The Executioner's Apprentice (The Executioner's Song Book 2) Read online

  “We’ll see,” Finn said.

  He reached down and unbuckled the straps holding Sweth’s ankles to the chair, then did the same with his wrists, before pulling him by the arm and forcing him to stand.

  “Is that it?” Sweth asked.

  “We’re done for today.”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean we’re done for today.” Finn guided him to the door and found Shiner waiting for him.

  The taller iron master winked at Finn. “Figured you’d need someone to escort him back. Let me take him for you, Jags.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shiner jerked on Sweth’s arm, forcing the prisoner along with him. Sweth stumbled and nearly fell, but Shiner grabbed him. That was probably for the best. They didn’t need him getting injured if he was guilty of something.

  Finn turned back to Meyer, who now stood at the counter, moving some of the instruments across the table.

  “You didn’t feel you needed to ask more questions?” He didn’t turn to Finn as he spoke.

  “That wasn’t the point.”

  Meyer glanced back, and Finn shrugged.

  “I could have used your interrogation techniques, but at this point, I figured it was probably for the best that I take a look at what burned before proceeding with anything else. That and I visit with Johan.”

  Meyer nodded. “Very well.”

  “You don’t disagree?”

  “This is your investigation, Finn. I will observe.”

  “That’s all you’re going to do?”

  Meyer sniffed. “If you think you need me to walk you through all aspects of your responsibilities, then I will. I merely thought you might be ready for something more.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” He turned and looked around the inside of the chapel. “This was once a place of worship. Strange we’ve converted it to this use.”

  “It was?” Finn hadn’t known that, though it did make a certain sort of sense. It was called the chapel, after all.

  “Long ago. There was a time when prisoners were offered a chance to pray for forgiveness. The chapel afforded that chance. Now they pray, but for different reasons.”

  He looked to the window and the figure of Heleth, the mother, worked into the glass. The way the light shone through the window made her look as if she were glowing, holding out a hand as if to offer her support to those who would come to celebrate her. Heleth had always been favored by the condemned, mostly because she was the one to offer the chance at salvation in the afterlife. The other gods chose different tactics.

  “What about the prison?”

  “The prison has been in Verendal for hundreds of years. You can’t have a city this size without a place to hold those who would try to violate the king’s laws.”

  “Not all are held.”

  “No,” Meyer said, turning to him.

  “And not all are held here. Or even in the city.”

  Finn bordered on pushing too much with Meyer, but he wanted to know what had happened to his father. If he couldn’t learn from the master executioner, there might not be anyone he could learn that answer from.

  “Not all,” Meyer agreed. “There are some crimes that must be sentenced differently. Some criminals who must be sent elsewhere.”

  Finn frowned. “Why? Declan handles the dangerous criminals in the city.”

  “This is a different kind of danger,” he said.

  “What different kind of danger?”

  How different could it be from housing those who would rape or kill or destroy?

  “The only kind that really matters to the king. The kind that challenges his power. The kind that means treason.”

  Chapter Six

  The Jorend section of the city wasn’t all that far from Meyer’s home. Finn followed the stench of smoke to the burned street. Buildings on either side of the road had been turned into little more than smoldering ash, leaving the homes in ruins.

  Finn lingered at the end of the road for a moment, simply taking it in. Others picked their way along the street, most of them gawkers, before moving on. Toward the middle of the burned section, a woman picked through the broken boards and remains of what had once been a home or a shop or even both.

  How many had been lost there?

  He knew of one, but that couldn’t have been the only loss.

  The memory of that day lingered for him. Finn dealt with torment. That was one of the harder aspects of his new responsibilities. Burning someone alive was a kind of torment he simply couldn’t fathom.

  He started along the road. The fires had been out for several days, but the stink of ash still hung in the air. Finn could almost taste it. Knowing how much had been lost there made it difficult for him to breathe, and he covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve to keep from inhaling it all.

  There wasn’t much he thought he’d find, coming there. It was more about having a chance to see for himself what had happened, but now that he was there, he wanted to take a moment and appreciate all that had been lost. The people of Jorend might not be his section, but they were still people in the city, and he would have wanted the same were it his section that had burned.

  When he reached the woman he’d seen, he found her kneeling inside of the home, bent forward and sobbing softly. Who had she lost?

  He continued onward.

  The farther he went along the street, the more he started to see buildings that hadn’t collapsed completely. A few more people were there, picking through the buildings. Hopefully, they only picked through their own belongings and didn’t try to steal from those who had lost so much. It wasn’t until he reached the end of the street that the buildings were mostly still intact. Even those had been heavily damaged with ash and char along the sides of them.

  Finn turned and looked back along the street. A shadowed figure at the end of the street disappeared.

  Was someone watching him?

  Finn frowned before heading back along the street. There was a time when he would have been concerned about the idea of someone trailing after him, but now he didn’t fear Archers. This was his investigation. If Meyer were there, Finn knew what the master executioner would do. He’d make sure that he took the time to investigate anything strange that happened around him.

  Which was what Finn needed to do now.

  He had to be careful, though. While he wasn’t convinced Sweth was responsible for the fire, that didn’t mean that whoever was responsible had disappeared. It was likely that if someone else had done this, they might still be around.

  When he neared the end of the street, he didn’t find anyone. A few curious stragglers, though that hadn’t been uncommon in the time that he’d been there. Very few had actually gone along the street, as if they didn’t want to get tainted by the fire. There were superstitions all throughout the city, especially in some of these outer sections, so it wasn’t surprising that someone would be wary of coming there, especially if they blamed one of the gods.

  Finn wouldn’t find anything there. The street was too quiet and most of the buildings too burned. Which meant he’d have to go and find Johan. Meyer had given him a little help there, which Finn appreciated. He didn’t have to wander through the Grindle section to find him.

  Reaching Grindle took some time. As a scribe, it didn’t surprise Finn that he’d been situated in a nicer section of the city, but Grindle was across the river and much more central to many of the merchant sections than to any of the outer sections. As he crossed the bridge, he felt a bit out of place, the way he often did, but he continued along, moving as quickly as he felt comfortable. Finn looked around him, watching the people who did feel comfortable there.

  Most were obviously merchants, or they had shops that catered to the people in this section. A few were dressed in the dark robes of the priests, and Finn passed a pair of black-robed priests of Fell heading toward their church.

  The Church of Fell welcomed only a select group within Verendal. Those who attended
had to have an invitation. Though he was now more honorable than he had been when a thief, Finn didn’t think they would welcome him. Probably not Meyer, either, though knowing what he did of Meyer, he doubted the man would care. Finn still had yet to decide if Meyer celebrated any of the gods, or if he had lost his faith after working as an executioner. Finn had never really had it to begin with—at least, that was what he’d always told himself—but when he’d been marched toward the Raven Stone, he had found himself praying along to Heleth no differently from any of the Poor Bastards Finn had been with in the time that he’d served Meyer.

  After passing a massive building advertising a construction business, he stepped into the Grindle section. The buildings were older, many of them still quite formal, though they were smaller. The detail of their construction was different from those in even the sections nearby, but there was a certain charm to Grindle that some of the other sections didn’t have. The streets were narrower as well, giving a more intimate feel than he’d had when walking through nearby sections. The air had a floral fragrance to it that came from a few gardens situated in the middle of the street, narrowing the road and forcing him to loop out and around.

  There weren’t as many people in the streets, but when he passed those who were out, none of them paid any attention to him. That wasn’t surprising. One of the things Meyer had wanted for Finn was to have him dressed in clothing that would blend in almost anywhere. With the kind of work they had to do and places they had to travel, anywhere from outside of the Teller Gate to the palace itself, he had to be dressed so that he could fit in throughout the city.

  Johan’s business took Finn a while to find. The building was near the end of the main street leading into the section, close to another building with a tall, slanted roof. That was all that Meyer had been able to uncover for him. Finn wasn’t surprised when he came across it easily. Meyer had probably known how to find it without asking. For all Finn knew, Meyer had already visited.

  That was a troubling thought, but he wouldn’t put it past Meyer. Master Meyer might trust that Finn would do the work asked of him, but all of this was an apprenticeship as well, so there was an element of testing involved. Finn couldn’t take offense to that. He had to understand Meyer would need to ensure the job was done as he expected.

  That was why Finn had to be as careful as possible and make certain he did what Meyer would want done. This was his apprenticeship, and though he might never have thought that he would want to be an executioner, it beat the alternative for him.

  When he stopped at Johan’s shop, he studied the sign outside. It was a simple wooden sign hanging from a metal pole, with a marking that depicted a scroll and a feather pen. It suited a scribe.

  He paused in front of the door, looking at the buildings on either side of it. A candlemaker was to the left, while a seamstress was on the right. When Finn stepped into the shop, a bell tinkled, announcing his presence.

  To Finn’s surprise, the interior was dimly lit. A single lantern resting on a table in the center of the room was the only source of light other than what drifted in through the windows, which was less than Finn would have expected.

  An older, gray-haired man stepped out of the back and eyed Finn for a moment. “May I help you?”

  Finn must have passed the initial test about whether he could afford the scribe’s services. The man hadn’t been subtle about it at all in looking him over. “I came to ask you a few questions.”

  The man frowned, pushing a pair of wire-framed glasses up onto his nose, wrinkling his brow at Finn. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for questions. If you want to hire my services, you should know I’ve got a week delay. Not as much as some, but there aren’t many who can scribe as quickly. I do require a deposit—”

  “I’m not here to question your services.” A deposit? He must be doing well if he could charge a deposit. “I came to ask you a few questions about a man under your employ by the name of David Sweth.”

  The scribe’s eyes widened slightly. “I have released him from his duties. I don’t need anyone like that working in my shop.”

  “Even if he’s not responsible?”

  “How can he not be responsible? I heard what happened.”

  Heard about, not seen. Finn doubted a man like this would ever even cross the river if he could help it, and when he did, he probably stayed on Porman’s Path through the city, wanting to take the way the king would take, never venturing off on any side streets.

  “That is why I’m here.”

  Johan regarded Finn again. “You don’t look like an Archer.”

  “My name is Finn Jagger, king’s executioner.”

  That elicited the most reaction out of Johan. “So, he did do it. That stupid bastard. What was he thinking?”

  “Do you have some place we could sit and talk?”

  “Must we do it here?”

  “If you’d rather come visit him in Declan, I’m sure I could question you there. I thought you’d be more comfortable here.”

  “I’ve done nothing that would make you need to bring me to Declan Prison.”

  “I didn’t say you did. I was offering an alternative.”

  Johan pulled an ornately curved wooden chair away from the wall and slid it toward the table, motioning for Finn to sit. Then he pulled another out and took a seat. Finn followed. He looked at Johan, studying him while settling into the chair and trying to gauge what kind of man he was. Older and thin, there was something almost delicate about Johan, though he stared at Finn with a heated intensity, almost as if he didn’t care for him.

  Finn had been used to that. Growing up as he did in the Brinder section, there had been plenty of times when he’d been viewed as less than those from the more central sections of the city. Even after coming to work with Meyer, there were plenty of people who viewed him as beneath them.

  “What can you tell me about Sweth?” Finn asked.

  The scribe sighed. “What’s there to tell? I needed a man to assist me. He took the job. Now I will have to find another.”

  “Did he do good work?”

  There was a hesitation. “It was adequate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He started to smirk. “Do you need for me to define the word adequate?”

  Finn sat upright. “Your answers to me have been less than adequate. I’m looking for clarity and detail. If you think it would be easier to answer these questions elsewhere—”

  Johan shook his head quickly. “That is not necessary. I meant no disrespect. I don’t know your education, Mr. Jagger. The work of a scribe is about efficiency and legibility. David Sweth managed both adequately.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He was not the most efficient with his time. With the backlog of customers, I need someone who can help expedite requests. Now it’s only going to get worse.”

  “And his legibility?”

  “If you would permit me a moment?”

  Finn shrugged. Johan got up and headed to a shelf near him, where he pulled off a few stacks of papers before returning and sitting in front of Finn. He set the pages down, creating two stacks. Finn scanned each top page. They looked to be inventory lists from a general store, nothing all that exciting.

  “What would you like me to see?” Finn asked. “You were hired to record the inventory of a shop, I presume?”

  Johan blinked a moment before nodding.

  Could he really have thought Finn wouldn’t be able to read it?

  “The one on your left is the work of a master scribe. As you can see, the work is quite legible. The work on the right was done by Mr. Sweth.”

  Finn struggled to see much of a difference, though suspected that was mostly because he hadn’t been trained to see anything different between the two.

  “It looks like Sweth did adequate work,” Finn said.

  Johan nodded. “He wanted me to move him along, but he wasn’t ready. There are many aspects to learning how to scribe. Unfortunately, he had
n’t taken the time to master some of the earliest parts of what I asked of him. He was too eager to move on.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s not to say Mr. Sweth wouldn’t have eventually progressed beyond his current state. I had given him suggestions on how to improve. He seemed to take them to heart, which is all one can ask of their apprentice, I suppose.”

  Finn sat for a moment, staring at the pages, still struggling to understand if there was anything to the difference. Were he to have been given both documents, he would actually have believed they were done by the same person.

  “What can you tell me about his character?”

  “His character?”

  Finn looked up, meeting Johan’s eyes. “Was he reliable? Trustworthy? Did you fear sending him on assignment? Would you leave him alone in your shop? Would you—”

  “I understand the question, Mr. Jagger. As to Mr. Sweth, he was mostly reliable. He didn’t come from the nicest part of the city, and you know how that kind can be.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “They often have deficits that must be corrected before they’re useful, and Mr. Sweth was no different. Like so many others I’ve hired from those sections over the years, I found that he struggled with what was asked of him. A little slow, but I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to help others move ahead in the world, so I’ve taken chances.”

  Finn sniffed. “By that, you mean you’ve enjoyed underpaying what you would offer someone else who might have apprenticed to you.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Do you know if Mr. Sweth had any family in his section?”

  Johan shook his head slightly. “I’m afraid I didn’t ask.” He gathered the stacks of papers and got to his feet, carrying them back to the shelves. “It wasn’t necessary for the kind of work that we did.”

  Finn watched as Johan moved around this section of the shop. Maybe he really didn’t concern himself with learning anything about Sweth, though Finn thought that unlikely. Johan had brought Sweth in, and he had trained him, which meant that he had thought that the apprentice could be useful, even if it wasn’t as useful as a master scribe.