The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  “Aponte?” The scar on Bren’s face flickered like a squirming fish. “You even thought to preserve that conniving bastard’s interests? He owed you much more than a load of ingredients for your ten years of slave work. The bastard turned you over to the magistrate!”

  “So you don’t think I did wrong?”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  “The type who consorts with thieves and arsonists?”

  He actually smiled, a feeble grin on his pale face. “You did what you had to do. You did it for the right reasons. Too much is at stake. But I worry about you. Won’t he be able to trace his ingredients to Teos?”

  “Possible but difficult,” she said. “First, the warehouse will burn very hot. Ingredients and such will turn to dust. Wooden casks and barrels will burn to cinder. It will be very hard to determine that the merchandise was missing at the time of the fire and difficult to prove.”

  She lifted another finger. “Second, we’ve started the process of wiping Aponte’s trade seals from the casks and barrels and substituting them with Laonia’s trading mark, one I hope you’ll be able to provide. We’ll need help with the task, but I think we’ll be able to finish in time. Third, and perhaps most important, I imagine that if it became necessary, a highborn like Laonia’s lord might be able to furnish a few witnesses who’ll account for the distant journey to acquire such stores.”

  “You’re incredible,” he said. “How did you manage this whole, complicated, dangerous feat?”

  She told him.

  “You did what?” He gawked when she told her about her most recent conversation with the captain. “A pirate? That wretch could have slit your throat with his thumbnail!”

  “You underestimate my resolve.”

  “I’m terrified of your resolve,” he said. “It’s going to kill you. Soon.”

  He stared at her.

  Lusielle couldn’t fathom what he was thinking, so she held the cup to his lips and fed him some tea.

  “There’s something I need to understand,” he said in between sips. “I don’t want to seem … ungrateful. It’s just that … you ought to hate me, Lusielle. You ought to be afraid of me.”

  She set down the cup. “I’m not daft, but I can’t lie either. I don’t hate you and I’m not afraid of you.”

  “It’s hard to believe. What you’ve done. Nobody else has ever done anything like this for me—for Laonia. I find it very hard to understand and even harder to justify.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “It wasn’t nearly the same thing.”

  “How?”

  “The risks you took—are taking, they are monumental.”

  “So were the ones you took. You almost got killed this last time.”

  “Is that why you did all this? Because you felt guilty about me getting wounded?”

  She shrugged. “It was part of it, I suppose.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I guess I—I feel like I have to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re in trouble. Because Laonia needs you. Because Riva’s injustices will take over the land if Laonia falls.”

  He just stared at her. There was something new in his eyes, a curious, expectant, almost hopeful plea to his gaze. “Is that all?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “What do you want me to tell you? That I seldom get to meet people whose sense of duty is greater than their sense for self-preservation? That I’m glad I lived to meet a man who isn’t willing to bow down to Riva and his goons?” That I think your half-smile is cute even though you are too stingy with it? She didn’t say that aloud, and yet he looked at her as if she had.

  She sighed. “Maybe I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else at the moment. Or maybe it’s because I’m a coward, afraid of leaving my old life behind and taking the next step. Maybe I’m just spiteful and I did all of this to take revenge on the man who wronged me.”

  “You could’ve set fire to all of Aponte’s warehouses.”

  “I could have, which is why maybe I’m being true to myself and I want to help you because you’re a good man and these days, good men are rare.”

  The grief was back in his eyes. “I’ve told you before, I am not a good man, especially not when it comes to you.”

  “Let me amend that: You’d be a very good man if you didn’t have to kill me.”

  There it was. She had said it. She had given him the opportunity to say that no, he wouldn’t kill her.

  He raked his dark hair with his fingers. “You don’t understand.”

  “I’m certainly trying,” she said. “Of course, you could explain.”

  Nary a word made it through his tightly pressed lips.

  “Can you tell me what this is about?” She reached out for his hand.

  He shrank from her touch as though she were a river viper.

  “Why did the Pious say you’re wicked?” she asked. “Why was he so interested in my mark? Why were the magistrate and Orell so intent on it? Why do you hunt a mark like mine?”

  “Lusielle … I can’t—”

  “I know. Oaths, honor, consequences and lives.”

  “It’s worse than you think.”

  “Then perhaps you can answer this question: Why did Nelia want to kill you?”

  His pallor turned gray. He didn’t answer.

  “If this was revenge as she said, how did she find you?”

  “Easy,” he said. “She just had to linger about one of Orell’s camps to keep track of his destination and she knew she’d find me.”

  “She got there before Orell.”

  “But just barely. She probably left as soon as she found out where they were going. She traveled alone, whereas Orell incurred delays gathering his party and searching the bog.”

  “But why did Orell kill her?”

  “He killed her to frame me, to justify him killing me on sight.”

  “She must have befriended me on purpose when she saw me with you,” Lusielle said. “The eye, the mule, it was all a ruse to get to you. But why did she want you dead?”

  Exhaustion crumpled his face. “I wish you wouldn’t ask so many questions.”

  “Then I’ll just ask one more question.” Lusielle braced to face her fears. “Did you kill Nelia’s sister?”

  He gagged. He scrambled weakly to the edge of the berth then held there, panting like a woman in labor. The anguish she spotted in his stare was more than any soul could endure.

  “Bren,” she said. “Did you kill a woman called Godivina?”

  “I did,” he said, before vomiting at her feet.

  * * *

  Lusielle had just finished cleaning up the mess when Carfu came to the door.

  “It’s time,” he announced.

  “I’m coming.” Lusielle dumped the cleaning rags in the bucket.

  “What happened here?” Carfu took in the wet floor and the dirty rags. “I thought he was getting better.”

  “Sickness flows from anguish well,” Lusielle said. “Some ailments can’t be so easily cured.”

  She carried the dirty linens and the bucket outside. To say that Bren had experienced a relapse was an understatement. He had vomited with such force that he had burst some of his almost-healed stitches in the process. He had had very little food in his stomach, expelling back whatever liquid she had managed to put into him, mixed with loads of yellow bile. He had ended up losing consciousness in a convulsive fit that had frightened Lusielle to the core.

  It had taken a lot of care and patience to settle him after that, because even senseless, he was hurting himself in his restlessness. Lusielle had brewed him a calming potion with an extra helping of shredded cargo root to calm his stomach and his nerves. As she disposed of the bucket contents and readied herself for the next part of her complicated plan, she knew one thing for sure—innocent men didn’t suffer anguish like his.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  THERE.�
� CARFU’S SHORT FINGER POINTED TO a dark shape among the riverbank’s tall weeds.

  Lusielle’s eyes narrowed on the spot, ignoring the jagged outline of the Tolonian mountains in the distance, and the unnatural silence ruling this stretch of river.

  “Closer, please,” she said.

  The captain steered the barge until it edged the Nerpes’s east bank. Lusielle had to smile when Elfu’s short figure emerged from behind the grass, wearing a little satchel and holding a large club, looking nearly identical to his brother Carfu. Standing next to him, tripling the little man’s height, she saw the man called Hato.

  “I take it we’ll be taking on a passenger,” the captain said without enthusiasm.

  “Passengers,” Lusielle corrected him. “Twenty-two more in all. With horses.”

  “Do you think I’m a cattle barge?” the captain said. “A manure transport? We’re fully loaded as it is, and you didn’t pledge payment per person.”

  “You’re right; I promised payment by the load. When the journey is over, I’ll pay you the balance fairly.”

  “Right.”

  Elfu was the first on board. He bowed to Lusielle and greeted his brother. “There’s good in darkness.”

  “There’s truth in lies,” Carfu answered.

  A hesitant Hato limped onto the barge. “The little man said that the Lord Brennus was with you. It’s the only reason we came.”

  “He’s right,” Lusielle said. “Your lord is with me, on this barge.”

  “We want to see him, before we board as the little man suggests.”

  “Your lord is safe. He’s sleeping in the cabin. You can see him at your leisure, but please don’t delay our journey. We’re on our way to Teos.”

  Hato’s stoic face couldn’t conceal his surprise, but he made up his mind quickly and signaled for the other men to board. The captain was less than pleased, knowing himself trapped in service by the presence of these violent-looking, well-armed, highborn warriors. Hato eyed the man with a suspicious glare.

  “Tell your men to be alert,” Lusielle said. “Our captain is a well-known pirate. I’m hoping your presence here will give him pause. It’s why I asked you to come.”

  The boarding went quickly. The large Laonian horses were walked over planks onto the barge. Lusielle was happy to see the Twenty carried oats and hay to feed their animals. One less thing to worry about.

  “Where’s my lord?” Hato said when all the men were aboard.

  “This way.” Lusielle led him to the small cabin. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the two of them hardly fit in the tiny room.

  Hato looked down on his lord. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He was badly wounded, but he’s been on the mend for the past few days. I think I can make him well, provided he allows himself the time to heal and the rest of you don’t tax him beyond his strength. The guilt wants to kill him too. That, he chooses to fight by himself.”

  This time, Hato’s highbrow stare swooped down on her. Either he couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying or he was unwilling to believe anything she said. Either way, she didn’t think he liked her much.

  “What do you know of his guilt?” he asked.

  “It’s sort of evident, don’t you think?”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Lusielle glimpsed a chance and seized it. “Everything.”

  Hato’s brow was up again. “I don’t believe you.”

  “‘Cause you don’t think he’d trust me?”

  “‘Cause I don’t think he’d betray Laonia.”

  The gods forgive her, but if she was ever going to discover the mysteries surrounding Laonia’s lord, this might be her only chance. She wracked her brain for bits of information she had. It wasn’t easy. She had gotten a strong sense for Bren during their time together, but she knew very little that was helpful or concrete. She would have to improvise.

  “I know about Godivina,” she said.

  Hato paled.

  “I know about Ali the Craftsman too, and about the riddle.”

  “Did he tell you about his brothers?”

  “They’re dead.”

  Hato plopped down on a stool, visibly upset.

  “Did he … ?” Hato paused. “Did he tell you about the blight … ?”

  “Hato?” Bren’s eyes fluttered open. “Is that you?”

  A wide smile split Hato’s long face. “My lord, it’s good to see you.”

  “The others?” Bren asked.

  “All here,” Hato said. “We’ve fared better than expected and it appears you’ve managed to survive without us.”

  “If I’m alive, it’s only because of Lusielle here.”

  “She tells me she’s learned some interesting things about you.”

  “Did she now?” Bren’s black gaze fell upon Lusielle. “She’s a curious one. Isn’t she?”

  “Might she be one to take advantage of an old man, my lord?”

  “She’s a woman, a crafty one at that. Aye, I think she’d try.”

  The lord’s body might be convalescing, but his mind was neither idle nor slow. The two men stared at her as if she were a wicked thing. She turned to the shelves and got busy pouring a cup of her most effective healing tonic.

  “It’s time for you to take your medicine,” she said. “If you’re good, and you drink it all, I’ll disappear for a while. I’m sure you two want to catch up.”

  “Indeed,” Hato said, leaving no doubts that he wanted her gone.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  THE SIGHT BEFORE HATO WAS AS unlikely as it was miraculous. It seemed impossible that after all those weeks he had found his lord, alive no less. As he waited for the woman to finish her ministrations, he recalled the strange sequence of events leading up to this moment.

  In all truth, he had not been expecting any visitors to the barn that evening, let alone the strange little man who had insisted on sticking to Severo. He was by far one of the strangest creatures Hato had ever met. No taller than an overbred mastiff and similarly dangerous looking, the odd little man approached him without fear.

  “There’s good in darkness,” he said. “There’s truth in lies. I’m Elfu. She says you must come.”

  “Who says?” Hato asked.

  “The mistress says to follow me. If you want your lord to live, you and your men must come now.”

  “How do I know you’re speaking the truth?”

  “You don’t,” Elfu said as he started down the road.

  Hato had been conflicted about ordering his men to follow the strange little man. In the end, he stalked the messenger on foot while the Twenty saddled their horses and broke camp, limping after Elfu despite his swollen knee.

  “Wait!” Hato tried to keep up. “I’m an old man.”

  “So what?” Elfu said. “I’m an old man too.”

  “Who’s your mistress?”

  “She who brews life from remedies,” the little man said. “She who he wants to murder.”

  “Lusielle still lives?”

  “She’s not so easy to kill.”

  “Slow down.” Hato wheezed. “Why should I follow you?”

  “She said you’d be stubborn.” Elfu dug a hunting knife out of his belt. “Here.”

  It was Bren’s hunting knife. Hato was sure. “How did you get this?”

  “She gave it to me.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to me before now?”

  Elfu looked him straight in the eye. “‘Cause I don’t like you.”

  United by duty and mutual distrust, Hato and Elfu led the Twenty out of the kingdom, on a ferry across the Nerpes and back into Tolone’s southern wilderness, where they had somehow made the unexpected rendezvous that had reunited Hato with his lord.

  Hato watched as the woman finished making her preparations and feeding the potion to his lord. She seemed competent, firm but caring, learned but also devoid of pretense. There was no question his lord had suffered a deadly wound. He had lost weight during this last
ordeal and was very pale.

  But something had changed about him. Perhaps just rest had done the trick. Perhaps those remedies the woman wielded so expertly had something to do with it. Hato couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but his lord looked more relaxed, less aggrieved, as if he had finally come to terms with his fate and made peace with his duty.

  “What news?” Bren asked as soon as the woman left the cabin.

  “Several things, my lord.” Hato summarized the events of the last few weeks, his search throughout the kingdom, his latest reports, his brief interview with the lords of Barahone and Konia, and a little about his encounter with King Riva.

  “You’ve got balls, old man, showing up like that at Riva’s doorstep,” Bren said. “I don’t know that I like it. You gambled your life at a banquet.”

  “It had to be done.”

  “It could’ve been a trap, you know, a plan from Riva to bring you in.”

  It had been a trap. His lord was keen to sense it, although Hato hadn’t told him about Riva’s proposal.

  “You said that more than half of Riva’s army is missing at the Narrows?”

  “Gone without leaving behind the slightest speckle of dust. We’ve been trying to track them, but so far, no success.”

  “And then there’s the matter of the ferry ships,” Bren said. “I want you to send urgent orders to reinforce all the borders and call out the full reserve.”

  “But my lord, it’s the harvest season—”

  “I know Hato, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

  “You don’t think Riva will find easy landing on Konia’s shores, do you?”

  “Konia’s rocky shores are hardly conducive to extensive landings and Lord Arnulf isn’t likely to extend Riva a gracious welcome.”

  “Can you be sure that Arnulf is loyal to our side?”

  “He was the one who told you about the ferries,” Bren said. “He has been a steadfast friend to Laonia over the years. But you’re right, we can’t take anything for granted and with his son dead, Arnulf could change his mind. I must answer his summons and make sure that our alliance stands, especially if Riva’s troops managed to cross the Nerpes. We need to make sure Konia remains on our side.”