Blurb
Ardana Sul was a true bastard. For the right price he’d get you anything, anyone, anywhere and not ask questions. So when Baroness Foncesca hired him to obtain the last known vial of plague dust, it was business as usual. He should’ve known she wouldn’t leave any witnesses. Flintlocks flashed, windows shattered, and his head slammed into sharp rock. He escaped with his life, but not his memory.
Dredged from the river by a kind fisherman, Sul recovers without knowing his past or name. Slowly he achieves what his ill-gotten earnings could never have bought: a measure of peace. But when the Baroness’ henchmen come to finish the job, his hands remember how to use a sword even if he doesn’t, and his violent past floods back.
Determined to right at least one of his sins, Sul vows to stop the Baroness before she can unleash the weapon he brought her on a city he’s grown to love. Sul’s talents are put to the test in a fight back to Foncesca, but his greatest enemy may be how much of his old self he’ll have to resurrect.
About the Author
Eric Lewis is the author of the grimdark fantasy The Heron Kings published by Flame Tree Press and sequels The Heron Kings’ Flight and The Heron Kings Rampant, as well as the gaslamp fantasy The Artificer’s Knot and short story collection As It Seems. His short fiction has been published in multiple venues including Nature Futures, Assemble Artifacts, Bards & Sages Quarterly, Cossmass Infinities, Allegory, Flash Fiction Magazine, the cyberpunk horror anthology Crash Code and multiple anthologies from Black Hare Press. By day he is a research scientist still trying to learn how to be a person again long after surviving grad school.
Author website: https://ericlewis.ink/
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Excerpt
Not so long ago, Ardana Sul might have taken a perverse thrill in holding pure death in the palm of his hand. Now, the package he’d borne across mountains, oceans, and deserts burned in his grasp, and he yearned finally to rid himself of it in exchange for cold platinum.
He leaned a bit too casually against the tower chamber wall, wondering not for the first time how his clients always seemed to have more money than taste. Afternoon sunlight poured through the tall, stained-glass windows overlooking the city of Tramontio and the river below. The manor tower’s exterior bore the scars of a dozen sieges, but the room inside had been garishly paneled and furnished, not quite to Sul’s liking.
If only she’d show up, he thought with a grunt. Keeping him waiting just to show she could.
When Sul’s patience finally wore thin enough that he considered making inquiries of the statue-silent attendants, the door creaked open. The servants, who would fetch tea or run a stiletto through his gut with equal dispassion, stood at attention when Sul’s employer stepped through, preceded by a colorfully uniformed bodyguard.
“Baroness Foncesca,” Sul said with a sardonic bow, “I was starting to think I’d gotten the day wrong.”
“No, you weren’t,” the middle-aged woman replied, her voice acid-sharp. “Nor taught not to speak to your betters until spoken to, I see.”
“I was. But I’ve found professional success often relies on unlearning most of what I was taught.”
“Clever.” The woman who effectively ruled Tramontio in her husband’s dotage waved a jeweled hand toward Sul. “Check him.”
The bravo took two long steps toward Sul and began running hands over his travel-worn clothes. Sul fought the instinct to pull away and lunge for the man’s sword, dagger, flintlock pistol or any of the hidden weapons the bodyguard certainly carried. They’d already searched him once at the manor’s discreet little postern gate he’d entered as instructed, and he knew this was just to put him in his place one more time.
“Humph,” he said, “usually I have to pay extra for this kind of treatment.”
“I only allow weapons that I control in my home,” the Baroness replied, “I’m sure you understand.”
The bravo nodded at the Baroness. “He’s clean, M’Lady.”
“I’ve been called many things in my time,” Sul quipped, “but never that.”
“Very well, Captain. You are dismissed.” The Baroness turned to the attendants behind her. “Clear the room.”
They all snapped a smart salute and retired into an adjacent room through another door.
After it rumbled shut, Sul waited until the echo of their heavy boots died away completely before speaking further, “Charming help you keep.”
“I don’t pay them for their charm. Or you. You’ve been gone a whole season, I was beginning to lose hope. Almost forgot what you looked like. Signor Nondescript. So unlike what the stories imply.”
“In my line of work, Baroness, it pays to be nondescript.”
“But as I hear it, your skill with a blade is anything but. You’re also accounted a master of disguises, not to mention blackmail, kidnapping, extortion, and… getting in and out of tight spots. So many talents.” Foncesca stepped toward him with anticipation in her eyes. The danger their business carried, it seemed, excited her. “Do you have it?” Her expensive perfume filled his nostrils as her mouth hung open just a bit.
Sul held up the package, a circle of thorns design branded upon its outermost layer. Paper folded around leather, stitched over lead, over who knew what else, like a set of nesting dolls, down and down until… “Right here. The last phial of plague dust known to exist. A goodbye kiss from the blasted Oldens, may they rot in the nineteen hells.”
The Baroness reached for the package, then drew back. “You’re sure it’s genuine?”
“The alchemist I took it from was, enough to throw his life away over it.”
Foncesca sneered. “Did he beg?”
“No, but his daughter did. You really want to know the bloody details of the job?”
“No.” She turned to a chest set on a table. Sul had briefly considered trying to pick its locks while he was waiting before deciding it wasn’t worth the risk. A few clicks and the iron lid opened. The Baroness took out a small box, its weight evident as she carried it to him. “As promised. Two hundred platinum crowns. I had to borrow from my own company to withdraw so much at once. Enough to buy a title of your own, lands of your own.”
“Both of which I’d lose, along with my head, the next time one of you nobles decided to declare a blood feud.”
“Only if you picked the wrong side.”
“I’ll keep the platinum, if it’s all the same to you.” He held out the package.
The Baroness hesitated once again before taking it and handing over the box at the same time. Their hands touched for the briefest electric instant, and it was done. Sul opened the lid, smiled at the neat little rows of white metal painted a hundred colors by stained-glass sunlight.
As Sul cradled his prize the Baroness put her own in the chest, shut and locked it again. She paused. “Aren’t you at all curious what I plan to do with it?”
“It’s nothing to me,” he said with practiced disinterest. “You know my reputation. I can get you anything, anyone, anywhere for the right price. When the job’s done, I get paid and move on. Course, this is more than enough to retire on. Might be my last job!” He tucked the box more firmly under his arm. “And with that…” He turned toward the door to the tower stairwell.
“One moment,” Foncesca insisted. “I’ll not have it said I lack hospitality.” She motioned to a side table upon which was set a decanter of rosé wine and two crystal goblets. She poured a small measure into each and offered Sul one. “You’ve traveled long and far for this task. Let’s at least drink a salute to a successful expedition.”
Now it was Sul’s turn to hesitate. He glanced toward the far door behind which the guards had disappeared. Finding no excuse to refuse he reached out to accept, but slowly while the hairs on the back of his neck bristled.
Foncesca must have read the uncertainty on his face and laughed. “Oh, really Mister Sul, you are too suspicious!”
“No such thing in my experience, Baroness.”
She laughed again, then offered Sul the other glass instead. “There, satisfied?”
Sul took it, thinking perhaps he was just being paranoid after all. They clinked glasses together and Sul sipped just the smallest bit. He didn’t taste any obvious poison, but that was no proof. “A fine vintage,” he said with a nod.
“Indeed? Would you be the type to know?”
“No, not really.”
“No. If you were, you wouldn’t be the man for this job. Well, let me indulge my predilection for intrigue and tell you something anyway. The plague dust is a little gift for my dear cousin, Camero.”
“The Duke of Oltrini,” Sul said, reflexively glancing out the window and downriver.
“Very good.”
“It doesn’t usually pay to know fine wines, but nobles and their vendettas are another matter.” His right foot instinctively moved an inch toward the chamber door, and his muscles tensed. Why was she telling him this?
“Indeed. He’s a wily one, but as the true heir to House Dolcati, Oltrini is rightfully mine, and I need a port for my shipping concern. The seeress I’ve engaged predicts I could very well take the city if I act before the year’s out.”
Sul snorted. “Seers. Charlatans, I say.”
“You may be right. In any event, if I attack while the Duke’s away on his latest interminable pilgrimage to Artamera, the other cities of the Sardicchie League will be bound by honor and treaty to rally against me. But an outbreak of plague, well, that’d force him home quickly enough.”
“And by the time he arrived the city’d be in such shambles you could take it in a fair fight. Or at least the appearance of one. My compliments to your ingenuity. Just so long as your own troops don’t bring the plague back to Tramontio themselves.”
Foncesca shrugged. “Acceptable losses. They’re pledged to fight for me and die if needs be. I’ll plan a quarantine ahead of time.”
“Of course, a city full of corpses isn’t much of a prize.”
“That’s the wonderful thing about peasants, isn’t it? There are always plenty more.”
Sul laughed out loud, perhaps too nervously. “I suppose you’re right about that. As I said, it’s no concern of mine. Though I’d appreciate if you waited until I’m far from here before releasing that awful stuff.”
“See, there’s the problem,” Foncesca said with just a touch of regret. “My seeress also warned me about you, the Bastard of Falisci himself. Understand, this is a terrible atrocity I’m committing. I could never be forgiven for it. So, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that, well, I simply can’t afford to leave any witnesses. Guards, help!”
In a flash Sul understood the treachery. He made a mad dash for tower stair but found the door locked. At the same time two guards burst through the other one, flintlocks raised. All planned in advance, of course. Ten years ago, Sul would never have been so sloppy.
“He’s attacking me! Kill him!” Foncesca screamed, thrusting a painted fingernail at Sul as she backed away in a pretense of terror. For half a heartbeat, Sul stared down two pistol barrels, and in the next they flashed.
The only thing that saved him was the box of platinum crowns he threw out before him. The stacks of coin went flying, and the lead balls that would’ve torn into his heart were deflected just enough to let him turn and fling himself through the window. Glass shattered, sunlight glinted through powder smoke, and in the next moment he was flying through the air. No, not flying, falling.
Ardana Sul hit the rocks piled against the tower, cracking his head on sharp stone and kept falling, down and down toward the river leaving red smears behind him. Above, the Baroness still screeched orders. His last sensation was a wet chill as the river welcomed him into its drowning embrace. Then oblivion.
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