Deepwoods (Book 1)

by Honor Raconteur

  “They do remember they’re not trying to hurt each other, right…?” Siobhan muttered anxiously under her breath. Maybe she should have insisted that they leave the weapons sheathed before doing this.

  “They’re fine,” Tran assured her in a low tone. “They’ve got good control right now, and it’s obvious neither of them are fighting at full speed.”

  Well, true, they were obviously holding back. But she knew from experience that these things could get out of control very quickly and neither man was wearing any sort of protective armor.

  Thwarted, Beirly circled back and tried again. Hammon wasn’t giving him any opening this time, however, and moved the sword spear in a series of quick thrusts, the wood sliding in his forward hand, so that Beirly had to dodge every direction to avoid getting a foot of metal in his gut.

  Beirly seemed to realize that if this kept going, he would dramatically lose the fight. In a short burst of speed, he closed the distance, sliding his sword against the staff, keeping Hammon from putting the blade into play. But Hammon didn’t hesitate or panic, he simply raised the staff above his shoulders, forcing Beirly’s sword up as well. Beirly had time to give a wordless protest before Hammon brought his knee up and rammed it into Beirly’s chest, forcing him backward.

  Losing his balance entirely, Beirly stumbled and collapsed onto his back, sword falling from his loosened grip. Hammon lost no time in putting the edge of the sword spear against the redhead’s throat.

  In good humor, Beirly spread his hands in surrender. “You won that bout, friend.”

  Hammon grinned at him. “You almost got me, though. A little faster, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.”

  “Ha!” Beirly didn’t believe that for one second.

  Grin widening, Hammon retracted the weapon before leaning forward, offering Beirly a hand up. Beirly took it and came easily to his feet.

  Siobhan watched this scene with open satisfaction. Yes, Hammon had the skills to defend himself and then some. She needn’t worry about that in the future. She clapped her hands together. With that settled, they might as well go in—

  “Me next!” Wolf said with unabashed excitement.

  She stared at him in horror. “What? Why?”

  “I haven’t faced a sword spear user in quite some time,” he responded as if the answer was obvious. “A man gets rusty if he’s always sparring with the same opponents.”

  “Pull the other leg, man!” Beirly responded, amused. “You spar with the whole city!”

  “They’re still the same opponents,” Wolf argued, already drawing the shield from his back. “Besides, I want to see if he knows how to get past a shield.”

  “You can hold a shield and fight?” Hammon asked, tone not condescending, but honestly intrigued.

  “Of course,” Wolf assured him. Turning sideways, he demonstrated for the other man. “Beirly made it so that I can lock the hand in place. See? Once I have the fingers through the handle, I use the thumb here to latch the others in position. It won’t release until I pull this lever here.”

  “Ingenious,” Hammon breathed, leaning in closer for a better look. “Beirly, have you considered selling this design? Actually marketing it? I know you’d only be able to make limbs for people able to afford them, but I still think you’d make a pretty kor from it.”

  “Now that is a good business proposition.” Beirly stroked his beard as he thought about it. “What do you think, Sylvie? You think you can help me sell it if I make it?”

  “Beirly,” the brunette drawled, “I can sell your beard to apes if I’ve a mind to. The reason I didn’t suggest it before is it’s hard to market something you have to custom make for people. I saw how much time you’ve invested in Wolf’s arm, making it so that it fits him just right.”

  “There’s a drawback, alright.” Beirly frowned in thought, still tugging at his beard. “But in the beginning, it was all trial and error. I bet I can do it faster now, not fumble as much.”

  “Debate this over dinner,” Wolf suggested, clearly not interested in business deals when there was new blood to spar with.

  Hammon good-naturedly raised his weapon again, ready to take on the next opponent.

  Siobhan leaned back against the wall with a sigh. Well, if it truly did start to get out of hand, she’d send Tran in to break it up.

  ӜӜӜ

  In an unusual turn of events, Siobhan was not the first down to breakfast the next morning. She came downstairs to find that Hammon, Grae, and Beirly had beaten her there, with half-consumed plates in front of them.

  “—was actually for my sake that the guild was formed,” Grae explained to an attentive Hammon. “You see, I studied under a master Pathmaker in Widstoe—that’s our hometown—and became a master there myself. But once I had the ranking, I discovered that most of the people in the city still went to my master for work. He’d been doing it for over twenty years, so I guess people were just used to dealing with him. But that didn’t leave a lot of customers for me, so I did a little research and discovered that Goldschmidt didn’t have a Pathmaker but it did have the size and demand to support one.”

  “So you moved there?” Hammon guessed.

  Ah, Hammon must have asked how the guild was first formed. Siobhan silently joined them at the table, serving up a plate of food for herself from the dishes in the middle, and started eating without even trying to interrupt.

  “Well, I was set to do that, but I’m bad with people.” Grae gave a self-depreciating smile. “I don’t deal well with strangers, especially. But Siobhan, she’s always been good with people. So I asked her to form a business with me—she’d handle the clients, I’d build the paths.”

  Hammon glanced at her.

  “I thought it a good business plan,” she said easily. “So I agreed.”

  “Right before we left, though, my master warned me that most Pathmakers don’t do well unless they’re part of a guild,” Grae continued. “It’s the protection of belonging to a guild more than anything else. Otherwise people try to pressure you into joining up with their guild, and you end up in a place where you’d rather not be. But it takes at least three people to form a guild, so…”

  “So they asked me,” Beirly piped up, stroking his beard in a reminiscent manner. “I’d built myself a carpentry business by that point, and had run it for two years, so I knew more about forming a guild than either of them. It didn’t set right with me, either, sending them off alone to a city that they’d only heard of. I couldn’t convince their parents to talk them out of the idea—they’re both from large families and I think they were just as glad for one less child to feed—so I thought, I’d best go with them. Turns out to be the best decision I ever made.”

  “Somehow—mind you, I don’t remember hearing this discussion at all—they talked about it behind my back and nominated me as guildmaster,” Siobhan couldn’t help but add dryly.

  “We took a vote,” Beirly defended himself mildly.

  “The majority carried,” Grae tacked on with a small grin.

  “Ha ha ha.” She glared at both of them, muttering under her breath.

  “Although I almost rethought that decision after two months,” Beirly admitted ruefully to Hammon. “See, we got a guildhall for cheap, and set up business easily enough. With Grae’s skills, we had a good number of clients within the first month. We’d barely gotten our feet wet when she stumbled across a black market and saw Wolf. Siobhan’s always been the sort to take pity on outcast souls, and after one look at him, she couldn’t leave him there. So she bought him.”

  Hammon’s eyes crossed. “You bought Wolf?”

  “For fifty-eight kors,” Beirly stated factually. Cocking his head, he asked rhetorically, “Has he ever paid that back?”

  Siobhan snorted. “I couldn’t begin to tell you. Considering how often I’ve had to dock his pay or fine him for damages, it’s a miracle he has any money at all.”

  Beirly waved this away as unimportant. “We thought she was
crazy at first. I mean, who buys a former dark guild mercenary with a missing hand? Especially one that’s as big as a giant and strong enough to snap your neck like a chicken’s? But he was so grateful for any show of kindness, I realized she was right to take him from there. That’s when I thought, if he just had that hand of his back, he’d be a force to reckon with. We needed a good fighter in the guild with all the traveling we did. So he and I made a deal. I’d make him up a hand so he could fight if he promised to stay until we could find another enforcer to replace him with.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait!” Siobhan threw up both hands to stop him. “I never heard about this! When did you two promise that?”

  Those big brown eyes blinked at her. “You didn’t know he promised me that?”

  “No, I didn’t know!” she responded in exasperation. “When did he?”

  “Oh, not long after you brought him to the Hall.” Beirly scratched at his beard and looked thoughtfully toward the ceiling. “Hmmm, a week or two after? Remember that one squinty-looking man who was trying to trick us into moving stolen goods to Stott? The one that Wolf squashed flat when he tried to flee? It was after that.”

  “That happened the first month he was with us,” Siobhan said faintly. Several memories sorted and flipped themselves in her head, forming a completely different picture than they once had. “Wait, so when I asked him to stay on long enough to pay back what I’d spent on him, is that why he gave me such a funny smile?”

  Beirly gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Don’t know anything about that.”

  Hammon put his knife down, apparently too engrossed in the conversation and history of Deepwoods to care about a trivial thing like eating. “So what happened next?”

  “Sylvie,” Grae said, like a man explaining that a typhoon had hit.

  Siobhan smothered a laugh, as it rather had been like that. “You see, the whole incident with the smuggler had taught us a clear lesson. We didn’t know enough about trade, and I’m not a good trader anyway. None of us are. So I started looking around for another member, someone that would understand the business, and give me good guidance. It wasn’t long after that we found Sylvie. She’d left Orin and come through Converse, looking for a guild that had a female guildmaster. I suppose she felt it would be safer that way, or something. Anyway, she heard that I was looking for a tradesman and came to me. We bonded over a bowl of chocolate strawberries.”

  “And the guild hasn’t been the same since,” Beirly inserted, eyes crinkling. “She wasn’t too sure what to think of a male-dominated guild like ours at first—she’s a bad history with men trying to take advantage of her—but we worked it out with her quick-like. The first day she was out late, and Wolf went looking for her, she came back with the widest smile on her face. She’d run into trouble and was in a fine pickle before Wolf showed up. It was the first time a man had defended her and not asked something in return, see. I knew then, she’d never leave of her own accord.”

  “It took us some time to figure out how to protect her properly,” Siobhan admitted with a long sigh. “But she’s worth every bit of trouble and then some. Although we haven’t had as much trouble with that in Goldschmidt the past few years. People more or less know now that if you hassle her, you’ll be dealing with every other person in Deepwoods, and there will be broken bones.”

  “It’s given her space to breathe.” Grae tapped the table to get Hammon’s attention. “Be careful with her. Please.”

  “And Denney too,” Beirly added.

  “And…?” Siobhan encouraged them with a smile of anticipation.

  Both Grae and Beirly looked back at her blankly.

  “And what?” Beirly asked, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t a clue what she wanted.

  “And what am I?” she snapped back, irritated. “Chopped liver? Why aren’t you worried about protecting me?”

  “Shi, I feel sorry for anyone that tangles with you,” Grae informed her bluntly.

  “No kidding,” Beirly muttered. “The last time a man hassled you, you’d taken him down before Wolf could do more than turn his head.”

  She glared at them murderously. Without turning her head, she growled, “I see that smile, Hammon. Wipe it off your face right now.”

  He gave a fake cough. “Wasn’t smiling.”

  ‘Wise of you,’ Grae mouthed.

  Grumbling under her breath, she stabbed the knife into her food with more force than necessary.

  “What are you two on about?” Wolf asked them. He’d apparently come down without her noticing. He came around the table to pat her gently on the head. “She’s a beautiful woman, isn’t she? Of course you should look out for her.”

  Her bad mood disappeared without a trace and she beamed up at him. Putting both arms around his waist, she laid her head against his stomach and crooned, “You wonderful man.”

  In an undertone, Beirly murmured, “He always spoils her like that.”

  “If either of you had any sense, you would too,” Sylvie informed them as she sauntered around the table to the empty seat next to Hammon. “After all, she controls your paychecks.”

  Grae and Beirly gave each other nervous looks.

  Siobhan started cackling like a mad crone.

  Sylvie grabbed Hammon’s spoon and without a by-your-leave snatched a bite from his plate. “Mmm, good.”

  Hammon regarded her with open surprise, not expecting his breakfast to be stolen.

  “She does that,” Beirly warned him belatedly. “If you sit next to Sylvie, expect to only eat about half your plate. She can’t resist eating both her food and yours.”

  “Is that right?” Hammon glanced at her, expression thoughtful and weighing. Then without another word, he reached out and piled another spoonful of everything onto the plate before nudging it a little closer to her.

  Sylvie’s mouth parted in surprise. When he simply looked back at her, expectantly, she softened into a sweet smile. With his generosity established, she didn’t hesitate to steal another bite, although she did give him his spoon back first so he could at least try to eat.

  Siobhan watched this play out with open satisfaction as Wolf took the chair next to hers. Well now. She’d known Hammon to be a kind soul from their first meeting, but this rather proved it to the whole guild. Sylvie had probably been half-testing him on that first bite—she routinely tested everyone she came into contact with—but now that Hammon had proven he wouldn’t judge her for her bad habits, they would likely be much more at ease with one another.

  They chatted over breakfast and ate but did not dawdle. With the storm past them, Siobhan didn’t want to waste any time staying here. They knew everything that could be learned about Lirah’s party and it was time to go.

  Fortified with a hot breakfast, steaming tea, and a good night’s rest, they took to the road once more. Leaving the isle took a matter of minutes, as it didn’t have any real width to it, just length, and then they stepped onto the second half of the Grey Bridges. The whole party let out a sigh of relief when they felt the warm wind flow over them. The air still had a distinct chill to it, but it didn’t even compare to the wind-cutting, bone-rattling cold of before.

  They crossed the bridge without incident, sometimes nodding or saying friendly hellos with the people that passed them on the other side. With fairer weather, the traffic on the bridge picked up considerably as people tried to take advantage and get to their own destinations.

  Siobhan kept an eye on Denney as they went. The girl had never been comfortable in Quigg, despite it being her hometown. Or maybe it was because of it. Wynngaard and Teherani both had interesting opinions about half-bloods, and Denney usually ran into trouble at some point when they passed through the city. The closer they got, the more openly she stuck herself to Conli. He put an arm around her shoulder, comforting, but also in a clearly protective mood.

  She caught Wolf and Tran’s eyes, inclining her head toward Denney. They nodded in grim understanding, accepting her silent order to keep an e
ye on her.

  Still, the day passed pleasantly enough, and by late afternoon, they arrived in the thriving, bustling, and sometimes dangerous city of Quigg.

  Quigg had never been designed or organized in any way as it was constructed. People had added on streets, neighborhoods and whole markets wherever they felt a need to have one. People who had been born and raised in the city still got lost in it, or so the rumors said. Anyone going to Wynngaard had one of two options: find a ship and sail there yourself or go through Quigg. Sometimes people had stopped there instead of continuing on, and the city reflected the very diverse cultures it housed. Every possible style of architecture, masonry, and signs could be seen as soon as the guild stepped through the main gates. Siobhan flinched from it a little, overwhelmed by the clash of scents, voices speaking loudly in different languages, and the press of bodies wearing every possible style of clothing.

  She could tell it unnerved the men, too, being surrounded and jostled on all sides by pedestrians and other travelers. They immediately formed ranks around the cart, Wolf guarding the back, Fei the middle, and Tran coming ahead to ride alongside her. Raising her voice to be heard over the din, she said to him, “Is it my imagination, or is this place more crowded than it was last year?”

  Tran grimaced agreement.

  Sylvie stood up in the cart and called, “Siobhan! Should I go ahead and see if our regular inn has room for us?”

  Instinctively, she felt it a bad idea. Shaking her head, she raised one hand and made a circular gesture, signaling the group to stick close together. Siobhan just knew that if they separated in this crowd, for any reason, they’d have a terrible time finding each other again. She especially didn’t want any one of them going off alone—no telling what trouble they’d find doing so.

  They blazed a path through the crowd easier as a group, but even then their pace was slow. Siobhan couldn’t clearly remember which street their preferred inn sat on, so Tran took the lead (bless the man’s memory) and led them off the main thoroughfare, which took them away from that crushing crowd. Siobhan breathed a sigh of relief to leave that noisy, somewhat smelly, mass of people behind her.