“I don’t understand,” Luc said.
Draigar laughed. “My lady wants to ruin me before our wedding. This household she speaks of…I only told her about it recently. There had been a serving lady I fell in love with…I wanted to be honest with her before our union, that no secrets should ever come between us. But I didn’t tell her that my lover died years ago. How did she say this fell in her hands? Between the time I told her and now, there is no way a messenger could’ve ridden that fast just in time to deliver this to her.”
He wasn’t really talking to Luc. He half-mumbled the words to himself, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that she would dare do this to him. After he had grown quiet, he straightened himself and opened his eyes, as if just awakening from a dream. “Thank you for this,” he said. He almost sounded like he meant it.
Luc returned to the tavern feeling even worse than when he had left. To betray Roena’s trust because he felt like the man didn’t deserve what she had planned for him...it wasn’t something mercenaries did normally, was it? But he wasn’t a mercenary. He was working with them for a reason and he was done with it now. Draigar had promised he would take care of their payment that same night. It was Iorwin they had worked for, anyway, not Roena, no matter what had happened up there.
He entered the tavern and was greeted to the sight of a few of his companions gathered around a table with a deck of cards.
“Hey Lucky,” Treda said. “Come join us, if you’re not too busy.”
“He’s been rubbing elbows with the blue-bloods,” Demon snorted. “Bet you he won’t.”
Luc frowned and took a chair. He slumped down on it.
Demon scowled. “Don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I think he just misses you,” Caiso laughed as he dealt the cards out. “What’s the news from the castle?”
“We’re getting paid tonight,” Luc said. “Master Landor will come by with the money.”
“I was under the impression this was just supposed to be the beginning. That successful completion of this job paves the way for others.” He craned his head towards the next table, where Tasha was drinking with Hana. “Ladies—” he began.
“Shut your gob,” Tasha snorted.
Hana smirked. “You really shouldn’t call her that. I don’t mind myself, but…”
“I’ve just learned my lesson,” Caiso replied with a smile. “My question remains, however.”
“I don’t know,” Tasha said against her mug. She took a drink, a troubled look on her face. “Why are you asking me, anyway?” she added, glancing at Caiso now for the first time. “It’s not like I give a fuck.”
“But I thought this whole thing was your idea.”
Tasha’s eyes hardened, but she refused to speak further.
“Ah,” Caiso said, catching on. “Secrecy among secrecies. So we are to work for Iorwin, and nothing more, even as we’re secretly working for someone else.” He pretended to close his mouth for a moment, exaggerating the motion. “And I know Jona, whatever bowels of the city he’s fucking himself into at the moment, wouldn’t care one way or another as long as the coin keeps flowing.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Demon asked.
Caiso flipped a card before grinning at him. “There a reason you’re asking?”
“Not particularly. Just doesn’t look like you need the money.”
“Why would you think that?”
Demon scoffed before pointing at him. “Look at you. You’re not like us. You talk too…too…” He shook his head and took a swig.
“I think he’s saying that you are a little too refined,” Treda finished for him. “You must have grown up around nobles, at least.”
“Ah,” Caiso said. “While that may be true, it doesn’t mean I don’t need the money. Money works the same way, regardless of where you come from.”
“Still,” Demon snorted, “you don’t have to be here. If you’ve got better prospects…”
“Which is always debatable,” Caiso pointed out.
Demon stared at him in confusion.
Caiso sighed as he dealt another set of cards. “If you mean to say that I could’ve traded in wares or offered my services to a scribe or something of that sort…while such lives were entirely open to me, I wanted freedom. The upper echelons of Hafed society can be so rigid. Or so it seemed to me at the time. I must admit I haven’t thought as much about it as I should’ve. I ran away as a young man and my life has looked like this ever since.” He glanced at Luc.
“I’m going to go home after this,” Luc replied.
Caiso smirked. “I wasn’t asking about you.”
“And why, Lucky?” Treda asked.
Luc sighed. “I never intended to come this far.”
“But you’re doing so well,” Treda said, turning away from his roast pheasant to give Luc an appraising gaze. “You’ve kept yourself alive so far and that’s always half the battle. Actually finishing jobs is the other half and you hardly broke a sweat doing that. I don’t think you’ll find anything that pays as well as this one does—for what little we do, anyway. Talk to him, Hana.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell him,” Hana said with a smirk, from way across the other table. “For all he knows, he has to do all the killing from this point on. Can’t blame him when he’s around a bunch of lazy assholes like the rest of you.”
Treda patted Luc’s shoulder. “We didn’t even know he was such a killer. You know Jona’s scared of you?”
“Now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Caiso offered.
Treda sniffed. “He is. He saw that thing, too. And you hacked its head clean off with your sword, like…” He whistled. “Hana was telling the bard all about it. They were about to make a song or something. You should’ve seen Jona seething in the corner.”
“Seething isn’t the same as being afraid,” Luc said. “Anyway, my family would be looking for me now. My father…the farm…”
“That rotting old place?” Hana asked. “Wouldn’t you rather come back with enough coin to get it all fixed up?”
“Plenty enough men who’ve said the same thing back in the Boarshind,” Demon grumbled. “Half of them’s dead, now. Other half can’t see themselves going back to mucking horse shit or whatever it is people do with their lives. Treda’s right, at least. Once a mercenary, always a mercenary.”
Caiso lifted his cup. “The open road, ever-changing scenery, fresh air—”
“Stale, stinking city air, more like it,” Demon snorted. “I could’ve gone back home after the Boarshind. Far away enough from Cairntown for them not to bother me. Instead I followed Oswyn. Don’t know what else I can be except a hired sword.”
His words threatened to explode inside Luc’s head. He rose from his seat again, mumbling something about needing to sleep. Laughing, they joked that what he really needed was hot soup and more practice, and he wondered if Hana did talk about his activities after all.
“Your room’s at the far end,” Tasha called out as he stumbled up the steps.
The furthest room was small, with a single bed in it. Luc blinked in confusion—he had paid specifically for the larger rooms to share amongst themselves, because there just wasn’t enough coin otherwise. As he closed the door, he noticed a sword on the mattress—a steel blade with clean lines and a new leather sheath. The bits of metal around the handle still sparkled. He didn’t know much about blades, but it was clear even to him that no expense was spared on this one.
He automatically unstrapped the worn, rusty sword around his belt and picked up the new one. A gift? It wouldn’t have been placed there by mistake. He wondered whether he should ask Tasha, and then realized she would probably deny any involvement in it. Did it matter where it came from? He had killed a monster and been gifted a sword for it. And slept with and betrayed a woman, all within the same week.
He pushed that last thought away and went to sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, he woke up with a hand
on his mouth and a dagger on his neck.
Luc reached out for his sword.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Roena murmured against his ear. Head swimming, he realized that one of his hands was tied to the bedpost and that his sword was on the floor at the other end of the room. She smiled before slowly drawing away from him.
“I’m sorry,” were the first words out of his lips.
The smile on Roena’s face faded. “I trusted you,” she said in a low voice. “I told you I had no one else to turn to and trusted you. Do you know how many men would’ve killed for such an honour? But instead, you turned around and told Draigar everything. You didn’t even know the man!”
“Not everything,” he whispered.
She gazed at him, as if trying to read him.
“He’s a good man,” Luc continued. “Maybe if you gave him a chance—”
She struck his cheek.
“You,” she hissed, “and every well-meaning soul in the city, all saying the exact same thing.”
“You would’ve ruined his name,” Luc said, undeterred. “Everything that was on that letter was a lie.”
“Why do you care?” she asked. “You’re a mercenary. You’re supposed to finish a job first and ask questions later.”
“I’m really not. I just came here to guide them.”
“Guide them?” She looked almost amused. “You’re in a private suite while your men are drawing cards on who gets to sleep on the floor. You’re hardly the guide. Don’t tell me you didn’t realize they voted you as their new leader. Even you can’t be that naïve.”
When Luc didn’t answer immediately, she sighed. “Or maybe you are. Why haven’t they eaten you up yet? Don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.” She reached out with the dagger. He cringed, but she only slid the blade into his bonds to untie him. As he rubbed his raw wrist, he saw her reach down from the window and pull up a leather bag, which she deposited at the foot of his bed before sitting on the mattress.
“What are you doing?”
She smiled at him. “Getting comfortable.” She dropped her head to the pillow.
He stared at her in shock. “Why?” he managed to ask.
“Because I’m told we’re heading to Crossfingers first thing tomorrow morning and I want to get some rest—”
“Lady Roena…”
“—which isn’t going to happen if you keep talking. What, Luc?”
“What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going with you.” Without another word, she reached out to tear the blanket from his hand and wrap it around herself.
Chapter Thirteen
It felt like the sort of nightmare that began like a sweet dream, one that never really seemed to decide what it wanted to be in the end. Luc watched Roena sleeping beside him with a curious mixture of irritation and exhaustion and desire. They weren’t feelings he was equipped to deal with. He couldn’t go back to sleep, not after he had woken up with her waving a dagger at him; after a while, he decided to crawl out of bed and head downstairs for a drink.
The door to the tavern was closed. He realized his mistake when he heard a rooster crowing in the distance. Taking a lungful of cold, early morning air, he made his way to the main hall, where the innkeeper had set up a fire. Tasha was sitting close by, sharpening a blade.
“How was your night?” she asked with a straight face.
“You sent her to my room, didn’t you?”
“She insisted.”
“Gods, Tasha, she almost murdered me.”
“Not that I give a shit what you do with your personal life, but she didn’t.”
“She…” He gave a low groan and slumped into the seat beside her. “What did she tell you, exactly?”
Tasha placed the sword on her lap. “She said that you and her have struck an understanding. She insists on joining us. She’s a good sword arm, she says, and judging from what I’ve heard about her, it’s probably not far from the truth. We’ll find out soon enough.”
“That’s it? You’ll let her join us just like that?”
She blew on the edge of the blade. “No, you let her join just like that. How the hell was I supposed to react when she barges in and demands to see you? It’s not like I have a say one way or another.”
“Since we’re on the subject—when did I become leader, anyway? I told you people I intend to leave once I got paid. Master Landor must’ve come by with the coin.”
“She brought the payment, actually,” Tasha said. She slid her sword back into its sheath before giving him a critical look. “I also met with our client yesterday while you were busy up there in the castle. He’s pleased with our work so far. He wanted you to manage this operation.”
Luc swallowed, trying to ignore how she said busy. “Why me?”
“Because if you had died back in Toskthar like we thought you did, we’d still be there arguing amongst ourselves about rations and shitting arrangements. Oswyn would’ve known how to whip the fucking bastards to shape. But since he’s not here…” Her face tightened. “I just want this all over with. I don’t want to get into whatever pissing match Jona wants to get into for control, but fuck if I’m letting him take over the reins when I’m the one dealing with our client. His men, on the other hand, have been careful around you ever since that the stunt you pulled back at the village. None of them blinked when I said you were leading this group from now on. Caiso seemed almost pleased.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small bag of coin, which she tossed towards him. He managed to catch it. “Your share, plus a bonus.”
He didn’t even have to open the purse to know it was more money than he had ever held at one time. “The sword came from him too, I suppose.”
“Do you still want to leave?”
Luc had been so sure he wouldn’t change his mind. But now, looking at the purse in his hand and the brand new sword at his belt, he felt the words die on his lips. Don’t know what else I can be except a hired sword, Demon had said the night before. The truth suddenly felt impossible to deny.
“Crossfingers,” Luc found himself saying. “What does he need us to do there?”
“We’re to meet with a contact of his. I don’t know much myself. He just told me when and where to meet this person and then proceed from there.”
“All this secrecy…”
Tasha pressed her lips together. “It’s expected. Get used to it. We don’t need to know the reasons behind what we’re asked to do. They point, you charge. It’s simple. Don’t overthink it.”
They were words he might’ve resisted not that long ago, but Luc fell into the now-familiar pattern of getting everything ready for the march west as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Though there wasn’t enough money for horses, bundled up and sweating under the weight of their packs made up for the frigid temperature. Snow had now fallen as far as the eye could see—a thick, white blanket covered the fields and sparse groves, sparkling under the sun with such brilliance that most of them had to cover their eyes while they walked.
Not that the journey itself was the least of Luc’s worries. Roena’s presence made it impossible for him to think as clearly as he would’ve liked. It came as a surprise that the men took to her with only the faintest grumbles. He had expected more of an outcry. Even Jona seemed strangely composed, though Luc caught him leering at her backside more than once.
But no one bothered her. They knew who she was, and he suspected that her appearance at the tavern—and her decision to stride straight into his room to spend the night there—had cemented most of the mercenaries’ opinion of him. What that was, exactly, he wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t about to argue with something that made life easier.
It became clear within the first hour, however, that his troubles had merely taken a different form.
“Do you just let them walk like that?” Roena asked.
Luc gave her a wide-eyed stare.
She frowned. “Shouldn’t there be some form, s
ome order, to this march?”
“I don’t know what you think we are,” Luc replied, “but we’re not soldiers.”
“The other mercenaries didn’t seem to have that same problem. Why do they still call you Lucky?”
“What are they supposed to call me?”
“Captain, boss, sir…”
Luc scratched his cheek. “Lucky suits me just fine.”
“They’ll never take us seriously like this.”
“Who’s them?”
“Clients.”
“We already have a job.”
“And you want more, don’t you? Isn’t the whole point of this life to secure services one after the other? Not run around like vagabonds in the hopes of stumbling upon some desperate soul willing to part with his money to hire such a sorry-looking lot.”
Luc took a deep breath. “My lady, I’m not sure I understand what you’re doing here. I know you don’t want to talk about what happened back home, but…won’t your father come looking for you soon enough?”
She frowned. “He won’t.”
“Most fathers would. Especially one as powerful as yours.”
“He’s used to this. Not the first time I’ve run away from him, and this time, it’s no thanks to you.”
He mumbled an apology under his breath.
Roena rolled her eyes. “He’ll expect me to tire and come slinking home with my tail under my legs. I won’t. Not this time.” There was a look of resolve on her face. Luc didn’t find it in his heart to argue. It was the same for everyone, wasn’t it? They were all running away from something.
~~~
Of course, the closer they got to Crossfingers, the less it felt like running away. The road was familiar, beckoning to Luc and filling him with a longing that even Roena Blackwood’s seduction couldn’t match. The mountains on the horizon were the same mountains he could see from his bedroom window, the same ones he had gazed at on long, lonely nights in the pasture. “Come home,” they seemed to tell him. “Come back home.” It took a lot of resolve for him to follow the mercenaries on the fork on the road, taking the one that led straight to Crossfingers instead of the village.
Blackwood Marauders Page 18
