As Feathers Fall

by Chris Galford

  “Stars above. Oh, I’ve many thoughts, Ros, and my brothers will like none of them.”

  That was the moment she decided that more honesty was key, no matter what her sense of preservation told her. “You’ve always asked that I be frank with you. So let me say: if you was any lesser man, I should consider slapping you right now.”

  It did the trick. His jaw worked shut like a trap and his fists bunched, but the noise died. She capitalized on it, recognizing that, in another’s rage, she could find grounding for her own. Pride was a powerful thing, particularly when pricked. Yet this meant all the more reason that she pick the road she was to walk from here carefully.

  He stood before her, waiting. The silence around them was rapidly deepened, as men wandered near—whether with questions of their master, or merely for the scene. With a heavy sigh, she let the rage trickle out in a tingle of skin.

  “We hunt. But not the boy. If he will fly, let him fly. None can deny what you’ve done for your family, but at a point, each chooses their own ends.” She paused, to see if the words were sinking in. Ivon seemed to grimace, but his silence held. He was listening. “We spared him from Cullick. He left the Bastard. If he’s fled us now, he’s surely got a reason—and I doubt any guards of Witold’s would better hold him.”

  “You speak for others now,” Ivon said.

  “No.” She spread her hands—empty, weaponless. “I speak what history’s proved. But I’d not have a man to war always looking over some’n else’s shoulder.”

  “He is grievous wounded. How long do you suppose he should survive out there alone?”

  She stared intently into his eyes, waited a beat. “At some point, that becomes a question for each’s own. And I’m not meaning for you to send him alone.”

  What met her was the narrow and emphatic drive of a family man with no family left to hold. What she had quickly identified as anger, she saw now, was less of a pure rage, and more of an element of grief. After all, until a few days ago, Ivon had earnestly thought his brother dead—more like than not, by his own hand. That they should have rejoined, and in his hardness, missed the opportunity to bear all the things that second chances wrought with his very much alive brother’s flight—it was, perhaps, too much to bear.

  Nevertheless, it was not her duty to be a sympathetic ear. Much as she should like to sort her lord out and set his heart to rights, that was the domain of other, softer souls. She knew her place: that of the loyal servant. It was not, she told herself, him alone that she served. There were a great many people riding on the single-minded focus of this knight. Too many. That required a certain element of sacrifice—something she herself had well experienced. If that, in turn, demanded a hard woman out of her, then so be it.

  Owls flew where they would. It was time they took their path once more, and let the others to theirs. Even if the words seemed hollow even to her, for all her intentions.

  The plans had come to her all the same, in a rush, as her master vented, and she countered, and the moons crept lower in the lightening sky, and a boy drew further and further from the coddled protection of those that had long forsaken him.

  Do as she must for the good of the rest, she had not entirely forsaken Kasimir’s rootless boy. In time, Ivon came to understand this, though it did not please him—for if one had slipped the knot, he saw no gain in prizing more from its protective confinement.

  As, in time, she noted when her welcome had been decidedly outstayed. She left him to his thoughts, though not without the reservations of his blessing, and headed straight for the last little piece in their overly dramatic puzzle. Other men seemed to creep in by leagues to the hole her departure left. She did not envy them the attempt to catch her lord’s ear.

  One, however, held back. At the edge of what she took to imagining as a stampede, the redheaded visage of caution waited, concern knitting his heavy brows. Rather than attempt a detour, she made straight for him. Sometimes, dedication deserved to be rewarded—and he probably would have followed her anyway.

  Even then, he took her arm and guided—not pulled—her aside, away from the others. There he said in a low voice, “Is he well?”

  “Given the ills of his family, I should suspect, better than most.”

  To Ensil’s credit, he did not contradict or question her. He looked her in the eye. He studied her. Then he nodded, and acceptance was a foregone conclusion. She removed his hand from her arm, but under that gaze, let her own linger a moment more than she otherwise might.

  There were moments still, in a look like that, or a touch, or something as subtle as a playful whistle on the wind, when Fallit would come unbidden to her mind. No longer did his ghost stalk her, but while memories faded, they did not die. Often, they prompted her to take a hard look at the world around her, as she did at Ensil then.

  Beyond his sense of devotion, there was little that could connect Ensil and Fallit. They were different men, as any soul was from any other. Long had she held this against the world—that there might be another soul within the circle of her life’s journey that did not mimic that dead…love. Perhaps contradictorily, in the same breath, she had tried to ignore the feeling entire.

  Life did not dwell in silence. Nor did it dwell in rage. The world simply was. One could not always understand its courses, but that did not make them any less real.

  Ensil was not Fallit. Not physically. Not mentally. Not even spiritually. Where one was filled with laughter and play, the other was filled with the seriousness of drive; in their persons was the divide of the fool and the soldier. Both commanded their share of affections. Both, human in their turn, deserved no less.

  Consciously, she squeezed at his bare arm before she let him go. “You are…a good man, Ser Ensil.”

  A raised eyebrow struck a somewhat comical break in his usual stoicism, but the question lay there—it did not need to be voiced.

  “I…do not think I ever thanked you for that day. Let this be the remedy for that ill.” His face smoothed and she could see it in his eyes—the resistance to the bow he felt obliged to take. Ever proper. “We must talk, you and I. But first—other fools and other battles.”

  He nodded sharply. “As you say, lady. Meanwhile, I shall be making sure there are no others here.”

  They parted, each to their own spheres. She envied him his, for all it consisted of was petulant soldiers. Gruff, but reasonable. Hers involved the lack of reason itself, for it took its fate to the figure of a teenage woman.

  That woman stood beside her cousin, warming the dulcet rays of the sun with the scowls both turned her way. Pleasurable as a bear trap. A patch of dirt had been claimed as their own. No trees to scurry up. No brush to hide behind. Just their small parlor in a tent, wide enough for a few crammed souls to take a night’s uncomfortable rest. One dared wonder how a soul as clumsy as Rurik had ever been had managed to slip out the back of it.

  Which turned her attention to the guard pacing before the pair, arms crossed and sporting a scowl to match his charges’. Unlike many of their companions, the man did not sport the steely look of a hardened sellsword. He was a Verdanite, like herself—a soldier’s son, a tempered blade himself, but better off as part of a town’s watch. Which was, coincidentally, all he should have been—but Ivon wanted men he could trust above all else, and ability aside, the man was that.

  In short, there was no way he had helped the youth to escape. It did not, however, excuse incompetence.

  “Leave us,” Roswitte hissed.

  He started at the cross sound of her voice, and the scowl evaporated. He looked back at his charges, wavered, and lastly shrugged his shoulders. “Reckon you’ll prefer me when the bear’s done with you lot,” he said. Then he tipped his head to Roswitte and moved swiftly away. Another side effect of the war: even men that once looked at her with uneasy acceptance were beginning to come around to some measure of respect.

  Essa spoke first, in an uncharacteristic show of self-interest. “Ivon sends for us.”


  “You will be silent.” If Essa was going to come at her with disdain, then Roswitte could match and overwhelm her severity. She was older. She was stronger, and she was every bit as stubborn. “I tell you this once. I come to you in earnest, not as lapdog, nor interrogator. I already know where your boy’s gone.”

  “Then someone thinks quick,” the cousin added nastily. “Lest this morning’s escapades were some new spot of fun to which I’m not so acquainted.”

  Essa actually spat at her feet. Spat. There was not an ounce of politick in her. Then, “And bully for you.”

  “Child,” Roswitte said once, in a tone of voice she meant to strike deep. The tone she took with bantering rangers—or Ivon to a troublesome hound. “Still so much anger. You know it’s because you dunno what to feel, right?”

  The eyes narrowed further, but they flicked from her cousin back. Uncertainty. Her cousin rose to give her more. That’s enough of that.

  “Assal, but you are a bear, aren’t you? Where’s the grace? The tact?” he jabbed.

  She ignored him.

  “War happened to you. Tragedy happened to you. It always happens to you. But, little girl, part of life is learning: it happens to us all. There’re things we control, and things we can’t—things we can regret, and things we can simply mourn and push forward. You’ve too much blood on your hands to be a child anymore.”

  “How dare—” Essa began, but Rowan hushed her with an urgent hand motion.

  “Ros.” An altogether more commanding note took the man’s voice. It startled her, but it turned her regard. He looked tensed for a fight, but his face held only concern. “How much do you know?”

  That a boy had done something stupid. That a girl had done something stupid. That they walked the lanes of youth together and barred themselves from living by refusing to come to terms. That it was a miracle any of these sad youths had lasted years in the great wide world without any shred of commonsense.

  That Alviss—old, sweet, determined Alviss—must have surely been a saint among men.

  “That someone made a mistake, and anyone with half a mind could see it eats at one every bit as much as the other.”

  The girl shook, looked away. Yet Rowan looked her dead in the eye, with a sadness only family could portend. It signaled the depth to her, if not the cause. She was fortunate her mind moved quick—amended the path she took her. It was already more talking in a day than she was accustomed to in a week.

  “You are, both of you, free to go. We ride east to fight the Bastard, taking Isaak with us.”

  Essa’s eyes feinted away, toward Ivon. In truth, they went further—toward the path Rurik had no doubt crept. Roswitte resisted the urge to look herself. The cousins shared something of a look, their eyes widening as they recognized the significance of what she said.

  “Without him, what are any of you to us? Nothing. You may stay, if you wish—but you will have to fight. Or you may go, for the good of a friend. Commonsense should tell you which is right. But I find suspicious little o’ that in the young.”

  Then she turned away to the camp. It was a risk she took, but she took it without fear. One could not tell the girl what she had to do; she would resist. One could only lay the options plain and leave it to her hands. Pave the road and the wagons will follow, she murmured, thoughts already ticking ahead to the roads they themselves would have to forge. Too much ground, too little time.

  “Ros, I—”

  It was a little voice that squeaked. A girl’s voice. Roswitte hesitated, but she looked back, not quite certain how to deal with what she feared she would find there. Yet there were no tears to meet her. Flesh shook, but the heart steeled. A girl may have spoken, but it was a woman she turned to find.

  Chapter 6

  In ebon hour

  all men know the baker’s power

  the rite of life

  beyond, betwixt, by edge of knife—

  a magic notwithstanding

  a birthing in the powdered breathing

  where hand, on hand, the flesh

  commits by blind and dust enmesh

  salvation in creation:

  solidifying by fiery consumption.

  After all that had happened, the shadow retained his perch above the city streets. Rats scurried below, as always they did, in search of the bread. Heedless of the needless consumption.

  Consumption—it was an amusing word, but not his word.

  As existence was not their word. Devouring. Feasting. Ravaging. These were closer truths, for in their flocks they swept the cobbles and left naught but their remainders in their wake. Locusts. They had never known what it was to be lonely. It was their blessing. It was their curse.

  Above, he curled cat-like into the stone, weighting himself by breaths against the wind. The windows were thrown open, the night was young, and he was being watched. As far as he had flown, and though he could see nothing, he knew it to be true. It was a skill time taught—like wolves of different packs, stalking one another through the brush. Each could smell the other. They simply couldn’t act as yet.

  The wisest hunter acted not on impulse; it picked its hunting ground with care.

  Such had been his game of cat and mouse for nigh an octave, from one hole to the next. Fortunate, that his people had been birthed in the dark places of the earth. Born into the hunt which inevitably killed them. He was a remnant. But the thing about remnants was this: they were the ones that had learned their lessons best.

  Nightfall. Twin moons. Dual purposes. He unfolded himself, but did not leap as yet—he stretched lest his inactive body fail him. At last he had momentum again. This waiting, though his nature, no longer suited him.

  Yet the other revealed himself first. Not in words, but a subtle stirring of shadow—the crumple of salt Aurinth himself had scattered across the creaking boards above. Through the door above him, a man stepped—certain, eager. It was in the way he stepped. He scarcely noted the salt. Stupid, than, as well.

  Three stories. One way in. Many out. He leaned back against the stone, shielding himself from the street. Closed his eyes, that the ears dare not grow distracted. This would not have been the one that tracked him, he knew. There was another. And so he waited.

  The other tore the room apart. Cursed when he found nothing he could use. Tore them apart again. Someone joined him. Other voices rose, repellant—and they either shoved their way through them or ignored them entire, but they left all the same. Their quarry was not in the room he had bought, because he was in the room below.

  Thought he ran. Slipped away into the night, like any sane little bird in flight. So they, too, slipped-slipped away and prowled through the streets all atwitter with their chittering. From there, it was easy enough to stalk them. Two more joined them from the alleys—watchers in the dark—and the lot headed for the outskirts.

  But it was not them he wanted. Puppets moved upon the world, but the master pulled its strings. He knew the hunt. Knew its shape. Knew when it was a puppet at its dance, and when a man.

  Cats had claws because they sought to climb above. He shimmied into the crawling dark and picked his way up brick and stone, shying from the sheer and slithering against the separated. Nothing was perfect. Time taught that. Perhaps in a moment, a fleeting instant, it had that honor—but time passed, and all things degraded. And in degradation, there was ascent.

  For the nature of the world was this: in death, life; in life, death. Simple. Clean.

  Rooftops were curious places. They yawned out into the sky, somehow freer than the teeming open roads below them. Nothing rose above them. Nothing boxed them in. They were the closest to flight that man could achieve, and even then, they were but another road, slightly higher, no less murky. He moved across their rickety trails with practiced precision, never faster than necessary, but never slower than the hunted hunters demanded.

  Then, the alpha. It came out in a man’s shape. The hounds passed him by without a word, but he had his cue, and into its silence did he s
lip. Shambling, uncertain—yet in the guise of one cautious for a nightly safety. Again: simplicity. It was the art of losing oneself. Swaddled robes and skittish starts—a man on a mission, but appropriately terrified of the course to get there.

  Aurinth could almost breathe in the rattle of coin that would secure the image: a merchant, or a broker.

  Yet no mere merchant kept the bulge of a blade in his boot, either. No sensible merchant stalked the streets at night without the due care of one better suited to the night than he. Little touches—they were everything in the game.

  Night’s delight: the revelation, the end. He moved—nigh danced—upon the ebon winds, down, down unto the earth. The cat always lands on its pretty, pretty paws. He stood, cracked and charged and quick-stepped a trail into the moving corpse’s wake.

  The stink! It was the thing of dread and insecurity—a lick of salt and dissolute dedication. Yet it felt to him the best ones always had it. Blood surged hot and thick within him to know it—a challenge, yea, a thing of promise!

  And he was away, at that, into the folds of the city’s yawning deeps. It turned. Oh, it knew, knew, knew, but it depended on all the wrong senses. Fingertips brushed the clothed bulge, but without knowing, all that did was trumpet to the ebon shadow precisely what he was.

  The shadow was giddy. The shadow was poised. When children lit the screams of a dozen soaring firebirds, the shadow soared beneath them.

  A hundred windows stood blind to their journey. For, even in the collision—that fool-man turning at the illuminated last—they were but elements. People looked to the effects, rarely the actions. Their blades were only wind, after all.

  This hunter stepped into the sweep of Aurinth’s blade, let it score his right arm. Momentum being what it was, Aurinth continued forward with his long sword, and the hunter slammed his head into the open notch at the bottom of the shadow’s throat.

  Long and short. It made all the difference. The one stepped in, pulling a dagger, teeth lashing out at the pulsating beneath the other’s skin. Life! Aurinth’s body screamed in exultation. It was long or it was short, and his blade was long, though the distance to his foe was short, and this, in turn, too likely meant his life was much the same.