The Serpent Read online

  Baga had gone off at a trot. I took a closer look at the corpse, wondering what he’d been thinking in his last minutes.

  All his clothing had crumbled away. If he’d had a collecting bag, it was dust in the Waste now. The man who’d found him and brought him in had been a prospector himself, so he’d probably done what I would have if I’d found the corpse: searched the surface around the body for artifacts the dead man might have been carrying when he died.

  I looked at the mummy’s clenched fists. The right hand was a noticeably larger ball than the left; though that might have been a whim of the way the body had dried out. Still…

  I began to unroll the mummy’s fingers. I thought they might break but they instead opened like leather straps which had not dried hard.

  They were gripping something as I’d guessed. It was a short rod with bristles of another metal set at right angles near one end in the fashion of a toothbrush. The barrel was carved with a snake and the design filled with silver wire. I’d have to go into a Maker’s trance to be sure of what the precise composition was but the rod appeared to be iron, and the bristles a mix of noble metals.

  “What’s that?” Nonce demanded.

  A strictly honest answer would have been “Damned if I know,” but that wouldn’t have shut the innkeeper up. I said, “Business for Master Louis, the great Maker who builds weapons for the Leader, Jon.”

  “It’s a weapon?” said Nonce, jerking back the hand that had started to reach for the object.

  I dropped it into my belt purse. “That’ll be for Louis to decide,” I said. “Or maybe Jon himself.”

  I would certainly give it a thorough trance examination when I had leisure. At the moment I wasn’t even sure it was an Ancient artifact, though I thought it was.

  “Say,” called older of the travellers in the fireplace nook; the fire wasn’t lighted at this time of year, of course. “If you’re one of Jon’s Champions, I guess you’d know Lord Frobier, wouldn’t you?”

  “I do,” I said. “We’re not close.”

  Frobier was stuck up beyond the norm of Champions of Mankind—and as a group we tend to think pretty well of ourselves. Some of the better-off farmers on Beune weren’t a lot better. It’s just the way some people are.

  “I figured you must ’cause there’s not so many of you, is there?” the old man said. His younger companion was obviously trying to shush him, probably because he didn’t like the idea of calling the attention of an armed stranger to themselves. “Anyway, Frobier’s up on Boyd’s Node right now.”

  “What in the name of goodness is he doing out here?” I said. What with retirements and deaths on the one hand and successful Aspirants on the other, you could never be sure how many Champions there were in the Hall at any one time, but it wasn’t going more than a hundred for sure. Finding two of us this close together was a greater surprise to me than it obviously was to the old man.

  “He’s not doing much at all,” the old man said. “He got sick like to die. His cook told me he was on the mend now, but last week when they arrived on Boyd they didn’t figure he’d make it.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked, but the traveller just shrugged.

  Baga came in just then with a paunchy middle-aged man in tow. “This is Master Oscar,” he said to me.

  “Baga,” I said. “I need to get to Boyd’s Node in a hurry. Do you need to catch a meal first?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I can wait a couple hours if you’re in a hurry,” he said. “You want to head right on out?”

  “If you’re okay with that,” I said, stepping past him to the door. Sam was out as soon as I had the panel open a crack.

  Over my shoulder I called, “Nonce! When I come back through, you’d best have that poor prospector buried. You hear me?”

  I don’t know for sure that he answered. I didn’t even know for sure that I’d survive to come back.

  CHAPTER 2

  Champion of Mankind

  We reached Boyd’s Node quickly but to my surprise we had to hike over a mile to reach the inn where Lord Frobier was staying. Three separate branches of the Road met at Boyd’s Node, as they did at Dun Add, but at Dun Add the branches connected just outside the node itself with only a short stub into the node. At Boyd’s the three branches entered Here separately, and Lord Frobier had entered at the community called Eastown.

  The track between it and South, where we’d come in, was decent for Here and it hadn’t rained recently, though it was nowhere near as good a surface as that of the Road (whatever that was). The innkeeper at South was resentfully aware of Frobier, who’d arrived with a party of almost twenty. “I never have luck like that!”

  That seemed like a large group to me also, though I knew Frobier travelled with an entourage of servants befitting his stature as a Champion.

  Baga could cook and carry the slight paraphernalia I needed on the Road—dried food and a tilt or ground sheet in case we had to camp on a completely uninhabited node. I was from Beune, which gave me nothing to brag about. Anybody who questioned my status as a Champion could meet me on the field and I would prove it on his body. There were better warriors than I but bloody few of them. And Lord Frobier wasn’t one of the exceptions.

  The inn at Eastown was a big stone-built structure with a loft which was probably high enough in the front for men to walk upright. I thought the common room in the front of the ground floor would be crowded with a party of twenty staying there as I’d heard, but in fact the tapster was alone with two servants in violet tunics who must be Frobier’s men.

  I walked in ahead of Sam and Baga. “I came to see Lord Frobier,” I said, addressing the room.

  “Lord Pal?” said the short, foxy servant whom I vaguely recalled from Dun Add. “His Lordship is upstairs and your visit will be very welcome, I’m sure. Let me go up and tell his lordship you’re here.”

  The inn had a proper staircase instead of just a ladder to the loft. The servant skipped up it while the tapster looked at me. “Will you be needing lodging for yourself and your man, milord?” he asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “We’ll want a meal regardless. Baga, stable Sam and I’ll be back as soon as I’ve talked to Frobier.”

  I went up the stairs with less enthusiasm than the servant had; it was going for a long day. At the head of the stairs was a hallway which four doors opened off. The servant stood in the doorway of one of those serving the front half of the loft. I joined him and saw Frobier stretched out on a low bed woven of rye straw.

  The windows on this side were low and Frobier’s complexion may not have really been as yellow as I thought at first glance, but his cheeks were certainly sunken and though the basin beside the head of the bed had been emptied, the stench of vomit clung to it.

  “Did Jon send you to replace me?” Frobier said. If his voice had been stronger, I think he’d have shouted.

  “I was patrolling in this region and heard you were laid up,” I said. “Were you on routine patrol also, Frobier?”

  That surprised me, because I’d asked Mistress Toledana to plot me a route which hadn’t been covered recently. I’m a strong believer in Champions making routine patrols. The courts at Dun Add provided justice for citizens who came to the capital to judge between them and a neighbor. That was better for the Commonwealth and generally for the parties themselves than letting them decide the rights of the matter by force.

  A Champion passing through a region could often save the parties a long and expensive journey while still arriving at a neutral assessment. Apart from solving conflicts, though, the Commonwealth was aided just by Champions passing through nodes and reminding citizens that the Commonwealth existed as more than a taxing authority.

  “I’ve got better things to do than wander through the boondocks!” Frobier said with a snort. That had been too enthusiastic and he lurched up in a coughing fit. After he wiped his mouth with a rag he said, “Lord Ercole of Banft is marrying his daughter, Lady Irene, to Lord Diederich of Hume.
Ercole hired guards to protect Irene on the journey, but Ercole wanted a Champion to go with her as befit her rank. Jon tapped me for the assignment, but here on Boyd I was taken suddenly ill.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure what the movement I heard was; Frobier’s chubby servant was coming up the stairs to join us. “Where’s Lady Irene, then?” I asked.

  “How in blazes would I know?” Frobier demanded. “I told you I was sick!”

  The servant who’d just come up said, “The lady went off with her guards after the master took sick. She said she didn’t need to wait. That was two days ago, milord!”

  “The Lady Irene is a self-willed bitch so that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Frobier said. “And she didn’t like men! I don’t envy Lord Diederich—if she even gets there.”

  “What do you mean ‘If she gets there’?” I said. “What’s going to prevent her?”

  “Hell if I know,” Frobier said. “She went off on her own without bothering even to tell me on my bed. I sure wouldn’t trust my daughter with that rascal Errol.”

  “He was captain of the guards,” the foxy servant said to me. “The master’s surely right on that.”

  “Look,” I said to Frobier. “It looks to me like Errol or another guard poisoned you to get Lady Irene away. I’ll help you get her back but I think we’ve got to move fast.”

  “That can’t be,” Frobier said. “I’ve heard you’re a wise-ass, Pal, but you better butt out of this one until you at least learn something about it. Jorome here—” he gestured to the plumper servant “—cooked all my meals.”

  “And before you get a silly notion about me, your lordship,” the cook said, “Lord Frobier ate all his meals with Lady Irene and she was right as rain the morning she left.”

  “That’s right,” Frobier said. “And if she was in such a hurry to get away, then she earned whatever she gets, I think.”

  Lord Jon wouldn’t think that, I was sure; but Jon wasn’t here and it wouldn’t make the current situation any better if I said that. Baga came up the stairs and the tapster called past him to say, “Tell your master I’ve got a cold joint for your supper.”

  “Is there anything you need from me, Frobier?” I said.

  “I didn’t need you to be here,” he said. “I don’t know now why you’ve come.”

  “I’ll stop troubling you and have my dinner,” I said and left the room, taking Baga back down the steps with me. “I’ll take a room after all,” I said to the tapster. “Don’t guess we’ll be going out till the morning.”

  We were eating mutton and kale and the tapster—the host—Grigor even had provided a mustard pot. I was just about to praise Grigor for the quality of the food when the front door opened and a fellow not much older than I am came in. “Good day, sir,” Grigor said. “You’ll want a room?”

  “I’m Master Timmons,” the fellow said. “I’m a clerk on my way to Dun Add to join the Leader’s government.”

  He wore a weapon and shield. At a glance at them in fabric holsters, I couldn’t give a detailed analysis of their quality but the weapon struck me as pretty low-end and the shield no better than the one I’d made for myself in Beune using an Ancient umbrella as my starting point.

  That shield was crap and I got the tar whaled out of me the first time I jousted with it. On the other hand the fact that I was armed had kept me safe along the Road to Dun Add, and I supposed that was all that Timmons required. I’d hoped to become a Champion of Mankind; Timmons only wanted to push paper in Jon’s growing bureaucracy, which he might be well suited for.

  “Yes, I’d like lodging and a meal for my companion and myself,” Timmons said. He moved slightly and I saw for the first time the woman behind him in the doorway.

  She was brown-haired and ordinary; not bad looking, but I’ve been living in Dun Add where women strive to be glamorous. This woman would have stood out in Beune but she would have to change a good deal to be comfortable in the capital. The women there would tear her to shreds. She would get as little sympathy as a hick like me had received from the men when I hiked to Dun Add to become a Champion.

  Grigor brightened when he saw her, however. “Ah! Mistress Clara,” he said. “Will her ladyship be joining us shortly?”

  “I’ve left Lady Irene,” the maid said.

  “Really,” said Timmons, looking at Clara, “she left you.”

  To the rest of us he explained, “I’m on my way from Messageries to Dun Add and I stopped at the node just up from here and met the party. There’s nothing there but ruins and desert but Lady Irene had stopped with Mistress Clara and her guards.”

  “That’s not on the route to Banft,” I said “They’d have had to go out the way we came in, at South to get the Road for Banft.”

  “Madame didn’t want to go to Banft,” Clara said. “She’d bribed Errol to take her to her cousin in Westbriggan but I heard the guards talking. They were going to sell her a long way from here, a node that isn’t in the Commonwealth. Only instead she just disappeared, the way she used to do back home on Banft when she was helping Master Sans for her father.”

  “Mistress Clara was left on her own,” Timmons said. “I was glad to offer my protection to get her to Dun Add.”

  “But what about Lady Irene?” I asked.

  “I scarcely think she is any of my business,” Timmons said stiffly.

  “A women left in the middle of a pack of wolves is any man’s business!” I said, then regretted I’d been so hot.

  In all truth, Timmons wasn’t a man in the fashion I meant the word. I’d been in the Hall of Champions, but it was more than that. When I was a kid I’d wallowed in heroic romances. I’d formed myself on those models.

  When I reached Dun Add I realized that the reality behind those romances was a harsh one. That hadn’t really changed me, though: the truth of what men and heroes did was much less inspiring than the romances, but I still preferred the romance and guided my choices by it.

  Most men made much more practical choices, as they certainly ought to do. I basically tried to do as a romantic hero would whenever I was faced with a choice. It’s what worked for me.

  “Well, I’m not standing in your way,” the clerk said haughtily.

  “He’s right, Baga,” I said. “You and I are back on the Road as soon as we have Sam out of the stables. Can somebody here point me in the right direction, Grigor?”

  “I’ll take you back,” said Clara, “if Master Timmons will come along with the dog so I can get back?”

  Timmons nodded. “All right,” he said. “Errol and his thugs are a bad lot, no mistake.” He looked at me and added, “I think you’re a fool, sir, and I will not throw my life away with you. But I’ll see you’re on the right path if that’s really what you want to do.”

  * * *

  Timmons’s dog was more terrier than not. I took a glance through her eyes and found her view of the Road adequate, though I didn’t have the rapport with her that I did with Sam. Human eyes unaided don’t see the Road, though mica lenses can provide a workable crutch for folks who need to leave Here and don’t have a trained animal to link with.

  Timmons and Clara had found their way to Boyd once, so there was really no reason for me to be concerned about them finding their way back after pointing me in the right direction. I did anyway, maybe to keep myself from worrying about what was going to happen after I found Errol and his gang.

  “I been with Lady Irene ten years,” Clara said to me. “She was always an odd one, but it wasn’t a problem being her maid. It was just the way she was raised by Master Sans. He’s a Maker and he’s real close with Lord Ercole, her father.”

  “What about her mother?” I asked. Clara was walking with me instead of with Timmons, who was leading. I don’t know what he thought about the business, but I suspected Clara was only a convenience for a few nights so far as he was concerned. She’d already forced him to get more involved in the business than he’d intended to be.

  “She died when I
rene was born,” Clara said. “That’s what they told me, anyway. Master Sans took her off and raised her until she was about eight and Sans brought her back to Banft and Ercole hired me.”

  “That’s crazy!” I said. “I’ve never heard of a parent behaving that way!”

  Clara shrugged. “You can’t blame her for being a bit strange, you see.”

  Ercole had to be a powerful noble to have gotten a Champion to escort his daughter, and men like that—especially those living at a considerable distance from Dun Add—were apt to be self-willed. What Clara had described was pretty extreme, though.

  “I said Sans was close to Ercole,” Clara went on. “His lordship didn’t take another woman after his wife died, but Irene brought back dolls for Ercole from wherever Sans was. He’d gone somewhere, but he sent Irene back with the dolls. They only lived a couple months but Irene always went and brought back another.”

  “Were the dolls machines that Master Sans was making?” I said. Since I’d been living at Dun Add I’d seen plenty of men who were likely to be with a different woman every few weeks. My friend Morseth was a lot that way himself to tell the truth. It wasn’t the way I’d been raised to think was right, but he was my friend regardless. He didn’t knock the women around—I wouldn’t hang around with him if he had—but he went off them pretty quick.

  “They were alive,” Clara said flatly. “They didn’t live long but they were alive.

  “The last one died six months ago,” she said. “Lady Irene went away like usual, but when she came back she didn’t bring a doll. That was when Lord Ercole decided to marry her off.”

  “Did she want to be married?” I asked.

  “No,” Clara said, “but her father didn’t pay any attention to her before, and he didn’t now either. He got a good settlement from Lord Diederich and he packed her off to Hume. And me too, of course.”

  She looked sideways at me and said, “I wonder what it’s going to be like living in Dun Add?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I come from a place called Beune, too small for you to ever hear of. And I guess it’ll be different for a girl anyhow.”