Book Preview - Elyon's Ghost

Chapter One

Dark heavy clouds covered the moon, making Senior Guardian Keavey Terrowyn’s hunt through the Codpiece—the filthiest, most disgusting part of the port city of Sarlogne—treacherous, to say the least. Sharp pieces of broken crockery, discarded bones, and offal from the more disreputable butcher’s shops, and disgusting rags with stains from the Goddess only knows what lined the back alleys where she was searching for her little skelli, Ghost. For three nights now, she’d scoured the Codpiece, the rukilla dust dens, and the slavers’ auctions for her.

It was unusual for the nine-turn skelli not to hear and respond to her three-whistle call. Even more unusual was for Terro to not see Ghost for three days running. She turned a corner into a narrow alley wedged between an alehouse and a gambling den and almost stepped on the legs of a nob rutting with a lolli on top of a pile of filthy rags.

Lollies, women who sell their bodies or lick the lollistick of a man for half a copper, knew they could count on the Blades to help them if the nob’s attentions weren’t wanted or, more specifically, paid for. This one was lazily rubbing some dirt off her thumbnail. She looked as though she was planning what soap to use on her laundry and not thinking about lying in a trash heap with her legs spread for the filthy nob bumping up and down between her legs.

Not inclined to take the time away from her search for Ghost, Terrowyn nonetheless stopped and glanced down at the lolli’s face, double-checking to make sure the sex was consensual.

The lolli grinned up at her with a black-toothed smile, an obvious sign of a Rukilla dust addiction, making her not just a lolli but one with the dubious distinction of being called a lolliruk, the lowest of the low. “Glad t’ munch ya after this nob’s done, Guardian. Real cheap since yer a blade an’ all.”

Terrowyn tried to ignore the nob’s grunts and bobbing butt as he repeatedly drove his stick into the pidge, not getting the quick results most nobs manage in these back alleys. “Not even if I was dead and lying on the midden heap. But have you seen Ghost?”

The woman’s brows came down as she thought about the question. “Nah. They’s been some slavers down by th’ docks.” She lifted a shoulder, “Could be she’s there.” The man’s butt stopped bouncing, and he let out a deep, satisfied groan before collapsing in a wilted heap on top of her. She pushed him off with a shove. “Get offa me belly, ya limp-sticked poonduster.”

The man rolled onto his back, eyes closed and obviously unconscious. His big belly lolled to the side, and to Terro’s extreme relief, his stick had retreated back into the front opening of his trews.

The lolliruk rose with some effort, let her filthy, ragged skirt drop down into place, and batted her eyes. “C’mon, Guards lady. I’ll do ya up right. Only half a copper.”

Terrowyn’s temper flared. “Do I look dead to ya?”

The lolliruk saw the flash of anger and hurriedly pulled open the back door of the gambling den, no doubt to use the half-copper she’d just earned to buy a face full of Rukilla dust. “Nah, Guardian. Never ya mind. I’ll be off, then.”

Terro didn’t give another thought to the nob lying at her feet. The lolli had called him a poonduster, or more specifically, a nob who snorts a nose full of dust right before sex. He’d be picked bare of his togs and belongings long before consciousness returned, but that wasn’t her concern.

Ghost was.

Nine turns earlier, Terrowyn had been the first to hear a mewling sound in this very alley. She’d searched for what she believed was either an injured kitten or a puppy. What she’d found lying in the gutter between the bloodied legs of a known lolliruk had stopped her cold. The blood hadn’t surprised her since rukis—those addicted to the hallucinogenic black Rukilla dust—typically didn’t live long in the Codpiece. Neither did the lollies, for that matter. And this lolliruk had been both.

It had been the mewling that had drawn Terrowyn’s attention, not the bloodied, unconscious lolli. The City Guard would take care of throwing any dead bodies into the midden, where they’d be burned at a later time. Not that the pidge was dead, but no matter.

No, what did matter was what she’d found in place of a tiny kitten. It had shocked even her, a Senior Guardian in the military sect of the Temple of Elyon. There, writhing and struggling between the lolliruk’s legs, had lain a disgusting, blood-covered baby girl whose body rested halfway in and halfway out of the sewage where the pidge had given birth.

Terrowyn had taken the bairn to a wet nurse who’d accepted care of the child, only to have the mother find and retrieve the babe when she’d come out of her Rukilla trance. Terrowyn kept an eye on the skelli, though, watching to make sure the mother didn’t accidentally kill or starve her to death. Terro had decided to take the child before she turned three, the golden age where the slavers believed the child might live long enough in their “care” to be sold at auction.

What she’d intended to do with the little skelli still baffled her, as a Guardian of the Temple wouldn’t be allowed to raise a child, but she’d been spared the problem when two sevendays before the skelli turned three, the mother had covertly taken her daughter to an illegal slaving market, hoping to sell her for enough silver royins to keep her in rukilla dust for the next full moon.

By then, the skelli, like most bairns unlucky enough to be born in the Codpiece, had learned the ins and outs of the sewer system running beneath the city. All skellies and nints learned those tunnels the moment they toddled their first steps. If they didn’t, they were dead. Pure and simple.

Instinctively knowing her mother intended to sell her, the skelli had run away to the sewers, where she’d hidden for an entire turn before Terrowyn saw any trace of her again. That hadn’t stopped her from searching for the babe she’d rescued, though. There’d been hundreds of skellies and nints through her turns as a blade, most dead and burned before their tenth nameday. But Terrowyn always felt a pull for the little one she’d dragged from beneath her skizzy mother’s legs.

Over the next turn, she’d caught glimpses of a distinctive, thick mop of curly brown hair jutting above the edge of the rooftops or disappearing down a sewage hole. It’d taken another turn to win the skelli’s trust, and now after nine turns, she’d trained the little skelli, whom she’d named Ghost, to come to her three-whistle call.

Terrowyn strode to the end of the alley and looked to her right. Even though she was in the Codpiece, the road she was standing on had some fairly respectable businesses interspersed with those of a more unscrupulous nature, to say the least. As with most of the roads throughout Sarlogne, it was paved with various shades of cobblestones, depending on what quarry they’d come from.

Some of the roads were smoother than others, and some, like nearly every road in the Codpiece, were bumpy from hundreds of turns of wooden and metal cartwheels and shod horses’ hooves clattering over them. If not properly maintained, the stones eventually sank or rose according to the quality of the underlying ground.

Here, on Coral Lane, so named for the color of the majority of stones, the cobblestones extended from one side of the road to the other. Some of the wealthier parts of the city had nicely paved sidewalks where genteel ladies and gentlemen could walk without tripping and landing flat on their faces.

Not so in the Codpiece. There were no sidewalks on Coral Lane, only bumpy, uneven cobblestones and quite a few potholes where people had removed a cobble or two for their yard or front stoop.

The buildings, themselves, were hundreds of turns old, some crumbling and others maintained by owners who’d inherited their workspace from grandfathers or even great-grandmothers in some instances. At times, skellies and nints would hire themselves out as part-time labor in these shops, and Terrowyn hoped someone had seen or heard about or even hired Ghost in the last few days.

Since it was a little past deadnight, only a few of the businesses remained open. Torchlight shone through the windows at The Brown Barrel, a cooper’s shop aptly named by a previous owner who possessed excellent barrel-making skills but lacked even a vestige of imagination when it had come time to name the place. Terro stepped through the open door and glanced around.

The business was a fire hazard, as torches burned from sconces set at even intervals around the shop’s perimeter, and discarded staves and hammers leaned up against walls and littered the floor. Wooden barrels of every size and shape lay in haphazard heaps around the room. There were the closed-topped ones, with two to four bands holding the multiple staves in place. These were strong and durable, made for storing or transporting wine and ale or for storing goods to be transported longer distances.

In the center of the room, lying on its side, was a large, open-topped half-barrel with a second smaller companion piece wedged into its cavity. Farmers used these for carrying or displaying their fruits and vegetables, while laundresses filled them with dirty or clean clothing, depending on their work of the moment.

Hanging on the wall to the left were circular staves arranged by size. The largest one, if set on the floor, would come to about Terrowyn’s chest, and the smallest would fit around her fist. These were arranged according to size, with the biggest hanging to the left of the door and the smallest ending at the seven-rung wooden ladder at the back of the room.

This led up to an open loft where the cooper himself was busy searching through piles of carefully bent staves. Since he had his back to her and she knew the old man had a difficult time hearing, Terrowyn raised her voice to get his attention. “Master Erlong, what are ya doing up so high? Where’s yer boy, Heben?”

The man, somewhere in his late seventies, straightened with difficulty and turned to look down on her. “Guardian Terrowyn. Back again so soon? I take it ya haven’t found yer little Skelli.” His hoary eyebrows descended, and when he mournfully shook his oversized head, his thick shock of out-of-control, snow-white hair moved like stalks of mushrooms blowing every which way on a blustery Greenmere day. “I hope ya find her soon. The longer she’s gone….” He took a step forward and grabbed the top rung of the ladder extending above the loft floor. “If ya can wait just a bit, I’ll climb down. These old bones are creaky, and it takes me a mite longer than it used to when I were a lad.”

He grinned down at her, and in the light from the flickering torches, he appeared a ghoulish specter, looming over her with most of the upper molars missing along with his lower two front teeth.

Terrowyn held up a hand. “No, don’t bother.” Having old Master Erlong up in the loft was strange enough that she put the question to him again. “Where’s yer boy, Master Erlong?”

He chuckled at that. “Me boy, as ya put it, has thirty-two name days to his credit, now, don’t he? Not really a boy, no more.” He turned, and as he slowly lowered one foot to the first rung, Terro braced herself in case she’d have to catch him if he fell. He continued talking while he extended first one leg and then the other to find each successive rung. “Heben went and stepped off ‘a here, didn’t he?”

To Terrowyn’s horror, the old man let go of the ladder and pointed at the loft. She climbed the bottom two rungs so she could take hold of his calf to steady him. “Maybe keep both yer hands on th’ ladder, aye?”

Nodding, he gripped the side rail, stained dark brown from turns of hard-working hands leaving their sweat and dirt on the ancient wood. “Landed on his arm and broke it in two, didn’t he? Took him to the poxy healers down at the Guild, but would they help him without seeing the silver? Not sweiven’ likely.” He shook his head angrily. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Did you try th’ healers at th’ Temple?” As his upper body finally came within reach, Terrowyn took hold of the old man’s arm and helped him descend the last three rungs.

Grateful for the help, Erlong nodded his thanks as he regained his equilibrium. “He’s no a pidge, Guardian. If he’d been me daughter, that would’ve been different, but, as ya know, the Temple healers….” He lifted one shoulder and sighed.

Terrowyn had known Master Erlong for many turns, and she’d watched his son grow from a young lad apprenticed to his da to someone who now built most of the barrels supplied to other hard-working folks who barely scraped out a living in the Codpiece. “About one or two turns past, two of th’ Temple healers got permission from th’ Arch Priestess to set up on th’ edge of th’ Codpiece once every sevenday. They asked because they knew most of th’ nobs in th’ Codpiece can’t get healers to work on ‘em. So, I know they help nobs like Heben right along with th’ pidges.”  She caught her breath when the old man swayed and quickly grabbed his arm again. Hooking one of the low barrels with her foot, she slid it forward until she could grab its side with one hand and, after upending it, helped lower him onto its wooden bottom.

“I thank ya, Guardian. Were that th’ City Guards were as kind as th’ Temple Blades. As to yer healers, Heben fell four day gone, and they won’t be set up for another three day. By then, who knows, maybe it’ll be too late. Bones start to heal wrong, th’ arm or leg, well, whatever one broke’ll be useless, don’t ya know. And a cooper with one arm’s like a beaver tryin’ to build a damn without a tail.”

Terro didn’t like the grey pallor of his skin, but there wasn’t much she could do about it at that time of the morning. “What are ya doing here so late? Most sane people are tucked up home in bed by now.”

“And what about you, Guardian? I know you’ve worked this deadnight shift these last fifteen turns or more. Why aren’t ya tucked up warm in bed, eh? There’s no question ya could get on the dawning shift or even th’ gloaming if ya wanted.”

The last of the jute burned out in one of the wall torches, and she watched the grey-white stream of smoke rise from the remaining scraps of oil-soaked fiber. For her, the answer to his question was obvious, but most people didn’t understand her preference for solitude over companionship. Perhaps living in a Temple full of more than three hundred women ran contrary to a solitary life, but it had worked out fine for her.

Not caring to go into the personal reasons for her choice of shift, Terro gave him an answer she knew he would understand. “I prefer working with th’ drunks and roughnecks instead of th’ nobles. Nobles rarely come to th’ Codpiece after dark. If I worked th’ dawning shift, I’d have to spend as much of my time in th’ wealthier parts of th’ city, and that’s where ya find th’ poxy nobles. But that doesn’t answer my question. Why are ya out so late, Master Erlong?”

He spoke on the end of a long sigh. “Heben and I was workin’ on a new order for th’ captain of th’ Pelican, and she’s due back in dock three days from now. If I don’t get this order finished, we’re done. All a businessman has is his reputation, and everybody knows th’ Brown Barrel delivers on time. But with Heben hurt and Jevon signed onto th’ king’s armies, there’s only me.” He lifted his shoulders in a fatalistic shrug. “Either th’ blessed Goddess will help me fill th’ order, or she’ll take me home. Either way, I’m satisfied. Me only worry is fer me boy. With a crooked, useless arm, he’ll end up as a beggar on th’ streets, now, won’t he?”

Terrowyn scratched her head. She didn’t have time to fix the problems of every poor bugger in the Codpiece, but there were times when she felt responsible for the decent, hard-working people she’d known over the turns. “Can ya bring Heben to th’ Temple’s back gate? Say around eight bells?”

“Aye.” He narrowed his eyes and watched her a moment. “What ye be thinkin’, Guardian?”

She stepped close and held her finger in his face. “Ye’ll need to keep yer mouth shut about it, but one of th’ healers is a good friend of mine, and I think she’ll help yer Heben if we can do it on th’ sly. Tell no one, just come to th’ back gate, and we’ll see what we can do about that arm, aye?”

Resting an elbow in his hand, the old man rubbed his hoary brows, closing his eyes and humming a moment while he thought. After a short time, he crossed both arms over his chest. “Folks’ll be wonderin’ if we just walk up to th’ gate with no business to be there. Yer stable master, Kemi, ordered two half barrels fer those new stalls she built. I think eight bells might be th’ perfect time to make a delivery, don’t you?”

Terrowyn raised brows and nodded. The people in the Codpiece were well used to having to work around the system. It seemed that all of the rules and cultural norms were put in place to specifically hold the poor people down. Not that Master Erlong was poor exactly, but he wasn’t rich, either. If he were, he wouldn’t have his shop on Coral Lane in the middle of the Codpiece. “I think that’s a perfect time fer a delivery. Now. Ya need yer sleep. Ya have a cot in th’ back, aye?”

“Aye. I’m that worn out. I’ll douse th’ torches and see ya at eight bells, Guardian. And thank ya. I owe ya.”

“No favors unless it’s to help some pidge in trouble someday. And, if ya might keep yer ears and eyes open fer Ghost. That’d be thanks enough.” Watching him move unsteadily around the shop, she wondered how long it would be before the Goddess called him home to his final rest.