An Elegy of Heroes

by K. S. Villoso

  “What do you mean?” Sume asked. “We sent word ahead.”

  “No room,” the woman replied. “Try next door.”

  “What about our deposit?” Sagar added.

  The woman feigned ignorance. Out on the street, Sume noticed that the inn’s windows were barred shut.

  For over the next hour, they were turned away from every inn they found. After the sixth one slammed their door on them, Sagar rubbed his hands together before shoving them into his robe, glanced out the street, and said, after a moment, “I haven’t seen a dog or cat since we got here.”

  “What do you mean?” She hadn’t noticed; maybe he had a point about her thinking too deeply, too much.

  Sagar looked irritated at her response. “Didn’t those children strike you as odd? But never mind. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding. Perhaps we should head straight for the keep. Our contact should be able to explain all of this.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “If he doesn’t…” A twinkle appeared in the corner of his tired eyes. “It’s cold, I’m angry, and I haven’t killed anyone in a very long time.”

  A long line of people gathered along the gates. Even under the sodden sky, they remained clamouring at the top of their lungs and demanding that Warlord Yeshin show himself. The vast majority seemed to be workers, or women with babes wrapped against themselves. “When they said unrest at Oren-yaro…” Sume began, but Sagar silenced her with a snort. She muttered under her breath instead, allowing him to approach one of the more placid-looking protesters.

  “We were told there was work at the keep,” he said. “What gives?”

  “Best take your feet elsewhere if you can,” the man replied, peering at them from under his hat. “There’s no work there at all. Where do you think half of us came from?”

  “My contact is one of the household masters. Hiko. He assured us he could give me and my granddaughter a place in the kitchens.”

  The man flashed them a quick grin. “Only place in the kitchens right now is in the stewpot. Hiko was killed at the uprising. I should know. Bandaged his head myself, for all the good that did him. Couldn’t stop the man’s brains from leaking out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You can ask the guards at the gate, if you don’t believe me.”

  Sagar glanced at Sume. She started. “What? Me?”

  “My back aches,” he grumbled.

  “You were walking fine just a minute ago.”

  “Children,” he said, turning to the man. “Absolutely no respect for their elders these days.” And he turned away from her, which she had learned over these last few years meant that there was no room for retort.

  She wondered how her father survived all those years with this man as his mentor. She ducked through the crowd, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. A woman with a basket on her hip gave her a look, but nobody paid her any attention otherwise.

  Sume’s fears—that the guards would recognize her—was unfounded. The one manning the gate was too young and would’ve been a child the last time they had gone through the town. He tried to give her his fiercest glare. “Go away,” he said. “I’m telling you what I’ve told everyone else here—until the Warlord himself comes out, I can’t give you any food.”

  “We’re from out of town. We were told we could find work here.”

  “Unless you’re willing to get paid in fish-bones and even then...in a few weeks, they’ll probably cost more than shoes. There’s a shortage of food in town. Locusts decimated our crops just right before harvest time. Why in heaven’s name would you go here?”

  “I didn’t know. We were just in Shirrokaru a few days ago.”

  “You didn’t know? But we sent word…” The guard paled. His companion elbowed him and muttered something about keeping silent under his breath. The younger guard rubbed his helmet apologetically. “That’s about all I can tell you. You should make your arrangements to go back home if you can.”

  As soon as the guards looked away from her, she pressed herself against the patch of bamboo to the side and very slowly began to walk along the stone walls and away from the crowd. There was no way she was returning to the old man without useful information. At the very least, he would leer at her again, and then she’d have to punch him.

  Either Sume was better at it than she thought, or extremely lucky that everyone was too embroiled in their own problems to pay her much heed, but she made it to the back of the keep without too much trouble. There was a ditch set against a hedge and a low wall. She removed her boots, rolled up her trousers, and made a running leap to reach the top. From up there, she grabbed her boots from the ground and crossed the fence towards the higher walls of the keep.

  It felt liberating, walking along the cold stone in bare feet. She felt like a child again—defying orders, acting against common sense, even as she remained frightened out of her wits. She couldn’t recall the last time she felt like this. She hopped into the courtyard, behind a crumbling shed, and dried her feet on the gravel before slipping them back into her boots. Her heart hammered against her chest, refusing to be still.

  When she got the chance to look around, her first thought was that Sagar had been right about the animals. The last time she had been at the keep, a plethora of dogs had greeted them. Even well into the night, she couldn’t sleep for the barking and howling from the yards. Now, the silence was so thick you could swim in it. She stepped towards the small outcrop of buildings where most of the household staff were lodged and her presence roused nothing.

  A very different fear settled in the pit of her stomach. She started to wish that a dog would bark, that the guards would see her, because the air was too clammy and everything felt strange and all she wanted to do was to talk to someone, even if it was just to explain herself.

  The buildings were abandoned. That didn’t surprise her. The workers were all outside. What she wasn’t prepared for was the thick layer of dust that had accumulated on the tables and chairs, giving the impression that they were gone for much longer than several days. If there was an uprising last week, then they must’ve been here since at least then, but it appeared as if they had been gone for years.

  She wandered along the alleyways before making her way to the storage barns. She remembered, from their short stay in Oren-yaro, that the warlord was insistent in micro-managing the produce from the farms. Everything had to be sent to the keep for inspection and inventory before it was distributed to the people. It was a system that reflected how deep Oren-yaro valued the old ways, where the warlord had the final say on everything his vassals did—right down to the person they married and the names they gave their children. She noticed that one barn had a cracked door and she went up to peer inside.

  Her heart rose to her throat. She could make out the silhouette of rice bags, stacked on top of each other against the walls. She drew back, confused. Locusts, the man had said. But you didn’t harvest the season’s crops for tomorrow’s pot. In such a situation, it made sense to ration the stockpile, like any responsible warlord would do, but…

  Didn’t those children strike you as odd?

  She tried to recall the girl’s face. The wide eyes. The firm mouth. The cheeks, sunken with hunger. The way they dove after those sweets like a pack of starving dogs. How could she have missed it?

  She took a step away from the barn and glanced at the gates. There was no true food shortage. But the town was starving, cut off from their food supply, because the gates were closed because they wanted to keep people away.

  The realization dawned on her. She heard a movement behind her, followed by the acrid scent of death. She swallowed and turned to meet it.

  Chapter Eight

  The only thing Kefier could recall, after it was all over, was the rage—red-hot, like the iron they hammered into blades back at the smithy’s. He did not know he was capable of such a feeling. It had started from his belly and exploded into his fists, which tore into the wa
lls of the small room he had awakened in, after they had dragged the sack from his head.

  He stopped when the door opened, revealing an old, but well-built man who was so tall, his figure dwarfed the door-frame. Anyone else, he would have attacked. But he had not forgotten this one’s face and his last few years in Gorent came rushing at him at once. He felt a little silly, standing there with splinters on his knuckles and blood running down his wrists.

  “I’d ask you to sit down, but seeing as you broke every chair in the room…” Yn Garr—or Gorrhen, as he knew him then—didn’t smile as he spoke. The muscles were tight behind his short, grey beard and he looked like he hadn’t aged a day in years.

  “What,” Kefier said, mustering every effort in him to remain civil, “do you want from me?”

  “Your cooperation.”

  “You took my daughter, you pernicious bastard.”

  “You learned a new word?”

  “I’ve learned several. I was saving them just for you.”

  Yn Garr regarded him for a moment. “You and your brother are not alike at all.”

  “Is that a compliment? Fuck, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

  “The girl, on the other hand...your daughter, you said?” He turned his head and snorted. “You’re lying to me. I don’t see the need, as I am neither impressed nor of a mind to care. No, Kefier, I will be honest; there is nothing I particularly want from you. If you had killed yourself right now, doing whatever it is you thought you would accomplish by destroying my furniture, you would have been doing all of us a favour.”

  “Drop dead, old man.”

  “But you’re here, and we need your niece. She considers you her father, and so your cooperation would be most beneficial for her—and, because I dislike making things more difficult for myself than they ought to be—for all of us.” He clapped, and a servant appeared with a piece of cloth. He handed it to Kefier.

  Kefier hesitated before taking it. His skin crawled, standing so close to this man whose arrival in Gorent years ago had turned his life upside-down, but he struggled to contain his revulsion.

  “Did Enosh send you?” he asked, wiping the blood from his hands.

  “No.”

  “Then how did you know about Rosha?”

  “You admitted to Arlisa she wasn’t yours and who her mother was. It may not seem like it, but I pay attention to your brother’s whores. The rest was basic arithmetic.”

  He flushed, recalling that Yn Garr used the same, loathing tone when he spoke to him as a boy. Lisa had betrayed him. One of these days, he was going to have to confront himself about his predisposition to making decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time.

  “Come,” Yn Garr said, after a moment. “Walk with me.”

  It was the last thing he wanted to do, but the man had Rosha, and he nodded. Yn Garr drew back, his heavy boots clomping across the wooden floors. Nice, polished wooden floors, stained in such a way that the grains formed a pattern that was both light and dark. Kefier had never seen such beautiful floors in his life. Nor had he ever seen such a grand foyer, with a ceiling that went beyond the second floor and a chandelier that probably cost more than he could ever make working at Jorri’s smithy.

  He saw Yn Garr glancing at him and tried to keep his face impassive. “Where are we going?”

  “To dine. I dislike talking on an empty stomach.” The man led him down a flight of stairs (this one, varnished oak—he knew the feel) and then past a double entryway to a dining room that could’ve easily fit thirty people and they would have room to dance. In the corner of the giant table were two plates, a set of utensils, and a washbowl.

  A serving boy led them to their chairs. That look came over Yn Garr’s face again, like he was expecting Kefier to do something stupid—eat with his hands, maybe, or drink from the washbowl. He would not give him that satisfaction. He carefully dipped his hands in the washbowl and wiped them on the clean towel to the side before staring back at Yn Garr, daring him to comment.

  Yn Garr pretended to ignore him while he gestured at the serving boy, who nodded and drew back. A few awkward moments later, Kefier heard footsteps and turned to see Lisa with Rosha at her heels. He got up and ran to wrap his arms around the girl.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, after a moment. He inspected her arms and her face. They were smooth, free of any markings.

  She shook her head. She didn’t look frightened at all. “Are we going home soon?” she asked.

  “In a while,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to stay here?” Lisa asked.

  He regarded Lisa for the first time. He didn’t know what to say to her, and a big part of him was convinced she deserved no words at all.

  Yn Garr’s voice broke their reunion. “Arlisa, take her back to her room,” he said. “She can eat there. We have things we need to talk about.”

  Kirosha grabbed his hand. He stood up, looking at her. “We can’t go home yet,” he said. “You have to be brave.”

  Normally, she would argue. But she must’ve caught something in the tone of his voice and nodded. Lisa gestured. She followed. Kefier returned to the table, just as the serving boy laid out trays of food for them—some sort of fowl, roasted with beets and honey, wild rice dotted with nuts, and a dish of leeks and carrots.

  “Eat,” Yn Garr said. “I wouldn’t bother to poison you.”

  The serving boy glanced at Kefier, as if waiting to see his opinion on this. When he didn’t reply, the boy drew back his sleeves and started to slice meat into his plate.

  They ate in silence for several minutes. Kefier had to admit that the food was excellent—the meat fell off the bone and was properly spiced, as if whoever worked the kitchens took great pains to ensure that people remembered what they ate, even if they were probably going to die afterwards. But he was still irritated, and when Yn Garr looked up and said, “Your brother grew up here, you know,” he lost his appetite completely.

  He put his fork down. “After you took him away.”

  “Which was necessary after you nearly killed him.”

  “We’re off to a great start, aren’t we?”

  Yn Garr didn’t smile. “Are you done? Because there is more at work here than your pride.”

  “No, go ahead,” he said, wondering how accurately he could throw a fork and whether eyeballs bled.

  Yn Garr narrowed his eyes. “Jarche scanned the girl,” he continued. “Tested her propensity to the agan. She is—how shall I put this delicately? Like an untapped well. Brimming to the edge. Do you not see? Every time she walks, agan spills from her being, gathers under her footprints like dew.”

  He sat back, fingers tapping on the table. Kefier watched him as he spoke. “I don’t understand why you are telling me this.”

  “Because I want to start off on the right foot. We need the girl. Our operations demand those highly skilled in manipulating agan, and with the proper training, she could be beneficial for us. I will not, however, take her from you by force. I’m not sure where you got the idea, but that is not something I do.”

  “My brother…”

  “...nearly died. I had no choice but to seek help for him. If you remember, I stayed in Gorent to teach him, though I had no need to. Look around you. Do you not see what I can offer your niece? I have access to the most prestigious tutors here in Cael, even Hafod, and she can have a life she has only dreamed of, thus far. I can see how deeply you care for her and so I understand your concern, but what we’re offering her is much, much more than you ever could.”

  “Is that where we are? Cael?” Kefier tightened his jaw. “If you were so concerned for us, why take us the way you did?”

  Yn Garr gave a thin smile—the first, since their conversation started. “Would you have come if I had asked nicely?”

  “That’s beyond the fucking point.”

  “That’s precisely the point. We need the girl. Or, rather...the mage she can turn out to be. Without proper guidance, she can grow up to be a danger to
herself and society. You must have heard stories…”

  Kefier shook his head. “Even if I agreed to this, her mother wouldn’t let her stay.”

  “Her mother…” Yn Garr blinked. “Right. That whore he picked up from Gaspar.”

  His face tightened. “Don’t insult her if you want my cooperation.”

  “I apologize,” he said, which surprised Kefier. He looked sincere about it, too. “It’s just that Enosh’s involvement with his various women, over the years...I take it you have not been in touch with him, either?”

  “What do you mean? He left you?”

  “He has not been the most reliable apprentice.”

  “Then where is he?”

  Yn Garr sighed. “I do not know. I had Arlisa keep an eye out for you because I had hoped you did.”

  “That’s why you brought her into this?”

  “In part.”

  He looked at the man again and tried to remember that this was the same one they had dragged from the sea so many long years ago. His boat was all but gone—a single mast sticking out from the vast expanse of ocean—but Kefier had spotted his pale arm floating under a mass of seaweed and gone in before Enosh could say otherwise. Yn Garr’s boot had been caught in something...Kefier wasn’t sure what, but he was able to dive and dislodge it from his foot. The man’s body bobbed to the surface for a second. That gave Enosh enough time to grab him by the shoulders and drag most of him into their little dinghy.

  Kefier tried to recall if Yn Garr knew he had been there that day, or if he thought Enosh saved him alone. Yn Garr had been unconscious the whole time, and it was much later that night, back in the village, when he finally woke up. Kefier wondered how life would be different if he hadn’t. Would they have ever left home? Perhaps, on clear mornings before the sun was up, he would still be making his lonely trek to those shores underneath the tall cliffs, gazing up at the brown-streaked bedrock that had stood there for thousands of years. What I would give, he thought. For Rosha to see those cliffs. Her heritage…