Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

“It finds concealed weapons, sir.” The thug smiled reassurance at me as if I were some country squire. He waved the device across Ta-Nam’s thick arms and down across his front.

“Well, I don’t like it!” And I didn’t, but when he’d finished with the sword-son he came my way waving his bat. The thing started squealing the moment it drew near me, an unearthly tone, a pure note, higher than any castrato ever reached. That set all three of them advancing on me, grim as you like, and ready to manhandle me despite my station.

It soon transpired that the Builders’ toy considered gold to be a weapon-which to be fair it is in many regards-and so, to the bemusement of the staff, I had to strip three hundred and eighty double florins from about my person and let them rifle with greedy fingers through the three thousand and twenty-six additional coins in my case.

“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to leave this with us during your visit, sir?” The thug seemed keen to take charge of my funds. “We’ve had riots here over a dropped silver. Taking this much money in there. . it’s not sensible.”

“Not safe.” The second thug, younger, his eyes unable to leave my case.

“Not sane.” The last and smallest of them, though still a solid chunk of muscle, and seemingly angered by the sight of such riches in a place of debt.

“It’s all well hidden.” I frowned at the heap of ribbons between whose double layers the spare florins were sewn. “Well it was before you laid hands on me.” I picked up a loose end and started to wrap the length of it, chinking, about my waist and torso. “Ta-Nam will be more than sufficient to protect my interests, with or without his knives.” I dropped that last slowly, letting the words hammer in the fact that the sword-son could end them where they stood. Moreover he could do so with a clean conscience since Umbertide law lays the crime at the feet of any man who can be shown to have paid for its commission. By signing themselves over to contract the sword-sons were virtually immune to charges of criminality, as much a device as a sword or clockwork soldier, and no more guilty.

Despite their avarice the guards made no attempt to take my gold. Ownership and debt were a religion in Umbertide and held in no place more sanctified than in the debtor prisons. The whole prison was essentially a device to bleed dry those that fell into its clutches-to bleed them in a highly structured and entirely legal manner. In the midst of such institutionalized theft on so grand a scale individual thievery could not be tolerated in any degree. Only by strict adherence to the rules of the theft could the illusion of it being lawful and civilized be maintained.

• • •

Our manicured thug took us through the more salubrious quarter of the prison and handed us over to a cell monkey who would lead us the rest of the way. I had to pay him too.

“98-3-8. . what was the rest?” He walked ahead of us swinging an unlit lantern.

“98-3-8-3-6,” I said, squinting at my paper. We’d gone past the high windows, past the lantern-lit corridors-the wooden doors punctuating the walls had given way to barred gates and the oil lamps smoked so as to set you coughing. “What does it mean?”

“Means he came in this year, ’98, not so long ago, less than a month, and that he’s poor as shit ’cos he’s about as far back as this place goes.”

I glanced through the next set of bars into an empty cell, stone floor strewn with dirt, a bare bench, a heap of rags for a bed. An eye glittered amid the rags and I realized it wasn’t a bed.

The stink intensified as we went on, a raw mix of sewage and rot. The passage became more tunnel than corridor and I had to bend to keep from scraping my head. Lone candle stubs, balanced amid pools of wax, broke the darkness here and there. Elsewhere things moaned and rustled in the blind and fetid spaces behind the bars and I was glad not to see. Our guide lit a taper at the last of these candles and we followed the glowing ember of it into hell.

“Here we are 3:6.” The man lit his lantern, reintroducing us to the sweaty and lumpen topology of his naked torso. We stood in a square and low-roofed chamber from which eight arches gave onto largish cells, each arch walled with grimy rusting bars. The creatures within turned their faces from the light as if it hurt their eyes. Most were naked but I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. They seemed uniformly grey, smeared with filth, and gaunt beyond the point that one might imagine a person could be reduced to and yet live. And the smell of the place. . it held less of the sewer and more of rot. . the kind of stink that wouldn’t quit your nostrils for days after. The smell of death-death without hope.

“What’s the last bit?”

“What?” I looked back at the jailer.

“The last bit. The case number.”

“Oh.” And I held up the roll of parchment to read it off.

We approached the arch that bore the legend “VI” upon its keystone.

“Get back!” The cell monkey ran his baton along the bars and the debtors shrank away, cowering like dogs accustomed to beating. “The new one! Show me the new one!”

The grey crowd parted, edging to the margins of their cell, bare feet shuffling through wet filth. The shadows retreated with them, the lantern revealing a stone floor strewn with litter.

“Where-” And then I saw him. Lying on his side, back toward us, his spine a series of bony knobs beneath pale skin stretched painfully across them. I’d seen dead beggars in the gutters of Vermillion with more meat on them after a night with the dogs chewing at their limbs.

“Eight-one-six-three-two!” the guard bellowed it as if he were on a parade ground. “On your feet!”

The harshness of that shout made me wince, me who would be walking out of here burdened with gold and with a meal whose price might buy one of these souls’ freedom turning sour in my belly. I reached out a quick hand to the man’s bicep. “Enough. Open it.” Teeth gritted.

“Costs two hexes to unlock in the Dregs,” he said without rancour.

I fished in my pocket for something as small as his fee, bringing up three of the six-sided coppers after an age of fumbling. “Do it.” My hand trembled though I wasn’t sure what I was angry about.

The cell monkey made a show of counting through his keys and eventually set the heaviest bit of iron on his ring into the lock before us. He beat the bars once more, setting my teeth on edge, and drew back the gate.

“You’re sure that’s him?” The figure held nothing familiar about it. Ribs standing out where they curved toward his spine, hair dark with grime. I could pick this thing of skin and bones up in my arms and stand without effort. All those miles we’d trekked south. . bringing us out of the northern wastes had delivered him to this?

I handed my case to Ta-Nam and stepped inside, painfully aware of the debtors to either side, hands hooked into what seemed like talons. The stench of them made my eyes water and caught at my throat. Five paces brought me to the figure. I kicked a patch of flagstone cleaner and went to one knee.

“It’s me. . Prince J-It’s me Jalan.”

The slightest twitch, a hunching, as if the bones all squeezed that bit closer together beneath the skin.

“Are you-” I didn’t know what to say. Was he all right? He didn’t look all right.

I reached out a hand and turned him toward me. Bright eyes watched me from beneath matted hair.

“Hennan.” I ran my arms under the boy and careless of the dirt drew him to me. He proved even lighter than he looked. I stood without effort and turned to the gate, and found it closing as I faced it.

“No!” I lurched forward, still carrying the boy, boots slipping on the muck, but the jailer turned the key before I made it halfway. He offered me a grin through the bars. My sword-son stood unmoving in the middle of the central chamber. I watched him, flabbergasted for a moment, before realizing that technically the jailer hadn’t offered me any harm.