A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 07

"Cam?" Tossing aside his shovel, Meron jumped down off the cart and ran to his brother.

Those strong arms pulled him in, crushing him for a long moment. Cam would have embraced him back had his arms not been pinned. Then Meron pushed away and looked at him hard. "Where have you been? We thought you dead!"

Others had noticed them and squeals resounded. Before Cam could say anything, they were beset by the rest of his family. Garth and Urlen, robust young teens, greeted him with thumps and cheers, and seven year-old Reeve jumped around like a pup, but Drewsa looked sullen and the younger girls, Beena and Crica, were called back by their father before they ever reached him.

"Leave," Gereg said to the girls and the younger boys. "Go back in the house."

Cam waited until they had done so. Meron, at least, stayed outside in the yard, though he stood beside their father now. "Hello, Badda."

"So you've come back, tail tucked between yer legs—"

Something cold reached like a hand into Cam's chest and started squeezing his heart. The pressure was so great he could barely draw breath. "Wanted to show you and Momma I'm not dead."

"Better off if you were."

Meron exhaled sharply. "That's not true, Badda."

But Gereg would have none of it. "Got to sucking Staubaun cock in town, that's what I heard. Ran off or dragged off, all the same. He's a damn Staubaun-sucking wog."

A flurry of color burst around the corner of the house. One of his siblings must have found their mother, probably working in the garden nearer the stream. She ran toward him, skirt flapping wildly.

"Cam!" she shrieked and threw herself into his arms.

He held her tightly, buried his face in her hair and not just so he need not look at his scowling father. She smelled like home—vanilla and soap. His tears flowed freely now, wetting her hair and pooling in his throat. "I'm sorry," he choked. "I wanted to come back sooner, but I couldn't."

"Oh, Mother help the weary, look at you." She stepped back and put her hands to his face, which he'd not shaved for three days, then embraced him all over again. "You're so thin! You need a meal. Drewsa!" she called to the house, "stir the coals and set a table."

Gereg's face flushed red. "Not in my house!" Each word sliced like a knife through Cam's heart.

"Yours, no," his mother said, eyes bright with joy. "Mine! My house will receive my children. It's my house under our law and Cam will hear none of your hard words while he is within its walls."

All Cam wanted to do at that moment was leave, but his mind had gone numb. He felt as though he'd fallen into deep water and was being dragged down to the bottom. His heart labored like he was dying. Fighting more tears, he wiped his face with his sleeve.

Having no recourse, with his wife looking so fierce and Meron nodding his willingness to back her, Gereg relented. "So be it, woman. But your son will not be staying. He can eat his fill and lighten your heart, but then he must go on his way. And I want the others out of the house when he's in it. I'll not have him pollute the children with his filth."

"There'll be no talk of that, Badda," Meron countered quietly. Cam met his brother's gaze and saw in it some of Gereg's disgust, tempered only by a calmer nature and a dogged determination to honor their family bonds.

"Make sure of it. And don't let your mother give him money. That's what he's here for."

Cam stared at him, aghast. "No, I don't want anything! All I want is your blessing."

"Get hers, then. Because you're not getting mine." Gereg stomped away without looking back.

* * * *

His mother told him where to find Henna. Just two months ago his twin had wed the wagon-maker's son and moved into a tidy cottage Bren had built for her behind the wagon-shop. He went to her as soon as he left his mother's house. Spires of lady's caps in last bloom marked the path to a stoop lined with pots of lamb's tongue and evermay. When Henna answered the door, she dropped the spindle of wool in her hand.

Cam smiled at such a picture of domesticity. His sister's kisses and hugs and squeals of joy caused the vise about his heart to release. After fighting Gereg, his mother had grown careful and sad, though she had fed Cam well, given him a suit of clothes, and insisted that he visit her again. His vanishing had caused her pain, but not so much as knowing the cause of it. Henna's happiness at seeing him was untainted by such cares.

"I'm doing well enough," he told her, though that was gilding the truth. Whatever he said to Henna would get back to his mother and he didn't want to worsen the wound. Someday he would put to rest once and for all his father's allegation that he'd only come back for money.

At the end of their visit he slid the knife from his boot and took up his old coat. He slit every coin from its hiding place. Altogether he had ten gold coins and twenty two silver. He gathered the coins and placed them into astonished Henna's hands.

"Keep them for me," he pleaded. "Can't have my coat getting too heavy and I've really no better way to hide them, living on the water as I do, going boat to boat and place to place. But it won't always be that way."

"But you may need it!'

"When I need it, I'll come to you. And if I can't come to you, that means I'm dead and don't need it anyway. If you don't see me in a year, I want you to have it."

"Cam—"

He told her another lie. "I've got work, Henna, an honest man's living. I'll come to see you when I can, so you'll know I'm alive."

"But why didn't you come before, Cam?"

He couldn't tell her. Knowing she wouldn't turn away from him no matter what his situation only made him want to protect her from a truth she could never imagine. Henna had a sweet good life untouched by ugliness. It'd be nothing but selfish to burden her with his.

"Bad company and stupid choices," he said, giving her a rueful look. "Ended up far upriver, past Merath and all. Had to work my way back, that's how I got the coin."

Bren came through the door and looked so surprised and stiff Cam didn't say much more. Once it was clear he made Bren uncomfortable, he left. He wandered back to the dock, where he found a merchant who in return for loading buckets of fish guts meant for the eel farms gave him passage to Trulo.

* * * *

That spring, using the coins he'd given Henna and what he earned over the winter, Cam bought a small boat and found he could make a spare but honest living ferrying hard goods and supplies bought in the bustling Staubaun cities to sell to Khelds in towns across the Dazun River. He spoke fluent Stauba and bargained with Staubauns better than most, so his prices were good. His trips took him on a regular course that brought him once every seven-day to Dazunor-Rannuli.

The wind was stiff but the day clear when he tied his boat at a battered pier in the Beardfen, as the Kheld port district was known. He arranged a handcart for the next morning and set out for the Staubaun merchant quarter just east of the bridge, in the Old City. Stone-paved streets alive with darting couriers and curtained litters wound between painted storefronts. A deep thrum reverberated over the city and he glanced upward as a silver charys larger than the largest boat on the river sailed overhead toward the Rill Mount at the heart of the city. Riches filled its belly, of that he was sure. Grain and spices, lubricants and horses, bolts of rare fabrics and plats of fragrant woods, and of course gold and wine. Big Staubaun boats and merchant cartels would distribute this Rill bounty all along the Dazun. Cam's goal was to get a few juggers of the wine.

The wine merchant, Glauvas, owned a shop on a street shaded by taller buildings two streets removed from the Lower Canal. Cam paid and arranged delivery for twenty bottles of Tollech's fruity vintage, for which he had two buyers. Smiling, Glauvas showed Cam another bottle, this one of finer glass. About its neck was a silver ring flashing with green jewels. The wine merchant poured a stream of deep purple wine into a goblet.

"Smell this. Taste."

Accepting the glass, Cam sniffed and was amazed. The scent of grapes was heavy, almost like raisins. When he sipped, the wine kissed his lips with blackberries, then danced across his tongue with pure cherry notes and whispers of heaven.

"Teremar wine," Glauvas answered the question before he could ask it. "And not just Teremar wine, but nectar drawn from the vineyard of the Highborn Princes themselves, the Thrice Royal Sordaneons. They release only a few bottles a year, and I got my hands on ten of them."

"How much?" he asked. One of his customers, a status-craving Kheld chieftain with a taste for Staubaun luxuries, would pay twice the cost for something this fine.

"Five gold kings."

"For all ten?"

Glauvas laughed. "For one."

Cam thought about it hard. If he bought one bottle, he wouldn't have coin for his other purchases. It took ten gold rams to make a king. Three of those bottles could buy him a better boat. He thanked Glauvas for the glass, but shook his head.

"Three kings," Glauvas said. "For you."

Cam looked at him in surprise. The merchant was always fair, but never open-handed. Cam dealt with him precisely because of this, and because Glauvas never attempted to exact sexual favors in return for bargains. The amiable Staubaun preferred women and was always purely business. The price, however . . . Cam calculated his potential profit. Though suspicious of the largesse, he nodded and reached for his purse.

The merchant stopped him. "I have only the sample here today. Come back tomorrow at the midday bell and I will have your bottle."

* * * *

Cam earned a living with his small boat, but he still needed Staubaun seed. That meant trolling the waterfront. Though experienced in the hard ways of the world, he was but twenty years old, still young enough to be in constant danger of being preyed upon by unscrupulous slavers or their agents. Good-looking Kheld youths were in great demand in the cities along the river. Even if he avoided slavery, he still risked rape. For that reason, remembering only too well the Lord in Merath who had injured him so badly that he had on and off crapped blood for a month, Cam restricted his contacts to a few men he had gotten to know well.

After leaving the wine merchant, Cam visited two other vendors, negotiating lower prices with both, then sought seed from a Staubaun tavern keeper he trusted. To his dismay, the man was ill and his replacement at the bar said he'd not be back for several days. The man eyed him warmly while running his tongue across his upper lip, letting Cam know he understood the reason behind his inquiry. The brazen solicitation put his guard up. Even if the man could be trusted, something Cam could not bank on, a half-breed with a hard one couldn't give him what he needed.

Dazunor-Rannuli's waterfront still terrified him, so he resolved to wait it out this time. If he left tomorrow afternoon, he could make the Fence at Rainill the next evening. Dazunor-Rannuli's Fences, of which there were many, had a reputation for sending good-looking young Khelds to the brothels or selling them off on site to any Lord who dangled a purse.

He slept that night on his boat, his dagger in hand beneath his pillow.

The next morning Cam made his rounds with the handcart, loading it with crates of spices, nails, latches, buckles, and bolts of fabric destined for a peddler in Hothyswell. It took two trips along the city's narrow streets to haul all his goods back to the boat and load it, along with the delivered wine and a few dozen sacks of rice. He then headed to Glauvas' shop as the midday bell tolled over the waterfront from its housing in the Porthouse Tower. Beneath his light leather jacket, the linen shirt Henna had made for him clung with the sweat of his morning labor.

The purple awning over the wine shop's entrance dripped from rain the night before. When the brass bell over the door rang, Glauvas appeared and bade him come into the back room. He then shut the door. Cam stiffened to see another man seated at the merchant's desk, clearly waiting. Glauvas walked over and picked up a bottle with a green-jeweled silver ring about the neck. He handed it to Cam.

"Yours for three kings, as we agreed."

Relaxing, Cam took the coins from his purse and passed them to Glauvas. He took the heavy bottle and placed it immediately into the sturdy carry sack slung over his shoulder. The other man in the room watched him, his assessment frank and warm. Cam from the first had pegged him as Staubaun, even though a hood covered his hair and a good part of his face and a long cloak covered the rest. The man exchanged glances with Glauvas.

The wine merchant smiled. "Cam, I would like you to meet my friend, Myron. He has a proposition for you. I'll be in the other room."

"What kind of proposition?" Cam demanded, but Glauvas had already left them.

Myron pushed back the hood of his cloak, showing the face of an older man, probably patrician, with good skin and a straight nose. Hair gone silver crowned his high forehead above brown eyes ringed with gold at the outer edges. "I am looking for companionship."

"A suck boy, you mean."

"To put it crudely. I enjoy youth and beauty, and you are one of those rare Khelds blessed with the latter. But I was also told you were hard-working, of good character, and discreet." He pointed to an upholstered chair. "Please, sit. I mean no disrespect."

"You just want me to suck you." Because such expectations were a fact of his existence, Cam took the seat and studied this Myron anew. The man's confidence, his aura of entitlement, even the soft twill weave of his deliberately plain garments, pointed to a man of high status and possibly wealth.

"I want to gain the pleasure of your companionship, your sexual companionship. If both of us are agreeable, I could make the arrangement regular."

"I have a boat. I like my work. And I won't belong to any man."

Those dark eyes appraised him. "I will make no demands on your time apart from what you agree to give to me. My hope is that when you are in town, you contact Glauvas, who will direct you to a room where we can pursue our mutual satisfaction. You will find me clean, gentle and trustworthy. My only purpose is pleasure."

The scent of the man, masculine and sharp, triggered Cam's lurking need. Myron's bright eyes betrayed desire and he was probably already hard, his unseen cock secreting tell-tale droplets. Cam's condition allowed him to smell such things. It went with the jitters nearly full-blown just beneath the surface of his skin. He wondered if Myron could tell. Fact was, he wanted cock in the worst way and a clean Staubaun man, rich and respectful, wasn't the worst of his options. He'd been ready to go to a Fence. Though he shied from assignations, he didn't think Glauvas would go to all this trouble to set up an introduction when he could have sold him off months ago had he been of that mind.

Slowly, Cam nodded. Something regular, the man had said. "I need someone tonight, if you're good for that. I still got cargo to secure, and need to pay someone to watch my boat."

Myron's smile warmed every crease of his face. "Come back tonight then. Glauvas will give you the address of the room, and send a man to watch your boat."