The Broken Man Read online

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  It had been the fourteenth day of the Spring moon when he had performed his first sacrifice at the oven. He had brought it a hen on the dark nights of both the Planting and Wet moons, but the sacrifices were working less each time. The Summer moon was only eight days old, and the spirit in the fire was getting impatient. Piju would get a hen from the mothers. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

  The mud and dirt streets into the slave quarters said as much as the walls around this place. It wasn’t considered enough of a part of Ard to have proper streets and drains. There was a courtyard around the oven and the well—enough room that a couple dozen women were seated there —talking and working, but even that hadn’t been paved.

  He moved on, across the square and down the next alley, to the small house built into the corner of the wall. He squared up to the door and was about to walk in when he heard his name called behind him.

  “Piju?” she said. “You came!”

  He turned around and, as always, was shocked by how the first view of her face affected him. She was tall for a woman - as tall as he was - with long black hair that hung down to her waist. Her eyes were a lovely sky blue that seemed as large as the world as she approached him.

  “Could you help?” she asked.

  “Hey Roe.” His brain had frozen, and he had almost forgotten her name. He took the toilet pot from her hands and helped her carry it into the house.

  “Have you eaten? Wash up! Have you had breakfast? Tell me what you’ve been up to.” Roe shot an even mix of questions and demands, while he washed his hands. Piju didn’t think he actually answered any of them. The water splashed on his face reminded him to loosen his tongue.

  “Hey Roe.”

  He turned toward her, and she popped a fresh bun into his mouth. It tasted of venison and smooth milled wheat. He sat down in the room’s one chair and focused on the joy of eating. He thought about it: “Hey Roe,” was exactly all he had managed to say since he got here.

  “Piju piju piju!” said the four-year-old flying tackle. Luckily Piju was already sitting down, or he would have fallen.

  “How is the baby Buck?” he asked.

  “Hey Piju!” Buck said.

  Piju hoped that he wasn’t teaching Buck to talk. Around Roe, he wasn’t much of a speaker, so he hoped his poor words wouldn’t influence the boy too much.

  Back at his home village, his buddy Harran had a family. He had gotten married within weeks of getting apprenticed. In the last four years, most of his generation would have had children of their own, instead of running off on a tour of Pywer with a strange Master who fought evil spirits. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but he wondered now how it would have been to have had a normal life in Leest village like Harran. Still, here in Ard he had met Roe, and there had never been anyone in the village like her.

  Roe was about his age, maybe a year or two older, but she was eloquent, beautiful, a master of music and baked goods. At least, she would have been a journeyman far down her path of mastery if she had lived in a village. Here, she was a servant, a mother, and still the most beautiful woman alive.

  Buck was pawing back the edge of Piju’s cloak, so the young man stuffed the remainders of the bun into his mouth, shucked the cloak onto the chair to keep it clean and dropped onto the packed earth floor. On the floor there was a thin layer of cut grass, traditionally laid to keep the floor from getting churned into mud. After decades of use, the floor was nearly as hard as brick, and the rushes just got pushed around a lot before they were swept out.

  Buck held up Piju’s wrist. “Buck,” the boy said, pointing to a horned tattoo. “Roe,” he said, pointing to the deer’s ear next to it. “Is Buck!” he said, pointing his thumb at his chest. He ran across the floor to crash into his mother, who was cleaning her face in the pail. “Is Roe!”

  Buck and Roe laughed together, and Piju burned in his heart to be a part of a family like this. What they had looked so special. He had always sat on the outside. He had always been a loner.

  Perhaps I was born to be a hunter, forever outdoors by myself. But, this few minutes of time with them made his heart turn inside him. He had seen families before without it affecting him, without causing him a trace of emotion, but this made him want to be something, anything, that let this continue.

  “Piju,” Roe asked, “are you alright?”

  He shook his head to clear the uncommon thoughts, and then he nodded, composing himself. He didn’t know how long Master Waylaid would stay in Ard. While he was here, however, he could try to be here with Roe and Buck, not out in the forest.

  “I’m fine.” He had spoken to her, with words; it was a milestone for the day. He continued. “How are you?”

  She smiled at him while she washed her feet, sliding them clean into house slippers and then into hard wooden sandals.

  “You are so nice to ask. Do you know that?”

  Piju blushed to his roots, absolutely unaware of any social graces that he somehow tripped over in his path to her door. His Master required politeness at all times and used the back of his hand when Piju slipped up. As the apprentice of an itinerant priest and scholar, Piju had never met anyone of lower social status than he.

  “No, I just...” He petered out for a second and then restarted again. “Can I help you with anything?”

  She swept her thick, black hair back into a conservative bundle, driving two wooden pins through the mass.

  “I wanted you to come back on a feast day so that I could fix you a real meal. Just this spring, you saved us from the Burning Ghost; then you helped stop the riots over the missing food during the Wet Moon; then you gave us all those deer. I could have wept with gratitude. You are just so amazing!”

  His throat had constricted to a size smaller than one of her hair sticks.

  “No…” The word was less than a squeak. There might have been a sentence after that, but honestly one needs air to make words so his mouth moved a little, and Roe didn’t seem to notice.

  “The gates to the Royal Court are opening early today, so I’m going to up the hill to my owner, Master Guillem, to get his house cleaned and prepare lunch. I keep up with the cleaning, so there isn’t that much to do.

  “His wife is going to want me to get the table linens aired out as well. They have a huge lunch planned, for feast day. It will be a big party for a bunch of the philosophers. Remember, you told me how to smoke the pig for it! But, I don’t think they have a dinner planned, so come back here tonight.”

  She smiled at him, and he stared dumbly. He had been watching her talk and hadn’t realized there was a question in that stream of speech.

  “You come back here tonight. I’ll wrap you up some leftovers, make some biscuits, get a milk sauce worked up, and see if I can get that baked up for you.”

  Piju honestly ate more meat than King Cailagean of the Ruad, but a piece of rabbit, venison, duck, or quail seared over an open fire was his dinner most nights when he traveled. He knew everything about smoking meat, cold or hot, but mostly because it packed well. Anything else was a mystery to him. Even the simplest bread had been pretty rare on the road. There was plenty of food at the Daen Library, but none of Brea’s soldiers did anything but blacken meat over the fire or throw things into a stewpot. Real cooking was an unbelievable treat.

  He had no idea what a milk sauce was, but his mouth had begun to water spontaneously. Roe magically produced a second bun and stuffed it into his mouth, just as she had the first.

  “You are a growing boy, and I know you need more good food.”

  “I’m sixteen,” he said around the bun, bristling a bit. “I’m not a boy.”

  He thought self-consciously of his blank right shoulder. He had never been marked as a man, but he wished she thought of him as one. He immediately looked down at the floor in embarrassment. He had practically yelled at Roe. He swallowed the bite dryly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, very contrite. “I was just playing. I didn’t mean to upset you.” She spoke as
if she was the one who should apologize.

  Then Roe was walking to the door. “Also, you are such a handsome man. I need to keep your mouth full so we don’t get into trouble.” She looked pensive for a second. Her composure faltered for a moment and she lost her perfect happiness. Some of the worry leaked through with a tightened jaw and her fingers wound together.

  “I like you, Piju. I’m not going to let us get into trouble.” She shook her head. “The last time I got into trouble…” She didn’t want to continue.

  Piju understood. Four years ago she was just a child with a baby, but the Bolg had rioted in her name. Hundreds of Bolg men had been killed.

  She smiled sadly, then brightened, shaking off the dark mood as quickly as it had settled on her shoulders. “See you tonight!”

  Piju sat on the floor, somewhere between wonder and despair. He chewed thoughtfully at the bun, amazed again at the flaky texture, the meat and juice in the center, and the wonder of a world that contained the tornado named Roe.

  Buck leaned on his shoulder.

  “Is wolf?” he asked.

  “Wolf,” Piju agreed. He was teaching the boy the important things to read. He couldn’t see the importance of Ruad poetry, but a boy should be able to read a Bolg’s tattoos.

  “Yes, that mark says that I have killed three wolves in one hunt. It was a very hard winter.” He had killed them before the end of his childhood, before he had even apprenticed. It had been a long time ago. He finished the bun and told Buck the names of the other tattoos on his arm.

  “What’s a Boar?” Buck asked. He had never been outside the slave quarters, never seen a wild animal.

  Piju ran his finger along the curve of the tooth tattooed on his forearm. “It’s a dangerous sort of pig. They are easy to find in the deep woods. They are good to eat but hard to kill.”

  He helped Buck with his words, scratching the symbols on the ground. It was simple say and repeat exercises that let his mind wander. He didn’t want the boy growing up inside these walls. Piju realized that Roe had been born here and had never walked in the woods in her entire life.

  Piju wished he were a master, so that he could teach something, something useful. Hunting wasn’t going to help them, here in the city, and he didn’t know that he knew how to do anything else. There was one thing that he could do for Buck, if not exactly teaching. Piju had traveled a lot farther than almost anyone in Ard. Excepting, of course, Master Waylaid who took me on those journeys.

  Perhaps Mistress Brea and Master Waylaid had been on more adventures in their long lifetimes than he had, but in his short years he had seen a lot and heard more. He didn’t have much to teach slaves that could improve their lives, but he had been on adventures far beyond these white walls. He could tell stories.

  “I was twelve winters old when I first met the giant...”

  CHAPTER 2 IN THE KING’S CHAMBERS

  Midsummer’s Day, Year Twenty-Seven of King Cail’s Reign

  Knowledge is the only God

  That compasses our skills;

  We shall rule the world one day

  And cure it of its ills.

  - Ruad Teaching

  “Why, may I ask, have you demanded a meeting this morning, Lord Ualla?” Cail rubbed his brow, trying to suppress his morning headache.

  Cail was slumped on a foot stool, exhausted from crawling out of bed. A servant had found his morning robe from somewhere on the floor and helped his feet into slippers, but he was cold, hurting, and tired.

  He had yet to leave his inner chambers this morning, and his bed, piled high with furs, still seemed to be sleeping on the floor behind him. He could hear the delicate snores of his third wife from under the pile as it rose and fell with each of her breaths. He longed to return to that sweet embrace.

  He thought, just for a moment, that it would be nice for a day to be as young as she was. Give this whole royalty business to someone else and cavort like a young man in his marriage bed. His first wife had never been so inclined when he had been that young. Those urges were sadly rare on this side of his fiftieth year.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but this is a pressing matter.”

  The king was not terribly interested in someone else’s emergencies this early in the morning, but Lord Ualla had wanted a private meeting. Private meetings were usually scheduled after breakfast, but this upstart lord had pressured the privy councilor to make it happen immediately.

  Lord Ualla had married one of his daughters, so a king had to consider the obligations that such a union created. Balance was one of the five virtues of the Ruad, and it seemed that Ualla was owed a favor. It just galled him that the requested time was in the cold of the morning, before the room had warmed up, before his morning headache had passed, and before his breakfast.

  He looked sidelong at the man. Ualla was a country lord and not a regular at court, but he had the look of a nobleman. His hair and mustache were as plainly red as the king’s, and he was strong of brow, the mark of the thinking man, with his hairline shaved back neatly to his ears. He wore a proper red linen tunic as well, adorned with a fine yellow trim. At least the man wasn’t playing the country bumpkin but was wearing the proper attire for the court.

  Though this was not court, the king thought grumpily. It was breakfast.

  He watched Ualla. He wrung his hands and chewed his lips. He was worried. Whatever this emergency was, it had him scared.

  His second wife swept in with a warm jar of wine. She handed it to him with a swift peck on the cheek and a pat on his thin shoulder. He smiled at her while she surveyed the mess he had made of his room. Yesterday’s clothes, his and his third wife’s, were scattered around the bed. The servants had cleared the jars and plates from the night table, but it was still sticky from the honey-sweetened wine. At least the servants had cleaned the nightjars first thing this morning. The room had stunk.

  He inhaled deeply of the honey and spices Celeste had mixed into the warm wine. It was her headache remedy. They had been together more than fifteen years and even when she wasn’t happy with him, she treated him well. She would not be called queen while his first wife lived, but she ruled the palace and his heart, if not his bed. This had led to some fights in the past, but for the moment, all three wives seemed to be living without giving him worse headaches. He swallowed a large gulp of wine, hoping his head would clear quickly.

  “Dearest,” he spoke to her retreating back. “Could you set out tea in a bit?”

  “Manda will be in momentarily, she wanted to be a part of this council.”

  The headache returned with a pain like a spike driven into his left eye. The queen was not invited to council. The lords did not approve.

  He took another drink, then rinsed his mouth and spat into the chamber pot. He didn’t need to get drunk before court. Maybe he would after court, but not before. It was early in the moon, barely the eighth day after the full Summer moon, and he needed a day off.

  Not the best of times for a feast, as there was a customary Tenth-day feast after every moon. Well, the Tenth-day feast was only two days away, but philosophers calculated today was Midsummer. He was sure the women would be having fits in the kitchen with two feasts in two days. He shook his head; it wasn’t his problem.

  “Your Majesty,” Lord Ualla began a second time as Celeste exited. “I apologize again for the early interruption, but my farmers are still being plagued by that unknown killer. The one they are calling the Shadow Man.” Ualla’s eyes were haunted, he’d seen the bodies before today.

  The king looked up from his wine and stared blearily at his councilors, the two men always invited to his private quarters. They were of the highest rank, nine-banded philosophers. Aris was his oldest friend and his primary adviser. He ordered the guard and was usually well informed on everything that happened in the Red Kingdom. Odda was his privy councilor and kept his schedule for court and these private meetings.

  Odda was a nickname, short for grandfather. The terrible title h
ad been stuck on him by Cail himself when the man’s hair had turned white. That had probably been from the stress of dealing with a wild prince all those years ago. He couldn’t even remember Odda’s real name anymore, but he ran the messenger boys. He was grandpa to those boys and they kept him as informed of court business as Aris was about the rest of the world.

  The dim light and his morning-misted eyes turned these men into ghost-like shapes. Uncomfortably indistinct in shadows of the room, they sat about a small table waiting on his pleasure. He felt uncomfortable with all this talk of ghosts and sorcery, as though the spirits were creeping into his very chambers. This was a place of science and philosophy, not magic and superstition.

  “Curtains, lights,” Cail commanded and shook his head to clear unwelcome thoughts. The servants moved swiftly to light small oil lamps and tie up the heavy wool curtains. There wouldn’t be slaves available at this early hour; the gates to the center of the city weren’t even opened yet, but he had servants from among the Ruad, who served his wives’ whims quite nicely.

  “How have you come upon this knowledge so early in the morning?” Cail asked. “Surely it would wait until court.”

  He spoke just shy of a royal command. His humor was in poor health this morning. The wine had not proved medicine for his headache, and it seemed he could still feel a fever warmth radiating from the bed in this cool room.

  “I had a messenger at the wall, Your Majesty. I was luckily already in the palace for your feast tonight. The guard carried it to me and probably spoke to Aris as well.”

  Aris, still somewhat indistinct in the corner chair, made no confirmation of this.

  Cail made his way to his chair to await his tea; the arms of the small throne were carved into the image of the noble grouse. The red-headed hen was the symbol of the Ruad. The comfortable chair, slow morning rituals, a nice herbal tea, some light conversation among friends; these things got you started, not serious problems before your eyes are fully open.