Chapter 9 The Golden Boy

Audit of T. Marsh. Note 4. Subject states he has killed "a couple of hundred, give or take" of a creature matching the description of a Ruin Wyrm. Recorded kills of Ruin Wyrms in the Guild's history: nine. Recommend the Guild not be informed until I have checked my arithmetic. Arithmetic checked. Recommendation stands. H.Q.

The lost dog was called Button, and she was the worst dog I've ever met.

The job sheet said she was a small white terrier belonging to the wife of a baker on Saddle Street, second ring, missing four days, reward five silver if found alive. The baker's wife cried when she told me about her. Button was her baby, she said. Button slept on her pillow. Button had never been out of the yard alone in her life.

I found Button in about an hour, in the yard of a fishmonger two streets over, eating something out of a barrel that the fishmonger very much wanted back. She was white in the sense that she had once been white. She had one ear up and one ear down and an expression of total contentment.

The fishmonger was standing over her with a broom. "That's yours?" he said.

"It's a job," I said. "Button?"

Button looked up at me.

I've had this happen with animals my whole life, so I wasn't surprised. Her ear went flat, the other one went up, and every hair on her body stood out so she looked twice the size and three times as dirty. She made a noise like a kettle and went straight over the fishmonger's back fence like a cat. Then she ran, flat out, howling the whole way, through two streets of washing and a market and a man carrying a ladder, and straight back to the baker's yard on Saddle Street, and in through the dog flap, and under the baker's wife's bed.

I followed at a walk. By the time I got there the baker's wife was on her knees on the bedroom floor with her face pressed to the boards, crying again, happier this time.

"She came home on her own," she said. "Oh, she came home!"

"Dogs know where home is," I said.

She gave me five silver and a loaf of bread and kissed me on the cheek, and I went back up the hill feeling pretty good about the morning. Twenty-one gold and a bit. I'd stopped counting the bits. They didn't seem to add up to much.

* * *

The Guild hall was fuller than I'd seen it, and noisier. People were standing on the benches and leaning over the gallery rail, and there was a clear space in the middle of the floor where nobody was standing at all. In the middle of the clear space was Sir Gareth Vantrell.

He had his helmet off and under one arm. He was taller than me, which doesn't happen often, and his golden hair caught the light from the high windows in a way that looked arranged. Two squires stood behind him, polished to a shine. In front of him, Guildmaster Ashby was reading something off a scroll, and every so often the crowd cheered.

Pip was working the edge of the crowd with her tray. It wasn't maps today. When she saw me she went red and tried to turn the tray round, but I'd already seen the sign on the front, written in charcoal on a bit of board: GENUINE WEIR RAT TEETH. AS PULLED BY THE LEVEL ONE. 1 COPPER.

"Pip," I said.

"They're real teeth."

"Where'd you get them?"

"Fitch's lads are hauling the bodies out of Four. There's hundreds of teeth. They're practically giving them away." She shoved the tray at a passing Iron rank, who looked at the sign, looked at me, and bought two. "See? Business. I'm not saying you pulled them personally. I'm saying they're as pulled by. It's different."

"How is it different?"

"Legally," said Pip, and took the man's copper, and was gone into the crowd before I could ask her anything else.

I'd come for my next job sheet. I went round the edge of the crowd towards the counter and tried not to be in anybody's way.

I'd almost made it when the cheering stopped.

"You," said Sir Gareth.

The hall went quiet. People turned to look. I turned to look as well, to see who he meant, and found everybody looking at me.

"Me?" I said.

"You." Sir Gareth handed his helmet to a squire without looking at him. "The farmer. With the smell." He walked across the open floor towards me, and the crowd moved back to let him, and his spurs went chink, chink on the boards. "My horse is still off his feed, you know. Four days. My farrier has never seen anything like it. I'm told you're a Guild member now."

"That's right."

"I'm told," said Sir Gareth, louder, so the gallery would hear, "that you are Level one."

Somebody laughed. Then a few more did.

"That's right," I said.

"Level one. Twenty-six years of age." He smiled round at the hall, inviting them in. "Do you know, I was Level one once? I was four. I got to Level two by killing a wasp."

The hall roared. Sir Gareth let it roar, and turned back to me while it did.

"And then this Level one farmer brings in a Gold-rank ear from the Weir, and everyone gets terribly excited." His voice dropped, so only I and the nearest few could hear. "I know what you are. You found something dead in a sewer and cut a bit off it. Scavenger. I've seen your sort on every battlefield I've ever won, going through pockets."

This is a copy of the author's NovelPhoenix chapter made without consent; the official publication supports the person who wrote it.

I didn't say anything. There didn't seem to be anything useful to say.

"And this," he said, and his eyes went to the cleaver on my back. "This is the famous cleaver. That nobody can lift. Let me see it."

"All right," I said.

That surprised him. I think he'd expected me to argue. I unslung it, unwrapped the sacking, and laid it on the end of the nearest bench, handle out, the way I had for Miss Quill.

He looked at it with his lip curled. It's a plain old thing, I'll grant him. The handle's dark with use and the blade's got nicks along the back where Grandad used to knock bone out of it. It doesn't look like much.

"A butcher's tool," said Sir Gareth, to the hall. "Lads, watch closely. You'll want to tell your grandchildren."

He took hold of the handle with one hand, quite casually, and lifted.

His arm stopped. The cleaver didn't move. The hall didn't notice for a second, because he was still smiling, but I was right next to him and I saw the smile go stiff at the corners.

He took hold of it with both hands.

He was strong. You could see that. His shoulders bunched up under the white surcoat and his neck went thick and the cords stood out on it, and the bench creaked under his grip, not under the cleaver. His face went from gold to pink to a dark, unhappy red. He set his feet. He heaved. He was a big man, a Level four hundred and twelve man, a man who had killed a wyvern, and he heaved at a meat cleaver on a bench in front of half the Guild, and it lay there and did nothing at all.

The hall had gone silent again. A different kind of silent this time.

Sir Gareth let go and stepped back. He was breathing hard. He looked at his hands.

"It's bolted down," he said.

"It's not," I said.

"It's bolted to the bench. It's a trick. A conjuror's trick." He swung round to the hall, and his voice was steady again, mostly. "Hedge magic! It's an old fairground trick, lads. Weight charm on the bench. I've seen it at every fair in Aldmere."

I reached past him, picked the cleaver up off the bench, held it up for a second so everyone could see, and put it back down.

"It's not bolted down," I said. "It's just heavy. You get used to it."

Somebody in the gallery started to laugh, and stopped very quickly when Sir Gareth looked up.

He turned back to me. He didn't look angry, which was worse than if he had. He looked like a man who has had a bad idea and is now going to have a worse one.

"Squire," he said. "Ale."

The squire brought him a full tankard off the nearest table. Its owner didn't object. Sir Gareth took it, held it up to the light like he was admiring it, and poured it over my head.

It was cold. It went in my eyes and down my collar and dripped off my nose onto the floor. It smelled of hops and someone else's spit.

"There," said Sir Gareth, quite pleasantly. "Now you don't smell like a farm. You smell like a tavern. That's a step up for you."

The hall laughed. Not all of it. More than enough. Over by the far pillar, Lark Hollis was standing with his arms folded and his bandaged wrist tucked under one elbow, and he wasn't laughing at all. He was looking at the bench where the cleaver had been.

I stood there and let it drip.

I won't pretend I didn't think about it. Everybody's got a temper, and mine's slow, but it's there, and I could feel it turn over somewhere low down like a dog that's heard a gate. But he was a Knight-Captain. The King's man, the hero of Corrow Ford, with half the city cheering him in the street. I was a Level one farmer a few weeks off losing my land, and I needed this Guild to keep handing me job sheets. You don't swing at a man like that in his own hall. Not if you want to keep the farm.

So I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

"Is that all, sir?" I said.

He let the silence run. Then he smiled.

"A word from me," he said, "and nobody in this city will give you so much as a dog to find. Remember that, scavenger." He took his helmet back off the squire and walked away through the crowd, and they opened for him again and closed up behind. I watched him go to the door at the back of the hall, Ashby's door, and go through it, and Ashby followed him in.

* * *

I picked up my cleaver and wrapped it and slung it, and went and stood at the counter, dripping, until the spectacled clerk noticed me.

"Job sheet," I said. "Please."

He looked at the door Ashby had gone through. He looked at me. Then he got a sheet out of a different drawer from the one he'd been about to use, and slid it across, quickly, before anyone could see.

"Iron rank," he said, under his breath. "Shouldn't be giving it to you. Cellar in the third ring. Fourteen silver." He sniffed. "Didn't see anything. Got a cold."

"Thanks," I said.

"Don't," he said, and blew his nose.

Behind me somebody put a hand on my arm. It was Miss Quill. I hadn't known she was in the hall. She was very white, and her mouth was a thin line, and she was holding a clean handkerchief out to me.

"You should have," she started, and stopped.

"Should have what?"

She didn't answer. She just held out the handkerchief until I took it. Then she went up the stairs to the north gallery very fast, and I heard a door slam somewhere above, hard enough to make the clerks jump.

* * *

I walked home the long way to dry off.

Pip caught up with me at the bottom of the hill. She'd sold out of teeth, by the look of the empty tray, and she was furious.

"You should've flattened him," she said.

"He's a knight."

"He's a dickhead." She kicked a cabbage stalk into the gutter. "Everyone knows he's a dickhead. He made a stall woman in the Weir kneel in the mud once, because her pig crossed in front of his horse. Then he bought the pig and had it killed in front of her. For fun." She glared at me. "You could've had him. I saw your face."

"What about my face?"

"For about a second," said Pip, "you looked like you were going to put him through the wall."

I didn't say anything to that. She wasn't wrong, and I didn't like that she'd seen it.

"Anyway," she said, "he couldn't lift it. Everyone saw. Sir Gareth Vantrell, Level four hundred and twelve, and he couldn't lift your cleaver." Her lips started moving, the way they had on the first day. "That's got to be worth something. That's got to be worth a lot of something."

"Pip."

"I'm only thinking," she said, and went off down a side lane, still thinking, with her empty tray bumping against her knees.

I thought about Sir Gareth a fair bit. It's hard not to, when you've got his ale in your ears.

The thing was, he couldn't lift it. A man that strong, a hero, with his whole body behind it. And I could pick it up with one hand. If I'd been a bigger fool than I am, I might have started thinking things about that.

But he'd come straight from a parade, hadn't he, and before the parade there'd have been some battle or other, and before that the wyvern. He'd have been tired. Tired men lift badly. And he'd done what everyone does, gone at it with his back and not his legs. Hero or not, you lift with your back, you get nothing.

That would be it. An off day.

As for the ale, well. Gareth was a lord, and lords are different. Dad used to say a lord's like weather. You don't argue with it, you just get the washing in.

Twenty-one gold and a loaf of bread. I'd have the cellar job done by tomorrow night, and that'd be fourteen silver more.

I ate half the loaf on the way home. It was very good bread.

Widow Ostry met me in the hall. She took one sniff and her eyebrows, which were already as high as her hair would let them go, went higher.

"No drink in my house, Mister Marsh."

"It's not in me, Mrs Ostry," I said. "It's on me."

She looked at my hair and my collar and the wet patch down the front of Hal's coat. Something in her face worked out roughly what had happened, and I saw her decide not to ask.

"Pump's in the yard," she said. "Soap's on the sill. You'll not drip on my stairs."

"No, Mrs Ostry."

I went out to the yard and put my head under the pump until the water ran clear, and it was the best thing that had happened since the dog.