by Henry Thomas
“I said stand down!” Ryla was on her way around the bar to intercept Elmund.
“Black luck to have seen either of them! Dathe dead and here we are dancing and drinking. How do you like that?” He pulled his arm away from his captain and staggered out a few feet further toward Joth and Eilyth. “What did you do in that town? Eh? What did you steal to get them up in arms about? Everyone knows that the bloody Dawn Tribes are full of thiev—”
Eilyth moved like a bolt of lightning and struck out with her staff and hit the man twice on the head and then swept his legs out from under him and laid him out on his back in the middle of the floor. Kipren and Galt’s eyes nearly shot out of their heads, and Ryla Dierns looked as though she had given up but was somehow impressed at the same time. Eilyth’s face was calm, but her eyes burned with fire and passion. She held the moaning Elmund on the floor with the butt of her staff resting on his windpipe.
“Listen to me now,” she said evenly. “We are no thieves, and my people most certainly are not thieves. It is the Oestermen who are consumed by greed, it is you and your vanity and your laziness and your disrespect of nature and your covetousness that poisons your world, not my people. We live with the earth, you seek to live off of it; can you not see your own folly?” She was looking at Elmund straight in the eyes and he had locked eyes with her and in that moment his eyes grew wide before they settled back.
He gasped once before he had his wind. “Please. Let me go. I’m sorry.”
She released him and he rose to his knees, a hand on his throat and the unmistakable look of fear and confusion in his eyes. Kipren and Galt helped him to his feet. He was looking at them all as though he was disoriented, as though he did not remember having seen them all day and all night, and Joth was almost certain that Eilyth had used her power on Elmund in much the same way as she had used it on him those weeks ago when he and Wat had been captured in the pass. Of course, the man was drunk and had been hit with a staff on the crown and knocked to the floor.
“It’s bunk time, lads. Fun is over for the night.” The captain motioned for Joth and Eilyth to take to the stairs. Joth thought it a good idea and guided Eilyth in that direction as the airship crew sat Elmund in a chair and Galt fetched him some water. A serving girl showed them upstairs to their rooms, which were at the end of the hall and adjacent to each other. The serving girl wished them a pleasant sleep and trotted back downstairs. Joth stood across from Eilyth and bowed to her slightly.
“You are bloody quick with that staff.”
“I could not let him keep talking.”
“I suppose that was the last thing he expected to have happen to him.” Joth could not help but smile. He had wanted to lay Elmund out from the beginning.
Eilyth smiled back at him. “Did you…wake him? Like what you did to me?”
She shook her head. “I only show the possibilities. The world as it is. It is up to the sleeper to wake.”
Joth did not understand what that meant. Her powers were mysterious and subtle, and altogether foreign to him. He found himself staring at her without any words again, without any words to put together in any meaningful way that would grant him a window into her world or allow him for the slightest moment to have a clear understanding of how she understood things, how the world could be brought into such sharp focus and clarity as it seemed to be for her. He stood there searching for something to say, something that could encapsulate his ideas and his feelings, but he came to the realization that he was not able to speak of it now. It was larger than him, larger than his understanding would allow him to fathom.
“My lady, I wish you a good night and a good sleep.”
She laughed at him. “Thank you, my lord.”
“No, not lord. Perhaps Master, but even that’s calling it close.”
He shared a laugh with her then. She was very charming, gold and red and dazzling blue and green. It was easy to forget that he was essentially a prisoner trapped within the prospect of her safekeeping if he were ever to rescue his friend and commander Wat. Of course there was the issue of Lord Uhlmet, but to him that mattered little; Lord Uhlmet could rot for all he cared. No, for him the world had shrunk down to he and the Lady Eilyth and their adventures, even if he was being used he felt well used. Even if he had to pit his life against Elmund’s or anyone else, he knew that he would do so willingly in order to protect her and preserve her, friends or no. They looked at each other there in the hall for a long while, and then Eilyth stepped inside the doorframe of her room.
“Well, goodnight, Joth, and thank you for your excellent guardianship today.” She seemed a bit stiff as she addressed him.
“Please, lady, I am here across from you should you need anything at all.”
“Yes, I see that.” Her face was unreadable.
She stepped inside and closed the door as Joth stood in the hall and listened to the sounds of the inn and Eilyth shifting about in her room. After a moment he stepped into his own room and lay himself down on the bed. He pulled his boots off and unlaced his clothes. He slipped down to his shirt and braies and lie in the bed. It felt grand to be in a bed, a proper bed; he had not felt it in months. He thought of Eilyth across the hall from him and he wondered if he were in her thoughts at all. He fell asleep wondering as the airship crew filed up the stairs and into their rooms.
Captain Ryla paused outside Eilyth’s door for a long beat before rolling up the writ Joth had given her then going to her own room and lying on the bed with her eyes on the ceiling for a long time before sleep took her.
Two seconds after the captain shut her eyes and faded off to sleep, Eilyth shut hers.
Seventeen
Eilyth was there already when he came down the stairs for breakfast. It was early morning he could tell by the soft light coming in through the leaded glass windows lining the lime-washed hall.
“How did you sleep?” she asked him.
“Not as well as I’d hoped.” He had woken so many times in the night he felt as though he had hardly slept at all. After so many nights of sleeping out of doors and in the elements he would have thought that a roof and a soft warm bed could grant him a restful night, but they seemed to have had the opposite effect.
“Nor I,” she said resignedly.
A serving girl came and put a pitcher of ale and some rolls still hot from the oven down at their table. She smiled and curtsied half-heartedly. “Can I get you both your breakfasts?”
“Yes, if you please,” Joth said. “I’m still hungry from yesterday.”
They sipped ale and put honey and butter on the rolls and talked of how much more distance they would have to cover to make it to Twinton and the High Mage. Joth did not know for certain where in Oesteria he was, and he had no idea how fast the airships could cover ground. He asked the serving girl how many days’ ride it was from Grannock to Borsford.
“Perhaps four days, maybe five,” she said.
Joth whistled lowly. They had made a week’s journey in just one short day.
“It’s not too far away to Torlucksford neither, closer by two days.”
She laid out two platters laden with eggs and toast and marrow-bones, some grilled wild onions, sausages, and some roasted root vegetables and turnip mash. It looked to be a fantastic breakfast, at least to Joth’s eyes. They were halfway through it when Ryla Dierns came down the stairs, and the rest of the crew shuffled down a few minutes later, Elmund last. All of them except Ryla looked the worse for wear, and Elmund looked worst of all. One side of his face was noticeably swollen and his eyes were bloodshot, and he was moving stiffly. To his credit, he approached the table where Joth and Eilyth sat and apologized for his words and his actions and insisted that he harbored no ill feelings and he hoped that they might forgive him his grief and drunkenness.
“Thank you, Elmund,” Eilyth said to him, and inclined her head slightly in what Joth now recognized was a sort o
f gesture of dismissal, as though Eilyth were letting him know that he had said the right words and that he could now leave her presence. Elmund was not quite as well-versed in Eilyth’s body language and he stood there for a long moment as though he were searching for more to say before he nodded a few times and walked over to sit with his crewmates.
“That was unexpected.”
“It’s the least he should do.”
“Do not discount him, there is hope in everyone,” she said absently.
“Hope, lady?”
“Yes. ‘Hope in everyone, and for everyone a hope.’ That is a saying among us.”
They finished their breakfasts and the serving girl told them that their baths would be ready shortly and that the stews were out behind the inn at the back of the kitchens as she cleared away their platters.
“More ale?” she asked, but Elmund made a sour-looking face and waved her away. Ryla stood from the table.
“Ladies first. Pretty and I shall bathe first, then you lot can go and soil the water with your grimy trunks after.”
Kipren and Galt laughed and gave her an “aye, lady” along with Elmund.
“Hurry yourselves along now, because we are in the skies again by mid-morning! And talk to the Innkeep about some provisions for our windsailing while I’m beautifying myself.” She came over and took Eilyth by the arm and swept her off toward the kitchens at the back of the inn.
Joth was left with half a pitcher of ale at the now empty table. By the time he had finished the ale, Galt and Elmund had gotten up and walked to where the innkeeper stood behind the bar and they were in rapt conversation with him. Kipren was eating the rest of Elmund’s unfinished breakfast. Joth decided that he might as well go and find the young groom and settle up with him while he waited for Eilyth and Ryla Dierns to finish in the stews.
He stood from the table and walked to the front of the inn and out the door. There was a crowd around the covered well, chatting and gathering water, and they all marked him as he came out and walked around the inn to where the stables lay.
The airship costume was anything but subtle, he noted. He missed the simplicity and practicality of his Dawn Tribe clothing. Two young girls pointed to him and snickered, and a third said something that sent them all chasing one another around the well in a tirade of screamed threats and screeching. He watched their antics until he rounded the corner and found the youth he had met the previous night mucking out stalls and filling a wagon with manure.
“Morning, Master,” he said brightly.
“Good morning. I’ll need the horses ready as soon as you can have them so.”
“I’ve just about finished my chore here, and I’ll start to tack them up for you.”
Joth nodded. He turned and started away but then thought better of it and turned back. “When you say you’ve ‘just about finished’ what exactly does that mean?”
“Well, Master, that means I got about three more stalls to muck out and then I got to head out to the back paddock and—”
“Better to get to my horses now, and get back to your chores after. I’m a bit pressed for time this morning.”
“As it please you, Master.” The lad sounded put out. “It’s just that I got a particular way of doing things round here, and I don’t really like to get it all out of order because I tend to forget things then, you see, like the time I was supposed to have hitched up a team of cobbs and I was—”
Joth had held his hand up for a long beat before the lad stopped his blathering. “I understand. Please see to those three horses I handed you yesternight?”
“Yesternight, as you say, Master.”
“What was your name again?”
“Bellan. Bell for short. That’s what I’m usually called by most folks around here anyw—”
“Thanks, Bell. The horses,” he reminded him.
Joth turned and continued on toward the back of the inn, leaving Bellan to stand looking back and forth from him to the stables and the manure cart. He rounded the corner and found himself staring at the naked form of Captain Ryla Dierns emerging from the bath and drying herself. She was stood on one of a pair of wooden runs that lined the short row of four wooden tubs that sat stewing in the cool fall morning, her lithe and sinuous form steaming in the pale sunlight. Joth looked away but felt as though he had stared at her far too long and not quite enough, an uncomfortable situation made worse by the fact that Eilyth sat submerged in the bath, her shoulders head and neck visible, having witnessed it all. He met her eyes and she only gave him one of her strange half smiles that he still could not decipher. The captain noticed him and did not seem to care that he had blundered upon them at all.
“Oh, it’s Shiny come to see the ladies, is it?” She and Eilyth giggled like the village girls had at the covered well. “Well, feast your eyes, lad!” She opened her towel and revealed herself to him, shaking her breasts and hips at him before wrapping herself back up and laughing to Eilyth. “Look at him! I think I’ve given him a shock!”
Joth raised his eyebrows and tried to compose himself with a smile. “Captain, you are quite a beautiful woman but please understand that I wasn’t sneaking around the bloody stews to catch a glimpse—”
“Oh, stop talking, Shiny.” She was smiling when she said it. “I’ll spare Pretty the indignity if you’ll kindly go on your way. You can tell the lads it’s bath time now.”
She favored him with a wink and broomed him away with her hand. Joth saw Eilyth laughing again as he turned red-faced and walked back past the stables and the street with the covered well and back in through the entrance of the Merry Haymaker. Bloody fool, Joth, he thought. She was a fine-looking woman though, that truth was for certain. If he had let Bellan talk for a few minutes more he might have avoided the sight entirely; or he would have rounded the corner and seen more of the Lady Eilyth than the airship costume revealed.
Joth went to the bar and asked for half a flagon of ale and tried to push those thoughts out of his head. He also paid for the stabling of the horses and for his and the Lady Eilyth’s room and board. The prices were fair and he paid for it out of his and Wat’s silver. He had to start paying attention to his spending, could not just hand out silvers to stable boys everywhere they went. He did not know how long the journey would take or even if they would be able to count on traveling back from Twinton by airship. Perhaps the High Mage would not think that the matter was of much importance, or perhaps he would want them to travel back slowly so that he would have more time to prepare should his answer be one of violence. Joth had thought little about what Eilyth’s true message to the High Mage might be, but he was smart enough to know that he was not escorting her to Twinton for an audience where she would debate the High Mage and the Council of the Magistry and make them aware of an ancient treaty and an oath that they had broken and wag her finger at them before disappearing back over the mountains and into Dawn Tribe Territory. He was almost certain now that Eilyth meant to do to the High Mage what she had done to Elmund last night and what she had done to Joth himself in Rhael’s Pass; she meant to shake the High Mage, to see if he would wake.
“It’s up to the sleeper to wake,” she had said, and Joth wondered what would happen if he would not wake. Would that mean war between the People and his people, war with Oesteria? If that were to come about he would be forced to fight the People alongside his fellows in the First Army. Joth thought of Eilyth and Traegern, of his time in the village by the mountain river, of fierce Eilorn, of the old hens who had teased and chastised him and wept when he left. His old life was gone, she had said, but what would happen when the Magistry mobilized its army and made for Rhael’s Pass with its Goblincraft engines and magic-wielding Mage Imperators and the First Army and its thirty-five thousand fighting men? Would he stand with the People or with his own? He knew the answer. He told Kipren to tell the others that the stews were open for them and then he headed bac
k there, his thoughts heavy on him.
There was no sign of Lady Eilyth or Captain Ryla Dierns at the row comprised of simmering wooden bathing tubs, and Joth was both relieved and disappointed in equal measure. He undressed and lowered himself into the hot water, paying attention not to step in the copper center of the barrel stave tub. There was a pail and a sponge. Sponges were said to be sea creatures, Joth knew, but why was it that they floated? He lowered himself under the hot water and held his breath for as long as he could.
He could hear the fire beneath his tub crackling through the water. He could hear the staves creaking and the water moving, constantly moving around him. When he lifted his head from the water and cleared his eyes, Lady Eilyth was standing above him on the wooden run. He was a bit startled and exposed. How long had she been standing there, he wondered? She handed him a small woolen bag.
“I thought you might wish to have some salts and oil for washing. I am sorry to have startled you.”
“Oh, thank you, lady.” He felt his face redden.
She regarded him with the half smile again then turned and left him to his bathing. The airship crew entered as she exited, and amidst crude jokes and boasting, and much talking and jocular behavior, they all finally settled into bathing themselves.
Joth used the salts and oils that he had been given. The scents themselves took him back to the village by the river, to evenings there in the cool mountain air, the moon, and the music by the table of the Roundhouse, laden with fresh bounty from the river and the fields, a simple dinner made rich with company and singing and fresh herbs. It made him long for the village, but it inspired curiosity in Elmund.
“What is that you’re rubbing yourself with?” he asked gruffly. “If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”
“It’s just salts and oils. You can try some if you like.” He tossed the bag with the rest of his salts and oils that Eilyth had prepared for him to the swollen-headed man in the tub.
“Thanks,” he said, catching it. It sounded like an apology. Good, thought Joth, still unconvinced of the man’s dependability. Joth got out of the bath and toweled himself off as Elmund sniffed and tested at the salts and oils.
