A Marriage of Friends

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “I see something,” she puffed the words out as she looked at Kestrel’s wooden crates.

  He remembered Lucretia, his wonderful knife, able to do the work to defend him as he sat unable to defend himself. His hand reached to his hip, pulled the knife free, and weakly flung it at the girl.

  The knife was true to its mission, its enchanted powers undiminished by Kestrel’s’ weakness, and it flew directly at the girl, striking her in her unprotected chest.

  Kestrel saw the eyes widen in her young face, and he felt a moment of regret, a question of whether he should have attacked someone so young.

  “Help me,” the girl croaked harshly.

  She fell to her knees, one hand out stretched to her left, and a sudden, weak red beam of energy appeared from down the street. It touched her fingertips, and raised her back to her feet. She turned, and woodenly walked away, from beyond Kestrel’s sight as she left the mouth of the alley.

  “Lucretia,” he called softly, and the knife came flying back to his hand. He grasped it, and let his hand rest in his lap, as he closed his eyes and passed out.

  Chapter 23

  Kestrel awoke before dawn. He heard distant sounds, coming from the parts of the alley further from the battle scene around Listay’s fort; no sounds came from the direction of the fort itself.

  His head was throbbing, his stomach was tense, and his muscles ached from the stressful contest. He rose, his hand hanging onto the crates, and stumbled out into the street. The air still stank faintly of fire, and there were two dead warriors lying untended in the street, arrows in their backs. They were Fields’s men, Kestrel hoped, killed by the archers who had stayed outside the fort to fight the battle in the mortal way of flesh instead of power.

  Kestrel walked to his right, and rounded the corner of the building where the sorcerer who he had attacked had stood. The paving stones were fused together and darkened, while the corner of the fortress was cracked and crumbled, a pile of stone chips lying heaped on the street.

  Kestrel rounded the corner and walked slowly to the main entrance. He looked up, and saw no one standing on guard, so he climbed the steps unsteadily, pounded briefly on the door, then slumped down and sat on the steps.

  Moments passed, then he heard the door open and murmured sounds. Hands suddenly reached down and lifted him, then pulled him into the hall, and the door was shut.

  “He is alive!” one voice exulted.

  “He doesn’t look very much alive,” another said.

  “Take him up to his room and we’ll let him rest,” Gates’s voice spoke. Kestrel opened his eyes and looked at his friend.

  “We survived?” he asked. “Did we have many losses?”

  “Just a couple of men. But we got you back – that’s important. You hurt the Triplets pretty badly, it sounds like, and that counts as a victory,” Gates told him. “Take him upstairs and put him in bed,” the man directed the others, and they lifted him and carried him up to his room where he fell soundly asleep.

  When he awoke, it was late afternoon, and he felt a terrible headache still overwhelming his ability to think. “Do we have any willow bark tea?” he asked the first man he met as he went downstairs.

  The man led him to ask two others, but none of them knew of any such medical supplies, though they all congratulated him on the victory against the Triplets. “That’ll set Fields back a long way, having his sorcerers knocked down,” one man said.

  “I’m going to go visit a friend, someone who might have something for my headache,” Kestrel decided, as his fingers massaged his temples. He went to his room and donned the dark glasses Gail had given him, then left the fortress through the underground passage one again, and walked slowly down the market road to the home of Duchess Tyle.

  “I’d like to see the Duchess,” Kestrel told the staff member at the gate. He lowered his glasses to reveal his eyes once again, and was immediately admitted.

  “Kestrel, what brings you to visit us?” Tyle asked as she entered the parlor.

  “I have a headache, and I hoped that you might have some willow bark tea I could drink,” he got directly to the point.

  “Have a seat,” she told him, then she left the room momentarily.

  “You’ll have a pot in just a few minutes,” she said, as she took a seat.

  “There’s quite a bit of talk about you and some events last night,” she told him. “People in the city believe that you and the Triplets do a great deal of damage to one another in a battle.”

  “I’ve got a headache,” Kestrel smiled wanly. “I don’t know what the Triplets suffered. I thought I did some damage to them, but then I saw one walk away,” his smile faded as he recollected the horror he had felt at the sight of the young sorceress walking away, Lucretia’s hilt sticking out of her chest.

  “People said that only one of the Triplets walked into his enclave. The other two must have been carried in, and that is something extraordinary, I’ll tell you,” the duchess conveyed her sense that he had done more than any other.

  “But they can resuscitate one another with their powers?” Kestrel asked, recollecting what he had heard.

  “So I’m told, but it may not be quick. And in the meantime, here you are, already up and walking around,” she pointed out.

  A maid entered the room with a tray, and placed it quietly on the table next to Kestrel, then glided out of the room.

  “Would you like to stay and have dinner with us, since the meal time is not far away?” Tyle asked, as Kestrel poured a cup of the stoutly steeped tea.

  He took a sip, puckered up at the bitterly astringent taste, then took a long drink.

  “Thank you. I’d like to have dinner with you,” he agreed.

  The duchess left the room to tell the staff to set another place. As she returned to the parlor, Gail came bursting in.

  “Oh Kestrel! It’s so good to see you!” She ran over to him and gave him an unexpected hug, then backed off in embarrassment.

  “I heard that Fields’s people are telling everyone that the Triplets managed to defeat you last night. But here you are, looking fresh as a flower!” she told him brightly.

  “Perhaps you exaggerate?” the duchess asked archly. “Go freshen yourself; Kestrel is going to stay and have dinner with us,” she instructed Gail, who obediently left.

  Minutes later, Kestrel escorted Tyle into a dining room, where the food was present once again, as was Gail. As soon as they entered, the doors were closed, and Gail removed her veils, then served portions of the food as they began to eat.

  “We had lunch with friends today,” Gail told Kestrel. “They all know you’re in the city of course. They talked about you the whole time. Aunt wouldn’t let me tell them that we knew you,” she pouted.

  “The less said, the better, child,” the duchess re-emphasized. “At least for now.”

  “I’m sure the Duchess is correct,” Kestrel concurred.

  The three held a nice conversation, and Kestrel realized as the meal ended that his headache had diminished substantially.

  “Thank you,” he said to the duchess as they rose from the table. Gail rewound the veil around her head, and then the door opened to allow them to return to the parlor.

  “I should probably return to Listay’s fort,” Kestrel said as he stood in the parlor doorway. He had enjoyed the company of the two women, and he felt reluctant to leave the comfort and elegance of the duchess’s home for the Spartan surroundings of Listay’s fortress.

  “You should stay and have another cup of tea, for your headache,” Gail spoke up.

  “Perhaps you should take some more tea,” the duchess agreed. Kestrel was easily persuaded, and so they sat and enjoyed more time in the parlor, Gail unveiling again once the tea had been served, and they talked about Uniontown society, such as it was in the time of the turmoil, and as Duchess Tyle remembered it had been before the Viathins arrives.

  Much later, Kestrel finally spoke when the conversation lagged. “I should be going
. I’m sure we’re all tired, and ready for bed. Thank you for such a wonderful evening, for the meal, and for the tea.”

  “Kestrel, it’s hard to imagine that you are the son of a god. You certainly seem much too down-to-earth; almost human, so to speak. And you look tired; if you’d like to spend the night in the garden cottage tonight, you should do so, and then slip away in the morning,” the duchess told him.

  Kestrel didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

  “I’ll just have a servant take some things out to the cottage for you,” she told him.

  “Let me carry them,” Gail spoke up. “I can walk out with Kestrel and carry them to the cottage with him.”

  “I suppose there’s no harm in that,” the duchess agreed thoughtfully, and so, a few minutes later, Gail carried an armful of sheets and blankets into the garden.

  “Here, let me carry those for you,” Kestrel immediately said, relieving her of the burden.

  “Watch out for that root in the walkway,” he warned a moment later as they walked through the dark garden.

  “How can you see that? I can hardly see my own hands,” Gail declared as she stepped over the obstruction.

  “Elves have better vision than humans,” Kestrel explained.

  They reached the cottage, and Gail opened the door for Kestrel, who went in and started a fire, while the Langravine unwound her veils once again, then sat in the front room by the fire, while Kestrel prepared his bedding.

  “Is it hard to sleep out here in this cottage?” Gail asked him when he returned and joined her in the front room.

  “I’ve grown used to sleeping in human ways,” Kestrel assured her. “And the bed is very comfortable.”

  “Are elven ways of sleeping different from human ways?” she asked, curiously.

  “Elves like to sleep up high, in upper floors of buildings, or up in trees, the way we used to always sleep a long time ago. I still sleep in trees sometimes when traveling,” he explained.

  “Could we run away?” Gail asked him, awakening him abruptly from his state of growing drowsiness.

  “Could you take me to the Eastern Forest, and introduce me to some nice elf who won’t mind my red hair?” she asked.

  He felt a pang of sadness at the thought of the girl’s unhappiness. She had done nothing to deserve such treatment and isolation. He thought of the treatment he had received in the past – shunned by elves for not looking elven enough, and discriminated against by humans for having elven characteristics. The surgeries he had endured had treated the problem in part, and the magic ring that Kai had given him at one time had been another answer, another way to change his outward appearance to conform to the demands of the societies he had traveled through.

  “What if?” he began to ask, then checked himself. There did seem to be an answer to the girl’s problem, one that seemed simple. It was so simple he wondered why he hadn’t considered it before, and he paused to try to find some logical reason to not solve the problem.

  “What if what?” she asked wistfully.

  “What if I turned your hair black, instead of red? Truly black, not a dye? Like I turned those villagers into redheads?” he asked as he stood up.

  Her eyes grew great and round. “Kestrel, you’re not teasing me, are you?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

  “No,” he said. He stepped towards her, and held out his hand, then helped her rise to her feet.

  “I think you look lovely, just the way you are,” he told her. He placed one hand on the top of her head. “But what matters is that the rest of the Uniontown world sees your beauty, so let me open the window and let them see you,” he said, then he released a careful measure of his power into her scalp, and watched her hair metamorphose from the roots outward to the ends of the strands. Her eyebrows darkened as well, and then he took his hand away.

  “There’s no mirror here in the cottage, but you have no more red hair,” he told her with a smile, though he felt an internal regret at the change in the girl.

  Her hands fluttered, and she stared at him intently. “Really? Really really?” she asked.

  “Go on, go inside the manor and look at yourself,” he told her. He bent and picked up her veils, then tossed them into a corner of the cottage room. “You don’t need that anymore. You’re free to go about the way all the other young ladies do.”

  “Oh Kestrel,” her eyes teared up, and she began to cry.

  “Go on,” he said gently, he went to the door and opened it. “You go to the manor now. I’ll see you again in a few days, unless you have so many beaus coming to call on you that you can’t make time for me,” he grinned at her confusion. She walked towards him, stopped, then left the cottage and started to run towards the manor.

  “Watch out for that tree root!” Kestrel called, and he watched her flee back to her aunt’s house.

  He hoped she would be happy, and he hoped her aunt would be pleased. He suddenly felt that he was dirty, that he had done something improper, and he no longer wanted to stay in the cottage where he had performed the immoral deed. He picked up his belongings, put out the fire, then left the cottage, tired as he felt, climbed the tree and went over the wall, then slowly walked down the nighttime street to the Listay fortress, then he entered the offsite building that used the under-the-road tunnel, passed through security and went to bed on the hard mattress in the room at the top of the tower.

  Chapter 24

  Kestrel awoke the next morning to the sounds of greetings from his doorway.

  “Were you here all night? We came looking for you, and didn’t find you,” he heard Stuart’s voice and sat up groggily.

  “You’re back!” he exclaimed after a second’s consideration.

  “And you’re back too!” the Duke’s head guardsman grinned.

  Kestrel rose from his bed and the two men embraced roughly, delighted to see one another.

  “And so you’ve made some new legends in Uniontown it sounds like,” Stuart said when they released one another. “Come down and see the man and let him welcome you himself.”

  Kestrel pulled on clothes and boots, then gladly descended the stairway to the main floor of the fortress.

  “Whatever possessed you to take a room so high anyway?” Stuart asked.

  “Just an elvish prejudice. We like higher places,” Kestrel answered. There were more men in the building than he’d seen so far, and he realized that Stuart and the Duke must have traveled with a heavy guard.

  “The Duke’s in the dinner hall. He’ll be happy to see you,” Stuart said. “It’s good to see you with us lad,” he added impulsively. “Now I know the gods are on our side, if they’re sending their own son to help us!” he spoke as they walked down the hall.

  “Well, they didn’t exactly send me,” Kestrel said. “I came on my own. I promised Lark.”

  “I know, lad, I know,” Stuart reassured him as they entered the hall.

  “My lord, look who I found sleeping up in the tower,” Stuart called loudly.

  A man stood from his seat at a table in the middle of the room, and the boisterous conversations occurring throughout the space ceased, as all heads turned.

  The duke looked different, Kestrel thought. There were heavier lines in his face, and more gray in his goatee than Kestrel remembered. But the eyes that stared at him were warm and friendly.

  “You look different, older and wiser perhaps,” the Duke said. “Not to mention the pointed ears,” he smiled. “But you still look like the honorable, trustworthy fellow I saw in the palace all those months ago.

  “Step over here and let me see you. After all that Stuart and Gates have told me about you, I expect you to be twenty feet tall and glowing with fire,” the nobleman said.

  “Bow to him, show your fealty,” Stuart said softly as they approached the duke, the men in the room shuffling aside to make room for them. The formalization of the alliance of their Duke and the fabled Destroyer was a moment they all believed would be historic.

  Kestrel
reached an open space in front of the duke, then obeyed Stuart’s suggestion, bowing down on one knee to the man.

  “Stand up,” Listay said. “No son of a god really needs to kneel to me.

  “I’m full of joy to have you within my walls, and thankful for all that I hear you’ve done already, while we’ve been out inspecting our other properties,” he spoke. “So tell me, what is it that brings you here to help us?”

  Kestrel turned faintly pink. “Lark made me promise to come help you,” he answered in a low voice. “When we were in the other land, she asked if I would come to Uniontown to help you, and I said I would.

  “Since then, I’ve also promised the Marquise Thuringa that I’d set her husband free from Fields’s captivity. And I’ve also promised myself that I’ll go to set Lark and the other prisoners there free as well.”

  “Is that all?” Listay said mildly. “Just a quick list of things to check off, and then you’ll be done?” his expression was serious for two seconds, then switched to a laughing countenance, and the men around him laughed as well.

  “We’ve not thought about going to cut off Fields’s ransom supplies from Grilt’s place, have we?” the duke asked the men around him.

  “That’s what Kestrel was taking us to do last night when the Triplets launched their attack,” Gates spoke up. “I think it’ll rattle Fields, especially coming when his fearful Triplets are out of service, while the Destroyer is still wreaking havoc.”

  “I think there’s a better way to describe our young friend’s activity than havoc,” the duke grinned. “Shall we call it ‘doing good works’?”

  “I’m all for sending the raid to Grilt’s place. He’s always been a stain on the name of nobility,” the duke said. “When would you propose to do this?”

  “Tonight, after nightfall,” Kestrel said.

  “That’ll be good. It gives me the day to catch up on things. Lucius,” he motioned, and his son stepped over from a nearby crowded table, “and I have a social visit to make today, so it’ll allow us to clean up and prepare to have some important conversations.”