by AC Cobble
“I won’t,” snarled Borace, shoving the man away, but in the din of the tavern, Rew could tell the berserker’s voice had dropped an octave. He was subdued as he took his position, clearly mulling over the fact that he had no particular skill at throwing knives and that perhaps he’d wagered far more than was wise when all signs pointed to him losing the match, again.
But pride is as slippery as a fish, and it stinks just as awful. Borace cocked his arm and flung a knife, which missed half a pace to the left of the board. Howls of laughter greeted his throw, and the man’s chest heaved with angry breath. He raised an arm and flung the second knife, and this one was well-thrown, more out of luck than anything else. The crowd in the tavern went wild, and Rew could no longer hear what was being said.
Raif approached Borace, and Rew and the others could see the big man shaking his head. Raif was pleading with Borace, grasping at the berserker’s arm, but Borace shook the nobleman off.
“He’s offering a way out of the wager,” guessed Cinda.
“He thinks he’ll lose?” asked Zaine, wide-eyed. “That last one was nothing more than luck, and even if Borace wins this match, he cannot win another. It was best two of three, wasn’t it?”
Shaking her head, Cinda explained, “I don’t believe Raif thinks he’ll lose his money. I believe he thinks Borace cannot pay. Raif is trying to avoid a scene, though it doesn’t look like he’s having much luck.”
“Your brother has come a long way since I first met him,” acknowledged Rew.
“You’ve seen him during unusual times, Ranger. You haven’t seen the best of him. My brother doesn’t always think through his actions, but he always acts with honor. He’s learned a lot, too, meeting people who don’t automatically bow when he walks in the room, watching you…”
They turned back and saw Raif backing away, his mouth tight, his eyes on the nameless woman. She pranced toward Raif and settled standing close to him. Borace tore his eyes away from the pair and stepped up for the last throw of the round.
He missed the board, by a lot.
Again, the tavern erupted, most of the patrons laughing at Borace and those foolish enough to have bet on the big man. The nameless woman’s eyes were hooded as she watched. Raif had his arms crossed over his chest, and while he’d just won a fortune and there were scores of witnesses to attest to it, he didn’t seem eager to attempt collection.
It seemed that the small, thin man who’d drank too much of Borace’s ale was on the losing end of many of the bets, and no one was shy about asking him to make good. People were shoving the man, jostling him and ripping his purse from his belt. From look of it, Rew guessed the purse didn’t contain nearly enough coin to cover the little man’s wagers. Hands were bunched into fists, and several men were fingering their belt knives. Rew thought the small man ought to be running as fast as he could, but instead, the little fellow staggered toward Borace like a fighting rooster. The berserker was at the target, drawing one knife from there and two from the wall.
The small man slammed a finger into Borace’s chest, and he appeared to be demanding compensation, though why that should be the case, Rew couldn’t fathom.
“He’s going to get that finger broken off if he’s not careful,” murmured Zaine. “I don’t think Borace is one to take demands kindly, especially when he’s sore about losing.”
The rest of the room quieted as well, particularly those who had won bets from the little man. It looked as if they weren’t going to need to rough the man up, that the giant warrior he was accosting was going to handle it for them. But instead, Borace shoved the three knives into the slender man’s hands and said loud enough to be heard around the room, “You want your coin back? Then you throw against her. I’m done. She’s beat me.”
Shaking his head, the thin man said, “Nah, mate, I want my coin from you. You lost. You owe me.”
Laughing, Borace shook his head and looked out at the crowd. “That’s not the way it works. Hey, anyone want to take care of this little fly? I’ve got a wager to settle, and it looks like he does, too.”
A man, a scar cutting down half his face, across one eye, and twisting his mouth into a disgusting sneer, laughed. “No worries, my man. We’ll handle the little fly for you. The rule round here—if you don’t pay in coin, then you gotta pay in blood.”
“If you say so,” growled Borace, pushing past the small man toward Raif. He coughed into a fist and asked, “Don’t supposed you’d, ah, like to throw for the balance? Double or nothing?”
“You don’t have double,” remarked Raif.
“The woman, then,” said Borace, gesturing to her. “She’s yours for, ah, a week if you can beat me.”
Raif shifted uncomfortably and shot a look toward Rew and the others.
“Two weeks?” asked Borace.
“I’m not yours to offer,” hissed the nameless woman.
“Silence!” barked Borace, and he raised a hand as if to slap her.
“Hold on,” snapped the small man. He grabbed Borace’s arm and, with surprising strength, tugged the giant berserker around. “You’re not going to leave me to these animals. I bet on you. You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you a thing.”
All around, the other patrons cackled in bloodthirsty glee. It reminded Rew of nothing more than a pack of narjags circling their prey.
Borace gripped the front of the smaller man’s tunic and shook him hard. “I’ve got a woman to deal with, so get out of my face, fly. You’re on your own, and best of luck with that. It looks like you’re going to need whatever grace the Blessed Mother spares you. I’d say I care, but I don’t.”
The small man swung his fist, the three throwing knives still in his hand. The points of the blades plunged into Borace’s neck. The small man staggered back, his mouth a perfect oval of surprise. He wasn’t as surprised as Borace, though. The giant berserker reached up and gripped the handles of the knives.
“No!” shouted Rew. “Don’t pull those—“
Borace did, and three geysers of blood fountained out from the puncture wounds, staining his shirt and everyone unlucky enough to be within half a dozen paces of him. The small man finally decided to run, and no one thought to stop him until the door banged open and he was out into the cold night.
Standing in the middle of the room, Borace looked down at the bloody knives in his hand in confusion, while blood spurted in sticky jets from his neck.
Rew glanced at Anne where she was sitting just as still as the fighter. She did not look away from the berserker, but she did not stand and run to him, either. Rew put an arm around her shoulder, and she raised her wine mug to her lips. Barely audible, she whispered, “I think I’ll have another after this.”
19
It was a subdued journey the next day into Carff. Borace had been an ass who had rarely displayed any consideration for anyone other than himself, but in some ways, that made it worse. It was hard to blame the man for being a selfish prick while not caring about his horrible demise. If he was guilty, they were as well.
Raif took it the worst. For a week, he’d been practicing several hours a day with the giant, and to see Borace felled in the opening salvo of what never became a drunken tavern brawl was difficult. The mercenary captain had strutted and preened as if he was the greatest warrior to walk Vaeldon’s soil, but he’d been nearly killed by the narjags in the only real combat they’d seen him face, and then he’d been stabbed to death by a reed of a man all because Borace was terrible at throwing knives and making wagers. Raif had taken the man at his word when he’d bragged about his prowess, and it was a hard thing to admit you were wrong about a person. It didn’t help that Raif’s admiration of Borace echoed how he’d felt about his father, and both men had died from daggers wielded by those they would have considered their inferiors.
The nameless woman had taken Borace’s death the best. While she was polite enough not to share her disdain for Borace in front of Raif, she made it no secret to the others she thou
ght the world was better without such a man. And perhaps it was. The mercenary had gladly taken Baron Appleby’s gold to leave Stanton and its people behind. He’d laughed when he’d discovered the bodies of his companions who’d fled without him only because he’d been too injured to follow. He’d cackled at spending his fallen companions’ share of the spoils on ale, which of course, led to some rather unwise assumptions about how skilled he was at throwing knives and how dismissive he should be to a man holding them. Was the world better off without the berserker in it?
Rew cursed to himself. He didn’t give a fig about Borace, whether the man was dead or alive. He’d been mulling the question over only because they were hours from Carff, where they hoped to find Prince Valchon, another boastful man who’d wrought much sorrow in the world. Though in Valchon’s case, the prince had earned his confidence. If Borace did not deserve his death, then did Valchon? And the most difficult part, what right did Rew have to judge such matters?
In the early afternoon, Rew found himself walking beside the nameless woman, and no one else was around them. He asked her, “You didn’t know him long, but you knew him well, did you not?”
She glanced at the ranger out of the corner of her eye. “I had a fling with him because we were off in the middle of nowhere, and there was nothing better to do. He made me regret it ever since. What, you think I ought to be sobbing like a child that the man is dead?”
Rew shrugged.
“It’s because I knew him well that I’ve no tears, Ranger. You didn’t see him taking time to say words over his mercenary friends, did you? That’s how he lived. He didn’t care about the living or the dead, and we’ve no reason to care about him.”
“But doesn’t that make us the same as him?” questioned Rew. “Borace being a heartless man doesn’t justify our heartlessness, does it?”
“You think too much, Ranger,” she said, patting the hilt of the brass scimitar hanging from her belt. “Care about your family and your close friends. For everyone else, there is this.”
“He was part of our group…” reminded Rew.
“Not really.”
Rew frowned at the woman.
“Ask the empath. She feels the ancient magic that courses through this world. She knows. Borace was physically with us, but he was never a part of us. Not even a part of me, Ranger, and I got closer physically to the man that I imagine you would ever want to be. If he’d been a true part of our group, she would have healed him, wouldn’t she? Why do you think she just sat there, Ranger? She knows.”
They walked on for a bit longer, neither of them speaking. Rew decided to do as the woman suggested. He stepped to the side of the highway and waited for Anne.
She raised an eyebrow at him in question, and he asked her, “Borace was with us, but was he one of us?”
Understanding his meaning, Anne shook her head. Rew nodded and began walking again at her side.
“The question is, does that matter,” said Anne. “Does it matter he wasn’t one of us? Does it matter he wasn’t a good man? I’ve healed hundreds of people that I never learned the names of. They could have been killers for all I know. Some of them probably were. Maybe I should have tried to save Borace. I think I could have, had I been quick.”
“That’s not… I-I didn’t mean you,” stammered Rew. “Anne, no, you can’t blame yourself for that man’s death. King’s Sake, the only one who should be blamed is Borace.”
“It was my decision not to heal him.”
“No… Don’t put that on your—“
“You’ve been so wrapped up in your own head that you’ve been ignoring everything else,” Anne chided him. “You’re worried about how you should feel about Borace’s death when I’m the one who chose not to heal him. But that’s not what you’re really worried about, is it? Rew, you’re tearing yourself up over a decision that you’ve already made, that all of us have already made. Maybe it’s right. Maybe it’s wrong. That’s too complicated for either of us to know. What we do know is what we feel, the nudge that the Blessed Mother grants us. You can feel the nudge, Rew, just as I did with Borace. The decision has been made. That’s my point. Right or wrong, it’s done, and rather than stewing about it, we ought to be moving on. It’s bigger than us, and I won’t claim to understand what is happening, but I don’t have to because I have faith. Faith in the Mother, and faith in you.”
Rew frowned.
“If you don’t confront Prince Valchon, he’ll kill thousands of people,” said Anne. “You worry that if you do, he won’t save thousands of people. Those are huge, complicated tangles that you’ll never be able to tease loose. What you do know, and what you can get your arms around, is what he’ll do to you, to Cinda, and to me. That’s the nudge the Mother has granted. Is there any way we all walk away from this and the king and the princes ignore us? It’s too late, Rew, which in your heart you know. The choice has been made. We’ve decided what road we’re to take. All that’s left is to walk the path.”
“I never thought you’d ask me to kill a man.”
“I’m not asking you to do or not to do. You know what you’re going to do already. Nothing I say will turn you from the path, and despite the guilt and horror I feel about such a thing, I wouldn’t turn you from it if I could. Walk your path, Senior Ranger. You’re going to kill Valchon. The only question is when.”
They walked on for a while before Rew asked, “What about how?”
“Stop complicating things, Rew.”
With surety of what he needed to do but no plan of how or when to do it, they arrived in Carff. Seeing Valchon was a gigantic risk, but it was Heindaw who’d imprisoned Baron Fedgley, so Rew believed it possible, even likely, that Valchon did not know it was Cinda herself who was the lynchpin in it all. If the king could be fooled into looking for Kallie, then why not Valchon?
Besides, without going to Valchon’s palace, they were at a dead end. And worse, they’d be signing Stanton’s death sentence as well. The people there had no chance if the prince did not come to their rescue.
Despite wrestling with it from every angle and deciding it was the best plan, Rew’s stomach roiled in protest, and his hands ached from clenching them as the sprawling walls of Carff came into view. Laughing bitterly to himself, he admitted settling on a plan to challenge the royal family shouldn’t be the kind of thing that set one’s mind to ease.
When they got to the gates of the city, they were still almost a league from the coast and the expansive harbor which had earned Carff’s place in the world. Over the noise of the city, they couldn’t hear the lapping of waves or the calls of the seabirds, but Rew knew from experience that when they reached Prince Valchon’s palace, they would. From the prince’s expansive rooftop gardens, there were places of quiet contemplation where one could absorb the energy of the sea, spaces where one could look out over the harbor and the activity there, toward the city itself, or take in the industry that stretched along the coast. Some of those gardens were quiet glades where no sound but the wind intruded. Others were filled with tinkling fountains and hidden musicians, and some were positioned to appreciate the cacophony of the city.
The gardens, long before Valchon occupied the palace, had been designed strategically to grant whatever impression the master of the house wanted to show visitors. The palace had dozens of faces, and the prince could decide which was his that day. The building, Rew had always thought, reflected Valchon perfectly, as if it had been designed with the chimerical prince in mind.
As they plunged into the chaos of Carff’s main thoroughfare and the noise rose around them, Rew gestured for the others to keep close. It was easy to get lost in a place like Carff. There were calls from vendors who lined the blocks around the city gates, selling all manner of items that newly arrived travelers might need, and just as many items that Rew couldn’t fathom anyone wanting or needing.
The air was damp and heavy, like a wet blanket, but it wasn’t as cold as they’d felt on the way there. So close to the coast,
a breeze blew off the water and brought warmth with it. The city seemed to generate its own heat as well, with so many people and animals packed tightly together.
Rew led them on, taking the main avenue that cut from the gates to the market square that crouched in the middle of the city like a spider at its web. Beyond the markets and the bustle around them was Valchon’s palace, hugging the coast with its back turned to the city.
There were all manner of strange and exotic sights to catch the eye, and while Rew tried to hurry the others along behind him, he quickly found he couldn’t. Every half dozen steps, one of the children would stumble, staring openmouthed at some new wonder.
There were street performers of a stunning variety, wearing colorful costumes and calling songs and chants designed to capture the interest of passersby. Behind them was block after block of a dazzling array of shops and kiosks. They were stuffed with goods, and there seemed to be very little organization to it all—tailors beside bakers beside potters. The main thoroughfare of Carff was meant for strolling, and each vendor displayed their wares to catch the eye.
Even more interesting than those seeking the attention of visitors were the visitors themselves. Carff and her port drew people from all over the world, and for the nobles and Zaine, used to the remote Eastern Territory, there were people unlike anyone they’d ever seen. The streets were a kaleidoscope of the world’s people. The babble of dozens of different languages filled the streets like water in a river. Rew tried to get the others to grab ahold of each other’s belts so they were not separated, but getting their attention was proving futile.
“That woman just swallowed an entire sword!” cried Raif. “Right down her throat!”
Rew coughed, bug-eyed. He was looking at woman wearing a black veil and headdress, skirts of the same loose, billowing material, and nothing else. She was perched at a ground level window of a house of pleasure, and her eyes and bare chest offered an invitation to what happened inside.
