CHAPTER 31 #2
This contract reduced that pledge of loyalty to a financial transaction. Tillmar promised absolute obedience and Hreban promised nothing except prompt payment. Will was right. Tillmar had sold himself.
Why even write this at all? It wasn’t enforceable or legally binding. Moreover, a pledge of loyalty required witnesses. If the sworn betrayed their vow, those who were there would know of their shame. This contract was completely secret. It forbade Tillmar from even mentioning its existence.
Did Hreban just get off on having it in writing? He clearly valued this oath, judging by the paper. It was thick, with strands of silver thread woven through. The “good stuff” from my study didn’t even come close.
A weird feeling pressed on my fingers as I slid them near the signature line.
“Tell me everything about tonight,” Everard said. “Be detailed.”
Had I imagined it? I slipped my fingers near the signature spot again. Here it was, a weird pressure, like trying to push two magnets of the same polarity together.
“I rent a cheap room in the Tangle’s south end,” Tillmar said. “I was asleep. A runner came in the middle of the night and told me to go to Bluestone Plaza. I got my gear and went.”
It felt like the paper was trying to repel me. I ran my hand all over it. Only the bottom quarter of the contract was affected, directly around the signature line. I couldn’t even touch it.
“There were eight of us there: Otrade, Praga, and six others I didn’t know.
Otrade said we were about to raid a house.
We were to secure it and leave as many as we could alive, because he had to ask some questions.
He kept asking Praga if she was sure she had the right house, and she kept telling him that she had followed the carriage all the way from the warehouse, and that he needed more people, because the man who’d carried the woman out made her skin crawl. ”
It made sense now. Hreban had invested too much into the Butcher to leave him unattended. He told Otrade to keep an eye on it, and Otrade had sent Praga. She saw Everard carry me out and the Shears set the warehouse on fire. She must’ve followed our carriage straight to our house.
The only question now was, had Otrade reported to Hreban right away or did he wait?
If I were Otrade, I would’ve waited until I could question us.
The bad news would go over better with some kind of explanation attached.
My lord, your pet serial killer was murdered, but I found the people responsible, and I have them under lock and key. What would you like us to do?
“Was Praga in the courtyard, too?” I asked.
Tillmar nodded. “She was the one who scaled the wall.”
There was no way to tell how much Hreban knew. He could know nothing or everything.
“I had a bad feeling about this,” Tillmar said. “I almost didn’t show up. That’s life, you know. It’s . . . short.”
Tillmar’s bad feelings were right on the money. If I didn’t interfere right now, Everard could kill him. Tillmar was a loose end that needed to be tied up.
“Is he any good?” I asked Gort.
“Yes,” Gort said. “Good fighter. Smart.”
“Is he lying about his family?”
“No.”
I looked at Everard. “Can I have him?”
He shrugged. “Do you have a use for him?”
I nodded.
“Very well.”
“Will, bring the wooden box, please.”
The wooden box was where I kept some of our money.
“Yes, my lady.”
Will left.
I rubbed the contract some more. Still a no-go on touching the signature line.
Will returned with the box. I opened it. Otrade had put a half-noma, fifty dens, on the bar. I would need to beat that. I took a noma out.
Tillmar’s face went completely flat.
I looked at the silver coin. “Gort?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“How much redblossom powder can a noma purchase?”
“Six months’ worth,” Gort said.
“We better make it two then.” I put a second noma on top of the first. “Two nomas a month. Sent to your family.”
Gort made 224 dens a month, more than two nomas. I was offering Tillmar a war rate.
Tillmar met my eyes. “What do I have to do?”
“In the morning, go to the Redeemer Tower. Tell them your sad Saubra Company story. Give them lots of details so they have no trouble confirming it. You dream of your friends who were put to death, and when you lie awake at night, they whisper to you from the darkness. You question why you lived, and they didn’t.
You wonder if you could’ve saved them. Can you sell that to them? ”
Tillmar nodded.
“Good. Look tormented as if the guilt has gnawed at you from the inside until you became a hollow husk of a man.”
Lute looked taken aback. Gort did, too. They hadn’t seen this side of me.
“Yesterday you thought of ending it all, but you dreamt of a knight in dented armor holding a sage standard on a plain wooden spear. He called to you. You’ve come to pledge yourself to the Redeemer Order.”
“What if they ask about my family? Redeemer pay is shit.”
Gort was right. Tillmar was smart.
“Tell the Redeemers that you’re no good to your family, since nobody will hire you. You have failed as a soldier, husband, and father. They are better off without you. You cannot live with yourself, and you wish to be reborn. Can you do that?”
Tillmar nodded. “I can.”
“Do you think your wife can pretend to be sad and abandoned or do we need to lie to her?”
“Benna is smart. She will play her part,” Tillmar promised. “She won’t tell a soul.”
“Good. You will write two letters. One explaining the true story and the other one so she can show it to people when they come asking.”
“What do I need to do at the Redeemers?”
“Be the best Redeemer recruit they ever had. Be humble, pious, and dedicated. Volunteer for unpleasant tasks. Say as little as possible, just show up when they need you.”
He nodded.
“They will confine you while they verify your story, so you won’t be able to leave the Tower for the first month or so, but that will pass.
The first few times you go out, you will be watched.
When you feel safe, go to Taryz Teahouse and order Thieves Brew with a sambocade.
They will tell you they’re out of sambocades.
Order something else instead, enjoy your tea and go back to the Tower.
The next time you come back to Taryz, ask for the sambocades again and there will be instructions for you. ”
Tillmar looked past me at Everard. “If I do this, will me and mine be black and green?”
Everything stopped. The three Magnars went still. Tillmar stared at Everard as if he were drowning and the Sleepless Duke was holding a life jacket.
“Do this well, and there will be a place for you and your family in Selva,” Everard said.
Tillmar looked at Gort. “I want to do this right.”
The older mercenary took Tillmar’s sword off the table and passed it to him. Tillmar got up.
Gort moved to the aisle to stand on Everard’s right. Lute forced himself to his feet and joined his father. On the other side Will stood up and took a position to Everard’s left. Everyone was getting up.
Everard offered me his hand. “My lady.”
Clearly, whatever this was required standing. I put my hand in his, stood up, and tried to turn toward Will. There was a space there. Instead, Everard gently but firmly maneuvered me to stand next to him.
“Your Grace . . .”
“This involves both of us.”
Tillmar dropped down on one knee, his blade upright, resting with its point on the floor.
I shut up.
The Magnars stood like sentinels, solemn and silent, their faces grave. The way they held themselves transformed the room into a sacred place, as if the walls of our basement had melted away and we stood in the center of the Red Basilica.
Tillmar bowed his head.
“I swear upon my life and the lives of all I hold dear to pledge my blade, body, and soul to the Lord of Selva. His word is my law, his cause is my cause, and there are none above him. So shall it be until the end of my days.”
A formal oath. Oh wow.
Dark smoke boiled out of Everard. His eyes turned a piercing, scalding green. He spoke as if etching each word into stone.
“I, Lord of Selva, accept you into my service. From this moment on, you are my sword, and I am your shield. Should you be wronged, I will give you justice. Should you fall in my service, your loved ones will not know hunger. Rise, Tillmar of Selva, and sheathe your blade until I have a need of it.”
Tillmar rose and put away his sword.
“In three months, after the Redeemers are satisfied, I will move your family north,” Everard said. “They will be protected and well taken care of.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
The smoke melted into nothing, and Everard’s eyes went back to their normal light green.
Hreban and Everard. One had tried to buy a man, the other changed the course of Tillmar’s life with five sentences.
That much power concentrated in the hands of one person.
It was at once awe-inspiring and terrifying.
There was a reason our society had moved away from that. Mostly.
Everard turned to me. “Are you ready to go, my lady?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Everard offered me his arm. I rested my hand on it.
Behind us Gort muttered, “You are one lucky sonovabitch, Tillmar. Let’s get you some ink and paper.”
The Shears agent was waiting for us in the hallway.
She was lean, with dark hair, sandy skin, and narrow dark eyes.
Her features were pleasant and ordinary, and nothing about her drew the eye at first glance.
I’d met literally a dozen women just like her at the Dog Market.
And then you looked into her eyes and realized she could kill you three times before you hit the ground.
Avaria, Solentine’s second-in-command. He wasn’t joking around.
“It is done, my lord,” she said.
I could see the courtyard through the window, lit with lanterns. A whole team of people in black and gray swarmed over the bodies. She must’ve called in reinforcements from the Shears.
“You have all of the measurements?” Everard asked.
“Yes.”
“You noted the blood spatter?”
“Yes.”