by Jaime Castle
"I had you right where I wanted you." He chuckled. "I meant, why are you here? How did you know where I was?”
“I saw you in Troborough the other day and followed.”
“You were there when—”
“Yes,” she said solemnly, looking to the ground.
“So, you saw me fighting off those Black Sands savages?”
“I saw something, but it didn’t look like fighting.”
Whitney dismissed her comment with a playful wave of his hand. “Yet you decided not to help?”
“Someone had to get the children to safety. Besides, I wasn’t sure it was really you until you went for my nethers back there. Thought I was seeing things. You’re much taller now.”
A moment passed.
“Still can’t grow a beard, though.”
“What, you don’t see it?” Whitney smirked, scratching at stubble. His features darkened. “You still live in Troborough?”
“Lived,” she said, terse. Then, “Not all of us are deserters willing to abandon everyone who loves us.”
Whitney could have kicked himself. Of course, Sora would feel abandoned. All these years later and Whitney barely even thought about her, but there was a time they were the closest of friends; perhaps, the only friend he’d ever really had.
“Sora, I’m so—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she interrupted.
It started to rain. Sora brought up the hood of her robe.
“What about me?” Whitney asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“I’m sure you learned how to weather a storm or two out there frolicking in the real world.”
The silence returned as their pace became brisker in response to the rain.
“So how did you find me?” Whitney asked, finally.
“I followed the Glass soldiers back from Troborough after they took you. Next thing I knew, you were on the road with that… King’s Shieldsman.”
“Torsten,” Whitney said.
“What?”
“His name is Torsten. He’s the Wearer of White.”
Her eyes went wide. “The what? And you’re with him?”
“I’m moving up in the world,” he said, putting on an air of sophistication.
“I’ve got to hear this. You go from stealing bread from Big Ben Barenstein to leaving all of us behind to become some sort of… noble?”
“Noble?” Whitney scoffed. “The Queen pretty much had to beg me for help. She needed someone with my… particular talents, and after I stole King Liam’s crown right off his head, even they couldn’t deny I was the greatest thief in all of Pantego.”
Sora laughed. “You’re the greatest thief in Pantego? I haven’t heard of you since the day you left Troborough.”
Whitney’s lip twisted, but he kept his cool. “I wouldn’t be a very good thief if you had, would I?” He reached into his pocket and displayed the same bag of coins Sora had stolen off the cultist.
She patted her pants, then shot a glare his way. “Why in Elsewhere would the Queen need a silver-tongued devil like you?”
“Must be for my quick fingers.” Whitney winked.
“You’re gross.”
“Or maybe she just couldn’t resist my charm. Either way, we were heading south to the Webbed Woods when that oaf of a knight got us captured.”
“The Webbed Woods?” Sora asked. It sounded like her breath got caught in her lungs. Whitney didn’t recall her being afraid of anything, but only a fool wouldn’t fear those cursed woods.
“The Queen wanted us to retrieve the Prince’s... or King’s... whatever he is now. She wanted me to steal his special doll back from a Drav Cra warlock or something like that. Somehow it’ll help him recover from sickness. Highborn and their trinkets.”
Sora just stared at him, dumbfounded.
Whitney couldn’t help but smirk. He'd nearly forgotten what she looked like. The years had been kind to her. The young Panpingese woman was somewhere between cute and beautiful, with a turned-up nose and almond-shaped eyes bearing just the right amount of wrinkles at the corners. She wore her jet-black hair long and straight, the slightly pointed ears indicative of her heritage poking through on the sides. She could have been deadly gorgeous, but she barely tried and Whitney had a thing for the effortless.
The rain let up and they’d put some distance between them and the ruins. Finding a relatively dry spot under a thick canopy of trees, they made a small camp. Whitney took a seat on a fallen tree trunk and Sora sat beside him, scooting in close. She smelled like a farm, which wouldn’t have been awful if not for the fact that it was now a smell so foreign to him. He was used to city folk and city smells—shog and piss and everything worse.
"So, what now?” Sora asked.
“I’m not sure,” Whitney said, “but I’m sure as Elsewhere not going to die for some knight.”
“You’re going to abandon him?”
“Better me do him before he does me.”
“Good to see some things never do change.”
“That’s not fair,” Whitney argued. “He hired me to steal, not to fight. He was supposed to be the muscle and he goes and gets us captured by a mob of crazies who probably wanted to cut our throats to please a goddess that’s not even listening? How do you think he’ll fair against warlocks or giant, bloodthirsty spiders? He’d throw me at them to save his hide.” Whitney shivered at the thought.
“What's the pay?”
Whitney had plans to continue his rant, but her response caught him off-guard. “Excuse me?”
“The pay,” she repeated. “In exchange for helping.”
Whitney grinned, turned his cheek and said, “I swore I wouldn’t say.”
“Oh, c’mon, Whit.” She nudged his side playfully. “Clearly you’re getting paid. What is it? How much?”
“Why? It doesn’t matter anymore. Torsten’s locked in a cage, and without him, I barely know who or what I’m looking for.”
“So, you give up?” It wasn’t a really a question.
“No, I move on to greener pastures. I’m out of dungeons and ancient dwarven ruins, in the clean air. I’m thinking a vacation is in order.”
“You still haven’t answered. What was the price?”
“My freedom, which I now already have, and some riches.”
“You’re lying.” She shifted her body and leaned forward so she could stare straight into his eyes. He tried to look past hers, but the brilliant green flecks in her irises kept drawing him back.
“I swear.”
“A swear from a man who fears no gods is no swear at all.” Her breath on his skin brought something familiar and strange all at once. “And furthermore, I don’t believe you. You were a sad liar when we were kids, and you still are.” She lay her hand on his thigh and nudged in closer. “Just tell me. What does the greatest thief alive get offered for his services.”
Her hand slid further and further up his leg until finally, Whitney blurted, “A name.”
She pulled away immediately.
“A name?”
“Yes. A name. Happy?”
“What does that mean?”
“If we made it back alive, Torsten was going to have me anointed the head of a new house and I wouldn’t have to share a name with that sorry bumpkin I called Dad.”
Sora seemed disappointed. She sunk back, all the glimmer stricken from her eyes.
“It’s the only thing a thief can’t steal,” he continued. “But it’s not worth dying over. A name doesn’t matter much in a profession where you’re not meant to be seen or heard. It was a stupid idea, really.”
“You haven’t changed one bit.” Sora sprung to her feet and took a few healthy strides away before Whitney reacted.
“What is it now?” he whined.
“Was it really so awful back home with all us bumpkins?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Sora folded her arms and continued facing away from him.
“Look,” Whitney sigh
ed. “There are enough men after me to fill a barracks right now and trust me, I’ve had my fill of dungeon food. I have some friends in Winde Port. We can head there for now.”
“What makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?”
“For one, you followed me all the way to Oxgate. Two, there’s no Troborough to go back to…”
He hadn't sooner said the words than regretted saying them. There was no more Troborough. Her home had been burned to the ground for no good reason.
She turned to him, tears pooling in the corner of her eyes. "You're a real bit of shog, you know that?" She stalked off and Whitney chased her.
“Sora,” he called. She didn’t stop. “Sora!” He tugged on her shoulder. She whipped around, grabbed his wrist, and wrenched it so hard the pain forced him up onto his toes.
“I should have left you to rot in that cell,” she said, then released him.
“Probably, but now we’re here. Whitney and Sora, together again.” Whitney figured it was best not to mention he’d already expertly escaped the cell and instead, placed a hand on each of her shoulders, smiled, and said, “Don’t you remember when we got Pavlo’s dad to believe his pigs ran away?”
Sora held her glare for a few seconds but her lips betrayed the slightest hint of a smile.
That was enough for Whitney.
“He searched frantically, screaming out to them each by name,” he said, holding back a laugh.
“Until he heard the snorting in his cellar,” she said.
“Must have smelled like shog in his house for a week.” They shared a laugh, and Whitney used the moment to rub at his sore wrist. For such a small woman, she had a grip like glaruium.
“And then you left,” she said, her smile vanishing.
He sighed. Ever since that day he’d worked alone. It was how he liked it. But as he regarded her, now so many years older, he couldn’t help but imagine what it might have been like if he’d invited her along. Had a partner in crime. Would he still have found himself jaded enough to drink himself silly?
“I’m back now,” he said. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, no? Why don’t we put the past behind us and go somewhere far away from here and see what kind of trouble we can get into?”
Sora moseyed back to the fallen log and lay down, staring at the canopy above. From that angle, Whitney could really tell how much she’d grown up. He pretended to cough, hoping she hadn’t noticed him staring.
“You know what I want?” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I want to see what you learned all those years away from home. I want you to find the new King’s doll and get that name of yours. And since I have no more home to go back to, I’m going to help you.”
Whitney stifled a groan. He leaned against a tree, facing away from her, trying to find words that wouldn’t trigger her again. “Look, Sora. I don’t know if the stories about the Webbed Woods are true, but this is a job for professionals. Drugging some cultists is one thing, but this—”
He lost his train of thought when he felt a burning sensation in his side. He looked down and realized that the bottom of his shirt was burning. He tore at it, slapped at it, but it kept burning. He grabbed it by the collar and ripped downward, removing it completely. Then, he cast it to the ground and stamped on it until the fire suffocated.
The sound of Sora laughing drew his eyes up. She stood grinning. The look he saw there was more sinister than playful. She gripped a small knife in one hand and the other raised toward him. A thin, fresh line of blood dripped down her palm.
“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “You’re not the only one who’s been training.”
XXIII
The Knight
TORSTEN’S HEAD was foggy from the beating he took, but he was still sharp enough to deduce what had happened when he woke up to find the adjoining cell empty. His one remaining gauntlet lay in Whitney’s cell, as battered as Torsten’s own body. Beside his foot lay a shard of glaruium and a small stone.
"That thieving son of a—”
Torsten heard movement. He grasped the stone and tucked it beneath his leg. There was some shouting in Drav Cra and a moment later, several cultists returned, pointing to Whitney’s empty cell.
The first of them stormed over to Torsten’s cell and banged on the bars.
"Where is he?" the man questioned in the common tongue.
"I do not know," Torsten said. "He was gone when I woke up." If Torsten had to guess, Whitney was headed as far northeast from Yarrington as possible. Away from the Webbed Woods. Away from a chance at doing good by the kingdom. The coward’s path.
"Liar!"
"I do not lie. Though I can't imagine there would be a reason I should tell you heathens anything.”
"Then you will continue to rot in that cell.”
"Am I to believe that you'd have let me go had I told you where the boy went?"
The cultist stared, eyes a blank expression behind an equally blank mask.
"Thought so. Now, why don’t you get on with it and crucify me like that poor man in Oxgate?”
“He was no innocent," the cultist said. “And you were interfering with our judgment."
“And what was his crime?”
"He was an infidel and a liar," he said. "That is what we do to liars."
"It appears you’ll have to crucify all of the Glass Kingdom then. If Iam doesn’t strike you down first.”
“Iam’s eye is blind.”
“I pity those who can’t feel his light.”
"The Grand Maester will handle you.” The man spun, snapped his fingers and stalked away, leaving Torsten alone again.
Torsten wasted no time. He picked up Whitney’s makeshift lock pick. Even with his heavy gauntlets off, however, his arms were too thick to fit through the bars in order to reach the lock.
Maybe the kid has a few skills after all.
He tried to maneuver himself for a better angle. Still unable, he leaned back and placed his booted foot firmly against one of the bars. Maybe he couldn’t finesse his way out like that pestering thief, but this cage was intended to hold a dwarf, not a man anywhere near Torsten’s size. Now that his muscles weren’t exhausted from lack of sleep and fighting, nothing was going to keep him from getting out.
He pulled his leg back and kicked. He repeated this until the bar began to bend out at the center, the space between them now just wide enough to fit his arm.
He jiggered the lock as steady drum beats began reverberating throughout the cavern again. Torsten didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good. He wondered if Whitney had been caught trying to escape.
It would serve him right; leaving a brother at arms behind.
The drums intensified. Torsten continued to prod with the thin piece of metal but he had no idea what he was doing. By the time he could feel the vibrations of the drums in his bones he still hadn’t gained any headway. His frustration mounting, he stood, lowered his shoulder and rammed into the gate as hard as he could. He backed up and went again, harder this time.
He could feel the metal starting to give when a procession of the masked cultists entered the hollow area and parted around the central node. A man emerged from the heart of them, wearing an unmarked robe like the others but without a mask. A braided, white beard fell down below his collar.
He raised a fist and the drumbeat stopped. He took a step toward Torsten and lowered his hood. Torsten expected to be regarded with disgust, but instead, the old man appeared confused.
“Torsten?” he said.
A response got caught in Torsten’s throat. Of all the people to show up in such a foul place, Uriah Davies was the last he’d expected to see. Nobody had heard from him in over a year, but Torsten was sure it was him. Especially once he saw the one-of-a-kind sword sheathed at his side. The blade, crafted from glaruium hewn from Mount Lister, bore a mighty lion’s head carved on the pommel.
Hard lines creased his forehead and the corners of hi
s eyes. Dark, heavy bags hung from his eyes like ripe fruits straining their branches. A web of scars spread from a barren patch in his beard up to his right eye and across the cheek. But that’s how he’d always looked. As a matter of fact, he didn’t look a day older than when Torsten had last seen him.
“Uriah?” Torsten had done everything but bury his predecessor’s body, yet here he was, holed up in with blasphemers and heretics.
“Yes, my friend. But now they call me Grand Maester Ur.” His staid, wrinkled face settled into an emotionless stare.
The vision played in Torsten’s mind: a broken-hearted Uriah Davies, haunted by what Redstar had done, intent on finding him no matter what the cost.
“Open the door,” Uriah commanded. A cultist stepped forward, unlocking the cage Torsten had expended so much effort trying to bash through. The mangled bars labored to pass each other.
Torsten backed away.
“Old friend,” Uriah said. A soft smile spread across his face but Torsten was unconvinced. “You have no reason to fear. I am sorry for how you have thus been treated.”
Torsten inched toward his former compatriot until one of the masked cultists beckoned Torsten to step through. The moment he was free, Uriah wrapped him in a tight hug. Then he held him at arm’s length, smiled, and asked, “How long has it been?”
“Too long,” Torsten said. “Have you been…” He looked around, “…here all this time?”
“Are you hungry?” Uriah asked, ignoring the question.
After a moment Torsten nodded. “Starved.”
“Then let us feast!”
Before he could ask any more questions, Torsten was led upstairs to a celebratory hall. Torsten had gone from being beaten and stuffed in a cage meant for dogs, to being treated like royalty. He couldn’t help but be skeptical, old friend or not.
A long, bulky table made of bronze awaited them, covered in biscuits soaked in sausage grease, pickled herring and cod, boiled apricots and honeyed hams. The dessert table was just as grand with rich foods Torsten would have been impressed by, had he not lived in the Glass Castle and had the walls not been adorned with banners and idols to the Buried Goddess. Her unholy sigil was everywhere, a droplet of blood buried beneath a sharp crest, either a mountain or the edge of an arrowhead or dagger. On the far end, two eye-shaped apertures looked out over a ravine.
