“Step aside,” Lucas demanded, but the assertive trader didn’t listen. Instead, he nudged his way to Torsten’s frontside.
“There it is,” the trader said, awe in his voice, although it sounded false. “A man with such great taste in weapons… I have here an axe forged by the legendary Brike Sledgeborne. You’ll be able to cut clean through dragon scale, hew through a stone wall!”
“What use do you think I have for an axe, friend?” Torsten asked, gesturing to his useless eyes. He couldn’t help but scratch an itch around them as well.
“Then perhaps your aide?” the trader shoved in closer and broke Lucas’s grip on Torsten’s arm. “Could you not see yourself with this grand weapon, young man? You’ll be the envy of the entire castle.”
“Would you shog off!” Lucas shouted. He pushed the trader out of the way, causing him to trip on cobblestone and drop the weapon. The way the blade clanged and reverberated, it sounded like little more than basic iron. Dwarven smiths would’ve never crafted something so rudimentary.
“Badgering scum,” Lucas cursed. “Worse than beggars back home.”
“Relax, Lucas.” Torsten patted him on the back. “It’s nice to see the swindlers back at it. Better than heathens.”
“I can’t stand liars and embellishers. It’s hard enough for honest workers like my parents to make a living.”
“Worry, not. Iam sorts the true from the rubbish.” Torsten lifted his chin and inhaled. He caught a whiff of flank cut from his favorite butcher off on the left, a chubby fellow from Winde Port. The modiste shop stood adjacent to it. Even without eyes, he knew Yarrington from a lifetime of patrolling its streets.
Things had been chaotic, but it buoyed his spirits to be out in the din of it all. To experience his city as it ought to be, a melting pot of peoples who saw the worth of Liam’s vision.
“That’s the shop,” Torsten said, pointing. He could picture it in his mind, the street sign outside, the grubby butcher who set up his stand at the corner to try and get lords and ladies to think his meat was somehow worthier of their palate than any others. Success in the Yarrington markets was as much a war as that with the Black Sands… but at least people didn’t die.
“You’re sure you know what to choose?” Lucas asked.
“I watched her handmaidens come and go with every extravagant outfit she ever wanted so that she could stand out at her masquerades and balls,” Torsten said. “I’m sure I can—”
“Thief!” a woman howled. “Thief!”
A man blew between Torsten and Lucas. Lucas absorbed the brunt of the blow, getting knocked off his feet while Torsten stumbled.
Aye, back to normal, Torsten thought. As the traders flock, so do the thieves.
For a moment, he worried that Whitney Fierstown was back to his old ways despite everything he’d been through. The thief who never seemed to disappear wasn’t heavy enough to hit with such force, however, even at full speed.
“You have to pay for that piece, you Docksider rat!” the woman screamed. “He stole a golden locket. Guards, help me!”
“Piece of sewer trash, get back here!” Lucas barked. Torsten heard him scramble to his feet, push someone out of the way and give chase.
“Lucas, leave him!” Torsten called.
“I’ll stop him, Sir!” Lucas shouted back, not listening. “Gives us all a bad name!”
“Youths,” Torsten sighed. Chasing thieves was below the station of a Shieldsman, but Torsten couldn’t blame Lucas. How could he after all his dealings with Whitney? And the young recruit had only just served as a city guardsman in South Corner. Old habits were hard to break.
Torsten extended his cane to walk on his own and tapped toward the shop’s direction. He actually found the crowds easier to traverse without a guide. People recognized him more readily, and bowed out of the way, offering blessings for how he’d stopped Redstar the Deceiver. He wished they’d all do the same for the others responsible, like Sir Mulliner and Oleander. But he knew—only he who drives the blade through the heart of evil ever winds up in bard’s tales.
He found the walkway and had begun to follow his nose toward the shop when he heard a shriek. If he’d had any hair on his bald head, it would’ve stood on end. Torsten knew that sound. He’d heard it from Oleander’s mouth after Pi threw himself out of his window.
“Lucas!” he shouted, but the young man’s chase had taken him out of earshot.
Torsten couldn’t wait. He took off toward Oleander’s voice, using his size and armor to shove through citizens. He plowed through a vendor’s stand and apologized profusely as he sped by.
“Ah, I see you changed your mind, Shieldsman!” the weapon’s trader said, forcing himself in front of Torsten again. “Even a blind man couldn’t lose with a weapon like th—”
Torsten flung the man to the side and rushed ahead, ignoring all the curses at his back from those he’d hurt or pushed aside.
“You ruined it!” Oleander screamed.
“Queen Mother,” Lucas stammered. “I didn’t mean—“
“You ruined everything!”
“Oleander, what happened?” Torsten questioned as he neared her. He immediately regretted using her name so casually, but it wasn’t the time to worry.
“My Queen, calm yourself, it was an accident,” Lord Kaviel said.
“Calm myself?” Oleander bristled. “He broke my mask… You sniveling cur. Look at me! Look at this revolting face. I should have you hanged!”
All around, citizens had begun to murmur about how she was at it again, and Torsten physically cringed.
“I was chasing a thief. It was—” Lucas said.
“Liar!” Oleander roared. “You wanted to see the face of your wicked, ‘whore queen.’ You wanted to look upon me and laugh!”
Torsten heard the explicit sound of the back of a hand across Lucas’s face. He knew well how her rings stung, and how easily they broke the skin. Torsten’s cane crunched a piece of Oleander’s mask as he hurried closer, his foot another. He cringed. The glass and porcelain shards scraped stone, as terror-inducing a sound as a barrage of Shesaitju thorn-arrows.
“Oleander, stop!” Torsten bellowed as he placed himself between Oleander and Lucas. The silence that ensued was like all the city had suddenly vanished, and with Torsten’s lack of sight, it may well have.
“I swear, Sir Unger,” Lucas stammered. “I didn’t mean to knock into her.”
“I know,” Torsten said. He extended his open hand and took an uncertain step toward Oleander. “My Queen, I think it’s time we returned home.”
She didn’t answer. More whispering broke out around them as the attention of the market-goers found them. Torsten knew how the situation must have looked. The Queen Mother stooped over another servant of the Crown, tall and fierce as the land from whence she came.
“So, it is true,” a citizen said.
“Look at her face,” said another.
“I heard, before he died, her heathen brother cursed her to be as ugly on the outside as within.”
“Should have tossed him over the wall instead a long time ago.”
The murmuring was relentless.
“Oleander,” Torsten whispered, struggling to drown out all the chatter. He only hoped that it was his heightened senses which allowed him to hear the voices so clearly. “Please.”
“Yes,” Lord Jolly said, finally growing stern. “Maybe it is time we cut our fun short.”
Again, Torsten stepped closer. He hoped Oleander remained in front of him, but as the throng of spectators grew, and the Shieldsmen fanned out to keep them at bay, he couldn’t even perceive Oleander’s breathing anymore.
“Oh, Torsten,” she cried. Her arms wrapped around his broad frame and she collapsed against his chest. “How hideous did the monster make me? What did he do to me!” Her legs grew wobbly, and Torsten helped her to her knees.
“It is a mark only of your bravery,” Torsten whispered. “You saved your son, our king.”
&n
bsp; “You promised never to lie to me,” Oleander said. “This reflects how they all see me. All of you!” She stood and screeched at the top of her lungs, saliva spattering Torsten’s face. “And they should! They deserve a better queen and my son a better mother. Liam should have wedded that Panpingese witch instead!”
“Oleander, you’ve simply had too much to drink,” Torsten said. “Your son loves you, and all your people will learn to do the same when they glimpse you for who you truly are and not what Redstar’s treachery made you become.”
“This is the real me.”
“Torsten,” Lord Jolly said. “Let’s get her bac—”
A crash sounded up a way by Southern Court. Horses whinnied, and their hooves clopped into the distance. Iam-knew-what bounced loudly along the road next, causing a few citizens to squeal in fright. Torsten squeezed Oleander close. With his other hand, he grabbed Lucas’s leg and dragged him over.
“What in Iam’s name is going on!” Torsten asked.
“A wagon wheel just gave out on a carriage coming up from South Corner,” Lucas said. “Looks like a food delivery from the docks for the castle.”
“Someone, get up there and help them clear the way!” Torsten commanded. A few soldiers took the orders and started to jog up the hill, boots crunching as they passed.
“Back off, filth!” the wagon driver shouted. “This food belongs to the Crown.”
“What is it now?” Torsten asked.
“Docksiders,” Lucas said. “They’re flooding out of the corner church. That same beggar from earlier and dozens of others. It’s like they planned—Torsten, we need to get the Queen Mother to safety!”
“They got ’nuf, dun’t they!” the Docksider Murray replied to the wagon driver. “How ’bout some for us ye left to die.”
“Should be ours!” another one yelled.
“The rest of you, fall around your Queen Mother!” Lord Jolly ordered. “We must return to the castle; let’s move.”
“Drop that, you ingrate!” one of the men Torsten sent up ahead barked. “Or Iam help you—” Something blunt smashed against his face. Nothing else could illicit that hair-raising sound of bone cracking.
“Iam has forgotten us!” Murray screamed. Those words were echoed by a few more as the racket from their violence grew to deafening. More footsteps from the direction of South Corner pattered as more poor citizens mobbed the broken wagon.
Torsten tore free of Lucas. “Lucas, get up there and help them break this up!” he demanded.
“What a perfect time those ungrateful whelps picked to raid a food cart,” Lord Jolly said. “All right men, let’s push through—”
Lord Jolly grunted, and warm blood splattered onto Torsten’s face, tasting like rusting bronzers. Oleander shrieked.
“Watch out!” Lucas crashed into Torsten’s side, knocking him and Oleander to the ground. Arrows whizzed overhead, clacking against a shop wall.
“We’re under attack!” a Shieldsman shouted.
“Where is that coming from?” said another.
“Shield wall!” Torsten yelled. “Protect the Queen Mother.” Armor and shields rattled as they fell into formation around Oleander, Lucas, and Torsten himself. “Push toward the castle.”
“Lucas, be my eyes,” Torsten said, barely able to hear anything over the burgeoning chaos. The growing mob of rioters from South Corner erupted into such a frenzy, they flipped the wagon onto its side. The crash sent all those near it into a panic.
“The arrow came from the rooftop,” he panted. “Lord Kaviel is injured, maybe dead… I…”
“Focus, Lucas.” Torsten shook his shoulders.
“They’re throwing crates and supplies all over the street,” he said. “They’re—duck!”
Lucas yanked on Torsten’s head, and the feather of an arrow fluttered by, burrowing itself in the flesh of one of the Shieldsmen.
“Sir Hystad!” one of them shouted as the man collapsed against Oleander, earning a slew of curses like Torsten had never heard as he caused her to trip and snap her heel. She dragged Torsten down with her and his face smashed against the ground.
“Torsten, what is happening!” Oleander shrieked.
Torsten tried to focus through the clamor, but it was all too much. Things breaking, feet stomping, men and women yelling in both fear and rage—he felt like he was drowning in the Grand Canal of Winde Port again only this time, he wasn’t sure of the way out.
“Out of our way, in the name of your king!” a Shieldsman demanded.
“The king has forgotten us!” Murray yelled up ahead.
“Torsten!” Lucas said. “Torsten, we have to get out of here!”
Torsten dared not move from shielding Oleander, but, finally, he turned his head and focused in on the voice of his aide. The blade of an arrow glanced off a nearby shield, bounced beside Torsten’s hand, and made him wince. He couldn’t remember the last time battle had that effect on him.
“The road is jammed!” Lucas said, hardly able to breathe. “We can run back through the markets while the Shieldsmen clear the protestors.”
Torsten felt Oleander’s shaking body beneath him as he stretched out and grasped the stray arrow. He ran his thumb along the blade and over the bumps of an engraved pattern in the steel, then down toward the fletching, fashioned from the tail feathers of a grimaur.
“Torsten!” Lucas shouted.
“The markets are too exposed,” Torsten answered. “Those arrows… angry Docksiders can’t afford anything like this.” He wasn’t sure who could; the craftsmanship was almost dwarven in quality, and the grimaurs were only found near the Pikeback Mountains in the Northeast. He went to lift it, but one of the Shieldsmen in formation was pushed back by the swelling mob and cracked it in two with his feet.
“Watch it, you buffoon!” Oleander yelled as another stomped on her hair. Torsten gave her a tug free, and the Shieldsman’s legs went with them. The man stumbled back over them, and at the same time, Torsten heard the squish of a blade through flesh, and the gargle of a dying man.
“Ass… assin…” the Shieldsman rasped before the end, voice so low and quavering that only Torsten likely heard it.
“Get off of me!” Oleander squirmed, pushing away from Torsten and letting the heavy man fall between them with a thud.
Torsten could think of a hundred groups which might’ve wanted Oleander dead, but it didn’t matter who. Perhaps whoever it was had purposely sparked this riot when the markets would be at their busiest, at dusk, after the craftsman stop working. Maybe they’d been lying in wait for months for Oleander to leave the castle. All Torsten knew was if they didn’t move fast, one of the arrows would eventually find purchase in her throat.
“We have to get off the streets, now!” Torsten shouted. “Lucas, take her.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’ll follow!” Torsten took Oleander by the shoulder and pushed her in the direction of Lucas’s voice without asking permission. “Go!” He shouted as he patted the street for the shield of one of his fallen comrades. When he found the edge, he lifted it and pushed through in the Queen’s direction. Her incessant complaining made it easy to follow them.
“You expect me to go in there with him?” she scoffed. “The house smells ranci—” An arrow jammed into wood, and judging by how quickly Oleander was silenced, far too close for comfort.
“Oleander, just listen to him for Iam’s sake!” Torsten shouted.
“Come, Your Grace!” Lucas said as a door creaked open.
Torsten rushed in after them, back first, feeling out every step. The rioters still chanted about how Iam and the Crown had forsaken them, even as Shieldsmen and guards pressed through the chaos and began arresting them. Torsten exhaled slowly, from his position in the doorway, focused on drowning the entire world out.
Iam, let me hear true, he thought. Oleander may have done dreadful things, but she sees your light now.
Torsten suddenly perceived the thrum of string, and a bla
de slicing through air. He raised his shield, and an arrow banged off the top. He staggered back, heard another arrow, and lowered his guard to block it.
“Stay in the corner!” Lucas shouted.
Young girls, likely the home’s occupants, cried and pushed furniture aside, the grinding, grating sound unmistakable.
“Torsten, what is going on?” Oleander asked. “Whoever that is was aiming at me.”
“There’s no way out the back, Torsten,” Lucas said nervously. “Just a wall.”
Torsten raised a finger to his mouth and took a few, slow, deliberate steps across the squeaking floorboards.
“Torsten, what are we doing in here!” Oleander barked.
He ignored her and approached the townhome’s stairs. Then he heard it. The whoosh was subtle, but someone had entered through the upstairs window.
“Run!” Torsten pointed to the front door.
“I can do it myself,” Oleander snapped as Lucas attempted to grab her.
Torsten felt the air as they ran by, then heard another squeak of wood.
“No!” He raised the shield high and deflected a projectile. He expected an arrow, but judging by the weight and the way it sank into the floor, it was a throwing knife. The assassin reached into his jacket and flung another. This time, Torsten was too slow. The grip just barely brushed his leg on its way by.
“My ankle!” Lucas yelped as he slammed down hard on the front porch.
Torsten screamed and with all his considerable strength, flung the shield up the stairs at the assassin. Then he turned for the exit. His hands groped frantically for the wall but found a table instead, which he purposefully knocked over, and then fell through the entry. The air had grown noticeably chiller in just the short time indoors. That meant the sun had dropped below the rooftops.
“Torsten, he shoved me out of the way,” Oleander said from on the ground beside Lucas. “He did—”
“What any Shieldsman should’ve done,” Torsten finished for her. They were certainly not the words Oleander was going to use.
“I’ll hold them off,” Lucas groaned. “Get her out of here!”
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