“Okay.” Salazar surrendered. “No others.”
Artifis Fen crawled back through the tiny door. A nosy moon now peaked through the gaps in the drifting clouds. He felt old and foolish and reckless—and alive.
The Wildes, Chapter 20
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Cian Flint, a wealthy Vinlands merchant, arrived in Riverbend with the swagger of success. Critical of the locals’ ways, he mocked the narrow winding alleys and constant congestion of RatsNest, and decided to construct a competing warehouse district.
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When the locals declined to invest, he poured his entire fortune into the project and purchased the land beside where the Inge turns at a fraction of what he believed it worth. Cocksure of his business acumen, he didn’t ask, and no one told him, the area was a flood plain.
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When the snows melted in the spring and the waters of the Inge swelled and jumped the banks, Cian Flint’s fortune and most of the buildings washed away. He disappeared shortly thereafter, leaving the warehouses of Flint’s Folly empty, as they remain today, a warning against hubris.
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Excerpt from Riverbend—
Where the Inge Turns
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The Wildes
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Whym tossed and turned before conceding defeat and opening his eyes. Although his body yearned for sleep, his restless mind itched to start the day. While Stern and Kutan might resent being sent on a pointless mission beyond the Mysts, the view from Sentinel Mountain had left Whym eager to see more of the Lost Land. The very moment the others stirred, he popped up, ready to help with breakfast. Thankfully, Agnis didn’t insist on cooking. After sharing a loaf of bread, some dried meat, and what was left of the cheese, they readied to leave.
“Not a word to anyone,” Stern reminded.
Whym nodded, unsure whether his master was referring to the details of their post or the half-baked plan to turn him into a rebel leader. He had no intent to mention either. Why reveal we’re being sent on a fool’s errand? And I’d never endanger my parents by sharing your ridiculous scheme.
“No need to wait for me,” Agnis offered once they were out of sight of the cottage. “It was thoughtful of Stern to send you with me, but I’ve been finding my own way since before you found your mother’s tit. You go on ahead.”
Though he was eager to reach his parents’ house, Whym felt obligated to accompany her—both to follow Stern’s directions and because he’d grown fond of Agnis. “Absolutely not! This is part of my training,” he said. She looked at him quizzically, and he returned a wry smile. “Stern tasked me to charm you into surrendering your secret ingredients.”
“Charm me, you might,” Agnis chuckled. “But without my secrets, I’d be just a sad old widow.” She winked, her smile hinting the words were far from true.
“Well, when you put it that way—” They both laughed. Whym put his arm around her thick shoulder. Only a day earlier, the act would have felt contrived. But in a short time, he’d grown close to her. He felt welcome around Agnis in a way he’d never felt with Stern and Kutan. They marched on together and, despite the slow pace and the large gap in age, the time passed with ease. When they arrived near dusk at the gate of her house in NewTown, he was sorry to see her go, and not just because he’d spent so much time alone the past few moons.
“Until next time.” She opened the gate. “And do give Isabel my regards.”
Whym was dumbstruck. They’d spent the entire day in conversation. Not once had Agnis mentioned being acquainted with his mother. When they’d first met, he’d thought the woman dull but agreeable. As he watched her amble down the walkway toward her house, he suspected he’d hardly scratched the surface of learning who she was. Be slow to discount, quick to suspect. Stern had cautioned him to be more circumspect when forming opinions about people.
Once Agnis entered her home, Whym hurried toward the bridge to RatsNest. He paused when he neared the tailor’s shop where Kira apprenticed, but reckoned an unannounced visit might be unwelcome and continued walking.
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“Son!” Isabel Ellenrond’s arms enveloped Whym the moment he opened the door. “I made dumplings.” He’d wanted to surprise his parents but found that Stern had sent notice. They’d prepared as if the day were a holiday. As he devoured the dumplings, they peppered him with questions, hungry for every morsel of information and impressed by all he’d learned.
“After you left, your father spent every night for a moon collecting rumors at the Fiddlestop. Oh, the horrible stories those drunkards put in his head!”
“You wouldn’t believe what people were saying at first,” Madwyn Ellenrond added. “That Stern harbored a grudge against our family and had planned a terrible end for you. Some even claimed that he intended to use you to start another rebellion. Can you believe that? Only when I learned the Council arranged the pairing, did I feel better.”
Whym was certain the Council of Truth had nothing to do with arranging his apprenticeship. But if the fiction appealed to his parents, he was content to leave them ignorant. “Oh, Mum, I almost forgot. Agnis Stitch sends her regards.”
“Agnis? I haven’t spoken—” The mention of Agnis had unnerved her. “How do you know Madam Stitch?”
Whym was puzzled by his mother’s reaction, but didn’t want to press her for an explanation. He did, however, intend to ask Agnis the next time he saw her. “She visited Stern in the Wildes and will look after the cottage while we’re gone,” he answered, becoming ever more comfortable with incomplete truths when it served his interests.
“Gone?” his mother asked. “Stern’s message didn’t say why you’d be visiting.”
“He believes we’ll have to travel quite far to find this post. But don’t worry, it’s not dangerous—just far away.” He’d expected to want to tell his parents everything. When he saw their reactions to any hint of trouble, though, he found he wished only to comfort them. “I’d tell you more, but I can’t due to the Seeker Code.” He knew of no such code, but the answer mollified them. First incomplete truths, now outright lies. Maybe I’ve learned even more from Stern than I’d thought.
A knock at the door saved him from going into further detail. “Anyone home?” A knowing look passed between his parents as he sprang to the door.
Kira threw her arms around him.
Whym returned the hug. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get to see you. I almost stopped at the tailor’s on the way here.”
At the mention of the tailor, Kira tensed and looked away, too quickly for him to decipher what he’d seen in her eyes—malice, fear, disgust? Whatever it was, it was out of character for her. It troubled him.
“I’m glad you didn’t.” She turned back to face him, and after a pause, added unconvincingly, “It would have ruined the surprise.”
“Dumplings?” His mother invited her to join them at the table.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I’ve eaten.” She patted her stomach, which had grown considerably since he’d seen her last.
At least she’s well-fed. Whym wisely kept the thought to himself.
“I’ve yet to see my grandmother, but maybe we could go on a walk later and catch up?” She directed the last bit to Whym.
He glanced at his parents, who were both smiling their approval. They made plans to meet later, then Kira left with the suddenness she’d arrived.
“She’s such a sweetheart,” Isabel Ellenrond sighed when the door closed. “I’m glad Tailor Thrump let her come.”
Whym took advantage of the interruption to shift the conversation away from the post and Agnis. He soon had his parents relating the recent happenings of their neighbors. Listening to them, with a belly full of dumplings, he felt like
a fat cat curled and comfy by the fire.
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Later that evening, Whym waited outside Kira’s door, kicking a stone from foot to foot. Of late, his thoughts had been dominated by Ansel’s death and Stern’s revelation. But in the early part of his apprenticeship, he’d reinvented his last parting with her so many times the imagined versions were more real to him than what had actually transpired. He’d kissed her back, kissed her first, run after her and pulled her into his arms. Only in memory had he stood, lead-footed and dimwitted, to watch her leave.
He knew he was a different person from the boy she’d kissed that morning. He was more accomplished, more confident. But when she’d stepped through his parents’ door, the old feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt had resurfaced. When she’d wrapped her arms around him, he was the same scared boy he’d been during the walk to the Fiddlestop.
The door opened. “Seeker Whym, have you scouted a secret route for our exploits this evening?” Mischief glinted in her hazel eyes.
Whym was unprepared. He’d imagined holding her and kissing her, but had planned nothing to enable it to happen. When his open-mouthed stare betrayed his lack of preparation, she played it off as a joke. “Tell me everything!”
As they strolled together arm in arm, he recounted his experiences, paying no attention to where they headed. He was focused on Kira and how to make his move, determined, this time, not to wait for her to kiss him. But as they walked and talked, the ease of their conversation left him loath to act.
When he recounted how Kutan and Stern had both disarmed him with a switch during his first days of sword training, she released a tinkling laugh that reminded Whym how much he’d missed her laughter. The only laughter he’d heard since the start of his apprenticeship was Kutan laughing at him.
“You’re telling me Seeker Sandoval gave you the choice of any sword, and you picked one you could hardly lift?”
It was one of those experiences that seemed hilarious in retrospect. While he’d been receiving the welts from the switch, it had been less than amusing. “It was a beautiful sword—sharp and long, with detailed engravings on the hilt.” He shook his head at the memory. “Like swinging a tree branch.”
She squeezed his arm with her petite hands. “Feels like you could swing a whole tree with these.” Whym blushed. “So what brings you back to the city? Your parents’ note didn’t say.”
I’ve not told her I’m leaving, nor how long I’ll be gone. His enthusiasm to leave waned. “I…I will…We…Stern’s accepted a post that will take us away for quite some time.” He pulled the stuck words from his throat. “He let me return to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” The sparkle left Kira’s eyes.
The word sounded far too final. “Not goodbye forever. Just a turn or so. We’re coming back.”
“I see,” she said, the smile, as well, now gone. “This job’s dangerous?”
“No, not at all.” Whym’s response was too quick to be reassuring. “Just far away,” he added after reading the concern on her face.
She folded her arms. “How far?”
“I…I can’t say.” He had the sudden urge to reveal every secret. They’d shared everything for so long, he felt guilty holding back. But his gut warned him to reveal no more. “The Seeker Code,” he added as an afterthought.
Kira weighed his statement as if he were a vendor she suspected of cheating, but finally took him at his word. “A secret, then? Secrets and danger and mystery! Am I safe alone with such a man?”
He started to protest, but she placed her finger on his lips and kissed him on the cheek. Did she kiss me on the cheek to show we’re just friends, or is she inviting more? He found himself again paralyzed with uncertainty, wondering about the meaning of this kiss. Once she stepped away, though, Whym had the sinking feeling he’d missed his moment. Instead of doing what he’d planned—what he’d dreamed of doing—he asked a question. “How about you? Is your apprenticeship all you’d hoped?” You spineless coward!
She hesitated as if she were picking from a list of prepared responses. “I’ve learned a lot.” Her voice was cold and carried an undercurrent of meaning he couldn’t decipher. She shifted the topic. “Do you recognize where we are?”
He’d been so focused on the conversation and flustered by his desire for a kiss, he’d not paid attention to where they were going. As he looked about in the moonlight, he recognized the hulking shells of Flint’s Folly, the flood-ruined warehouse district where they’d often played as children.
“Our hideout!” Armed with the imagination of youth, they’d pretended the remaining structures were another world—a world they together ruled from the hideout they’d built in the abandoned warehouse in front of them. He stepped over and kicked the loose plank they’d used as an entry. It swung open to reveal a moldy darkness.
Kira slid between the gap in the boards. He followed. It was the first time he’d been inside at night. During daylight, the gaps between the wall planks let in enough light to see. At night, the warehouse was an eerie, shadowless emptiness. “Kira?” He reached out to feel for her.
She caught his hand as it brushed against her shoulder and held it against her cheek. “I’m here.” She lowered his hand and placed it on the small of her back.
“I’m—” Whym started to speak, but she again placed a finger over his lips and leaned into him.
“I’m here.”
Tentative and uncertain, his lips sought hers. They met, and she didn’t draw away as he’d feared. She instead returned the embrace, seeking out his tongue with her own. Her lips were full and soft, her body warm. When his loins stirred, he pulled away, turning so the rise in his pants wouldn’t press against her.
Kira intercepted him, one arm drawing him back, the hand of the other moving up his leg, squeezing the bulge she found. “I’m here.” She tugged loose the lacing that cinched his pants. The night wasn’t cold, but he was shivering. This was beyond what he’d dared to imagine. He kissed her neck as his pants slid to the ground. She wrapped her arms around his and lifted herself up, Whym’s own arms moving to support her from beneath.
A quick breath—a sudden sharp intake of air—and a warmth like nothing he’d experienced enveloped him, spreading from his middle outward to his tingling extremities. He was inside, her body moving rhythmically up and down in his arms. Her breaths came quick and hot against his ear, and he shuddered as he clenched her against him. He’d not even realized he was holding his breath until it escaped in quickened gasps of release.
After, she shook as he held her in his arms. Not until a hot tear rolled from her cheek onto his neck, did he realize the shaking was crying. The moment of satisfaction passed, and he gently set her down. “Did it hurt?” He’d comforted her tears before, but the assumption these tears were his fault crushed him.
“No,” she answered, her voice quiet, distant. “It didn’t hurt.”
Whym searched for the right words, a salve to sooth the pain, but he was confounded by her tears. If it hadn’t hurt, why cry? He wanted to ask but feared the answer.
When her words came again, they were like air to a drowning man. “Whym, will you promise me,” she asked between sobs, “when you leave Riverbend for good, you’ll take me with you?”
At that moment, Whym would have promised the moon. “Of course, I promise.”
She hugged him then and held him as though she was afraid to let go. He’d never seen her like this. It scared him.
“I need to get back.” She released him, an urgency in her voice he didn’t question. He fumbled in the dark to retie his pants.
Like the morning walk to the Fiddlestop several moons before, Whym withheld the questions clawing at his throat to escape. Kira, as well, said nothing. He was left to ponder his conflicting feelings—a new closeness between them, but an ever-widening distance at the same time. It was as if
they were being simultaneously pushed together and pulled apart. Does she feel it, too?
When they reached the turn for their homes, she kept walking toward the bridge. “You didn’t get the evening off to see me, did you?” he asked.
“I snuck out to visit my ill grandmother.” She stared ahead, thoughts elsewhere. “But if I’m lucky, I’ll not be missed.”
What type of master would refuse one evening to visit with family? Not knowing what to say, he said nothing.
She stopped at the edge of the bridge. Whym could hear the lapping of the Inge against the bank below, egging him on to say aloud the words in his mind. He found, at last, the courage to speak. “I love you.”
Kira kissed him on the cheek, tears welling again in her eyes. “I know.” She turned and ran across the bridge. He’d wanted to walk her all the way back, but the longer they spent together, the greater the odds of her being caught and punished.
Despite the many times he’d imagined calling or chasing after her—the many times he’d promised himself the next time would be different—he watched, unspeaking, as her slight figure dissolved into the void of night. Unlike the morning when first she’d kissed him, this time he was left tortured not by “what if,” but “what now.”
He shuffled back toward his parents’ home, his boots scraping unevenly against the rutted dirt road. There was so much left unresolved that he feared the uneasiness would dog his thoughts every step of the journey ahead. He’d returned to Riverbend eager to leave. He’d leave reluctant to go.
I’m being silly. What could change? We’re both apprentices. We’ll still be apprentices when I return.
The Wildes, Chapter 21
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Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Page 13
