Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

The bruisers on the door let me in without question. Rich men came every day to watch poor men die and bet on the outcome. The elder Terrif brother, Deckmon, he recognized me sure enough, looking up from his cash table. He put a finger to the skin beneath his left eye and pulled it down, letting me know my entrance had been marked.

The usual crowd circulated around the four big pits, the numbers men at the margins with the odds chalked above their stalls. I took a moment to breathe it in, the colour, the noise, the aristocrats dogged by their toadies, a loose halo of hangers on, and moving here and there, wine-men, poppy-men, ladies of negotiable affection.

The stink of blood ran through it all, an undercurrent. I’d not noticed it in those years I spent here, betting on carnage. The smell brought back memories, not of the Blood Holes but of the Aral Pass and the Black Fort. For a moment I felt the icy waters of the Slidr enfold me and the red berserker heat rise to meet it.

I crossed over to Long Will, a trainer and talent scout, a thin strip of a man, crowned by a grey shock of hair. “Maeres here?”

Long Will jerked his head toward Ochre. Of the four big pits it lay farthest from the main doors. I eased my way through the crowd, sweating, and not just from the strain of carrying my treasure. The thought of Maeres Allus put a chill in me, making my legs feel as weak as my trembling arms-though an unexpected anger came with that fear, a rising heat that had been there beneath the terror, keeping me company all the long and rattling ride up from Marsail.

A pretty girl trailed her fingers through my hair, an oily wine-man thrust a pewter goblet at me. I glanced pointedly at the coffer occupying both my hands.

“Prince Jalan?” Someone recognizing me, unsure.

“Is that Jalan?” A fat baron from the south. “Damned if it is.”

Underlings parted before me as I approached the tight knot of colour at the edge of Ochre. More than a year. Thousands of miles. Icy wastes to baking desert. I walked through Hell . . . and here I was again, back where it started. Fourteen months and they hardly knew me, here in the place where I’d spent so much time, and money, and other men’s blood.

A murmur grew about me now: even if the crowd weren’t sure of my name they recognized a man walking with intent toward the heart of things. The last few layers peeled back, men I knew by sight and name, Maeres’s associates, merchants in his pockets, minor lords courting loans or being courted for this or that advantage. The business of business while twenty feet below, two men fought, each doing his level best to beat the other to death with his fists.

Two narrow-faced Slovs stepped aside, and there, revealed between them, stood Maeres Allus, small, olive-skinned, his tunic unostentatious- to look at him you wouldn’t think he owned the place and much more besides. He registered neither surprise nor interest at my appearance.

“Prince Jalan, you’ve been away too long.” A roar of triumph rose from the pit behind him, but nobody seemed interested any more. I imagined the victorious brawler looking up, expecting cheering faces, and seeing nothing but the wooden guardrail and the back of the occasional head.

Jorg Ancrath, that prodigy about whom so many prophecies seemed to circulate, that vicious and vic-torious youth on whom my grandmother’s plans appeared to pivot, the young king who lit a Builders’ Sun in Gelleth and another on the doorstep of Hamada . . . he had given me his advice on dealing with Maeres Allus. He had spoken his words in the hot and drunken darkness of a Hamadan night, and now, with Allus before me at long last, those forgotten words started to bubble from the black depths of my memory. “I’ve come to settle our business, Maeres. Perhaps we could go somewhere private.” I gestured with my eyes to the curtained alcoves where all manner of Blood Holes negotiations were conducted, from the carnal to the commercial, not that the former wasn’t the latter.

Maeres’s dark eyes rested on the coffer in my arms. “I think perhaps too much of our business has taken place behind closed doors, Prince Jalan. Let us settle our accounts here.”

“Maeres, it’s hardly suitable-”

“Here.” A command. He meant to humble me before witnesses.

“I really don’t-”

“Here!” Barked this time. I don’t recall Maeres Allus ever raising his voice before that. He glanced over his shoulder down into the pit. “A poor fight. Put the bear in.”

If there were any people in the Blood Holes so taken with their own affairs that they weren’t already staring in my direction then the mention of the bear soon changed that. A ripple ran through the crowds and as one they began to flow toward Ochre, drawn by the fighter’s shouts for mercy and by the prospect of seeing him get none.

Maeres didn’t turn to watch the spectacle, keeping his eyes on me instead. We stood there like that with the throng around us baying for blood, their voices competing first with the man’s screaming and then with the grisly noise of the bear rending its meal.

“You had business to conduct, Prince Jalan?” Maeres cocked his head, inviting my reply. Two of his enforcers stood at my shoulders now, hard men who had survived the pits to climb to their current positions.

“I’ve come to settle my debts, Maeres. I borrowed in good faith and gave my word to repay in full. My father is the Red Queen’s son and I don’t give my promise lightly.” I layered on the bravado. If I were going to spend thousands in gold I should at least enjoy the moment. “Remind me how much is due.”

Maeres put out his hand and a hulking fellow in black placed a slate into his palm. I knew the man for Maeres’s bookkeeper though with those big sausage fingers of his he looked better suited to wrestling trolls than pushing numbers around. “The debt stands at three thousand and eleven in crown gold.” A sharp intake of breath ran through the onlookers, perhaps even the building itself sucked in its walls at such a figure. Many there would have difficulty imagining so large a sum, and none of the gentry were so rich that the loss of three thousand wouldn’t hurt them.

Three thousand exceeded what I’d borrowed from Maeres by some considerable margin. Even with months of interest. I suspected I was being charged for the services of the men he sent after me, Alber Marks, Cutter John, and the Slov brothers who were tasked with returning me to the city for a secret and gruesome death. With a grunt of effort I supported the coffer with one aching arm and flipped open the lid with the other. “If you could have your man count out the required amount.” I stepped forward so that the coffer almost reached Maeres, level with his head, the coins’ glow lighting his face.

It took a while but each scoop of the bookkeeper’s shovel-like hands lightened my load. He weighed the coins in his scales, calling the tallies aloud then spilling the gleaming heap into a leather sack. He quickly sent for two more, realizing that the one he had would prove too small to receive my payment.

“One thousand.”

While the bookkeeper scooped and weighed, weighed and scooped, Maeres kept his gaze on me, eyes dark and unreadable. The madness I’d seen in them that day in his poppy halls lay hidden now.

“The repayment of a loan is always welcome-but tell me, what prompted this change of heart, from a man so keen to borrow to a man so keen to pay?”

“Two thousand.” The bookkeeper tied off a second sack.

I stared back. Was Maeres inviting me to advertise his methods? Daring me? This killer with his vile tastes, murdering within the walls of Vermillion, dining so close to the palace that the shadows of its towers might brush against his mansion, richer than many a lord, making his own laws and dishing out his own justice. “I met a king and sought his advice.”