by Joseph Lallo
This instruction they eagerly followed, chasing each other as they scampered off toward the sea.
“Your children,” Lain said.
“Mine . . . yes. Twins. They are shy, as they must be. They have had no one but me.”
Lain watched as the pair frolicked on the beach sand. They yelled and laughed. It seemed that they spoke well enough, their playful calls to each other coming in the intricate patterns of Crich speech. A question burned in Lain's mind. He looked to Sorrel. Her eyes seemed to implore him not to ask it. There was little reason to. Some things were better left unspoken.
“They seem healthy.”
“Of course they are. They are my everything. I've provided for them better than I ever have for myself. And I couldn't have done it half as well if it had not been for you.”
“Me?”
“I taught you all of the malthrope things you should have known from the start, but you taught me the useful things of men. Smoking the food. Making the clothes. There were times when we did not have much, but if not for the things you had taught, we would have had nothing. But . . .” She sighed. “The life I have lived, I do not regret. It has been enough for me. It is not enough for them. They deserve better. I need for them to have the life you and I could not have. And I know that I cannot find it here. Across the sea are North and South Crescent. There are few men there. I know this.”
“South Crescent is home to elves, mostly. They feel the same about us as men do.”
“I hear this, too. But there are not so many. There may be a place for us there. And North Crescent?”
“I do not know, but . . . I have met someone who has family that came from North Crescent. She seemed more accepting than the rest.”
“It is more than we can hope for here.”
“You do not know what you will find there. It could be a terrible place.”
“This is a terrible place. If I find the same there, then nothing has changed. But if there is something better . . . I owe it to them to give them the chance. That means I must find a way to get there. I sneak into the city when I can. I listen. I do not know how, but I will find a way to get them to that place.” She stepped close and put a hand on his shoulder. “You say you've worked with men, and you spent time in this other place. Do you know a way? A way to get to the Crescents?”
Lain sat on a log of driftwood. Sorrel took a seat beside him. He looked to the sea and thought. How could such a thing be done? There was gold. There was always gold. But arranging even a simple sale of land or slaves had already proven treacherous and difficult, even with the money to do so. A journey to the Crescents? That would take months, and even if every member of the crew were bribed into compliance, all it would take was a single man having a second thought in that time and Sorrel and the children would be doomed. The only way that it could work would be if the people on the ship did not know what they were delivering . . .
A memory sifted to the surface, and with it came a glimmer of hope. It must have shown in his eyes, because Sorrel clutched his leg.
“You know something. You've thought of something!” She said with guarded excitement.
“There was an elf called Goldie. He and I were together on the plantation. He was one of the ones who escaped. One of the other slaves told me that he worked in Delti. His family smuggles goods and people to South Crescent. If what I was told can be believed, he may feel he owes a debt to me. Even if he doesn't . . . I've managed to gather some money.”
“You think he can take us to the Crescents? You think you can trust him?”
“I don't know. I don't even know if it is true. But Delti is not far from here.” He stood. “I can find out.”
She stood and placed her hands on his shoulders, turning him to face her. “You can find out tomorrow. For now it has been too long since I have had anyone but the twins to talk to. Stay and listen for a while,” she said, smiling. “For me.”
He nodded and sat, listening for hours to the voice that he'd feared he'd lost forever.
#
In a city not far from the east coast of Tressor, the hunter and tracker named Dihsaad was just finishing the long trek the next in a string of bounty offices. He was a man of few needs, and his past association with Duule had provided him with more money than he was likely to spend for the rest of his days. Nonetheless, a man needs something to fill his time; since his collaboration with the criminal, he'd developed something of an obsession with the creature that had slipped through his fingers. Thus, when a message arrived from Duule suggesting that the malthrope may have returned, he threw himself into the task of finding it once more. Evidently Maribelle's business had sharply improved, and when Duule had her questioned about it, she spun a ridiculous yarn about a man with wolf skull for a helmet. When she was encouraged to be more forthcoming, she revealed that it was indeed the same creature.
So the hunt began anew. Duule had placed men in and around Maribelle's bounty office, but somehow the thing still managed to slip in and out without being caught—or even seen. If it was going to be found, it would have to be the old-fashioned way. A bounty office, one less crooked than Maribelle's, would hold the specifics of the crimes giving the local authorities the most trouble. The malthrope was both troublesome and a criminal, so the local offices were places as good as any to learn if he was back in the area.
Like most such places, this one was little more than a single room with a chest of dispatches and small lockbox inside of it and a crude signboard outside. Inside the cramped space was a burly, heavily-armed man with the task of preventing the lockbox filled with bounty payments from walking away. He was joined by an official of the kingdom, no doubt one who was rather disappointed with his current assignment. The official was responsible for reading out the daily bounties and meting out payments. In lieu of holding cells, a row of thick wooden posts lined the courtyard in front of the building. Holes had been drilled in the tops, and shackles had been threaded through them.
Dihsaad had been a frequent visitor to this particular office in his more active tracking days, so much so that the official and his guard didn't feel the need to offer any more than a nod when he arrived. He stepped into the dimly-lit bounty office, pulled the only unoccupied chair up to the dispatch chest, and began to sift through its contents, muttering to himself.
“Kidnapping. Not his style . . . arson, no . . . stolen jewelry, perhaps . . . poaching.” He nodded. It was certainly a malthrope's prerogative to take advantage of a decent hunting ground. Dihsaad unrolled the scroll and began to read the details, skipping along vaguely. “By the order of . . . for the crime of . . . a sum of . . . ah, here. As evidenced by the discovery of bones stripped of their meat and,” he smiled, “buried to conceal the crime.”
He stood and presented the scroll to the official.
“Has this bounty been claimed?” he asked.
The official yawned, not bothering to look. “No bounty has been claimed at this office for eight months.”
“Has anyone shown interest in this?”
Now the official snatched the scroll and reviewed it. “No. I cannot speak for the other offices, however. That one is offered in every office from here to the border.”
“This one is mine, then.”
“Very well,” the official acknowledged with supreme disinterest. He dabbed a quill into a pot of ink and etched something onto a sheet of parchment. “Noted.”
Dihsaad paced out the door and made his way to the only other building worthy of note in the tiny town, a sizable tavern named Stone's Bottom. It was an inexpensive place for travelers to fill their stomachs and wash the accumulated road dust from their mouths and throats before continuing on to more worthwhile destinations. As tended to be the case for such places, it attracted more than its share of the seedier sort of clientele. Far from interested in the swill they served, it was the riffraff in the back room who Dihsaad was after. Just as the bounty office was ostensibly the local representation of royal authority, th
e dim recesses of the tavern were an extension of Duule's influence. Notably, Duule's men were far more efficient and enthusiastic in their roles.
Waving off the understandably skittish bartender, Dihsaad shouldered his way through the door that separated the more mannerly patrons from the cutthroats and thugs. Inside the room, lit by a single soot-blackened lamp, the air was thick with stench, smoke, and profanity. As the command structure of a den of thieves was a rather fluid thing, Dihsaad addressed the room as a whole, keeping his message brief.
“Send a message to Duule. Dihsaad may have found his creature.”
#
A message to Duule seldom took long to arrive. Barely three days had passed before a messenger, thoroughly unprepared for the wildfire he was about to spark, arrived at a palatial mansion farther inland. Duule's influence had grown in leaps and bounds in Lain's absence. With it had grown his confidence. After a period of attempting to conduct his business in increasingly secure locations, the banishment of the one foe with the suicidal willingness to turn him in to the authorities gave him a feeling of security. He began to flaunt his wealth, moving in four years from one estate to another, each one larger and more opulent than the last. He conducted his business openly, flaunting his frightening influence upon the underbelly of Tressor with complete disregard to the far less resourceful and less organized authorities of Tressor.
Duule was on the porch of his current residence, sipping from a brandy glass when the messenger arrived on horseback. The young man, recruited chiefly because his downright emaciated frame would do little to slow a horse, marched up to Duule on wobbly legs and declared his cryptic message.
“I have a message for you, sir. Er. Dihsaad found your creature,” he said, his insides not having settled from the ride.
Slowly lowering the brandy glass, Duule looked at his messenger. “Are you certain you have relayed that message properly?”
“Yes. Yes, sir. Dihsaad found your creature.”
He stood. When he began speaking, it was with exaggerated enunciation, but each successive word grew in intensity. “I want you to go back to wherever you got that message. I want you to tell everyone you meet that Dihsaad shall have everyone and everything he needs to find this creature. My forces are at his command. Fast horses, strong men, anything he needs. And tell him I'll be arriving personally in a few days, and when I do, I will be bringing a damned army to find this creature and watch as the heart is torn from that monster's chest. Understand?”
“I . . .”
“Understand!?”
“Yes, sir!” the messenger yelped.
“Then move!”
The messenger fairly leaped from the porch to his horse's back and rode off as though death itself was chasing him. Duule turned to the door of his home, stalking forward and knocking the brandy glass angrily to the ground.
“He dies this time. He dies!”
#
In days, the sum total of Duule's network was turned entirely to the task of finding Lain. Under the guidance of Dihsaad, they swept like flood waters across the land. Sorrel was skilled at hiding any trace of her presence, but with two young children to care for and a legion of highly-motivated individuals searching the land, evidence began to arise. Footprints here. More buried bones there. Dihsaad began to assemble the pieces. There were certainly malthropes. More than one, some of them children. They had spent time in a few different port areas.
Unbeknownst to Lain and Sorrel, the noose was tightening around their necks.
Chapter 32
In the city of Delti, two weeks later, an elf was seated at a desk in his small but respectable home. His name was Glinilos, but somehow the nickname of Goldie had managed to follow him through the years. Spread on the desk before him were maps depicting shipping routes, tables containing dates and values for shipments, and price lists for various services. Absent from any sheet was the name or address of any individuals associated with the shipments. For the most part, the shipments under his supervision were the sort of which the recipients would prefer no records linked them to the items in question. Business was doing well, thanks mostly to the deeply-entrenched war with the north.
With the coming of the war, many vital ores and minerals previously available almost exclusively from the north had suddenly needed to be sourced elsewhere. Things like iron and copper were in horribly short supply. What little supplies of these resources that Tressor could produce were earmarked for the war effort. For the rest of the kingdom, alternative sources needed to be found. Increasingly, those alternative sources had been in the mineral-rich Southern Crescent. Much of the imported ore found its way to the military as well, but people like Goldie could be coerced into providing a steady supply of anything one might find across the sea if the price was right.
Keeping track of such matters and maintaining the necessary network of connections, typically through bribery and partnerships, required a specialized set of skills. Goldie had proven phenomenally well-suited over the years. Though his unfortunate past had left him with a terrible limp and lingering pains, his mind was as sharp as ever. He was currently working long into the night, endeavoring to find room on one of his outgoing ships for a bundle of exquisitely woven rugs that had been purchased by one of his older brothers back on the South Crescent. He took great pains to keep his office private and isolated from his other affairs, and only worked on the most sensitive aspects of his job during those hours in which he was least likely to be disturbed. It was thus a nearly heart-stopping surprise when, without any warning, a voice spoke out from directly behind him.
“Goldie,” Lain said. The elf snapped around and inhaled, ready to scream for help, but Lain was ready for that, seizing the back of Goldie's head with one hand and clamping his mouth with the other. “Do not scream. I come seeking information. Do you understand?”
He nodded. Lain slowly removed his hand.
“Do you remember me?” asked the malthrope.
“You are the mally from the slavery days,” Goldie said.
“I have spoken to Gurruk and Menri in the past. They told me they felt that they owed me a life-debt. They said you would agree.”
Goldie drew in and released an angry breath before grudgingly nodding. “I do.”
“I am told that you are able to smuggle things to South Crescent, and people as well.”
“I can.”
“I want you to take three of my kind as far as you can toward North Crescent. It must be done secretly, and safely.”
“Three malthropes . . .” Goldie said, his face twisting with disgust.
“An adult and two children.”
“That is . . . that is a very difficult request.”
“Can you do it?” Lain asked steadily. There was no threat in his tone, but there was the ring of bone-deep dedication to the task, the willingness to do anything to see it achieved.
“When I smuggle passengers, they travel in disguise. With malthropes, that will not do,” He explained. “But . . . there may be a way.”
He turned to his bundles of manifests and schedules and one by one drew out the tightly-rolled parchment. He flattened them against the table and ran his fingers along the carefully scribed lines.
“Yes . . . I have something that may do. It will not be comfortable.”
“Comfort is not important. I require only safety and secrecy.”
“Very well. There is a ship coming in twenty days. Just north of Delti, you will find a small inlet. Bring these malthropes of yours there an hour before dawn on that day. They will be brought as far as Qualia. It is near the northern tip of South Crescent. From there, your creatures can make their way north by land.”
“And their safety is assured?”
“One does not remain the overseer of an enterprise such as this by losing cargo. For this matter, I will escort the cargo personally to its final destination.”
Lain stepped back, reaching out to snuff the flame of the lantern. “Do this and your debt is paid.
You will forever have my gratitude.” He stepped back into the darkness. “Betray me . . . and I shall take what I am owed.”
With that, he was gone.
#
Days with Sorrel passed quickly. At first, she was concerned that Goldie could not be trusted, but she was nothing if not practical. If she intended to wait until someone she could trust with certainty could take her across the sea, she would never see the Crescents. At Lain's behest, the group made a habit of moving to a new shelter every few nights, in case someone else had taken the bounty and was able to find her trail. Once a temporary home had been selected, the nights and days were theirs.
There were moments, precious and few, when it was as through the long years they had spent apart had never happened at all. Sorrel learned, to her delight, that Lain now spoke Crich fluently. It meant that he at least could share some tales with Reyna and Wren, each of whom knew only a few words of Tresson. Strangely, when she spoke to Lain alone, she insisted on using her broken Tresson. She said it felt better, familiar. It brought back the old days.
The twins were slow to warm to Lain, but they listened in fascination when he spoke, and when his back was turned, they crept near to investigate him. It was the same curiosity he dimly remembered from his youth. For their sake, he pretended not to notice them.
Too soon, the morning of the twentieth day had come. The inlet Goldie spoke of was shallow and marshy, little use for proper shipping or sailing, and thus empty and unused. The four malthropes crouched in a bushy patch of overgrowth and watched the water. A mist hung over its surface, and the deepening gold of the coming dawn was not enough to cut far through it.
“You are sure he will come?” Sorrel asked.
“He will come, or he will answer to me.” Lain reached into his shirt and pulled out the swatch of cloth he'd held for so long. “Take this. When you reach the Crescents safely, give it to Goldie, and give him a message that could only come from you. I will wait for him to return. If he has it, I will know you are safe. If he does not . . .”
