“The man’s done nothing to you,” Beirly pointed out. “Hasn’t even looked at you sideways.”
“It’s nothing he’s done or said,” Grae admitted grudgingly. “But the man’s just menacing. All he does is stand there and breathe and he’s menacing!”
“Aye, well, no arguments there. It still boggles my mind what Siobhan saw in him that made her so adamant to have him.” Wood creaked, as if Beirly had shifted his weight in the chair. “He looks better now, but you didn’t see him with his hair like a bird’s nest and a beard down to his chest. He looked like a Wildman.”
“What did she see?” Grae wondered, bewildered.
“Don’t know. But she was right to get him. I mean, look at the way he behaves. He follows her like a giant shadow. More fierce than a guard dog, that man is. If the least bit of danger comes near her, he snarls and snaps at it and drives it away.”
“I do feel better about her walking around now that he’s with her,” Grae reluctantly admitted. “Shi has never been aware of the fact that she’s a pretty woman.”
“Well, with those twin swords on her back, she likely thinks that she can handle whatever danger comes near her. And she’s not wrong half the time.”
Erik snorted. Siobhan could handle the regular thief or drunkard, but if true trouble came her way, she’d be hard pressed to combat it. Erik had been fighting long enough that he could evaluate someone just by watching them move. Siobhan had the balance and strength to be a good swordswoman, but she lacked the reflexes to make her formidable.
“I just don’t know how to react to the man,” Grae complained.
“That’s fair,” Beirly allowed. “I don’t either. For that matter, I don’t think he knows how to react to us. But Grae, I’ll tell you this. For every show of kindness I’ve offered him, he’s shown respect and kindness in return. He might come from a dark guild, but he was in a good home before that, that’s as clear as the nose on my face. Treat him well, and he’ll do the same to you.”
Grae contemplated that for several minutes. “You don’t believe he’ll turn on us.”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Gut feeling.” Beirly let out a low chuckle. “Don’t glare at me so. Look, lad, if the man had wanted to take advantage of us, he could have done it a half a dozen times over. He could have stolen all our money—and we had quite a bit on us in Converse—our guild crests, our weapons, and made off like a bandit. Even injured as he was, we would have been hard pressed to stop him. But what does he do? He guards us. He does his best not to scare us. He treats Siobhan like a precious jewel. It’s not money or freedom he’s after.”
“So what does he want? Safety?”
“And kindness, aye, I think that more or less covers it.”
Safety? Kindness? Erik couldn’t refute the man’s words. That was indeed what he wanted. That and a deeper connection to these three people who had allowed him to live as a human being for the first time in seven years. But he didn’t know how to reach them. Grae he scared just by standing there. Beirly was a little nervous around him still, in spite of the words he was saying. Only Siobhan seemed able to take him at face value.
From the depths of the past, he dredged up memories of what it had been like with his friends and family. And from them, an idea sprouted. Maybe, instead of waiting for the other three to reach out to him, it was time he turned the tables and did something first.
Scheming, he silently stood and retreated back to his room, not leaving behind any sign of his eavesdropping.
Chapter Four
Something about the man just felt off. Erik couldn’t put his finger on what, but he didn’t like the overall feel of the man. From that cautious expression on Siobhan’s face, she felt the same way.
Ranton, as he had introduced himself, looked like a shady trader. His clothes just this side of respectable, but worn in. One eye squinted slightly every now and again, and there was a permanent smile etched into his face no matter what Siobhan said. He sounded like a foghorn, too. The voice grated on Erik’s ears.
“We’d only have two wagons,” Ranton said, rubbing his hands together in a habitually nervous habit. “So no need to weigh or measure anything.”
Erik frowned. He’d only been in the guild two weeks, granted, and he hardly knew more than the basics of pathmaking. But after helping Grae build three paths, he knew enough to realize that everything had to be weighed. Grae had to know the weight of everything in order to properly use the paths.
Siobhan, of course, knew this as well. A professional smile pinned to her face, she responded, “I’m sorry, sir. We must weigh everything. It’s impossible to take you on a path otherwise.” She shifted in her chair, sitting more upright and on the edge, as if ready to move out of it quickly. Erik also noted that even though they sat in their own guildhall, she had not offered any food or drink to their guest. In the time he’d known her, she’d never failed to offer that courtesy.
After seven years in the dark underworld, Erik knew a bad situation when he saw one. Siobhan clearly saw the same, as she didn’t trust this man. Of course, right now, all they had to go on was intuition. Deciding it was time to make or break, Erik cleared his throat and added, “You said your name was Ranton. What guild?”
Ranton’s smile flinched. “No guild for this deal. I’m working with a private trading company.”
“We’ll need a detailed list of the cargo you have.”
“With provenance,” Siobhan said with a deliberately casual tone. Her eyes watched the man like a hawk, though.
At the word ‘provenance,’ the smile ran away from his face. He wasn’t sweating, but Ranton looked as nervous as a mouse trapped by three hungry cats. “Well, these are all handmade products, of course there’s no provenance—”
“Of course there is,” Siobhan corrected gently. “A maker’s stamp, a history of the making, and a date. That’s all I need.”
Ranton cleared his throat, or tried to, but sounded like a choking duck. “I’m afraid I don’t have that on me. Well, it looks like we can’t do business today. I’ll take my leave, contact you later—”
Erik’s patience with the situation broke at that point and he grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and slammed his face against the table’s surface. Of course, the man flailed and tried to push himself away, but his strength was no match for the Wynngaardian’s and Erik just leaned against him harder.
Siobhan had leapt out of her chair when he moved, sending it flying backwards. She had her hand on one of her hilts, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. Seeing that Erik had the situation well in hand, she slowly lifted the hand free.
“Ahem. Wolf. He’s a smuggler, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Erik growled.
“I thought so.” Tsking the man, she bent at the waist to look him in the eye. “Thought to try your luck with a brand new guild, hoping they didn’t know better? Too bad for you, but the man leaning on you is a former dark guildsman. He can smell a rat better than I can.”
For a moment, Erik almost felt proud of his bad history. All of that experience had certainly come in handy.
Shaking her head, she straightened and requested, “Wolf, keep him here. I’ll call for an enforcer.”
“Sure, sure.”
When Siobhan had left, Ranton tried twisting his way free again, breathing hard between clenched teeth. He looked like a turned over turtle, doing that. Erik found it mildly entertaining. When he had exhausted himself, he gave up and whined, “You’re not really from a dark guild!”
“I really am,” Erik assured him, almost feeling a smidgeon of pity for the idiot. Or at least, he would try to feel pity for him at some point. Perhaps in the distant future. Leaning in a little closer, he breathed into the man’s ear, “That woman saved me from being a slave at a black market. There is not a thing I wouldn’t do to repay her for that kindness. So if you try to hurt anyone in this guild again, I will cut your throat and count it as a good deed.”
>
Ranton swallowed hard and went about three shades paler.
The would-be smuggler was saved by Beirly, who chose to come out of his workroom at that moment. He took in the situation with a startled blink, then asked slowly, “I take it something went wrong?”
Erik went with the short explanation. “Smuggler.”
“Ahhhh,” Beirly intoned in understanding. Then, for some reason, his face furrowed into a disturbed frown. “Did Shi tell you to do that?”
Glancing down, Erik looked at the situation from his perspective, but still didn’t understand the question. “Do what?”
“Pin the man like that. Did she realize what he was?”
“Not at first. But she saw through him quickly enough.”
“Not at first,” Beirly repeated, his frown deepening. Rounding the table, he came in closer, the wheels spinning in his mind. When he got to Siobhan’s upturned chair, he flipped it back up to its proper position and then stared down at it for a long moment. “Wolfinsky.”
The tone alone said that whatever was on Beirly’s mind, it was weighty. So Erik responded cautiously. “Yes?”
“I see now what you meant before, that it was foolhardy for us to open for business without having an enforcer. It gives me chills to think that if not for you, Siobhan would have met this scum alone.”
It gave Erik chills, for that matter.
“So. I’ll offer you a deal.” Beirly pointed a finger at his new hand. “That’s nothing more than a block of wood that you can attach a shield to. I can do much better work than that.”
Better than this? It was functional, certainly, but Beirly was right in that it was little better than a block of wood strapped onto his arm. Beirly had in essence created a large cap for his stump. It was solid, a polished dark wood, with one wide notch in it so he could slip a shield’s strap into it. Aside from its fighting ability and using it to protect his stump, it had no other merit. “How much better?”
“I can make it so you can grab things and lock onto it.”
How he would manage that, Erik had no idea. But he’d seen this man’s handiwork throughout the Hall. He had no doubt that if Beirly said it could be done, the man would pull it off somehow. The smuggler tried to take advantage of his split attention and squirm free. Erik leaned on him a little harder, making the man gasp for breath, but otherwise ignored him. “In exchange for a better hand, what do you want?”
“You stay until we can find a new enforcer.” Beirly said this straight forwardly.
Was that all? Erik was inclined to stay longer anyway, just to work off the debt he’d incurred with Siobhan. “Deal.”
Beirly relaxed into a grin. “Didn’t have to think about that, did you? Well, that’s fine.” Dropping into a chair, he got comfortable. “Well, while we wait for Shi to return, let’s talk about your new hand. “You might want to let up on the man first, as I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“That’s fine. He’s a waste of oxygen anyway.”
ӜӜӜ
“How does it feel? Does it chaff?”
Erik twisted his arm in different directions, trying out his new wooden hand. It fit like a glove over his stump, with a leather strap on the forearm keeping it in place. Beirly had carved it as if the hand was in a closed fist, with only the thumb detached and moveable, and for something that was supposed to be temporary, it had an amazing amount of detail whittled in. It actually looked like his hand. “No, no chaffing.” Whatever the man had lined it with on the inside was soft as butter. Lifting it closer to his face, he studied it in detail. “This is amazing,” he marveled. “Have you thought of making these for a living?”
“Not until I started on yours,” Beirly admitted frankly, beaming. He was pleased his work was so well appreciated. “But I’m thinking I could make a good sideline business out of it. This is just temporary, mind, so don’t get attached to it. I figured out how to make a metal version with moving fingers and thumb so you can latch onto things with it.”
So this was nothing more than a mockup of the metal version he’d make later? It seemed too elaborate for that, but Beirly wasn’t one to do anything in halfway measures.
Curious, he slammed his new hand into the other, testing how it felt against flesh. A slow smile took over his face as his real hand tingled in pain. “I could do some damage with this.”
Beirly looked up at him uncertainly. “Come again?”
“It’s a useful weapon you’ve given me.” He tried to explain it so the man wouldn’t think he’d try the new hand out on him next. “Even without the sword, if danger approaches any of you, I can combat it with the help of this hand.”
The shorter man sank back onto his work stool and just stared at Erik for a long moment. No one else was in the workroom and Beirly seemed to realize he could take advantage of this privacy to probe. (Neither man seemed brave enough to try it in front of Siobhan.)
“Wolfinsky. You seem dead set on acting as an enforcer for us. But Siobhan clearly didn’t ask you to do that. So why are you?”
Erik was not a man of words. He fumbled for a moment, trying to find the right way to explain. “I’m not good at many things. But fighting, protecting someone, that I excel at. It’s the only way I have of repaying you.”
Beirly lowered his head and stared at the floor for a long moment. “Is that why.”
“I was standing at the edge of an abyss,” he said softly. “You and Siobhan and Grae saved me from that. I should be doing something more, something grander to repay the grace you’ve given me. But I can’t think of anything else I can do for you.”
After letting out a long breath, Beirly looked back up, his beard lifted up in a smile. “I’ve misjudged you, Erik Wolfinsky. You are a good man.”
Erik blinked at him. Had something he said struck a chord in the man?
“Now, finally, I get it. I understand what Siobhan saw when she looked at you.” Shaking his head at himself, Beirly muttered under his breath, “It’s borderline magic, those eyes of hers.”
“Is she truly never wrong?” Erik couldn’t help but ask.
“Not once since we were children. Boggles my mind how she does it. Gives me grey hairs sometimes, too.” A twinkle appeared in his eyes. “Like when she insists on buying former dark guildsmen off a black market slave train.”
Erik snorted, seeing the humor in the situation now. “Aye, I still think she’s crazy for doing that. Even if it’s me she bought.”
“You set a bad precedent,” Beirly mock complained, half-seriously. “Since she succeeded with you, now she’ll think she can do it again.”
His eyes went wide with horror as his imagination conjured up future scenarios. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not. I’m dead certain she’ll do this again. It might be years later, but she will. I’ll bet my beard on it.” Already resigned, Beirly put his hands against his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “Well, regardless, the hand fits you well. Now, I suppose I’ll start in on your true hand.”
Not about to stop the man, Erik waved him on and headed out. In the doorway, he paused and turned back to ask, “I haven’t seen Siobhan or Grae all morning. Where are they?”
“Oh, them? They left early this morning. Grae spends his spare time building paths so we can take on more clients. Siobhan decided to help him today.”
The blood drained out of Erik’s face as the full meaning of that sank in. “You mean to tell me that those two are outside of Goldschmidt’s walls, on their own, building pathways?”
“Right,” Beirly confirmed, puzzled by Erik’s reaction. “Is there a problem?”
“Wind and stars, man, that’s dangerous work to do without any protection!” Erik felt like swearing, only couldn’t think of any words strong enough. “Which way? Which way were they going?”
“Ah?” Beirly looked toward the ceiling as he tried to recall. “South side. I think Grae wanted to build a path towards Winziane.”
Now knowing everything
he needed to, Erik spun on his heel and sprinted out of the Hall. The street outside was busy with mid-morning traffic, so he had to pay attention to avoid running into something or plastering himself against the side of a wagon. As he ran, a steady stream of curses ran through his head. Seriously, what were those two thinking?! Being inside of a city was bad enough, but if true danger broke out, the city guild enforcers would step in. Outside of the city, there were absolutely no rules or anyone to turn to for safety.
Even as he ran, he knew what had happened. Siobhan was worried about Grae going out on his own, so to safeguard him, she’d gone along. And true, two were safer than one. But it probably didn’t occur to her to call Erik, because he was still too new in her life. Out of sheer habit, she took on the burden of protecting her friend. He was going to have to break this way of thinking with her, and with Grae, or they’d get themselves into serious trouble when he wasn’t around.
It took precious minutes to get out the south gate, and then another minute for him to find the two. They were several hundred yards out past the gate, off the beaten highway, kneeling on the ground with their heads buried in their work. Neither of them paying the slightest bit of attention to their surroundings.
They did this regularly? The idea terrified him. “Siobhan! Grae!” he called, not slacking his pace.
Both looked up, Grae having to shield his eyes to see who approached. Siobhan had her back toward the sun, so saw him and waved in greeting. “Wolf! Is there a problem?”
“You’re both fools, that’s the problem,” he snarled at her. Skidding to a stop, he loomed over her, torn between shaking sense into her and collapsing in relief that no trouble had found them yet.
Grae scrambled to his feet, then shifted from one foot to another in unease. Siobhan popped up as well, but she met Erik’s enraged expression head on, not in the least fazed by his temper. “What’s this about?”
He flung a finger toward the gate. “Do you really think that just because you’re within sight of the gate that you’re safe? That no trouble will find you here? That just because there’s two of you, you can handle things if thieves or brigands do approach? Siobhan, that’s madness!”
Origins: A Deepwoods Book - a Collection of Deepwoods Short Stories (Deepwoods Series 0) Page 6
