The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  After the last cut, Fynn straightened and took a step back. “Now, very gently pull the binding away from the wound.”

  When I looked at her, Fynn shook her head. “This requires no particular skill and he obviously trusts you. Just don’t yank it.”

  I nodded and sent the image of Wag lying still once more before I lifted the cloth away from the wound. The smell of blood and serous fluid washed over me, but not, thank Aer, the smell of corruption.

  Fynn leaned forward to peer at the leaves we used to cover the flesh of the wound, her bottle of water in hand. “What is that?”

  “We were in the woods,” I said. “We didn’t have any salve or ointment with us, but there were bation saplings there.”

  She looked at me in disbelief, then bent to wash the leaves away. “It’s clean.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen the like. The wound is as fresh as if it were made no more than an hour ago. Where did you learn this?”

  A tingle, like the warning of danger, danced on the back of my neck. “I just knew. It’s common knowledge, isn’t it?”

  Fynn arched her eyebrows, squinting at me, but for a moment the diffidence that covered her like a cloak was absent, replaced by earnest curiosity. “No, it’s not. I’ve used haelroot ground with common mint, burnwood bark boiled with lamb’s ear leaves, and even finely ground silver in fern paste for large wounds, but I’ve never heard of anyone using leaves from a bation sapling.”

  “I must have heard of it somewhere.” I shrugged, but a suspicion grew in my mind that all my internal conversations couldn’t dismiss. “I would imagine the medicines used depend on what’s available. Different plants grow in different areas.”

  Fynn didn’t look convinced—disagreement hardened her features. “I haven’t spent my entire life in Gylden.” She blinked. “I’ve studied every text I could find in Collum on healing. I don’t remember anyone using bation leaves for anything.”

  “My apologies if I gave offense,” I said without paying attention to my words. “I’m just a reeve.”

  She nodded. “Amazing,” she murmured to herself. “He has lost a lot of blood, and there’s a nick in one of his arteries, but I don’t think your pet is in any danger of dying from infection.”

  Wag gave a soft growl at that.

  “He’s more of a companion than a pet,” I said.

  Fynn gave no sign that she’d heard me as she continued. “I’m going to pour easeroot balm across the wound before I do anything more.” She washed the wound with a faintly yellow liquid that carried a soft scent of lemons. Even to my human nose it smelled soothing, and Wag blinked slowly, drowsing. Fynn pulled a needle and a spool of strange-looking thread from her bag and poured more of the balm over them. “Your friend there is about to get some very expensive stitches. These are made from cleansed animal intestine. They’ll bind the artery and the muscle long enough to heal before they dissolve.” She gave me a direct look. “Your thief hasn’t covered the price.”

  “We’ll pay it,” Bolt said.

  “How can you leave the stitches in without the wound fouling?” I asked.

  Fynn looked at me and shook her head. “You know about bation leaves and not this?” She looked away from me to finger one of the leaves. “Hold his head. Even with easeroot, he’ll probably feel this. Remember what I said. If he tries to bite me . . .” She didn’t bother to finish.

  “Fair enough,” I said and concentrated on putting an image of remaining still in Wag’s mind while the smells of the room intensified at the touch of my hand on his head.

  Half an hour of wax burned off the candles before she finished, but Wag never moved—though I could feel each stitch going into his side as if I’d been pierced myself. “Amazing,” she said as she tied off the last knot. “If you can keep him still I can seal the wound so that it heals faster.”

  When I nodded, she covered the wound with a thick brown paste that filled the air with an odor of concentrated pine. Wag jerked each time she put it on, the sting coming through the delve strong enough to pull small gasps from my lungs.

  “Interesting,” Fynn said. She gave her head a bemused shake. “I wouldn’t have thought I could use that on an animal. Most people can’t manage to sit still for it.”

  “It smells like pine tar,” I said.

  Fynn smiled, blinking. “It is, partly. Old medicine, but it still works.” She packed the implements of her craft back into her bag, pocketing some of the withered bation leaves as she did so. “My thanks,” she said.

  I pulled my purse to pay the rest of the promised fee, but Fynn stopped me with a gesture. “That’s not my price.” She glanced at Bolt before she shifted to bow in my direction. “Lord Dura.”

  Bolt muttered a few words under his breath that didn’t sound like soldierly wisdom. I heard my name a few times.

  Fynn smiled at our reaction as if we’d given her a gift. “I told you I’d read every book I could find in Collum. And I have recently returned from Bunard. The streets were abuzz with your exploits, Lord Dura.” She turned to Bolt. “And yours as well.” She cocked her head to one side. “I expected you to be bigger.”

  Bolt smiled with half his face. “Most people do.”

  “My price, Lord Dura, is quite simple,” Fynn said.

  On anyone else the sound that came out of Bolt’s mouth would have been a groan. From him it sounded more like a threat. “Simple,” he muttered, “rarely means the same thing as easy.”

  Fynn smiled. “When you return to Bunard, force my father to admit his paternity.”

  “How about if we just tie you up and leave you here?” Bolt said, but Fynn never looked his way.

  “You’re asking me for something I may not be able to deliver,” I said. “Why not take the money and go to a different city? Most people enjoy thinking about revenge more than actually getting it.”

  She laughed. “I’m not after revenge, Lord Dura. I’m after access.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  A bit of humor slid from her expression. “Who’s the greatest healer on the continent?”

  Bolt shifted on his feet. “She wants to go to Elania to study under Crato.” He shrugged. “He’s kind of eccentric.”

  Fynn nodded. “He won’t apprentice commons.”

  I understood, but I still had to say no. Orlan despised me, and I didn’t have time for diversions. Then I felt something warm against my hand. When I looked down, Wag had managed to turn his head enough to give me a few feeble licks.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll try. If I fail, I’ll send the rest of the money north to you.”

  “Someday,” Bolt said, “we’re going to have to have a serious conversation about these impulses of yours to help everyone. That’s a serious character flaw you have there.”

  I nodded. “It’s a good thing I have such steadfast friends to help me shoulder the burdens.”

  He looked at me in disgust before turning to Fynn. “We’re kind of pressed for time, girl, and now that we have a new commitment, I’d rather not wait for dawn. Can you get us out of the city?”

  She smiled. “Of course. Follow me.”

  Chapter 28

  A day out of Andred, Mark asked, “Aren’t you worried about King Rymark or Grace Hyldu changing their minds?”

  Pellin shook his head. “Not at the moment. The death of the sentinels has frightened the church and the rulers into allowing us our freedom.”

  Mark nodded, gave one last longing look toward the south before settling deeper into his saddle. “It won’t last.”

  Pellin nodded his agreement. At best, fear was a temporary motivation, but what made Mark think so? “Why do you say that?”

  “Living with the urchins, you get scared a lot—scared of not getting enough to eat, scared of not being able to stay warm when the wind comes out of the Cut during the winter, scared of getting caught thieving.” He shook his head. “When something really bad happens, it seems like the world is coming to an end, and it
might be, but when it doesn’t happen right away, the fear isn’t as strong.” Mark turned in his saddle to look behind them. “They might change their mind about locking you up to keep you safe.”

  “That was well reasoned,” Pellin said. “But for the moment, I no longer need to pit the ambitions of the rulers and the church against each other. Lady Bronwyn is patrolling the border of the forest, and Toria Deel is searching out the truth behind the Clast. Doubtless, they could use our help.” After several days spent recuperating in Andred, he felt more prepared for the task.

  “I hope not,” Mark said.

  Pellin smiled. “Agreed. Tell me, Mark, what did you think of our meeting with the powers of the north?”

  “You’re right—they are scared,” Mark said. “Terrified even—though they did a fair job of keeping it hidden.” A smirk crept up his left cheek. “It’s too bad we don’t have time to remain in Andred for a few weeks. With a bit of preparation I’d be able to use that fear to separate King Rymark and Grace Hyldu from a substantial portion of their treasury.”

  Pellin ignored that last remark, finding it easier to do since he’d delved the seemingly playful boy at his side. What drove the Mark in his larcenous endeavors was a rage at the suffering life brought. That passion filling the boy’s mind was so vast that Pellin had emerged from the delve with an entirely new perspective. He’d yet to share his findings with Bronwyn, but the potential within the boy and the failure of the Vigil to keep corruption at bay—losing first Laewan and then Jorgen—left Pellin musing.

  The selection criteria for apprentices to the Vigil had always centered around empathy, but most of those they’d chosen had experienced little in the way of personal hardship. Had the Vigil taken the wrong approach all these centuries?

  “What will they do?” Pellin asked when it appeared as though Mark took the prolonged silence as an invitation to doze once more.

  “For now, exactly as they have said,” Mark answered. Again, he failed to use the honorific of Eldest that everyone else applied to him. Pellin found it refreshing not to be reminded of his responsibility at the end of every sentence.

  “And later?” he prompted.

  “Whatever insanity pops into their heads,” Mark said. “You should let me show them how to run a con. That would teach them the importance of creating a detailed plan and sticking to it.” He shook his head. “I doubt most of the rulers could even attempt a decent bluff.”

  “They’re not criminals,” Pellin said.

  “No.” Mark shook his head more vigorously. “They most certainly are not. They are kings and queens and heads of religious orders reacting to each new circumstance just as expected.”

  Pellin stared at his young companion. “You’re suggesting someone is running a con on us?”

  Mark laughed. “We have a saying in the urchins—‘If it looks as though someone’s not conning you, you’re not paying attention.’”

  “That’s a very cynical view of life, boy.”

  Mark only laughed harder. “Just because I’m cynical doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

  “There is good in the world also,” Pellin said, “and not everyone is trying to get something from someone else.”

  Mark sobered enough to nod in agreement. “The urchins don’t get much of a chance to meet those types, but I’ve met some.” His gaze became direct. “A few. But I don’t think the people who are planting gold in the streams of the Darkwater have your best interests at heart.”

  “So why call it a con?”

  Mark nodded. “A con, at its heart, is quite simple—it’s getting something from someone by trickery that they would never give you on their own. Most of the urchins I trained always started out making it more complicated than it needs to be. The basis of a good con is to know your target well enough so that when you get the plan started, he or she will react exactly how you expect.”

  Pellin felt a weight settle into his stomach. “That’s what happened at Bas-solas. If we’d lost, then the enemy would have proceeded in one way, but when we won and killed Laewan, the enemy already had plans for that in place.”

  He pulled morning air that still held a hint of mist into his lungs. “Aer help me,” he prayed. “We have to do something unexpected.”

  Mark smiled. “You’re not really used to doing that sort of thing, are you, Eldest?”

  Pellin shook his head ruefully. How, in the name of all that was holy, had he ended up needing counsel from a boy thief? “No.”

  They rode in silence for a few moments before Pellin braved the question on his heart. “Mark, let’s put aside the rulers and heads of the orders for now. What can you tell me of our enemy?”

  Mark’s face grew solemn as they rode, and when that silence stretched beyond a few moments into over a quarter of an hour, Pellin became convinced his apprentice had forgotten about the question.

  Then, out of his peripheral vision, he saw Mark shake his head.

  “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. His servants can’t abide light, he needs a supply of people to come to the Darkwater to create them, and he doesn’t want to just destroy your power, Eldest, he wants to use it.”

  A dangerous idea began to form in Pellin’s head. It frightened him, because it would put him at risk, and it was so unlike what he would normally do that no one—not even Bronwyn or his own brothers—would ever suspect such a possibility, but it would take planning. And supplies. Lots of supplies. Aer have mercy, where and when had he learned to contemplate such risks?

  Something unexpected indeed.

  He looked up to the heavens. “Where are we, Allta?”

  His guard peered at the landscape around them. A series of rolling hills stretched away to the north and the east, while plains stretched to the west and south. “We’re heading north, but we’re still some distance from the Havilah River. If we continue in this direction, we should hit it in two more days, if we ride hard.”

  Pellin inhaled, committing his will and courage to an idea even Lord Dura would call foolish. Something unexpected. “I want to avoid the river and the traffic on it,” he said. “More, I want to avoid the armies of King Rymark and the gold hunters that will be panning the Havilah and its streams. Let us turn east instead.”

  Allta must have sensed something in his manner, some hint of recklessness that showed in his expression or tone of voice. “Eldest?”

  “We’ll make for the Sundered Hills,” Pellin announced. “It’s the closest portal to the Darkwater Forest. Perhaps we can pick up Bronwyn’s trail.” Something unexpected.

  Chapter 29

  Toria Deel rode east with Lelwin and Elory at her sides. Somewhere in the next day or two, they would leave Owmead behind and enter the low rolling plains of Caisel. For weeks they’d followed rumors of the Clast, riding from village to village, stopping to delve every crier or agitator they could find. She sniffed at the memory. Their minds had been as empty as their rhetoric, nothing more than collections of mostly imagined injustices fueling resentment at any whose lot in life seemed a little better than their own.

  Once, she encountered a memory of the leader, but her initial exhilaration at the discovery had faded. The memory consisted of nothing more than a brief glimpse, masked and hooded, standing next to a full-throated speaker who demanded unquestioning obedience.

  “What happened here?”

  Lelwin’s voice broke her reverie, and Toria looked up to see they’d crested a line of hills overlooking a broad valley, burnt and blasted. “This is the boundary between Owmead and Caisel. It has a lot of names: Valley of Blood, Vale of Salt, Widow’s Dell. There are other, less proper titles, epithets that widows and orphans cry in their grief when husbands and fathers don’t come home.”

  They rode down the slope past earthworks, defenses that time and weather had managed to diminish somewhat. “Sowed as it is with blood and curses, it’s a wonder anything grows here, but even with all that, the land yields its fruit in season.”

  To
each side of the road, farmers worked to wrestle another year’s worth of produce from the land, at peace with their counterparts who mirrored their labors across the boundary—a river at the bottom of the valley that flowed south, meandering until it emptied into the southern sea.

  “Aer willing, the drought won’t come again in our lifetime.” She breathed it like a prayer, hadn’t realized she’d spoken until Lelwin looked up from the book Toria had given her.

  “The drought always comes,” Lelwin said with the feeling and finality of an executioner, and then returned to her reading. With several weeks of decent food, her narrow face had filled out enough to reveal a heart-shaped contour and her collarbones no longer held such prominence against her clothing. Though she would never be considered a great beauty by court standards, more than one man would find the intensity of Lelwin’s gaze beneath her dark eyebrows compelling enough to want to discover what thoughts lay within her mind.

  Elory lifted an eyebrow at the girl’s pronouncement but, other than that, made no comment. The youngest of the Vigil guards, he had yet to temper the stoicism that Etgar, her previous guard, had taken pains to instill in him. She’d been grateful for that stoicism after Peret had revealed himself, but in the days since, she’d had cause to wonder if Elory had desired to give her some warning about her burgeoning affection for Peret Volsk.

  “I wouldn’t have listened,” she admitted out loud, surprising herself with the noise. She started and turned her thoughts inward, checking the doors within her mind that led to the memories of others. They were all secure, the model of the Merum library in her head as peaceful and calm as she could wish. There was no need to worry yet. It took hundreds of years for the accumulated memories to break down the personality of those who held the gift. Carefully, she unlocked one of the doors and stepped into the memories of Lona, queen of Aille, dead for over ninety years.

  “You still love me,” she asked in surprise to the man, “even after time has ravaged and wrecked my appearance?”