Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

I visited a barber and had my beard shaved off-a ritual shedding of the north if you like. The fellow with the razor and snips declared it an unholy tangle and charged me an extra crown for the job. With it gone I felt strangely naked, my chin tender, and when he showed me the result in his mirror it took me a moment to accept that the man looking back out was me. He looked a lot younger, and vaguely surprised.

Walking through Amele in my new outfit-nothing fancy, just outdoors clothes that a country squire might wear-and my chin still stinging at the slightest breeze, I will admit to turning a few heads. I smiled at a buxom peasant girl off about whatever business it is that occupies peasants, and she smiled back. The world was good. And getting better by the mile.

• • •

“Bonjour,” Hennan greeted me when I returned to the tavern where I left the others-the King’s Leg, sporting a wooden stump above the door.

“Bon-what?”

“Snorri’s been teaching me the language the locals speak.” He looked up at Snorri to see if he’d got it right. “It means good day.”

“The locals all speak the Empire tongue well enough.” I sat down beside Tuttugu and stole a chicken wing from his plate. “Sometimes you have to wave a coin at them before they’ll admit it. Don’t waste your time, boy. Awful language.” I stopped talking in order to chew. Whatever Rhone’s failings-and they are many-I’ll call any man a liar who says they can’t cook. The lowliest Rhoneman can make a better meal than all the north put together. “Mmmm. That’s worth the trip south on its own, hey, Tuttugu?” Tuttugu nodded, mouth stuffed, beard full of grease. “Where was I now? Yes, Rhonish. Don’t bother. You know what the literal translation of the Rhonish word for defence is? The-gap-before-running-away. It’s a hard language to lie in, I’ll give you that.”

Snorri made a warning face and Tuttugu became still more interested in the rest of his chicken. I noticed a few locals aiming hard stares in my direction.

“A wonderful brave people though,” I added, loudly enough for the eavesdroppers to choke on.

“You look different,” Snorri said.

“I think ‘even more handsome’ was the phrase you were looking for.” I filched another piece of Tuttugu’s chicken. He tried to stab my hand as I pulled it back.

“More like a girl.” Snorri picked up his flagon and drained it.

“Well, I’ll have to strain the bits out of my beer by hand now the moustache is gone. . but otherwise it’s all good. You should try it.”

Tuttugu snorted at that. “My beard’s the only thing that keeps my chin from burning in this furnace you call home.” He sucked the meat off a leg bone. “I think the reason your chickens taste so good is that they’re all half-cooked before you slaughter them.”

Snorri rubbed his own beard but said nothing. He had trimmed it close, against the northern style: compared to most Vikings he merely looked as though he’d forgotten to shave that morning.

Kara watched me closely as if making a study. “You’re changing your skin, Jalan, casting off the north. By the time we reach the gates of your city you’ll be a southern prince once more. What will you keep from your journey, I wonder?”

And it was my turn to keep silent. Most of it I would gladly lose, though I’d learned a lesson about that. Throw away too much of your past and you abandon the person who walked those days. When you pare away at yourself you can reinvent, that’s true enough, but such whittling always seems to reveal a lesser man, and promises to leave you with nothing at the end.

Two things I would keep beyond doubt. The ache to know that Edris Dean had died and died hard was one of them. The other-the memory of the Northern Lights-the aurora borealis Kara told me they are called-that ghostly show which lit up the sky on the longest night of my short life when we camped on the Bitter Ice at the end of our endurance.

• • •

The trek continued under blue skies. Despite our fears no agents of the Dead King intercepted us, no monsters clawed from their graves to put us in ours, and we passed over the border into Red March without incident. Even so, Snorri pushed us hard, more urgency in him now than at any point since the Hardassa were on our heels. I could tell his wound hurt him-there was a stiffness about the way he moved. I wondered what we would see if he lifted his shirt to show the mark Kelem had put upon him. Perhaps though, the memory of Kelem in that cave, holding Snorri’s dead child, drove the northman forward more than the hooks in his wound drew him on. That had been a mistake on the mage’s part. He could have blocked that particular route to death’s door without that. I don’t care what magics you command-putting that kind of fury into a man like Snorri is always a bad idea.

• • •

In the town of Genova, two days out from Vermillion, I weakened and spent the last of my gold on a decent horse and tack, together with a fine riding cloak and a gilded neck chain. A prince of the realm can’t turn up looking like a footsore beggar however far he’s travelled and however many enemies he’s vanquished. I know Genova well enough and there’s fun to be had there, but with home so close I pressed on without further delay.

“Damn but even the air tastes better here!” I slapped the pommel of my saddle and took a deep breath-savouring the heady musk of wild onions among the oak and beech of the hill forests.

Snorri, Tuttugu, and Kara, sunburned and tramping along in my wake had fewer good things to say about my homeland, but Hennan, perched behind me on the gelding, tended to agree.

It felt wonderful to be back in the saddle again, a touch unfamiliar but far better than walking. My new steed looked rather nice too, a deep black coat and a crooked flash of white down his face, almost a lightning bolt jagging its way from between his eyes to his nose. If he’d been a seventeen-hand stallion rather than a squat gelding barely reaching fourteen hands I’d have been all the happier with him-though of course considerably poorer. In any event, he ate up the miles nicely and provided a good vantage point to watch Red March pass me by. My only regret was that the Norse had strapped their baggage to the beast as if he were a packhorse. Even “Gungnir” was there, wrapped in old rags to keep it from prying eyes, with just the spear tip gleaming where it pierced the wrappings.

I flashed my smile at Kara from on high a time or two but had little response. The woman seemed to be getting moodier by the mile. Probably thinking about how much she’d miss me. She was clever enough not to believe that I was coming with them to Florence and the nightmare Snorri had his sights on.

I bought us a room at an inn that night and after supper Kara found me alone on the porch. I’d been sitting there a while, watching the last traffic hurrying along the Appan Way as the day dwindled into gloom. She came to me as I always knew she would, reeled in eventually by that good old Jalan charm after the longest courtship I’d ever undertaken.

“Have you decided how you’ll stop him?” she asked without preamble.

I sat up at that, having expected some small talk before we began the old dance I’d been leading her up to. The dance that would see my passions requited at last in the hired bed awaiting us on the second floor.

“Stop who?”

“Snorri.” She sat in the wicker seat opposite, unconsciously rubbing her wrist. A lantern hung between us, moths battering against its glass while mosquitoes whined unseen in the dark. “How will you get the key from him?”

“Me?” I blinked at her. “I can’t change his mind.”

Kara massaged her wrist, rubbing at dark marks there. It was hard to tell in the lamplight among all the shadows. . “Are those bruises?”