Yerrin: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 6)

by Garrett Robinson

  Wyle eyed her. “How much do you know about the family Yerrin, exactly?”

  Annis’ cheeks darkened for a moment. “Quite enough.”

  “Oh?” said Wyle. “I wonder. I wonder if you know what they do to anyone who attempts to interfere with their trade. No, not even interfere, but just to skim a small bit on the side. I have had friends who attracted their attention—have had, I say, for none of them still live. And they were not quick in dying. The Yerrins saw to that. No, I do not imagine you know very much about the Yerrins at all, or you would not pursue them in the first place.”

  Annis smiled, though the expression was devoid of humor and held only a clear threat. Loren shuddered at how closely she resembled Damaris in that moment.

  “You guess wrong. I myself am of the family Yerrin. You have the honor of addressing Annis, daughter of Damaris.”

  Wyle’s mouth opened at once, as if to reply by reflex. But once he heard Annis’ words, his voice died in his throat. His skin went several shades paler. At last he choked out, “I … I had not heard that you still traveled with the Nightblade.”

  “Yet you can see that I do,” said Annis. “And I would ever so much appreciate your help. But of course, if you will not give it, I shall be forced to send a letter to my darling mother.”

  “You …” Wyle swallowed hard. “I know you would not. They say you have sundered yourself from her. There are precious few rumors about you, but they all agree on that.”

  “If so, they speak the truth,” said Annis. “And certainly we are on no friendly terms. Yet whatever opinion she holds of me, my mother—and in fact, all my kin—would be most interested to learn the name of a man dealing in magestones, and just where in Bertram he might be found.”

  Wyle stared at her for a long, silent moment. Then his gaze rose to Loren, and he flashed her a wide smile.

  “The Nightblade of the High King,” he said, giving her a deep bow. “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance. It will, of course, be my pleasure to serve you.”

  WYLE HAD A BROAD, SOLID table of oak, and across it he unfurled a map, holding down the corners with large tomes bound in leather. When that was done, he had Annis lay out their journey in Dorsea thus far. They started with riding south out of Feldemar and crossing the Sunmane Pass, and then the mad crisscross through Dorsea’s western towns, finally ending in Sidwan where they had lost Damaris’ trail. Gem soon grew bored by the conversation and went to sit in Wyle’s great armchair, where he promptly fell asleep. When they had finished telling the tale, Wyle pursed his lips and pulled at the thin scrub of beard on his chin.

  “That is quite the journey, and I hear little information that may help,” said Wyle. “She could have thrown you from her trail long ago, and you never realized it until Sidwan.”

  “We thought of that,” said Annis. “But to a man so clever as yourself, surely such a setback would be merely a distraction.”

  Wyle arched an eyebrow. “You wound me, my dear, though doubtless you do not intend to. There are some kingdoms where the word ‘clever’ carries a more sinister connotation, and Dorsea is one such.”

  Annis’ eyes went wide, and she tilted her head to the side like a bird. “Is it? I had not the slightest idea. You must forgive me.”

  The smuggler hid a smile. “I shudder to think how sharp your wits will be in adulthood.”

  “I will choose to take that as a compliment,” said Annis, giving a perfect curtsey.

  “I think you are right that Damaris would stay well away from Danfon and the other major cities,” said Wyle, looking back at the map. “It would simply be too great a risk. But then again, an unexpected course is often the best way to accomplish something nefarious. And it is well known that Damaris is both crafty and devious—meaning no offense to her daughter, of course. Very well. I will send word at once to my friends in the city, and we shall see what may be seen. But there is nothing else we can do tonight. After I send my letters I will retire, and I suggest that you do the same. We must all hope that the morning will bring news.”

  “Well enough,” said Loren. “In that case, there is only one matter more we must discuss with you.” She looked at Annis and tapped her cloak where an inner pocket held her magestones.

  “Ah, yes,” said Annis. “We did not entirely lie to you when we came here. We do carry a certain valuable cargo, and we do mean to sell it—or at least a portion of it.”

  Wyle drew up, looking back and forth between them. “Truly? Agents of the King’s law, dealing in magestones? Wonders never cease.”

  “I think these are days when all of us will see many things we have never seen before,” said Loren. “What price would you give us for them?”

  For a moment Wyle did not answer, only pulling at his beard again and staring at the table in thought. “Let us see … I could give you mayhap fifty weights per stone.”

  Loren’s knees went weak. With fifty weights she could make a pauper’s journey from one end of Underrealm to the other, and with a hundred she could do the same thing but eat like a king the whole while. She had heard often that magestones were very valuable, but she had never known just how much so. She thought back to when she had found Damaris’ caravan in Selvan, its wagons containing secret compartments holding hundreds of magestones each. She did not have a great enough command of numbers to calculate how much coin that cargo would bring, but she guessed it was enough to buy half a kingdom.

  And then she almost fell over as Annis immediately replied, “Eighty weights.”

  Wyle frowned. “Are you mad? On my best day I cannot sell them for eighty-five, and five weights of profit is nowhere near enough for the risk I take.”

  Annis rolled her eyes. “You can sell them for nearly double eighty-five, you brigand. We will sell them to you for eighty if you will buy at least ten of them.”

  The smuggler’s frown deepened. “Seventy-five—but I will buy fifteen.”

  “Seventy-six.”

  Wyle threw his hands up in the air. “You are a merchant’s daughter,” he cried. “You should conduct yourself with dignity. It is unbecoming to haggle for scraps.”

  Annis spread her hands with a disarming smile. “I must preserve at least some of my dignity as my mother’s daughter.”

  Wyle rolled his eyes just as she had—but Loren thought she saw him hiding a smile as well. “Very well. Seventy-six, you beggar. I shall collect the coins tonight and have them ready for you in the morning.”

  Loren did not think her tongue would work. Visions of piles and piles of gold weights danced in her mind. But she forced herself to be calm again, and she gave Wyle a little half-bow. “Though at first our meeting was fraught with tension, I am glad to have made your acquaintance regardless. We shall see you upon the morrow.”

  Wyle returned her bow with a deeper one. “And you, Nightblade. If I am still uneasy about our association, I grant at least that it will be an interesting one. I beg only that you do not make it interesting in the same way that Xain did—leaving me alone and forlorn upon a riverbank without a copper in my pocket.”

  Loren raised an eyebrow. “It seems that you and I have had at least some similar experiences with Xain, then.”

  “Oh?” Wyle looked surprised. “You should have told me from the beginning that you and the wizard were not friends. It might have changed my opinion of you.”

  “Our road together was long,” said Loren. “Things changed.”

  Wyle sniffed. “Very well. I hope to hear the tale some time. But that will have to wait for another day.”

  Annis gave him an even deeper bow than he had given Loren. They roused Gem and left. Shiun waited outside the apartment’s back door, and she pushed herself from the wall with a raised brow.

  “Since I have not had to chase him down again, may I assume that negotiations went well?”

  “Well and better,” said Loren. “He will begin gathering information at once, and we will return in the morning. I think we can trust him to do as we have b
id him, but just in case …”

  Shiun nodded at once. “I will remain here to watch the building and make sure.”

  “Thank you,” said Loren. “I shall send Uzo to replace you after the moons have begun to lower in the sky. We are all of us weary.”

  They fetched Uzo from the front of the building and made their way back towards their inn. Gem was nearly asleep as he walked, and Uzo had to keep a hand on the boy’s shoulder to prop him up. Loren took advantage of the Mystics’ distraction to step aside with Annis.

  “How did you do that magic with Wyle?” she murmured.

  “Hm?” said Annis, raising her eyebrows. “I did no magic.”

  “You sold him the magestones for thousands of gold weights!” said Loren. “When we first met, you did not even know what the stones were, much less their price.”

  “Oh, that,” said Annis. She dropped her gaze and smiled, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “It is simple, really. It would have been better if I had known their value to start with, for I likely could have fetched a better price. But I had to let him make his proposal first. I knew he would bid far, far less than they were worth. Once he gave his first offer, I picked what seemed a good amount higher and worked from there. And not that it matters much, but he is not giving us thousands of gold weights—not much over one thousand, in fact.”

  Loren scoffed. “You speak as though that is not simply unimaginable wealth to almost all in Underrealm. Sometimes I forget you are a merchant’s daughter in truth.”

  Annis’ smile widened but for only a moment. “We shall have to find some way to store them safely, of course. He will likely give us the coin in lockboxes, and we can spread them between all our saddlebags. At some point we should find a banker.”

  Loren hesitated a moment. Annis noticed it and looked at her curiously. Loren’s mouth worked for a moment before she spoke, more quietly and slowly than before.

  “Let us not spread the coins among all our saddlebags,” she said. “Just yours, Gem’s, and mine. It would be better if Chet did not know about it at all.”

  There was a long silence between them as Annis looked away uncomfortably. “This is about your dream, is it not?” she said at last. “I could understand Chet wanting to leave, after … after what happened. But do you really think he would rob us into the bargain?”

  “I do not,” said Loren. “But remember that Chet knows nothing about the magestones. How would we explain where the coin came from in the first place?”

  “Ah,” said Annis, nodding quickly. “Of course. That is very wise. I should have thought—”

  But her words died as the night’s silence shattered. Deafening as thunder, the city’s bells began to toll.

  The sound made them freeze in their tracks, and Loren’s hand went to her dagger. In all their journeys, they had heard many bells tolling in alarm, and her first thought was that somehow she had been discovered. But she realized that was a ridiculous thought.

  A second thought flashed through her mind to replace the first: Damaris.

  “Something is happening,” she said.

  Gem had been startled to full wakefulness, and now he cringed every time the bells tolled anew. “Is the city under attack?”

  Loren turned to Uzo. “Go to Shiun at once. Make sure that Wyle does not try to escape in the confusion. If you must, escort him to join the rest of us at the inn.”

  Uzo nodded and ran off while Loren turned to Annis and Gem.

  “Whatever this is, I do not like it. We must reach Chet at once.”

  They set off at a sprint, only slightly hampered by Annis with her shorter legs and longer skirts. Soon they found the inn and ran inside. Loren had planned to dash upstairs and find Chet. But she skidded to a halt on the threshold as she saw him there in the common room.

  “Chet!” she said. “Are you safe? We heard the bells—”

  “As did I,” he said, “and I came down to see what the fuss was all about. Then a crier come to the square outside. He … he told us the reason for the bells.”

  His words died, and one hand rose to scrub at his face. His skin had gone ashen, and his fingers were shaking.

  “Chet?” She almost lifted a hand to reach for him, but she pulled it back at the last second. “What is wrong?”

  “King Jun, the king of Dorsea,” said Chet. “He has been murdered. The crier said he was assassinated by the High King. Dorsea has joined the war on the side of the rebels.”

  They stood there in silence for a moment, staring at him. Then Loren shook herself out of her thoughts. The common room buzzed, and no one seemed to pay them any attention. But that might change. She had to get them out of sight.

  “Upstairs,” she said. “Let us speak no further word until we are safe in our room.”

  Annis began pacing the room’s length even before Gem closed the door behind them. “This cannot be,” she said. “It cannot be. Dorsea pledged its support to the High King. Jun was one of only three kings to do so at once. Enalyn would never kill him when she so desperately needs the support of the other kingdoms.”

  “It is a ruse, then,” said Loren. “It must be some work of the Necromancer. Only they stand to benefit from the tumult this will cause.”

  “And my mother must be behind it,” said Annis.

  Loren frowned. “Damaris? What makes you think so?”

  Annis shook her head, looking miserable. “It is just as Wyle said. She has done the unexpected. We thought she would stay away from the capital, just as she wanted us to think. She went there and put this plan in motion, knowing we would be unlikely to follow her and discover her plot before she could carry it out. We thought she would avoid Dorsea’s king, but all along she meant to kill him.”

  “But assassinating a king ….” said Loren. “That is no small feat. And she has only been in Dorsea a scant few weeks.”

  “Oh, she must have set events in motion long before,” said Annis. “I should have foreseen this. We wondered if she still served the Necromancer, and now we know. Seizing power in Dorsea was a part of the grander scheme. Now this kingdom is a strong foothold. Indeed, Dorsea’s betrayal is far worse than Dulmun’s. Dulmun’s strength of arms may be greater, but it lies far to the northeast. Dorsea is in the center of Underrealm, and it borders more kingdoms than any other. There is some small comfort: this threat would have been even greater if Damaris had managed to capture and hold Yewamba. From that stronghold, she could have staged assaults into both Feldemar and Calentin with relative ease.”

  “At least we thwarted her there,” said Gem. “And we will stop her here as well.”

  “It will not be so easy,” said Annis, shaking her head. “Yewamba was a mighty stronghold, but Damaris was isolated. Now she is in Danfon itself. She will have the full support of whoever has taken the throne after Jun’s death. Yet I do not know how they think to thwart the will of the senate.”

  “You mentioned that before,” said Loren. “What is the senate?”

  “A body of twelve representatives, two each from the six states of Dorsea,” said Annis. “They govern most domestic matters within the kingdom, while the king has ultimate authority when it comes to war. But even in that, the senate may gainsay him if enough of them unite in common purpose.”

  Gem sniffed. “That sounds hideously inefficient.”

  “It is meant to be,” said Annis. “A precaution so that no mad tyrant can lead the kingdom to ruin through warmongering.”

  “Yet Dorsea is the most warlike of all the kingdoms,” said Loren.

  Annis raised her brows. “Spoken like a true daughter of Selvan. They are often embroiled in battles, yes, but they content themselves with small border skirmishes. The senate is supposed to keep the king from doing anything too consequential.”

  Loren bit back her first angry answer and took a deep breath before answering in a calm voice. “The people of Wellmont would say that Dorsea’s actions have been consequential enough.”

  Annis spread her hand
s. “No kingdom is perfect. Some are merely less terrible than others.”

  Gem looked back and forth between them with an uncomfortable expression. “Mayhap we should put aside philosophy for a moment and consider our next action. It seems clear we must stop Damaris, as well as the new Dorsean king.”

  Loren heaved a sigh. Gem was right. Her dislike of Dorsea mattered little in the face of their current predicament. “Who would that be? Who would turn this kingdom against the High King?”

  “I do not know,” said Annis. “Jun is of the family Fei, and it will be someone else in that house who takes his place. But I do not know the royal families of all the nine kingdoms very well. I know only that Jun has no siblings, and so it will be one of his cousins, or mayhap an uncle or aunt.”

  “So we mean to pit ourselves against a king, then?” said Chet quietly.

  Loren looked at him. He sat on one of the beds, leaning against the wall beside it. His knees were up, his arms draped over them. He was not looking at any of them, but only picking at his nails.

  “Only so far as we must,” said Loren gently. “It seems clear we shall find Damaris in the capital, and she is our true aim.”

  We hunt Damaris, she thought, wishing he could hear the words. You said you wanted to see it through, to catch her. Stay with me at least that long, before you tell me you mean to leave.

  He glanced up, meeting her gaze. His face filled with the sad smile she had seen too often lately. “Very well. It appears we ride for Danfon.”

  Loren nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she turned to the others. “But not at once. We aimed to get a good night’s rest, and I still mean to. Gem, go to Wyle’s hideout. Tell Uzo and Shiun to split the watch between themselves, and that we ride from the city tomorrow. Then return here as quickly as you can, and get to sleep. We should try to be up before the sun.”

  Gem gave a quick nod and flew from the room. Chet readied himself for bed and fell asleep almost at once. Loren prepared to do the same, but Annis stopped her for a moment.