The sign of Coop’s Hanged Man Inn was just that: a painting of a hanged man, arms bound behind his back, his head bent at a sickening angle. Rain, falling freely, now brushed past in gusts. Temper’s cloak hung heavy and cold from his shoulders. He heard the surf rolling into the pilings just a few streets down, while the bay glistened in the distance like an extension of the rain.
The clouds still held some of the day’s light, but the gloom obscured anything a stone’s toss away. The evening was developing into a night to chill the bones and numb the spirit. He looked forward to slipping into his regular seat just within distance of the inn’s massive fireplace. He also hoped Corinn would stop by so he could ask her about Shadow Moons and this prophesy business… though it’d been nearly a week since he’d last seen her and, truth be told, he worried whether he’d ever see her again. He’d reached a few conclusions of his own.
Opposite the Hanged Man, across the wet cobbles, hunched the low stone wall of what was reportedly the oldest building in the city. It was an abandoned stone house, too far gone to repair. Temper had never paid it much attention, except that now old man Rengel’s tale called to mind another local superstition: that the house predated the town, and that its ruined walls and abandoned rooms had always been haunted.
Rumour also held that it was there Kellanved and Dancer, along with others including Dassem and the current Regent, Surly, had lived and plotted everything that followed. Eyeing it now, on a dark wet night, with the black limbs of dead trees outlined around it, and the bare and tumulus-looking grounds, it did appear sinister. The locals preferred the pretence it didn’t exist, but whenever they had to mention it, they called it the Deadhouse. Personally, he couldn’t believe any sane person could have lived there — which meant Kellanved and Dancer could very well have once stared out of its empty gaping windows. He shrugged and turned away. Sure it was haunted. To his mind, the entire Empire was haunted, one way or another.
Two men stood in the rain out in front of the Hanged Man, backs pressed against the windowless walls. They hung close enough to either side of the entrance for Temper to hear the droplets pattering off their leather cloaks. He’d felt their eyes on him as he approached. Now near they ignored him.
‘Bastard night for a watch,’ Temper grinned to the one on the right.
The man’s eyes flickered to him, looking him up and down, then squinted back into the rain. ‘We’re waiting on a friend.’
Temper paused at the steps down to the front entrance. Everyone knew the Hanged Man was a veteran’s bar, so there was little need for these two to pretend they weren’t keeping an eye out for friends inside. He almost called them on it but didn’t; they looked new. Maybe they just didn’t know the drill. Feeling old, he thumped down the steps.
Coop’s Inn was the other oldest building in the town of Malaz, or so Coop avowed. True or not, the building did stand much lower than the street, and its outer walls were large hand-hewn limestone blocks — the same sort as lay in nameless ruins all over the island. The inn’s common room was so far beneath street level that the steep stairwell leading to it was eerily like a ship’s companionway down to the lowest hold. Rainwater had poured down the worn steps and pooled at the threshold. Temper’s cloak dripped into the puddle as he shook the moisture from his head. He took hold of the oak door’s iron handle and, with the other hand, reached up to the chiselled scars that crossed as faintly as spider’s webbing along the low lintel. He believed everyone had their own personal superstitions, soldiers and sailors more than most. This was one of his. He thought of it as an acknowledgement of the forgotten folk who’d raised the stones in the first place. A sort of blessing — given or received, he wasn’t sure — and as a gesture towards his own continued safety. After all, he did live upstairs. Or rather he lived at ground level. His arrow-slit of a window stood barely an arm’s span above a rat-run between the inn and Seal’s whitewashed brick and timber house behind.
The Hanged Man’s common room was large and wide, the ceiling beams low enough to touch or, if one weren’t attentive, seriously damage one’s head on. They’d brought more than one drunk’s evening to an abrupt and painful end. Fat stone pillars stood in a double row down the chamber’s centre as if marking a path from the entrance to the crackling, rowboat-sized fireplace directly opposite. Long oak tables stretched to either side of this central walk, shadowed in differing distance to the fire. The stone walls were stark, unrelieved but for the occasional miniature vaulted recess, each now dimly illumined by a lamp. Most of the room’s light, however, came from bronze oil lanterns hung from crusted iron hooks set deep into the pillars and the walls. The huge fireplace lit the far end of the room with flickering amber light, dispelling the chill air of the chamber and adding, sullenly, to the illumination.
There was enough smoke to fog the room, but it was warm and dry at least. Temper loosened his cloak. To either side men talked, laughed, and drank. A much larger crowd than usual, and younger, more rowdy. Anji passed, a brownstone jug on one hip, refilling mugs. She gave Temper a harried nod, already weary. He smiled back, but she’d passed on. Poor gal, she’d been spoiled by the regular crowd of quiet old duffers who’d nurse a tumbler of liqueur for two or three bells each. Tonight she was more than earning her keep.
As Temper passed between the long tables he felt the weight of numerous eyes and paused, but no one returned his gaze. Instead, they stared at their cups or the gouged tabletop, murmuring to one another as if they hoped he would just move on like any unwelcome guest. Unusual behaviour from men who appeared hard and ragged enough to have been emptied out of a prison ship, or culled from the press gangs that fed the Empire’s constant need to replenish the oars of the Navy. Temper crossed to his regular seat, sensing the odd charged tension in the air.
Passing the last tables, he glimpsed a crowd of mangy looking fellows dressed in threadbare tunics and cloaks who struck him as nothing more than destitute street-sweepings. These men sat alongside others who suggested the cut of military service with their scars and heavier builds. An unusual crowd for Coop’s. But the old man, Rengel, had warned him to anticipate a night of strangeness.
Someone had taken his regular bench along the rear wall. Considering how crowded the room was, Temper half-expected it, but couldn’t avoid feeling irritated. Couldn’t Coop have kept it for him? What did he pay rent to the damn brewer for anyway? That tiny cell upstairs? The wretched food?
The man occupying his seat wore a leather vest over a padded linen shirt that hung in tatters down over the bench and leggings of iron-studded leather. Oiled leather wristlets half-covered forearms that bore a skein of scar tissue: puckered remnants of scoured flesh, thin pale crescents of bladed edge, and the angry pink mottling of healed burns. Head low to the table, he spoke to a companion shrouded in shadow.
For a moment Temper hesitated. He considered addressing the man. Not that he expected to retrieve his seat, but to challenge him enough to better glimpse his features. The fellow’s face remained averted. Stiffly so, it seemed to Temper. Intangibly, the space between the two momentarily seemed to contract. Coop materialized, stepping through a rear narrow door. He scanned the room, hands tucked behind his leather apron. He waved towards a sole empty table and Temper ambled over; he’d just stood a half-day watch and was damned if he would stay on his feet a moment longer.
Coop sat with him. ‘Sorry about that, Temp.’ He raised a decanter of peach brandy.
Temper nodded. ‘Quite the crowd,’ he offered, but Coop simply poured. He shrugged and raised the tumbler for a toast.
‘To the Empire,’ said Coop, raising his own glass.
‘To the bottom of the sea,’ returned Temper, and downed the shot.
Sucking his teeth, Coop pushed his seat back against the rear wall to better view the room. ‘Yes, a different bunch. But it’s just the one night y’know.’
‘A Shadow Moon.’
Coop looked up. ‘Yeah, that’s it. First I’d heard of it though.’ He pulled a rag from behind his apron and used it to wipe his glistening forehead then his retreating, curled red hair.
Temper slid a forearm onto the table, inclined his head to the room. ‘Rough looking…’
Coop waved the suggestion aside. ‘A quiet bunch, considering all the young bloods. Nothing broken yet except the seals from two casks of stout.’ He chuckled knowingly.
Temper sighed. In his eyes Coop’s main failing was his unflinching optimism. Coop’s steady supply of it would have made him suspect simple-mindedness had he not known otherwise. Perhaps, he thought, Coop was inclined to be hopeful, given all the coin passing his way.
He considered dropping in on Seal later. Gods knew the young army medicer could probably use the company
