Bardian's Redemption: Book Four of the Guardian's Vambrace (The Guardian Vambrace 4)

by H. Jane Harrington

  “Well, I won't be alone. When I get where I'm going, I'll have a ready-made family,” Emmi said, more like she was trying to convince herself rather than Dailan.

  “You ain't planning to leave your special trinkabobs behind, are you?” Dailan climbed onto the mattress and started plucking the mechanical devices from their places. He dumped them into the trunk, and Emmi shifted them around, using the clothes to cushion them.

  “It looks awful heavy,” she said. When she tugged at the handle, the trunk barely budged. “I don't know how I'm going to carry it.”

  “Like I said, you need a servie,” Dailan reminded her.

  “How could I ever own a collar, when it goes against everything I was raised to believe?” Emmi countered.

  “Well then, you gotta dump this load and sell off the trinkabobs. Since you're gonna be on the road, you'll need lorans to buy food. Don't want to go hungry out there, trust me. I starved a lot in my life, and there's nothing worse than a cold night alone in a dark forest with nuthin but the music in your stomach to sing you to sleep.”

  “I really don't want to sell them.” Emmi shifted her weight, looking torn. “No, I'll leave them here. I can always send for them later. I have a stash of lorans that I've been saving up. It should last for a while.” She returned the devices to the shelves. Dailan lent a hand.

  “Don't worry when you run out. The refuse barrels are always loaded with cast offs. Just pick the mold and rot off and it ain't half bad. Remember, if you have to trek through the woods, don't content yourself with rabbit meat alone. Bunnies ain't all that hard to snare, especially the cute little baby ones, but if that's all you eat, you'll keel to starvation inside a week. Make sure you vary up your eats—there's always a ready supply of insects and fungi. As long as you don't eat the poisoned ones you can get by. Maggots'll keep ya a stretch. Bird eggs, too, if you can find 'em—just hope they're not all baby-birdy before you crack 'em. I wouldn't call it living, but it's surviving. You'll do fine, all tough like you are.”

  Emmi tried on a smile that didn't want its own existence. She tugged on the trunk handle, but even with the lightening of the load, it still didn't seem inclined to move with any ease.

  “That's gonna strain your ankle,” Dailan thought out loud.

  Emmi eyeballed the trunk for a good long minute while she was rummaging around her brain for ideas. When she hit one, she snapped her fingers. She ducked down and reached under the bed. Her fist came up with something that turned out to be a back-sling pack. The things she had loaded into the trunk were dumped out on the floor and Emmi started stuffing them into the pack.

  “Smart,” Dailan nodded. “You won't need no servies with this slung on your back.”

  “Travel light, I always say,” Emmi agreed. Only a few of the clothes fit, so she plopped on the floor and set to weeding out the stuff that wasn't as important.

  “What about this sunshield potion? Looks like the sun'd do a dragon on your light skin,” Dailan recommended. “I got sunscorched in High Empyrea over the winter. Did you know you can get burned even in the snow?”

  Emmi shook her head as Dailan snatched up the bottle from her vanity. He shoved it between some clothes in the pack. Emmi eyed him, like she couldn't believe he wasn't trying to talk her out of going.

  “Well, you can. I think it hurts even worse than a regular sunburn. Me and Bertrand—that's my best friend—we was laying out on the Kingsmere after it froze over. I was showing him how to ice fish. The air wasn't too cold, but that lake ice was the biting, toothy kind'a frigid, so I took my tunic off and wadded it up underneath my belly. We was having so much fun that we lost track of the time, and my back got all ripe and blistered. I ended up getting sun poisoned on account of it being so bad. Bertrand's a healer and he fixed me up, but I was dizzy-sick and hurting for a good two days even with his potions. I think the thing that helped the most was him and Saiya Kunnai sitting with me, playing cards and dice and Capers. Kept my mind off the burning. Anyhow, since you won't have nobody to help if you get sunscorched, you should be careful and not get it in the first place.”

  Emmi was distracted from her pack, all caught up in the story. “I'll be fine. I've been taking care of myself for a long time, anyway.”

  “I know. Like I said, you don't need nobody else.” Dailan went back to the vanity. “You should also bring some of this smellybobber potion. You'll get to stinkin' something fierce. I always hate the smell of my own funk and wished I had some flowery stuff to douse it with when I was on the streets.” Dailan chose one of her bottles of flower juice and added it to the pack. “What about your hair? I bet you gotta wash it a lot, since there's so much of it. You're gonna need a few jars of hair suds. You got any of that around?”

  Emmi glanced to the pack that was already bulging with stuff. “I don't think it will fit.”

  Dailan shrugged and waved it off. “You'll just have to do without. You learn to get by with nothing when nothing's all you got. It will be a rough year ahead for you, but I'm sure Captain Bounty will help you get on your feet when you find him.”

  “Oh, he will,” Emmi agreed darkly. “And I'll be with people I can trust. Unlike here, where they lie to your face for a smile.”

  Dailan coughed his agreement. “Trust is important. And since you know him so well, him coming to visit every year like he does... Well, I'm sure it will all work out. Good luck! Captain Bounty was right when he said you'd make a great pirate.”

  “Pirate...” Emmi hesitated. It seemed to click just then that the Captain had lied to her, too.

  Dailan hauled her up and slipped the heavy pack over her shoulders. “C'mon. You're burning daylight. Gotta hustle if you wanna make headway and find a good hidey-hole before dark. Don't want to be caught out after, with all the bandits on the streets.”

  As he urged Emmi toward the door, her bad ankle gave out under the heavy weight of the pack. She stumbled to a knee.

  “Need a hand?”

  Emmi slapped it away. “I can do it on my own.”

  “Sure you can.” Dailan shrugged and muttered, “That don't mean you have to.”

  The weight of Emmi's troubles added to all the heavy of the pack and she didn't even get her feet up under her good. Her fists slammed against the rug with the frustration they wanted to beat out. It seemed like she wanted to cry, more out of anger than sadness. She sloughed the pack off her shoulders and held out her arm. She wasn't about to admit defeat from her own mouth, even if her actions said it clear. Dailan hauled her up again and slapped her back to show he didn't think less of her.

  Emmi hopped to the bed and sank onto it. Her face was all scrunched up and sour. “They deceived me...”

  “Yup.” Dailan didn't really know what to say, and she seemed to be working out all the figures on her own.

  “...to protect me.” It sounded a little like a question.

  “That's usually what families do.” Dailan said it all suave and confidant, like he was some wise old tutor, when really, he was just saying what sounded smart at the moment.

  Emmi looked up, real serious. “They do?”

  Dailan ran a hand through his hair. “Dunno, really. Never had one until recent. I seen a lot of folks lie to protect the ones they love, though. Like my big sister, Saiya Kunnai—Princess Kiriana, I mean—she spent months lying to His Majesty, pretending she didn't love him when she really did. 'Cause she wanted him to make the best future in Empyrea that she couldn't give him, on account of her being a cast off of the nobility and all. And then His Majesty went and lied right back, pretending to favor this one pompous harpy, so as Kir wouldn't figure out that he was planning to marry her against all the uppities that would try to prevent it...” Emmi was staring at him again, all absorbed in the story that sounded more like ramblings to Dailan's own ear. “Anyhow, they done a lot of fibbing to protect the other, and it was pure out of love.”

  “What Westerfold and the Magister did. It's not the same,” Emmi sai
d.

  “No, probably not. But it was still told for your sake. Can't imagine how hard it must'a been for them. At least they kept you around and didn't send you off somewheres. They wanted you with them. I'da given anything to know my mother. Even if she wanted to protect me so bad that she'd do something rotten, knowing I'd hate her for it. Seems like you're lucky that yours been tending to you all this time, doing the stuff a real mother does and not ever getting the credit, or even the benefit of the name.”

  Emmi couldn't rummage anything up worth arguing the point, so she shrugged like she agreed without being forced to admit it.

  “I don't got much on mothers, since I never had one. Even with all the secrets and such, yours seems a downright gem compared to what Kir got. Her mother's so cold, I bet she drops frozen turds. She even poisoned Kir for her own benefit.”

  “Her mother tried to kill her?” Emmi's jaw dropped.

  “Her own blood. You think you got it bad 'til you see what someone else got, then you thank your lucky moonbeams. None's better than that, for sure.”

  Emmi seemed to be doing a lot of thinking, so Dailan put a stopper on his lips and left her to it. She was about to say something when a bunch of courtesans filed in the room, all gushing and fawning and falling over themselves to talk to her first. There was a chaotic flurry of voices all talking over each other, and a lot of hands mussing Emmi's hair.

  “Emerald! Shiriah says you saw Professor Westerfold's lair!”

  “Is it fantastic, Emmi? What's it like?”

  “Now that you know, you can join the Underground as a full-fledged member.”

  “Shiriah always wanted to tell you.”

  “Maybe Emmi will decide to be a courtesan, too!”

  “The Underground has needed new members since the purge, Emerald.”

  “It's like she's come of age, for Shiriah to acknowledge her this way.”

  “Too bad she didn't get to know Cressiel better before...”

  Emmi's cheeks ripened at all the fuss, but she seemed to eat it up, too. Dailan could tell these people were like a clan to her, and she had probably been spoiled rotten by their attention all her life. She sure was more of a handful than any wenchlet Dailan had ever known. It was probably all their fault for that.

  The bubbly chatter stopped like someone had hit a switch, and all necks swiveled toward the door. The Magister stood there silently, parked on Emmi. That beautiful enchantress face, so used to crafting fabrications, wasn't hiding nothing here. Her days of weaving fantasies for her ward were past and done.

  The courtesans all stood up at the same time. Dailan figured Shiriah had probably asked them to leave through their Psychonic connections. It was clear as crystal that she needed some privacy with Emmi, to do some talking and bawling and whatever else mothers and daughters did when they were making up.

  The courtesans all gave Emmi tweaks, pats and squeezes of affection, then they slipped out the door on light-hearted tread. Dailan made to follow them. As he passed the Magister, he could feel a message coming from her. It didn't have words for his ears or his mind, but it was more like a concentrated feeling, like an arrow of pointed energy. The message was one of thanks.

  He didn't have to guess what she was thanking him for, even though he hadn't really done nothing. Emmi had made the decision not to run away all on her own. Sure, Dailan kinda had reminded her what it would really be like out there, but there wasn't no falsehoods told on his part. Sometimes it took a great honking lie to protect someone from their own self. This was one of those times that it took a great honking dose of the harsh truth.

  -35-

  Cacophony of Clashing Echos

  A good Arcadian warrior, this Guardian Inagor Arrelius. He seems a jovial sort, content in his relationships, competent in his roles, agreeable in his company. No doubt Vann's youth was pleasant with such a paternal figure to share the evening hearthfires. I am fascinated by the Guardian's obvious infatuation with the Queen, for theirs is a dalliance spanning the decades. Can one really love so long? Such lengthy commitment seems repellent to my good tastes, for what person could sate me indefinitely? If the red thread of fate truly binds my finger, I believe my commitment will likely be of an unconventional variety. That woman must be exceedingly special for my attentions to linger, and she is certainly bound to live as unconventional a life as I.

  - Excerpt from the journal of Guardian Toma Scilio

  A snarling, slobbering, dagger-fanged obscenity of nature waited at Inagor's side. Kir didn't know what kind of kaiyo it was—she had never seen the like before, even at the Battle of Kaiyo Storm. The fur was dense and short, bluish and brown in stripes, and the face reminded Kir of a hog. The clawed paws looked optimal for running or fighting. It came to Inagor's waist, and there was some crude leather device strapped to its back like a saddle.

  “You don't think I'm batty, do you?” Kir asked the Inagor ghost. “You know better.”

  The breeze kicked up and the air temperature dropped, heralding in the approaching rainstorm. The familiar scent that Kir had caught before, the earthy licorice, tickled her nose again on the wind that brought it from Inagor's direction. She suddenly remembered—it was in the air the day she had been attacked by Inagor's ghost in the vorsnarm hallucination.

  The vorsnarm. Kir huffed. It hadn't been in the kaiyo pits. It had been in the pouch at Inagor's collar. So, this Inagor was not a hallucination after all. He was real, and he was tweaking her sensibilities with the inhalant. It explained the exponential explosion of irrationality in the fear she had felt that day, and in the fury she had felt with Malacar. Vorsnarm heightened emotions. Kir was under the effects, even now.

  Kozias had always insisted Kir wrangle her temper. Anger, he had said, was useful in battle, but only in controlled substance. It was an ally when reined, a foe when unbridled. Kir had to find a way to overcome the vorsnarm in her system or it would reduce her to a snarling, raving beast, not unlike the kaiyo beside the Inagor ghost.

  Whomever this person was, this Inagor-thing, he had wanted her terrorized that day in the encampment. Now, it seemed, he wanted her raring for a rumble. He wouldn't have faced her like this, with her hackles up and her fangs snapping, if he hadn't intended to face her with blades.

  Kir wasn't sure how much of her awareness was being affected by the hallucinogen, but she was pretty certain that the Inagor-thing was not an illusion. She knew positively that it wasn't Gensing—she had been seeing Inagor before the kaiyo assault, and she had seen him while the Chamberlain was still contained. It may have been another trickster, or possibly someone wearing an alterlet. He was a very real body with a very real intention to kill her.

  The hum of a Blazer whip crackled to life when the doppleganger's wrist flicked it. Kir hadn't noticed the device on his belt before, but the glowing blue length was impossible not to see now. Kir was intimately familiar with the hum of the energy and the scorch of Blazer burn that those whips dealt. Tarnavarian had enjoyed laying them across her naked back. In the agony, she would drop her mental defenses, allowing him full access to the depths of her vulnerable mind. Physical torture was an effective means to the Psychonic probing that would otherwise be nearly impossible due to the impenetrable mental wall. Kir had learned, through excruciating acquaintance, how to master the pain of Blazers. Maybe too much so. There was something of an unexpected pleasure in their burn now. Kir couldn't figure how that worked. She still felt the pain, but it was almost as though she half-enjoyed it.

  One of the benefits to the Blazer whip as a weapon was its ability to be fixed or flaccid, depending on the need. It was usually used for striking purposes, but this Inagor-thing seemed to be a swordsman at heart, the same as his likeness. His whip was rigid like a broadsword. He had the bearing of a master.

  Ulivall's broadsword was strapped to Kir's back. She gripped the hilt without drawing, taking a deep stance. The opponents stood silently for long minutes, sizing each other up through the patter o
f raindrops that were just beginning to fall. The Blazer whip crackled with each drop it tasted.

  The doppelganger moved first. His whip sliced the rain, barely missing Kir's cheek. She dodged and drew in one fluid motion. They circled each other like animals. Kir launched, delivering a Hassalewn strike that he countered expertly with the whip. They traded blows around the woods. Kir was seeing the mastery of a true legend before her. There were not many swordsmen in the whole of the world who could match blades with this man. He was better than she was, though she would not allow that thought to monkey with her emotions and fuel doubt. Being under the effects of vorsnarm, the last thing Kir needed was to yield to insecurities that would get her killed on this field.

  She focused all her will on the one word that could solidify her courage and hold back invading storms. Kir wrapped herself in the cloak of Kionara and squared off with renewed confidence. If the vorsnarm enhanced emotion, it would be bravery, stubbornness and tenacity that she would well in her being.

  They fought like bitter rivals, trading off blows in the steady rain. Kir used her acrobatic agility to launch herself from trees and swirl for deflection and deception. The doppelganger's arms were slower, but they were powerful.

  Kir glanced down to the warrior's left forearm, where the vambrace of Guardian Arrelius had resided for over two decades. It was sun-starved and pale. Whomever this man was, he had worn a vambrace there, just like Inagor. The skin was not smooth. It was carved with scars that drew a Kion along the length, exactly like the lumanere one on a Guardian's vambrace. He must have been a sick, twisted individual to have cut a dragon into his flesh.

  The Inagor-thing had made no vocalizations, accusations or otherwise. Kir still had no clue as to why he would hate her so fiercely, or why he would take on the likeness of a deceased Guardian. When the Blazer whip fell limp, he flicked his wrist to sturdy it. Kir took the momentary lapse to ask the question that tormented her.