David Dalglish - A Dance of Cloaks

“Every one of them is a lie,” Veliana said, her voice calming. A deadly seriousness had replaced her anger. “Soon all symbols will be the spider. You know that, don’t you?”

“You know nothing,” Kadish said, scratching the skin below his eyepatch. “And you can’t see the future. I, however, am smart enough to view the present. As long as you hold out on Thren and his Spider Guild, you are lost. We’ll take your members, your streets, and if we must, your lives. We all want this war to end; we will not suffer Beren to keep us from that finality. Tell him if he wants to have a guild by the end of the month, he needs to pledge his men to Thren Felhorn.”

“You know,” one of the men beside Kadish said, an ugly brute with scarred lips and a missing ear. “Perhaps James might be more willing if we had his pretty lady here for ransom.”

This time Veliana did draw her daggers but Kadish stood and glared at his men.

“This meeting is done,” he said to all of them. “We will not debase ourselves with such talk. The Ash Guild will see wisdom. Good day, Veliana.”

The woman spun and left, slamming the door behind her. When she was gone, Kadish rubbed his chin as his underlings snickered and made lewd comments.

“They’re vulnerable,” he said. “Rasta, take a few of your boys and have them scour the Ash Guild’s streets. Find out just how badly they’ve been pressed.”

“Planning something big?” the earless man said.

“Keep your mouths shut for now,” the guildmaster told him. “But if James has lost more than we anticipated…”

He let the threat hang in the air. Rasta stood and left while the earless brute recovered the dice from the floor, shook them in his hands, and rolled.

A aron winced as he walked down the hall, his shoulder throbbing from where Senke had struck him. Ever since the meeting, and Thren’s promise to include him in all things, his father had made him spend hours training. Most often Senke was his trainer, the wiry rogue second to only Thren in skill with a blade.

“Are you ready?” Senke had asked when they first closed the door to the large, open room. Aaron had nodded but held his tongue.

“Good. Let us dance.”

And so they had danced, blunted practice swords whirling and clanging as they parried, riposted, and blocked. Of all his teachers of combat, Senke was by far the best as well as the most enjoyable to be with. He laughed, he joked, he said things about women that made Aaron blush. When it came to swordplay, though, he took the dance seriously. The joy would fade from his eyes, like a fire buried in dirt, and then he would explain an error, or detail improved reactions. Most often he smacked Aaron with his sword and let the pain do the teaching.

That day Senke had been determined to hone Aaron’s dodging abilities. The sword struck too quickly, and Aaron’s initial reaction was always to block or parry, not dodge. Other teachers might have taken away his sword, but Senke would have none of it. His student would learn to control his instincts, otherwise they would control him. Again and again the sword cracked against his shoulders, his head, and his hands. Whenever he tried to raise his sword, Senke’s other blade would shoot out, parry it away, and then slap him across the face.

Aaron rubbed his shoulder, part of him wanting to ask a servant to massage it for him. But massages meant pain, and pain meant failure, at least when it came to training with Senke. So he put it out of his mind as best he could, wiped more sweat from his face onto his sleeve, and stepped into Robert Haern’s room.

The furnishings were few but expensive. The chairs were padded and comfortable, the walls painted a soft red, and the carpet a luxurious green. Robert sat on the bed, piles of books on either side of him. Aaron wondered how he could possibly sleep on it, then wondered if the old men even slept in the first place.

“You’re here,” Robert said, smiling when he looked up. “I had begun to worry that Senke would knock all reason and wisdom out of you.”

“My ears are clogged,” Aaron said. “The wisdom stays in.”

The old man chuckled.

“Good for you, then. Sit. We have old matters to attend to.”

Aaron sat down, wondering what he could mean. Over the past week Robert had gone to great lengths describing the various guilds and their guildmasters. This went beyond recent times and into the past, beating into Aaron’s head why their colors were what they were, why each symbol had been chosen, what they looked like, how they were drawn, and every other possible fact that seemed totally irrelevant. No matter how obscure, Robert would frown deeply and reprimand whenever Aaron missed an answer.

“In the darkness I might have taken away a light,” Robert said. “But here I have nothing to take from you, so instead I do this; for every error you make, I will treat you like a child. I will tell you tales instead of truth. I will dismiss your questions like foolish inquiry, instead discussing matters that only a boy would be interested in.”

The threat had worked.

“What old matters?” Aaron asked as he sat cross-legged on the carpet.

“Do you remember that first day? I was to have an answer from you, but since forgot after my…brief stay in the dungeons. I asked you why the Trifect would declare war on your father after he had built up an alliance of guilds over the course of three years. Do you have an answer?”

Aaron had not given the matter much thought. He went with his initial guess, hoping it would be right. Robert always insisted that he would know the answer to all questions he asked, yet no other answer seemed to pop out at him.

“Thren became too powerful,” Aaron said. “He was stealing too much gold, so the Trifect forced this war with him and the guilds.”

Robert chuckled.

“A child’s answer,” he said. “Coupled with a child’s trust in his father. You couldn’t be more wrong, boy. Perhaps we should read the story about Parson and the Lion instead of discussing such adult matters.”

“Wait,” Aaron said, his voice rising above a whisper. Robert noticed this and was pleased.

“Do you have a better answer?” he asked. “Do you know why your first one is wrong?”

Aaron’s mind raced. He had to know. Anything was better than the fairy tales.

“Thren didn’t grow too strong,” he ventured, each sentence coming out as if stepping on ice to test its strength. “If he had, then the Trifect wouldn’t have openly opposed him. The Trifect weighs all options, and this war has cost them greatly. Thren would not have stolen as much in ten years as they have spent in the past five.”

“Now you’re making sense,” Robert said. “The Trifect does not take on strong foes. They weaken them, poison their insides and rot their hearts. Once their target is desperate and fearful, then they strike.”

“But the Trifect forced this war,” Aaron said. He rubbed his thumbs together, as if trying to coax the truth out from an invisible coin. “But clearly Thren was not weak. He was still getting stronger. The Trifect acted outside their normal behavior.”

“Did they really? You say Thren was clearly not weak. How do you know?”

Aaron paused, and his head leaned back a little as if he had smelled a bad smell.

“How could he be weak?” Aaron asked. “We’ve survived against the Trifect. We’ve killed many of them, and thwarted every attempt to defeat us.”

“Not every attempt,” Robert said. “Must I get out the children’s rhymes? Your father has suffered many casualties, and his coffers are near empty. This war taxes both sides. Never think you are invincible and your opponent a whipping boy. Rarely do matters work out that simply.”