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69. [Cortland] The Cracks
🕑 Added 2024-10-08 04:29:27 +0000 UTCCortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, bringing his newest champion north
King Cizco Salvado, Quill of Infinzel, Kingdom of Infinzel, in the past
Henry Blacksalve, Healer of the 8th Renown, Soldier’s Rest, and the three other champions of the broken wall
***
1 Trollove, 61 AW
The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent
149 days until the next Granting
“Mark my words, hammer master, we can use this to our advantage.”
It was well after midnight when Cortland returned to the pyramidal city with King Cizco. The air still smelled like fire, but the panic of earlier had loosened into something wild and free. If the celebrations they’d encountered during their march back inside had been any indication, the people of the outer districts would be partying until sunrise, and perhaps beyond. Despite not enjoying a single drink, Cortland had a vaguely hungover feeling. He stumbled after the king, his head feeling packed in cotton.
“The mages make it work, don’t they?” Cizco continued. “Eight champions to carry out their intentions instead of four.”
Cizco bubbled with an excited energy that Cortland found baffling—wide-eyed, fingers flexing, his cloak unfurling behind him as he jogged up the stone steps. It was as if the king, too, took part in the joy buzzing through the outer districts, even though the people out there celebrated freedom from him. Meanwhile, men and women of the pyramid stood at windows, alarmed by the festivities between the walls. Cizco passed them by, vibrating too much to notice their questioning looks.
“The archmages made servants of their candles,” Cortland said. “Cursed them.”
“Yes, and?” Cizco glanced over his shoulder. “Bel thinks he’s liberated his people and gained the gods’ protection. But he has lost my protection, Cortland. Our protection. Soon, your hammer will dictate our term.”
Cizco yanked open the door to the lift. Cortland stumbled inside after him.
“I believe this is the grand change our logician was sent to usher in, to guide us through,” Cizco continued. “But the gods have always favored Infinzel, have they not? And here, they provide us an opportunity to strengthen our standing. I am glad our situation has at last been made clear.”
Cortland half-listened, distracted by the crimson handprint on the wall. “There’s blood,” he said.
“So there is,” Cizco said. “I believe you will have to raise up a new champion after tonight.”
“What?”
As the lift rose, Cizco held his open palm out. His golden inkwell appeared in his hand and he made a show of testing the weight.
“We’re a champion short,” Cizco said. “I feel it.”
“Who?” Cortland demanded. “How?”
“Let us see.”
They emerged onto the second highest level where Cortland and the other champions lived. On brisk strides, the king made directly for Carina’s apartment. Cortland lingered a few steps behind, noticing more dried blood on the stone.
“I believe our logician has toyed with forces beyond her,” Cizco said. “It was bound…”
The king trailed off, stopping in Carina’s doorway. They bumped shoulders as Cortland roughly maneuvered around him, hammer in hand. The scene within the room was a grisly one—blood smeared across the floor, a broken mirror, smashed bottles, bent arrows, and a crack in the ceiling.
But no Carina.
Vitt’s nightstalker, Patricia, laconically lapped up a pool of blood, arrows sticking out of her neck and shoulder. Her yellow eyes sought Cortland. Without thinking, Cortland covered the distance with [Bull Rush] before the beast could even realize his intentions, and caved in her head. She disappeared in a thin, black mist—returning to Vitt, wherever he was.
“What happened here?” Cortland mumbled. He spun to face the king, and raised his voice. “What happened here?”
But for the first time since Soldier’s Rest, the king had gone silent. Cizco gazed up at the crack in the ceiling, his mouth screwed up in confusion. Cortland realized that the king had been expecting to find something else in this room. A scene of violence, perhaps, but not one absent any bodies.
“Find the others,” Cizco said quietly. “Vitt, Henry, Carina. We need to know who is lost to us.”
Cortland ground his teeth. Back into the night, then. When had he ever hesitated to carry out an order?
“As you wish,” he said.
As Cortland made to leave, Cizco pulled out a chair and sank into it. He flicked through the pages spread across the table—diagrams of Infinzel, maps, ledgers—and brushed them aside.
“Wait,” Cizco said.
Cortland stopped.
“Whose man are you?” Cizco asked.
Cortland tilted his head. “What?”
“Ben Tuarez was my man,” Cizco said. “Over the years, he assisted me with all manner of difficulties. He understood what made this place tick. And you—you were his man. His most reliable weapon. I admit I have not always seen you as more than that.”
Cortland grunted. “Never asked to be more than that.”
“No, you have not. And you are loyal, aren’t you? Loyal, and powerful, and aspiring to fill the shoes of your mentor.”
Cortland felt heat on his scalp. “What do you want me to say, Cizco?”
The king sighed. “Nothing. I have to tell you something that shames me, Cortland. It is a night for that, apparently.”
“Respectfully,” Cortland replied, “you don’t have to tell me shit.”
“It is about Arris Stonetender.”
***
1 Meltzend, 61 AW
On the Troldep River, North Continent
119 days until the next Granting
Knees bent, balanced on the platform at the front of the riverboat, Cortland flung his hammer into the buffeting wind. The chunk of ice he'd aimed for exploded on impact, its pieces sinking below the river's surface before bobbing back into view. With [Weapon Return], he snapped the hammer back to his hand, feeling a brief moment of satisfaction at the destruction.
Cortland did not need to clear a path for the riverboat. The combination of the spiked icebreaker across the bow and the dual water-wheels at the back meant their boat could smash through most obstructions they might encounter without losing much speed. Plus, there were a dozen crewmen—some of whom watched Cortland now—ready to take up pikes and oars should the water tighten around them. Cortland shattered the ice to pass the time.
It felt good to break something.
They were fast losing daylight. But, fifty yards ahead, Cortland spotted another bobbing chunk of ice, one side glittering in the sun and the other shadowed. He cocked his arm back.
“I don't think I've thanked you, have I?”
Cortland made a low noise in his throat as the voice interrupted his backswing. He lowered his hammer and glanced over his shoulder. Orryn es-Salvado stood on the deck, one skinny leg laced through the railing.
“What?” Cortland said.
“I have a fuller idea of what you can do now,” Orryn said. “I never thanked you for holding back when we fought.”
Cortland closed his eyes. He would dispute Orryn's characterization of their previous encounter as a fight—it was more like a beating—but what would be the point? The boy would probably just agree with him. Orryn had been obsequious and under foot ever since they'd started up the river. He had never left Infinzel before and now he traveled north with Cortland, four champions of a rival faction, and sailors who wore the pyramid but were too lowborn to be worthy of attention. That left Cortland as Orryn's only option for conversation.
“Don't mention it,” Cortland said.
“Well, I learned a lot from it,” Orryn continued. “Perhaps, when we get back, we could have some more formal training sessions. Private ones. Like you did with Carina.”
Cortland eyed his latest protégé. His ears and nose were pink from the cold, and his short-cropped black hair spiked from the wind. The Ink had agreed with Orryn—his ears didn’t seem to protrude as much, and Cortland swore that his teeth had straightened.
“Maybe,” Cortland said.
“I want you to know what I’m capable of,” Orryn said. “That I can be depended upon.”
“I’ll see soon enough,” Cortland replied. “On the mountain.”
Cortland did not need to [Assess] Orryn to know his abilities. He had already committed them to memory.
There had been no gathering of prospects to the sand pit in the early morning hours to select Infinzel's fourth champion. Cortland had not been consulted. He had learned about Orryn's rise to champion the day after Solstice—when Cortland had been summoned to the Battle Library to make plans for Nortmost. Cortland had remembered, then, how nearly a half-year earlier he’d met Carina for the first time in that room. He remembered how there had been a crack in the wall by one of the bookshelves—still there—that he believed one of Orryn’s rats had spied through.
As if on cue, the silver-furred rat that Orryn had selected as his familiar climbed out from within Orryn’s jacket. The rodent perched on Orryn’s shoulder, on its haunches, its mouth upturned toward Orryn’s ear as if whispering a secret.
“She’s watching us again,” Orryn said quietly.
Cortland slipped his hammer back into its loop, then climbed onto the deck where Orryn stood. With Cortland’s exercises at an end, the crew of the riverboat returned to their tasks.
“Who?” Cortland asked.
“You shouldn’t have to ask, hammer master. It’s been the same, the whole way up.”
Cortland turned his head, following Orryn's gaze to the upper deck where Rivian Stonespirit perched on one of the large wooden spools that housed the riverboat's anchor chain. The woman kept her balance on one leg, bent in a crouch that must have been hell on her thigh muscle. She faced into the wind, her eyes closed, her sashblade held horizontal in front of her. As Cortland and Orryn watched, she glided through a series of positions with exaggerated articulation.
“She's not paying any attention to us, boy,” Cortland said.
Orryn leaned closer so he could whisper. “You don't think so? You haven't noticed how she mirrors your own training times? I think she takes your measure.”
Of course Cortland had noticed how Rivian had a habit of appearing on deck to go through her exercises whenever Cortland decided to engage in his own more brutish exertions. However, he did not want to give Orryn any credit for having picked up on that detail.
“What else is there to do on this ship?” Cortland asked. “I think nothing of it.”
“No, I suppose I wouldn't either if I had your renown.”
In truth, Cortland did wonder about Rivian. The woman was in her twenties, but with a heavy brow and stoic eyes that made her seem older. She wore her black hair in a neat ponytail and dressed always in one of those antique uniforms from Guydemion's Host—gray trimmed with green, loose-legged pants, and a purple sash around the waist. The gods had made her a blade master of the fourth renown.
The ranking impressed Cortland. He had packed a couple histories for the journey north, wishing to learn more of Infinzel’s past. He had tracked Rivian’s fighting style back to the Final War. She was meant to perch on the back of a horse, launching away from the rider to attack with her twin sashblades. A technique useful only for the circuses, now. And yet, someone had kept it alive enough for Rivian to learn. She spoke little, even with her fellow champions, and Cortland got the sense that they didn't know her any better than he did, which meant she hadn't been a regular around Guydemion's tavern. He wondered where the old general had been hiding her.
As Cortland studied her, Rivian's eyes opened. She pointed her sword at him, then made a hook with it to gesture over his shoulder.
“There,” she called down. “Look.”
The heavy gray clouds that hung above the river had parted, and now the Nortmost loomed on the horizon. They were almost there. Cortland squinted, as if he might be able to see champions ascending the mountain from this distance. They had received missives from the two Quills of Infinzel that the Ink had appeared earlier that day. They were already a half-day behind.
“I suppose that means tonight's card game is canceled,” Traveon Twiceblack said.
Cortland no longer bristled at the former barkeep's annoying habit of slipping up behind him. He had only lashed out with a backhand the one time and, anyway, Traveon had been nimble enough to duck away and seemed to enjoy the exchange.
“No one has any money left to lose to you,” Orryn grumbled.
“Now, I know for a fact that isn't true,” Traveon replied. “I've been keeping you in enough hands, rat master, specifically so that I could crush you decisively on our final night of travel. All these weeks, batting you around with my paws, only for you to escape back into your little hidey-hole.”
“Beastlord,” Orryn said.
“Hmm?”
“I am a beastlord, skulker.”
“Yes, of course, who would say anything different?”
“You did,” Orryn replied. “You said rat master.”
“Did I?” Traveon shrugged. “Have you ever heard the one about the noble ordering dessert in the outer districts? I said mousse, not mouse!”
Cortland knew allowing the card game had been a bad idea, but what else were a bunch of men supposed to do aboard a riverboat for two weeks? He watched how Orryn turned to regard Traveon. Cortland recognized that cold, patient certainty in the eyes of the es-Salvado. One day soon, I'll get to kill you, the look said. For his part, Traveon didn't seem to notice, which surely made him even more infuriating. His eyes—lined with black, as always—were focused on the mountain ahead.
“I didn't know they made mountains that big,” he said.
Orryn snorted, taking the sudden sincerity as an opening. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“And you, Orryn es-Salvado, are you so well-traveled that you find the natural world unimpressive?” Traveon asked. “I had thought this was your first time out of Infinzel, just like me.”
“Enough of this flirting,” Cortland said. “Get below and gather your things. There won’t be rest tonight. We head straight up.”
With one last sneer for Traveon, Orryn scurried away. Although he hadn’t been speaking to her, Rivian hopped down from her perch and disappeared below, as well. Only Traveon lingered beside Cortland, considering the mountain like a painter would, in no rush to follow any orders. When he at last made to depart, Cortland grabbed him by the arm.
“Do you need reminding of our previous discussions?” Cortland asked.
Traveon raised a delicate eyebrow. “Which, hammer master?”
Cortland glanced down at the man’s chest. His coat hung open, and his shirt was halfway undone, revealing much of his Ink.
“Cover yourself up,” Cortland said. “We don’t want word of Infinzel’s schism to spread amongst these other champions. Not if we can help it.”
“Surely, they’ll hear eventually. With all the shipments that move through the Underbridge? Sailors talk.”
“Then let them hear that way,” Cortland said. “No point in hastening the process. Give them time to plan ways to probe our weakness.”
Traveon smiled. “But we aren’t weak, are we? One happy, unified front. A reciprocal exchange of wishes planned by our insightful Quills. Eight champions go to the island and eight return.”
“Gods, but you fucking chatter,” Cortland said.
“Only because I sense you enjoy it,” Traveon replied.
“Orryn doesn’t. You should be careful about that.” Cortland grit his teeth. “And I expect peace to be made on the mountain, as well.”
“Ah, you allude now to the man who tried to murder me and absconded with my betrothed.”
Cortland exhaled through his nose. Traveon had not been shy about telling the story of his battle with Vitt—the details grew grander and bloodier with every retelling, and the motivations for the encounter fuzzier. As Traveon told it, Vitt had mistaken him for an intruder in Carina’s rooms and handled him thusly. As for why the logician and hunter had left Infinzel ahead of their fellows—those decisions puzzled Traveon and he dared not speculate. The actions of Infinzel’s two missing champions were similarly a mystery to Henry Blacksalve, even though the healer had been the last to see them on the night of his changing loyalty. Cortland could tell his old friend wished to evade this topic and, for the duration of the journey, Cortland had allowed him to do so.
He already knew all he needed to know.
Traveon cleared his throat. “Your grip becomes uncomfortable, champion.”
“Because I haven’t yet heard my answer.”
“I won’t make it a problem,” Traveon said quietly, meeting Cortland’s eyes. “Can you say the same of them?”
“Is the boy making a nuisance of himself, hammer master?”
Cortland released Traveon’s arm as Watts Stonework appeared on the deck. The scarred bouncer was stripped down to his tunic and pants, covered in sweat, likely from working the tension-cranks for the water-wheels—a task no one had asked him to do, but that he had taken upon himself. A man who liked to work. Cortland appreciated that. A thin layer of frost formed on the lens Watts wore over his damaged eye.
“Ah, saved from further scolding by umbo Watts,” Traveon said. “The gods smile.”
Watts’ nostrils flared at the nickname. “Move your scrawny ass to whatever task the hammer master has assigned you,” he said.
As Traveon danced away, Cortland again took measure of Watts. The gods had done the man a disservice. He seemed worth more than one level of renown.
But then, there was the matter of his class. Survivor. A rare offering from the symbologist, and one not usually taken up. There were few survivors in the archives. Most significantly, it was the class selected by the Orvesian betrayer Sulk, who would go on to have a Ministry devoted to him. Traveon had become fixated on that auspicious detail.
Cortland turned to regard the mountain and Watts came to stand next to him. They coexisted in easy silence, until glasses clinked behind them.
Henry sidled up between them. This was usually around the time when the healer crawled out of bed, and today was no different. Cortland had stopped nagging Henry about his drinking. He had been grateful for his friend’s presence these last weeks, even if they spoke only of frivolous things. Sometimes, Cortland still caught himself staring at the new symbol on Henry’s throat. It looked unnatural there.
“Good evening, gents,” Henry said. “Last chance, I think, to steal this boat and sail it to Inkwash.”
Cortland shook his head and Watts smirked. Henry had made some variation of that joke almost every night as the three of them sat around their table in the galley, watching detachedly as Traveon beat Orryn and the sailors at hand after hand of cards. The Gruff Gentlemen’s Club, Traveon had nicknamed them. Cortland felt an unfamiliar pang in his chest, recognized it as melancholy, and bit the inside of his cheek.
Henry passed out generous pours from his bottle of whiskey, and the three men knocked glasses.
“A privilege to come this far with you both,” Watts said.
“I look forward to a more leisurely voyage back,” Henry replied. “And hope to sleepwalk through most of the hiking.”
Cortland simply grunted and slugged back his whiskey. He doubted they would share any drinks on the way back. Not if Cortland did what was expected of him.
Comments
iridium248
Traveon is Rank 2? Psssh, Vitt is absolutely going to slaughter him at some point.
