by A. M. Manay
“Fenroh claims that the Patriarch sacrificed himself for our sins, that he healed the Deadlands with his blood, that Shiloh is a God-slayer, but that she helped His Holiness fulfill his plan. Some believe him, but many are skeptical. They remember Shiloh’s healing of the land near Northgate, and her work to contain the fever. They can’t imagine the Patriarch willingly giving up his pampered life to heal lands he himself declared should remain dead. They see how high Fenroh has elevated himself, and they are suspicious,” Daved related.
“Besides, people are angry with the Purification,” Daved continued, “and the recent steep increase in tithes and taxes. Many were happy when the Patriarch returned after Rischar’s death, yearning for the familiar, only to feel betrayed when his priests starting dragging people off in the night. I have never seen such hostility toward the church.”
Silas snorted. “They certainly have it coming. Lord Daved, before I forget to tell you, we ran across your bastard brother, Jivan.”
Daved’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’ve never heard of him, but my father certainly had women. Are you sure he’s really my father’s son?”
“I’m sure. He favors you quite strongly. He wore the gray, but he was only a novice, and he tried to help Shiloh and some of the others imprisoned at the Citadel. He’s only a couple of years younger that you are. Do you wish to know him? He might be of help to you someday, when we can contrive to get him safely to the Wood. You are rather alone in the world, after all.” Silas’s own role in Daved’s familial isolation both men were too polite to mention.
Daved nodded, eyes full of sorrow. “Yes. Yes, I would like to know him.”
“I shall tell him so. Speaking of family, are they pressing you to marry?” Silas asked.
Daved nodded. “Yes, they’re anxious to have me wed a girl from Gerne, some cousin of Westan’s, but I’ve been able to hold them off due to my age. I’ve only just turned fifteen. I told them I wanted to wait until I’m twenty and have a chance to finish my studies and get my lands in good order before I am betrothed, so I can make the best possible match. I think they were persuaded. Esta seems to like me, though sometimes I think she suspects I’m still sweet on Shiloh. Westan likes me because I speak Gernish.” The boy paused, eyes narrowing, before continuing, “But what do you care? I thought you wanted me married off so I stop mooning over Shiloh.”
Do I tell this boy that someday, sooner than later, Shiloh may need to press her claim to the throne, and she’s going to need a more suitable husband than I? Do I tell him that it would smash my heart to pieces to give her up, but if I have to, it had damned well better be to a man who loves her as much as I do? That if he bides his time, he might wind up a king?
“I was just curious, my lord. My advice, given my recent unpleasant experience in prison, is not to accept a marriage you don’t want. Life is too short for such a compromise as that, and I suspect you can wait out Esta’s reign,” Silas finally replied.
“Why? Are you planning sedition? Fomenting an uprising?” Daved asked, eyes wide and eager.
“Not yet. But don’t expect her reign will be long.”
“How is she?” Keegan asked.
Silas stopped and turned to face the chief. He’d just left the hospital tent and had been heading to bed for a much-needed rest.
“Better than yesterday. Worse than she’ll be tomorrow,” Silas replied. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“She puts on a brave face for me,” Keegan admitted. “She could be dying and tell me everything is fine.”
Silas smirked before schooling his face. No need to antagonize him with the fact that she trusts you more, he told himself.
“She does that with everyone,” he assured Keegan. “You can tell by how she breathes, or how she is too still, or too restless.”
“She sent me out of the tent when she was really suffering,” Keegan continued. “She doesn’t trust me.”
“She doesn’t want people to think she’s weak. She once hid from me under a blanket even though she needed my help. She’ll learn to trust you eventually. She did me, and I hardly deserve it,” Silas said.
“Alissa was the same way. Would never admit she was wounded until she fell clean off her horse,” Keegan confided.
“I remember.”
“I thought Shiloh was going to die,” Keegan confessed, his gruff voice uncommonly soft.
“It was a close call,” Silas concurred, remembering his own fear all too well. “She said it’s been a long time since she’s had that many bad nights in a row.”
“Jonn couldn’t have saved her alone,” Keegan said softly. “He needed your help.”
Silas nodded. “No, I don’t think he could have. That isn’t a criticism of him. Decent men don’t know those curses.”
Keegan shook his head in frustration. “I taught Alissa half of them, so that’s probably a fair assessment. Well, there go my plans for killing you on the sly. I have to keep you around for the same reason she needed Edmun. Gods damn it.”
Silas snorted a laugh. “My humblest apologies for ruining your revenge.”
“My wife needs something to do, Master Bentin,” Silas began. “Idleness coupled with the slow speed of her recovery is making her melancholy.”
The elderly wandmaker didn't look up from his table. “I remember you. The one Edmun corrupted. Fire with a bucket of water in you. Went through wands like mad. Cost Jerroh a fortune to keep you in them when you were at school. One of Blufeld’s whelps. Kilas? Vilas?”
“Silas,” he corrected Bentin through gritted teeth. “Silas Hatch.” The rest of the man’s statement was accurate enough.
“I’m in the business of crafting wands, Hatch, not entertaining invalids.”
“She carries steel,” Silas said.
Now Bentin looked up. “The hexborn girl? Keegan’s daughter? Why didn't you say so?”
“I just did,” Silas replied, exasperation finally showing.
“Bring her ‘round, then. I’ll be here.”
“I'm not sure what good I'm going to be to you, Master Bentin. I can barely lift a wand,” Shiloh admitted. “But I do thank you for seeing me.”
Silas had wheeled her across the meadow in a cunning chair that Henrik had constructed for her to use during her convalescence. She still could not manage two-dozen steps without assistance. She now sat in the wandmaker’s summer workshop, a cluttered tent adjacent to an outdoor furnace and kiln. His domain was situated well away from the community's dwellings. Wandmaking was known to produce the occasional explosion. The old man stood at a scarred wooden work table, stooped with age but bright of eye.
“You have eyes, do you not, my lady?” he asked with a grin. He tapped his temple. “And your brain still functions?”
“As best I can tell,” she confirmed with a smile, cheered by his sparkle of mischief.
“Let's see the wand, then, eh? It’s been a long time since I’ve laid eyes upon it,” he suggested, holding out a wizened hand. She obliged him, and he held it with reverence. “Such a lovely piece of work. And it has bonded to you strongly. I can feel it. No one else can wield it now without inviting ruin. Ha! Fenroh will remain as disappointed as he was when he was a boy.”
He handed it back to Shiloh. She took a moment to enjoy the feel of it in her hand before she slipped it back into her pocket.
“I did hear that Fenroh wanted this wand, when he was young,” Shiloh told him.
“Oh, yes. He was fit to be tied when I wouldn't let him touch it,” the old man laughed. “I hid it away. Fen had the potential to carry steel, but not the temperament. Not the soul for it. He runs too hot. Destroyed several other lesser steel wands before I put my foot down with his father and confined him to one element at a time. Got me exiled here for my trouble once Mirin came to power, but saved the wand, perhaps even the kingdom. Steel requires balance.”
“I have balance?” Shiloh asked.
“Between strength and weakness. Between heart and stomach. Between
hot and cold. Between creation and destruction. Between royal blood and Feral bone. You have balance.”
“How could you know all that about me? We've never met before,” Shiloh protested.
Bentin smiled crookedly. “I know because the steel knows. If it weren't true, you'd have blown off your remaining hand ages ago.”
He opened an old trunk and hauled out a thick tome. “Read this, Shiloh, then come see me again.”
On the Magical Elements by Kohson of Dessica. Shiloh bent over her reading at one of the outdoor dining tables, jotting notes on a blank page in Silas’s leather-bound notebook. The Free did not manufacture paper, so every sheet they'd brought with them was precious.
It felt good to have a pen in her hand again. Familiar. Studying made her feel competent rather than crippled. Probably why Silas encouraged it, she said to herself.
She looked up for a moment to see Hana at her own course of study. With an intensity Shiloh had never seen in the girl back at school, Hana focused on her target as Henrik tutored her in hunting curses.
“Interesting reading?” Jonn asked, taking a seat on the bench next to Shiloh.
“Yes, if a trifle impenetrable,” Shiloh answered. “It's several hundred years old. Some of it sounds more like Estan than Brynish.”
“I have a few medical books like that,” Jonn commiserated. “At least, I did before I got arrested.”
Shiloh pulled her cloak around her shoulders. A cold wind made her shiver. “I'm glad Henrik made it out of the Pit alive with the medicine you gave him for me,” she said idly. “He seems like a decent sort.”
Jonn darted a puzzled glance her way then followed her gaze to the pair at target practice. “I never found that man in the Pit. Nor anyone else with the wounds you described. I assumed the man you were so worried about had already died.”
Now it was Shiloh’s turn to look confused. “Huh.” A stillness came over her like a calm before the storm. She closed up her books and tossed them in a bag. She slung it over her shoulder and picked up her cane. “I'm going to head inside,” she told Jonn. “It’s cold.”
“Shall I walk with you? Help carry your books?” Jonn offered.
“Yes, thank you,” she answered. She handed him her burden without taking her eyes off of Henrik.
“I need to talk to Silas.”
Silas paced as Shiloh relayed her tale. “Was Henrik among the condemned in chains the day you broke everyone out?” he asked.
Shiloh shook her head. “I don't know. I was a little preoccupied.”
“But he was among you in the village afterward?”
“I think I remember seeing him at the trial of the survivors,” Shiloh answered, wracking her memory.
“He seemed quite strong on the road. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But he did not look like someone who had spent the better part of six months fighting starvation and infection in the Pit.”
“Are you saying it was a ruse? That his interrogation was staged? Fenroh’s torture and threats for show? Why would Fenroh concoct some deception like that with a Feral prisoner?” Shiloh demanded.
“If Henrik wasn't a prisoner at all,” Silas answered grimly. “If he was an ambassador. From Keegan.”
“What?” Shiloh said, voice soft and wounded.
“Maybe Keegan sent him to treat with Fenroh and they made a deal. Fenroh needs you contained. He can't have you free, wandering about Bryn. He needs you either under his eye or out of the way,” Silas explained. “Perhaps Keegan agreed to keep you bottled up here in Freehold, in exchange for your life and the Gods know what else.”
“But what was the point of the staged interrogation?” Shiloh wondered.
“To frighten you. To compromise you by making you complicit in Fenroh’s crimes. Or, perhaps, to lay the groundwork for your father’s awfully timely arrival along the road to Fountain Bluff. With you already knowing the Feralfolk were coming to help you, running into them after your escape would seem less suspicious,” Silas theorized. “Or maybe Henrik made a deal with Fenroh all on his own. Offered useful information or something of that nature. Maybe Keegan has nothing to do with it. Henrik has always had flexible loyalties.”
“What do you mean?”
“During the war, Edmun had him informing on Keegan. Keegan had him informing on Edmun. I think at some point, they both had him passing false information to Rischar,” Silas replied. “I was sometimes the go-between. Henrik’s reliable in a firefight, and kind to children and dogs, but otherwise, he’s a bit of a slippery fish.”
“First Bluebell, and now this. My Gods, how do you trust anybody?” Shiloh sighed.
“I don’t. With very few exceptions.” The corner of his mouth twitched.
“So what do we do? Confront Keegan?” Shiloh asked.
“Absolutely not. That gains us nothing. It would only benefit Keegan to know of our suspicions. And it would only frighten the others to share those suspicions before we are certain of them. Mosspeak might want to bolt.”
“I have to act like I know nothing of this?” Shiloh said hotly.
Silas tried not to look amused at her ire. “That’s exactly what we both have to do. Because if Keegan means to keep us in a gilded cage, we’re going to need the benefit of surprise when we bust our way out.”
“I finished the book, master,” Shiloh informed Bentin. She had managed to walk to see him this time, with a cane, but she’d needed Penn to carry the book. Penn and Loor were now taking a walk and picking flowers to pass the time until her lesson was over. Silas was not comfortable with the idea of Shiloh wandering about on her own, and Shiloh couldn’t blame him.
“How did you find it?” Bentin asked.
“Informative,” Shiloh answered, “and long.”
“Ha! You actually finished it?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
“Of course.”
“The last three apprentices Keegan tried to foist on me couldn’t make it more than halfway. I sent them away. I don’t like laziness,” Bentin declared.
“Understandable,” Shiloh replied.
“Have you long aspired to be a wandmaker?” Bentin asked.
Shiloh shook her head before confessing, “No, master. I wanted to be a healer.”
“Has something changed?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I’m just tired of curses and countercurses. I’ve had to learn so much about them, because of my condition, and I’ve seen so much violence in the last few years. So much cruelty in the Citadel. And I’m absolutely sick of hospitals. I do like helping people, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe I need something to focus on that doesn’t remind me of terrible things. Maybe I want to do something a little more creative. Maybe I just want to make something pretty and useful and not have to think about ugliness for once.”
“There are worse reasons to take up a discipline,” Bentin said.
Bentin picked up a large stone and set it in front of Shiloh with a loud thunk. “Use the spell on page 1,046 to carve some wands out of this rock.”
She laid a hand on it and closed her eyes. She pulled her wand and rested it on top of the lump of stone and closed her eyes again. “But master,” she finally protested. “It’s the wrong kind of rock, isn’t it?”
A grin broke out on this face. “I wanted to see if you really finished the book,” he confessed, eyes twinkling. “For today, just watch me. See if you are still interested in learning about my work.”
Shiloh obeyed. For hours, she watched the old man work at his long-practiced craft. Sometimes it would look for all the world like he was doing nothing for many minutes at a time, just staring at or holding a piece of material. Then he would start to hum, and out of a hunk of driftwood or a bowl of beeswax would emerge a cylinder thin as a reed or thick as a staff. And she would watch as he used his wand to define a handle and carve decorations, to sharpen a point or smooth out a ridge.
It was mesmerizing.
The sun was low in the sky by the time he stopped and met her eyes again. Pati
ent Penn sat with her back against a nearby tree, dozing with her hat over her face and a snoring Loor in her lap.
“Well?” Bentin asked.
“I want to do that,” Shiloh declared. “Please show me how.”
Too Young
Hatch,
I know it was you who killed my wife. The word has spread far and wide since you delivered her head to her swine of a brother. Maybe you think you are safe from me at your foreign university, but I have friends and kinfolk in Estany. When I look back on my kindness to you during the war, I am filled with disgust at your treachery. Mark my words, boy, I will have my justice.
—Keegan of the Free
Silas swallowed and closed his eyes, then tossed the letter into the fire. He couldn’t really blame the man. He wished he could explain, but he knew it was impossible. His only choice was to make sure that whenever Keegan finally came for him, he would be in a position to defend himself.
I wonder if he knows about the baby. I wonder if he should.
Heaving a sigh, he turned back to his books. And checked to make sure he had a wand in his pocket and a locked door behind him.
Shiloh made her way gingerly down the staircases to the floor of the meadow below, using her wand to clear the steps of ice. She had been performing her daily prayers in the small temple located midway up the cliff, but Lordsday services were held out of doors unless the weather made it impossible. Cold was not considered sufficient cause for an indoor celebration, evidently.
She had been fearful of attending, worried that the familiar rituals would remind her of the Patriarch’s hideous services back at the Citadel. An insult to the Gods, those were. Her health had been fragile enough to use it as an excuse to refuse to go. Finally, she had gotten up her nerve.
It was her first solo descent from the little home Keegan had made for her, and she clung to the railing. When she came at last to flat ground, she pulled her purple cloak around her. The chill in the air was enough to turn her ears and nose as pink as her hair.
