“How do you know? What if it’s not?”
“It’s her,” Spirk repeated.
Rem stood by a good while and then added, “Well, even if it is – and I hope to Mahnus it isn’t – we still haven’t found the girl.”
At this, Long stopped crying and sat up, shaken by the notion he’d forgotten about his daughter. “That’s right: we ain’t.” Yendor offered a hand and Long pulled himself to his feet, wiping his nose with his sleeve and the back of his hand. “Sorry you had to see that, lads,” he croaked, his voice still raw and more broken than usual.
Yendor missed half the words, but he got the gist. “You got every right to feel poorly.” Poorly? Yendor rebuked himself. I bet poorly don’t come half near it.
Long stepped back and inspected the tree stump. “It’s a fine monument for her, though, and a fitting. Wish I knew who made it.”
“’Nother giant, looks like,” said Yendor, pointing to the mess of footprints around the tree trunk. “No reg’lar man coulda made this thing.”
“Another giant,” Long said quietly.
“Let’s see if we can figure out what happened here,” Rem suggested. “Then maybe we’ll know which way to head next.”
The effort seemed to focus Long’s thoughts, for after an extensive search of the clearing, he declared, “Way I see it, Em came into these woods along that game trail and ran into this back road, here,” he indicated with a wave of his hand. “Looks like there was wagons camped here for a spell. And it’s certain there was some kind o’ fight all around that old fire pit.”
Yendor dreaded saying it, but needed to know. “So, whoever Mardine ran into killed her?”
Long’s silence was confirmation enough.
“Then,” Yendor continued, “She musta happened on them as stole your Esmine.”
“Let’s search the trees for graves. If we find ‘em, I wanna know who’s in ‘em,” Long rasped.
A few short minutes later, they were digging up corpses.
*****
Vykers, Back Home
Vykers was beyond agitated. When Aoife hadn’t returned within a reasonable time frame, he became restless, began to worry. What was he to do if something went wrong on the other side? He was weeks and weeks away at best by conventional means. And he found it excruciating to consider the possibility that he’d finally won the A’Shea’s heart, only to lose her again through some unforeseen catastrophe. But no, he told himself, Aoife was a strong woman. It had to be the case that something had befallen the Frog, and the A’Shea had gone to help him. When he tried to consult Arune on the matter, he found her every bit as bedeviled by the situation and, thus, of no comfort whatsoever.
After three more days, Vykers was nearly homicidal with anxiety, and his slaves took special care to stay out of his reach and avoid his gaze. Just as the Reaper was about to snap, Aoife reappeared, stumbling out of the nothing between two trees, disheveled, dirty, scratched and frightened. Vykers rushed to her side.
“What’s happened?”
“What’s happened?” Aoife spat back at him, anger evident in her voice and manner. “What’s happened? You happened, Reaper. You happened.”
He would like to have believed she was joking, that her strange behavior was a jest of some sort, but the fury in her eyes was all too real. “What does that mean?” he demanded, his nerves frayed from worry and his teeth on edge from having been yelled at so unexpectedly, from such an unexpected source.
“Tadpole…the Frog…assaulted me…tried to…”
“What? He tried to what?”
Rape me, she’d have said, if the memory wasn’t so terrifying, if the mere words weren’t so abhorrent to her.
But what she couldn’t bring herself to say aloud, the Reaper read in her manner. “I’ll kill him!” He growled in white hot rage.
“You already have,” Aoife replied coldly. “There is nothing of the boy I knew in that…that creature.” She paused, haunted by the memory. “He chased me around and through my grove and out into the grasslands beyond. Wherever I went, there he was. And yet I could not lead him back here. Finally, I stood and fought him off…but he is strong…and savage.” She looked defiantly at Vykers. “My Tadpole is gone forever now; only your Frog endures.”
So, it was back to this argument again. Was there any point in trying to explain himself while the A’Shea was so angry? Was there any point while he was so angry? In the end, he stared at her until she stalked away.
“This will never work for us, Tarmun. I heal and you destroy. We’re like summer and winter.”
“And what is the one without the other?” he challenged.
Aoife stood up straighter, raised her jaw just so. “I lived many productive years before I ever laid eyes on you, Reaper.”
“Productive,” he said. “But I did not hear the word ‘happy.”
She actually laughed at him, although her eyes were wet with tears. “What do you know of happiness? You, whose greatest delight is in killing others?”
Oh, there were things he might have said, any number of things. But he felt her slipping from his grasp like sand through his fingers, and it bewildered him to the point of stupefaction.
“Lunessfor is, as I said, to the southwest. You have your men with you; I’m sure you’ll be safe on your voyage.”
“And you?” He finally managed.
“Will not be joining you.” Her voice still quivered with rage, but there was pain in it, too, sadness, a brittle quality like the thinnest of glass.
“And where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” she said curtly. “Far away from here, from you.”
Brave, he was, and strong, but neither brave nor strong enough to swallow his damned pride. He watched her go without a word. She stepped into the space between trees and was gone. He would not admit as much to himself, but the wound he’d received from the End was nothing to the one he’d just gotten from the A’Shea. And she was a healer!
Arune could not help herself; this turn of events was just what she’d hoped for. It was terrible for the Reaper, of course, but for her…?
*****
Kittins, Wandering
Although he’d recently learned to read, he didn’t need to: the crude sketch was obviously meant to be him, and even an illiterate bumpkin could make out the sum of money offered for his capture. Kittins was a wanted man – not perhaps in the manner that most men wish to be wanted, but wanted nevertheless. He cracked an ugly grin at the irony.
He stopped grinning when he heard the clink of steel at his back. He turned from the wall on which the poster hung, hoping to catch his would-be captor napping, only to find himself facing a good-sized semicircle of men. They must have been trailing him since he wandered into this shithole of a town, and he’d been so preoccupied with his plans for vengeance that he hadn’t noticed.
“Easy, mate, easy,” a scraggly bearded man with a nervous tic cautioned.
“Or what?” Kittins asked. He thought they’d see their own superior numbers and laugh at him, like he was touched. They did not.
“A scrap, I’d guess,” the man responded. “You’re a bigg’un and I reckon a bunch of us’ll go to it tryin’ to bring you down, but bring you down we will.”
There were seven of them, with more coming. Kittins didn’t like the situation and turned to run, only to find several more men at his back. “Won’t be much of a reward with all these men,” he told the crowd. “You’d better hope I reduce your numbers.”
He struck. What else could he do? Surrender was as foreign to him as courtly dancing. And, yes, he did manage to kill a number of his assailants. But this time there were too, too many, rendering the result a foregone conclusion.
Kittins felt a crushing blow to the back of his head and blacked out.
When he came to, he was bound in enough rope to double his weight…and he was paralyzed.
“I believe he’s awake,” said the voice of an elderly woman. “Tilt him up so I can get a b
etter look at him.”
Kittins’ feet plunged downward as his head whooshed into an upright position. He surmised that he was on a table of some fashion, designed to rotate up, down and around if its minders so desired. When his head cleared, he discovered himself in a large, stone chamber with a surprising amount of natural light. Not a dungeon, then. A figure crossed into view – Her Majesty – followed by another, Bailis, and a third, the Queen’s Shaper.
“An ugly thing, isn’t he? That little charm about his neck…is that what makes him so resilient?” the Queen inquired.
“That is correct, your Highness. But if you remove it…”
“I have no intention of removing it.”
“You are aware that he expressed a desire, an intention to kill me.”
The Queen turned to her Shaper and patted him condescendingly on the shoulder. “There, there, Cindor. I won’t allow him to do any such thing.”
Kittins wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a trace of irritation in the Shaper’s visage.
“Why let him live?” Cindor asked. “Why keep him?”
Her Majesty turned towards her advisor. “If you found a new poison, my old friend, would you discard it immediately, or would you not rather squirrel it away somewhere, against a possible future need?”
“I believe this one’s too dangerous for that,” the Shaper responded.
“Ah,” the Queen said, “But he’ll find there’s nothing in the world more dangerous than me.”
There was something in her voice that made the statement unsettlingly credible.
*****
Long’s Team, At Mardine’s Grave
Lots of dead humans; one, even, that was more a pile of mush than a corpse. But no Esmine. There, at least, was something to be hopeful about.
“That all o’ them? Anyone find any more?” Long asked.
“That’s all of them,” said Rem. And thank Mahnus, he thought.
“What now?” said Spirk.
It was Yendor who answered. “We follow them tracks, o’ course. Whoever survived this fight obviously took the girl along.”
Long closed his eyes, focused on breathing. More searching, more endless travel. If Esmine weren’t alive at the end of it…He’d drive himself mad if he kept thinking that way. Best to get moving. Move. Do. “Alright, lads. We follow.”
At other times, in other places, and under other circumstances, there would have been grumbling, whining. Not here, not now. The other men dusted the grave dirt off their clothing, rinsed their hands in the same stream in which Jaddo had died, and climbed wearily back onto their equally weary mounts.
Time was, Spirk would’ve broken into song to while away the miles. But that time was as dead as Mardine.
~FOURTEEN~
Vykers, Lunessfor
Vykers didn’t remember much about the slog to Lunessfor. He’d been lost in his final conversation with Aoife, wondering how it went wrong and what he might’ve done differently. If he’d been a different man. And he couldn’t get his mind around how quickly it had all fallen apart. Her decision at first had seemed so sudden, so rash, but then he remembered she’d been fighting and running from the Frog for three days. Plenty of time to work herself into high dudgeon.
As for the Frog, whatever he might once have been, he was Vykers’ enemy now. His death was a foregone conclusion.
Looking up, the Reaper was almost surprised to find himself at the gates of Lunessfor. He expected to be turned away by the guards, but was not. That made no sense to him, unless, again, he was walking into a trap. He didn’t care. Once inside, he emptied his pack and distributed the last of his money to his slaves.
“Now get the fuck away from me. You’re all free!”
His slaves looked stricken. What had they done to be cast away like this? A few looked hurt, one or two looked lost. The red knight looked angry.
“What?” Vykers yelled at them. “You’re free. Go away or I’ll plant ya!” He waved his arms threateningly at them until they got the message.
The lone black man amongst the group seemed particularly aggrieved. What was he to do in a land where he was the only one of his kind and appeared, on the surface, so different from virtually everyone else? How might he explain himself, not knowing the language or customs? Vykers was indifferent. Last to go was the red knight, who simply shook his head in disapproval before walking away.
As soon as the slaves dispersed, a young boy, an urchin, approached and spoke to Vykers.
“I’ll do whatever needs doin’ for a few shim!” he proclaimed.
“Ha!” Vykers scoffed. “You’re askin’ the wrong man. I just gave all my coin away.”
The boy squinted at him. “Say, you’re the Reaper, ain’tcha?”
“And?”
“Can I take you anywheres? Steal you anything?”
After a moment’s thought, Vykers responded, “You know the vintner’s on Fage Street?”
“There’s three o’ them on Fage, Reaper.”
“Well, I never been. Show me.”
The boy was quick as a mouse dashing through the floorboards, but Vykers kept up. It was amazing what finally being healthy could do for a man. A quarter hour later, the boy pulled up outside a seedy looking business with a sign so weathered as to be almost unreadable.
Vykers poked his head in the door, eyed the man behind the counter and said to his guide, “This ain’t it.”
“This way, then,” the boy replied happily.
Vykers wondered if the Frog had ever been to Lunessfor, and his mood darkened. Boy or not, if the Reaper ever got ahold of the Frog again, he’d…
“Here y’are,” the boy said.
A much cleaner and better maintained business, this was. My luck, this won’t be it, Vykers thought. And I’ll have to trudge on to the last. But it was the place he was looking for. A quick peek through the door revealed a man Vykers knew well but hadn’t seen in years.
“Two minutes, and I’ll have some coin for you,” he told the boy.
Inside the shop, the Reaper walked directly to the counter and stood patiently before a fat man in a small cap who was busily reading a large book. Incredibly, it took the merchant more than a minute to recognize Vykers’ presence. When he did, he was sorry he’d been so long about it.
“Tarmun Vykers!” he giggled nervously.
“Quinsh Seidan,” the Reaper replied, his voice dancing a fine line between humor and hostility.
“Come for a bottle of wine, have you?”
“You know I ain’t. Where’s my money?”
The vintner’s nervous laugh became markedly more pronounced. “Your…ah…money. Yes, well, that’s the thing…”
Vykers grabbed the fellow by his shirt collar and slowly, inexorably, dragged him up and over the counter.
“Last I heard, you were on your deathbed!” the vintner protested.
“Funny,” Vykers said, “’Cause you’re seconds from being on your own. Where’s my money?”
“It’s invested! I invested it! Much safer than hiding it somewhere!” The vintner was no longer laughing.
“Not for you, it ain’t. I’ll take everything you’ve got on hand, and I’ll be back in a few days for the rest,” said Vykers. “And don’t try sneakin’ off on me. It’d make me too happy to have to kill you.”
He let go of Quinsh, who fell to the floor.
“I can get you a few thousand Nobles right now,” the man said. “And more next week.”
“Get those Nobles, and we’ll see if you live ‘til next week.”
The vintner scrambled to his feet, dashed behind his counter and disappeared into the back room. It occurred to Vykers that Quinsh might attempt to escape out the back of the shop, but then he realized that not even Quinsh was that stupid. At last, the man emerged from the back room, holding a small wooden chest and looking much put out.
“I’ll have a hard go of it until next week,” he complained.
“You don’t know shit about hardship,�
� Vykers sneered as he grabbed at the proffered chest. Popping the lid, he saw the vintner had made good on his promise. “It’s a start, fat man.”
“Yes,” Quinsh answered morosely.
“See you in a few days,” Vykers said over his shoulder as he headed out into the street.
“Yes,” Quinsh repeated with even greater sadness.
The boy was right where Vykers had left him; he tossed the kid a Noble. “I reckon that’s more money ‘n you’ve seen in a month.”
As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) Page 49
