The Last Broom

The 60th nameday of Sanar Ul Akbari was worthy of no celebration to most who knew him well, and certainly to none who worked or lived on one of his many estates, of whom he was quick to exact rents, despite always being behind on payment of his own. It was, however, a perfect occasion for every breed of sycophant to ingratiate themselves into his dizzying orbit, and for every pavonine preener from all four empires and every free city between, to be seen and heard among the nobility they cherished, loathed, or desperately aspired to.

Reckoner, one of the oldest and most storied ships in the history of the Ventan navy, having held off the Aelian fleet for three days during the siege Entoli, had been chosen and duly hollowed out for the event. All five of its internal decks had been removed to accommodate the two hundred guests, to mark the grandeur of the day.

Guntar Graev, a man of whom very little was known among most attendees, other than that he was unspeakably wealthy, was holding forth in one curving corner of the Great Hall, extolling the relative virtues of the soil outside his new home city of Brenkt, a home which he had chosen after the recent, and very tragic death of his first wife. He had chosen Brenkt because of the soil, he said, which owing to its richness in clay and heavy metals, made for some of the best building material anywhere in the world. As he described its many qualities and applications at length, the most beautiful women of the capital were arrayed about him, apparently rapt with awe, one visibly boiling out of her corset with laughter at a joke no one else appeared to have heard.

Having been raised on a pig farm in Ostersund, Graev now had the ear of every King, Governor, Senator, Emperor, Minister and Councillor on the continent. While the relative peace of the last thirty years was lauded by all of them as a divine success to which they could each independently lay a personal claim, it had brought about certain challenges. Namely, ruling over peoples newly bereft of conflict. Ruling, it appeared to most charged with the duty, was a great deal easier when there was something, or someone, to rule against. Costly, yes, but then the masses paying for the war rarely lived long enough to haggle the price. Ruling in peacetime required a great deal of knowledge, care, and attention to detail. It was all so boring.

But where the ruling classes saw challenge, Graev had smelled opportunity. The Architect, as he now insisted on being known (and it was finally starting to catch on), had designed a gaol so impenetrable it could not be escaped from and so capacious it could meet the demands of even the cruellest kings. Soon after he had completed the construction for some duke in Centrys, he was approached by a king over the water in Thorvon. Then another on some outer isle of Aelios. Then another, and another until now, he had more money than he could spend and still the letters and the heralds kept appearing.

Jan O’Brae, son and heir to the Brae copper mines and the fortune within, was being fawned over by a coterie of noble women seeking a match for their daughters who were presumably of no benefit to them back at home. For all that he tried to carefully disarm their many compliments and favours only seemed to improve their aim. He was not yet engaged, it was true, but nor was he free to do as he pleased. He was beginning to regret attending at all, but his father’s gout had flared up terribly on the morning of the ride, and it was had been his bad luck to be home and in sight, while his brothers had either been out hunting or keeping their heads down long enough to say they had been, and so the duty was his.

Ul Akbari himself would remain conspicuously absent for as long as he could bear without risking scandal or exodus, ever preferring the idea of his own mystique to the extended company of those who might buy into it.

Tjensin Chandra, once fabled First Sword of the Emperor, was politely making the rounds of old diplomats, bureaucrats and the grandchildren of men he might once have run through with a blade. Now, between the creaking wheels of his rolling chair, he appeared to be of little danger to anyone. Still, he’d always to be mindful of who he spoke to. For him, the old wounds had healed, ignoring those which had printed his body with a network of scars and rendered his legs useless, but he’d to watch who he spoke to. Which was tricky in itself, with his fading eyes. Lord Bale, First Minister of the North Wolds, now held him in deep conversation about the price of wool which had run on for a time both of them would later describe as extraordinary, but from which neither was socially comfortable enough to extricate himself.

Lord Derru was already sat at the table, spinning his knife on its point in the way of boys full-grown and yet to have been told no. He was also toying with a serving girl, or she was toying with him, it wasn’t entirely clear to anyone but them. As she nipped and mussed at him in a way that was churlish, grotesque, juvenile, and which made them both appear in all ways utterly ridiculous, almost every other man in the hall was compelled to steal a glance. Derru wasn’t even particularly interested in girls anymore, but it would make the night go faster until the real drinking started, he thought. And the boys would think it was japes. Tomorrow he was off to some colony where, if he took a liking to the climate, one letter to his father and a word in the ear of a minister, in a few years he might be governor. He had no intention of spending any of the 4-months long journey sober.

To most of the room he was some minor royal or other. She alone knew him intimately, though he did not know her. Guntar Graev made a careful note to ask him before the night was through, where did he find his whores?

Outside, black waves rushed to meet the shores of Gunnyworth port, the lights from the town tossed like emeralds in every rolling crest. The inns and houses of the old town squatted into one another like sunken pies, smoke bubbling into the night sky from their peeling corners, as hunching men staggered or crawled between them, percussive bouts of belch and vomit punching into the bay on a tepid wind. On the jetty, revellers too hot or too drunk to dance milled about, while others leant stoically over wooden rails, kissing pipe smoke at their reflections.

They parted as a figure in a riding cloak tried clumsily to shuffle between them.

‘Sorry. My apologies. Terribly sorry. Please. Thank you. Sorry.’ Came the small voice from within. The figure skirted the gangplank, stumbling over the threshold and then falling headfirst down the many steps onto the lower of now only two decks on the Reckoner, scraping half of one shin as he fell and landing hard on his hands and knees.

As he did, three horns rang out beside him, rendering him near deaf as they apparently announced his arrival. The eyes of the hall were on him. Almost at the same time, the doors to the captain’s quarters flew open and a man appeared to float through them. Beneath him were six much uglier men, each distinctly violent looking in his own unique way. The horns continued their belligerent cascade as the litter processed through the ship, the parting guests in equal parts confounded, confronted and mildly amused.

The floating man, he saw, was draped in carmine silks embroidered with what must have been a thousand stars, his elegant features those of a much younger man. He first surveyed the room with the air of one with nothing left to prove, and nothing left of the world to discover. No surprises. When he saw a man in a riding cloak getting to his feet and the scene about him, his dainty nostrils flared. Both he and the man realised too late and with horror that the litter was heading straight for him.

Two men stepped forward from behind the litter, with neither the refined elegance of their master nor the palpable brutishness of his bearers. He knew neither, but many in the room knew them as Albur Krott, and Leodar Vulkov. Krott, in spite of his diminutive frame, was one of the more famous thugs in the capital, as thugs went, for his tendency to collect on his debts by claiming small body parts from his debtors. He gave the man on the floor the feeling of being hunted. Vulkov on the other hand, looked hardly old enough to be there, his drawn face ghostly pale beneath cold blue eyes, a light frost of fluff barely perceptible on his chin.

The man in the cloak stepped back reflexively expecting the chair to drop to the deck, or for his host to step down, but instead he remained suspended in air, the cohort under him hardly swaying with the effort.

‘I’m sorry, I-’

‘The Gracious Sanar Ul Akbari invites you to introduce yourself.’ Proclaimed the first among the litter bearers. Although many could attest to him having invited nothing of the sort.

‘Lord Karys Broom, sir, of Ridge.’

‘Can’t say I know it.’ said Ul Akbari, after a time, his voice smooth. In truth, everyone knew it. It was the westernmost point on the map, and to every child made to learn the map it made the northwestern aspect of Semar look much like an old man with a crooked nose. ‘And what brings you to my nameday celebration, Master Broom?’ he asked, craning his neck to see both of Karys’ hands, like a child whose father has returned from long travels abroad.

‘Actually, I have a request, of some urgency. He said, glancing nervously at the still-staring room. ‘I only ask sir, as.’

‘What is it you need, son.’ It was more an order than a question.

‘It’s my…my, my father, s-sir.’

‘Debts is it?’ asked Krott, with a long flash of white.

‘Hardly worth the ride,’ said Vulkov.

‘He went riding on the cliffs, near two weeks ago, and no one’s seen nor heard from him since. I was wondering sir, given the gathering of great and noble houses that you have here sir-’

‘Not a sir.’ mumbled Krott.

‘…if you might be called upon to spare a moment, that if he had been found anywhere, that somebody here might…err, might know something.’

It took a few moments before Ul Akbari seemed to rouse himself as if from a daydream.

‘Young Master…’ he leaned to Krott and Vulkov for inspiration. Krott scratched his neck and stared into the gap between floorboards. Vulkov scraped at his fingernails with a table fork.

‘Broom.’ Offered Karys Broom.

‘Master Broom…’ he said, not impolitely. ‘I pray you be not offended when I tell you that neither I, nor any of my esteemed guests here tonight, are in the habit of procuring lost fathers, lovers, pets, or other such items of personal import, and it appears to me that you have been rather careless in possession of your father. You are correct in your estimation of your present company, for these are indeed great and noble houses. And what is nobility without, on occasion, the making of small sacrifices in the interests of those less fortunate than ourselves.’

Once he got going, Broom thought, Ul Akbari seemed to really enjoy speaking a great deal. And the posing of questions without asking them.

Jan O’ Brae took this moment to creep away from his distracted inquisitors and out onto the top deck, before taking the first cab he could find back into town.

Guntar Graev was wondering without aim or urgency whether this meeting had truly been an accident, or if it had been yet another tiresome minor set piece by their host to present his unending magnanimity to a captive audience. But mostly all he could think about was the girl presently wrapped around Lord Derru’s neck.

‘Does anyone here know anything about this boy’s father?’ He searched the ship for anyone ready to venture a response. The room followed his unspoken cue to return to exactly what they had been doing the moment before either of them had arrived. He gave Karys a languid shrug.

‘Whatever. Just hang him and be done with it. When’s this dinner coming.’ Lord Derru was slouched over the table, the serving girl apparently undeterred by the trail of spittle adjoining him to the table, though it did not escape the notice of Sanar Al Ukbari.

‘Stay tonight.’ said Ul Akbari, conspiratorial. ‘And in the morning we will speak of your father.’ Vulkov watched him carefully as he said this. Krott sniffed long and slow, hawking something thick enough to bite down on.

‘Thank you.’ said Karys, and meant it, though not for the reason his host knew of. His wrist hurt like hell, he realised suddenly as all the feeling seemed to rush back into his bones at once. Gods be good, he thought.

Later that night as he rode out of Gunnyworth port as fast as his horse would carry him, more tired than he thought was possible, he knew that within a month or two, everyone the world over would believe his father was dead.