Book Two: The Journeyman

From Pascale de Montereu's "Story of Aethilia"

The world blossomed under the care of Contado and Navale, and grew strong and prosperous under their loving eyes. And yet during this blossoming of abundance, a sour note was struck, for try as they might, the creations of the world could not bring forth anything new. After years of the same crop being grown upon the same land, the land ceased to yield, and the fields lay fallow. The fields within the mind suffered a similar fate, as the years passed without inspiration, without new ideas. Contado and Navale appealed to their sister Strella, but the world was beyond her power to repair. In desperation, the Divine Children appealed to Aes. Aes reached deep within Herself, and brought out Tessura, the Weaver. Made of all the beautiful things in the world, She glowed like the sun and sparkled with the brilliance of flowing water over gemstones. Tessura sat Herself at Her loom, and gathered the things of the world, and from them, created anew, and the world began to bloom once more.

Until the glorious day when Tessura rose from the loom and looked into the looking-glass, and gave birth to Formate, Her brother, Her reflection, Her second self. Formate the Shaper picked up Tessura's work-basket, and beheld the things and beings of the world. He reached into the basket, and drew out life, and held it in His hands. From those hands did new shapes arise, and were new things born. Contado and Navare looked upon the creations of Their Brother and Sister, and did care for them, and cause them to grow strong and beautiful. As did their eldest sister Strella look upon the work-baskets of Formate and Tessura, and from time to time She added to them, new creations to be Shaped and Woven.

Thus were the Arts of Shaping and Weaving added to the Castes of Aethilia, and there they remain, to this day, keeping strong and prosperous the land of the Gods.

Chapter Eight, Three Years Later

Isani

While the Guildsmen toiled in their firelit halls, the traders arrayed stall after stall of glittery things, and the royals took tea in their salons while debating the finer points of philosophy and history, another life went on, unnoticed around them. Life, shoddy, putrid and bitter, teemed around the docks, higher on the riverbanks where storehouses lined the streets, in the Tanner's Quarter, where the reek of animal flesh being prepared was only just the better of that of the fishmonger on the other side of the city. The workingmen were Named into a caste just like an other Aethiline, only of a decidedly less smart variety than that of a glasswright or a goldsmith or a scribe, and their day was hard, painful, and short.

Life of a different sort entirely teemed around the taverns that served these men, drawn to dark corners and shadowed halls where poverty and impropriety found an auspicious crossroads. For a certain sort of workingman, his week's wages found a hasty exit over a roll in the bed of a garishly made-up trollop or a roll of the dice. But whores and dice also attracted a better heeled sort, charmed by the notion of a bit of risk, just as a stand of day-old fish attracted flies. It was there that I grew to an early manhood, nipping at the gamblers' heels with a pack of other dirty, lice-infested children of nowhere.

I was blessed with quick feet and even faster fingers, the quality that sold me to Umberto when I had nowhere else to go. I was, as Tigant, Umberto's slimy, hook-nosed lieutenant often reminded me, an orphan. Pulled out of the slurry of mud and filth on the riverbanks, as the story had it, by a soldier and given into the safekeeping of a tavern doxy. The soldier I remembered only vaguely, seeing a row of glistening buttons sometimes, in the shadow of the day's end. I remembered his boots, too, I thought, gleaming black and smelling of polishing wax. The rest of him was lost to memory, save that he was tall, and I still had the memory of the beginnings of rough stubble on his cheek as he'd carried me tight to his chest.

It was a romantic notion, and one that I was too-afraid to ever share with my few mates, who never ceased to look for an opportunity to jeer and angle for position. In truth, the filth of my clothes must have covered the gleaming buttons, and why would a solider so natty and grand stop to fish a street-orphan out of the river anyway? But it was my fiction, and it gave me comfort, so I held to it. Chantal, on the other hand, I remembered as clearly as daylight.

I have no memory of a mother before her, and gods know she tried her best to act the part, however unsuited for it she may have been. From that day forward the combination of cheap perfume oil and sour whiskey would bring a vague smile to my face and a much more defined sickness to my stomach, and I avoided the wide skirts of prostitutes like a disease ever after. Two years I spent with her, hiding under the table as she took coin from strangers to please them. It was all strange to me then, and felt indescribably wrong, but I know now that she was considered skilled in her trade and offered me a protection I would never again enjoy.

I knew, even as a child, that there was an undefined melancholia about her, even as she grinned to her customers and joked with the tavernkeepers. She would bounce me on her knee as she applied rouge to her cheeks for the night, but sometimes her leg would fall still, and she would forget I was even there, her eyes staring into a distance where I couldn't follow. She often sent me to market for her, pressing a handful of brass coins, and sometimes, if we were lucky, a silver, into my palm in exchange for a loaf of bread or an armful of vegetables. She always answered the door and told me I was clever, and shared half with me before wrapping up most of her bit in a cloth for later.

I will never forget the day she didn't answer. I was eight, and I thought I had been especially clever at the market. I bought bread with her coins, and when the grocer looked away from his stand for barely an instant, I snatched a big summer melon, right off the end! I raced home to show Chantal, careening up the stairs like a wild bull. But at my knock, there was only silence. I remember how the door squeaked on its hinges as I pushed it open, and I remember the rasping sound the rope made as it swung on the rafters with the weight of Chantal's body.

I may have known she was unhappy, but I never did learn why she took her own life. I did not weep. I took out the knife she gave me, climbed on a stool, and cut her down. I walked out without looking behind me, leaving her on the floor with the melon and the bread. I never told the tavernkeeper, and I never went back to that place. Instead, I headed for the river, and two weeks later, filthy and starving, I found my vocation with Umberto the Thief. I didn't mourn her. She was unhappy and I envied her ability to get what she wanted, just by a knot made by her hand. I would not, I vowed, wallow in tragedy, I would make something of her death by making something of myself. I would not give up.

I graduated from stealing melons to confidently lifting purses within two years of being under the instruction of Umberto, a stoop-shouldered, sallow-faced man from a former Longan province somewhere east of Sapientia. He called me Goldrings, on account of my blond hair which hung in curly rings despite all my attempts to tame it into a knot. He reckoned me one of the most successful apprentices he'd ever had, although he called me too reckless, something I privately laughed at. The desire to be wealthy moved me, not fear. I had nothing to fear from the dandied-up gentlemen with their feverish gaze as they watched the dice roll, nor the swords they carried with so much ineptness. I had nothing to fear from my "mates," either. I was the best among them and I knew it. I climbed in status among them from the first batch of coins that I nicked, and I never looked back.

One of them thought he would take me out when I was eleven, palming a narrow blade and trying to stab me in my sleep. Luckily for me, I slept light and my knife never left my side when I did. When the other boy reared back to slash, I rolled over and cut him across the arm. He dropped the blade and I kicked him in the face until he was down. Umberto and Tagint just shrugged. If you needed protection, you didn't belong there, that was the understanding. But I never took a life. Tagint said the day I did it would make a man of me, but I thought I had gotten on just fine without it.

I had, by my reckoning of the season when the soldier found me, just turned thirteen when I made my biggest score yet. I was loitering by the door of the Sword and Spur, one of my favorite pubs, when I saw him. By his velvet waistcoat and lace cravat, I marked him as a damn sight wealthier of a nob than the usual spiffed-up lot. I made one pass at him as he went near the door, figuring I'd lift his purse as he passed through the crowd at the door, but he surprised me. He passed right by the door and kept going. That's when I understood and my interest sharpened like a steel point. He wasn't here for a bit of slumming, dice or cards and a woman, he was here for a rarer commodity entirely– opium, fresh off the ship from Duros. Now I was determined, for his purse would be fat indeed.

I got him just before I could reach the alley by the pub, palming my knife and colliding into him. I cut the strings and ran off before he got his wind back, shinnying up and over the nearest rooftop while he cursed after me. When I finally found a safe place to cut it open, I was rewarded past my wildest dreams with a pile of gold ducats, and even more enticing, a loose ruby that shone in the candlelight and some other, smaller stone with a cloudy blue surface. Too many people had seen me by the Sword and Spur for me to hold it back, but I was determined to keep something of it. The ruby and the ducats I handed over to a very pleased Tagint. The cloudy blue stone I kept for myself, it being just small enough to stitch into my boot.

The loot that I served up to Tagint did more than please him. It gave him a reason to launch me even higher among his band of apprentices. I was already a cutpurse of some renown, he wanted to see if I could handle myself with a housebreaking. I was teamed with a burly lookout named Dillon, and a climber/scout/second-storey woman called Bretta. I was taught how to "starglaze" glass, putting a sheet of paper coated with glue over the window before it was broken, so the glass shattering made little noise and the pane could be removed with barely any fuss.

The first three jobs went smooth as polished gold, for I was just muscled enough to climb and hang in place on a windowsill with ease, and just light enough to be able to follow Bretta up the side of a building and flatten myself in the shadows if anyone passed. One night, Umberto himself came and found me, with Tagint in tow. It seemed they had something special for me, a burglary job on Ridge Hill itself, where the Nobility lived while in Town. The Town house in question was an old one covered in ivy on one side, which would be a huge advantage to us, and owned by a Marquess named Lord Bertram Summerfield.

Summerfield, our information had it, was getting on in years and had fallen on slightly difficult times. His collection of objets d'art wasn't what it might have been in earlier years, but it was far more vulnerable now that he'd been forced to let over half his staff go. From the sound of it, it would be even easier than our last job, since there was not only few guards and a wallful of ivy, but a balcony besides.

I prepared in Umberto's headquarters that night, with him even willing to give us lampblack for our faces and soft, kidskin gloves for our hands. He was, as he told us, already seeing the profit from this in his eyes, and was willing to give us some extra tools to make it happen. Bretta went in first, scouting the area and reporting an all clear, with one guard making a long, routine loop around the inside of the wall.

She waited for the guard to pass, and gave a low hoot, and I shimmied up the brick wall and dropped beside her. Thankfully, Summerfield was old-fashioned in many respects, and preferred a perfectly manicured formal garden, one with many hedges and wide trees, that made it all too easy to slink across the lawn and up to the house itself.

Bretta and I crouched behind a bush trimmed into the shape of a cannonball and waited for the guard to make one more pass, and then I reached for the ivy. I went up first, swinging neatly over the balcony wall, and bent down, waiting for Bretta. When she made it up to the balcony, I took out my cutting-blade and hammer while she took out one of the public broadsides we saved for this purpose and coated the back with gum. I cut a wide enough circle in the glass so I could put a hand through with ease, and took the coated page from her. With that on the glass, I took a hammer to the cut area and it split with barely a sound. I removed the glass, put in hand in, and neatly removed the bar from the latch.

We were in.

The balcony opened to a sitting room so cold I could see my breath upon the air. Double doors led to the bedroom, and they were warm to the touch, telling me that he was conserving fire everywhere but the room where he stayed. Good enough, I thought, my eyes roaming across the art-filled walls and cabinet of travel mementos. I thought the man had sold off half his collections! There was enough in this room alone to justify the care we'd put into this job.

While I moved around this room, Bretta went downstairs with a pair of sacks. Light and nimble, she could elude any servants still up at this hour of the night.

But she went about her task apparently unmolested, and after listening in the darkness for several moments and hearing only the soft movements she made, I went back to looking over the rooms that were my responsibility.

I'd already placed several small paintings in my sack, along with a jeweled egg and several ivory Durosian figurines, when I found something that completely captivated me. It was a jewel-box, the likes of which I had never seen. It was made of gold, inlaid with brilliant red and blue stones, and bearing the likeness of a winged disk on the top. Underneath the disk were a series of raised outlines that depicted the oddest things I had ever laid eyes upon– people, strangely stylized, a long hand viewed from the side, two open disks, and a lion, among others. I wondered if it were some sort of foreign writing, although I had never heard of any who wrote in pictures.

So entranced was I by the strange jewel-box that I didn't hear the sound until it was nearly upon me, a scratching at the door. When I looked up, Lord Summerfield himself stood before me in his night-robe, with a tasseled nightcap askew upon his head. In one hand he held a candlestick, in the other, one of the new pistols.

"Drop that box, you damned thief!" he yelled and waved the pistol at me.

To be sure, I was more afraid that didn't know what he was doing with the pistol than that he might shoot me. I'd never used one before, and from the way he was waving the thing about, he probably never had either.

"Unhand that, I tell you!" he growled again. I slowly lowered the sack.

"Not the sack, you idiot! That jewel box! It's from Meleket, and I won't have the likes of you touching it!"

Meleket? The ancient desert land? I'd barely heard of it, let alone imagined I'd ever see anything from there. The mystery of it made me covetous. I contrived to slowly set it down while reaching beneath my cloak with my other hand.

"No, no, you foolish thief. I don't trust you. Give it here!" he gabbled, and as he got closer I could see that the man had lost most of his teeth.

Yes, I thought, come closer. My throw isn't bad, but I'd rather not trust to it.

"Worth a lot, is it?" I sneered, waving it to distract him. I hadn't gotten my blade completely free, and until I did, his eyes had to be elsewhere. Yes, my lord, follow the pretty jewel box.

"More than a man such as you will see in a lifetime!" he snorted.

"Now give it to me!" he screamed, and leaped toward me.

"With pleasure!" I growled and stuck the knife in his side.

He made a most awful noise as he fell off me, screaming and gurgling. As he tumbled to the ground, the pistol went off. There was a deafening BANG and a cloud of sooty smoke billowed into the cold air. The ball zinged past my ear and cracked into a china plate hanging on the wall. The resulting smash and fall of broken glass sounded like a herd of charging elephants.

I thrust the gold jewel-box in my pocket, and quickly bent down to feel at Lord Summerfield's throat. He was, as I suspected, quite dead.

Suddenly, I heard the thunder of footsteps coming up the stairs. The staff? The guard? Or had they possibly managed to summon the Watch that quickly? I'd never been on Ridge Hill before, for all I knew, half of them lurked behind Noble houses for when they might be needed.

I grabbed the sack and headed for the balcony, forgetting to retrieve my knife. I looked quickly over the side, but neither saw any guards, nor heard Bretta's answering hoot. I hoped she had gotten out safely, of course, as she was a skilled climber and her loss would be felt by Umberto– perhaps enough to take it out of my cut!

I made it down the ivy and to the outer wall before I heard the sounds from the room I'd just vacated. They'd found Lord Summerfield's body, and there were already men on the balcony scanning the grounds below. I was completely trapped. I couldn't pull myself onto the wall now, they'd see me even with the black clothing and lampblack on my face. It was then that I looked over and saw Bretta, crouching in the bushes with two sacks in her hands. She went from glaring at me to looking worriedly at the men on the balcony.

For Aes' sake, Dillon, do something!

To my surprise, the Watch did indeed seem as if they were lurking round the corner, and they turned out to be my salvation. One of the house-servants had run out of the house screaming, and an open cart of Watchmen pulled up to he gates. Bretta and I took our chances when we saw the two men looking out from the balcony were distracted by the watch to sneak out of their sight and over the side of the wall away from the bedroom balcony and the arrival of the Watch.

We didn't stop to catch our breath, but fled into the shadows, not pausing until we were well clear of the Hill and into the warren of alleyways that began the descent in quality that marked the beginnings of the lower city.

"Goldrings, you idiot!" Bretta panted, leaning against the alley wall. "What in the world happened up there?"

"Summerfield caught me, right in the middle of loading my sack. I had to kill him."

"You killed him?" she said, eyes going wide. Murder was something of a rarity on jobs like these, and Bretta seemed to know I had never done it before.

"Well what else could I do?" I snarled. "The man had a pistol aimed at my head!"

Which he seemed inept with, I thought but didn't say. And if I hadn't been so taken with that damned jewel-box, we would have been gone before he even got out of bed.

But it was most definitely best that I didn't mention that, or, I added silently, tell anyone anything about the jewel-box at all. It was mine, from the moment I laid eyes upon it, I knew it was meant to be mine. The gem I was already keeping back from Umberto and Tagint was there to insure my future lest my chances with them fell through, but this was something else entirely. I planned to hold on to it, no matter what else happened.

"Well, it was good that no one saw you," she said finally. "It's probably also good that Summerfield is dead, since he could finger those blond curls of yours in a second. Good work, Goldrings."

Good work, yeah... I killed someone. I had to, yes, but the reality of it was starting to set in. One thing to be a proficient thief, but to be a murderer before I even turned fourteen? I would probably be celebrated for my "bravery." The thought made my stomach churn. After all, what would happen next? Would Umberto decide I was a lousy house-burglar but a fair killer? What would the soldier who saved my life think of that?

Oh, go on now, I thought irritably. The man was a memory, only made distinct by Chantal's drunken ramblings. I wasn't even completely sure he had ever existed, really. If he did, he'd known Chantal enough to take me to her, but not to ever come back. Yeah, my fictional soldier really cared enough to bother about whether the urchin he pulled out of the river muck grew up only to turn thief and murderer, all right.

"Goldrings, you all right?" Bretta was asking, staring fish-eyed at me.

"Fine," I said quickly. "What about Dillon?"

She shrugged. "He either got out at first sign of the Watch, or he didn't. He's replaceable, if he didn't make it back."

Replaceable. Aren't we all. I suddenly had a bad need to find a mug of ale, like everyone else seemed to do when they had doubts about life.

I thrust my sack into Bretta's hands. "Take this. It's all here, and I'm sure Tagint can appraise it without any help from me."

She looked at me, bewildered. "But you'll lose your cut!"

I just shook my head. "Don't matter about that," I mumbled, and walked on out of the alley.

Bretta didn't yell after me, she probably just took the sack and claimed it for hers. It really didn't matter, for I was sure about only one thing– I didn't want to go back. Not ever.

I wandered the city until dawn, being careful to avoid both Umberto's patch and any areas where the Guard was thick. When I finally started to get tired and hungry, I headed for the outer edge of the city, where farmers' children came in from the country to set up stands of whatever would grow this close to winter, and poorer caravans clustered tight around meager fires. This was a poor area, but a less brutal kind of poor than the dockyards where I was raised and where Umberto and his gang ruled.

I found a table near the door in a shoddy tavern on a cold, windy street corner where I felt sure I wouldn't be recognized, and fished out my last few coins for a round of bread and a bowl of stringy stew. As I shoveled food into my mouth, I wondered what in hell I was going to do now. I had been stupid to run off like that and leave the biggest haul of my life in Tagint's greedy claws. Bretta was right, I'd never see any of it again, and he'd probably have me horse-whipped for running off. So what if I killed somebody? The man was a Noble, a leech on all that his hardworking subjects labored themselves nearly to exhaustion to live off of. The toothless old thing deserved to die.

But what about me? What did I deserve? I wondered why I was even torturing myself with these questions, since none of the rest ever did. They were content with their lot– at least, the general idea of it, even if they did burn for riches and a warm bed at night. So why was I any different?

Suddenly the door swung open and a huge group of caravaners ambled in, still half drunken from the night before. They held the door open for one of their fellows, and I grimaced at the blast of icy air. I looked bleakly out the door before they finally closed the damned thing, imagining my still-warm stew congealing before my very eyes.

Which it pretty much did, I thought was an angry sigh, staring down at it. If I'd been dockside, Umberto's toughs would have beaten the snot out of them for "bad tavern manners." I almost chuckled at the thought of it, since here no one seemed to care enough to even say anything. The caravans meant business, after all.

As I dabbed up the last of the stew with my remaining hunk of bread, I suddenly realized what that low, well-kept building across the street was– a temple to Nascere, the Namer. If I went to them, could they tell me what I was supposed to do with my life? Why I felt so different than the others?

I cautiously ventured over, feeling a nervousness that was quite unlike me as I walked in and told a young acolyte that I wanted to be Named. The kid seemed surprised, but had the good sense not to say anything about me being too old. I wasn't sure if they did Namings for people who weren't infants anymore, so I was relieved at that.

I was brought into the presence of a youngish woman, with plain hair and a face like a horse's. She wore the robes of a Namer, though, and had a certain air of dignity about her.

"You are the supplicant?" she said, looking at me with the surprise that her acolyte hadn't shown.

"Yeah, I guess. I'd like to be Named."

"How old are you, my son?"

"I'm thirteen, is that going to be a problem?"

She merely raised her eyebrows at my defiant tone, and shook her head. "No, not at all. I have never Named someone already grown, but my mentor, Nerinda, spoke of it to me."

"Well, good then." I said, and began to realize that she hadn't moved, that she was just waiting for me. She wants an offering, of course she does. But I used my last coins to pay for the meal, and I certainly wasn't going to part with my Meleketan jewel-box!

I sighed, sat down and pulled my boot off. I reached for my waist, and then realized I'd left my knife– the one Chantal gave me before she died-- at Summerfield's house. In Summerfield. I hoped she couldn't read my mind!

"Lady, may I borrow a knife?"

She looked at me quizzically, but she summoned her acolyte to bring one to me. I opened the stitching and pried out the cloudy blue gemstone.

"Will this do?" I asked.

She seemed surprised, as she bent over and took it from me. "Yes, this will do quite well."

She had her acolyte take me away so that I could use the wash basin, and I returned to the sanctuary cleaner than I'd been in years. The priestess merely nodded to me before washing her own hands in a ewer of sanctified water and adding a pinch of pungent-smelling incense to the thurible hanging by the altar.

She pointed to the Naming table. "Sit up here, and be still."

I obeyed, and she carefully placed her hands on my shoulders. The woman smelled of spices and soap, and her hands felt very delicate. Even more than Bretta's.

As she touched me, she began to let out a low hum, which seemed to fill the room.

The priestess hummed for what seemed like an eternity, the unearthly sound of it raising the hairs on my neck. Finally, her eyes opened and she looked very carefully at me.

"Your name is Isani, although I sense you have had and will have other names in this life. You wear many masks, and all of them well."

"But what of my caste?" I said, becoming quite furious at her and the cold way she looked at me. She knows! Any moment now she'll not only blurt it out, but she'll call for the Watch. And then what? Kill her, like I did Summerfield? Only for seeing the truth? Thieving was like weaving, in a way, I thought. Only in reverse. What if she said I was a Weaver? Would that only serve to confirm my destiny with Umberto's band?

"You are a Namer," she said finally, completely astonishing me. "You sense the truth, no matter what, and your inability to do anything about it infuriates you. You have much power about you, Isani, and you are loved by the Gods. Try to remember that, even if your Naming skill brings you sorrow."

~~*~~

I left the temple feeling as if I'd been struck dumb. Of all the things she could possibly have said, never in a thousand years would I have expected that. I was a Namer. Well, now what? What did a Namer do, besides hum and give people their caste? I knew soldiers were also Namers, as were weapon-masters, but that was about it. Really, I'd never been considered part of a caste, even though I knew I had to have one since everyone did, but I knew precious little about them.

I'd been hasty to leave Umberto, I decided finally. I needed some way to earn enough to live off while I figured out what it meant to be a Namer, and thieving was all I knew. I looked for a place to hide the jewel-box before I went back into his territory, though. I had enough good sense for that.

Umberto and Tagint didn't even look surprised to see me when I came ambling back in.

"Where the ‘ell have you been, boy?" Tagint growled, grabbing my curls with his meaty hand.

"Around!" I said defiantly.

"Around, is it? I should have you beaten for running off! Bretta here tells us you killed old Lord Summerfield. That true?"

I nodded and spat. "Tis the truth, right enough!"

Tagint suddenly looked at me more carefully, and yanked me close and started sniffing me. The scent of him, especially after the pleasant odor of the priestess, was enough to make me gag.

"Hey, you smell all clean-like. Where you been?" Umberto ambled over, finally deciding to be interested. "Had a bath, have you? And where did the likes of you get a bath, little Goldrings?"

"My name," I said furiously, "is Isani."

"Isani, is it?" Tagint said with amusement. "And how did you dream that up? I thought Goldrings was good enough for you, I did!"

I didn't answer, and Umberto gestured for him to shake me until my hair started to rip.

"I went to a Namer!" I finally screamed.

Tagint dropped me in a heap at his feet.

Umberto loomed over me, his voice dangerously soft. "Where would you get the money to pay a Namer? You're not holding back from me, are you?"

I gathered enough courage to look him square in the eye. "No, sir. I gave her my last coins, she said as how Aes bade a person pay only what they could!"

To my astonishment, Umberto began to laugh. "She gave you charity, then, boy. Probably because she couldn't fleece you like a pair of worried parents!"

"What about the killing?" Tagint ventured. "The boy got caught!"

"Oh, leave him be, Tagint. Whatever he did, he's covered."

Curiosity got the better of me. "Covered? How?"

Umberto looked at me curiously. "For some strange reason, word is out that the Watch thinks he was murdered by one of the Queen's own Guard!"

"That's... that's something!" I stammered, my mind feverishly at work. It was as if some divine providence had reached out and saved me from the Guard, although I had no idea how. Why, though, that was easier.

Somehow, some way, I was meant for greater things. The priestess herself had said so!

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