The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue

by Patrick Honovich

Table of Contents

Chapter 2: Opponents Worthy and Unworthy

part 1

I climbed down the first ladder, through a wave of heat and another great dense tuft of steam, coughing and damp. The first things I saw were two black lacquered tables, dressed with silver bowls of steaming water and silver baskets of rolled towels.

Another man with pronounced jowls bent over a basin, inhaling the steam with an almost canine huff of satisfaction, wiped his face with a damp towel, and looked up with kind eyes. “New?” Before I could answer, he said, “Don’t bother with the name,” and smiled as if it was customary part of the experience.

I opened my mouth to ask a question but again he cut me short. “You’re wet from the frost. I’ll save the speeches for after you’ve washed.”

I waved my right hand over the bowl, trying to feel for enchantments.

“It’s safe.” He had a long, broad, drooping face, thin silver hair around the sides and none on top.

I checked anyway. “Trust no one,” Master Tellrus had said when he took me in, and I’d believed him enough to toil away for ten years, questioning every assumption.

The bowl was charmed to keep the water warm, nothing more. I picked up a towel, unrolled it, dropped it in, and used it to wipe my face clean. The heat and the soft cloth went a long way towards putting back some of my missing confidence. I took a deep breath, feeling the steam soothe away the ache in my lungs, and I tossed the towel into a basket on the floor.

As I straightened up, he spoke, looking up from a scroll. “Better?”

“Who do you work for?”

“You really don’t ask anyone here who they work for. Inside these walls, there are no masters and no servants.” He paused, rubbed a bony hand over his cheeks. “Or rather, we are all servants here, and the masters cannot come. Get my meaning?”

I didn’t, but I shrugged. “I’ve heard things.”

He chuckled. “Rumors and half-lies. Forget them. These are the facts: the house extends down rather than up. Certain kinds of business are best conducted in the dark. When they built this house, they built most of it below ground. This house doesn’t extend down to the Cold Hells, contrary to rumor, but there are several floors beneath us, and just the one up top.

“Due to a loophole in Imperial law that the Crown has let stand, the business conducted here can be less honest than you’d expect, and the details can remain secret. You can say you bought something here, but not who you bought it from. You follow?”

I nodded. I had my own ideas about those rumors, whether they were true or not. And I had business to conduct here. If the girl at the door hadn’t screwed me, that business would demand all of my energy, so I listened. “Think so,” I said.

“Not yet.” He waved his pointer finger. “But you will.” He turned towards the door, and checked to make certain I was following.

I walked out of the washroom and into a large lounge with leather furniture to match the armed guards at entrance and exit, hearing someone come down the stairs behind me as we left the room.

“This is where you’ll be assigned a guide.” He led me to the bar. “I have my own business to attend to. A bit of advice: don’t volunteer information, and don’t forget everything here is for sale.”

In a stage whisper, he added, “I’d try the Stinger. Good drink.” He coughed, clapped me on the shoulder, and walked back towards the receiving room. As I watched, he draped one of his long arms over the shoulder of one of the cloaked men by the door, who nodded, and came my way.

I tried not to look worried, and turned back to the bar. The bartender looked back at me, and with my training I saw her eyes glitter, a spell of some sort.

“What’s in a Stinger?” I asked the bartender. “And what color are your eyes, really?” Looking at her, I didn’t see anything local — she looked imported. Chin-length hair, red the color of the Emperor’s robes. The color and cut suggested Menos, maybe some clansmen relatives in the Western Isles.

“They’re brown.” She sounded amused. “He told you to order one?”

I nodded. “I could use a drink.”

“You’re what, young for your age, already a journeyman?”

I took a quarter-step back, just in case, since the last two times I’d heard that tone in a woman’s voice it had been followed by a hail of her personal effects.

“So what’s in—”

“Don’t ask, and I’ll mix you one. Don’t bother trying to pay me, either. Down here, there’s no charge.”

“But...” I heard another part to the sentence, and waited for her to finish.

She glanced over my shoulder. “But if you have too many, I guarantee you’ll pay for it elsewhere.”

“Just the one, then.” I could handle my drink. There would be time later for a bottle or three, if I made it through.

She nodded, and poured from several bottles behind the counter, keeping her hands out of sight and squatting low to keep me from seeing. I didn’t try.

“Closely guarded secret?” I asked, as she delivered a drink smelling of oranges but looking like over-brewed tea, brown-black and murky.

“Not so closely guarded, but a secret nonetheless. Auntighur collects them.” She nodded at the cloaked man now standing a pace or two behind me, and went to tend to another patron.

The man politely cleared his throat, so I turned. He pushed back the hood of the cloak, looking back at me from inside a calm shell I could feel, almost see. White whiskers covered his chin, the hair fine and slightly curled, making his face longer, and somewhat tasseled as the fine hairs at the end of his beard stuck this way and that. Beneath thin white eyebrows, his eyes were deep sod-green, tired and patient and knowing. Not what I’d expected, although after the old hound in the warming room I know I should’ve abandoned expectation altogether.

“Mr. Nosso?” He leaned forward on the swells of his feet, almost on his toes, bracing part of his weight on a simple cane carved without elaboration out of a piece of what looked like elm, or maple. Leaning the cane against one leg as he stood, he held his hands together, prayer-style, and looked at me, waiting for me to correct his pronunciation.

“That’s right.”

“You can call me Div.” He raised one silver eyebrow, letting me know it was, of course, an alias. I shook his hand. His old fingers were strong and as hard as fired iron.

“I’m here in an advisory capacity. It’s a courtesy we extend to our new members, to ensure they don’t through ignorance end up... destroying themselves.”

“Go on.”

“Once you have passed the scrutiny of our reviews, you are considered a member. Which does extend to those who have gained their admittance under another member’s patronage.”

I sipped the drink — whatever was in it stung the places where my lips were split from cold and dry air, so I guess the name “Stinger” was apt. There seemed to be a sort of charm on the booze, too — not harmful, but a little more reassurance and power than I’d expected from a simple drink, no matter about the secret ingredients. “So—”

He talked over me. “I’m not here to lay down the rules. I’m here to provide advice, when asked, on the etiquette of this place.”

I gave a nod.

He smiled, as if he was being particularly magnanimous. “You’ll note I say those words with a cook’s pinch of irony. Not everyone here understands that life can be taken seriously without it becoming grim.”

I doubted very much I’d like his sense of humor, but I nodded again, to be polite, already thinking ahead to other things.

He drew both arms and legs in, standing wheat-straight, then waved his left hand around at the room. “Look around you, Mr. Nosso. There are people here who you won’t ever see again, and stories you’ll never hear anywhere else. It’s considered impolite, young sir, to ask directly, but you’ve doubtless already heard that.” He made it a question with those steady green eyes.

“Yes, I have.”

He nodded. “Good. Keep your resolve, you’ll do fine. Don’t let your guard down.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been trained not to. Should be able to handle that.”

“Ah, yes, your... training, your advantages. May I?” He looked at me, studying, reached to tug my sleeve out of the way, inspected my fingers, felt the back of my neck with old, crabbed, iron hands. I allowed it, but didn’t like it. I touch my ink all the time, but I don’t like it when anyone else does. With a snort, he stepped back. “Verrin.”

I nodded. The people here were well-informed. To anyone on the street, it would’ve been just another tattoo.

“You may make it down to the lowest level, as part of your business here, but in trying you might also lose everything.” Before I could object he continued. “Hard to say, Mr. Nosso. Tell me — and this is primarily for my own studies, entirely unconnected to the working world of Auntighur — are you familiar with the poetry of the age of Herrad?”

What? I nodded. Master Tellrus liked his students well-read. “Am I correct in assuming you ask because of some personal link? I mean, given your choice of name...” I let the words trail off.

His eyes gleamed, and the downward sag of his face reversed, adding wrinkles to wrinkles around the eyes as he smiled. He nodded, and tugged at his goatee, twirling the hair around one finger, considering me.

“Divezha’s quite a fascinating case, and yes, you are correct in your assumption.You see...”

I listened, I heard, but as he spoke I caught sight of the woman from the entryway. She was being led by a roof-beam of a man who walked as if his feet were blistered.

“I’m sorry, Div, I have to ask you a question—”

“And presumably, to repeat what I’ve been saying.” His voice made me see nettles and hailstones, but his face remained unruffled. “Go on, ask.”

“I assume there isn’t an additional guard in the atrium. Perhaps in the cloakroom?”

“Certainly not. Our members wouldn’t have it. What happened?”

“A woman pulled a crossbow on me, took me aside, and made me strip down, right inside the door. I like a joke as well as the next man, but—”

He scowled. “Is she here?”

“Just watched her cross the room. She’s over there.” I nodded in her direction. She wasn’t looking my way.

“Come.” Div took up his cane again and started walking.

No longer with the air of a kindly relative, he waved the hand without the cane towards a pair of comfortable leather chairs. Catching the slight shift in my own eyes, he smiled, this smile without any warmth at all. “This won’t take long.”

The chairs scuttled closer to the table under their own power once we were settled. Div propped the cane against the armrest, waved his bony hand over the base of the oil lamp, and the oil inside the glass changed color, from a murky whiskey-amber to a pale sky-blue. The wick popped into flame with a sound like snapping fingers, and Div sat back. “Describe this woman.”

I told him, although I suspected I was actually telling whoever else was listening in through the lamp flame. A moment later, the lamp oil changed color again from blue to pearl. Div cocked his head to the side, staring at someone on the other side of the room.

He spoke as if killing time. “Did you know Divezha was out-of-favor only towards the end of his career? He wrote some amazing works in the early part of his life, as Herrad lay sick and dying in Asduvir but, of course, they weren’t well-received because he worked in the great master’s shadow.”

I nodded. Get to the point, I thought, What does this have to do with me? “So?”

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich