She had her mouth close to my ear now, sending tickles down my neck. I could smell her cheap lemon-grass scent, cutting through the ale stink, and the dream-weed on her breath.
“How many men would it take? To bring the place down around Lord Gellethar’s ears?” I asked.
Makin’s eyes returned to the lanterns and his knuckles went white around his flagon. Somewhere behind us Rike gave a roar, quickly followed by the splintering sound of a body meeting a table at high speed.
“If you had ten thousand men,” Makin said, raising his voice above the crashing sounds. “Ten thousand men, well supplied, and with siege machines, lots of siege engines, then you might have him in a year. That’s if you could keep his allies off your back. With three thousand you might starve him out eventually.”
I caught hold of Sally’s hand as it slipped across my belly to the buckle of my belt. I twisted her wrist a little, and she came front and centre, sharpish, with a high-pitched gasp. She had green eyes, like Katherine’s but more narrow and not so clear. Under the paint she had fewer years on me than I first thought, she might be twenty, certainly no more.
“And what if I found us a way in? What then, Brother Makin? How many men to take the Castle Red if I opened us a door?” I spoke to Sally’s face, inches before mine.
“The garrison stands at nine hundred. Veterans mostly. He sends his fresh meat to the borders and takes it back when it’s been seasoned.” I heard Makin’s chair scrape back. “Which son of a whore threw that?” he yelled.
I kept the whore’s wrist turned. I took her throat in my other hand and drew her closer. “Tonight we’ll call you Katherine, and you can show me how it works with girls.”
Some of the dream-haze left her eyes, replaced by fear. That was all right with me. I had two hundred men and no secret door into the Castle Red. It seemed only right that somebody should be worried.
23
My book shifted again. I say “my” book, but in truth it was stolen, filched from Father’s library on the way out of the Tall Castle. The book lurched at me, threatening to snap shut on my nose.
“Lie still, damn you,” I said.
“Mmmgfll.” Sally gave a sleepy murmur and nestled her face in the pillow.
I settled the book back between her buttocks and nudged her legs slightly further apart with my elbows. Over the top of the page I could see the faint-knobbed ridge of Sally’s spine tracing its path across her smooth back to be lost in the red curls around her neck. I wasn’t convinced that the text before me was more interesting than what lay beneath it.
“It says here that there’s a valley in Gelleth they call the Gorge of Leucrota,” I said. “It’s in the badlands down below the Castle Red.”
The morning light streamed through the open window. The air had a chill to it, but a good one, like the bite on ale.
“Mmmnnn.” Sally’s voice came from the pillow.
I’d tired her out. You can wear even whores out when you’re that young. The combination of a woman and time on my hands wasn’t one I’d tried before. I found the mix to my liking. There’s a lot to be said for not being in a queue, or not having to finish up before the flames take hold of the building. And the willingness! That was new too, albeit paid for. In the dark I could imagine it was free.
“Now if I know my ancient Greek, and I do, a leucrota is a monster that speaks with a human voice to lure its prey.” I bent my neck to bite at the back of her thigh. “And in my experience, any monster that talks in a human voice, is human. Or was.”
My feet hung over the end of the bed. I wiggled my toes. Sometimes that helps.
I reached for the oldest of the three books I’d stolen. A Builder text on plasteek sheets, wrinkled by some ancient fire. Scholars in the east would pay a hundred in gold for Builder texts, but I hoped for more profit than that.
I’d been taught the Builder speech by Tutor Lundist. I learned it in a month and he’d gone bragging to anyone who’d listen, until Father shut his mouth with one of those dark looks he’s famed for. Old Lundist said I knew the Builder speech as well as any in the Broken Empire, but I couldn’t make sense of more than half the words in the little book I’d stolen.
I could read the “Top Secret” at the head and foot of every page, but “Neurotoxicology,” “Carcinogen,” “Mutogen”? Maybe they were old styles of hat. To this day I don’t know. The words I did recognize were interesting enough though. “Weapons,” “Stockpile,” “Mass Destruction.” The last but one page even had a shiny map, all contours and elevations. Tutor Lundist taught me a little geography as well. Enough to match that small map to the “Views from Castle Red” painstakingly executed in the large but dull A History of Gelleth whose leather-bound spine nestled in the cleft of dear Sally’s oh-so-biteable backside.
Even when I understood the Builder words, the sentences didn’t make sense. “Binary weapon leakage is now endemic. The lighter than air unary compounds show little toxic effect, though rosiosis is a common topological exposure symptom.”
Or, from the same page: “Mutagenic effects are common downstream of binary spills.” I could stretch my Greek to guess the meaning, but it hardly seemed reasonable. Perhaps I’d stolen an old storybook?
“Jorg!” Makin hollered through the door. “The escort’s here to take you to the Forest Watch.”
Sally
