by Jenna Rhodes
“Only one or two, as good allies should. We’ve no time to rest. There is urgency to our visit here.”
“And, I presume, an explanation as to how you found me?” The gold of Abayan’s skin seemed to mingle and glow with the last of the lowering sun as he watched their faces carefully.
“Narskap came to me. As the maker of your weapon, he has a tenuous bond to it. Nothing like the one you share with the hammer, but enough of one that he found you by it.”
“Did he now?” Abayan singled his gaze to rest on Narskap, appraising.
“He does. And because of that, and the sword he wields for me, he came to me and told me of a flaw in the weapons, of a flaw that might be most fatal for you. I listened and decided the best course would be to seek you out, and remedy that flaw.”
“Tell me the flaw.”
Quendius gestured at Narskap to speak. He cleared his dry throat but the first word or so husked out. “My workmanship,” he started, and then began again, “I have erred. The power imbued is not locked within the weapons as it should be.”
“I have a healthy respect for my hammer,” said Diort. “Are you telling me the Demon can break loose?”
“Even so.”
Mmenonrakka loosed upon Kerith would be disaster. Gods and Demons existed upon their own planes, with their own balances, and here was further proof of what Diort had feared from the beginning. Narskap had meddled with those he should never have, and now look what he might face. Diort shifted weight. “What proof have you?”
“Do you doubt him? He talks with Gods and Demons, as no one on this earth has since the Mageborn died. I came to offer my craftsman to repair your weapon, not be reviled by your doubt.”
“It is only.” And Diort closed his mouth then on his retort, not finishing his statement.
Quendius made as if to turn away, pulled his horse’s head down, and gathered the stirrup foot.
“Wait.”
The hot, dry wind off the steppes grew in intensity, swirling about them, snapping Abayan’s banner on the poles about the pavilion. They waited.
“What is it you need to do?”
“Bring him the hammer.”
“It is always on me.” Diort shouldered aside his cloak, pulling the war hammer from his baldric. He hesitated in handing it to Narskap.
“I need it a moment,” Narskap told them. “Then you will hold it until I’ve built a forge fire hot enough to repair it.”
Long moments passed, Diort’s fingers growing white-knuckled as he clenched the haft. Then, he passed it to Narskap.
Narskap took it up, and mounted his horse. Abayan Diort threw his head back as if knowing he’d been taken.
“Now,” said Quendius quietly but firmly. “You will accompany us.”
“To what end?”
“Not yours. Not yet. You will be my guest while we decide your future. Leave your men quartered here.” Quendius took stock of the encampment. “It would be a shame to let all this training go to waste.”
“And when will I know what it is you suspect of me?”
“Soon,” Quendius told him as he mounted up. “Order your horse made ready and pack clothes for winter.”
“They will tear you down if I signal them.”
“Not with Narskap holding the sword.”
“He is one man against many archers.”
Quendius smiled thinly. “The very last thing you want to make him do is drop the sword. He is the only barrier that contains it. None of us would survive if he fell while blooding it.” He gathered his reins. “We need to discuss our plans, Abayan Diort, and consolidate our alliance. You may find this a more pleasant imprisonment than you expect.”
Diort let his breath out in a gust of disgust at himself, and called orders to harness his mount.
Days of summer passed, heat bleeding into the cruelest month, the Dry month, and through it. Even a hot rain, thought Hosmer, as he sweated into his Town Guard tabard, would be welcome. No ice or snow could be brought down from the mountains to chill drinks, as none existed, and no root cellar could be dug deep enough to cool. Yet, with the instinct of his lifetime as a farmer, he could tell that Yellow Moon month, the season of harvest, with its nights holding the edge of fall and winter in it, loomed in the future. His da talked about the apples that would be coming in soon, a fresh new crop, brimming with crisp flavor and juices, and leaves that would drop not from the heat and lack of moisture but simply because it was the time of year for decaying as the days turned to winter and the quiet, muffled beginning of renewal.
The city didn’t seem to notice or anticipate it. Its cycles were bounded on craftsmanship and work and other sensibilities he didn’t understand. Rise early, work hard, drink hard, fall into bed. That seemed to be the only cycle here. For all that, he enjoyed working the streets more than the Conference, where the Vaelinars drifted in every morning, argued with one another long and loud, their voices ringing sharply, their elegant faces in permanent scowls of disagreement, the very air about them smelling as if lightning had just struck nearby. He watched waves of copyists and scribes rushing about, their hands filled with paper and stained with ink, their hair in disarray as if they pulled it in consternation even as they struggled to keep up with the flood of words and treaties.
He watched Sevryn Dardanon as he paced the Warrior Queen in her journeys to and from the Conference. The man noticed him as few did, always nodding. Hosmer knew he’d been by the brewery and press a few times to visit his sisters, but he’d been on duty and so had no idea what passed between them. He and Garner speculated that Sevryn had an interest in Rivergrace, but she’d become withdrawn and stayed that way, working quietly at the shop and at home, talking little and listening much as if she were trying to take in everything about them and impress it deeply within herself, so as never to forget. What could she be forgetting about her own family?
He shifted weight from one boot to another, bringing his mind to the milling crowd outside the hall. He’d begun to know them all by face and attitude. Some were petitioners still hoping to get their needs listened to, and waited for an opening in Last Cause Petitioners’ Day. Others shifted about in the morning and the evening to shout and curse at the Vaelinars as they gathered, bellowing about war and slavery and thievery. Their protests seemed to fall on deaf, if pointed, ears. Frustration boiled as the sun did. His sharp eyes caught a silvery-haired Kernan woman as she reached into a sack at her side, filling her hand with an overripe fruit. He left the steps with a bound and reached her side.
“Don’t be throwing that,” he told her. “Not today and not tomorrow.” His grip closed about her wrist, forcing her to drop it into the dust of the courtyard. Her lip curled at him, her mouth age-wrinkled with missing teeth, and her eyes shrewd.
“They’ll take you, laddy-boy. Put a glamour on you and fill your eyes with magics and sweep you away.”
“Fools, then. The only glamour I’ll be following is the one of a pretty girl.” He released her hand. “I’ll bet you had the boys traipsing around after you, not so long ago.”
That caught her off stride and then she cackled. “Oh, I did, I did!” She winked at him.
“That doesna surprise me at all. I can still see it in you. Now get in out of the sun before the heat does you in, aye?”
She poked a bony finger into his ribs. “I’ll go, but you tell them for us. Tell them they can’t be taking our children off on wild hunts for nothing!”
“I will.”
He watched her leave, a sway to her hobbled walk, her head in the air, before he returned to his place on the hall steps. She took a handful and more with her, all complaining about the elven yet agreeing that it would do no good to bake their heads any more in the heat. As his wide-brimmed hat soon provided the only shade and he watched the crowd from under it, they all began to drift away. They would be back, he knew, in the evening hours after supper and a cup or two of courage and bitterness, to shout at the hall and its inhabitants again. At least he didn’
t have to stand boot-deep in rotting vegetables and fruit that day.
Buttennoff came by perhaps a candlemark later, judging from the slow ascent of the sun, with a knotted cloth napkin, and a mug in his hand. Hailing Hosmer, he passed the bundles over. “Your mother sent you lunch.”
“From the shop? How kind of her.”
Buttennoff grunted. They both knew he’d been at the brewery to talk to Nutmeg and had taken the lunch from there, as Lily spent every daylight hour at the shop. “How are my sisters today?”
“The tall one stays quiet, but Meg talked my ear off before I walked her to work.”
“Good thing you had an extra ear to keep your hat from falling down to your neck.”
His friend grunted again, watching as Hosmer unwrapped his cold meat and cheese to eat. “Think she’d come to Summersend with me?”
“She likes to dance. Ask her.”
“All she talks about is that Jeredon, the queen’s brother. It’s like a mote stuck in her eye.” Buttennoff leaned unhappily against a pillar.
Whenever Hosmer had been about, she’d filled the air talking about Butterknife, but he wasn’t about to tell his friend that. Women were women and Buttennoff had to learn the hard way about them, just as he would be doing if he had time off duty to do any studying. He crunched a roll of crusty bread, soft and flavorful in the center. He tossed the last of the crust down into the courtyard in scraps for birds scattered about to dive down and steal.
“She likes dancing,” he repeated stubbornly. “How could she not want to go to Summersend?”
“True.” Buttennoff scrubbed at his chin, then straightened alertly. “What’s this?” He jabbed his thumb at the Bolger making his way across the courtyard toward them, leather vest open over his chest, a scarred veteran of a Bolger, large leather sack tied to his belt and hanging over one lean hip.
“Dunno,” Hosmer told him, because he didn’t, and had no idea. He planted his feet in the Bolger’s way. “Halt.”
The Bolger halted. Looked him up and down as if taking his measure, and that made the hairs on the back of Hosmer’s neck bristle a little. “Inside.”
“Not today. Last Cause Petitioners’ is on the morrow, anyway.”
“And no Bolgers for that,” Buttennoff added. “Just people.”
The Bolger gave him a dismissive glance. He put his hand out to Hosmer. “Inside.”
“Can’t do. You’ve no business in there.”
The Bolger thumped his chest. “Rufus. Tell Sevryn man here.”
“Hey, now. We’re not your servants.” Buttennoff swelled up, but Hosmer put his hand out to the guardsman. “Why not, I’ll do it. Wait here with him?”
“The queen will have your head for it.”
“I’ll just have a look-see. I won’t interrupt anything.” He nodded to the Bolger. “I’ll be back.”
The Bolger inclined his head, spread his feet wide, and settled into a firmly planted stance on the stairs. Hosmer left the two of them staring into each other’s eyes, the Bolger seeming a little amused.
Deep in the inner recesses of the hall, where the wings held the smaller meeting rooms, he found the queen’s audiences with its guard in the hallway, and by luck or fortune, Sevryn was talking quietly with one of them when he turned the corner. Hosmer hailed him with a wave.
“By the morrow,” Sevryn said to him. “The sun’s only been up a few candlemarks and you’re already red with its glow. I’ll have an ointment sent for that.”
“We Dwellers favor a rosy complexion, m’lord Dardanon. Have you time to give me?”
“Always. Nothing wrong? The lasses all right?” Sevryn joined him quickly, brows lowered.
“They’re fine. I’ve someone looking for you, not sure if you want him sent away or what.”
“Queen Lariel’s not taking any visitors today.”
“Not the queen, sir, you. A Bolger who names himself Rufus.”
Sevryn’s open expression immediately smoothed. “Bring him around to the alley courtyard, know the one? It’s shaded this time of day, and quiet. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Hosmer bowed and went back downstairs to escort the Bolger where he’d been directed. The long lines of the hall slanted over the small yard, where carriages and coaches sometimes unloaded, but no one lingered about now, with everyone inside and already working. Rufus trotted by him with a lope that suggested he ran as much as he rode, the sack thumping at his hip.
Sevryn slipped out without a word, taking the servants’ corridors and going out the small side door to where Hosmer and Rufus waited. He looked little different than he had the last time they’d met, although perhaps a bit more weathered by the sun. Sevryn waved Hosmer to stand down. Whatever Rufus wanted, he didn’t fear an attack.
“Well met,” he said.
“You remember.”
“You helped in a fight. I wouldn’t forget that.”
“You keep her safe?”
“Her family keeps her safe,” he answered the Bolger, his throat tightening a little at the thought of Rivergrace.
“Good. I watch her, little.” And he held his hand off the ground, as though he would pet a toddler’s head, and Sevryn blinked back his surprise at that.
“What is this all about?” demanded Hosmer.
Rufus jerked his head. “I promise Sevryn man remember.” His hands went to his weapons belt.
Hosmer had his short sword out and at his chin before he could move any further. Rufus froze in place, breath growling in his chest.
“Hosmer,” Sevryn said. “Stand down. Any attack would have come by surprise.”
Hosmer drew his sword away slowly, carefully. Rufus kept his hands on his belt until Sevryn gave him a nod. Then, quickly, with hands misshapen by smithing and by age, he undid the laces on his large sack, to give it over to Sevryn.
“What’s this?” He opened the sack to look inside, and saw the top of a large, widemouthed jar. It took both hands to lift it out, the sack sloughing away like an old, used skin and falling to the ground. Balancing the bottom on one thigh, he opened the jar to see a thing immersed in scented oil, hair matted to its skull. It rolled as his hands shook, revolving slowly, turning until the thing’s face bobbed upward, aquamarine gem encrusted in a bloodied earlobe.
He looked at Gilgarran’s severed head, the eyes dulled but open and staring back.
Chapter Sixty-Four
THE WORLD CRASHED DOWN on Sevryn. He fell to his knees under its weight, Gilgarran staring at him, memories cascading down in an avalanche of pain and horror, of betrayal and survival. He heard a low, keening moan in his ears, felt his throat constrict. His hands convulsed about the jar. He knew everything.
Then he knew nothing.
He woke with his forehead on a scarred, splintered wooden table smelling of beer, ale, and garlic. Sevryn rolled onto his cheekbone and stared out of one eye. His dim view of the surroundings threatened to swim about in a sickening, dizzy manner, and he shuddered. A sodden cloth fell from the back of his neck as he did so, and he heard Hosmer saying, “Sunstroke. Nasty thing. It’s dark and quiet in here, and you should be drinkin’. Weak beer or water.”
A clay jug scraped the table by his hand. Sevryn sat up with a groan. Another sodden cloth fell from his head to his lap. He left it lying there as he wrapped his hands about the jug and stared into it to make sure nothing looked back before hefting it to drink. It went down his throat, and he choked before he remembered to swallow. Hosmer thumped his shoulder.
“Where am I?”
“I think this one is called Th’ Lying Wife. Not sure, one tavern looks th’ same as another to me. It was closest.”
“Rufus?”
“The Bolger took his sack and left.”
“What happened?”
“I was going to ask you that one, m’lord.” Hosmer looked kindly at him. “Drink some more. I thought you were going t’ die on that spot.”
“I think maybe I did.” Sevryn took another deep swill, and the water
flowed into him, not cold by any means but wet and alive. Eighteen years of shackles, years of the most menial servitude and fear and loathing, working the mines, training men he neither knew nor respected how to fight, how to kill. Moments he could see crystal clear surged through his mind, pushing, shoving their way through, one after another. He swallowed hard. “Who knows I’m here?”
“No one. Seemed t’ be no one else’s business.”
“Thanks for that.”
“He had a head in that jar. Severed from its neck.”
“I know. It came from a man who took me off the streets, treated me like his son, and taught me what I needed to know.”
“I can put word out for the Bolger. We’ll bring him in for the murder.”
Sevryn said, “No. He didn’t do it.”
“You know who did, then?”
“Someone beyond the reach of the Calcort Town Guard.” He put his hand out and clasped Hosmer’s wrist on the table. “Thank you anyway.”
“It’ll be the Warrior Queen’s business then, I’m guessing.”
He nodded slowly. If he told her. There were many things he no longer told her. He would have to leave her side.
He got to his feet. Hosmer jumped to catch him as he swayed. “Maybe another mark or two in here, m’lord.”
“No. No, I’ve lost far too much time already.” He leaned on the compact, sturdy Dweller, reckoning what to do and how. “Do you know the healer’s college, the small inn on Green Lantern Way?”
“I think so. A good place for you the rest of this day.”
“It seems wise. Are you going back on watch?”
“I traded my shift. I’ll go back after dinner hour, work late.”
Sevryn hesitated before asking, “Could you bring Lady Rivergrace to see me?”
The muscles under his arm bunched a bit as if deciding and not favorably, then Hosmer shrugged. “I will. But you treat her fairly, m’lord, or I will find you wherever you are.”
“I understand.” And he did.
Hesitantly, Rivergrace stepped into the inner halls of the building. She lifted both hands to her veils, pulling them off her face and letting them tumble from the back of her head. She looked up quickly as Sevryn appeared on a threshold.
