by Ashley Capes
A painting on the wall opposite caught his eye – that of a giant dragonfly attacking an enormous fish. It had burst free from a deep pool on a river, but his interest quickly shifted to the man sitting beneath the image.
Smoke rose from a pipe between his teeth, the only distinguishable feature about him. Yet, surely this was the man he’d seen in Togan? Coincidence or something else? A high collar hid the man’s throat, where scars might have been concealed. Never leant forward, as if merely placing his mug down. “There’s a man at the table behind you, Luis,” he said. “Tell me, either of you, is he familiar?”
Luis turned to wave for the serving girl and Elina leant back into the shadow and glanced over her own drink – a glass of dark wine. Luis shook his head. “I don’t remember him.”
But Elina lowered her voice yet further. “He nodded to me in Togan.”
Never made a fist. “Exactly. Our fisherman-friend?”
“We find out tonight,” Elina said. “Take our rooms but once the last light is out we converge upon his room. Oksar will give us the room number and key if I ask.”
Never raised an eyebrow. “You two sound... friendly.”
“He’s the prince’s cousin.”
“Ah.”
Luis grinned but it faded. “So what does pipe-man want?”
“Hard to say,” Never said. “Hanik; not a young man but plain-looking. Appears unarmed, hardly seems to be a warrior.”
“We can ask him ourselves soon enough,” Elina said.
When the serving girl reappeared Never ordered another drink – this one of water, and soon after, sought his room. Elina and Luis joined him, Luis catching an arm when Never stumbled on his way to the bar.
“Never?”
“Hush. I’m drunk,” he said. “Let’s lure our friend into a false sense of confidence.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Elina muttered before arranging their rooms with the man at the bar. “And I’d like to see Oksar, give him my room number? There is some urgency.”
The fellow nodded, turned to a wall lined with hooks, lifted a key and handed it over.
Elina led them up a set of stairs and then a second set, taking a door at the end of a corridor. Moonlight fell through the glass of a square window, the nearest lamp some of the way back along the passage.
She let them inside, fumbling a moment before lighting a lamp.
Inside, no windows but three beds occupied three walls, each with blankets and pillows of feathers and chests at their feet. Never headed for the nearest bed and lay across it. “I’ll have this one.”
“I’m not very tired,” Luis said. He paused at a water barrel. “I can watch first, if you wish?”
Elina took the second bed. “Oksar probably has to finish in the kitchen but he’ll knock three times.”
Never turned from the light and closed his eyes.
*
He woke to three knocks on wood.
Damn. It’d been a good sleep. He rose, throwing off a blanket. Luis was admitting a spindly man dressed in an apron. His bald head shone in the lamplight. Elina went immediately to him, hugging the man and stepping back. “Oksar, it is good to see you.”
“And you, Ellie. Who are your friends?”
“Never is slow to wake and Luis let you in. They’re helping me.”
Oksar smiled to them. “Welcome both of you.”
Never expressed his thanks even as he wondered which task Oksar understood them to be assisting Elina. The king and the rebels? Or the Amouni?
The innkeeper handed her a key. “On this very floor, nearest the stair.”
“Thank you, Oksar. Have you seen him before?”
“Not that I recall. Be careful, won’t you?”
“We will.”
He turned to leave but she caught his arm, her hand near-to encircling his whole wrist. “What about the king?”
His expression fell. “No reliable word, I’m afraid. They say it was a foreigner, that’s all we know here.”
“But is he alive?”
“Nothing official to say he isn’t.”
Elina nodded and saw him out, leaning against the door a moment. She twirled the key between her fingers as she did. “If we didn’t need the rest I’d keep going.”
“No one would think less of you for needing to rest,” Luis said. “Least of all, I’m willing to bet, your king.”
“Perhaps.”
“Let’s deal with the pipe-smoker first,” Never said.
Elina led them into the darkened corridor. Never drew one of his knives, the slight rasp echoed as Luis followed suit. His spear he left in the room and Elina’s free hand rested on her dagger at her belt as she fitted key to lock.
“Spread out,” she whispered then turned the key and leapt inside.
Never followed on her heels, angling left, finding himself in an empty room. Naught but a made bed and moonlight pouring in from an open window. He stalked to the window.
Outside waited only a sheer rock wall and a drop to the pier. A cool breeze stirred something on the sill. Pipe ash?
“How is my room?” a voice enquired.
Never spun.
The regular-looking man waited in the corridor, pipe in hand.
“Who are you? Why are you following us?” Elina demanded from where she stood in the centre of the room.
“Consider me but a cog.” He clapped his hands together. A wall of grey smoke and ash rose in the doorway, too thick to see through. It billowed forward. Luis gasped and Elina fell back.
“Quick.” Never turned for the window but a similar wall of smoke had risen – from the ashes he’d seen before? It swirled closer. What magic was this?
Never crouched, waving the others down. “We have to get out of here before –” he broke off in a fit of coughing. Everything tasted of ash. Smoke stung his eyes and he crawled toward the window. If he could pass through...
But his limbs were already so heavy. He let out a garbled curse, dragging himself along the polished wooden floor. A soft thud, then another followed. Elina and Luis.
Darkness.
Chapter 7.
Never woke with a start.
Morning light crept beneath heavy curtains in a small room of stone – still the Bluestone Inn? Or elsewhere? He drew in a rasping breath – raw throat. And when he tried to move... ropes tightened around his chest and wrists.
Bound to a chair.
Nothing really beat the classics when it came to interrogating a prisoner.
As if on cue, a dark figure rose from beside the window, pulling the curtain open. Sunlight blasted Never’s face. He squinted against it, a growl rising from his tender throat. “That’s just childish,” he said.
The silhouette chuckled. “Perhaps.”
Pipe smoke – almost sweet but acrid. “Who are you? What do you want, pipe-man?”
“Call me Cog – that will suffice.”
“Very well, Cog. Where are my friends?” Never asked.
“Elsewhere.”
Never strained against his bonds then blinked down at wedges of cloth, arranged between the forearms of his skin and even shins and knees.
“Yes,” the man said. “I’m taking precautions, just as your brother suggested. I am aware of the gift you and he share and I wouldn’t want you to rub your skin raw and have you bleeding. Just in case. And I will tell you, your friends are alive.”
Snow? Snow had arranged the capture? “Bah! You already have all the advantages. And what does my brother want?”
The man leant forward, his plain features resolving from the light and offering a glimpse of the angry scarring on his neck. His smile was weary. “What do any of us wish for? Answers.”
Never groaned. “If I must be captured again, can’t you do away with the rhetoric and the posturing?”
“Captured again?”
“Attempted capture. Thugs with poison darts – some of your work, I suppose?”
“Not I, perhaps your brother?”
“On the river then. You followed us.”
“Of course. My master wished for me to watch and wait for you.”
“Master?” Never had to swallow before he could speak again. “Listen, don’t let his ego fool you.”
“Fool? No. You and he are the living link between man and God. I know my place. As I have already explained, I am a mere cog in a greater machine – it is of comfort, truly.”
Never frowned. Living link? Grand, but hardly true. The Amouni were powerful, yes, but that didn’t equate a link to the Gods... did it? No. Foolishness. This fellow had been blinded by whatever lies Snow had spun.
His captor raised a cup of water. Never drank, the cool liquid a blessing. “I do not believe that. Nor that Snow would be fool enough to delude himself.”
The man sighed. “He said you would not be pleased to hear from him... after the business in the White Wood.”
A fair assessment. “So he sent you to speak for him? He couldn’t come himself?”
“He is seeing to certain... necessities. I am to extend an offer.”
“What?”
“The answers you seek. Truth about your heritage.”
“That I have already discovered.”
Cog raised an eyebrow. “All?”
“Enough to find my way to the rest.”
“Truth about your father.”
Never bit off his next words – whatever they’d been. “If he’s lying –”
“No lies. And he asks that you join him in Sedrin’s Temple of Jyan when you arrive in the capital.”
“Should I bring my chair?”
Cog gathered up a pack and slung it over his shoulder. “Your friends will be along soon enough.”
“Who are you?” Never asked. “That wall of smoke – what magic was that?”
The man paused at the door. “I am what he made me.”
And then Cog was gone.
Never slumped in the chair, turning his head from the sun. It warmed his neck and sweat soon formed. He cursed then used his entire body to wrench the chair away from the window, scraping and bouncing to a halt in a strip of shade. One more half-turn and he could face the door too.
Then he began to rub the ropes that tied his wrists against the arm of the chair.
Due to the way his chest and arms were bound, he’d made little progress when the door finally burst open at noon.
Elina and Luis stood in the doorway, weapons held ready.
Never straightened. “Who wants to untie me?” He raised an eyebrow. “No fighting now.”
Elina snorted and Luis walked forward with a grin, producing a blade and cutting through the ropes binding Never’s arms. “Didn’t think we’d find you alive.”
“Cog was a strange man. Where are we?”
“In an old watchtower above the Bluestone,” Elina said. “Oksar doesn’t man it anymore.”
“Cog?” Luis asked.
“That’s what he called himself – and it doesn’t make sense to me either,” Never said. And what the man claimed was disturbing. I am what he made me. Snow had given Cog his magic? How – it wasn’t possible.
For humans.
Never stood when Luis finished the last of the bindings. “Thank you both. Let’s return to the river, catch up to Cog.”
“Catch up?”
“I assume he’s heading to City-Sedrin.” Never rubbed some feeling back into his limbs and stepped out into the sunshine. A short path crossed a tiny plateau overlooking the chimney of the inn below, and the deep blue ribbon of River Rinsa where it cut through the stone hills. To the west, lay their backtrail and a distant hint of the Long Falls above the green of the forest.
Toward the east waited more grey hills, quickly swallowing up the river, and beyond them in turn, the pale purple peaks of the Folhan Mountains, before which lay City-Sedrin, invisible for now.
“You didn’t pass him on your way up?” Never asked.
“He’d have been long gone by the time we woke,” Luis said. “That wasn’t just smoke, whatever it was he did. My head still aches.”
Elina nodded in agreement, then shrugged. “We won’t catch him up here.” She strode for the edge of the plateau and started down the worn ladder. Never climbed last, finding that, despite the greying wood, the ladder was strong. And long enough that surely someone had helped Cog haul him up?
Or was it evidence of more strange magic?
At the bottom, they bypassed the inn itself, meeting the thin innkeeper at their boat. “All loaded for you,” he said, patting the stern. “I’ve thrown in a few extra supplies too, kindling and the like, if you need to camp on stone. Good to see you’ve returned, Never.”
He grinned at the man. “Does your famous beef come in those supplies?”
“It’s better hot but there’s a surprise in there,” he said.
“Did you see Cog leave?”
“Can’t say I did.” Oksar appeared troubled. “It wasn’t until I happened to check on Lady Elina that I thought to search for him. But no signs and I can’t say I remember his boat either.”
Elina thanked him and accepted one more item from the innkeeper, a hard leather case such as those used by couriers. She took the oars and Never considered asking her about it... but she wasn’t likely to share and it would have had something to do with the rebels, surely. And besides, Never had a new secret of his own.
And he had yet to decide whether he would share it.
Even with Luis.
If he could trust anyone, it was probably Luis. The man’s loyalty was above reproach but still Never hesitated. Old habits? Or new fears? He could not deny that Snow’s betrayal stung, even as it made little sense.
Besides, if it was some sort of ploy, if Snow wanted more than he let on – as he invariably did if the elaborate message was any indication – then it was better to protect Luis and Elina by keeping them safe in ignorance. Or at least, not to worry them over something he could not yet explain, let alone prove.
Chapter 8.
Rinsa River widened as it snaked into the hills and their mighty stone walls. The patterns on the rock face changed as Never rowed and dark water flowed beneath the boat, the current slowing. Once, Never caught sight of some sort of bottom-feeding flatfish near the shallows but his eyes were drawn always back to the carvings.
While first they seemed to be mostly related to the Hanik kingdom – the domed trees or stern, bearded faces of old kings or even proud archers, the carvings soon grew older. Many were filled with deep green moss and red lichen. One image showed an open pair of hands, fingers spread to what appeared to be an inhuman gap – an echo of one of the symbols on Snow’s die? Others were more detailed, appearing to show scenes of worship at altars crested by heavy tomes – yet it was hard to be certain. Those unmarred by moss were worn down by the centuries.
“So many Amouni markings,” he said.
“We have always considered them such,” Elina replied. “This stretch of the Rinsa is often called the ‘Old River’.”
The Rinsa soon curved around a long bend, narrowing as it flowed beneath a high stone arch. More Amouni markings covered the arch; now thin knives crossed at the blade. As the day wore on, during one of his turns on the rudder, Never guided the boat close to the wall where the current once again slowed to spread into a pool.
“What are you looking for?” Luis asked as he pulled the oars in.
“There, by the waterline – doesn’t that look like writing?”
“Runes,” Elina said.
As the boat scraped stone, Never caught the rockface, holding them in place where the current was weakest. He leant down, touching a rune – the half-moon that had been slashed twice.
Were the runes familiar? Beyond the dice, the sound of the runes. He could almost... “Estayeta jin nysor.”
“What does it mean?” Luis asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. But the words lingered. Estayeta jin nysor. There was something about them... something mother used to sing? O
r chant? “But I feel as if I should know them.”
A blue-banded dragonfly zigzagged across the water.
Never released the wall and sat back down to turn the tiller. The boat slid into the centre of the river, the current pulling them slowly forward. Luis had not resumed rowing.
“Keep going,” Elina said. “We cannot tarry.”
Luis nodded, putting the oars back into the water. “Three days yet to the city.”
Elina nodded.
“Will you search for the prince first, or head for the palace?” Never asked.
“The palace. Prince Jenisan should be there already.”
“And if not? If Karlaf could not find him?” Never asked. “Or worse, if King Noak is already lost?”
Her eyes flashed. “Then I will find whoever is responsible and Bekana War-God help them.”
“We will help you,” Never said. To a point.
Luis nodded.
“Thank you both.”
“Do you still suspect the nobles? Baron Denarc and whoever else?”
“Gedus. And yes... but we have no proof. For now, only Gedus’ not-very secret desire to rule – I suspect he hopes the Vadiya will set him up as a ruler beneath them when or if they seek to expand their Empire further. Jenisan may know more by now.”
“Then we row on,” Never said.
By evening, Never had taken another turn at the oar and was now lowering a slab of rock across the mooring rope and turning back to the campsite with a sigh. Not that it was much of a site – an uneven depression beside the river, littered with old, damp leaves from elm trees growing high above.
The same leaves spotted the river, like gold and green flecks bright against the black of the water as darkness continued to fall. They ate a cold meal – Oksar’s leftovers, which were very agreeable – and sought rest early.
Never lay back, cloak beneath his head. The stone was hard under the bedroll, but his shoulders and back ached from all the rowing. It was a joy simply to be still. A small weight rested against his chest and he reached into an inner pocket. Smooth as glass – he retrieved the object.
The tiny figure within the orb stood straight, one hand shaded as if searching for something.
