The Realm Rift Saga Box Set

by James T Kelly

  “No.”

  “Do you think we’re all stupid?” She stalked towards him and he retreated from her. “Do you think we don’t know you’re lying to us?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You want to hear some truth?” She poked him in the chest, as if she wished her finger were a knife. “We don’t trust a word you say.”

  He stopped retreating. Was that true? Or was she trying to hurt him?

  She jabbed again, then her hand balled and she hit him, but without conviction. A sob burst out of her. “I hate you,” she whispered. And she hit him, then slapped at his chest. Strong, confident, independent Katharine. What had he done?

  He put his arms around her, pulling her close and resting her head on his shoulder. He made meaningless sounds into her hair, stroking it with one hand. Maybe this was what they needed. To get it all out. Clear the air. Move on.

  But then she pushed him away and he stumbled back. She wouldn’t look at him. “Don’t touch me,” she said and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  She just needed to be comforted. If he could comfort her, make her see. Then everything would be alright again. “Katharine.” He reached out to touch her arm.

  She slapped his hand away. “Don’t,” she said. “Not again.” She met his gaze, her eyes colder than Neirin’s had ever been. “Never again.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but she was turning, leaving. “Katharine,” he said. But she didn’t stop. He followed her, out into the hallway, chased her down the stairs. “Katharine, wait.”

  Six was stood at the bottom, watching them descend, confused and concerned.

  “Don’t let him talk to me,” she said to him as she passed and, by the time Tom reached him, he was stood in his way.

  “Let me pass,” Tom said, then called, “Katharine.”

  “Let her be,” Six said.

  No. He couldn’t leave it like this. Not worse than before. “Katharine.” He tried to elbow his way past but Six pushed him back. “Let her be. Tom, let her be.”

  She stepped into a room at the back of the house and the fight went out of him, as if it had been sustained only by the sight of her. He slumped against the stairs. He would have sat but the sword strapped to his waist wouldn’t allow it.

  “I said some terrible things, Six,” he said. He pressed his face into his hands. “I don’t know what happened. I just got so angry.”

  When he looked up, Six was just nodding, his gaze on the doorway Katharine had disappeared through.

  They grow close, Dank had said. “Will you talk to her?” Tom asked.

  “Don’t put me in the middle of this.” So said the elf standing between them. Tom smiled despite himself.

  “Please, Six.” When the elf shook his head, Tom said, “Just make her understand, I never meant to hurt her. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  Six shook his head and sighed. “I won’t tell more lies for you, Tom,” he said, full of apology and regret.

  Tom blinked. “It’s not a lie.” How could it be? Then he felt his hand twitch. Did Six think he wasn’t sorry? That he’d meant to hurt her? “It’s not a lie,” he growled.

  “Then why don’t your actions match your words?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Only what I see.” Six pointed after her. “I see a good woman. A friend. I see her being hurt. And it’s always you that hurts her.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “Perhaps you don’t. But what is it they say the road to Faerie is paved with?”

  Good intentions. Tom twisted his neck to look down the hallway after her. “What should I do?”

  “Let her be.” Six’s words were kind but they stung all the same. They were for Katharine’s benefit, not his own.

  “And then?”

  Six shrugged. “And then see if she still wants anything to do with you.”

  Tom nodded. Six was right. Chasing Katharine would only upset her more. She needed time and space. Then maybe they could mend this rift. He touched Caledyr, drawing comfort from it. Or should he pursue? What if, by leaving her alone, he allowed her to draw further away from him? When a word or an action on his part could mend all?

  Before he could argue, Brega stepped from the front room. “Tom, Six. Lord Neirin wants to talk to you.”

  Six nodded. “I’ll fetch Katharine. Tom, you go in.”

  Chastened, he did as he was told. Brega assumed a position behind Neirin, who was stood in the centre of the room, back straight, arms folded. It was not his fading and tattered robes that stopped him looking as imposing and as gallant as he always did. It was something in his eyes. His own face had become his mask. Behind it there was fear and doubt.

  But he offered Tom a kingly nod. “Thomas.” His tone was soft, sympathetic, like Tom was a distressed dog. They had heard everything.

  So he tried to pretend nothing had happened. “Lord Neirin.”

  Storrstenn sat in a high-backed chair, lost in its size. He made no concession to the mood. “It is past time you were risen, Master Rymour,” he said. His hands were steepled and he looked stern. “There is much to do.”

  Neirin added, “Indeed.” Said to claim the last word and nothing more.

  Storrstenn grinned.

  Dank and Katharine filed in behind Six. “I couldn’t find the other dwarf,” he said.

  Storrstenn waved a hand. “She shall return shortly. I sent her on an errand.”

  “An errand?” Neirin asked.

  “Indeed.” Said with a mocking grin.

  But Neirin ignored it, if he even noticed it at all. “What errand?”

  “To secure what we need for the next part of our journey.”

  “One dwarf cannot carry what we need,” Brega said.

  “No?”

  “No. We need weapons, food, clothes.” She still wore only a shift and a yellow scarf.

  “One of you bears arms already.” Storrstenn opened his hands, a sort of shrug that indicated the building they were in. “Clothes you can find here.”

  “You would steal from these people?” Six sneered.

  “You bear the mark of outcast. You seek to topple a king.” Storrstenn smirked. “Yet a little common thievery is below you?”

  “These people have suffered tragedy. They’ve done nothing to deserve burglary.”

  Storrstenn’s smirk disappeared. “And what did I did do to deserve years of indentured servitude?”

  “Three. Three years and you return to your people.”

  “Yes, three years. A grave matter to a dwarf, who counts his luck and finds himself rich if he lives past twenty.” Storrstenn wagged a finger at Six, a comical gesture if hatred didn’t burn in the dwarf’s eyes. “We do not all have the luxury of long lives. Do not spend our time as frivolously as your own.”

  Twenty years. To live only twenty years. Tom tried to remember what he’d been like at twenty. It seemed a lifetime ago. What if his life had ended then? He’d have died with a wife. No children. No Faerie. He would never have stood in Cairnagan, Cairnalyr, in the Western Kingdom, before Emyr himself. He would not have known Katharine, would never have held Caledyr. Never have seen the merrow. What an extraordinary life he’d lived in the time since twenty.

  All lost to a dwarf.

  “Do not spend your pity on me, boy,” Storrstenn warned him. “Unless you would spend it on yourselves and the elfs too.”

  “He’s right.” Six seemed unmoved by any of it. “We have what time we have. No sense wasting it moaning and wishing.”

  “To the matter.” Neirin kept his gaze on the dwarf. “If your companion is not securing weapons, clothes or food, what is she doing?”

  “She fetches food, Lord Neirin. I did not say she did not.” He steepled his fingers again. The arms of the chair forced his elbows too high, leaving his hands in front of his face. “She fetches mounts, that we might cover more ground. And she sends letters.”

  “Letters?”

  “Letters. For us to find success, we m
ust alert our brothers and sisters across the Kingdom.”

  “You have a plan.”

  “I do.”

  When Storrstenn said nothing more, Neirin raised his eyebrows at him, unimpressed. Tired and fragile though he was, it was still an unnerving sight. But the dwarf still said nothing.

  “Perhaps you would be kind enough to share?”

  Storrstenn’s mouth set. “A secret shared is a secret known, my lord.”

  “If you expect me to put my life in your hands, master dwarf, you will find yourself mistaken, abandoned, and your cause no longer our concern.”

  Storrstenn smiled a charming smile. Fake. Even condescending. “Too many eyes and ears put a dwarf’s life at risk, my lord. I have assured my survival by sharing only the most essential knowledge.”

  “I deem it essential.”

  Storrstenn fidgeted, casting his gaze across everyone in the room. “Of course,” he said, pained. “You, my lord, should know. But only you.”

  “Everyone,” Neirin replied. His voice sounded hollow as he said, “We have travelled a long way together. We can all be trusted.”

  Tom frowned. How long ago was it that Six was under suspicion?

  “My lord, I beg you reconsider.”

  “I will not have us in ignorance, dwarf, while you decide our fates as if you were our lord and master.” Neirin’s voice regained some of its old, cold fury. But even that did not make Storrstenn quail. “You will talk, to all of us, now.”

  He grimaced, matching Neirin’s stare. But Tom could see the dwarf knew there was no choice; he would have to trust them. Storrstenn took a deep breath and his shoulders sagged. His grimace melted into concern. “There is a whole network of dwarfs across the kingdom,” he said. “Each one works towards freeing our people from this contract.”

  “How?” Six asked.

  “They have their ways,” he said, carefully.

  “You will explain further,” said Neirin.

  “To a Westerner?” he protested. “Lord Neirin, if I tell him too much where will he go? To his fellows, with my secrets on his lips and a pardon in his dreams.”

  “He travels with us,” Neirin replied. “Our cause is his own.”

  “You would endanger all of us?”

  “You are in danger already,” Tom said. “You’ve fled your masters in the company of fugitives. If we parted ways now, you’d still be hunted by the Westerners.”

  “But my brothers would not,” Storrstenn replied. “They would be safe. Anonymous. Able to continue our work.”

  “And what use this work if you do not harness it?” Neirin asked. “If it is to be of help, we must know of it.”

  Storrstenn glared at Six, eying the tattoo on the elf’s cheek. “Very well.” But his expression belied his sentiment. “Many of them gather information. That is all. They listen, they read, and they send reports.”

  “To you?”

  He shrugged. “To many. There is no one leader.”

  “And the others?”

  “They work towards destabilising the kingdom. Some of their tasks are petty, like framing community leaders for criminal acts. Some of them are greater, like misdirecting or rewriting orders, encouraging officials to corruption, feeding intelligence to enemies.”

  Six swore in elfish. “Why?” he asked. “What could you possibly gain?”

  Storrstenn grinned now. “If we dwarfs are to be freed, the kingdom must find itself in a great concern so that we might be expelled from it.” He opened his hands and his grin became a leer. “We must cast the kingdom into civil war.”

  Chapter 7

  Those words hung heavy in the air. Civil war. An awful thought, to bring fighting and death and distrust into someone’s land. Farms like this would find fellows across the Kingdom, neighbour turned against neighbour, families turned inside out, friends turned soldiers on different sides of a battle. Yet these elfs had forced war onto everyone else’s doorsteps. Smothered Tir in misery, sowing heartache and fear across the duchies. It was time they reaped some of their own harvest.

  Six spoke into the silence, with a sneer that even Brega would struggle to match. “You overestimate yourself, dwarf, to think you could hurt the Kingdom.”

  “Yet we are everywhere, master elf. We are in your homes, your palaces, your great houses. We are aides to generals and proctors and kings. You entrust us with tasks you called menial, not realising how much damage can be done with a mere piece of paper.”

  “It will take more than paper to cause a war.”

  “You think so?” Storrstenn shrugged. “Sannvinn travelled to the nearest town with a piece of paper signed and stamped by the patron of her masters. A piece of paper that will furnish her with seven horses and provisions for a week.” He smirked. “A forgery.”

  Tom watched Six’s face melt from derision to distress.

  “You see, don’t you?” Storrstenn said. “By making us responsible for your menial tasks, you have placed into our hands such a power.”

  Six shook his head but said nothing. His golden skin had paled.

  “It’s a bad plan.” It was Brega who spoke, her words plain and unemotional.

  Storrstenn bristled. “Why?”

  “Starting a civil war will put soldiers on the streets and tighten security at the palace.”

  “The palace?”

  “At Cairnagwyn. We need to break the central monolith there.”

  “Why?”

  Tom couldn’t face explaining it all again. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Storrstenn stroked his chin. “So you would have me share my plans but you will not share your own?”

  “Idris invades the duchies of men,” Neirin said. “His dragons make him unstoppable. We would break the magic that binds them to him and level the battlefield.”

  “I would not place your faith in a children’s fable such as magic, Lord Neirin,” Storrstenn said with a smirk. “You will find better results in deposition. Promise a crown to Proctor Renwyr and you will find him more than sympathetic to our causes.”

  “Is that how you plan to free the dwarfs?” Tom asked. “Put someone else on the throne that will set you free?”

  “It is.”

  It seemed wrong in a way Tom couldn’t quite understand. To remove a king and replace them with a puppet. What if someone had done that to Emyr?

  Of course, Emyr hadn’t enslaved an entire people.

  “There is no greater pull on a soldier than war on his own doorstep,” Storrstenn said. He was appealing to Neirin, who looked uncertain. “The invasions would collapse. We could find freedom. Seeking entry to Idris’ palace would be impossible even in peacetime.”

  Storrstenn was right. What chance did they have? If they weren’t spotted and reported by any of the thousands of elfs who lived there, they would be stopped by the hundreds of guards protecting the king. Tom looked at Neirin. What plan had he to get the sword to the monolith? Tom began to suspect he didn’t have one.

  “I can get them in,” Six said. “The best plan is to go unseen. Slip into the palace, break the monolith, slip back out again in the resulting chaos.”

  Storrstenn snorted. “Of everyone here, who has the best chance to slipping into the palace? The humans? The Easterners? The traitor? Or I?”

  “I know the palace. I can find a way.”

  Storrstenn shook his head. “And how will you get there?” He pointed out the window. “It’s a long road to Cairnagwyn.”

  The implication was clear: they needed him. And if they didn’t need his plan, they needed his help. And with his help came the plan.

  “I would hear your thoughts, Brega,” Neirin said, quiet, fragile. His gaze was pointed at the dwarf but his eyes saw something else. His face was a stony mask. Of course. He was used to Siomi’s counsel.

  Brega saw it too. “My lord?”

  “If you please.”

  She shifted, straightened her back. When she spoke her voice was without edge and soft, making it harder to hear be
hind the scarf she wore. It was like she was doing an impersonation of Siomi but it was the wrong thing to do. “Soldiers will complicate things.” Stop stop stop, Tom thought, and wished Brega could somehow hear him. “But we might make use of the confusion. If Western eyes are directed at each other, there will be fewer pointed our way.”

  Neirin’s face was pinched. He looked like he might cry. “It is not how you would do it?” he managed.

  She hesitated. Had she seen her mistake? When she said, “No,” her voice was louder, more like her own. She took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “But we might not have a choice.”

  “I won’t do it.” Six was stood with his arms folded, feet planted as if he expected someone to push him. Perhaps he didn’t realise how much of Neirin’s posture he had imitated. “I won’t help throw my people into war.”

  “Your people branded you a traitor,” Tom said. “Unjustly, so you said.”

  “Do innocent elfs deserve civil war for that?”

  “Do the innocent men and women of the duchy deserve the war Idris has brought them?”

  “Only Idris is guilty of Idris’ wrongs.” Six shook his head. “We shouldn’t punish other people for them.”

  Katharine nodded. “I agree with Six.” She turned to Storrstenn. “I have the utmost respect for your people, Storrstenn, but this is not the only way. The Council of Elects could demand the treaty be revoked. Or amended. Idris doesn’t have time for a war with the duchies and with the Provinces too.”

  Storrstenn grimaced. “It was diplomacy that made me a slave, lady Pathfinder,” he said. “Do not ask me to put my fate in its hands again.”

  “But it’s not right to exchange your freedom for the death and suffering of innocents.”

  No-one is innocent. That’s what Mab had said, before they left Faerie. And, as if reading his mind, Storrstenn thumped the arms of the chair and hissed, “There are no innocents.” His face was twisted into a mask of hate. “Every elf in this kingdom is guilty of slavery.”

  “Not every elf has a thrall in their household.”

  He pointed at Six. “But they stand by.” He stabbed at the air, like he could wound the elf with his finger. “They do nothing. Say nothing. That makes them guilty.”