awed him. It's like a node - sum total of many waterways, a channel for life and strength, an artery. He'd never seen so much water aside from in Evendim. In the spring tide, the Culway ran so fast it was almost clear - he could see every grey-green rock below them. Far to the southeast, he saw the River Aila flowing into the Culway from the east; the river that passed through Lydra, on the other side of the border.
He closed his eyes. If he reached out his mind to the same place where he'd touched Harren two days ago - it would be so very much easier now, and even the pitiful energy he had would be more than enough to stretch across the distance - and he would feel nothing.
Stefen nudged him. "Something up?"
"Nothing." I'd feel nothing. He shook his head slowly. What had Harri had done after they spoke, in the day and a half before he and his Companion had died? Would Harri would have paid for passage upriver, or headed overland to the Culway before seeking a ferryman? Who had he found - Cejan smugglers, Cul Aber rivermen? Had he encountered other travellers, like the runaways? How long had he still believed he'd make it home?
"See now," Stefen continued. "Lighthouse Market is that way," and he pointed southeast, upriver, around the great convex curve that defined Cul Aber's edge. "It's not so easy to make out at high water, but you see over there?" He gestured to a point not far from them, where the water churned white, strange eddies swirling in the flow. The pattern, he saw, stretched outward across the water, spiral after spiral until too far out to see. "That's the rock harbour. Started a long, long time ago - story is, they used some old river defences set back when Valdemar was running scared of the East. Moved things around a bit, set traps along the riverbed. Anyone headed downriver toward Iftel, Rockharbour meet them at the docks, friendly like, and offer them the service of a guide to get them past those dangerous rapids 'tween Cul Aber and Garamill - that's the next port north. Same in Garamill - the Rockharbour men there ply them as headed south. Make their way upriver, downriver. Anyone who don't want to pay," and Stefen shrugged. "Some folks make it by, but Rockharbour picks up their cargo if they don't."
Valdir's eyebrows raised. "Doesn't the port master know the entire river's being held to ransom?"
Stefen snorted, and rubbed his fingertips together. "Gets about half. Of what he knows about," he explained. "Meanwhile, there's a good trade in, ah, slightly damp goods over at the Grand Bazaar. I figured I should show you around there. See what's new in this week. Ask where it all came from," and his eyes narrowed against the wind.
They retreated from the bitter riverside, down to the street they'd walked earlier, and then Stefen lead him up the hill on the other side by a thin path - always his preference, Valdir had noted. This end of the city seemed to be made of undulating steps and cobbled valleys; he had the sense that Cul Aber had originally been a rounded hillside that the river swept around. A place where Valdemar stood and took a last, lingering, guarded look eastward. How long ago had some fool set defences against an enemy that had forgotten about them? Today the fort atop the city was no more than a folly, and every watchman he'd glimpsed on the walls had looked only inward for trouble.
He felt eyes on them as they passed; marked men on tavern-stoops, caps tipped to Stefen; he wasn't sure he would have liked to pass through these streets alone, though in other ways, the Rockharbour quarter seemed more respectable than the one Stefen inhabited. Fewer cracks in walls and window-panes; glass so clear that he sometimes glimpsed the lives behind it; a woman sweeping, another rocking a cradle. "Nice, isn't it?" Stefen muttered. "Yorann keeps saying I should live here."
"You disagree," Valdir noted.
Stefen gave a wave of his hand. "Would be strange. Feels too exposed, right at the foot of yon hill," and he pointed his thumb at the looming shadow of the once-fort, now-manor. "And I lived all my life in Scale land."
"You're with the Scale? You don't wear their mark -"
"I'm with myself. No one marks me," Stefen said firmly. "Ask me, marking people is the whole damn problem. Just another damn wall you got to find a crack through. Here now," he announced, and Valdir saw that the route ahead of them spilled out into a bustling square, full of street-traders.
The North Gate rose to the right of them, a stone arch above rusted iron doors that didn't look like they'd been closed in years; beyond lay the land route to Garamill. He wondered what lurked out there, beyond the walls and out of the reach of the Rockharbour. Bandits, I assume. Doubtless allied with the Rockharbour. And sharing their take with the gate-guards when they bring it home. If the city's dilapidation and Stefen's stories hadn't disillusioned him, the beggars in every corner of the square would have done so. Ruin and filth - and then you, making your way with music? He closed his eyes for a bare moment, and remembered the feeling of red light lapping over him beside the river; warming him as he shivered, soothing him as he ached. The city's strange heart, beating so close to him. He followed Stef as he between the heavily-laden carts rolling in and out of the city - the stink of oxen so thick that merely breathing was unpleasant.
Valdir glanced at the stalls around the near edge of the square as they passed - food and spices, bolts of cloth, nothing interesting. He noted that at the corner of the square was an old theatre, a fading signboard hanging sideward above the wide-open doors in its outer wall proclaiming 'The Grand Northgate Playhouse.' He concluded this was the source of the bazaar's Grandness, as he saw no other sign of it. The market snaked through the streets ahead of them, stallholders selling simple things, dubious herbs, and the perfectly normal goods he now knew were robbed from the drowned. Stefen leaned close as the street narrowed around them. "You see something familiar for sale, you tell me," he murmured, and then spun on his heel and peered at the rows of trinkets on the stall beside them, giving a jaunty wave to the stallholder. "Morning, Shute."
"Stef," she nodded. "Looking for something particular?"
Stef sighed at length. "I gone pissed off Taj - you know Tajinet, no? Maybe you don't. Anyway, I got amends to make. Know where I could see something new to these shores that might impress a lady, eh?"
"Ain't nothing new under this moon," she sniffed. As they spoke, Valdir cast his eyes along the trestle; he saw brooches, long hair-pins, neatly folded clothes. Nothing that could even conceivably have belonged to Harri. Stefen bantered back and forth with the brooch-seller, and the next beside her, about who had newly come by what, and Valdir listened intently even as he pretended to ignore them. He wasn't even sure he'd know what to look for if he saw it -
"Valdir!"
He turned, trying to place the voice. Who? Who even knows me? The face of the man striding toward him was opaque to him, somehow even harder to find in his memory than the voice. Ruddy, round, bearded; older and softer than most of the toughs who might have caught Valdir's name lately. "You made it out!" He was smiling even as Valdir's stomach sank. "It's me, Dower," and he grabbed Valdir's arms and shook them vigorously.
Oh, gods.
"Old friend?" asked Stefen, looking curiously over his shoulder.
"Ah. Stefen, Dower."
He gave an awkward introductory wave, but Dower snorted. "Everyone knows Stef," he explained, as if to a child.
Stefen smiled graciously, but shot Valdir a questioning look. He explained quickly. "Dower and I met a short while ago in Mountathler -"
"In the cells under the fortress, no less!" continued Dower in triumph.
At that, Stefen's eyebrows retreated into his hairline. "I did tell you it was just a misunderstanding," Valdir replied quickly. "They soon realised I wasn't really a smuggler - what a notion! - and I headed off as soon as I could. Didn't want to risk more of my luck."
"Aye, you said you had business up in Cul Aber," and Dower smiled curiously.
Fishing for his cut - is that all anyone ever does here? He shrugged affably. "If it comes to anything, I'll be sure to let you know," he pledged, and he shot Stefen a pleading look. Please. Get me away. I'll come up with a story to tell you later.
Stef hooked a merciful arm about him - much tighter than mercy alone required, and his warmth against Valdir's ribs seemed to momentarily still the biting breeze. Dower flinched from them as most men might, and Stefen spun him about with a smirk and a swagger and frogmarched him down the market.
Valdir tried to keep in step as Stef's grip on him loosened; a quick glance behind confirmed that Dower had made himself scarce. That had been doubly unsettling - I would never have thought to see my cellmates again. And it's a long time since I last thought to flaunt myself just to have a man leave me be...
The thought of the game he'd played with Leren all those years ago only served to remind him of the darkness that had devoured the priest's mind. Perhaps he had followed that same darkness to Cul Aber. Or someone had. Not the harmless minstrel Valdir, that was for sure. Stefen released him, and eyed him questioningly. "Well, that's not someone I thought I'd run into again," murmured Valdir, scrambling for scraps to patch up his torn history.
"Night in lockup? And I took you for a nice boy." The smile fell from his face. "You want my advice?" he whispered. "This ain't Mountather. Cul Aber, you got to make damn sure you've dropped an anchor. If the watchmen pick you up here, you tell 'em you live at my place on Old Arch Street and Masonway, and you got family no further out than Horstein - whatever you got to say to stop them calling you vagrant, even if you is one." His arm dropped stiffly. "Best if you keep out of trouble, mind."
"You seem to manage it," he replied, confused.
"I learned. Got to be someone. Got to take care of yourself." His swagger became a shiver in the cold breeze, hair falling over his face so Valdir couldn't see his expression. "Don't forget it, okay?"
Valdir nodded, dropping his eyes to the trestle that rocked on the cobbles beside him, laden with oddments of leatherwork and metal - true to Stefen's word, much of both showed signs of water damage, shrivelled or corroded in the Culway's dark embrace.
His eyes fell on a tarnished silver ring.
He gasped, and reached for it before he could stop himself. The stallholder started as he flicked it onto its edge, turning it through its full arc. Simple knotwork, a pattern of silver braids - and there at the back of the loop, the place where the knots changed direction; a quirk, an engraver's error, a one-of-a-kind mistake.
He knew that pattern's reflection so well. He'd seen it only in reverse image. Red ridges impressed on wax, cracking under his fingers. A promise set over a secret.
:Tran, I've found Harri's seal ring.:
-->Part 5
He awoke to a slamming door and footsteps pattering up the creaking stairs in the hallway. Someone was shouting outside. There was a loud thump, and in the dull morning light he saw Stefen sit up in his bed. "Fuck," he muttered, crawling fully-clothed from under his blankets.
Another thump. It was coming from the front door, he realised. He sat up slowly, and Stefen hissed at him. "Hide. Now," and he pointed at the panels of silk around the room. Spurred by his urgency, Valdir rolled to his feet and tossed his tatty blanket in the corner over his pack, and slipped quickly behind one of the strange curtains - a panel of bright green silk. It was but slight cover, and even in the dimness likely obvious there was a man behind it. He readied an illusion quickly, as he heard Stef clatter out of the room.
He heard the heavy door open. "I heard you," Stefen said, words deadened by wood. "Can I help you, officers?" His voice, Valdir noted, had changed completely - it was as high and formal as if he were acting out a courtly romance on a stage. Valdir only caught a few garbled words of the reply - trollop plying wares in - before Stef's voice cut in again sharply. "Sirs, I believe you're referring to my wife."
The long silence indicated that Valdir was not the only one taken aback by that comment. He twitched in confusion, silk rippling around him.
He heard another grunted question. "Gladly," Stefen replied ostentatiously. Within moments, he heard the door flung open. Shadows, footsteps only yards from where he hid. "Hey there," Stefen continued. "I'd thank you not to disturb my home. My wife," he added indignantly, "has retired upstairs to rest her delicate feet."
The silk beside Valdir rustled, and he heard a hand clap against the wall. "Didn't look like no one's wife." He tried to see through the thin cloth - he could make out a shape, a helmeted head, but that was all.
"How dare you disparage her," huffed Stefen. "My Taja," he lamented, and a woman called down from the stairs. "Please forgive these most mistaken men -"
The farce moved back to the hallway, and Valdir dared to slip his head out from the edge of the silk. The door was closed, and he could hear tone more clearly than words - a woman, shrill, and Stefen placating their visitors. Soon enough, the front door slammed closed again and Vanyel heard the bolt slide home. "Damn it, Taj," Stefen muttered. His voice was all his own again. "Come here," and he tramped back into view, a woman hanging from his arm, smudging at her eyes with a handkerchief. She was striking; long-necked, half a head taller than Stefen, her gown an odd crisscross of panels, her face high-cheekboned and obviously foreign. Blonde hair escaped from an elaborate network of pins, falling over one bright blue eye. Just below her collarbone was a mark, in Cejan script. "Tajinet, Valdir," Stefen gestured, and she greeted him with what seemed like a polite term of address, though not one he had ever heard before.
"Your wife?"
Stefen snorted. "Though no god or priest know of it, nor either of the two of us. Tajinet and I are married only in the eyes of any nosy watchmen who follows one of us home. That's the first time they been here in a good while," he noted, as she departed with a bored wave. At Valdir's raised eyebrows, Stefen added, "She's a charwoman - starts early mornings when it's still dark and quiet out, gets ninepence from the baker, thruppence from the tannery, tenpence from the bookbinder, and soforth. Takes in needlework to while away the rest of the day. We don't bother each other much, but the bastard watchers get one look at her and think she's a whore." He scowled. "I don't mind playing along. She returns the favour if they ever come knocking when I'm - entertaining." He cast a meaningful look at Valdir.
He thought back to all he'd seen the previous night at the market that still throbbed with light in his memories. "I saw those Cejan marks on some of the prostitutes -"
"Runaway slaves, same as Taj. It's one way to turn a coin when the whole world knows you's not meant to be here," Stefen shrugged. "Them at the market, Scale protect them if anyone come looking. Poll has ways of dealing with the watchmen - ways that don't get anyone carried off over the river." Stefen grimaced and put a hand to his eyes, sceptically examining the daylight that came through the window. He reached under the upturned bowl on the table; the expected scrap of yesterday's bread appeared, and he tore it in half with his hands. "Should head out," he declared. "Got people to find. I wouldn't worry about your stuff, not with Taj home."
Protection against me taking off on you, he noted, and paused in the doorway. "Delicate feet?" he asked, doubtfully.
"Pretty sure Taj could open beer bottles with them toenails," Stefen replied cheerfully as he stepped out into the daylight.
By morning, Cul Aber was dappled with cloudshadow; pale grey stones bleached by sun, alleyways in dark grey shrouds. Stefen led Valdir through them nonetheless. Here and there, puddles of water lingered; it had rained again in the night. Birds circled above the rooftops, and in the gutters he saw two children gathering stones, ready for the moment one of the creatures landed.
It didn't take long. One webbed foot resting on a rooftop and a rock flew up, sending the bird careening one way and two roof-tiles the other. The air filled with a cacophony of laughter and avian screams.
As the agitated song died down, Stefen augmented it with one of his own. Valdir gritted his teeth, and began counting his own footsteps, attempting not to react to Stefen's choice of music. No. No, I can't keep ignoring his evident fondness for the Demonsbane song, not without looking very unpleasant about it. Conversation was the only readily apparent means to interrupt. "You like that song awfully much," he ventured. Now stop.
Stefen shrugged, and his eyes grew distant. "Yeah, I do. It's a good story, you know? Gets to me, that there'd be someone who'd just do all that. Got all that power, and instead of using it for himself, he put his neck out for some people who weren't even his sort," and he shook his head. "I first heard that song when I was a kid. Made me wish there were really people like Vanyel. Someone who'd do right by anyone as needed it." He stared throughtfully at the ground they tramped upon, and then looked sidelong at Valdir as he attempted not to squirm. "So if you was a soldier down by Karse," he said slowly. "Maybe you'd know."
"Know what?"
"Is he real?" Valdir's steps slowed to nothing. "I never thought so - but I met a man from Kettlesmith who swore that he was - he came through there once with all of his panolpy, going north from the border. I don't figure people in stories for real, though," he speculated darkly. "Saying Vanyel is real, that's like saying a phoenix is real, or a god."
Phoenixes are also real, he thought helplessly as he pondered what to say. A panolpy. What would I even do with a panolpy? Stefen seemed to shrink from him glumly - some of his discomfort must have shown in his face. "Herald-Mage Vanyel is real," he told him carefully. "The stories, I wouldn't put so much stock in."
"He's real? But he never saved no Hardorners?" Stefen sounded disappointed.
"I heard he did," stammered Valdir. "But I doubt it was so grand as all that. It's just a song."
"You ever see him?" Stefen asked, and his voice was full of awe.
"Ah - only from a great distance," Valdir hedged, feeling his voice rise.
"Oh my gods," and Stefen bounced a little on his toes. "Herald-Mage Vanyel. It's all true? I never believed that man from Kettlesmith, I thought Vanyel must at least have been dead for a thousand years, but you're saying it's all true?" I did not say it was all true. Valdir held his tongue in sour frustration. "Just think, if he were here to clear up Cul Aber..." and Stefen trailed off, staring at the gutters, flecks of sun in his eyes.
"What would he do?" Valdir asked into the silence, in spite of himself.
"Dunno. Dunno who he'd even want to take down first - the gangs, the lord mayor, the watchmen... Or the rest of us," he shrugged. "What I do know is, it would be like a story - there'd be something for a hero to do. Not this damn mess. Though if I got to see him here, I wouldn't care what else happened," and a transcendent smile rose on his face.
Valdir vaguely resented whoever it was that Stefen was smiling about.
Not me, that's for sure. I only ever did whatever damned messy thing I had to, and then some bard made it rhyme clean so I could never explain how it really -
Stefen reached a guarding hand to Valdir's arm, and pointed at the wall ahead of them. "See that?" he gestured. They were at the corner of a tiny crossroad; across from them, a jagged scratch marked the wall. "This is Rockharbour land," he said quietly.
"Is it dangerous?" A little danger might make a pleasant distraction right now.
Stefen shrugged. "Not if you stick with me. I wouldn't stray too far, though. Folks with light fingers and heavy cugels, you get me."
Valdir stared at the scratches they passed - scratches, scuffs, chipped walls, continuing along as they walked. Border disputes. Familiar signs, in any form. "So why are the Rockharbour called that? I might have thought the Lighthouse Market would be called a rock harbour..."
"It's a joke. And maybe Lighthouse Market is a joke on a joke, I don't know. Up here though," and he paused, considering the lay of things, and then headed down a narrow wynd that forked eastwards as it climbed to meet the top of the river wall.
The cold came on them fast as the Culway came into view, and Valdir huddled in his cloak. But after the decrepitness of the city, the sight of the river in daylight - vast and high and racing north toward the ocean at the top of the world, spray like diamonds scattering against the wall - awed him. It's like a node - sum total of many waterways, a channel for life and strength, an artery. He'd never seen so much water aside from in Evendim. In the spring tide, the Culway ran so fast it was almost clear - he could see every grey-green rock below them. Far to the southeast, he saw the River Aila flowing into the Culway from the east; the river that passed through Lydra, on the other side of the border.
He closed his eyes. If he reached out his mind to the same place where he'd touched Harren two days ago - it would be so very much easier now, and even the pitiful energy he had would be more than enough to stretch across the distance - and he would feel nothing.
Stefen nudged him. "Something up?"
"Nothing." I'd feel nothing. He shook his head slowly. What had Harri had done after they spoke, in the day and a half before he and his Companion had died? Would Harri would have paid for passage upriver, or headed overland to the Culway before seeking a ferryman? Who had he found - Cejan smugglers, Cul Aber rivermen? Had he encountered other travellers, like the runaways? How long had he still believed he'd make it home?
"See now," Stefen continued. "Lighthouse Market is that way," and he pointed southeast, upriver, around the great convex curve that defined Cul Aber's edge. "It's not so easy to make out at high water, but you see over there?" He gestured to a point not far from them, where the water churned white, strange eddies swirling in the flow. The pattern, he saw, stretched outward across the water, spiral after spiral until too far out to see. "That's the rock harbour. Started a long, long time ago - story is, they used some old river defences set back when Valdemar was running scared of the East. Moved things around a bit, set traps along the riverbed. Anyone headed downriver toward Iftel, Rockharbour meet them at the docks, friendly like, and offer them the service of a guide to get them past those dangerous rapids 'tween Cul Aber and Garamill - that's the next port north. Same in Garamill - the Rockharbour men there ply them as headed south. Make their way upriver, downriver. Anyone who don't want to pay," and Stefen shrugged. "Some folks make it by, but Rockharbour picks up their cargo if they don't."
Valdir's eyebrows raised. "Doesn't the port master know the entire river's being held to ransom?"
Stefen snorted, and rubbed his fingertips together. "Gets about half. Of what he knows about," he explained. "Meanwhile, there's a good trade in, ah, slightly damp goods over at the Grand Bazaar. I figured I should show you around there. See what's new in this week. Ask where it all came from," and his eyes narrowed against the wind.
They retreated from the bitter riverside, down to the street they'd walked earlier, and then Stefen lead him up the hill on the other side by a thin path - always his preference, Valdir had noted. This end of the city seemed to be made of undulating steps and cobbled valleys; he had the sense that Cul Aber had originally been a rounded hillside that the river swept around. A place where Valdemar stood and took a last, lingering, guarded look eastward. How long ago had some fool set defences against an enemy that had forgotten about them? Today the fort atop the city was no more than a folly, and every watchman he'd glimpsed on the walls had looked only inward for trouble.
He felt eyes on them as they passed; marked men on tavern-stoops, caps tipped to Stefen; he wasn't sure he would have liked to pass through these streets alone, though in other ways, the Rockharbour quarter seemed more respectable than the one Stefen inhabited. Fewer cracks in walls and window-panes; glass so clear that he sometimes glimpsed the lives behind it; a woman sweeping, another rocking a cradle. "Nice, isn't it?" Stefen muttered. "Yorann keeps saying I should live here."
"You disagree," Valdir noted.
Stefen gave a wave of his hand. "Would be strange. Feels too exposed, right at the foot of yon hill," and he pointed his thumb at the looming shadow of the once-fort, now-manor. "And I lived all my life in Scale land."
"You're with the Scale? You don't wear their mark -"
"I'm with myself. No one marks me," Stefen said firmly. "Ask me, marking people is the whole damn problem. Just another damn wall you got to find a crack through. Here now," he announced, and Valdir saw that the route ahead of them spilled out into a bustling square, full of street-traders.
The North Gate rose to the right of them, a stone arch above rusted iron doors that didn't look like they'd been closed in years; beyond lay the land route to Garamill. He wondered what lurked out there, beyond the walls and out of the reach of the Rockharbour. Bandits, I assume. Doubtless allied with the Rockharbour. And sharing their take with the gate-guards when they bring it home. If the city's dilapidation and Stefen's stories hadn't disillusioned him, the beggars in every corner of the square would have done so. Ruin and filth - and then you, making your way with music? He closed his eyes for a bare moment, and remembered the feeling of red light lapping over him beside the river; warming him as he shivered, soothing him as he ached. The city's strange heart, beating so close to him. He followed Stef as he between the heavily-laden carts rolling in and out of the city - the stink of oxen so thick that merely breathing was unpleasant.
Valdir glanced at the stalls around the near edge of the square as they passed - food and spices, bolts of cloth, nothing interesting. He noted that at the corner of the square was an old theatre, a fading signboard hanging sideward above the wide-open doors in its outer wall proclaiming 'The Grand Northgate Playhouse.' He concluded this was the source of the bazaar's Grandness, as he saw no other sign of it. The market snaked through the streets ahead of them, stallholders selling simple things, dubious herbs, and the perfectly normal goods he now knew were robbed from the drowned. Stefen leaned close as the street narrowed around them. "You see something familiar for sale, you tell me," he murmured, and then spun on his heel and peered at the rows of trinkets on the stall beside them, giving a jaunty wave to the stallholder. "Morning, Shute."
"Stef," she nodded. "Looking for something particular?"
Stef sighed at length. "I gone pissed off Taj - you know Tajinet, no? Maybe you don't. Anyway, I got amends to make. Know where I could see something new to these shores that might impress a lady, eh?"
"Ain't nothing new under this moon," she sniffed. As they spoke, Valdir cast his eyes along the trestle; he saw brooches, long hair-pins, neatly folded clothes. Nothing that could even conceivably have belonged to Harri. Stefen bantered back and forth with the brooch-seller, and the next beside her, about who had newly come by what, and Valdir listened intently even as he pretended to ignore them. He wasn't even sure he'd know what to look for if he saw it -
"Valdir!"
He turned, trying to place the voice. Who? Who even knows me? The face of the man striding toward him was opaque to him, somehow even harder to find in his memory than the voice. Ruddy, round, bearded; older and softer than most of the toughs who might have caught Valdir's name lately. "You made it out!" He was smiling even as Valdir's stomach sank. "It's me, Dower," and he grabbed Valdir's arms and shook them vigorously.
Oh, gods.
"Old friend?" asked Stefen, looking curiously over his shoulder.
"Ah. Stefen, Dower."
He gave an awkward introductory wave, but Dower snorted. "Everyone knows Stef," he explained, as if to a child.
Stefen smiled graciously, but shot Valdir a questioning look. He explained quickly. "Dower and I met a short while ago in Mountathler -"
"In the cells under the fortress, no less!" continued Dower in triumph.
At that, Stefen's eyebrows retreated into his hairline. "I did tell you it was just a misunderstanding," Valdir replied quickly. "They soon realised I wasn't really a smuggler - what a notion! - and I headed off as soon as I could. Didn't want to risk more of my luck."
"Aye, you said you had business up in Cul Aber," and Dower smiled curiously.
Fishing for his cut - is that all anyone ever does here? He shrugged affably. "If it comes to anything, I'll be sure to let you know," he pledged, and he shot Stefen a pleading look. Please. Get me away. I'll come up with a story to tell you later.
Stef hooked a merciful arm about him - much tighter than mercy alone required, and his warmth against Valdir's ribs seemed to momentarily still the biting breeze. Dower flinched from them as most men might, and Stefen spun him about with a smirk and a swagger and frogmarched him down the market.
Valdir tried to keep in step as Stef's grip on him loosened; a quick glance behind confirmed that Dower had made himself scarce. That had been doubly unsettling - I would never have thought to see my cellmates again. And it's a long time since I last thought to flaunt myself just to have a man leave me be...
The thought of the game he'd played with Leren all those years ago only served to remind him of the darkness that had devoured the priest's mind. Perhaps he had followed that same darkness to Cul Aber. Or someone had. Not the harmless minstrel Valdir, that was for sure. Stefen released him, and eyed him questioningly. "Well, that's not someone I thought I'd run into again," murmured Valdir, scrambling for scraps to patch up his torn history.
"Night in lockup? And I took you for a nice boy." The smile fell from his face. "You want my advice?" he whispered. "This ain't Mountather. Cul Aber, you got to make damn sure you've dropped an anchor. If the watchmen pick you up here, you tell 'em you live at my place on Old Arch Street and Masonway, and you got family no further out than Horstein - whatever you got to say to stop them calling you vagrant, even if you is one." His arm dropped stiffly. "Best if you keep out of trouble, mind."
"You seem to manage it," he replied, confused.
"I learned. Got to be someone. Got to take care of yourself." His swagger became a shiver in the cold breeze, hair falling over his face so Valdir couldn't see his expression. "Don't forget it, okay?"
Valdir nodded, dropping his eyes to the trestle that rocked on the cobbles beside him, laden with oddments of leatherwork and metal - true to Stefen's word, much of both showed signs of water damage, shrivelled or corroded in the Culway's dark embrace.
His eyes fell on a tarnished silver ring.
He gasped, and reached for it before he could stop himself. The stallholder started as he flicked it onto its edge, turning it through its full arc. Simple knotwork, a pattern of silver braids - and there at the back of the loop, the place where the knots changed direction; a quirk, an engraver's error, a one-of-a-kind mistake.
He knew that pattern's reflection so well. He'd seen it only in reverse image. Red ridges impressed on wax, cracking under his fingers. A promise set over a secret.
:Tran, I've found Harri's seal ring.:
-->Part 5
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Date: 2014-10-03 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-03 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-04 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-03 08:28 pm (UTC)You are definitely a tease with all this exposition.
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Date: 2014-10-03 10:00 pm (UTC)I am a HUGE sucker for identity porn in Metal Gear and DCU fics (quick rec: Four Men Sleeping In A Double Bed is like the purest identity porn fic ever and it's under 2000 words long). This scenario is the only way I've ever thought of to do Van/Stef identity porn and I am just gonna keep twanging it until Van totally cracks due to becoming obsessively jealous of himself.
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Date: 2014-10-03 11:55 pm (UTC)I DO love this kind of porn, particularly in this context, because Van is so uncomfortable with his superhero persona. I think the amount of exposition is good, and the fact that you are underplaying how into Valdir Stef is-- perhaps mostly because Van would never believe anybody could be as into him as Stefen surely is, so it makes Van's perspective all the more credible here; he doesn't realize that Stef is actually flirting. Plus, as you mentioned, Stef doesn't know Valdir, and a strange, vagrant man isn't the first one you take to bed... even if you are a Stef-level free.
I'm also clutching onto the clue you just gave me: that Van will not be able to restrain himself from revealing who he actually IS, because he will be jealous of his song-exaggerated true self. YES. PLEASE. I kind of need this now.
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Date: 2014-10-04 12:30 am (UTC)Ngl I am bothered by the underplaying because I'm having a hard time balancing the need for chemistry with my ideas about how this Stef is different & how I want this plot to develop - I wanted him to be more guarded, and if he HAD been all over Valdir from the getgo, Valdir would have backed the fuck away. They both have a lot of reasons to not want to get attached to each other right now... I do want to shine more chemistry through that fog though.
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Date: 2014-10-04 08:52 am (UTC)Aside from that (and you DO have a way with words...) this part is simply amazing. I have always been fascinated by the beginning of Stef/Van relationship, even because Stef -the less magical of the couple- was apparently the more aware of their bond (granted, there are things living under rocks with more relationship awarness than one Vanyel Ashkevron...) And it seems it is the same here! I soo love it xD
And I also love how Van/Valdir is jelous of his public persona. He is not that hero -in his mind- after all!
And Stef, his guardness and his... Purity perhaps. There is something still stubbornly good in the young man, isn't there? :D Also, this setting shows him off sooo well... Competent Stef for the win.
"What I do know is, it would be like a story - there'd be something for a hero to do. Not this damn mess." <- THIS IS SO TRUE. Damn, destroying demon on the Hardon border is EASY. Put back together a situation like the one in this city, not so. But the first things get you to be called a hero, the second doesn't.
Also, the plot is thickening! Dun dun dun... (Please tell me Van doesn't die here I can't stand Van dying ç.ç)
TOTALLY OT: I have a curiosity °-° Do you believe that a blind person can become a herald? I mean from all I have read -which is not all of it, granted- it looks like the bond is triggered when a herald-to-be looks in the Companion's eyes... and a blind person couldn't °-° And I don't know where else to ask xD
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Date: 2014-10-07 09:05 pm (UTC)It maybe didn't come across too well, but I was trying to get Van to imply that the facts behind his musical adventures were actually as messy and ambiguous as the situation Stef was part of in Cul Aber. I really love this fic based on the Demonsbane song - it's weepy and manpainy but it is everything I am a sucker for in Van/Stef. But yeah, whether Van sees it or not, his life was made much simpler by being Chosen.
There is something still stubbornly good in the young man, isn't there? <---i'm kinda touched that you noticed this ;__; Because Stef hasn't. As for awareness - I think Stef is mostly following impulse here and is sticking close to Valdir because he knows he wants to, but he hasn't dwelt too much on why.
As for your question - I'm not sure, but in a lot of choosing scenes it seems more magical than real - especially Talia's, where she later even forgot that Rolan had spoken to her. If it's something that happens outside the 'real world', I'm not sure it would be constrained by real-world logic. XD
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Date: 2014-10-10 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 12:17 pm (UTC)