by Bobby Adair
“And the owners of the animals will never return,” said Beck.
“You believe that to be true?” Evan asked.
“We’ve both suspected it from the very beginning,” said Beck. “All my doubts are now gone. Blackthorn is smarter than I have long suspected he was. I have no doubt about his ruthlessness. I think he intends to exterminate the excess population while at the same time slaughtering as many demons as possible.”
“Will you be able to avoid riding out with the army?” Evan asked. “That doesn’t sound like a safe expedition for anyone.”
“You’ve seen my escort,” said Beck, referring to Blackthorn’s four men waiting out in the alley. “They’re to ensure that between now and the moment the army rides out, with me on a horse among them, that I don’t have the chance to change my mind.”
“What will you do?” Evan asked. “How will you get back here?”
Beck shrugged and smiled. “Blackthorn is a wily one, but he and his blue-shirted dunces are still no intellectual match for me. I’ll take along a handful of strong young scholars who can handle themselves outside the wall. When the time presents itself as we’re out on Blackthorn’s folly, we’ll make our escape and return to Brighton. Then we’ll execute our plan. We’ll take control and rule these towns as they should have been ruled all along. Famine, thanks to Blackthorn, will be a solved problem for us. So, no need for us to head west to avoid it.”
“Much danger awaits outside the circle wall,” said Evan.
“Every path is fraught with danger,” said Beck. “We accepted the risks when we made our choices at the start of this.”
Evan nodded.
“How is your recruitment effort going?” Beck asked.
“Aside from Oliver’s sudden absence, it goes well.”
“Does Oliver worry you?”
Evan rubbed his chin, and he spent a moment thinking about it. “I don’t worry as to whether Oliver has given us up. I’m worried about him. I’m afraid something may have happened to him.”
“You should stop by the temple to check,” said Beck. “What of the recruitment?”
“It goes quickly,” said Evan with a confident smile. “Your intuition on the Dunlows was correct. They do despise Blackthorn for all the mistreatment he has heaped upon their family. They also are in contact with a network of the disgruntled. We have tapped into that, and in a flash, we now have nearly fifty men who will raise their swords to overthrow Blackthorn.”
“Even with the army gone,” said Beck, “fifty will not be enough.”
“We have perhaps another hundred that we know of who might join in.”
Nodding and getting hopeful, Beck said, “That may be enough to cut the head off the snake that Blackthorn leaves in his place. As for the cavalry and militia that he leaves behind, we may not need to fight with them face-to-face. If we give them enough of the story about Blackthorn’s choice to exterminate so many men at the hands of the demons, they will all come over to our side. That way, when Blackthorn returns with what’s left of his precious cavalry, we will either be able to repel them or convince them as well to join us. Then we’ll see Blackthorn on the pyre, and a new age of intellectual enlightenment will be born in the three townships.”
Chapter 25: Bray
Bray studied his dirt-encrusted nails as he warmed his hands near the last embers of the dying morning campfire. His arms were streaked brown. His body had the familiar odor of someone who had been on the move for too long. He was used to the dirt and grime, but he should’ve jumped into the stream the night before with the others.
He held his nose from the stench of sweat and rabbit innards.
“I stink,” he muttered.
He studied Ella’s sleeping form by the campfire. Her face seemed to glisten in the emerging sunlight. William and Melora lay asleep next to her. The bath she’d taken seemed to have unpeeled a new woman, one who looked both beautiful and out of place in the overgrown wild. Her devotion to her children seemed to have only deepened through the course of their time together.
Though he’d grown unintentionally fond of her, he was getting the familiar itch of freedom.
Besides, she reminded him of a woman he hadn’t seen in too long.
He needed time away. After days of companionship, he was mentally exhausted. His jaw was tired from chatter. His mind tired from the constant explanation of the wild’s rules. The bushes and the trees didn’t argue with his decisions. They didn’t question his every move.
Flexing his fingers and cracking his neck, he stood and looked out over the tops of the trees. Light seeped through the foliage, giving him an early morning greeting. They were on an eastern course for the Ancient City. Coventry was a short trek north. He considered the pile of skins he had in his pack—enough to buy decent food if he received a fair price for them.
Definitely enough to purchase a few cups of ale, before visiting one of the finer women in the local House.
Maybe he’d even bring back supplies if he were feeling charitable. He collected his gear quietly, keeping a watchful eye on his sleeping companions. Melora rested with her bow near her head. Ella’s sword was within easy reach. They were learning.
They’d survive just fine without him. He hoped.
The rustle of clothing interrupted his thoughts. Ella sat up, rubbing her eyes. She opened them. Observing Bray’s posture, she whispered, “You’re leaving.”
“I was thinking about it.” Bray shifted the pack on his back. He grunted. He wasn’t easily guilted, but he felt a pinprick of shame.
“Where are you going?”
“To Coventry. I was thinking about getting some food. Trading in the scalps I have in my bag.” He motioned toward the charred bones by the fire. “We could use a break from rabbits.”
Ella studied him with an expression of distrust. “How far away is it?”
“Only a few miles.”
“Were you going to leave without telling us?” Ella asked, though her face said she already knew the answer.
Bray grinned. “Would you miss me if I did?”
Ella scowled. “If you’re going to leave, at least have the decency to tell me now, so we don’t wait around for you.”
Bray’s gaze wandered to the figures beside her. Melora slept peacefully. William also looked peaceful, but Bray hadn’t forgotten the violence the boy had engaged in. Bray pictured the boy hovered over Theodore Marks in the forest, stabbing and screaming. Then he pictured him looming over Ella. Bray’s mistrust made him hesitant to leave them for too long.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” he said.
Without another word, he trekked into the forest.
Chapter 26: Oliver
Oliver’s mind was made up. Now that Franklin had turned on him, he wasn’t going to stay in the temple under Father Winthrop’s brutish tutelage. He was going over the wall. He’d find one of the unsanctioned villages and live with people who were free from continual abuse. He knew being out in the winter was dangerous. He knew he’d have trouble with food. He knew he’d have trouble getting a weapon. He’d even have trouble getting a cloak warm enough to protect him from those freezing nights when he had no roof over his head.
The solution to those problems, he realized, was coin.
That was something he knew how to get.
That was the focus of his fantasies every night when his thoughts wandered before he went to sleep.
Oliver had a plan.
Franklin was gone. General Blackthorn was in the temple scolding Winthrop, which seemed to have become a daily routine. Oliver laughed at the pointlessness of it all. General Blackthorn was wasting his time trying to find anything but a cowardly bully inside Winthrop’s flowing, womanly robe.
Nothing would ever be resolved. General Blackthorn was a stone wall, used
to yielding to nothing. Father Winthrop was a spoiled merchant’s little fat kid. He’d cry and snivel and beg to get his way. Neither would surrender.
Oliver snuck through the narrow servants’ hall behind the Temple Sanctuary, walking slowly in the dim light to keep from making any noise that might be heard through the wall where General Blackthorn scolded Father Winthrop.
Once in the main hall, Oliver ran on light feet. He stopped at Father Winthrop’s door, listening to the voices in the Sanctuary.
Still talking.
Oliver thought about the risk he was taking. He thought about the consequences, but he was tired of fearing things he could do nothing to forestall. He’d thought it all through a thousand times. He’d already made his choice. He wasn’t going to get whipped again. He was going to risk all to avoid it.
In he went, closing the door quietly behind him.
The smell of the unwashed chamber pot overpowered Winthrop’s usual stink. The room was uncomfortably warm. The fire burned vigorously in the hearth.
Oliver already knew what he was after: the box of ancient cross-shaped relics under the bed.
He bounded over to the side of the bed, the place where he’d spotted the box before.
Franklin had told him the story of how Fitz had come to be in the temple. As soon as Oliver heard about the box, he knew exactly the one Franklin was talking about. He knew where it sat. He could describe it in some detail, having seen it on a hundred occasions, and having looked at it with the hungry curiosity of a boy his age. Thanks to Franklin, he now knew the box contained relics, all wrought from expensive metals and jewels.
Getting down to his knees, Oliver looked beneath the bed where the box usually sat.
But the box was gone.
Oh, no.
It didn’t take a brilliant man to deduce that after Fitz had attempted to steal one of his priceless trinkets, Winthrop had moved the box.
Oliver jumped to his feet and looked around, knowing that a moment of thought would save him long minutes of searching.
Oliver was smarter than Winthrop. In all the ways that counted, anyway. Sure, Father Winthrop knew plenty of trivial facts about The Word, about life, and about the history of the people. But that was only because he was an old man who’d been around long enough to see lots of things happen. In time, Oliver would learn all that Father Winthrop knew. In Oliver’s mind, that was a given.
Anything Winthrop could do, Oliver could do more easily.
The cabinet of old trinkets. That was the obvious place to hide the special box.
The cabinet stood half again taller than Oliver, fashioned by the hands of the Ancients in those peculiarly straight smooth boards. This particular cabinet was plain, except for the places where time had cracked and discolored the wood. It had two shelves open for viewing and another two on the bottom hidden behind two small doors. Given the old trinkets of inexplicable utility on the shelves, the most logically obvious place for Father Winthrop’s box of cross relics was on one of the shelves behind the doors.
Oliver rushed over to the cabinet and yanked the door handles. The cabinet wobbled on uneven feet. Some of the trinkets swayed. Some fell over. Others jingled.
Oliver hissed a few swear words as he threw his hand to the edges to hold the old thing steady. He wasn’t afraid it would fall, but he did fear that something might tumble off a shelf and break. That’d make enough noise to bring Father Winthrop harrumphing down the hall to protect his useless baubles.
With the cabinet stabilized, Oliver stepped back to look at the old things on the shelves. With some, he couldn’t tell whether they’d fallen over or were standing upright. Most were already broken—at least, that was Oliver’s guess. One was obviously some kind of cup, made from some odd, lightweight material, but a good portion of it was gone. That one was easy enough. About others, he could only make a wild guess.
Oliver straightened the objects on the shelves, hoping he’d arranged them correctly. He took a moment to listen between nervous breaths for the muffled echo of General Blackthorn’s voice out in the Sanctuary.
Satisfied that he was still safe, Oliver gently tugged on both of the cabinet doors. They moved, but didn’t open. He immediately realized why. Oliver stood up and slowly shook his head as he appraised the lock. Sure, he’d seen locks on doors before, but just like this cabinet, they were rare. Rarer still were locks that functioned.
He wondered if maybe the lock was just stuck. After all, it was hundreds of years old. Oliver knelt down and tugged at the doors, peeking at the mechanism holding the doors together to see if he could tell how it worked.
Unfortunately, it appeared to be actually locked. That meant there was a key, somewhere.
Would Father Winthrop keep the key on his person?
No, Oliver didn’t think so. To do that would be to risk losing it. Even the key had value just for the fact that it was made of metal, the sort of metal that hadn’t rusted away to nothingness after all these years.
Oliver looked around the room again.
He hurried over to the bed and looked under the pillows, thinking that he sometimes hid stolen crusts of bread under his own pillow for eating late in the night after Franklin was asleep.
Sadly, no key lay under either pillow.
Oliver looked quickly around as his heart started to race. He’d been in the room too long. He’d planned to be in and out in a flash. Now he was lingering and searching.
He thought about abandoning the plan and coming back later. But when? He was seldom alone. Father Winthrop spent most of his time in his room these days.
Opportunities like this were few.
Oliver took a slow breath to calm himself. He looked around.
The fireplace? Maybe up on the mantle.
Oliver hurried over. The shelf was above the level of his eyes so he dragged his hand along the top edge, feeling for anything that might be a key.
He started on the left end and almost made it to the other, losing hope with each passing stone, when his fingers bumped something small and cold that jingled quietly over the stone. Oliver spread his fingers to capture it and pull it down.
The key.
Oliver’s heart raced with excitement instead of panic. He hurried back across the room to the cabinet, kneeling down by the lock.
He slipped the key in, not sure how exactly it operated. He jiggled. Nothing. He pushed, he pulled. Nothing seemed to work. He tried to turn it left, and then right.
The ancient pieces of metal slid across each other, conveying the feel of corroded surfaces rubbing out of the lock and up the length of the small key. The lock clicked.
Oliver swung the doors open. There, sitting by other old pieces of refuse, was the box. Oliver stifled a giggle as he reached in, lifted the lid, and peered inside.
The sparkly little cross relics were more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen, prettier than any description Franklin had provided.
Suddenly aware that he’d stopped breathing, Oliver gulped a big breath.
Oliver reached into the box, wanting to fondle each piece, but knowing time was short. He didn’t need to pick a favorite. To him, these were things to be traded for freedom. Any would do. Three would be perfect, or so he guessed as he looked at them. That number wouldn’t be missed. One would get him enough coin for things he might need for traveling and surviving, including a weapon. One for bribing any guards he encountered that might stop him. One for bribing his way into his new home, wherever that turned out to be.
He grabbed some crosses, jiggled the others around in the box to make them appear to be evenly spread, closed the lid, and shut the cabinet doors. He jammed the key into the lock, trying to reverse what he’d done to get the thing unlocked, but it seemed to fight him in the attempt. Losing his patience, he yanked and turned, and
suddenly the lock seemed to catch.
He jumped back to his feet, hustled across the room, put the key back where he’d found it, and heard Winthrop’s heavy wheeze out in the hall. Oliver’s brain went white with panic.
The handle on the door to Winthrop’s chamber creaked.
Chapter 27: Bray
The bitter air seemed several degrees warmer as Bray journeyed away from the campsite. Or maybe it was just the freedom of being away from the others. Bray adjusted his pack on his shoulders and increased his pace. The feeling of being unburdened—of not having to slow down—was a feeling he could get reacquainted with. He contended with rocks, roots, and stones with ease. He wove around trees and through snow while keeping alert for danger.
The time passed quickly. He barely had time to think about the woman he was going to see before he was within sight of the township.
It had been almost a month since he’d visited Samantha. The image of her red hair and fervent green eyes had kept him company through several cold, rainy nights in the wild. Along with her husband, Conrad, Samantha ran one of the more widely-known pubs in Coventry. But Bray hadn’t found that out right away. She’d only recently gotten married, and he’d never laid eyes on her before meeting her in the bar.
After a particularly gruesome encounter with a pack of demons a year ago, Bray had stopped at the pub, intending on having a celebratory drink. While ordering a flagon of snowberry, he’d found himself increasingly enamored by the woman serving him. Her smooth, pale skin and auburn hair had distracted him from his aches and pains.
He’d ended up in the back room with her. It was only later that he’d found out her name was Samantha, and that her husband was one of the wealthiest merchants in town. She’d sworn him to silence, fearing she’d be killed or put to the pyre. Bray had kept his word, on the condition she lay with him whenever he came through.
