Kings of the Wyld (The Band #1)

The ship on which the fight had broken out was on fire. Those on both sides of the clash had gathered on the quay to watch it burn.

Matrick hauled his bulk into the carriage, nodding curtly as the driver returned his dagger. The king, somewhat creepily, kissed the blade before sheathing it. Moog climbed in after, and winced at some pain in the foot he was using for leverage.

The left one, Clay noted. The infected one.

“You all right?” asked Matrick.

Moog still hadn’t worked up the courage to tell Matty about his affliction. “Fine!” said the wizard a little too loudly. “Just not as spry as I used to be.”

Matrick chuckled and put a hand on his stomach. “Fucking tell me about it. Hey Gabe, maybe give me a few months’ warning the next time you decide to drag my fat ass across the Heartwyld, eh? I’d have done a few laps around the castle, or maybe not eaten a pie every day.”

Moog looked doubtful. “You ate pie every day?”

Matrick shrugged. “Damned right I did, or else what’s the point of being king?”

Gabriel, meanwhile, was still standing at the alley mouth. At a glance, Clay assumed he was watching the ship in flames, but then realized he was looking past it, transfixed by the daunting immensity of the Maxithon.

“Gabe,” Clay called, and after a moment his friend tore his gaze from the arena and joined them in the carriage. Gabriel sat with the sack cradled in his lap, saying nothing. The quiet sullenness that seemed the dominant part of his nature these days had returned, and not without reason. Gabriel had vouched for Fender and his wife to move from the sewers into the slightly less foul-smelling streets above. He no doubt felt responsible for Oozilk’s capture. Her death (because Clay couldn’t imagine a kobold lasting long in the arena) would join the many burdens camped like crows on the frontman’s shoulders, from letting his band fall apart, to allowing his marriage to crumble, to driving his daughter to repeat the same reckless mistakes of her father.

The driver cracked the reins, urging his red-feathered akra on through the riotous streets of Coinbarrow, weaving through the press of drunks, scratch addicts, scratch dealers, off-duty courtsmen in six-striped tabards, and rowdy river men looking to exchange a few silver crowns for a strong drink, a keen woman, and an itchy red rash come morning.

The air itself was a wild brawl of smells and sounds: the punch of unwashed flesh, the scream of a scratching mandolin, the jab of tobacco smoke, the glee of a whistling pipe, the occasional head butt of sour urine, the aching sorrow of a moaning lute. All that, and voices singing, laughing, yelling, swearing, and groaning in myriad different ways.

Clay craned his neck as they rattled by one of the four square towers to which the Maxithon was anchored by the thickest chains he’d ever seen. Graffiti marred the tower’s base, most of it illegible, although Clay’s eyes picked out four words scrawled in bright white paint that stood out from all the rest: Long live the Duke.

They veered right, rumbling uphill, and soon left Coinbarrow behind. As their unease abated, the akra’s feathers changed colour. One of them went white again, while the other turned a dusky blue. When Matrick ventured to ask the driver what the bird’s blue feathers denoted the man glanced over his shoulder and growled, “I’ll say this: Don’t bend over near it.”

They turned left onto the city’s main thoroughfare, a broad avenue called Sintra’s Ring that carved a circle through every ward in Fivecourt, and soon passed beneath a massive arch into the Narmeeri Ward. Carved in relief along the top of the ward gate were the words SUFFER NO TYRANTS, the origin of which Moog used to explain every single time Saga had been to the city. Clay had never been much for history lessons—he had trouble remembering the words to most songs—but it was hard to forget one that had been drilled into your head five times a year for ten years running.

In the wake of the Reclamation Wars, when the last of the Hordes had been scattered, the Company of Kings had envisioned a unified Grandual: a single, spanning empire to rival the lost Dominion of druinkind. They promoted one among them to the rank of Emperor, and named Fivecourt the Imperial capital.

But hardly a year had passed—and the foundations had only just been laid for the Emperor’s grand palace—before the new Emperor issued two illfated edicts that historians unilaterally agree proved to be his undoing. The first of these was, as Moog colourfully phrased it whenever he told the story, “to tax the living shit out of his subjects.” The next was to demand that the firstborn daughter of every noble household be sent as a hostage to Fivecourt. Upon their arrival the Emperor announced their great good fortune of being the founding members of his brand-new harem.

The noble daughters responded poorly to this decree, and the first Emperor of Grandual died due to what Moog dubbed “testicular asphyxiation,” which is to say they stuffed his severed balls down his throat.

The daughters were executed, the nobles rebelled, and the Emperor’s son and heir fled west, through the Heartwyld and over the mountains, to Endland.

“Hey,” Moog blurted, startling everyone. “Have I ever told you guys why it says ‘Suffer no Tyrants’ above the ward gates?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel.

“You have,” said Clay.

“Like a hundred million times,” said Matrick, and the wizard slumped back into his seat.

They’d entered the Narmeeri Ward, and but for the arena floating on the river below, Clay could have imagined the carriage had ambled into the southern sultanate itself. The streets here were cramped and curving; bands of pale moonlight filtered between swathes of red and gold cloth draped overhead. The driver wisely avoided the night market, but Clay could hear the babble of voices from the grand bazaar near the heart of the ward. The mingling scents of spice and heady hookah smoke wafted on an unseasonably warm breeze that contained a startling amount of gritty sand.

They rolled by several temples to the Summer Lord, who the southerners called Vizan and worshipped with a sort of reverent fear, the way everyone else did the Winter Queen, and finally passed through another gate into the highest tier of the city. Here were the estates belonging to Narmeeri grandees, and even a small palace occupied by the Sultana herself whenever she deigned to visit Fivecourt. Her salvaged druin skyship, The Second Sun, was moored there now, its fanning sails crackling with static discharge.

Clay decided he’d let Gabriel sulk long enough. They were nearing their destination, he presumed, and yet he had no idea where exactly it was they were going, or why.

“What’s the money for?” he asked.

Gabriel looked over, his blue eyes hooded, his jaw working as though he were chewing on something. Finally, he answered, “It’s for Ganelon.”

Matrick frowned, leaning forward. “When did he get out of prison? I was led to believe those sent to the Quarry were sent there to stay.”

Clay, too, had been under that impression. He’d tried to ask Gabriel about it before Jain and the Silk Arrows had robbed them outside Coverdale.

Ganelon had killed a Narmeeri prince, after all—the eldest son of the Sultana—and neither Saga’s celebrity status nor the fact that he’d committed murder for a very, very good reason could protect him from her wrath. The Sultana’s magi had hunted him down, and for reasons each their own, Ganelon’s bandmates had been conspicuously absent when he’d needed them most.

The warrior was eventually captured, confined to an inescapable prison known as the Quarry—inescapable because its inhabitants, which included a veritable who’s who of Grandual’s most dangerous criminals, were turned to stone. Clay had heard it said the Quarry was tended by Keepers, who were blinded at birth and raised to know every inch of the prison by touch alone, and guarded by basilisks, the gazes of which could turn exposed flesh to stone.

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