I raised my head and grabbed my knees so he couldn’t see my hands shake. “How much are you paying, Paul? I might decide to kill myself, although I lack experience. Why don’t you go first so you can give me some pointers?”
Paul was the town burgher, sort of a headman and peacekeeper, and he looked at me like I was a pile of turds on his clean floor. He thought I was a threat to peace and orderliness. I knew he thought that because he said it to my face at least once a day. He was right too. Paul was a young, fit, brown-haired man, so handsome he was almost as beautiful as a girl. The townswomen pined for him openly, and they passed vile gossip about his wife.
Paul’s thugs each toted a bladed club. Tettler stood on the left, just a hair shorter than Paul, twice as old and five times uglier. On the right, Sam stood hunched, favoring a poorly healed leg. A man in his prime, he hid his bald head under a peaked, woolen cap. He stared at me with intelligent eyes full of disgust, and he spat on the grass near the lane’s edge. “Burn and die, you rotten fish!”
Sam was my wife’s brother.
Their faded yellow sashes showed they were important men. When they stepped off the lane, I picked up my sword, hands steady. They faltered thirty feet from me. Paul cleared his throat. “If you insist on remaining around here, you will suffer Bindle’s judgment. You must swear you’ll come to the town square tomorrow at midday! For judgment. Swear it!”
My face heated, and I almost jumped up to put my sword through his neck. I clenched my teeth against such a pointless display of anger. “Sorry, Paul, I prefer to enjoy the noonday sun while relaxing at the top of the falls, naked.”
Sam sneered and swore at me using three parts of my mother’s body.
Paul put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Bib, if you don’t swear, we’ll lock you in the temple cellar. Lock you.” He glared at my eyes for a second before blinking and glaring at my shoulder instead.
“Where are the rest of your faithful retainers, Paul?” I knew he had ten men working for him.
“Can’t find ’em,” Tettler grunted.
Paul hissed at Tettler and then shrugged at me. “It would be convenient for you to know where they are, eh? They could be anywhere, couldn’t they?” Paul shook his head, his long hair waving. “No, you have to swear to appear, otherwise you must come with us.” Sweat ran down both sides of his face.
They didn’t seem all that dangerous. That meant that I should have killed them without hesitating. I have learned to heap suspicion upon those who don’t seem dangerous. Paul was a snobby twit, but brave. I didn’t have to kill him today. Maybe another day. Maybe never, who could tell? “All right, I swear.”
“What?” Paul said, his eyes wide.
I pointed my sword at the sky. “I swear by all the gods and their private regions that I will call upon you and the other decent citizens of Bindle tomorrow at midday. At the town square. Should I bring anything? I could purchase the whole damn bakery if I wanted to.”
Paul breathed deep. “Good, then . . . no, don’t, I mean don’t with the bakery, but fine with the square, just be there. Fine.” He led his men at a fast walk up the lane.
I turned and found that my blue front door had closed. I pushed against it, but it didn’t budge or even make a sound. Leaning my shoulder against the door, I murmured, “It’s getting dark, the night’s colder than walrus whiskers, and I’m covered in blood. Can we wait until morning for this shit?”
The door eased itself open, as slow as cold grease. As I walked inside, it slammed shut on my left foot.
“Damn you to eat hot coals in hell!” I hobbled around the main room. “I’m going to smash all your doors to splinters and use this place to store horse turds!”
Carpenter’s tools, lumber, paintbrushes, and two lanterns lay clumped where I had left them around the main room. I snatched up a short board and hurled it at the blue door, maybe the most ridiculous act I had ever undertaken. I turned away from the door to cover my embarrassment, which was the second most ridiculous.
Although the fire was well-banked, building it up sounded like more work than building the whole damn fireplace. The fire remained un-poked by me. I ignored the bucket of water and the clean clothes beside it. My lanterns were useless without fire, so I trudged into the bedroom mostly by feel.
The new bed had cost as much as a wagon filled with pigs, and the new glass window should come next week. I felt a flash of rage that I had to wait. It flashed and left behind nothing much at all, so I lay down on my pallet with my sticky sword and started to ask Manon if she was cold. Instead, I closed my eyes and hoped I’d fall asleep sometime before sunup.
TWO
Cold water pelted my neck and face, and I opened my eyes to see veiled daylight. I rolled right to my feet away from the rain blowing in through the window. I refused the notion that I wasn’t a young man, but my joints popped like a dead tree in a gale.
I brought my sword into the main room and saw that the
