23. [Cortland] Soldier's Rest (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, slumming it

The bouncer and bartender of Guydemion’s, a Soldier’s Rest tavern

23 Hazean, 61 AW

Soldier’s Rest, Infinzel

247 days until the next Granting

Cortland considered going to Soldier’s Rest incognito. A cloak with a hood big enough to hide his face and keep his hammer disguised within its folds—like some Penchennese spy. He had a cloak just like that hanging in his wardrobe, all black and sinister, a gift from some tailor that he’d never worn.

Too gods damned hot for that, he decided. Sweat already dampened the back of Cortland’s shirt. From the heat or from the steady boil of anger? The hammer master couldn’t be sure.

A place within Infinzel’s walls where one could contact the Brokerage of the Blades. The assassins who had killed his friend Ben Tuarez. And Ben’s replacement herself had been seen there.

The information came from Vitt Secondson-Salvado but, even given that, something still smelled.  

Cortland exited the pyramidal city at the Underbridge and made his way through the dwindling traffic of the river port. He’d worn a shirt that covered the Ink on his chest, at least, and so hopefully he looked to most like a short and scowling blacksmith on an important errand. He walked with purpose and kept his shoulders squared at such an angle that passerby gave him a wide berth. As he cut between merchant stalls, Cortland sensed a few hawkers recognize him. They shouted their offers of gifts for the great champion. Cortland ignored them.

When was the last time he’d spent any time in the outer districts? Probably not since he’d been elevated to champion. His parents had been born within the pyramidal city and had always been proud of their modest apartments, even when the dues put a strain on the family. They’d looked down on the folks who’d moved their lives outside the walls and, without really considering the whys, Cortland had inherited some of that perspective.

It was going on dinnertime which meant a shift change inside Infinzel. Soon, Cortland walked alongside a surge of laborers from the mineral garden and smithies, those who worked within Infinzel but lived in its shadows. He eyed their homes as he passed down the streets. Some were well-built structures of stone, none bigger than a modest cottage, but solid and respectably constructed from bricks born in the mineral garden. Others residences were disposable, haphazard lean-tos of thatch and wood, jammed between buildings or atop them, easy to knock down.

There were still wartime ordinances regulating the space between Infinzel and the ring-wall—thoroughfares needed to be a certain width and no structure could be built taller than the wall. These were laws from the time of bombardment, but the Garrison was still in charge of enforcing them. Personally, Cortland had no desire to report or knock down any of these shabby constructions. He felt certain some eager Garrison recruit would be along eventually, though.

As he entered the Soldier’s Rest district, the roads tightened, the air grew thick with smoke, and the volume went up. Food stalls jostled with taverns which abutted brothels, all of them competing for space with the ironically triangular stone houses that seemed determined to challenge the district’s height regulations.

Rebelliousness was ever present in the air here and Cortland found himself walking with his hand on his hammer. He observed a circle of men and women taking bets on bareknuckle fistfights that looked as bloody as his training session in the Garrison. A smith who had been walking beside Cortland arrived home to dump his tools unceremoniously on the doorstep so that he could grope his woman on the threshold. A roving pack of drunks sang a bawdy song about the many conquests of King Cizco, although this was whispered to a stop when they noticed Cortland.

“Hammer me, master!” a whore yelled to him from a window, then started cackling. Heat rose up the back of Cortland’s neck.

Cortland turned a corner and the break in the ring-wall came into view. Children of Infinzel were taught there was no greater sign of danger than broken stone. Yet, here was the gap in the wall that had been made sixty years ago, upon the return of Guydemion’s host. Infinzel’s ranging army at last set down their burdens here. The buildings clustered tighter around the break in the wall and then spilled outward, like clay bursting loose from a tube. The road leading out from Soldier’s Rest was dirt—not cobbled like the other routes into the city—because even after sixty years it wasn’t considered official. The growing number of homes, trading posts, and farms that Cortland saw as he peered out through the break indicated that every year the people of Soldier’s Rest became less inclined to wait for their places within the pyramid.

The location Vitt had given him was practically at the break in the wall. Cortland understood why Vitt had drawn him a map as he squeezed through an alley between two buildings that would’ve been too narrow for a carriage. No one would come back here unless they already knew what they were looking for.

Cortland ducked under a clothesline laden with laundry. As he did, he realized these weren’t sheets hanging out to dry but flags. The first depicted the pyramidal city of Infinzel cracking open to reveal a charging squadron of riders with skulls for heads—the retired standard of Guydemion’s host. The second featured a sketch of the broken section of ring-wall that Cortland had just seen—the flag of Soldier’s Rest, apparently. Cortland hadn’t been aware that such a thing existed.

Pushing through the flags, Cortland emerged into a tranquil grass courtyard shaded by cherry trees. The hideaway abutted the ring-wall on one side and the backs of stone buildings on the other; the area looking very purposely carved out for privacy. Up ahead, warm conversation and fiddle music poured from a well-maintained tavern. The sign above the door read simply ‘Guydemion’s.’

 A man of Cortland’s age and his young son sat on a bench outside the front door. They were both dark-haired and droopy-eyed, but where the ten-year-old was slight of frame bordering on wispy, his father was a burly customer with a fighter’s efficient physique and chipped features. The man raised his eyebrows upon seeing Cortland, but covered the surprise quickly.

“Evening,” he said simply.

“Evening,” Cortland replied, and that seemed good enough for the both of them.

The boy glanced up from the sketchpad he’d been drawing in, looked Cortland over, then nodded once to himself. “That’s Cortland Finiron.”

“Indeed?” his father said with a shrug.

Cortland’s attention had been drawn to a patch of brown grass on the shadier side of the courtyard. It looked to Cortland like someone had tried to burn the land there. At the center of the grass sat a wishing pool—knee high obsidian stone, about an arm’s length across, clear water within. Having crossed to the pool, Cortland peered down at the handful of coins at the bottom. Each of them was a standard triangular token of Infinzel, but they had words scrawled upon them—words Cortland couldn’t quite read, despite the water’s stillness.

The curved dagger and coins symbol of the Brokerage of Blades—carved into the bottom of the wishing pool—he could read quite clearly.

“I wouldn't, sir,” said the man on the bench. “They make their debts difficult to repay.”

Ignoring him—without really considering what he was doing—Cortland plunged his arm into the wishing pool. Try as he might, he couldn’t grasp any of the coins at the bottom. In fact, even after crouching, he couldn’t even touch the bottom. A physical impossibility. Some kind of illusion.

Cortland straightened, flicking water off him. That was real, at least.

“What do you know about this thing?” he asked the man.

“Know who it belongs to and what it's for,” the man said. He noticed Cortland reach for his hammer. “And I know we already tried to smash it. Blow it up. Etcetera.”

“Warded,” the boy at his side said without looking up. “Unnatural behavior.”

 “But then, sir, your efforts might prove more fruitful,” the father added.

Cortland flexed his knuckles, setting aside the notion of demolition for at least a few moments. “You said you know what it’s for.”

“I did.”

Cortland’s eye twitched. “What’s it for?”

The man glanced at his son, who’d returned to his sketching. “A person writes a name on a coin. A name belonging to someone they’d like to see go away.”

“Killed,” the boy clarified.

“They write the name in their own blood,” the man continued. “Then, they toss the coin into the pool. Brokerage takes the coins. Decide whose requests they want to answer. After that? All I know are the spooky stories people tell in the bar.”

Cortland stared down at the coins in the pool. Names written in blood that somehow hadn’t washed off when the tokens sunk into the water. With a shake of his head, he walked away from the pool, heading toward the tavern and pair on the bench.

“You let them put this here? In front of your place?”

“Wasn't no ‘let.’ It wasn’t there one day, the next it was,” the man replied. “And this isn’t my place. I just watch the door.”

Cortland glanced up at the sign. “Whose place is it?”

The man pointed at the sign. “Says right there.” 

“Guydemion?” Cortland asked. “Which one? Some nephew?”

“The,” the man said. “The Guydemion.”

Cortland snorted, even though he could tell by the man's face that he wasn't joking. “He's got to be a hundred years old.”

“Ninety-four,” the man said. “A year younger than our king. Though not nearly as well preserved, I'd imagine.”

Cortland put his hands on his hips. They wrote poems about General Bel Guydemion. He'd been a noble seeking adventure before he rose to command the last host of Infinzel, largely because his commanding officers kept getting themselves killed. Guydemion led a desperate army that became cut off from the pyramidal city during the Final War. They lived on the run for years, moving from battle to battle, and were only able to return home when the gods intervened. The people of Infinzel who'd survived the siege hadn't known what to make of these battle-hardened soldiers, but they feared them nearly as much as the Orvesian invaders. The last host was refused entry to Infinzel, so Guydemion had torn down a section of the wall and founded the first outer district. And now, Cortland learned, the man still lived within spitting distance of his handiwork.

“I didn’t know,” Cortland said.

The man pointed over Cortland’s shoulder, at the silhouette of the pyramidal city. “Too much time up top. You miss things.”

Cortland frowned, but didn’t have much in the way of a rebuttal. “He here? I’d like to speak with him about the wort in his courtyard.”

As Cortland took a step toward the door, the man’s weight shifted and he held up a hand. He didn’t stand up, but he still blocked Cortland’s way.

“Locals only, I’m afraid,” the man said.

“It’s a tavern, isn’t it?” Cortland replied.

“Sure. But they don’t let us Rest folks up to the noble tier to drink at Carat’s, do they?”

“Place is shit,” Cortland said. “You’d hate it.”

“Nonetheless, we have spaces of our own as well and we’d ask you respect them. I’m not of a mind that I could stop you entering, Cortland Finiron, but I’d be obliged to try.”

Cortland nodded and took a step back. He found that he appreciated the man’s plainspoken way.

“What’s your name?”

“Watts Stonework,” the man said. He nudged the boy. “And this is Otis.”

The boy glanced up to mirror his father’s stoic nod. Only then did Cortland notice the symbol on his neck. Young Otis hadn’t been marked with the pyramid of Infinzel, but with a gear.

“You’ve got a Gadgeteer,” Cortland said to the father.

Watts sighed. “Changed two months back. The local chapter doesn’t want us to send him to Beacon until he’s a little older. They got him in classes here.”

“Not bad sorts,” Cortland replied. He’d never had to kill any Gadgeteers, although he kept that comment to himself.

Reaching back, Watts knocked on the window behind his head. The shutters creaked open, releasing a burst of music from within, and a strikingly handsome young man stuck his head out. He looked to be in his twenties, with an immaculately trimmed beard and a shoulder-length black hair tied in a bun. Cortland thought the younger man was wearing eye makeup.

“I’ve got twenty crossbows trained on him,” this new man said. “You just say the word, Watts.”

“He don’t really,” Watts told Cortland. “Bring our guest a beer, Traveon.”

The window snapped shut and, moments later, Traveon sauntered outside with a mug of ale. He bowed deeply when he handed it to Cortland.

“Traveon Twiceblack, at your service,” the bartender said, shaking his apron with a flourish. He might have been joking about the crossbows, but Cortland spotted a glint of metal at the man’s hip. A dagger or a hand-bow.

“Huh,” Cortland said by way of thanks. The beer, at least, was cold and bitter, just the way Cortland liked it.

“How’s the old man?” Watts asked his companion.

Traveon retreated to lean in the doorway. “Not up for entertaining, I’m afraid,” he said, looking at Cortland. “But he welcomes the champion’s intervention on the matter of the assassin piss puddle.”

So, while Watts had Cortland out here, this foppish bartender had been reporting to the faded legend holed up inside. Cortland wondered for a moment what sort of operations were being run out of Guydemion’s, but he set that thought aside and turned to regard the wishing pool.

“You said it just appeared?”

“A half year back,” Watts said.

“You know anyone who’s used it?” Cortland asked.

“Only know the ones I’ve talked out of it,” Watts said. “I don’t sit out here day and night.”

“Word got around and we’ve had all sorts creeping around back here,” Traveon added. “Even had some nobles down from the top tiers.”

Cortland shot the man a look that made him flinch. “Which nobles?”

Traveon shrugged. “They all look the same to me.”

“He don’t know,” Watts clarified. “He just likes to gossip.”

“Carina Goldstone,” Cortland said next. “You know her?”

The bartender and the bouncer exchanged a look. A wide smile broke out across Traveon’s face and he pressed a hand against his chest as if to still his heart.

“I assumed Carina was the one who pointed you in our direction,” Watts said.

“Doubtless with a message for me,” Traveon added. “She’s to be my wife.”

Cortland stared at him. “What?” he said flatly.

“We’re engaged,” Traveon said.

“They are not,” Watts said.

“Well, I proposed.”

“Eight years ago.”

“And she still hasn’t given me an answer,” Traveon said, looking to Cortland. “Unless…”

The hammer master shook his head, much to the young bartender’s disappointment. “You’re her people.”

Watts nodded. “She grew up with us. Under Guydemion’s wing.”

“The old man still has big wings,” Traveon added.

Cortland pinched the bridge of his nose. There was no conspiracy here. Vitt had put him on this path in the hopes to kick some mud onto Carina. Nothing tied this place or these people to Ben Tuarez—although nobles visiting the Brokerage wishing pool was certainly of interest. Even so, the Brokerage probably had a wishing pool in every city and Ben had enemies spread across the world. What was Cortland going to do? Track down ever bastard coward that wrote a name on a coin until he found the one who requested Ben?

Well, he did have one idea. A petty revenge, but perhaps better than nothing.

Cortland turned to Watts. “You said that thing is indestructible?”

“Near enough as we can figure,” he replied.

Nodding, Cortland drank down the rest of his beer and handed the mug to Traveon.

“There are ways around indestructible,” Cortland said.

Cortland turned away from the men and took up his hammer. The weapon’s weight felt good in his hand and his Ink vibrated excitedly on his chest. Behind him, Cortland heard Otis close his sketchbook so he could watch. Cortland moved to stand right at the edge of the burnt patch of grass. He cocked his arm back and dropped to a knee in one sharp motion, bringing his hammer down on the ground in front of him.

He used [Crevasse].

The earth rumbled, bellowed and snapped, then split apart. A chasm spread from the impact point of Cortland’s hammer, racing forward to swallow up the wishing pool. Not a drop of water spilled as the circle of stone dropped six feet into the dirt. Cortland controlled the spread of his fracture, making it just large enough to engulf the Brokerage’s creation. The rest of Guydemion’s courtyard was quaint as ever.

When the tremor subsided, Otis clapped like he’d just witness a magic trick.

“Fucking hammer master,” Traveon murmured. “Carina wasn’t kidding.”

Cortland peered down into the chasm. Despite the drop, the wishing pool was still completely intact. The water remained placid, the obsidian stones neatly mortared. A cute trick by the Brokerage, but not one that would matter.

Watts came to stand at his side. “An improvement,” he said.

“You got shovels?” Cortland asked. “I’ll help you fill in the hole.”