The Defenders' Apprentice

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

In all the wide city, the bridge was the one thing that always seemed the same. Between the training hall and his assumed role as a guardsman, Thorat had to stay mostly to the upper part of the city, even when he was in Anamat, so this place still felt like it belonged to his scrappling days. The row of stone houses shading the canal was bright in the afternoon sunlight, even as the whitewash peeled away from some of them. Thorat leaned over to watch his dark reflection in the canal waters. Down on those banks, he’d spent every night of a too-short season curled around Iola in sleep. They’d been scarcely more than children, but they’d bonded as surely as if they’d been lovers, more surely in some ways.

Now she shared her magic with the world, with the princes, and they didn’t understand it. What if they could see her truly, could see the dragons for what they were again? The world would dance to that mystery once more, and she would be even further out of reach to him than she was now. There was no going back. For one thing, they were too old to camp on the streets anymore. For another, he could smell the cold remains of a fire. Someone else was camping under the bridge.

A trumpet sounded from the top of the soothsayers’ hill, and he turned to see that one of the princes was coming to make his petition, to lie on Iola’s altar so that she could carry his unfelt offering to the dragons’ realm. Thorat stood at attention and saluted the prince’s train as it passed, Enomaean horses bearing the dragons’ gifts, as if horses didn’t hate the dragons. The moment his back was turned, someone climbed up the canal bank and landed soft-footed on the bridge beside him.

“Why did you want to meet here?” the scrappling girl demanded. He was sure now that she was a girl.

“It’s where I used to camp, the trading season that I was on the streets.”

“Just one season?” the girl asked.

“That’s how it used to be.” Thorat looked over his shoulder. It was bad enough to linger on the bridge alone but much worse to have a conversation there. Their voices would carry up the canal, even up the streets.

“Follow me,” he said. The girl followed close behind him as he climbed up the soothsayers’ hill.

At the next corner, he turned to her. “How long have you been in Anamat?”

“Dunno,” the scrappling said. “Three years or so.”

“And no apprenticeship yet?”

“The guilds all say they’re full, don’t have enough work for the journeymen even, with so many foreign goods in the market, and them not taking so many of ours away.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t find you before,” he said.

“We? And why?” the girl said with a sneer. “I do all right. I got my trade.”

“Picking pockets isn’t a trade.”

“It is,” she said.

Thorat shrugged. He turned off the main street at the next square, leading the girl into a long alley between houses. It was so narrow that a bridge connected two of the buildings above their heads. A short distance later, counting the houses as he went, he opened a wooden gate and walked into an even darker passageway, which dipped into a tunnel under a house.

Behind him, the girl hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re safe enough here. See?”

Ahead, a dragonlet’s eyes flickered in the darkness, then disappeared.

“Maybe,” the girl said. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed him through the gate, closing it behind her.

The underground passage was only five strides long, then the light of the sunset sky shone in from above. Three broad steps led up into a sheltered courtyard bounded by the kind of tall, well-kept houses that merchants and elder guildsmen favored, except for one that seemed to be abandoned. A ramshackle stair leaned against its outer wall, running all the way up to its attic story.

The girl had stopped. She looked around, puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” Thorat asked.

“I’ve never seen this place before,” she said. “I thought I knew every inch of this city.”

Thorat laughed. “I thought I did, too.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been here a while,” she said.

“Not as long as some. Come meet my...my aunt.”

“Sure, your aunt. Right.”

§

If Squid was going to go off sailing, there really was no reason to stay under the bridge, and since the guilds wouldn’t have her, it was either this or the temple. Eppie followed the mysterious guardsman, still wondering what could possibly be mysterious about a guardsman. She didn’t have much to lose. She might get a roof over her head. He wasn’t leading her to a brothel or the fallen temple. Those were down by the harbor and a lot easier to find than this place, whatever it was.

At the top of the stair, he told her to wait on the landing. A pair of potted geraniums bloomed there, as if whoever lived here cared more for the flowers than for the staircase. She had a pretty good view out across the city. Eppie reckoned that she was about halfway between the governor’s palace and the East Canal bridge, where she lived. It was a residential quarter, not far from the metalsmiths’ guilds, and across the East Canal from the Chroniclers’ guildhall. She traced the rooflines to try to figure out how they’d gotten there.

“You won’t be able to find it that way,” the guardsman said from behind, startling her. “Come in, but give me your name first.”

“They call me Eppie or just scrapper. Who are you?”

“Thorat,” he said, “or just ‘you there, guard!’ I often prefer it that way.”

Eppie nodded. “And this aunt of yours?”

He didn’t answer, just pulled the curtain aside and motioned for her to enter.

Eppie had been expecting some kind of cramped apartment with a low ceiling. Instead, a short set of stairs led down to what might have been the next-to-top story of the building except that it was open all the way up to the roof beams. It was a vast hall, as big as a temple sanctuary but plainer and dustier, lit by the sky’s fading light coming through broad slits under the eaves. As Eppie’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw a glimmer on one of the side walls, metal reflecting the light of a lone torch. A row of swords hung there, a whole rack of them perfectly polished, at odds with their dusty surroundings. A barred set of double doors at the far end of the room looked like something out of a temple, too, but there were no priestesses there. If there were, it would have smelled better, like incense, not like dust and sweat and rot.

Someone coughed. Eppie turned to see old woman as she emerged from a back room behind a grimy curtain. A beam of light from the windows threw ridged shadows over the wrinkles around her squinting eyes. Her hair seemed to reflect the light in bursts, then fade back to reddish gray. She peered at Eppie for a long while, saying nothing and puffing on a curved pipe. She was smoking some sort of bitter, medicinal-smelling herb. The old woman was wearing boys’ clothes like hers, only a little less ragged. She beckoned for Eppie to come closer.

Eppie stepped forward, measuring the distance between them with her eyes. The old woman had a wildness about her, though mostly she looked like any other old woman: creaky knees, wrinkled hands, and sharp eyes.

“Thorat says you see dragonlets,” the old woman said. “Do you?”

“I don’t always.” Eppie let the words out slowly. What kind of person thought that it was good to see dragonlets, that it didn’t just mean you were crazy? “I don’t see what that has to do with anything. He said you need help with cleaning or something.”

The old woman shook her head at Thorat. “Is that what you told Anot, too?”

Thorat shrugged. “That was a while ago. I thought I’d be more careful this time.”

“Careful is never enough.” The old woman turned back to Eppie. “Can you fight?”

Eppie nodded. She could lay claim to some distinction in that field. “I’m not the best in the city, but I’m close.”

The old woman chuckled. “We’ll see about that.”

Something flew up into the air between them, though Eppie hadn’t seen the old woman, or Thorat, move. She caught it – just a small chunk of firewood, nothing more.

“Good enough reflexes,” the old woman said to Thorat. “You’re right about that much.”

“I wouldn’t have brought her if I didn’t think there was a chance.”

“A chance of what?” Eppie said. Outside, in the falling night, she was missing the best pickpocketing of the year. “What is this place?”

“It’s a training hall of sorts, but our requirements are different from most,” the old woman said.

Thorat nodded. “Some of the guardsmen at the palace and in the princes’ keeps learn just enough swordplay to ensure they can get the taxes from the farmers, but some of us train more, under teachers like…like this one.”

“I’ve met some of them,” the old woman said. “That’s not a flattering comparison.”

“My apologies, Your – Master.”

The old woman grunted. “We are a training hall, but we don’t brag of our existence in the marketplace, or anywhere. If you tell anyone that you’ve been here, I will not hesitate to hunt you down and silence you.”

Eppie took a step back. “But how?” she wondered aloud.

“You don’t want to know that,” Thorat said.

“I do, though.”

The old woman laughed. “You’ll have to find your way back here, then. If you can’t, there’s no sense telling you more.” She took Eppie by the arm and looked into her eyes. After a long moment, she nodded approval, then thrust Eppie away so smoothly that Eppie didn’t even realize what was happening until she landed on her back halfway across the floor, winded but uninjured. How did those old arms have such strength in them?

“Come tomorrow, then, if you can find us again,” the old woman said. “We can teach you to fight. After that, we’ll see.”

“I don’t need to learn to fight,” Eppie said. She bested Squid half of the times that they sparred, and he was the best fighter in the southeast quarter of Anamat. She did all right, just like she did with her pickpocketing, but she’d never thrown someone halfway across a room, not like that.

The old woman just laughed. “You don’t know how to fight. There’s more to it than catching blocks and not breaking apart when you land on your ass.”

“I’ll be back,” Eppie said.

“We’ll see,” the old woman replied. “Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

“Go on, now,” Thorat said. “Maybe we’ll meet again tomorrow.”

Eppie bowed clumsily to both of them and ran up the stairs. She paused on the landing and listened.

“I don’t know about this one,” the old woman was saying.

“What else do we have?” Thorat said.

“Nothing, or only a little more than nothing.”

“A bit more than nothing.”

Eppie felt sure that if she lingered any longer, they would find her there, so she hurried back to the bridge. On the way, she lifted a large bead from a country tanner’s pocket. It stank of dyes and lye, and she bought a whole loaf of festival bread with it, plus a jug of ale at the corner tavern. When she got back to the bridge, Squid and three new scrapplings were crouched beside the sputtering campfire, poking at it with sticks.

“Who are they?” Eppie asked him.

“Bunch of green-knees. I told them they had to get out of here, but then the watch came by. Are they gone yet?”

Eppie shrugged. “I didn’t notice. I brought some bread. You got anything?”

The green-knees leaned forward. Eppie could practically see their mouths watering. They were just scrawny kids from the provinces, their tunics in rags already. They shook their heads.

“You can’t live on nothing,” Eppie scolded them. “It’s Midsummer, best begging of the year.”

“We just got here,” one of the green-knees said.

“All right, here, have some bread. There’ll be more tomorrow at the temple. What do you have?” she asked Squid.

He held his hands out. “I got nothing. I spent the day at the docks, getting the lay of the land for that ship. I’m going tomorrow.”

“You really are going, aren’t you?” Eppie said.

Squid nodded.

“Well, I got enough to share,” Eppie said. “And I’ll be going too.”

“Where to?” one of the green-knees asked eagerly.

“Nowhere much,” Eppie said. “I got a job cleaning, big house.”

“Ha!” Squid said. “The only thing you know how to clean is the lint from peasants’ pockets.” He leaned toward her, reaching for her pocket with a strange, blank look in his eyes.

“Who’d bother with a peasant?” Eppie said, latching onto the insult, which galled her but wasn’t as unsettling as the suddenly predatory look in Squid’s eyes. He’d gotten like that once or twice before, but then he’d been normal again. Picking pockets had to be better sport than dusting out an old attic, even if it was full of swords. She reached for familiar ground. “Wanna fight about it?”