their parties and stuff. Demo matches only: First Blood, hardly ever to the Death. No wonder he liked to practice in Riverside. Nobles can be pretty squeamish. But it’s a good bet St. Vier would know that voice pretty well by now, the low, purring voice this ragged guy was using. “Look,” St. Vier said, “do you have a job for me? Is that what this is about?”
The student tugged his frayed cuff down. “A job? Me? I don’t even have the price of a beer.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t suppose you’d kill me for free.”
A smile forced its way onto the swordsman’s face. “No.”
“For practice, then?”
“Can you fight?”
The scholar opened his robe to show nothing hung on his belt, not even a knife. “Not particularly, no.”
“That’s no good, then. I like a challenge.”
“Oh.” The young scholar turned away. “Maybe later, then. But remember,” he said over his shoulder, “you had your chance.”
Richard St. Vier watched the tall man walk out of the bar alone. Sometimes nobles came down to Riverside in disguise, looking for kicks or for connection. Some disguise. He wasn’t just ragged, he was dirty. His face was young but thin and hollow like hunger. A starving nobleman? A jumped-up servant? A tutor in disgrace?
Richard shook his head. Poor kid. Whatever he was doing in Riverside, he was going to have an interesting time while he lasted. Maybe he should have bought him a beer, for a sort of welcome. The first day was always hard, here.
I, myself, did not expect to see that Alec again.
But then I kept hearing about him. Wandering Riverside like a lost soul, trying not to get laid but to get killed, near as I could tell. It should have been easy. He was going about it exactly the right way—insulting people, asking stupid questions.… The thing is, he was unarmed. He had no money. Sometimes he made people laugh, saying things no one else would dare to. No one really wanted to be the one to off him. He was probably crazy. That’s a different kind of dangerous.
I saw him again at Rosalie’s a few days later. I was looking over some very fine silver spoons that Hal had managed to find in a house uptown, and in walks the skinny kid, right up to where Rosalie is ladling out stew for Fabian Greenspan.
“Is that food?” he says to her. “Or are you trying to get rid of old wash water?”
“You could use a little of both,” Rosalie retorted.
Fabian sniggered. Some of the soup he was eating came out his nose.
“Oh, look,” the kid said. “It’s medicinal, too.”
Fabian had the shakes. It was early in the day for him—just past noon—and Rosalie wanted to feed him before he started drinking and she’d have to throw him out. He couldn’t handle it at either end.
“Hungry?” Rosalie asked Alec.
“Hardly. I
“Hey,” Fabian protested. He had a soft spot for Rosalie.
The boy looked down his long nose. “Well, you do get thicker as you get older, don’t you?”
“Hey!” Fabian roared feebly, and went for the kid.
“Hey,” said another voice, a calmer voice. The swordsman St. Vier was peeling Fabian off that Alec character.
“Hey, Richard,” Rosalie said calmly. “Want some stew?” If she doesn’t like you, she just ignores you.
The young scholar was standing very stiff. I guess he’d never been attacked by a guy with the shakes before. Or he wasn’t used to being ignored.
“Richard St. Vier,” he drawled. “You’re off your game.”
“No,” St. Vier said; “I ate already.” He was always polite, even to drunks.
“You’re a disappointment,” the scholar went on.
The swordsman turned to him, giving him his full attention. “How so?”
A swordsman’s full attention is not something you really want on you. It gave me a chill. The tall kid’s eyes glittered hard, like he was fevered, but his skin was pale, like he was casting his final throw.
“It’s been three days, now. You haven’t killed a soul. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You haven’t even stepped on a bug. I think you’re vastly overrated. What’s the matter, have you lost your nerve?”
The swordsman stood up. “Come with me.”
The scholar’s hands were shaking; I was close enough to see that. But he thrust his pale face forward and followed St. Vier out of the tavern.
It wasn’t going to be a pretty death. St. Vier wouldn’t waste good swordsmanship on an unarmed man. But I had a bet on with Hal, so we followed them out there.
The scholar was standing against a wall, very white in the face against his black robe and the crummy stone. “Remember,” he was saying, fast and breathy, “one blow to the heart. They say you’re quick.”
Young men can be real fools. Not just the scholar, but the young swordsman we all called Dapper Dan, who must have taken a bad notion to impress St. Vier. Guys like that think being a swordsman’s all about risks and big gestures, and he made one now.
“Allow me,” I heard him say, as he drew his blade.
St. Vier was St. Vier. Dan should never have shown cold steel around him. Someone with slower reflexes might have taken the time to notice that the blade wasn’t coming in his direction. But Richard St. Vier moved fast.
You have to love the guy. He drew and slashed right across Dan from the side, a gorgeous twist nobody else could have made in time. Dan squawked and fell, and St. Vier said, “Damn,” when he realized what he’d done.
The scholar hadn’t even had time to move out of the way. He stared down at poor Dan.
“You should have let him,” he said.
“It wasn’t his business,” said St. Vier. But I was out there, and I saw: He hadn’t drawn until Dan did. Whatever he was planning to do with the scholar, it wasn’t the long cold kiss of steel, as the poets say. “Would you like a drink?”
They walked back into Rosalie’s tavern together, and that was that. From then on, you never saw them apart.
Nobody bet on when they started sleeping together, because there was no way of finding out for sure. Their landlady, Marie, the whore and laundress who lets out rooms above the courtyard of the old place with the well where she washes, is usually a pretty good egg, but she got all prissy with, “Master St. Vier’s business is his own, and at least he pays his rent on time most months, not like some.…” But why else did St. Vier make it clear over and over that anyone who laid a finger on his crazy student would have him to answer to? More than one bully, pimp, and bravo fell that year when they tried it anyway. As far as St. Vier was concerned, there was one rule: Don’t Mess with Alec, no matter what.
I guess Lord Horn didn’t know about St. Vier’s Alec rule. How could he, when he lived way up on the Hill with the rest of them? What some old noble wanted Alec for was anybody’s guess, but not everyone was sorry when Alec disappeared for a while. It made the swordsman jumpy as hell, though. He made some inquiries, killed a few hired toughs who should have known not to mess with Riversiders, got Alec back, all right—and then he went after Lord Horn and took care of him, too.
Well, what else could he do? He had his point to make. But the city didn’t see it that way. Brought St. Vier up on murder charges, threw him in the Chop. Nobody liked it, but what could we do? We don’t ask anyone in the city to do us any favors. We look after our own, no squealers; but if you’re taken, good luck to you.
Alec broke that rule. For St. Vier, see. Of course, we didn’t know it at the time. We thought Alec had left again because he was bored or lonely or scared shitless. Fabian Greenspan swore he’d seen him lying with his throat slit off Fuller’s Way. But Fabian doesn’t always see so clearly. Red Sukey said he’d thrown himself from the Bridge because of the tragedy of his eternal love. But Sukey likes theatre. Then Nimble Willie came back from plying
