The candle had burned to a hardened puddle and the hearth was cold. Halogi had not returned, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t. Her heart turned cold as she recalled what she had told him. What if she was wrong? He might have tried to break Vargn’s spell and been destroyed.
As someone knocked on the door, she prepared to face the day.
A short time later, she followed the guardsman who had brought her here. He spoke to her briefly about what to expect, but she hardly heard him. She had eaten a bowl of bland porridge that upset her stomach. And her thoughts of Halogi weighed on her heavily.
The guardsman brought her up a flight of stairs and into a chamber with a dais on one end. There, sitting before an ornate table, was a man with long gray hair combed back from his face, dark eyes and an aged, tired countenance. He wore the habit of the King’s Guard with a symbol of rank on his collar. Ingifrith stopped before him.
“Captain Eklin of the King’s Guard,” the guardsman announced.
The captain looked up with an unreadable stare. “What is your name?”
“Ingifrith Klemet, House Earticael.”
His brow lifted slightly at the title. Only Ingifrith’s father was a royal, but it was enough. “You were seen breaking the king’s law by approaching Tower Sie. Do you deny this?”
“No, milord.” She wondered why that rat warden wasn’t here at this inglorious trial to state his case. She added, “The Fylking made their displeasure clear.”
He appeared to study her. “You might have been killed. If other fools hear you survived it, they might follow suit. Did you think of that?”
“No, milord.”
He leaned back with official deliberation. “By my authority as captain of the King’s Guard, I hereby charge you ten pieces of silver or six moons in gaol.” His expression wasn’t much different than the one the Fylking had worn when he had sheathed his sword and left Ingifrith lying on the ground.
Ten pieces of silver. Ingifrith could almost hear the laughter of Leofwine’s god, the Prince of Trickery. She had only just over that amount, which she had barely touched since her father’s solicitor handed her the purse. Even if she had wanted to seek her fortune in Faersc, she wouldn’t be able to now. She would have no way to buy passage over the sea and the things she would need to get there. She would have to return to Earticael.
But six moons in gaol? That was unimaginable. For one thing, it would put her back on the road in winter. Her stomach turned at the thought. Even if she could deal with that, she couldn’t deal with being trapped. She thought of Halogi, fleeing at the mere notion of escape even if it meant his destruction.
Then she thought of the silver flute. That might be worth the journey back to Earticael. She didn’t want to sell it; it was all she had, save Leofwine’s bow and quiver. But it was something.
She stepped forward and drew her pack around. She pulled forth her purse, a plain leather pouch that had belonged to her father, and emptied its contents onto the captain’s desk. She plucked out the extra, smaller coins that exceeded the amount, returned them to her now empty purse and stepped back, choking down the lump in her throat. “May I go now?”
The guardsman behind her stirred. The captain leaned forward in his chair and stared at the coins, then at her. Clearly, he had not expected her to have such a sum. “Where did you come by this?”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “My father was Nichlaes Klemet, House Earticael, Commissioner of the King’s Archive. He died in the spring and left this to me. My brother got his house in the royal district.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “What is your brother’s name?”
“Leofwine Klemet. He was a scribe in the King’s Archive and seneschal to the High Constable of the King’s Rangers in Dyrregin. Now he serves Fjorgin as an Adept of Fenrir.”
Ingifrith had thought that stating her brother’s accomplishments might convince the captain to take her seriously. Instead, his expression changed. He lifted his gaze to the guardsman and said, “Take her back to her room. I must send for Moust.”
“What?” Ingifrith choked. “You’re taking my coin and not letting me go? The king will hear of this!” An absurd claim, but at this point it hardly mattered.
Captain Eklin nodded to the guardsman and began gathering up the coins.
As they reached the door of her cell, the guardsman opened it and turned to her. “You must understand, milady. If the punishment weren’t steep, everyone would be doing what you did.”
Ingifrith pushed past him. “I paid your fine and am held here still. You think I stole the coin, is that it?”
“No, milady.”
“Then who is Moust?”
He hesitated as if he were about to claim ignorance. Then he said, “Adept Moust is of the Fenrir Brotherhood.”
Ingifrith lowered herself onto the cot. Fenrir Brotherhood? Why would they want to talk to her? But the soldier was finished answering questions. He closed the door and locked it, leaving her there for the second time. Without her father’s coin.
She had mentioned Leo. Was Eklin looking to verify her story? That had to be it. They thought she stole the coin. It couldn’t be anything else. Leo wouldn’t be looking for her. He had never cared where she was.
She clenched her fists and slammed them onto the cot. A scream would accomplish nothing, but it rose from her throat anyway. She went to the table and slung everything on it to the floor. Ripped the pallet from the cot and hurled it across the room. Kicked the coals in the hearth and threw the last of the wood into it, sending dust billowing into the air.
Would that the Rule of Exchange applied to humans as it did to the Otherworld! Humans were crooks, thieves and deceivers. She seriously regretted not taking Halogi up on his offer to destroy this place.
She sank down onto the floor by the hearth and put her head in her hands. She missed the forests and fields and the open air, where the wild things lived. This place was cursed.
Thanks to her, Halogi had probably been vaporized by a warlock.
It was afternoon before she heard the rattle of a key in the lock. She had dragged the pallet back onto the cot and tried to sleep amid intense efforts to penetrate the sludge cast over the Veil in this place. She had started a fire with what was left of the mess she had made, but no spirits or demons came into the weak flame she had coaxed forth.
She expected to be taken back to the room where Captain Eklin had sentenced her, but instead, a man in a black cloak with the hood drawn entered. He gave what sounded like instructions to someone in the hall and then closed the door behind him. As he turned, Ingifrith stiffened with chills. He pushed back his hood.
He was an ordinary man with plain features and black hair graying at the temples, but power whispered around him. Pursing his lips, he glanced around the room at the mess. Ingifrith didn’t care. She sat on her flimsy cot, hair tangled around her face, and glowered at him like a cornered animal.
As he walked toward her, he moved his hand in an odd circular motion. At once, the cloud over the Veil cleared. Impressive. Ingifrith wanted more than anything to reach past the Veil and find a friend, but she decided not to try her luck against a sorcerer—at least until she knew what he wanted.
He reached out, moved the hair from her face and lifted her chin. As he studied her, she pulled away, disliking everything about him. His presence prickled on her nerves like a nightmare she couldn’t recall.
“What do you want?” she said.
“The whereabouts of your brother, for a start.”
Ingifrith broke into laughter. “He could be in Loki’s bed for all I know. I haven’t seen him in suns.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I find that unlikely.”
Ignoring his implied threat, Ingifrith leaned forward. “You’re an Adept and you can’t find one of your own?”
His mouth twitched with a cold smile. “Leofwine is gifted. As are you.” His gaze darkened. “Had you not been brought here, I wouldn’t have found you so easily.”
Good to know, Ingifrith thought dryly.
“What are you hiding from?” he asked. A strange smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Her heart skipped a beat as she sensed him probing her, like a wandering eye moving over her body and near the edge of a chasm where her innocence had died horribly. He knew where it was, as if he had a map.
“You dare,” she said, but there was nothing she could do. Her heart started to race. Sun on the grass. She tried to move, thinking to hit him in the face, knock him down, scatter his focus, but he had her in some kind of hold. Wildflowers, trembling in the wind. Now desperate as a cat in a cage, she focused on the Veil. It was as dark as a winter’s night; only death waited there, death without fire.
Something settled in the hearth. A spark flew onto the floor.
“Where is Adept Klemet?” the sorcerer repeated.
Ingifrith could all but feel his fingers on her now, searching for secrets, taking a pulse, cutting off her air.
Halogi, if you still live— she pleaded in the dark.
As the sorcerer turned to look behind him, she sagged as if dropped. Fire burned in the hearth. He walked to it, held out a hand and turned to Ingifrith with a sneer. “Foolish woman. I am not so easily distracted.”
He stepped back as the fire rushed out into the room and rose into the most beautiful thing Ingifrith had ever seen, her wild and arrogant demon friend. He towered over the sorcerer in his giant form, his war gear shining, his flesh luminous and his eerie, pale eyes filled with such black wrath that Moust dropped to his knees and began to mutter like an imbecile.
The demon rushed down in a smoking rage, clutched Moust by the throat and lifted him into the air. You sniveling worm, he said in a voice that sounded like a cavern flood. Clutching at the beast’s clawed, burning hand, the sorcerer tried to scream.
“Halogi, please don’t kill him,” Ingifrith said.
With a roar, the demon hurled Moust aside. The sorcerer hit the table, smashing it and the little chair to pieces. Holding his throat, he choked, “Ha—Halogi—” He half laughed, half cried with astonishment.
“Oh, you know each other?” Ingifrith said. If not for the fact she would get blamed for his death, she’d have let Halogi do whatever he pleased with this wicked man. She rose, picked up her pack and slung it over her shoulder. “You lot think you can just go around and bully people? Because your order is ancient, that gives you permission, is that it? Leofwine once told me Fenrir was a venerable order. Whatever he did, I’m sure you had it coming.”
The sorcerer cowered there, not taking his eyes from the spiraling, breathing flames of the demon filling the room. His gaze darted to her and back.
“I approached the tower and I paid my fine,” Ingifrith said. “I did not steal that coin, I don’t know where Leo is, and my personal business is none of yours. Come near me again and I won’t protect you.”
She didn’t wait for the Adept’s response. She went out into the hall, ignoring the guardsman who had no doubt been listening but had strict orders not to interfere. As Ingifrith moved around him, he ran into the room, not seeing Halogi as the demon vanished into a smoking presence that filled the hall, the building, the sky and the heavens beyond.
Why did you not call me sooner? Halogi said softly, near her ear.
Ingifrith strode down the hall. “I didn’t feel you here anymore. I feared you’d been destroyed.”
He rumbled with laughter. No indeed, Brave One. I am free, and in your debt.
“Consider it paid.” Ingifrith wondered what the demon had done to gain his freedom, but she doubted the answer would be nice. Based on Leofwine’s harrowing tales, an entity like this, unfettered by the Rule of Exchange, would be capable of anything.
As she rounded the corner and headed for the front door, someone shouted behind her. Captain Eklin strode down the hall, his cloak billowing around him. He didn’t look pleased. “You’ve not been given permission to leave,” he informed her.
“By whom?” Ingifrith returned. “Moust? What kind of honor do you have, taking my coin and then allowing that horrid snake to use sorcery to interrogate me?”
The captain scowled in irritation. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
A sudden gust of wind blew down the hall, ripping at the torches. The captain looked around him, puzzled.
“You summoned him quickly enough when I told you who I was,” Ingifrith reminded him. “What did you think he was going to do? Serve me tea?”
The captain started to speak but jumped back as the big doors exploded open and slammed onto the stone outside, splintering the oak to pieces. One of the doors creaked and sagged on a bending hinge. Pale as wax, Eklin swung around as Moust staggered into the hall behind him. “Let her go!” the sorcerer commanded.
Ingifrith didn’t wait for permission. She went through the doors hanging like Hel’s sacrifices on their frames, stepped over the shards of oak and twisted iron, down the steps and into the street.
Where will you go, Brave One? Halogi asked her, now a warm breeze on the air.
She had no idea. “Away from here.”
I suggest east.
“Why?”
But the demon was gone. After that sank into her, she decided her best course for the moment was to get out of this accursed town and into the woods. She set her sights on the trees beyond Rivergate, quickening her pace.
~*~
Smoke spiraled up through the boughs of a dense thicket near Falon, a small village five leagues west of Rivergate. The wind was restless, damp and colder than usual for the season. Ingifrith sat close to a small fire, her knees propped up and her arms folded over them. Her belly growled with hunger and her flesh tingled with the presence of sylphs draping her in the silence of stars.
She had found some beautiful stones in a nearby stream and left them on a stump. One of them had moss growing on it in an interesting pattern. A naiad had drawn near and touched it, then snatched it up and flowed away. Ingifrith no longer knew if her small gestures were needed; the spirits of the land seemed to surround her regardless, as if her attention were enough to appease them. But after a small company of guardsmen had ridden by earlier in the evening, following the stream, Ingifrith decided not to assume that.
The flames wavered, sending forth an occasional mundane spark. No spirits stirred there. She hadn’t sensed Halogi in the two days since he had given her the ridiculous suggestion to travel east.
Thanks to the demon she was free, but broke, and could think of nowhere to go but back to Earticael like a hound with its tail between its legs. Perhaps Cevin at the Witch’s Tree would take pity on her and give her work, but in all likelihood he would also expect her to spread her thighs to him again, and she had lost her enthusiasm for that. As for the miller, her father’s friend, he would surely have let his loft out to another tenant by now, which meant she’d have to find somewhere else to live. And she no longer had her father to help her.
Perhaps Leofwine had returned and taken up residence in their father’s house. Unlikely. Considering that the Fenrir Brotherhood was so bent on finding Leo that they would detain and question his sister, Ingifrith knew he wouldn’t possibly go to ground in a high-profile place like that. Their father’s solicitor had made it clear that Ingifrith couldn’t live in the house without Leo’s consent, and at the time she hadn’t cared. Now, she didn’t dare to go near the royal district. The Brotherhood probably had spies watching it.
Then there was the run-down, musty heap of her mother’s cottage, which had been looted by boys, cursed by their mothers, and left to weeds, weather and wildlife. Ingifrith had no desire to reclaim that place. It wasn’t safe. For all she knew, bored farm hands were watching it with the same vigilance as the sorcerers watching for Leo.
That left the wilds. Ingifrith drew a deep breath of wood smoke, pine and the fertile compost of the forest floor, and her heart sank. What are you hiding from? Adept Moust had demanded. Everything, now. Thanks to the
Fylking of Tower Sie, the warden who had reported her and then Moust, she was exposed and weakened on both sides of the Veil. Her previous life of making soup for old men, concocting remedies for common ailments and gathering berries and flowers for woodland spirits seemed as cold as bedding a barman in the cellar of a common tavern.
She had so desperately wanted a change.
Ingifrith leaned over, picked up a piece of wood and put it on the fire. The light ebbed for a moment, crackling. A stiff chill crept over her scalp. Beyond the glow, two red eyes shone in the inky shadows of the surrounding trees. In a blink, they were gone.
“Phooka?” Ingifrith said softly. She had never known what else to call it. The beast was one of those old earth creatures that didn’t have a name—not that anyone knew, anyway. Something snorted like a horse. It could have been the wind, and the red eyes, sparks from the fire. Ingifrith drew a deep breath and returned her attention to the flames.
She started as the woods stirred and a beast appeared, a heavy, pitch-black horse, one heavy hoof stomping the ground. Absorbing the light, the phooka lifted its head, red eyes glowing.
Are you afraid?
Ingifrith started to speak, but her breath caught as the horse spooked, muscles rippling as it fled across the Veil. The sylphs vanished like breath and the dryads withdrew into the bark of trees. Some kind of animal scuttled off into the brush. Ingifrith jumped back as her fire leapt up with a roar, sending smoke and sparks into the sky. In the center of the flames rose Halogi in a whirlwind of red and black. He stepped forth with cavalier poise, the height of a mighty warlord, his shining cloak caressing the flames. His eyes were pale as moons slitted with black. He moved an elegant hand, firelight shining on his long, curved nails.
Ingifrith could have run into his arms and hugged him. “You’ve sent my friends to flight,” she said with a smile.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 46
