[Florin & Lorenzo 01] - The Burning Shore Read online

  Spinning around to face the next blow Florin saw the rapier flickering towards his eyes and ducked a little too slowly. Another thread of agony zipped across his forehead, and a spill of hot blood ran down into his eyes.

  Blinking back tears, Florin stumbled away, crouching low, waiting for a chance to duck in behind that sword point.

  But the Tilean gave him none. The rapier gave him the advantage, and he intended to use it.

  “Should have just paid up,” he said, flitting to one side with the grace and finesse of a dancing instructor. “Now it’s too late.”

  With a practiced flick of his wrist the man struck again. The blade was invisible as it sliced through the darkness. Florin spun to one side. The blade hissed past his ear, and he lunged forward.

  Once again the Tilean was too quick. Even as Florin tried to close with him he’d skipped backwards, the blade of his rapier swishing playfully through the air.

  “Ranald’s teeth,” Florin snarled with frustration. Behind him he could hear the Reiklander groaning with pain as he lumbered slowly back to his feet.

  “What’s that you say?” the Tilean asked, nipping forward to send the tip of his blade stinging across Florin’s nose.

  “I said you can have the gold,” he snapped, trying to ignore the fresh burst of pain.

  “Sorry, my friend,” the Tilean said. “Too late for that. You’d have me arrested as a common thief.”

  “Stop messing about,” the Reiklander interrupted, his voice an aggrieved whine. “I’m bleeding. Just kill him.”

  The Tilean obediently lunged forward from the shadows. Florin, desperation pushing him into one last frantic gamble, threw himself forward and to the right.

  For a split second he thought that he’d made the wrong choice. Then the Tilean’s blade flickered as it stabbed through the air to his left, and Florin was upon him. With a yell he gripped the elbow of his sword arm and plunged the blade of his dagger into the little man’s stomach.

  The Tilean’s eyes opened in twin circles of shock as the knife ripped upwards into the soft flesh beneath his ribs. Then his mouth gaped opened in an expression of perfect outrage as Florin twisted the blade up into his heart as neatly as if he were coring an apple.

  With a horrible sucking sound, he pulled his dagger free and let the Tilean fall.

  He died silently. The barest rattle of his last breath was silenced by a thump as his body collapsed bonelessly onto the ground. Florin’s senses were already concentrated on the Reiklander.

  But the big man was already running: his heavy boots pounded down the street as he fled. For a second Florin considered giving chase. Then he looked down at the body at his feet.

  The blood, black in the moonlight, still pulsed from the wounds in its stomach and throat. It seeped between the cobbles to mix with the filth of the gutter, as inconsequential as a butchered pig’s.

  With a deep, shuddering breath Florin knelt down beside the man. He reached under his jaw to feel for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Unthinkingly he wiped his dagger clean on the Tilean’s shirt. Then he turned the corpse’s face away from the grimy stone of the pavement. He brushed a smudge of dirt away from its forehead, and closed its eyes.

  Fighting the tight fist of nausea which clenched his stomach, Florin rose to his feet. He squeezed his temples and took a deep breath.

  Why didn’t I just run, he asked himself?

  But he no more knew the answer to that than to why he’d spent his inheritance on cards, or why he’d turned down the sinecure of militia commander. Or why he’d done anything since his parents had died.

  He sighed, turned and made his way home.

  Behind him the dead man lay in the street, his form as still and pale as a stone knight beneath the light of the gibbous moon.

  Florin’s apartments were at the top of an old building that sprawled drunkenly across three streets. It had served many purposes over the years: it had been a barracks, a stable and an inn.

  Now it was none of those things. The cavernous spaces between its peeling lathe walls and high drafty gables had been carved up into a shabby warren of little chambers that housed everything from bales of cheap calico to the workshops of a dozen stooped and weak-eyed artificers.

  Florin unlocked the side door and made his way up three flights of narrow stairs. They squeaked and groaned as if they were about to collapse, but he was too used to them to pay any heed to their protest.

  In summer the slate roof above his rooms became hot enough to fry eggs on, but in the winter it froze into a flat sculpture of snow and icicles. Even the rats deserted the gables at that time of the year, although the cockroaches weren’t that fussy: they scuttled away now as he unlocked his front door and pushed it open.

  And yet, despite the discomfort, Florin had never considered moving back into the luxury of his family’s town house. For as long as he could remember that home had felt like a prison, the bars of respectability strictly guarded first by his father and then, after his death, by his brother. Here, at least, he was free.

  Hungry, but free.

  He bolted the heavy door shut behind him, dropped the dead weight of his purse onto the table, and collapsed into the beaten up sofa that had been drawn up to the window. Putting his feet upon the sill he leant back, stretching as luxuriously as a cat.

  As the first pink hint of dawn crept across the slate of Bordeleaux’s rooftops and spires and distant ramparts Florin breakfasted on half a loaf of stale bread, which he washed down with a few mouthfuls of sour wine.

  Tomorrow, he decided, he would eat properly. For the first time in what seemed like an age he’d be able to afford to. Perhaps he’d buy some fat pork sausages from the Empire, or maybe find a Tilean cookshop where the fish was smothered in one of their delicious cream sauces. He’d even heard that a new halfling restaurant had opened near the docks. That might do.

  But for now he was content to sit and gnaw his week-old bread and watch the city wake. The citizens grew as loud and raucous as the flocks of sparrows that flitted above their heads. The cries of the costermongers and beggars rose up from the streets below in a ragged chorus that would last all day.

  Meanwhile, to the east, the red ball of the autumnal sun rose up behind the great central column of the Lady’s temple. She stood silhouetted in eye-watering sunlight, a vision of beauty in gold and pure white marble.

  The spire upon which she perched rose out of the merchants’ quarter like a sword hilt out of the stomach of an enemy. It had been raised at the expense of one of Bordeleaux’s most celebrated grail knights, the martyr needing something to buy with the hoard of the dragon he’d slain.

  Not that “martyr” was the word the merchants used to describe the late St. Gilles. It was rare to find any of their class that showed anything but derision for their aristocratic masters. How many times had Florin’s own family equipped their protectors at usurious rates, or sold them warhorses with weak lungs and strained fetlocks?

  “Idiots,” Florin muttered, without conviction. He’d never been able to muster the hard shell of contempt that the merchant families of Bordeleaux showed towards their supposed betters.

  The sun climbed higher as he dozed. It was almost midday before a bang on his door jolted him out of his sleep. He turned just in time to see it crash open and a figure stumble through.

  It was the dealer.

  He looked no better in daylight than he had in lamplight. In fact, he looked a lot worse. The network of scars that marred his face was as pale as death against the red brick of his complexion, and the broken angle of his nose looked more predatory than comical. It resembled a vulture’s beak that arced out over a grin of broken teeth.

  “Good morning, boss,” he nodded towards Florin, his beady eyes slipping past him to rest on the stained leather of the purse.

  “Good morning to you, Lorenzo,” Florin greeted him, and relaxed back into his chair. “What took you so long?”

  “I didn’t want to be followed,” Lorenzo repl
ied, closing the door behind him and pulling up a chair. “You’ll be shocked to hear this, but a couple of those fellows last night weren’t quite gentleman.”

  “You don’t say?” Florin raised his eyebrows and passed the wine across to his old retainer.

  “No,” Lorenzo took a deep, gurgling pull of wine before continuing. “No. They expected me to help them cheat you.”

  The two men, servant and master, peasant and gentleman, old and young, turned their eyes to the purse that lay between them.

  And suddenly they were wracked with laughter. Tears streamed down their cheeks and their heads were thrown back as they howled at the sun like confused wolves.

  “Well, gentlemen or not, they came just in time,” Florin said, recovering first. “Mordicio wanted his money two days ago.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Ah, my boy, there you are!” Mordicio exclaimed happily as Florin was led into his office.

  “Yes. I’m sorry that I’m a couple of days late, but…”

  “Nonsense!” Mordicio waved away the apology. He rose arthritically from behind his desk and hobbled over to embrace his guest. Before Florin could react, Mordicio’s liver-spotted hands had descended upon his shoulders and he was clasped to the old man’s bony chest.

  An onlooker could have been forgiven for thinking that this was a favourite nephew returned from some long and dangerous voyage, rather than a defaulting debtor. And at another time he might have been right. With Mordicio, loan sharking and family weren’t mutually exclusive.

  “Come, sit down, sit down,” the old gangster smiled happily, his eyes as warm as honey beneath the snow-white bushels of his eyebrows. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Well, perhaps a little wine,” Florin said politely, and pulled up a chair.

  “Brioch, wine for my guest,” the old man, arthritis forgotten, snapped his fingers. Florin heard the shaven-headed thug who’d escorted him into this inner sanctum amble wordlessly off into the carpeted distance.

  “Ah, Florin, Florin, Florin. It’s been too long.” Mordicio stumbled around the corner of his desk, paused briefly to rub his stooped back, then folded back into his chair with a sigh.

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that, it’s just that…”

  “Please, no apologies. Why apologise? You’re here now, shouldn’t that be enough for a poor old man like me?”

  Florin bit his lip, and tried not to look at the gilded books and jewelled trinkets that lined the old man’s shelves. He tried to ignore the silver astrolabe and the thick Arabyan carpets. In fact the only thing that looked poor in the whole room was its owner. Mordicio never wasted money on new clothes or jewellery.

  Or barbers. The unruly bush of a beard that softened the bony angles of his face might have belonged to a dwarf, if a dwarf could ever have grown so tall and lank. Mordicio’s fingers burrowed into its depths to scratch his chin as he regarded his guest.

  “No, my boy, no apologies. I’m just an old man glad to see an old friend’s boy. Of course, if you have my money…”

  “Right here,” Florin told him. He unhooked his purse and, without further ado, started to count the coins out onto the scuffed leather surface of the old man’s desk.

  “Oh, well, if you have the money on you—” Mordicio watched the coins piling up with the feigned indifference of a letch eying a low-cut dress.

  “There you go,” said Florin, putting out the last coin. “One hundred crowns.”

  “Very good. And don’t worry about the interest.”

  “The interest?”

  “Yes, for the last two days.”

  Florin paused. There’d been no mention of extra interest for being two days late. But then, there’d been no mention of being late, either.

  “How much?” Florin asked warily, but Mordicio just smiled.

  “To you my friend, nothing. On the house.” His eyes twinkled, as his smile grew as wide as a shark’s. “Gratis.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course, of course. I always liked you. I liked your father too, gods rest him, even though he never put so much business my way. Ah, here’s our wine.”

  The secretary had returned, as quietly as he had gone. He handed Florin a goblet of spiced wine, and his master a clay pot of water.

  “Your health!” said Mordicio, drinking deeply.

  “Your health!” Florin tested his wine. It was as fine as it smelled, and although it seemed a waste to gulp it down he did anyway. He wanted to get out of here before the subject of interest came up again.

  “Thank you, it was excellent,” he said, wiping his mouth and setting the goblet down. “But now I really must be going.”

  “Ah, busy, busy, busy, hey?” Mordicio nodded approvingly. “I was the same at your age. But a man must have pleasures as well as business. Like music, for example. Or gambling.”

  “Well, yes…” Florin trailed off.

  “Or women.” Mordicio’s smile suddenly seemed to be a lot more mocking than avuncular.

  “Yes, women. Or should I say girls? Girls like the Comtesse Grisolde Angelou. A hideous name, but a beautiful girl. At least,” he chuckled mirthlessly, “her father thinks so. But then the magistrate isn’t alone in that, is he?”

  Florin sat back down.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do J want, he asks me. As though we were traders haggling in the market and not two old friends!” Mordicio’s voice quivered with outrage, and his hands tugged at his beard as though in grief. “What do I want? Me, who knew you when you were a child. I’m almost insulted.”

  “That was never my intention.”

  “I know, my boy, I know. But when you get to my age you like to talk to youngsters. To be reminded of what it’s like to be young and in love. Or, if not in love then…” He punched his thumb through the ring of his fingers in an obscene gesture and laughed.

  Florin sighed.

  “No, I’m just interested, just interested.” The gangster’s voice faded off and for a moment he sat and regarded his guest, enjoying his discomfort.

  “As for me, I’m too old for that kind of thing. Well, almost. But I do enjoy a little bet from time to time. A little flutter.”

  “Oh yes?” Florin asked, waiting.

  “Yes. Even if it’s just on the toss of a coin.” With an exaggerated wince of arthritic pain Mordicio reached across the desk and selected a single coin from the pile. He turned it between his fingers and examined both sides.

  “An emperor and a griffin. Let’s call the emperor heads, shall we? What do you choose?”

  “Me? Well, I don’t gamble. I, well, I…”

  “Very wise, very wise. But there are worse vices, you know. Can you imagine what the magistrate would do if he found out what you have been doing to his daughter?”

  “What are we betting on?”

  “Your debt. Let’s call it double or quits, shall we?”

  Florin knew that he should refuse. His brother would have complained for months about having to give him one hundred, but two?

  Anyway, Mordicio might be bluffing. And if he wasn’t, why would the magistrate believe him? Especially if Grisolde kept her mouth shut.

  Florin leant forward, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and squeezed.

  “I’ll call heads. The emperor,” he decided, sitting back up.

  “Well then, here we go. I’ll throw it. Isn’t this exciting my boy? Doesn’t it set the heart aflutter?”

  “Yes,” Florin groaned miserably. “It does.”

  Mordicio spun the coin high into the air with a practiced flick of the thumb. It glittered in the afternoon sunlight before falling back to the desk and bouncing on the aged leather, pirouetting around like a golden ballerina. It slowly wobbled to a drunken halt and finally collapsed onto the desk.

  Florin, hardly daring to look, leaned forward. Then, although he fought it, a smirk spread across his face.

  “Who won?” the old man asked. “My old eyes aren�
�t what they were.”

  “Me,” Florin said smugly. “Look.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Ah well, you win some you lose some. So now I owe you a hundred.”

  The younger man tried not to look too triumphant as he started to shovel the coins back into his purse.

  “Well, no hurry. Whenever you can.”

  “No, no,” Mordicio spread his hands. “I’m a man who pays his debts. Unless… Well, how about another spin of the coin? Double or quits?”

  “No, I really must be going,” Florin shook off the temptation. With this money he could buy some decent rooms, a decent wardrobe, maybe a necklace for Grisolde… No, not that. Grisolde wasn’t really worth it anymore. Maybe Claudia.

  “Well, if you won’t humour an old man…” Mordicio broke his train of thought. “By the way, would you ask Grisolde to tell her father I need to speak to him? I think it’s better he hears the news of her engagement from an old friend of the family, don’t you?”

  “What!”

  “No, no, don’t thank me. I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  Now it was Mordicio who smirked.

  Florin, defeated, selected a coin and resisted the urge to punch the old man. Behind him stood Brioch, and behind Brioch a mansion full of locked doors and professional thugs.

  So he didn’t punch Mordicio. Instead he said, “Double or quits, you say?”

  Mordicio, a genuine smile creasing his face, nodded.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so close to tears. Perhaps not since his father’s funeral, four years ago. Even then the Hanged Peasant’s best wine hadn’t tasted so sour, nor had the obscenely painted walls of the back terrace seemed so dull.

  “Don’t worry about it, boss,” Lorenzo told him unhappily, pouring him another glass of wine. “Bastien will pay. Doesn’t he always?”

  “Used to,” Florin agreed miserably. “But this time? Three hundred crowns. That’s probably more than he’s got in the warehouse.”

  “Still, blood is thicker than water.”