Newbie Writes a Novel

Interlude: Brat Masterpieces

The summer after Jean came to the Gentlemen Bastards, Father Chains took him and Locke up to the temple roof one night after dinner. The roof was walled on every side but open to the sky; Chains’ “blindness” gave him an excuse for not maintaining the garden it was meant to hold. Here he could sit, unobserved, and smoke a paper-wrapped sheaf of Jeremite tobacco while the sunlight sank beneath the horizon and the caught fire of the city’s Elderglass rose glimmering in its place.

That night, he wanted to talk about the eventual necessity of cutting throats.

“You boys are investments, in time and treasure both.” He exhaled ragged crescents of pale smoke, failing as usual to conjure full rings. “Big investments. My life’s work, maybe. A pair of brat masterpieces. So I want you to remember that you can’t always smile your way around a fight. If someone pulls steel on you, I expect you to survive. Sometimes that means giving back in kind. Sometimes it means running like your ass is on fire. Always it means knowing which is the right choice-- and that’s why we’ve got to talk about your inclinations.”

Chains fixed Locke with a stare while he took a long, deliberate drag on his sheaf; the final breath of a man treading in unpleasant water, preparing to go under the surface.

"You and I both know that you have multiple talents, Locke, genuine gifts for a great many things. So I have to give this to you straight-- if it comes down to hard talk with a real foe, you're nothing but a pair of pissed breeches and a bloodstain. I know you can kill, but you’re just not made for stand-up, face-to-face bruising. And you know it, right?"

Locke’s red-cheeked silence was an answer in itself. Suddenly unable to look Father Chains in the eyes, he tried to pretend that his feet were fascinating objects that he’d never seen before.

“Locke, Locke, we can’t all be mad dogs with a blade in our hands, and it’s nothing to sob about, so let’s not see that lip of yours quivering like an old whore’s tits, right? You will learn steel, and you’ll learn rope, and you’ll learn the alleypiece. But you’ll learn them sneak-style. In the back, from the side, from above, in the dark.” Chains grabbed an imaginary opponent from behind, left hand round the throat, right hand thrusting at kidney-level with his half-smoked sheaf for a dagger. “All the twists, because fighting wisely will keep you from getting cut to shit-mince.”

Chains pretended to wipe the blood from his ember-tipped “blade,” then took another drag. “That’s that. Take it and learn to work around it, Locke. Sulking is a game for boys; a man can’t flinch from his weaknesses. There’s little time left for you to be a boy around here, and that’s a shitty deal, but it’s the only one you get.” He forced twin streams of smoke from his nostrils, and cheered up visibly as the tails of gray vapor swirled around his head. “Now quit acting like there’s a fucking naked woman on your shoes, will you?”

Locke did grin at that, weakly, but he also looked up and nodded.

“Now, you,” Chains said, turning to regard Jean, “I think you’ve got the sort of temper that cracks skulls when it’s off the leash. I think you could be a lovely, vicious little bastard with steel in hand, a stand-up bruiser to keep your friend here out of trouble. Care to give it a try?”

Jean’s eyes were immediately drawn down to the fascinating spectacle of his own feet. “Um, well, if you think that would be good, I can try...”

“Jean, I’ve seen you angry. Give me some credit for being four times your fucking age, son. You don’t smolder and you don’t make threats; you just go cold, and then you make things happen. You’ve got something Locke doesn’t-- pith, vinegar, the curse of the fucking Gods, I don’t know.” He drew smoke from his sheaf once again, and flicked white ashes to the stones beneath his feet. “I think you have the knack for smacking brains out of heads. That’s neither good nor bad; it’s just something we can put to use.”

Jean seemed to think this over for a few moments, but Locke and Chains could both see the decision already made in his eyes. They had gone hard and hungry under his black tangle of hair, and his nod was just a formality.

“Good, good. Thought you’d like the idea, so I took the liberty of making arrangements.” He produced a black leather wallet from one of the pockets of his laze-coat and handed it over to Jean. “Half past noon tomorrow, you’re expected at the House of Glass Roses. “

Locke and Jean both widened their eyes at the mention of Camorr’s best-known but least-public school of fencing. Jean flipped the wallet open. Inside was a flat token, a stylized rose in frosted glass, fused directly onto the inner surface of one leather fold. With this, Jean could pass north over the Angevine and past the guardposts at the foot of the Alcegrante hills; it placed him under the direct protection of Don Tomsa Maranzalla, Master of the House of Glass Roses.

“That sigil will get you over the river and up among the swells, but don’t fuck around once you’re up there. Do what you’re told, go straight there and come straight back, and for all our sakes tame that mess on top of your head. Use fire and a poleaxe if you have to.” Chains took a final drag of evergreen-scented smoke from his rapidly disappearing sheaf, then flicked the butt up and over the roof wall. His last exhalation of the night sailed over the heads of the two boys, a wobbly but otherwise fully-formed ring.

“Fuck me! An omen!” Chains reached after the drifting ring as though he could pluck it back for examination. “Either this scheme is fated to work out, or the Gods are pleased with me for engineering your demise, Jean Tannen. I love a win-win proposition. Now don’t you two have work to do?”

*****

In the House of Glass Roses, there was a hungry garden.

The place was Camorr in microcosm; a thing of the Eldren, left behind for men to puzzle over, a dangerous treasure discarded like a toy. The Elderglass that mortared its stones rendered it proof against all the human arts, much like the Five Towers and a dozen other structures scattered over the islands of the city. The men and women who lived in these places were squatters in glory, and the House of Glass Roses was the most glorious, dangerous place on the Alcegrante slopes. That Don Maranzalla held it was a sign of high and lasting favor with the Duke.

Just before the midpoint of the noon hour the next day, Jean Tannen stood at the door of Don Maranzalla’s tower; five cylindrical stories of gray stone and silver glass, a hulking fastness that made the lovely villas around it look like an architect’s scale models. Great waves of white heat beat down from the cloudless sky, and the air was heavy with the slightly beery breath of a city river boiling under long hours of sun. A frosted glass window was set into the stone beside the tower’s huge lacquered oak doors, behind which the vague outline of a face could be discerned. Jean’s approach had been noted.

He’d gone north over the Angevine on a glass catbridge no wider than his hips, clinging to the guide ropes with sweaty hands for all six hundred feet of the crossing. Ferry rides were a copper half-baron; for those too poor to ride, there was the ecstatic terror of the catbridges. Jean had never been aloft on one before, and the sight of more experienced men and women ignoring the ropes as they crossed at speed turned his bowels to ice water. The feel of hard pavement beneath his shoes had been a blessed relief when it came again.

The sweat-soaked yellowjackets on duty at the Alcegrante gatehouse had let Jean pass far more quickly than he’d thought possible, and he’d seen the mirth drain from their ruddy faces the moment they recognized the sigil he carried in his little black wallet. Their directions after that had been terse; was it pity that tinged their voices, or fear?

“We’ll look for you, boy,” one of them suddenly called after him as he started up the clean white stones of the twisting avenue, “if you come back down the hill again!”

Pity and fear, then. Had Jean really been enthusiastic for this adventure as recently as the night before?

The creak and rattle of counterweights heralded the appearance of a dark crack between the twin doors before him. A second later, the portals swung wide with slow majesty, muscled outward by a pair of men in blood-red waistcoats and sashes, and Jean saw that each door was half a foot of solid wood backed with iron bands. A wave of scents washed out over him: humid stone and old sweat, roasting meat and cinnamon incense. Smells of prosperity and security, of life within walls.

Jean held his wallet up to the men who’d opened the door and one of them waved a hand impatiently. “You’re expected. Follow me and respect the house that has made you its guest.”

Against the left-hand wall of the opulent foyer, a pair of curlicue staircases in black iron wound upward; Jean followed the man around and up one set of narrow steps, self-consciously trying to keep his sweating and gasping under control. The tower doors were pulled shut beneath them with an echoing slam.

They wound their way up past three floors or glittering glass and ancient stone, decorated with thick red carpets and innumerable stained tapestries that Jean recognized as battle flags. Don Maranzalla had served as the Duke’s personal swordmaster and the commander of his Blackjackets for a quarter of a century; these bloody scraps of cloth were all that remained of countless companies of men fate had thrown against Nicovante and Maranzalla when they had torn Camorr’s trade rivals apart during the Iron Sea Wars.

At last, the winding stair brought them up into a small dim room, barely larger than a closet, lit by the gentle red glow of a paper lantern. The man placed one hand on a brass knob and turned to look down at Jean. “This is the Garden Without Fragrance,” he said, “Step with care, and touch nothing.” Then he pushed the door to the roof open, letting in a sight so bright and astounding that Jean rocked backward on his heels

The House of Glass Roses was more than twice as wide as it was tall, so the roof must have been at least one hundred feet in diameter, walled in on all sides. For a frightful moment, Jean thought he stood before a blazing, hundred-hued alchemical fire. All the stories and rumors had done nothing to prepare him for the sight of this place beneath the full light of a white summer sun; it seemed as though liquid diamond pulsed through a million delicate veins and scintillated on a million facets and edges. Here was an entire rose garden, wall after wall of perfect petals and stems and thorns, silent and scentless and alive with reflected fire, for it was all carved from Elderglass, a hundred thousand blossoms perfect down to the tiniest thorn. Dazzled, Jean stumbled forward and stretched out a hand to steady himself; when he forced his eyes closed the darkness was alive with after-images like flashes of heat lightning.

Don Maranzalla’s man caught him by the shoulders, gently but firmly.

“It can be overwhelming at first. Your eyes will adjust in a few moments, but mark my words well, touch nothing.”

As Jean’s eyes recovered from the initial shock of the garden, he began to see past the dazzling glare. Each wall of roses was actually transparent; the nearest was just two paces away. And it was flawless, as flawless as the rumors claimed, as though the Eldren had frozen every blossom and every bush in an instant of summer’s fullest perfection. Yet there were patches of genuine color here and there in the hearts of the sculptures; swirled masses of reddish-brown translucence, like clouds of rust-colored smoke frozen in ice.

These clouds of color were human blood.

Every petal, leaf, and thorn was sharper than any razor; the merest touch would open human skin like paper, and the roses would drink blood, just as the stories said, siphoning it deep inside the network of glass stems and vines. Presumably, if enough lives were fed to the Garden every blossom and every wall would someday turn a rich, rusty red. Some rumors had it that the Garden merely drank what was spilled upon it, others claimed that the roses would actually draw blood forth from a wound, and could drain a man white from any cut, no matter how small.

It would take intense concentration to walk through these garden paths; most were only two or three paces wide, and a moment of distraction could be deadly. It said much about Don Maranzalla that he thought of his garden as the ideal place to teach young men how to fight. For the first time, Jean felt a sense of dreadful awe at the creatures who’d vanished from Camorr a thousand years before his birth; how many other alien surprises had they left behind for men to stumble over? What could drive away beings powerful enough to craft something like this? The answer did not bear thinking of.

Maranzalla’s man released his grip on Jean’s shoulders and re-entered the dim room at the apex of the stairs; the room, as Jean now saw, jutted out of the tower’s wall like a gardener’s shack. “Proceed to the heart of the garden,” said the man, “and if you have any love of life, step slowly and mind your balance.” Then he pulled the door shut after him, and Jean seemed alone on the roof, with the naked sun overhead and the walls of thirsty glass before him.

Yet he wasn’t alone; there was noise coming from the heart of the glass garden, the whickering skirl of steel against steel, low grunts of exertion, a few terse commands in a deep voice rich with authority. Just a few minutes earlier, Jean would have sworn that the catbridge crossing was the most frightening thing he’d ever done, but now that he faced the Garden Without Fragrance, he would have gladly gone back to the midpoint of that slender arch fifty feet above the Angevine and walked it without guide ropes.

Still, the black wallet clutched in his right hand drew his mind to the fact that Father Chains had thought him right for whatever awaited him in this garden. Despite their scintillating danger, the roses were inanimate and unthinking; how could he have the heart of a killer if he feared to walk among them? Shame drove him forward, step by sliding step, and he threaded the twisting paths of the garden with exquisite care, sweat sliding down his face and stinging his eyes.

It was the longest thirty feet of his brief life, that passage between the cold and waiting walls of roses, but he didn't allow the garden a single taste of him.

At the center of the garden was a circular courtyard about thirty feet wide; here, two boys roughly Jean’s age were circling one another, rapiers darting and flicking between them. Another half-dozen boys watched uneasily, along with a tall man of late middle age. This man had shoulder-length hair and drooping mustaches the color of cold campfire ashes; his face was like sanded leather, and though he wore a gentleman’s doublet in the same vivid red as the attendants downstairs, he wore it over weather-stained soldier’s breeches and tattered field boots.

Not a boy at the lesson didn’t put his master’s clothes to shame. These were sons of the quality, in brocade jackets and tailored breeches, silk tunics and polished imitations of swordsman’s boots; each one also wore a white leather buff coat and silver-studded bracers of the same material; just the thing for warding off half-hearted training thrusts. Jean felt naked the instant he stepped into the clearing, and only the threat of the glass roses kept him from leaping back into concealment.

One of the duelists was surprised to see Jean emerge from the garden, and his opponent made good use of that split second of inattention; he deftly thrust his rapier into the meat of the first boy’s upper arm. The skewered boy let out an unbecoming squeal and dropped his own blade in shock. “Master, I was distracted by the boy who just came out of the garden! That was not a fair strike!”

Every boy in the clearing turned to regard Jean, and it was impossible to guess what soonest ignited their naked disdain: His laborer’s clothing, his pear-like physique, his lack of weapons and armor? Even the boy with a spreading circle of blood on his tunic sleeve continued staring with open loathing. The gray-haired man cleared his throat, then spoke in the deep voice Jean had heard earlier. He seemed amused.

“You were a fool to take your eyes from your opponent, so in a sense you earned that sting. But it is true, all things being equal, that a young gentleman should not exploit an outside distraction to score a touch. Let you both try to do better next time.” He pointed a hand toward Jean without looking at him, and his voice lost its warmth. “And you, boy-- lose yourself in the garden until we’ve finished here; I don’t want to see you again until these young gentlemen have left.”

Certain that the fire rising in his cheeks could outshine the sun itself, Jean rapidly scuttled out of sight; several seconds passed before he realized with horror that he had leapt back into the maze of sculpted glass walls without hesitation. Positioning himself a few bends back from the clearing, he stood in mingled fear and self-loathing, and tried to hold himself rigid as the sun’s heat cooked great rivers of sweat out of him.

Fortunately, he hadn’t much longer to wait; the sound of steel on steel faded, and Don Maranzalla dismissed his class. They filed past Jean on their way out of the garden, each boy seemingly at ease with the lethal labyrinth of transparent blossoms. Not one said anything to Jean, for this was Don Maranzalla’s house, and it would be presumptuous of them to chastise a commoner within his domain. The fact that each boy had sweated his silk tunic to near-translucency, and that several were red-faced and wobbly with sun-sickness, did little to leaven Jean’s misery.

“Boy,” called the Don after the troop of young gentlemen had passed out of the garden and down the stairs, “attend me now.”

Summoning as much dignity as he could, realizing that most of it existed only in his imagination, Jean sucked in his wobbling belly and went out into the courtyard once again. Don Maranzalla wasn’t facing him; the Don was looking at the undersized training rapier that had recently stung a careless boy’s bicep. In his hands, it looked like a toy, but the blood that glistened on its tip was quite real.

“I, uh, I’m sorry, sir, my lord Maranzalla, I must have come early, I, ah, didn’t mean to distract from the lesson...”

The Don turned on his heel, smooth as Tal Varrar clockwork, every muscle in his upper body ominously statue-still. He stared down at Jean now, and the cold scrutiny of those squinting black eyes gave Jean the third great scare of the young afternoon.

He suddenly remembered that he was alone on the roof with a man that had butchered his way into the position he currently held.

“Does it amuse you,” the Don asked in a serpentine whisper, “to speak before you are spoken to, in a place such as this, to a man such as myself? To a Don, such as myself?”

Jean’s blubbered apology died in his throat with an unmanly choke; the sort of wet noise a clam might make if squeezed out of cracks in a crushed shell.

“Because, if you’re merely being careless, I’ll beat that habit out of your butter-fat ass before you can blink.” The Don strode over to the nearest wall of glass roses, and with evident care he slid the tip of the bloodied rapier into one of the blossoms. Jean watched in horrified fascination as the red stain quickly vanished from the blade and was drawn into the glass, where it diffused into a mistlike pink tendril and was carried into the heart of the sculpture. The Don suddenly sounded amused again. “But if you’re being bold, little Jean Tannen, if you really have the balls to speak to me as you see fit, in my own garden, well... maybe I can do something with you after all. So which is it?”

At first the paralysis of Jean’s tongue refused to lift, then insight hit like a kick to the stomach: Further deference and apologies would be a mistake. Why would a veteran of a hundred battles, the most legendary killer in Camorr, feel the need to privately humiliate a single fat eleven-year-old?

“If I lied to your face and said it was boldness,” said Jean, licking his sweat-salted lips, “would that be bold enough to save me from a pounding?”

After a moment of weighted silence, Maranzalla laughed and cracked his knuckles with a sound like pine logs popping in a fire.

“I can see that the moral education of initiates at the Temple of Perelandro is getting curiouser every year! But don’t fret-- I know your master, Jean. Known him for quite a few years now, though we held very different stations when we first crossed ways, by the Gods. And so I already know there must be something worth kindling behind that blubber of yours; Chains has other boys at his temple, but you’re the only one who’s been sent here, right?”

Jean nodded. The Don’s casual warmth now seemed genuine, and it did more to calm Jean’s aching nerves than the still-rising heat of the sun overhead.

“Truth is, you didn’t come early. I let my previous lesson run long because I tend to indulge those wretched little shits when they want to cut each other up a bit. In future, come at the stroke of one, to make sure they’re long gone. They cannot be allowed to see me teaching you.”

Once, Jean had been the son of wealthy merchants, and he had worn clothes as fine as any just seen on this rooftop. What he felt now was the old sting of his loss, he told himself, and no mere shame for anything as damned stupid as his hair or his clothes or even his hanging belly. This thought was just self-importantly noble enough to keep his eyes dry and his face composed.

“I understand, my lord. I don’t wish to embarrass you again.”

“Embarrass me? Jean, you misunderstand.” Maranzalla swiped idly at the air with the toy rapier, the let it drop with a clatter to the stones of the courtyard. “Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting limitations and its proscriptions against dishonorable means of engagement.

“You, on the other hand,” he said as he knelt and gave Jean a firm but friendly poke in the center of his chest, “you are going to learn how to kill men with a sword.”