01 - The Burning Shore (2 page)

A diamond glittered hard and cold, the silver into which it was set dull by
comparison. Florin leaned forward to examine the jewel.

“Why do you only have one?” he asked.

“What?”

“It’s an earring. Where’s the other one?”

“Does that concern you?” the Reiklander asked, his voice ominously low.

“No,” Florin replied. “I’ll accept it.”

With a final look at the dealer the redhead dropped the earring onto the mess
of coins that spilled across the centre of the table.

“I’ll call you.”

Florin swallowed and realised, for the first time, how damp his palms had
become.

“Well, what have you got?” his opponent snarled with impatience.

“Kings,” Florin smiled, and turned over the first.

The second.

And the third.

The redhead took a deep breath, before running a hand through the thatch of
his hair. He grinned at the dealer. Even though every game of the evening had
been fixed, even those they’d lost, this last hand had been damned
nerve-wracking. All that gold was enough to make anyone nervous.

“Well,” he began cheerfully, turning to Florin, “you had me worried there,
but…”

Florin turned over a fourth king.

“Four kings,” he said, unnecessarily. “Can you beat that?”

For a moment the gamblers sat and looked at the dealer, whose mouth had
fallen open.

“Four kings wins,” he managed at last.

A smash as the Tilean dropped his wine bottle brought them back to life.

“Well, gentlemen,” Florin said, reaching out with both hands to scoop the
pot. “It’s been a real pleasure.”

The redhead sat open-mouthed as his gold disappeared into Florin’s purse.

“We’ll have a rematch anytime you want,” Florin said, eyeing the big man
warily. But his attention had turned to the dealer who, for the first time that
evening, was beginning to sweat.

He pulled at the tip of his crushed nose as if trying to straighten it, then
rubbed his brow. Then he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down
unhappily.

“I’ll be on my way then,” Florin said, to nobody in particular. His eyes
flicked from the two other players to their failed accomplice.

“Here’s a little something for your trouble,” he told the dealer, dropping a
handful of coins on the table and backing towards the door.

“Thanks,” the man nodded unhappily.

“My pleasure. Good night.”

And with that Florin turned and, fighting the urge to run, rattled his way
down the stairs and out into the darkness beyond.

The three men sat as if hypnotized. But when the door slammed below, they
returned to their senses. Leaping to their feet, they rushed to follow Florin
out into the night.

* * *

Although it was as black as pitch in the alleyway, Florin could tell that
dawn was not far off. It had something to do with the smell: the first faint
stirrings of the ocean breeze had started to stir through the miasma of sewage
and mouldering plaster. It was the smell of Bordeleaux.

Shifting the heavy purse on his belt, Florin hurried out of the darkness of
the alleyway and into the street beyond. Here pale starlight mixed with the glow
of a dying moon to set the bleached walls and painted shutters of the district
aglow.

Testing the weight of the coins once more Florin grinned, his teeth shining
in the pale light. He hurried back towards his lodgings. The exhilaration of his
victory carried him unheeding through the potholes and clumps of raw sewage that
slimed the street. He began to whistle but stopped when caution took over.

After all, he’d won often enough to know that it was a lot more dangerous
than losing.

He pressed on until he’d rounded two more corners. Then he stopped, waiting
and listening in the deep shadows.

It was quiet now. Only the sounds of the city’s troubled sleep rose above its
cooling chimneys and gabled roofs. Here and there a dog barked in the night, or
a gust of wind smashed a tile or banged a shutter closed. There was an
occasional distant cry, although whether of drunkenness or pain it was
impossible to tell. Once a high-pitched scream floated across the city before it
was suddenly choked off. Laughter followed.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Florin was about to start back home when he heard the sound of his pursuers.
Their footsteps were cautious but insistent as they pattered after him, jogging
hastily over the broken cobbles of the street.

With his back pressed firmly to the wall Florin craned his head around the
corner and peered back down the street.

Although they were no more than silhouettes in the gloom there was no doubt
that the pair following him were indeed the card-sharps. The Reiklander was
conspicuous thanks to his size; he dwarfed the wiry form of the Tilean who
scampered along in his wake.

Time to run, Florin told himself, his pulse accelerating. There was certainly
no point waiting for his pursuers to catch up, even though facing them would
provide one hell of a challenge.

A sudden flash of steel appeared in one of his pursuers’ hands as they drew
nearer; it gleamed as coldly as the stars that flickered above.

No point hanging around, Florin decided. It would be a mistake to look for
trouble with two armed men. To push a bluff too far. A mistake to listen to the
siren song of rushing blood that hissed in his ears.

As the cheated card-sharps rushed towards the corner the Tilean slipped in
the filth that slicked the cobbles. He swore, his deep southern accent
unmistakable.

“Quiet!” his comrade hissed, turning on him angrily.

Florin’s teeth shone again as he smiled in the darkness. By now the thrill of
winning a few games of cards had disappeared like morning mist, burnt away by a
rush of a terrible new excitement that wasn’t much different from fear. It
gleamed within the darkness of his eyes, and on the sheen of sweat that dewed
his skin.

“Ah, to hell with it,” he said out aloud and stepped back around the corner.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he greeted them as warmly as if they had been
guests in the family home. “Lost?”

The Tilean was the first to recover from his surprise.

“Yes, we are. We’re lost,” he began unconvincingly. His friend, however, was
beyond any pretence. Desperation was apparent in the ragged emotion in his
voice, the smell of his sweat, the sharpness of his movements.

It occurred to Florin that he might have made a mistake.

“Give us back our money,” he demanded, closing on Florin. He chopped his
cutlass through the air as he approached; the gesture as casual as the swish of
a cat’s tail before the pounce.

“I don’t have any of your money,” Florin countered, feigning confusion as he
stepped back and prepared to counter the attack that he realised was inevitable.
It had been inevitable right from the start.

“Please?” the Tilean pleaded from behind his comrade, his hands spread wide.
“Return it and you can go.”

As he said this, the Reiklander leapt forward with a roar, his cutlass
blurring into a lethal arc aimed at his victim’s legs.

Every instinct told Florin to leap backwards, or upwards—anywhere but into
the attack.

He leapt into the attack.

Florin tore his dagger from its sheath as he rocketed forward. He caught his
opponent in the centre of the chest with his shoulder, then twisted the blade to
one side and cut upwards.

With a grunt of surprise the Reiklander lurched backwards, trying to reverse
the angle of his flailing sword arm. But before he could, the dagger’s edge had sliced through the muscle of his bicep as neatly as a
wire through cheese.

The Reiklander howled with pain and jumped away, slashing wildly at his foe
as he did so. Reversing the grip on his dagger, Florin pressed forward, his mind
full of predatory concentration.

Again the redhead lunged at him and again Florin leapt into the blow, this
time slashing at the pale white target of the flesh beneath the Reiklander’s
beard.

The steel connected with scarcely a sound.

The big man fell back. His weapon clattered onto the cobbles as both hands
fluttered up to staunch the sudden pulsing of warm blood. Florin danced warily
to one side, the lethal point of his concentration focused on his enemy. The
Reiklander fell to his knees; it was the opening Florin needed.

But before he could finish him off, the Tilean struck.

In the long, long seconds of his fight with the bigger man Florin had
completely forgotten about the second. It was a lapse that almost cost him his
life. While he and the big Reiklander had been struggling the Tilean had slipped
behind him, waiting for an opportunity to strike. And the opportunity was now.

With a grunt of effort, the Tilean’s sword whipped silently forward, tearing
through the silk of Florin’s shirt with an angry whine. It sent a line of
white-hot pain slicing across the muscles of his back.

Spinning around to face the next blow Florin saw the rapier flickering
towards his eyes and ducked a little too slowly. Another thread of agony zipped
across his forehead, and a spill of hot blood ran down into his eyes.

Blinking back tears, Florin stumbled away, crouching low, waiting for a
chance to duck in behind that sword point.

But the Tilean gave him none. The rapier gave him the advantage, and he
intended to use it.

“Should have just paid up,” he said, flitting to one side with the grace and
finesse of a dancing instructor. “Now it’s too late.”

With a practiced flick of his wrist the man struck again. The blade was
invisible as it sliced through the darkness. Florin spun to one side. The blade
hissed past his ear, and he lunged forward.

Once again the Tilean was too quick. Even as Florin tried to close with him
he’d skipped backwards, the blade of his rapier swishing playfully through the
air.

“Ranald’s teeth,” Florin snarled with frustration. Behind him he could hear
the Reiklander groaning with pain as he lumbered slowly back to his feet.

“What’s that you say?” the Tilean asked, nipping forward to send the tip of
his blade stinging across Florin’s nose.

“I said you can have the gold,” he snapped, trying to ignore the fresh burst
of pain.

“Sorry, my friend,” the Tilean said. “Too late for that. You’d have me
arrested as a common thief.”

“Stop messing about,” the Reiklander interrupted, his voice an aggrieved
whine. “I’m bleeding. Just kill him.”

The Tilean obediently lunged forward from the shadows. Florin, desperation
pushing him into one last frantic gamble, threw himself forward and to the
right.

For a split second he thought that he’d made the wrong choice. Then the
Tilean’s blade flickered as it stabbed through the air to his left, and Florin
was upon him. With a yell he gripped the elbow of his sword arm and plunged the
blade of his dagger into the little man’s stomach.

The Tilean’s eyes opened in twin circles of shock as the knife ripped upwards
into the soft flesh beneath his ribs. Then his mouth gaped opened in an
expression of perfect outrage as Florin twisted the blade up into his heart as
neatly as if he were coring an apple.

With a horrible sucking sound, he pulled his dagger free and let the Tilean
fall.

He died silently. The barest rattle of his last breath was silenced by a
thump as his body collapsed bonelessly onto the ground. Florin’s senses were
already concentrated on the Reiklander.

But the big man was already running: his heavy boots pounded down the street
as he fled. For a second Florin considered giving chase. Then he looked down at
the body at his feet.

The blood, black in the moonlight, still pulsed from the wounds in its
stomach and throat. It seeped between the cobbles to mix with the filth of the
gutter, as inconsequential as a butchered pig’s.

With a deep, shuddering breath Florin knelt down beside the man. He reached
under his jaw to feel for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Unthinkingly he wiped his
dagger clean on the Tilean’s shirt. Then he turned the corpse’s face away from
the grimy stone of the pavement. He brushed a smudge of dirt away from its
forehead, and closed its eyes.

Fighting the tight fist of nausea which clenched his stomach, Florin rose to
his feet. He squeezed his temples and took a deep breath.

Why didn’t I just run, he asked himself?

But he no more knew the answer to that than to why he’d spent his inheritance
on cards, or why he’d turned down the sinecure of militia commander. Or why he’d
done anything since his parents had died.

He sighed, turned and made his way home.

Behind him the dead man lay in the street, his form as still and pale as a
stone knight beneath the light of the gibbous moon.

Florin’s apartments were at the top of an old building that sprawled
drunkenly across three streets. It had served many purposes over the years: it
had been a barracks, a stable and an inn.

Now it was none of those things. The cavernous spaces between its peeling
lathe walls and high drafty gables had been carved up into a shabby warren of
little chambers that housed everything from bales of cheap calico to the
workshops of a dozen stooped and weak-eyed artificers.

Florin unlocked the side door and made his way up three flights of narrow
stairs. They squeaked and groaned as if they were about to collapse, but he was
too used to them to pay any heed to their protest.

In summer the slate roof above his rooms became hot enough to fry eggs on,
but in the winter it froze into a flat sculpture of snow and icicles. Even the
rats deserted the gables at that time of the year, although the cockroaches
weren’t that fussy: they scuttled away now as he unlocked his front door and
pushed it open.

And yet, despite the discomfort, Florin had never considered moving back into
the luxury of his family’s town house. For as long as he could remember that
home had felt like a prison, the bars of respectability strictly guarded first
by his father and then, after his death, by his brother. Here, at least, he was
free.