Chapter 4

Three emotions struggled to command Rennor Crow. The first to make a bid for supremacy was surprise. That a windbag like the Beggar Bully would choose death rather than try to weasel out of his predicament undermined all that Rennor knew of the man and every instinct about him too. Second came disgust. Rennor had never liked blood. Certainly such a phobia was something of a drawback in a member of the Long Knives but it also gave him a reputation for clean and efficient kills. Now he stood soaked in the stuff. And finally fear surged into the mix. Gostle had wanted answers and coin, not a one-legged corpse. Not yet anyhow. Disappointing Gostle was not a habit anyone maintained for very long.

Rennor had always thought it surprising how few mistakes it takes to ruin a man's life. Sometimes it took as few as none. The sack of shit bleeding at his feet was a mistake. A big one. He glanced around. Gostle's men stood ready, one holding the woman, one holding the one-eyed beggar, Benam, who had in his only full socket enough surprise for two eyes.

"I think we can take this to mean that our fat friend was telling the truth after all." Gostle crossed the room to stand a short distance from Rennor, wrinkling his nose. Mallar hulked at his side, ready, watching Rennor. "Against all expectations he seems to have been prepared to die for his peasant beau. How touching." Gostle narrowed his eyes at Rennor. "Let us reward his devotion by giving the woman and the girl a quick death." He motioned with his head for Rennor to do the deed. "In the cellar. And no mistakes this time." His voice stayed soft but the words carried their own edge even so.

"Rope-Master." Rennor inclined his head, offering Gostle the honorific that could only be spoken within this house. He bent to take the Beggar Bully's wrists and began to drag him toward the far door. By rights Mallar should help him. The Bully was a big man and heavy, but Mallar stayed at Gostle's side as the Rope-Master approached Benam.

"So, Master One-Eye, you've seen what stealing from the Rope got our late friend here. He was lucky to get off so lightly. You are to be my new bully. If you play the game you will enjoy the rewards. Misbehave and you'll be praying to the God Below for someone to kill you."

Rennor looked up from his labour at that. The phrase seemed oddly familiar. For an instant he saw the mouth of a yawning cave and a man wrapped in shadow. You'll be wanting someone to kill you soon. That's what the hermit had said.

Rennor shook the strangeness from his head. "Bring the woman!" he barked. "And, you, help me with this." The man who had released the newly promoted beggar came and took one of the old bully's arms. The dragging was easier after that.

Once they were through the door and out of sight in the hall Rennor let the other man do all the dragging. He felt dizzy, his thoughts confused. This part of the house was unadorned, used for storage and murder. Although people called the room they'd just come from the Killing Room, the Beggar Bully was the first to die there in an age. It was easier to kill someone where you wanted to bury them. It saved on all the mess and dragging.

Rennor went to the end of the corridor and opened the cellar door, taking the lantern that burned in a niche beside it. He led the way down while Gostle's man dragged the Bully, leaving a crimson smear on the edge of each stone step. The woman began wailing as Gostle's other lackey manhandled her through the doorway.

"Quiet, Gaia." Rennor pressed one hand to his forehead as hard as he could. His head seemed to be splitting and a white agony filled his vision. "Quiet. You'll scare Rula." The girl was in a room nearby – she would be listening to the commotion in the corridor. Where the names came to him from he couldn't say, but he knew he wanted quiet. He felt dirty. He wanted to wash the blood from his hands and to sit somewhere dark until the confusion passed.

The lantern light barely reached the far wall of the cellar. It was a large space. Four stone pillars supported the floor above and to Rennor's certain knowledge at least fifty corpses were interred beneath the floor, each slotted vertically into a deep hole set just a foot from the previous burial. Seven of them were his own work.

"Don't kill my daughter." Gaia forced herself to calmness, as her captor pressed her back against the nearest pillar. She fixed Rennor with reddened eyes. "She's just a child. She had nothing to do with this."

"You had nothing to do with this either, Gaia." Rennor drew his knife. The Master Knife in Falstar had presented him with it personally. That was one cold-eyed bitch he never wanted to meet again. "You have no idea why Armston gave you that money."

"I... I don't..." She stared at him wide-eyed while, in the turmoil of his mind, a faded ribbon fluttered.

"Get on with it, killer. It's cold down here and it stinks." The man holding Gaia knotted his fingers in her dark hair and yanked her head back to expose her throat.

"I'll go get the girl." The other man stood from dragging Armston. The pair of them would be digging three holes soon. One big, one middle-sized, and one small.

"No!" Gaia screamed and tried to throw herself forward.

"No." Rennor echoed her, his voice softer, the heel of his hand pressed to his lips fingers reaching across his face, their tips digging at his forehead as if seeking purchase.

The man went anyway. Derran, that was his name Rennor thought. As Derran passed him Jac drove his knife through his ear and deep into the man's brain. He did it with Rennor's precision and detachment. The blade came free as Derran fell. The other man, Wullan, released Gaia and backed off, hands raised. He had his own knife at his hip but made no move for it.

"Easy, killer. I've got no argument with you. Kill the peasant, don't kill her, it's all the same to me. Same goes for the brat."

"It's just the girl I want kept," Jac said. Rennor knew he should smile and so they both did. They gave a smile that said why they wanted the child. A very wrong smile. It relaxed the man before him a little. "Hold this one for me."

Wullan nodded and gripped Gaia tighter. He looked nervous. He knew there weren't many ways out of the cellar for him. "Tell me what we're saying about Derran. So I know the story to tell."

Rennor nodded. "The woman did him with his own knife. He was careless." He gestured with his blade. "Hold her still. I want this clean." He looked at his hands. The blood still stained his cuffs but all that had been on his skin had gone as if it were never there.

Wullan held Gaia, both of them pale, sweating, terrified. When Jac stabbed him in the throat Wullan hardly seemed surprised. He clutched at his neck as if he might stem the flood, and when he fell there was more reproach in his eyes than fear.

"Gaia." Jac set a slim hand to the woman's shoulder. "We're going to get Rula and then we are going to leave. If anyone gets in our way I will kill them. If I get into trouble both of you run. Leave the town. Go home."

"But..." She searched his eyes. "I don't..."

Jac gripped hard and shook her. "Do exactly what I say, Gaia, or Rula will die here. You've lost one child. Don't let the other die too."

"Who are you?" And something in her face made him think that the answer was already trying to reach her tongue.

"I'm Jacob Summer," he said. "And the God Below won't let me die."

They left the fresh corpses in the cellar along with the old. Jac found that the two men's deaths hardly weighed upon him, as if he wore Rennor's callous indifference like a shield. Killing the Sverland boy had shocked him to the core and only the hectic pace of events afterward had prevented him brooding upon it. And the boy had been trying to take Jac's life whereas the men were unsuspecting and offering him no violence. But clad in Rennor's flesh and drawing on his talent for murder Jac felt no shame.

"Stay." He mouthed the word at the top of the cellar stairs as he pushed Gaia to the wall. He knocked on the first door along the passage. They would have the child here or in the next room. Someone would be watching over her.

A key rattled in the lock, the handle turned, a narrow slice of face and a dark eye appeared. "Rennor Crow! Ain't seen you in a while." Nency opened the door wide, smiling. She worked in the kitchens and would put on a maid's dress if Gostle needed extra help for a big dinner. They must have brought her in to keep the girl quiet.

What was left of Rennor started to bring his knife up so that it would take the woman beneath the ribs and reach her heart. Jac turned the blade to the side and clumsily punched her in the face instead. She fell with a cry, revealing Rula behind her, hands tied, eyes red with weeping.

Jac followed Nency to the floor while Gaia hurried in, shushing her daughter before she could scream. With a hand knotted in Nency's red hair Jac set his knife to her neck. A stray memory floated across his mind. This same neck. Kissing it in the stables behind the house. Rennor and the woman had visited the hay together more than once.

"I'm taking the girl and the peasant. If you give us away I'll kill you before they get me. Do you understand?"

The woman stuttered and sobbed, blood running from her nose.

Jac pressed the flat of the blade hard against her throat. "Do you understand me?"

Nency drew in a shuddering breath and nodded.

"Tell them I knocked you senseless." It had been what he was trying to do.

Jac took the woman's key and stood. He sliced the rope binding Rula's wrists, gripping her as she flinched away. "Come on."

A strong-door divided the cells and killing room from the servants' quarters and the kitchens. Nency's key opened it. Jac led them through the door past a row of sleeping chambers and on into the kitchen.

The cook and three kitchen boys watched them go on through. The aroma of bubbling stew and roasting mutton set Jac's mouth watering. He stopped and gestured with his knife toward the loaves cooling on the long table. "Take some supplies." He narrowed his eyes at the nearest of the cook's lads. "Get a couple of sacks." The boy jumped to it.

A short while later Jac followed Rennor's memories down the corridor that led past the store rooms to the side entrance where deliveries were made. They left at an unhurried pace passing the stables where Rennor had lain with Nency on many occasions. Many, but not enough that he would have hesitated to kill her when she stood in his way. Jac located that strand of callousness and peeled it away as though it were old skin to be shed. He needed some of what Rennor had been but he wouldn't let the killer corrupt who he was. If he let the man's coldness infect him it would empty his soul and while he might have the skills to rescue his wife and child he might find that he no longer thought it worth the effort.

"Where will we go?" Gaia spoke in monotone as though she thought the world about her a dream. Jac knew the feeling.

One of the stallions in Gostle's stable whinnied loudly as they passed the stable door.

"They have horses..." Rula ventured

Jac had considered the horses. His immediate thought had been that none of them could ride, but then he realised that he could. Along with the required skill came an instinct to saddle one and leave both the woman and the child behind. Jac scraped that unwelcome trait away from who he was as if it were dirt. Three of them wouldn't fit on one horse and so they would walk. The important thing was not that they outdistance any pursuit but that they lose it. As they walked away another image came to him, pushed by instincts owned by both Rennor and Armston. Fire and smoke billowing from the stable doors. Jac stamped down on that too. He was a farmer. He raised animals and when the time came he gave them a clean, quick end. No horse would burn to increase his chances.

"Come on." He led Rula and her mother out through the yard gate under the watchful eye of one of Gostle's guards. The man had no reason to stop them. It was ironic that the Rope's strength was now its weakness. Those within the organisation knew that it would be madness for anyone to challenge them, and thus they were slow to understand such events. Though, like a giant disturbed from sleep, once roused their reach and appetite for revenge were prodigious.

"Who are you, mister?" Rula found her courage after a few streets separated them from Gostle's home. Everything seemed to amaze her and she gawked at it all, her fear almost forgotten, displaced by wonder. Jac envied her that and hoped that Baya would be able to shrug off the horrors she'd seen with similar ease. "Who are you?" If she had heard him in the cellars she didn't believe him. And who could blame her?

"I'm..." Too many names crowded his tongue. He didn't want to speak his own. "Errobor," he said. It seemed as good as any other.

They walked through the town at a brisk pace headed for the south road. To the east and west the tinker taverns and the river-runs stretched out along the roads leading from Renstown but the south road boasted mansions with stone pillars and slate roofs. These homes were set back from the highway behind high walls, gates of wrought iron, and trees that had yet to reach their full height. At least Jac considered them mansions. Overlaying his astonishment at their grandeur was Rennor's dismissal of them as the pretensions of merchants new to their modest wealth. In Falstar there were true mansions that would beggar these to the same degree that Renstown's homes beggared Jac's farmhouse. And of course Falstar was considered a provincial outpost to many in Alitha. To the Alithans all of the kingdom was held to be one of the more barbarous territories little improved during the thirty years since King Marton's father drew back his armies and sued for peace beneath the emperor's governance.

"Do kings live here?" Rula asked her mother.

Gaia shook her head, a tense motion. She knew the danger they were in even if she didn't understand why they were in it.

Jac knew that their leaving town would be marked whatever route they took and made no effort to conceal it. Gostle would know that Gaia had brought her daughter in from the east along the Stonewash. What story the Rope Master would tell himself about Rennor's madness Jac couldn't say. Rennor could potentially run anywhere on the map that hung in Gostle's study. With nothing else to lead them Jac imagined that the Rope would end up following the line of Rennor's apparent insanity and look to the east for answers. But once east then to the north or south? Jac hoped he had given them a reason to look southward.

"Stay close," Jac said. "Gaia, cover her face." He nodded to Rula who put her hand to her birthmark and looked hurt. Her mother nodded and moved to pull the girl's hair across her cheek in an auburn veil.

It started to rain, a cold, slanting drizzle. It had rained on the way in and Renstown would see them off the same way. Jac bent his head and led the way through the lanes, taking Gaia and her daughter along the narrow ways between this farm and that. He skirted Renstown at a distance, circling back north. They paused on a bank in the shelter of a hedge to eat bread and chicken taken from Gostle's kitchens. The loaves were lighter and finer than any Jac had ever had but he found himself wanting to gnaw on the heavy slices Catalin would set before him. She had never been much of a cook but he had always loved the earnestness with which she tackled the task.

Jac didn't know how long the Rope would search for them. Rennor and Armston had their own ideas but neither could be sure. It rather depended on how much information Gostle passed up the line. Gostle played the merchant and at heart he was one. He would cut his losses rather than spend too much time in pursuit. He would give chase, to be sure, for the form of the thing. But he wouldn't make it his obsession. But if he told the Long Knives that one of their own had cut loose... They would hunt Jac to the world's end. Or at least until they had Rennor's corpse in their keeping. The Long Knives were the agents of the Rope's vengeance and their reputation would not allow Rennor to vanish after such betrayal.

Rula was the noose about both his neck and Gaia's. It was Rula that would see the Rope haul all three of them back for a cruel imitation of justice. Have you seen a young peasant woman with dark hair? Have you seen a lean man of average height and brown locks cut to his ears? These questions would not take a searcher far. Have you seen a child with the mark of a hand in scarlet upon her cheek? That question would find them, even out in Cove Village with nothing but the wild heath and the Cold Straits beyond.

"Hurry!" The tension put an angry edge on his voice. Jac bit back on it, thinking it wasn't his anger ... but not quite sure.

Who are you? Gaia had asked. And he had given her one answer. Who are you? Rula had asked and he gave her another. It's a dangerous question to ask anyone, for it you think too hard about it you start to wonder. Which parts are me? Which have I been given? Which have I taken? At least that's how Jac had always felt. It was Catalin that had given him a centre. She gave him children and they aimed him at the future. He marched on, hands becoming fists, fingers remembering a time when an axe blow took them.

Who am I?

I'm the man who will find his wife, save his child, and bring them home.

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