by Rob Scott
Steven stood up. ‘Do we have any wine left? I need a drink. Mark, this is crazy. You can’t be the prince of Rona, and I am not a sorcerer. We weren’t drawn to Idaho Springs, because there was nothing in Idaho Springs to draw us there.’
‘Yes there was,’ Mark interrupted. ‘You have it in your coat pocket.’
‘Lessek’s key?’
‘That night in our house, we chucked it away – we thought it was nothing, maybe a hunk of some crazy miner’s rock – and yet I felt it that night, Steven, and I felt it again when you came back here, that day by the fjord. It’s something I can’t explain, but it reminds me of when I get a flight back to Long Island to see my family: it’s about feeling safe, like I belong – feeling like I’m at home. That hunk of ore makes me feel like that – when I stand next to you and you have it in your pocket, and when I stand next to your bloody saddlebag when you have it packed away. At any given moment, I can pinpoint the location of that stone, even blindfolded.’
‘This is too much, Mark,’ Steven said. ‘You had a bad dream. I’m sorry Rodler called you a Southie, but you can’t take that insult and decide it means you’re sovereign of Eldarn.’ He was growing exasperated. ‘It’s too great a leap. You can’t explain the portals. I know for a fact that the safe-deposit box was never opened at the bank because the key was missing until I found it at Hannah’s shop. There are no records of any deposits or withdrawals from the day William Higgins opened the accounts in 1870. That portal was secure.’
‘But the other was not,’ Mark argued. ‘Imagine if Doctor Tenner, before he died in the fire, made arrangements to send Regona through the portal. Think about where she would be safest from Nerak – it’s certainly not in Randel with Weslox. She would be safest delivering that baby in a medically advanced society – even in 1870 – and then raising it there. He probably figured he would go and find her later, after the trouble had passed – he might even have drafted the letter I found behind the fireplace as a decoy, after all, everyone talks about this guy as if he was a genius.’
‘That couldn’t be the case,’ Gilmour said.
Mark turned on the old man, his argument ready, but Gilmour went on, ‘It would have been Lessek.’
There was an almost tangible silence, broken only by Rodler’s breathing and the ever-present babble of the nearby river. It was Steven who finally spoke. ‘Not you, too, Gilmour. This is madness.’
‘Actually, it makes sense, except Tenner – he was a brilliant physician and an excellent advisor to Prince Marek, but he knew nothing of the Larion portals. After the Larion Senate fell, only Kantu and I knew they existed, and how to use them to cross the Fold. Kantu was in Middle Fork; I was wandering broken and lost. The only person who could have done it was Lessek – he could have detected the portal and sent Regona across the Fold. He might have known that Eldarn’s monarch would be drawn to the keystone, one of our world’s most powerful talismans, even across great expanses of open land or water. Mark’s deductions, however fantastic, are quite reasonable. I’m not saying this is true, but it certainly could be. Lessek could have intercepted Regona on her way to Randel and sent her across the Fold to your world.’
‘But how?’ Steven was still far from convinced. ‘If Nerak was in Riverend, kindling Estrad’s biggest bonfire and killing off the rest of the Ronan royal family, how much time would Regona and Lessek have had? Nerak couldn’t have been there for very long.’
‘Lessek would have been able to detect the portal, even when closed-’
‘I believe that,’ Mark interrupted ‘When we opened it that night in our house, we could feel its energy as soon as Steven cracked the seal on the cylinder.’
‘Why isn’t it doing that now?’ Steven asked suddenly. ‘It’s there in my pack. Why can’t we feel it?’
‘You’ve grown accustomed to it,’ Gilmour said. ‘If we took that portal to somewhere never touched by Larion magic, the people there would feel a tingling in the air like you did. Regardless, if Lessek was on hand, he could have escorted Regona to the far portal and allowed her to open it.’
‘She had to do it?’ Mark asked.
‘Lessek would have been a wraith,’ Gilmour said. ‘He may have looked like a normal man, but he would not have been able to open the portal by himself.’
Steven considered their argument aloud. ‘So Lessek knows Nerak has the portal hidden in Estrad. He meets Regona outside the palace while Nerak is inside, burning the place to the ground. Lessek encourages Regona to open the portal and proceed, alone and pregnant, to a foreign world, where she is drawn by the force of his key to Idaho Springs, Colorado – oh, and somewhere along the line gives birth to Mark’s great-great-great-grandmother?’
‘Or grandfather,’ Mark said. ‘Otherwise, yep, that about sums it up.’
‘I see.’ Scepticism was thick in Steven’s voice. ‘But you’re overlooking the fact that your family isn’t from Colorado.’
‘True, but my great-grandmother moved west when she was married and my grandfather worked for the railroad, crisscrossing the west from their home in Cheyenne. My father was actually born in St Louis and lived in the Midwest before moving to New York. I’m telling you, Steven, he and Mom had planned for that trip to San Francisco for years. They literally saved every penny they could for it – they had a big jar on the kitchen counter. It was their dream to go to the Pacific and we had to pry Dad out of those mountains with a crowbar. He just didn’t want to leave. And in what community in 1870 would a dark-skinned, single mother have been accepted? If she was in the United States, it had to be the black community: no whites would have had anything to do with her.’
Steven said, ‘Your great-great-great-grandmother was from Rona.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mark sighed. ‘I know it’s crazy – but Lessek is trying to tell me something; he’s been trying since my first night here, on the beach near Estrad. I just haven’t been able to figure out what it is, and this is the only thing that makes sense.’
‘If you’re right, how would Nerak know?’
‘I have no idea,’ Mark answered. ‘Unless he knew the key would have pulled me to Idaho Springs, and your bank.’
‘What about me? He doesn’t seem to know anything about me, and I worked in the damned bank for three years – and we share the house. If what you say is true, I’ve been a victim of Lessek’s key as well. Why doesn’t Nerak know who I am?’
‘I can’t begin to say, but if the opportunity ever arises, we should definitely ask him.’ Mark walked over to where Rodler slept and, kicking the smuggler a good deal harder than he had his roommate, said sharply, ‘Wake up, asshole.’
Rodler was up like a cornered animal, a thin dirk held tightly in one fist, no trace of sleep in his sharply focused eyes. ‘What’s happening? Is it a patrol?’
For a moment, Mark was impressed with the man’s response, though sleeping with one eye open was most likely a necessity for him. Still, he didn’t like Rodler and didn’t approve of his business. He had decided he would kill Malakasians without guilt, his way of dealing with the helplessness he felt in the wake of Brynne’s death. Mark might not like war, but he recognised there were times when it was inevitable. Diplomacy in Eldarn had died the night Nerak killed Prince Markon at Riverend Palace and he had taken up arms for the oppressed. He might kill, but he would never deal in drugs, no matter how lucrative it might be.
Now grinning at Rodler, Mark asked, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have been in Colorado Springs last winter for the Colorado State Swimming Championships, would you? Maybe sitting next to a man from Fort Collins? He had on a green sweatshirt.’
The man blinked several times in confusion, then sheathed his dirk. ‘Mark Jenkins, I don’t even know what most of those words mean. But no, I was not in Color-ado last winter. I have never heard of that territory. Is it in Rona?’
‘I’m relieved to hear that – but I woke you up to make certain you understand that if you ever disparage me, my skin colour or my race again, I will kill you. All right
?’
‘Gods rut a mule, Mark, but I thought we were already beyond this.’ He shook his head in disappointment. ‘I was doing my own thing, when you appeared and started shouting. I would have been very happy to have missed the four of you by a thousand paces, believe me.’
‘Just so you understand – and Rodler, I truly am glad that you weren’t in Colorado Springs last winter.’
‘And why is that?’ The younger man sighed.
‘Because you would be dead already.’ Mark turned back to his blankets. ‘Good night.’
THE RAID
‘Wake up,’ Brexan whispered, ‘Sallax, wake up. It’s another raid.’ She rolled to her feet. Her back ached from eight nights of sleeping on a hard wooden floor, but she ignored it and squirmed into her tunic.
From the bed, Sallax groaned and opened his eyes.
‘No peeking, you rutter!’ She turned towards the wall, then said, ‘No, never mind, just get up – hurry! I can hear them, maybe two doors down. We have to get you down the back stairs.’ Her hair a tangle and her tunic unbelted, Brexan rushed to his side and began unwrapping his injured shoulder. It was healing; Jacrys had done an admirable job of rebreaking and setting the bones, but it should have remained bound, without interruption, for the next Moon.
Sallax winced.
‘I know. I know,’ she whispered. ‘We have to, just until they’re gone.’ The Malakasian soldiers and their Seron escort (Prince Malagon’s Seron warriors were brutal and efficient, but not adept at espionage) were searching for a woman travelling with an injured man who was addled, and nearly incoherent in his speech. The raids had started two days after she and Sallax fled Carpello’s warehouse. She thought she had left Jacrys dead, but when the searches began she realised that somehow the resilient bastard spy had survived Sallax clobbering him with the wooden table leg. Now Jacrys was obviously directing the periodic raids – maybe even from his hospital bed – as the soldiers and Seron crawled into every cabinet, beneath every building and inside every cargo hold.
They had her description; of that Brexan was certain, so she sheared off her hair – and nearly burst into tears when an emaciated, cropped-haired ghost stared back at her from the mirror. But what Jacrys had planned for her would be far worse than a tragic hair-cut.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘they’re close this time.’ From outside the window, Brexan heard the screams of those Orindale citizens unfortunate enough to be the search subjects this pre-dawn aven. The shouting was more a warning that a raid was coming than the city folk being badly injured by the searchers.
Sallax was up and dressed when she heard the front room door burst open, kicked off its hinges as the first of the Seron made their way into the inn. ‘Pissing demons,’ she said, ‘they’re here already. Come on. Down the back stairs, right away.’ She hurried Sallax out the door and along the darkened hallway, careful not to touch his shoulder, waiting to hear a barked command to halt at any moment. In her haste, she had forgotten her belt; now she scurried downstairs without any weapons.
‘Trenchers again?’ Sallax drawled.
‘Is that all right? Can you do trenchers this morning? I will get you all the trenchers in the kitchen if you promise not to say anything to anyone but me.’
‘Trenchers, yes,’ Sallax said, ‘and he won’t say anything.’
‘Good job. Outstanding, and you just wash the trenchers until I come back for you. It will be just a few moments, all right?’
‘Trenchers, yes.’
They reached the service entrance and Brexan hurriedly lit several paraffin tapers from coals still burning in the fireplace. Illuminating the small room, she positioned the big Ronan at a tub of water, pushed a cloth into his hand – and then discovered that every trencher in the scullery had been scrubbed clean and stacked neatly beside the hearth. From the front room, she heard the sound of heavily booted feet stomping up the stairs to the guest chambers. ‘Bleeding whores,’ she said, sweating, ‘every rutting dish is already clean.’ She sidled across to a large pot of leftover stew, ladled some into as many trenchers as she dared and piled the soiled dishes beside the tub. ‘Can you clean these?’
‘Trenchers,’ Sallax said, hefting one to eye level and watching as bits of stew dribbled down his wrist to the wooden tabletop.
‘Excellent,’ she said, kissing him quickly on the cheek. ‘You clean up. I’ll be back.’
She had paid the tavern owner an extra silver piece to be permitted to secrete Sallax into the kitchen whenever the Redstone was searched. This was the third time in eight days. She worried that some smart officer might wonder why a scullery worker would be cleaning trenchers during the overnight and predawn avens, but thus far, her luck had prevailed: the raiding parties stormed through the inn, searching every room, including the kitchen, and left without a second glance at the big simpleton.
Hiding herself the first night had been challenging: at a loss for any other option, Brexan had slipped into the squalid chamber where the tavern staff bedded down and, stripping off her tunic and leggings, she had dived into bed with that same waiter who had been her antidote to loneliness: too much wine and sex with a stranger. She shocked the young man near to death as she helped him out of his bed clothes and began fondling him beneath the blankets, but when the soldiers burst into the room and she had feigned shock and terror along with the others, they were in no doubt about what the kitchen maid and the waiter were up to.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Brexan had kissed the confused boy affectionately and slipped back into her clothes, then headed off to retrieve Sallax.
That evening, the young man had looked at her questioningly. Not knowing whether she would be forced to take refuge beneath his covers of his bed again, she smiled at him. ‘Shame we were so rudely interrupted,’ she whispered, ‘but I guess that’s what we have to put up with these days.’ She didn’t want him to know she was the target of the raid.
This morning all the tavern staff were already awake when she arrived, stirred by the sounds of raiders stomping upstairs and through the guest chambers. Several had lit bedside tapers, and no one appeared surprised when Brexan entered the room.
‘Oh, lords, you aren’t going to make me do this with the candles lit, are you?’ She didn’t wait for a response from the bleary-eyed staff but steeled herself, pulled her tunic over her head and slipped into bed with the young waiter. As she settled beneath the covers, Brexan found him already stripped and waiting for her.
‘I thought you might be back,’ he said as seductively as the clumsy encounter permitted.
‘I would be so grateful if you help me make this look as convincing as possible,’ she said, smiling down at him.
When the door crashed open a moment later, two Seron tried to press inside, but stuck in the doorway until the larger of the two pushed the other violently out of the way, clearing a path for himself. Behind them, a Malakasian officer dragged the elderly tavern owner by one arm. The innkeeper made eye contact with Brexan briefly, and then looked away.
‘See? I told you,’ he said to the soldier, ‘just these five.’
‘But only four beds?’ The Malakasian moved through the room, tugging down blankets, moving piles of clothing, and peering behind the crates the employees used for storage. ‘Does someone always share a bed in here? What kind of place is this, eh?’
‘These two…’ The old man stammered as he pointed at Brexan and her young waiter with a quivering finger. He was too nervous; Brexan held her breath. At least her bare shoulder was exposed outside the blanket – more convincing than finding her there in a tunic and boots. ‘These two came together from Strandson,’ the tavern owner said.
The officer nodded, and Brexan exhaled slowly. He didn’t care about who she was or what she was doing in this filthy, malodorous chamber: he was upset at having been deployed on a pointless search by a spy who outranked him in the field and strutted around in a rich man’s wardrobe. The man and woman had obviously slipped through the barric
ade around the city – anyone could these days, with Prince Malagon gone and his generals bickering about it like elderly women.
He glanced down at Brexan, hoping to see more than just her shoulder, then turned back to the tavern owner. ‘The one in the kitchen?’
‘My overnight worker,’ the old man said. ‘He comes in late and cleans until dawn. He’s addled, kicked in the head by his father’s horse. I let him clean the trenchers and keep the fire going. That’s about all he’s good for.’
The officer whistled softly, then said, ‘Fine,’ and to the Seron, ‘You two, let’s go. Find the others and move on.’ A moment later, they were gone.
Back in their room, Brexan rewrapped Sallax’s shoulder. She was tired, and desperately wanted to sleep another half-aven, but the dishevelled hillock of abandoned blankets thrown across the floor did not look very appealing. ‘You did well this morning,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ll be back now – they’ve been here three times. It’s Jacrys sending them.’
Sallax growled threateningly under his breath. ‘He tried to fool. He tried to be nice. Sallax knew him from Rona.’
‘I know.’
‘Praga, too.’
‘Praga?’
‘Sallax is from Praga, not Rona. Brynne too.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘I thought you were from Rona.’
He grimaced as she pulled the bandages close around his shoulder.
‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Not like before.’
‘What happened?’ Brexan felt that she was making progress with Sallax, building his trust and helping him face whatever nightmares had changed him from the proud, tough freedom fighter to the crippled, filthy dock scavenger she had met south of the city. This was more than he’d said in eight days.
‘The wraiths found Sallax.’ He stared at a point in the woodwork.
‘A wraith?’
‘Many wraiths. They were hunting for the old man.’ Since the night she helped him escape from Carpello’s warehouse, Brexan had not heard Sallax use Gilmour’s name. ‘There were many, and they came across the hills and up the river valley. Sallax was in the river.’
