After Selon had soaked up her fill of Felix’s blushing face, she cackled and found a spot beside Jossy, a spot that was, thankfully, across the tent from Felix. When no more bandits joined them, Torsten pulled his map from the waist of his trousers and unrolled it over the table, pinning the wily edges down with rocks. Felix continued his playing, for he had not yet been asked to stop, but he took care to gentle his volume, falling into an easy melody, something for the background and of little distraction.
“With the palace rebuilding, Malcolm’s been able to make more trades with less fear of detection,” Torsten began, pointing to a mark on the map that Felix was too far away to discern. “The good news is, the more attempts he makes, the more chances we have at intercepting them. Instead of an exchange twice a month, there have been two in a single week, and we were able to intercept one of them.” He smoothed his finger along the map—down a road, Felix suspected—and jabbed at a new spot, straightening his shoulders and delivering an intense look to his bandits. “The fruit raid was a success,” he said, and the others nodded their agreement, “but tomorrow is the end of the week, which means he’ll be looking to make a trade for coin while the Quarter’s heads are bowed in prayer. We cannot let that coin pass through our guard again.” He looked at Felix and held up a hand.
Felix stopped playing and set the flute in his lap. All eyes were on him, except for Torsten’s, who had turned his attention elsewhere.
“Selon,” he said, and she tilted her chin to him. “I want you for the raid tomorrow. I’m taking you off your restriction.”
“It’s about damn time,” she responded hotly.
Torsten slammed his fist on the table, and Felix jumped. So did Selon. “Take me seriously when I say that if it happens again, I will wash my hands of you.”
She glared at him and he glared right back. With his shoulders free of the pelt, Felix could see them rising and falling as he breathed, taut with anger. “We do not kill,” he stated, voice much calmer than his body language. “Murder is not our agenda. It is not who we are. Tell me you understand. Say it.”
“We do not kill,” Selon repeated, sounding thoroughly chastised.
“What do you mean ‘you don’t kill’?” Felix heard someone ask, and when Torsten turned sharply to stare at him, he realized it was his own voice that had presented the question. He cleared his throat as it suddenly began to constrict. In his mind’s eye, he could see Merric on his knees in the snow, blood rushing from the wound in his thigh. He could see Harold approaching him with his nocked arrow, aiming it at Merric’s head. “But you killed him,” he said. “You killed Merric.”
“Harold, what is he talking about?” Torsten asked, moving around the table to stand directly at Felix’s side.
The bandit named Harold was shaking his head adamantly. “I don’t know what he’s on about, King. I’ve killed no one.”
Felix shot up from the chair, ignoring the burst of pain in his ankle. “Liar!” he shouted, Harold’s figure blurring as he pointed a shaky finger in his direction. “You shot him with your arrows! I saw you! You told Torsten you had ‘taken care’ of the guards! You killed him!”
He knew a hand was hovering by his arm—Torsten’s hand—waiting to steady him in case he fell, but Felix didn’t want it. He tried to jerk away, and the extra pressure on his ankle sent him careening forward with an agonized gasp, but he didn’t meet the ground face-first. Instead, he found himself saved by Torsten’s arm, which had wrapped around his waist faster than he could fall.
“Sit down, Flautist,” Torsten said, pushing him until he’d settled back in the chair.
“He killed him,” Felix repeated, wiping his eyes, and Torsten knelt before him.
“He didn’t,” he insisted, and then he glanced back at Harold, who was still shaking his head. “We don’t do that.”
“You don’t do that?” Felix asked incredulously. “You’re bandits! I saw him shoot my friend!”
Without looking away from Felix, Torsten addressed the others. “Leave us,” he commanded, no leeway in his voice.
Their audience abandoned them hastily, and when only Felix and the bandit king were left in the tent, the air was thick with tension.
“Harold gave me a full report of what happened to your carriage the day you arrived,” Torsten began, still kneeling before him. His hands rested on the arms of the chair, and Felix felt caged in, surrounded. The pelt around his shoulders was too hot. He was suffocating. “Your guards were incapacitated, but left alive.”
Felix shook his head, disbelieving.
“We have no interest in murder,” said Torsten.
Felix inhaled shakily. “He shot an arrow through Merric’s leg,” he breathed, “and he had another aimed at his head.”
“Merric?” Torsten’s frown intensified, which should have been impossible. “Not Merric McClintock.”
His name on Torsten’s lips only made Felix angrier. “Yes, Merric McClintock, an apprentice of the Guardians’ Guild and son of the guildmaster.”
“What were you doing traveling with the guildmaster’s son?” Torsten asked, hazel eyes flashing.
“He was my friend,” Felix said, his voice hitching over the words.
Torsten sat back, then stood. A hand flew to his chin, where he smoothed his fingers anxiously over his beard. “Then you are more than a flautist, after all.”
“I’m a flautist and a friend of the Guardians’ Guild,” Felix answered, irritated. “And you are a bandit with a taste for changing the subject.” He wished he could stand and meet Torsten eye to eye, but his ankle was still throbbing. “Your bandit shot my friend.” He took a deep breath. “Are you telling me he’s alive?”
Torsten was pacing, and it reminded Felix of Merric on their final night together, when he’d been walking back and forth across the floor, fretting over Scorch’s whereabouts. But when Torsten finally stopped and dropped back to his knees before Felix, it was nothing like Merric. The way he was looking at him—they were nothing alike.
“Harold wounded the men in your guard so they couldn’t follow their trail,” Torsten said. “But no injuries made were mortal. I can guarantee that your friend was left alive.”
Felix sat back in the chair, breathless. “Then Merric is alive? He’s alive? Are you sure?”
“If Merric was one of the guards with your carriage, then he didn’t die, at least not by the hands of my men.”
The relief was instantaneous, but Felix refused to be too easily convinced. “But they left him to bleed out in the snow,” he pointed out. “Harold told you he’d taken care of them. I may be young, but I’m not stupid. I know what that means.”
Torsten’s hands were clenched into fists, and he dug his knuckles into the meat of his own thigh in aggravation. “No. You misunderstood,” he said. “Harold is an expert with the bow. He knows how to kill a man, and he knows how to spare one. When he said he had taken care of them, I assure you he meant it quite literally. We don’t kill. He would have seen them bandaged after he knocked them out.” He didn’t look pleased at having to relay such assurances. “The last person who broke the rule was punished, and it hasn’t happened again.”
“Selon?” Felix asked.
“Months ago, she accidentally killed a guard,” Torsten admitted gruffly. “She’s been restricted from raids ever since.”
Felix stared at him, his breath coming too quick. “I don’t understand. What kind of bandits are you?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“You’re nothing like the bandits I’ve heard about in songs and stories. You steal fruit, kidnap flautists, and shoot guards, only to bandage them up after? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Torsten’s eyebrows shot up. “Is it so unusual not to kill?”
“In my experience, yes,” answered Felix. “It is unusual in life and it is most unusual in bandits.” He was lightheaded, confused. If Torsten was being truthful and Merric was alive, why hadn’t he come for him? Why had no one barged into
the bandit camp to rescue him yet? And even more disturbing, why wasn’t Felix more anxious to be rescued? “He must think I’m dead,” he whispered. “Or else he would have come for me already.” The words were for his own ears, but Torsten listened to them grimly.
“Be glad no one has come for you, Flautist,” he said, finally standing back up. “We take aim to never kill on raids, but if someone comes into our camp looking for violence, we will meet them with our arrows.”
“You target goods heading in and out of the palace. Is that all?” Felix asked. “Do you not raid from the surrounding villages, as well? I’ve travelled these roads before and have never been assaulted by your bandits.”
“I don’t need to explain my work to you,” Torsten snapped. “You’re a flautist. And a friend of the guild.”
“And what does that mean to you exactly?” asked Felix brazenly. He shifted forward in his chair, fingers tight on the armrests. “You made a face when you found out Merric McClintock was my companion. Why?”
“I didn’t make a face.”
“Yes, you did,” Felix insisted, “and you’re making it now.”
Torsten sighed. “The Guardians’ Guild is no friend of mine. And neither are you. That’s enough of this conversation.”
Felix crossed his arms. “You can’t control what I say.”
“No,” admitted Torsten, “but I can control where you are when you say it.” Without pause, he bent low, scooped Felix into his arms, and stormed out of the tent.
“Hey!” Felix yelled, beating fists of dismay into Torsten’s annoyingly unyielding chest.
Torsten ignored his display of outrage as much as he ignored the catcalls and whistles that followed them. He stomped all the way to the other side of the camp with Felix squirming in his arms, and when they made it back inside Torsten’s tent, he set him down—with disturbing gentleness—on the fur blankets.
“You’ve disrupted an important meeting,” he declared with a snarl, looking down at Felix. “I’d tell you to stay here, but I already know you can’t run away.” And with that, he turned on his heel and left.
Felix fumed, pounding a frustrated fist into the pile of blankets. His hopes of hobbling out of camp in a rage were quickly dashed when he couldn’t even climb to his feet without his eyes watering. Left with no other options, he threw himself back onto the pallet and glared up at the top of the tent.
So Torsten had claimed his bandits weren’t killers. That didn’t change anything. So he claimed that Merric and the other guards were alive. He could have easily been lying, and Felix was inclined to disbelieve him. Bandits that didn’t kill didn’t make sense. Bandits were a ruthless band of thieves, not lovers of fruit and song. They were supposed to be ravaging Felix and keeping him in a cage suspended over a fiery pit, not making him tea and toting him around.
Around midday, Dot appeared in the tent with a portion of lunch and more tea, which Felix begrudgingly consumed. He came back an hour later with a small cup of guild-brewed whiskey and a pinch of bitter leaf to chew for his pain. Felix downed the whiskey and chewed up the leaf angrily—as angrily as one could chew a leaf—and then he passed out on the pallet in an exhausted, frustrated heap. He made sure to sprawl his arms and legs out as much as he could, in case Torsten came looking for a place to rest.
Eventually, heat woke him. More specifically, heat on his leg. When he cracked open an eye, Torsten was sitting at his feet, Felix’s ankle propped up over his knee. He was undoing his wrappings, one hand gripped firmly around his shin, holding him in place. Felix fought the urge to snatch back his accosted body part.
“The guild is a corrupted place,” Torsten said, unwinding the bandage and not looking up from his work. “Your connection to it surprised me.”
“Why, when you know nothing about me?” asked Felix, pushing himself up on his elbows to get a look at Torsten’s work. His ankle wasn’t as swollen as it had been the night before, and it still hurt, but not nearly as badly as Felix had expected. “And the Guardians’ Guild isn’t corrupt. They’re a league of brave warriors trained to protect the people of Viridor. Which part of that offends you?”
To his supreme annoyance, Torsten laughed. “They’re paid to protect,” he said, prodding carefully at Felix’s ankle. “Protection should be for everyone, not for whoever has the most coin to spend.”
“Sure, and you’re a bandit because you like saving people coin,” Felix responded drily.
“Try rolling your foot,” Torsten said, pointedly ignoring his last comment.
Felix gave it a roll. “It feels better.”
“It looks better,” said Torsten, beginning to rewrap it. “You heal quickly. Your black eye is gone, too, in case you were wondering.”
He hadn’t been. Actually, he’d forgotten about his bruised eye completely. He touched a finger to it now, and the skin that had been so tender before felt smooth and painless.
“How did a flautist get a black eye?” Torsten asked, finishing the wrapping and folding Felix’s trousers—his trousers—back over his ankle. “I know Jossy didn’t give it to you. Were you caught in a tavern brawl? Could your guardian not protect you?”
Felix scooted away from him once his foot was free, moving as far away as he could in the little space on the pallet. Torsten took up a lot of room with his presence alone, but his broad shoulders and general bulk seemed like overkill in the small tent, and for the second time that day, Felix felt like he couldn’t breathe properly.
“It’s none of your business how I got it,” he said, refusing to meet Torsten’s eyes. “And you’re wrong about the Guardians’ Guild.”
“Your ankle was twisted, not sprained,” Torsten informed him. “It should be all better by morning. You’re lucky.”
Felix gaped at the bandit king’s blatant ignoring of his comments. “Yes, how lucky I am to be stuck here with you.”
“You would rather be with the guardians, I suppose,” said Torsten.
“I would absolutely rather be with the guardians,” Felix agreed.
Torsten stood, smirking. It was refreshing to see, really, after a full day of frowns. “Were you going to train with the guardians? Become an apprentice and make the world a better place for the right price?”
“Please,” Felix scoffed. “I can hardly lift a sword. I could never be a guardian.”
“But you’re more than a flautist, aren’t you?”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
The strange softness that had afflicted Torsten’s face that morning returned as he looked carefully at Felix. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
Before he could answer that no, he was certainly nothing more than a flautist with horrible luck, Torsten ducked through the tent flaps and disappeared again, leaving Felix to brood. Never in his life had he dedicated so much time to brooding. He had never before considered himself a brooder. But there he was, brooding and unable to stop it. He reached for his satchel, pulled out his flute, and began to play a violent tune about a guardian who killed an entire band of bandits to save a prince from their clutches. He slammed his fingers over the keys and blew the notes out angrily.
When Torsten reappeared a few minutes later with dinner for them both, Felix kept on playing, glaring at him over his flute. Torsten set Felix’s plate down and turned to leave, but then he turned back. After a moment’s hesitation, he sat on the ground with his food and began to eat while Felix played. He even had the nerve to look like he was enjoying the entertainment, which made Felix stop immediately. He threw his flute aside, picked up his plate, and began to eat. They dined in silence, as they had at breakfast, and there was a twinge in Felix’s stomach at the realization. He hoped it was food poisoning.
“Tomorrow, if your ankle is better, I have plans for you,” Torsten announced once their plates were cleared.
Felix shrugged, settling down in the blankets. Torsten handed him over more bitter leaf to chew. “I don’t dance, if that’s what you’re planning,” he grumbled, shifti
ng over so Torsten could lie down beside him. Lifting the blanket for him was an automatic gesture, one that made him flinch regretfully in the aftermath.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Torsten said, slipping off his boots and easing onto his back. “Sing me a song, Flautist.”
Felix sighed, trying to convey his irritation in a single huff of breath. “Any requests?”
“No. I’d just like to hear you sing.”
“Fine.” He rolled onto his back, too annoyed to bother sitting up properly. His leg brushed against Torsten’s under the blankets. “Here’s one you’ll enjoy.”
He sang a song about the heroic slaughtering of a bandit. It went into great, gory detail, and he was feeling quite clever about it until he heard Torsten laughing softly beside him.
7 - The Disagreeable Flautist
His first thought upon waking should have been something along the lines of Merric being alive, and how wonderful that was. He should have woken from a romantic dream with pink cheeks and a quickened pulse. He should have dragged himself across the bandit camp on his twisted ankle and demanded that Torsten release him so he could return to the man he maybe, possibly loved.
But when Felix woke, his first thoughts weren’t of Merric, they were of fruit bandits and black fur and peppermint. And when he’d rid his mind of those invasive thoughts, he couldn’t help but focus, instead, on his inappropriate feelings of relief. He felt relief that Merric was alive—of course he did—but his greater focus was on relief that Torsten and his men were not guilty of killing him. In the first blurry minutes of the morning, Felix was actually happier that Torsten wasn’t a murderer than he was that Merric had not been murdered, and that was not a thought he had any interest in thinking.
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