Sin and Soil

by Anya Merchant

  “Absolutely!” said Damon. “What’s it about?”

  “Love.” She brushed a few loose strands of hair out of her eyes and gave him a diagonal half smile. “Accidental love. The kind that’s easy to fall into and hard to fall out of.”

  “The dangerous kind, in other words,” he said.

  Bylia grinned and gave his shoulder an affectionate stroke before continuing on toward the Smoke and Stage’s eponymous stage. He watched her go, and then watched Vel watch him.

  “She seems nice,” said Vel, in a not-so-nice tone.

  “She is,” said Damon. “She’s like us in a lot of ways. Her parents died when she was young and it’s just been her and her older sister.”

  Vel folded her arms and set her lips into a familiar pouty expression. “Did you bed her?”

  “What?” snapped Damon. “Of course not! She was seventeen when we last spent time together.”

  Vel seemed ready with a response, but she hesitated and offered a shrug instead of putting it into words.

  “She’s a friend, Vel,” he said. “One I haven’t seen in far too long. You should talk with her when you get a chance. The two of you have more in common than I think you realize.”

  “I somehow doubt that.”

  “You’re going to regret it if you write her off as a simple commoner, or however the noblewomen you’re used to sipping wine with might see it,” he said. “She’s special, Vel.”

  “Why?” asked Vel. “Because she has big breasts?”

  Damon shrugged and tried to make his face look convincing. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Vel let out a huff, finished her cider, and stood up from the bar, walking off.

  CHAPTER 20

  Damon finished his cider, and no sooner had he pushed his mug forward along the bar did Bart, Jonna’s bearded husband, arrive to refill it. He felt content, borderline happy, but was still aware enough to recognize the danger inherent within letting his guard down completely.

  “How has the village been faring lately?” he asked.

  Bart let out a small, somewhat positively pitched grunt. Damon remembered that particular facet of the quiet bartender’s character. He was not a man of many words.

  “Have many travelers come through recently?” he asked.

  Bart gave a small shake of his head and another grunt, this time in a tone that Damon interpreted as a no.

  “There’s a reason behind why I came back, Bart,” he said. “I thought… I feared, really, that Malon and the farm might be in danger. My father racked up a considerable amount of debt across a wide variety of dangerous people and I suspect that they might try to use my loved ones as a means of putting pressure on me.”

  The sudden hardening of Bart’s expression was almost more disconcerting than their current topic of discussion. Bart was tall and broad, but quiet and placid of personality. Damon suddenly felt compelled to reconsider his childhood assessment of the man as a gentle giant.

  “If you could simply keep an eye out and an ear open for me, I’d be most grateful,” he said. “Any strangers asking about me, or my father, or Malon would obviously fit the bill.”

  Bart gave him a slow nod, cracking the massive knuckles of his right hand. More patrons were arriving by the moment, and he gave Damon one last reassuring look before slipping off to tend to them.

  The afternoon had progressed into early evening. Damon spent the next half hour greeting a range of people that he recognized to varying extents. He felt proud and humbled for many of the adults he’d known as a child to greet him, to shake his hand, as a man.

  In some cases, they’d heard of his exploits as a gladiator. In some cases, they’d actually seen him perform. In all cases, to them, he was still Damon Al-Kendras, Malon’s energetic young ward, a member of their community.

  It wasn’t just Merinians who shook his hand, but the local, native Remenai, as well. Damon had only begun making the distinction between the Merinians and Rem upon moving to Veridan’s Curve, where race had always been an active factor, and the specter of prejudice seemed to vanish into the nonsense that is was now that he was home.

  Deremia, an elderly Remenai forager, took the time to sit down next to him and buy him a drink.

  “Young Al-Kendras,” he said. “It is most pleasing to see you back in the region.”

  His most vivid memory of Deremia was being chased out of an untamed field of wild carrots for indulging in the mischief of young boys, but he pushed that aside. “Thanks. It’s good to be back, and good to see you, Elder Deremia.”

  They shook hands and conversed about everything and nothing, and then Deremia excused himself, falling into a table with a group of Merinian farmers in the manner of an old friend.

  Damon appreciated the ease with which the two cultures mingled so much more as an adult than he ever had as a child. It was a small thing, but huge, at the same time, and left him wondering about Malon’s words on choosing to stay in the area for a reason.

  More patrons arrived by the minute. A group of tired Merinian farm hands sat down at the bar. A family of Reminai hunters carried a rosy cheeked child with endearingly large ears over to a table in the corner. A group of desperate beggars of near an even split of both peoples queued by the door, and Jonna quickly tended to them with whatever was ripe and available for giving.

  It felt right. Almost nothing that Damon could remember within his recent experience had felt so right. He sipped at the hard cider which Bart had continuously provided him without ever demanding a copper cent in return and watched as Bylia pulled her chime chord out of its case and prepared to grace the crowd with her song.

  A feminine hand set down a bowl of stew on a plate alongside a thick slice of ruggedly crusted bread. Damon turned to see Malon joining him on the stool Vel had previously been sitting on, carrying a matching array of food for herself, along with a mug of cider, and smiling warmly.

  “Jonna gifted us dinner and three rooms upstairs for tonight,” she said. “You aren’t sick of stew already, are you solas?”

  She ran a hair through his hair, and he noticed the rosy glow in her cheeks and wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen Malon drunk, or at least tipsy.

  “Jonna’s stew is a different animal than yours,” he said.

  “Better, you mean?” asked Malon. “She does have more experiencing cooking and certainly receives a wider array of feedback.”

  “Neither better nor worse, just different.” He spooned up a bite, feeling his mouth sing as a tender chunk of spicy chicken fell apart on his tongue. “You look so happy, aesta.”

  “As do you,” she said, her smile widening even further. “I’m happy that you’re taking to this change so well.”

  “You like it here, don’t you?” he asked. “This town. The farm.”

  He realized that he’d come to view Malon’s circumstances through a pessimistic lens at some point, the type of perspective that a young man riding the early days of an exciting career develops for most other seemingly boring paths in life.

  “I do,” said Malon. “Very much so. I have my reasons for staying in the Malagantyan that have little to do with any particular passion for farming or economic considerations, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t grown fond of it.”

  She pursed her lips, shifting her attention from him toward Vel, who was sulking at a table in the corner with a similar slate of food in front of her. The expression on her face was so dour that several young men, including Obi, were keeping their distance despite the obvious interested glances they shot in her direction.

  “Vel’s going to need a bit more time, I think,” he said.

  “Of that I have no doubt.” Malon took a sip of her cider. “Can you help her along, solas?”

  “As much as she’ll let me. We haven’t exactly worked out our friction quite yet.”

  “Thank you.” Malon leaned over and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. Damon felt his face flush a bit as the heat of her lips seemed to cling to his ski
n, aware of how it must look to anyone watching.

  Most of the evening crowd had settled into seats with drinks and dinner, and Bylia had moved to the center of the stage to begin her song. She had a coy smile on her face as she watched the crowd watch her, and her eyes seemed to linger on Damon for a moment or two longer than the rest.

  “Do you know her?” asked Malon.

  “I do,” he said. “She’s a friend.”

  “Is that right?” Malon’s mouth quirked sideways, but she let him off without saying anything more, fingers playing with the bottom of her neat red braid.

  Bylia began playing her chime cord, each of the long harp strings vibrating with the sound of an accompanying metal bell as the silver slits in between knocked together. The room was silent aside from the music, and after stringing out a smooth melody as a base, she began to sing.

  Even her voice had matured in the time since Damon had last seen her, and the nature of the lyrics caught him by surprise. Namely, the fact that they were in Konakai, one of the native Rem languages, as opposed to Merinian.

  Damon, along with most of the patrons in attendance, couldn’t understand the words, but in truth, it didn’t matter. Bylia had said that her song was about accidental love, and the beautiful, lilting melody of her voice conveyed the theme so perfectly that he could almost picture the scene of two young, circumstance fated lovers in his head.

  The crowd erupted into applause and foot stomps as the first song came to an end. Bylia only took a brief pause to bask in the attention before bowing and beginning another. Damon leaned forward against the bar, sipping his cider, eating his soup, and feeling content.

  CHAPTER 21

  It was late in the evening when Bylia’s performance finally came to an end. Damon was on his third cider and second helping of stew. Malon had slipped away to help Jonna with various inn related odd jobs, and the inn’s patrons were beginning a slow trickle home or to their rooms.

  Bylia had gone upstairs after finishing her last song, and when she came back down, she wore a long burgundy tunic over a pair of silk leggings, a much more reasonable and presumably comfortable outfit to wind down the evening in. Damon grinned and patted the stool next to him, and she smiled back and sat down.

  “How was I?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow at her dramatically. “Do you really need to ask?”

  “Not really, but I do love compliments,” she said.

  “That much, I remember.” He slid his cider toward her, and she took a quick sip. “You were outstanding, Bylia.”

  She let out a small cough as she passed his drink back. “Thank you.”

  “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but hearing you sing…” He shrugged. “It makes me wonder what you’re doing here in Morotai.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why not travel back to Veridan’s Coast?” asked Damon. “I’m sure you’d be able to make a handsome profit if you returned to the route we were on when you traveled with the Gleaming Scythe.”

  “I was with Brienne back then, along with you and the other gladiators,” she said. “The rigors and dangers of travel weren’t a thing I needed to concern myself with.”

  “You could always hire a guard. Two or three, even, given what you could make once you built up your name.”

  “If I knew of even just one such man who was trustworthy in that way, perhaps I would have left this town already.” She gave him a meaningful smile, her eyes lingering on his for a second or three too long.

  Damon was about to suggest they take the conversation upstairs when a niggling thought came to him. He glanced around the common room, spotting Malon near the door leading to the kitchen in back, but no Vel.

  “Did you happen to see Velanor while you were upstairs?” he asked.

  Bylia frowned. “No, I didn’t. Why? Is she prone to sneaking off on her own?”

  Damon rubbed one of his knuckles against his chin, feeling a rise of concern and dark premonition. “Not especially. I should go take a look around for her.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Bylia slipped her arm through his as he stood up, and they exited the inn.

  Morotai was too small of a village to warrant exterior illumination beyond what little windowlight spilled out from its various residences and the ethereal green glow of Eldritch in full majesty. The sky was clear and the constellations were out, the Red Eye and the Grinning Lemur foremost among them.

  Beyond the market square, near where the shops and houses were smaller and sparser, stood five people in the middle of a clear conflict. It was a tableau of shadows, the silhouette of a petite, frightened woman held tight by the tallest of the bunch while the remaining three waited for directions.

  “Run back to the inn,” said Damon. “Get Malon. Don’t alert anyone else and make sure she knows that the situation could be dangerous.”

  He pulled his arm free from Bylia but couldn’t bother to make sure that she’d heard and would follow his command. He set his hand on the hilt of his sword, suppressing the urge to take Rovahn’s name in vain at the frustration he felt toward himself over still not having found the time to sharpen it.

  Color and detail entered the scene as he took the last few steps needed to properly see what was going on. A tall, heavily scarred Remenai man in a fine silk tunic and trousers stood behind Vel, one arm wrapped underneath her breasts while the other held both her hands together by the wrists.

  There were three other men, two Merinians and another Rem, arrayed around him, clearly paying him deference. All of them wore a collection of swords and daggers, but none of them moved to draw them, even as Damon unsheathed his own blade.

  “Damon Al-Kendras,” said the scarred Rem, in a quiet, mocking voice. “I was of consideration toward sending your pretty companion off to find you. I wonder if you would care to guess why we are here?”

  His Merinian was good, though it had the eccentricities and the lilting, almost musical accent most Rem never fully eradicated. Damon saw the man’s face more clearly now, noting that one of his long ears was missing its top half.

  He also had a facial tattoo of two overlapping Vs cutting across the other, more nuanced tattoos of his face. A banishment mark, given only to Rem who’d been exiled from their clans.

  “If I had to guess, I would say that you want something from me,” he said.

  “That is a rather safe and boring guess,” said the Rem.

  “My line of work has taught me the value of caution,” said Damon. “I’m at an obvious disadvantage here. You know who I am, but I don’t know you.”

  “You should.” The Rem leaned in closer to Vel, who wasn’t doing much to hide her obvious terror, and made a purring sound from his throat. “In Veridan’s Curve, they know me as Shank. Many are of knowledge of my… extensive dealings.”

  Damon felt his blood run cold, more for Vel’s sake than his own. Shank had a reputation as an indiscriminate killer for hire, willing to take on jobs involving women, children, even nobility and those with the Godking Avarice’s favor. His hand felt clammy against his sword hilt, but he did his best to swallow his nerves and keep his voice steady.

  “And these three?” he asked, gesturing to the other men as though they mattered in an attempt to downplay Shank’s intimidation.

  “These three are not of worth explanation,” said Shank. “Gavel’s men. Brawn without brains. Brawn of which knows it’s place.”

  “What do you want?” asked Damon.

  A cool wind blew through the trees in the distance, whistling against the branches and rattling the leaves.

  “You are of respect in a large way among the coastal cities,” said Shank, ignoring his question. “Damon Al-Kendras. A swordsman as much as a gladiator, a warrior of power. In some circles, you are of reputation greater than my own. In the circles of death, however, I am the one they speak of.”

  “If you’re here to kill me, then let’s get straight to the point,” said Damon. “Let her go and draw your
steel.”

  “No,” said Shank. “Not yet.”

  He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, his face expressive, albeit uneven, with both long Rem ears drawing downward. The other three men drew their weapons and stepped forward to confront Damon directly, fanning out to surround him on all sides.

  “Gavel wants his money, Damon Al-Kendras,” said Shank. “Are you of ability to pay it?”

  “Are you capable of asking nicely?” asked Damon.

  Shank nodded again. Two of the three bruisers attacked at once, swinging curved longswords in an attack that would have easily downed an average, unprepared warrior.

  Damon parried both blows with a single movement, grimacing as the hilt of his weapon vibrated painfully against his injured finger. It was distracting, but not as restricting as it had been days earlier. It was manageable, which was enough.

  The issue of his sword’s dulled performance edge was a larger issue. Damon knocked aside an attack from the third man, ducking under a follow up strike from one of the first two and hopping a pace back. He would need to judge his attacks carefully. Revealing the limited state of his weapon’s ability to do damage would leave him at a disadvantage he couldn’t afford.

  Instead of attacking normally, Damon struck out with the flat of his blade, the metal making a satisfying crack as it connected with the kneecap of one of the Merinians. He dodged two staggered slashes from the others, spinning and countering with a blow to one of their hands with enough savage strength to disarm the weapon from the man’s fingers.

  Damon’s performances with the Gleaming Scythe had often been pretended, exaggerated affairs, but his sword skills were anything but. His reputation as a gladiator came from his abilities, the small but telling movements that would sell the action to even the most combat experienced members of the audience.

  He all but danced around his opponents, continuing to punish them with the flat of his blade and smiling as though he had a choice in the matter. One of them dropped after a blunted blow to the side of head that he threw the full spectrum of his strength into. The one whose knee he’d shattered fell victim to a trip and a hard kick to the face.