by Claire Luana
“Speak for yourself,” Pike said. “I’m starved.”
Callidus looked over his shoulder at her before following in Ansel’s wake. Wren stood frozen for a moment, her mind vacillating between the little cabin with Thom and the larger cabin the others had disappeared into. She finally huffed and followed after the others. She was thirsty. She supposed some water wouldn’t hurt.
The large cabin on the end seemed to be used as a dining hall. Inside were low-slung tables and benches. It was surprisingly tidy, and a ginger-haired woman in an apron and kerchief hurried over to the table they had gathered around. Wren glowered at Pike and Callidus as she slid onto the bench next to Callidus, daring them to say anything. Thankfully, they didn’t.
“Got a venison stew with pearl onions and carrots,” the woman said. “Shall I bring four bowls?”
“Ya, please, Greta.” Ansel flashed his smile at her, and the chipped tooth made Wren’s heart stutter. How had he come to be here? From the Red Wraiths to the Red Badger, worlds away? She wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to talk to him. To be sucked in. She knew how charismatic Ansel could be. She didn’t want him softening her with platitudes and explanations. She knew what he had done. She had heard the words with her own ears. She knew what he was.
The serving woman returned with four bowls of hearty stew, along with a board full of cheese and crusty potato bread. “The boys hunt all the meat local. And Greta is one of the finest cuisiniers in Nova Navis,” Ansel said. “Enjoy.”
Wren looked down at her stew. It did look delicious: hearty chunks of meat and little onions glistening like pearls. She took a bite and was surprised at the complex mix of spices—pepper, tarragon, and...was that a hint of nutmeg?
“So,” Ansel said. “Why ya lookin’ for mercs?”
“None of your business,” Wren said.
“Ya made yourself clear earlier,” Ansel said, “but it can’t hurt to have some idle conversation. Or shall we all sit here in silence?”
Wren glowered.
Pike and Callidus each cast her glances that she knew meant ‘stop being so rude,’ but she didn’t care. They didn’t know Ansel. She did. This is what he did.
“We’re considering a...countereffort against the new Aprican emperor,” Pike said. “We need men.”
Ansel whistled. “I hear the people are fallin’ to his side like dominos. You’d be up against tremendous odds. Highly disciplined fighting forces, nearly unlimited financial resources. City fightin’ is difficult terrain if it came to an actual skirmish.” He smiled around a bite of bread.
She took another bite of stew. Between the stew and the heat of the fire, a warmth suffused her that she hadn’t felt in days. Her muscles began to uncoil, loosening the tension that had filled her at Ansel’s nearness. Could she really get back on that boat and sail to gods-knew-where? Without Pike as their ally? Would they even be welcome back on the vessel if Pike insisted on working with Ansel and Callidus refused? And could Thom make the voyage to the Beekeeper-knows-where they would head to next? How long would he have to convalesce here? They’d already been gone from Maradis a week.
“How many men do you have?” Pike asked.
“’Bout two hundred,” said Ansel. “But they fight like a thousand. Each man—and I’ve got a few ladies—is handpicked and trained by me. Loyal. Fierce.”
“Two hundred,” Callidus said. “The Apricans have thousands.”
“About ten thousand, I hear,” Ansel said. “Though some of those’ll be headed home now that the city is won. Alesia has at least five. If those men could be rallied, the right plan put in place, the right man to command ’em, the Aprican occupying force could be crippled.”
“Especially if the emperor began to think the city was subdued,” Callidus said, exchanging a glance with Pike. “He might let his guard down.”
“We’d have to find a way to...neutralize certain defenses,” Pike said. The bread. He was talking about the bread.
“When you are hired, how do you and your men get from place to place? I didn’t see any sailors around here?” Pike asked.
“I know a captain over in Port Gris,” Ansel said, referring to the capital of Nova Navis. “She’s got a fleet that’s carried us in the past. I trust her.”
“She?” Pike raised an eyebrow.
“Oh ya.” Ansel grinned. “Quite a firecracker. Hell of a sailor.”
“And how much have you charged, in the past, for you and your merry band?” Pike asked.
“He can’t be trusted,” Wren muttered into her soup.
Callidus turned to her. “Should we really discuss this now?”
“I don’t care if he knows I think he’s a two-faced snake,” Wren said.
“I admit,” Ansel said, “I ain’t always been one hundred percent upstandin’ in my business dealings. But I don’t know what ya think I’ve done. Ya disappeared into thin air. Far as I knew, ya were dead.”
“Is that before or after you sold me to the Jackabees?” Wren was on her feet now, her hands planted on the table.
“What?” Ansel’s face drained of color. For the first time since they had arrived, she thought she saw some of that young boy he had been years before.
“Maybe we should leave these two to talk,” Callidus said, standing.
“I’m not done with my stew,” Pike protested, but he let Callidus haul him up.
“Greta will get ya more if ya ask nicely.” Ansel motioned back towards the kitchen.
Pike took his bowl with him and the two men pushed through the double doors.
Suddenly, the room felt very small. Even with the table between them, blocking Ansel from Wren, the air felt charged. Ansel’s ice-blue eyes were fixed on hers, pinning her to where she stood. She had been through so much, yet still this man made her feel like a little girl, foolishly following her first crush anywhere.
“I was there that day,” Wren said. Her voice was steady, much to her relief. “When you went to confront the Jackabees with Nik. I had a bad feeling, so I followed you. I saw when they ambushed you. I saw when they beat you. And I heard when Harlson asked for half your territory. And me. And you gave both to him without a second thought.”
Ansel pushed up from the table, pacing away from her, and then turning. “I was lyin,’ Wren. If I’d said no, they’da known...” He looked down, tracing the pommel of his sword. It was fashioned in the shape of a snarling badger head. “They’da known how much ya meant to me. I’d have said anythin’ to protect ya. I gave up half our territory, just so they’d let me go—so I could get back to the Wraithhouse and warn ya. But when I got back, ya were gone. Nowhere to be found. We thought they’d taken ya. We...I went crazy. I rounded up the rest of the Wraiths and we went for them. That night. The Jackabees. To find ya. It was bloody. There was so much fighting; a lot of the Wraiths died. But ya weren’t there.” Ansel rubbed his jaw, his eyes distant. Like he was still seeing the blood of those children. Like he still had it on his hands.
He continued. “Nik, he said ya were already dead. That they’d found ya and beaten and dumped your body in the bay, over by the piers. I took a few of the lads who were left, and bloody and hurtin,’ we searched everywhere. We never found ya. We thought ya’d died. Been picked clean.”
Ansel’s words struck Wren like arrows from a quiver. Could that be true? That he had thought she’d been dead? That he had searched for her? That it had all been a desperate ruse...?
Her world was tilting on its axis, shifting beneath her. She had hated Ansel for so long, his betrayal had festered inside of her, poisoning her like a cancer. Don’t trust anyone...they betray you. No man will ever think you’re worth fighting for. Could it be possible that she had been wrong?
No! Her mind rebelled at the notion. Ansel was playing her like he always had. She was a fool to fall for it. “You’re just saying that,” Wren said. Her voice was shaking now.
“Am I?” Ansel stepped around the table, looming over her. She wanted to shrink back from him but
held her ground. “Maradis was ruined to me. The wraiths had gone to hell, and I couldn’t be in a city that killed ya. Me and a few of the lads stowed away on a boat. Made our way to Port Gris. Turned out I had some family here. A grandmother I hadn’t known. Started rebuildin’ my life.”
Wren found herself shaking her head. Lies, they were lies. They had to be. For how could she even think about trusting him again?
“Bran is here, one of my seconds. Ya remember him from the Wraiths? Ya don’t believe me, ask him what happened that day with the Jackabees. Ask him...whether he thinks I woulda handed ya over to Harlson.”
Wren’s heart thumped in her chest. Branley. She did remember him.
“And if ya don’t believe him...” Ansel started unbuckling his leather breastplate under one arm, pulling it over his head.
Wren jumped as it thunked onto the table. “What are you doing?” she asked.
Ansel pulled his white shirt off, tossing it into a ball on top of the armor. His face was flushed. “If ya don’t believe me, or believe him, believe this. I got this to keep ya close. Always.”
Wren’s breath left her as she stared at Ansel’s taut torso, lean and strong from years of sparring and fighting. Across the center of his chest, right over where his heart must have been, was an intricate tattoo rendered in black ink. A tattoo of a wren in flight.
Chapter 27
Wren was drowning. Drowning in Ansel’s words, his presence, in the stark black ink of the tattoo, proclaiming that the anger she had felt for the past four years had been for nothing. Had been...a misunderstanding. Wren backed up. “I need some air.” Her feet propelled her past Ansel, through the door out into the damp chill Novan afternoon.
Pike and Callidus were outside, huddled close to a fire, Pike finishing his second helping of stew.
“Did you figure out whether you hate him or not?” Pike asked, his dark eyes furrowed.
Wren ran her fingers through her hair, its ends knotted from the blustery ride. “Maybe? I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s someone else I need to talk to.” Wren squinted towards the paddocks beyond the little village, where men and women were sparring with whirling staves. “And I think I see him. Wait here.”
“Can’t wait,” Pike called in a simpering voice after her.
Even back in their Wraith days, Bran had been big. Now, he was huge, with thick cords of muscle raining down blows upon his opponent in a merciless tempo. His round face was ruddy with effort, and his dimpled cheeks were covered with a thick beard braided at the ends and tied with little silver beads.
“Bran,” she cried, stepping up on the lowest rung of the fence circling the field.
Bran looked her way, shock registering in his hazel eyes.
His opponent took advantage of the moment and whacked Bran hard in the ribs.
Bran doubled over with a grunt of pain, resting one hand on his knee, the other held up in a sign of surrender. “Low blow.” He coughed before standing and taking in a deep breath.
“Never take your eyes off the fight,” his opponent said with a wide grin.
“Right you are. Now you’re learning,” Bran said. “Switch partners. I need a minute. I think I see a ghost from my past.”
“A wraith,” Wren called.
Bran let himself through the gate and swept her up in a bone-crushing hug. “Gods, it’s good to see you.”
“Ribs...” Wren croaked.
“Figure it’s payback for that little swipe.” Bran set her down, a wide grin breaking across his face. “I knew we had company...but I never in a million years would have thought...”
“The feeling is mutual,” Wren said.
“Can I get you something hot to drink? You’re freezing.” He ran his hands over her shoulders in a vigorous motion. “Some things never change. You never had any insulation on you, did you?”
“None left for the rest of us after you took it all.” Wren punched him in his sizable arm.
Bran guffawed, and the sound warmed her. It was good to see him. She had locked Ansel and the other Wraiths into a little dark corner of her mind after she had fled, but those memories were all resurfacing now. They had been her family. And with the exception of Nik, she had loved them like family. Well, with the exception of Ansel. That had been more complicated.
Bran led her into one of the small cabins. The interior held a main living room with two worn chairs pulled close to the fireplace. Bran went to work setting the fire and Wren wandered about, examining the sparse furnishings. Everything was faded and worn, but somehow inviting. On the windowsill, Wren found a crude carving of an elk, one of its horns broken off. “You still have this?” She turned to Bran, running her hands over the rough cuts of the wood. She could almost feel the boy’s chubby fingers, frustrated that he couldn’t get the chisel to work just right. She remembered him making it, sitting by the little cast-iron fireplace in the Wraithhouse while a particularly nasty storm drummed its fingers on the metal roof.
“Had to gauge my progress. This here’s some of my latest work.” He pointed to an exquisite carving of a braying elk over the mantle, its proud antlers rendered in lifelike detail.
It drew her and she ran her fingers over the grooves of the elk’s fur, the velvet of the antlers. “It’s extraordinary,” she breathed.
“Can’t go on killing people forever,” Bran said, setting a kettle over the growing flames. “One day I’m gonna give this all up and open my own shop.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Wren said, sinking into one of the chairs, its sagging cushions enveloping her. “Except the killing part.”
“So.” Bran sat too. “Our little Wren, flown home. How, after all these years? Why?”
Wren closed her eyes. “I didn’t know you were here, that Ansel was here. We came looking for mercenaries for hire. I’m a member of the Confectioner’s Guild, and some of the Guilds are looking for aid to try to take back the city.”
“Confectioner? Like candies?” Bran wrinkled his nose. “You’re too real for all that fancy stuff.”
“Says the man carving intricate elk statues,” Wren joked. “In truth, I didn’t find it. Confectionary...it found me. It saved me. After...”
“Yes, that. After what. Why did you leave? Ansel...it almost destroyed him. “
Wren’s mouth dropped open. “Are you... It’s true? You went looking for me? Fought the Jackabees?”
“Hell yes. Ansel was like a man possessed. The red wraith come to life. He bashed Harlson’s head in with a rock. That snake Nik said they had beaten you and left you for dead. We pawed through garbage along the piers for days, but after we couldn’t find you, we had to face facts. You were dead. Few of the other lads drifted away to join other gangs, few of us stayed with Ansel. We realized we couldn’t go back to the city, not with what Ansel had done. It had upset the balance of the gangs. And we’d had it with Maradis anyway.”
Wren pressed her lips together. So Ansel’s story was true. The rumbling of boiling water from the kettle was the only sound between them, and Bran got up, removing it with a towel before moving into the corner to pour. When he returned, he placed a blissfully warm mug into her chilled hands before sitting down.
“Where’d you go, Wren?” Bran asked softly. “Why’d you leave us?”
She looked at him. There was old pain in his eyes, and fresh pain too. They had thought her dead, and now it seemed she had left them. “I overheard Ansel saying he would trade me to the Jackabees. Hand me over like nothing. So I ran.”
Bran softened. “You really thought Ansel would do that to you? You and Ansel... He felt like a king with you at his side. Didn’t you know how he looked at you? He never woulda traded you for anything.”
Wren looked into the fire, tears prickling in her eyes. “Sometimes it’s hard to see...what’s right before you.”
“Well, isn’t that the way of the world?”
“And the tattoo...” She looked at Bran. “On Ansel’s chest? Is it really...?
” She trailed off. Seeing Ansel and Bran again...it brought it all raging back, the raw want and need of the Wraithhouse, the way her heart seemed only to beat for Ansel, her eyes always searching for him. The memories of her time with him were so vivid—the color brighter, the smells more pungent. Perhaps it was the potency of young love, or the heightened pain of his supposed betrayal, but when she thought of Ansel, her feelings buffeted her. Even after all this time.
“For you? Of course the tattoo’s for you. Failing you was his biggest regret. I reckon once you two get over the shock of seeing each other, the fact that you’re alive and well and happy will bring him great joy.”
“I’m sorry,” Wren said, guilt washing over her. How had she gotten it all so wrong? “For leaving. For putting you through...what you went through.”
“Sounds like you went through quite a bit yourself. It was a long time ago. We were stupid kids playing at being gangsters. We ended up right where we were supposed to be.”
“Good,” Wren said, taking a sip of her tea. She coughed. “Does this have whiskey in it?”
“’Course! What kinda operation you think we’re running here?”
She laughed.
“Seems like you landed yourself in a good spot too, current circumstances aside,” he continued. “Do you have someone taking care of you? You married?”
“Married? No,” Wren said. “There was...is...someone...” She sighed. “I don’t know where he is right now.”
“That sounds like a story,” Bran remarked, taking a sip of his own tea.
Wren let out a little laugh. “It’s been a strange few months. We’re trying to find him, but all I have to go on is this.” She pulled the chain out from the neck of her dress, showing him the ring.
“What’s this?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. A clue. As to his whereabouts. But it’s about the most generic clue ever. The stone is rare but still it could be found in a dozen places. The falcon...it’s his clan crest. Could mean anything.”
“That’s not a falcon,” Bran said, turning the ring in his hand to study it. “The beak is wrong.”
