Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  “Puzzling,” Rem said, “but not impossible to reconcile. Maybe there was already a Red Raven, but the heir took his place? Maybe the Devils of the Weald actually did take Korin Lyr hostage, but he eventually earned a place among them? Those would be my guesses.”

  “Mmm,” Torval said again. He was staring now.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Rem asked, knowing damned well why.

  Time’s come, he thought. Give it to him.

  “How do you know all this?” Torval asked. “The prevalence of an old name among Keramian noble houses? The disappearance of the heir? The way that disappearance shook the nobility far and wide?”

  Rem took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose that’s the rest of it, Torval,” Rem said, doing his best to keep his gaze steady. “You’ve let me escape this for a good long while now. I suppose it’s time you knew. I trust you, after all—trust you with my life.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I’m not just a groom’s son raised in a lord’s house,” Rem said. “I’m not even a younger son of some rich family out looking for adventure. I’m Remeck Stromm, son and heir to Kürek Stromm, the Grand Duke of Lycos . . . and I died to get away from home.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Torval was silent for a long time. Waiting through that long, interminable silence that would decide whether the two of them would remain friends henceforth, or whether Rem’s subterfuge had destroyed what they’d built, was a mighty struggle. In the interim Rem scanned the woods and the campsite around them. The others were busy with their presleep rituals near the campfire. The horses, tethered in a small copse on the other side of the road, cropped placidly at the grasses about their hooves, silent and resigned. Again an owl screeched in the distance, and Rem wished the damned, accursed old raptor would just shut up already.

  “What do you mean, you died?” Torval asked.

  “I mean I faked my death. I went for rides in the woods alone quite often—more often than my father wished. Slipping my bodyguards and setting out on my own was a favorite game of mine, even as a grown man. After planning to make my exit, I abandoned my horse in the woods, left blood around the scene, then used a stolen skiff to speed downriver and put some distance between myself and my home. Traveling in yeoman’s clothes, no one gave me a second look. The news of my apparent death didn’t even start to move up and down the Pilgrim Road until I’d made it almost all the way to Yenara, a month later.”

  “Why?” Torval asked. The word was spoken quietly, but the command in it was implicit. They weren’t having a conversation now. This was an interrogation.

  Rem kept his gaze steady. “Everything I’ve told you about my father—how hard of heart he was, how unwelcome I felt in his presence—that’s all true. The only part I withheld was the truth of what he wanted from me, and what I denied him. He’d been angling for years to align with one of the other grand duchies of the Marches, to try and consolidate holdings and maybe create a new monarchy in Hasturland. I was his pawn in those plans. My whole life had been pushed and prodded toward that unwavering destiny, to bring a crown and a true throne back to the people of the north. But it also meant I never had choices. I couldn’t choose my friends . . . my lovers . . . my confidantes or counselors.”

  “So,” Torval said, his voice carrying a note of bitterness, “you ran away.”

  “Children run away,” Rem said, as he’d once said to Ondego. “I left.”

  “Men without responsibilities leave,” Torval said. “You ran away, leaving your family and your whole country in the lurch, no doubt. What do you think happened after you disappeared, eh? Was there another heir? Or would your father’s duchy—all that he’d inherited and built and hoped to build—now forfeit because his snot-nosed brat couldn’t handle the responsibilities bequeathed to him?”

  Rem felt sick to his stomach. He’d expected one of two things: either Torval would laugh off the news and tell him he’d suspected as much all along, or he’d storm off in fury, hurt and angry that he’d been lied to. But for some reason, Rem had not expected this—a pointed, purposeful challenge to his motivations and desires, a questioning of his very worth. And yet he should have expected it, shouldn’t he? Torval was the best of men—or dwarves. He’d only broken with his own folk when they refused to accept his petition for change. But he’d never abandoned his family or his personal responsibilities. Instead he’d marched off into the world to meet them, head-on, and woe betide anyone who dared stand in his way.

  “You know what the responsibilities of feeding your family—and your children—feel like, Torval,” Rem finally said, working hard to keep his voice low. “But you have no idea what the weight of a kingdom and a crown feels like. Especially when the person who should be teaching you to do it all for yourself—to better become yourself—is making all of your choices for you and using you as little more than a puppet for their own ambition.”

  “Answer my question, gods damn you,” Torval said. “Was there anyone to take your place?”

  “If I had to choose, I’d have handed it all to my sister, Anjevine,” Rem said. “She was regal from the womb, and smarter and more responsible than I would ever have been. But, knowing my father and the ways of the Hasturfolk, who aren’t fond of female rule, it probably fell to my little brother, Leriok. I had faith he’d do just fine. He was irresolute, perhaps, but a good lad with a good heart. I had to trust he’d learn to stand up for himself, even if he hadn’t already.”

  That part was a bit of a lie, but Rem hoped Torval could forgive him for it. In truth, Rem had never been sure Leriok could handle the strain of ruling in his stead. If there was any part of his flight from home that still haunted Rem when he was sleepless or nostalgic, it was that: What had become of Leriok? Had he, ultimately, been able to embrace his fate as the newly dubbed heir apparent and flourish? Or had the weight of it all crushed him? Would all those competing voices and influences, from their own iron-willed father to the various self-interested courtiers of the privy counsel, help him better become the man he was always meant to be, or forcibly mold him to sit a throne that never should have been his?

  Rem’s guilty reverie was shattered by a sudden hard, loud sound. It was the sound of Torval’s calloused hand striking Rem’s face. It was a heavy, muscular hand, and it hurt. Rem felt his face flush. A fury shot through him, like fire in his veins.

  But the fury wasn’t outward. It was inward. You should have known it would come to this, he thought. You were wrong all along, foolish all along. He’s not wrong to be hurt by this, or to think less of you—you were wrong to think you could ever shirk your duties . . . your responsibilities.

  And Torval—the best of men, or dwarves—knows that.

  You’ve let him down, and it kills you, doesn’t it?

  “Does Indilen know?” Torval asked. The fact that he kept his voice barely above a whisper was truly impressing Rem. Clearly he was angry, but he hadn’t lost his self-control.

  Rem nodded, trusting that Torval, with his dwarvish night vision, could see him well even in the dark. “Months ago, after that mess with the stonemasons. She understood. She’s still by my side, isn’t she?”

  “Well, so am I,” the dwarf said, sounding both angry and earnestly committed all at once. “But this . . . All this . . . What you did . . .”

  “You left your people behind—your whole world—because they denied you a choice. I did the same. I know I fled my duties and my responsibilities, but I also never asked for them—just like you were never asked whether you’d rather be a miner or a warrior.”

  Torval grunted, turned, and began to pace. Rem felt a little better at that. The pacing meant he was thinking, and when Torval stopped to think about things, he almost always made the right decision—the compassionate one. The silence that fell as Torval paced and Rem waited was some of the bitterest, most lonely silence that Rem had ever known in his life. This dwarf—this excellent, honorable, courageous, ardent dwarf—was the best friend Rem had
ever known, and a companion whose respect—whose understanding—meant everything to him. If finally revealing all of this cost him even a small speck of all the respect he’d earned, he would never forgive himself . . .

  “So you think,” Torval began, “that our Red Raven pulled the same sort of stunt—faked his death to duck the crown, then found he liked a life of banditry and murder?”

  Rem was puzzled. “Torval, you do understand—”

  “This isn’t about you anymore,” Torval hissed. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Do you think that’s his angle? Royal heir gone bad? Essentially just a troublemaker and runaway?”

  Rem thought about that, then shook his head. “No. And I’ll tell you why: Tzimena. We’ve barely interacted with her, true, but she doesn’t strike me as a shallow or wicked young lady. If she’s still worried about him—still invested in him, somehow—then we have to assume there’s some honorable angle in what he’s doing. Something she can use to convince herself that he’s trustworthy.”

  “But is he?” Torval asked.

  Rem shrugged. “Probably not. It could be he genuinely has some affection for her, and doesn’t want to see her hurt, but my impression of him is one of cunning and craft. If he wants something, he’ll find a way to get it. If he has to wait for it, or take great pains to achieve it, he’s got the patience to see it through.”

  “Why would he run away from his crown, then?” Torval asked. “Why the subterfuge?”

  “That brings me to another part of their conversation,” Rem said, silently glad that they were no longer discussing him. “He told Tzimena that she shouldn’t make his identity known or speak on his behalf—that if she did so, she’d be in danger, namely from the lord marshal.”

  “So he doesn’t trust the lord marshal,” Torval said. “We already knew that.”

  Rem nodded. “But there was surety in his voice. He also told her that when his people attack, no one would be harmed if they did not pose a direct threat.”

  Torval straightened. “Do you believe that?”

  Rem shook his head. “Why do you think we’re talking?”

  “So he didn’t just run away,” Torval began.

  “He fled,” Rem finished. “He’s not in Erald, on his throne, because he can’t be. Maybe his supposed death, on that hunting trip, wasn’t planned by him, but by his brother? The one who now holds the title? Or the lord marshal himself, trying to eject an independent young duke for a more tractable one?”

  Torval nodded slowly. “That makes a little more sense.”

  “But you see why I’m worried by all this?”

  Torval nodded again. “Oh, aye. That snake’s waiting for his highwaymen to attack, those Estavari swordmaidens will fight to the death to defend the lady, and the lord marshal clearly wants the Red Raven dead—and he’ll probably be willing to murder anyone—you, me, and the Lady Tzimena included—to keep him from either escaping or proving to the world who he really is.”

  Rem sighed. “And here we are, caught in the middle.”

  Torval hung his head. “Bollocks.”

  “We can’t let on, can we?”

  Torval considered carefully. “No. Sick as it makes me, we can’t. I don’t care to sit around waiting for the Devils of the Weald to ambush us, but if we try to confront the lord marshal with this—”

  “—We’re dead for sure,” Rem finished.

  Torval shook his head, ran his hands over his bald scalp, then stamped his feet in frustration. “Gods, what’ve we stepped into?”

  “No point asking that right now,” Rem said. “The next question is, what do we do?”

  Torval resumed his pacing, and Rem waited patiently for a reply. After a minute or so, the dwarf offered his only solution.

  “We wait. We keep our eyes peeled. When and if the Devils attack, we keep our skins intact. I want that gold as badly as you do, boy, but from here on, I’ll settle for just making it home.”

  “And what if the Raven was lying to Tzimena?” Rem asked. “What if the Devils don’t give a damn who they kill when they try to spring him?”

  Torval shrugged the slightest bit. “Then we kill the Red Raven, to deny them their prize—and we kill any of the bastards who threaten us. Home, lad—that’s all that matters now.”

  Rem thought of Indilen. He was sick with missing her, with needing her. He’d say a prayer to every god he’d ever petitioned as he fell asleep tonight, hoping to make it home to her in one piece.

  “Home,” he said to Torval, the single word carrying greater import than he ever could have imagined it was capable of bearing.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rem slept fitfully that night, his mind trying to iterate all the ways in which the Red Raven’s freedom from that cage could materialize, and all the ways in which that freedom could kill Rem and Torval. He wrestled with the guilt of self-interest; with a certain amount of shame in trying to prepare himself not to do his duty, to let a notorious outlaw flee without a fight; with the sincere hope that, whenever the attack came, it would come quickly, and he and Torval could withdraw from the violence without injury and then be on their way home. He was even reasonably sure he would spend another night camping in the terrible ruins of Hobb’s Folly if it meant he was heading back toward Yenara and not farther away.

  He fell asleep for a time, but woke in short order, hounded by a horrible dream. In it he’d been sleeping in Hobb’s Folly, the fire crackling, wind tickling the trees above him, a hillcat screaming in the distance. Everyone around him lay still, a few snoring.

  Rem had risen, filled with a terrible sense of urgency—a gut-deep dread that urged him to go to the Raven’s cage, to check on their clever prisoner.

  But it wasn’t the Raven in the cage. It was Geezer. He lay on his side, face ashen in the moonlight, eyes staring sleepily into the maw of death as blood seeped out of him and stained the straw lining the cage.

  “I curse you,” he whispered, as though reciting a prayer before sleep. “I curse you both. I call down Hyryn’s wrath, beg for Serath’s snare . . .”

  I’m sorry, Rem tried to say, but he had no voice.

  Cold hands settled on Rem’s shoulders. He smelled lavender and grave mold. A woman’s voice—Rikka’s voice—whispered in his ear.

  “You shall be broken on Ghagar’s table,” she rasped. “Swallowed by Meimis, snatched by Kraet—”

  He opened his eyes, heart hammering in his chest. He lay awake for a long time after that, trying to banish the dream from his mind and failing miserably.

  By morning, it felt like he hadn’t slept at all, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true. There had been dreams—some terrible, some prosaic, some just plain bizarre—and the ghosts of them ran circles round the empty spaces in his head as he clawed his way up out of the murk of exhaustion and welcomed the gray dawn light of a new day. Sullen and tired eyed, Rem trudged down to the riverbank, stripped naked, and gave himself a bracing bath in the frigid waters of the Kaarten, hoping to both steel and awaken himself for whatever the day might hold. By the time he had made it back to camp, fasts were already being broken and the soldiers were preparing their mounts to begin the day’s ride.

  Torval had taken the initiative that morning and made breakfast for the two of them: cheese; dried fruit; a bag of roasted, salted nuts; and some beer from the little keg Aarna had sent along with them. The dwarf even offered one of his prized pickled eggs, but Rem politely refused.

  “Fried, yes, pickled, no,” he said. “But I do appreciate the offer.”

  Torval shrugged, fished one of the eggs from the jar, and went about wolfing it down. When he had nearly made it disappear, he leaned closer to Rem and spoke quietly, blowing sulfuric breath with the astringent tinge of vinegar toward his partner.

  “I want to apologize,” Torval said. “For last night.”

  Rem stared at him, honestly puzzled.

  “I shouldn’t have said those things,” the dwarf said. “Sometimes I forget that the boundaries of honor
are not so clearly drawn as we would have them. If your father truly used you as you said, and if you were truly trapped, as you said, then you were right to go. You owed them nothing. Your life is your own.”

  Rem studied the dwarf. He saw the sincerity in his eyes, the earnest desire for understanding and reconciliation. For a moment he thought of Leriok again: a fresh-faced boy, five years his junior, always eager to please and slow to complain, capable, but hardly gifted. He imagined that boy mourning his big brother, lost to bandits in the woods . . . and then imagined that same boy, his youth instantly snuffed out when the expectations and requirements of a future throne were thrust upon him.

  Your life is your own, Torval had said. But was it?

  Rem thrust the thought of his brother—his guilt—from his mind, shrugged, and made sure no one was nearby to hear them. So assured, he offered his own apology.

  “I’m sorry I kept it from you for so long,” he said.

  “Your life is your own,” Torval said again, this time with a portentous emphasis. “You owe no one an explanation—not even me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Rem said. “I was born into my family—pure accident, no choice in the matter. But you, old stump, you’re the family I’ve chosen. You are the brother and friend that I want—that I need. Let me swear, from this moment forth, to never keep secrets from you again. I trust you with my life. I hope you know you can trust me with yours.”

  Torval held up his beer mug. “Aye, that, my brother. I know it all too well.”

  They touched mugs lightly, then drank. After a moment Torval sighed.

  “I shan’t call you Bonny Prince anymore,” he said.

  Rem raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Torval shrugged. “It’s just not funny if it’s actually true.”

  The dwarf looked at Rem askance then and gave him a crooked, mischievous grin.

  Rem could only laugh and shake his head.