Elias grunted, but his attention was still inside the jailhouse with Macallister, though the change of subject did much to calm him. “The duster as well,” Elias said, absently. “Macallister’s enchanted dagger bounced right off it.”
Bryn inspected the duster. She ran her hands along the side, probing the material. She felt Elias stiffen, but pretended not to notice. “It looks like there are interconnected plates of some kind on the inside of the coat. It’s serviceable as light armor. These three items alone would fetch a small fortune on the open market.”
Bryn looked up at Elias. His attention appeared to be fixed on some distant point far over her shoulder. “Elias? Are you listening to me?”
Elias offered her a thin smile. “I’m sorry Bryn. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Penny for your thoughts?” Elias cocked his head and transfixed her with his black eyes. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Only that you reminded me of my mother just now. She used to say that. I guess it’s a popular saying but...” Elias looked down at his feet. The rage that had sustained him for days suddenly blew out of him, and he felt at once alone and afraid.
“Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind or just stand there?” she said, in what Elias had begun to realize was typical Bryn fashion, placing a hand on her hip and arching an eyebrow at him.
Elias found himself warming to Bryn’s particular kind of concern. Looking at her crinkled, mock-serious expression, he found it a little harder to feel sorry for himself. He forced another smile, but this time it came a little easier. “I just don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve stormed the estate of the most powerful man in fifty leagues and taken him down without much of a leg to stand on. I don’t know what repercussions this will bring down on me. Macallister has powerful friends.”
“And so, Elias, do you. Besides, we’ll get a signed confession out of Macallister before the day’s out.”
Elias shrugged. “Then there’s this business with the Scarlet Hand. You heard what Phinneas said, they never leave loose ends.” Elias paused, and came to the heart of the matter. “I’m worried for Danica. She’s all I have left. I’m in a bit over my head here. I’m just a distiller, who is very lucky he didn’t get killed bringing in his father’s murderers.”
“You are about as much a distiller as I am a handmaiden.”
“I’m an excellent distiller.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Bryn looked him dead in the eye. “What would your father do?”
Elias returned her gaze, his eyes at once hard and smoldering. “He would protect his family and his land. He would see justice done, at any cost.”
Bryn looked hard at him, and in the ardor of that calculating stare, Elias realized that for all her glib remarks and affectations, Bryn Denar was a cunning woman. “There you have it. Only you’re not official—yet. As a daughter of House Denar I can usually see that my will is done, but a Marshal doesn’t serve under the purview of the Constabulary, a Magistrate, or even a Duchy. A Marshal enforces crown law and has jurisdiction throughout all Galacia. Only the crown can appoint a Marshal. The queen’s cousin has the queen’s ear, but, as you say, you are but a distiller.”
Elias saw what Bryn was doing, but a fire rose in him nevertheless. While mere moments before he wished for nothing so much as a return to a simpler time when his biggest worry was what to make for dinner, he realized that he could never return to his life as it once was.
Elias adjusted his baldric, so that his sword rested on his back for riding. “Perhaps,” Elias said as he untied Comet’s reigns from the tether post, “but I would think at the least the queen would care to meet the man who uncovered the sect behind the greatest threat to the crown since the war. After all, I am the only man in recorded history to have killed a ghost.”
Bryn arched an eyebrow. “You’re coming to Peidra with me?”
Elias mounted Comet and looked down at the bemused tax bursar. “Yes ma’am, I reckon I am. Now, let’s get moving. We have a lot to do, and not a lot of time in which to do it.”
†
“I’m going with you,” Danica said and crossed her arms.
“Out of the question,” Elias replied. “You are still recovering from your injuries and—”
“And what? It might be dangerous. I am just a girl after all.”
“I was going to say that you will be missed at the Academy.” Elias sat back and took a breath. Danica glared at him as if she could bend his will with her eyes alone.
The party once again found themselves at the doctor’s table. Neither Elias nor Danica could bear to stay in the house they had shared with their father for so long. Moreover, both he and Danica still required the doctor’s ministrations for their myriad injuries. Phinneas for one had given up hope that Elias’s wound would ever close, but truth be told, Elias thought the doctor happy to have the company, as he extended an invitation to Bryn and her retainers as well. He had also taken on Lar, who refused to leave his friends alone to their grief.
“You said you can’t go back to distilling whiskey after all that has happened,” Danica said. “So how do you expect me to return to the Academy as if my world hasn’t just been upturned? I’ll have nothing to come home to if you’re off playing lawman.” Her words cut into Elias. The others at the table busied themselves with studying their mugs of coffee. “I can’t ignore what’s happened anymore than you, and I’m just as hungry for vengeance.”
“I’ve already lost you once, I couldn’t bear it to happen a second time.”
“And you think I feel any different? Tarnation, Elias, we’re safest together. Dad taught me to handle myself, and I’m not without my uses. I am a healer after all.”
Elias didn’t disagree on any particular point, but was hesitant all the same. His primary concern was for her psychological well being, although he would never tell her that. While Danica seemed her old self again, he couldn’t exorcize the memory of her delirium and fevered ravings. The psychic wounds inflicted by Slade might manifest themselves in unforeseen and dire ways. Despite his misgivings, he had no right to stop her, and if he was honest with himself he would prefer to have her with him.
Instead of arguing Elias settled on taking a sip of his coffee and exchanged glances with Bryn who offered him a spare nod. “I suppose it would be easier to keep you out of trouble if you’re with me.”
Danica flashed her wry smile and leaned back. “So, it’s settled then.”
Phinneas cleared his throat. “You have something to add, Doctor?” asked Elias.
“Danica’s training as a healer is not yet complete,” Phinneas said.
“I am not going back to the Academy, Phinneas Crowe,” Danica said. “I’ve made up my mind and that’s that.”
Phinneas held up a hand. “I’ve known you long enough, child, to realize there’s no changing your mind once it’s set on something. What I mean to say is that I am coming with you.”
“What?” the Duana siblings said as one.
“Danica,” the doctor said, “you are touched, like your brother. You have your mother’s natural intuition and the healer’s touch. Like Elias, long have your gifts slumbered, but recent events have activated your latent abilities. You will need training to learn how to cope with them.”
“Phinneas,” Elias said, “you’ve served Galacia long and well in the war. You owe her no further debt. Are you so eager to give up what you’ve built here?”
Phinneas locked his large, clay-brown eyes on Elias. “I don’t have a family. You, Danica, and your father are the closest I’ve ever come. To honor the man I loved like a brother, and a promise made long ago, it’s my duty to watch over you now as if you were my own. I’ve got one last adventure left in me.”
Elias reached across the table and squeezed Phinneas’s hand. “We’re fortunate to have each other”
“Don’t think you’ll be leaving me behind!” cried Lar. “I’m coming too.”
Elias shook
his head, but he found a reluctant smile crept over his face despite his best efforts to suppress it. He flashed Bryn another look and she threw up her hands, her cobalt eyes sparkling with a mischievous glint. “It looks like you’ve put together quite a company, Marshal.”
“So,” said Lar, “do I get a badge too?” Danica reached out at once and slapped Lar on the back of the head. “What!?” he cried.
“We’re up and leaving everything we’ve ever known,” Danica said, “travelling halfway across the country, hunting an assassin order that no one else even knows exists with blood and vengeance on the mind—and all you have to say is, do I get a badge?”
Lar grinned at her sheepishly.
The entire party erupted in laughter, and Elias, for his part, surrendered himself to the tide of good humor. Like adolescents in their cups for the first time, once they started they couldn’t stop, as the combined stresses of the recent week expulsed from them in a cathartic fit of giggling.
Then Elias felt a change in the room.
A peculiar sensation washed over him—a tingling along his spine, which crawled up his neck, to the crown of his head, and then along his arms, raising goose-bumps in its wake—but it was one with which he was rapidly becoming more familiar, and it meant one thing: Magic.
Elias scanned the room, but remained still, not wanting to tip off any imminent threat that he was aware of it. He had the distinct feeling that unseen eyes watched him. He slid a hand surreptitiously toward the hilt of his sword, which he had hung on the back of his chair.
“Elias, is something the matter?” asked Danica, who always seemed to sense his changing moods.
Elias considered coming clean about his premonitory feelings, but decided against it. “No,” he said after a handful of heart-beats, when the prickly sensation faded. “I just forgot how good it feels to laugh.”
“So, it’s settled then,” Danica said. “We’re all going to Peidra, even Phinneas. I hope you can keep up old man.”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine I’ll have all that much trouble, young lady. It doesn’t seem too long ago that I rode with your father. We were off saving the world long before you were a sparkle in his eye.”
“And what of Macallister?” asked Lar.
“He knows nothing of a plot against the crown,” answered a grim-faced Elias. “Slade’s hire was one of convenience, at least for Macallister. As for the fiend, his motives died with him. Slade didn’t seem the type to spill all his beans, even if he did think he had me dead to rights. My heart tells me he had other reasons for coming to Knoll Creek than just claiming this sword.”
“While Macallister may not be guilty of treason,” said Bryn, “he will still answer for his crimes. He may have an in with the Magistrate, but he doesn’t have one of these.” She reached into her shirt and pulled out a golden chain on which hung a signet ring bearing the royal seal of House Denar. “I’ve sent my retainers to the Magistrate with a signed confession from Macallister. The Magistrate is bound by law, as is the house that vests him power, to sentence Macallister. His hold over this town is at an end.”
“I guess the only question now,” said Lar, “is since Macallister is out, and Elias is leaving Knoll Creek, who’s going to make the whiskey?”
For the second time that day, and in the last week, Elias laughed.
†
Sarad Mirengi sat cross-legged on the floor of his private study in the center of a scrying circle.
The Prelate laid his hands on either side of an Ovular mirror. The runes and sigils engraved into the edge of the glass glowed with crimson light as he focused his will and chanted in the thick, guttural language of his masters. “Show to me he who slew Slade of Kezia, son of Vormir.”
Scrying was a demanding art and beyond most arcanists even if they could manage to uncover the secrets of the lost lore. Without a strong energetic or personal connection to the individual or situation involved it proved all but impossible. Sarad hoped that Slade’s strong link with the man who had slain him would provide enough of an energetic connection for him to use it as a conduit for his spell. He just needed a quick glimpse.
At first the scrying spell faltered and in the mirror Sarad saw only his own striking, almost feminine features, distorted by the slow churn of arcane energies coalescing in the glass. He narrowed his concentration and drew deep on the reservoirs of his power. The churning sped and soon his reflection disappeared and in its place formed a vortex of red energy streaked with black.
Sarad felt his consciousness drawn into the vortex, which calmed and wavered like a pool of water after a gale had disturbed its placid surface. In the rippling surface a face formed and then a few environmental details. Sarad examined the face carefully and took note of its features, filing them carefully in his memory. The man appeared to be in his mid to late twenties and had a strong jaw line, black hair, and black eyes. He wore a brown duster in the fashion of the Marshal. His figure was largely concealed by his attire and the table at which he sat, but Sarad estimated from the breadth of his shoulders and angular features that Slade’s killer was an athletic man.
The man laughed at some silent joke and then abruptly stiffened. He scanned his surroundings with hawk-like eyes.
He can see me! Sarad thought, at once alarmed. The Prelate attempted desperately to widen his view, and learn more about his quarry, but the Marshal covertly reached his hand toward the folds of his duster, perhaps to produce an armament or talisman. In either case, Sarad could ill afford either retribution or discovery, and his hold on the spell was faltering.
He surrendered his grasp on the spell, gleaning only the shadowy forms of some few others who sat at the rustic wooden table. Sarad frowned. This meant that this Marshal, whoever he may be, was trained in the arcane arts. He should have expected as much. How else could he have defeated Slade, whose own command over the arcane knew few rivals.
Slade’s final, cryptic words haunted the Prelate: The Marshal rides. Beware. Sleeping lions have been woken. From the south they rise. At the least he now knew that this man was a Marshal and stationed in the south of Galacia. With some help from the Quarter Century War and House Denar’s dwindling coffers, the Scarlet Hand had done much to eradicate the Marshal Corps. Despite their efforts, it seemed at least a few of the pesky order, so reminiscent of the knights of antiquity, had survived to spread their lore and skill.
Sarad knew he would have to act swiftly to eliminate this threat. He could ill afford to have his plans upset by an upstart from the South.
†
Rafe Kaifess smiled as he felt the sending.
The gnarled piece of black stone that hung around his neck grew cold, indicating his Lord had business with him. Rafe increased his pace as he made his way down the central thoroughfare in Abbington and toward the modest lodgings he had acquired. He itched in anticipation of the mission his masters would have for him. He prayed that whatever it may be he would be allowed to employ his special skills.
Rafe did not notice the ire of those he brushed aside in his haste, or the merchants extolling the virtues of their wares, or even the feel of the cobblestones beneath his feet. He swept through the front door of the Inn, but slowing to observe the courtesy of nodding at the inquisitive Innkeeper and bidding him a good day, before he dashed up the stairs to his bedchamber at a near run.
Rafe knelt on the floor and took the frigid black stone in hand. He closed his eyes, and with the aid of the talisman sank at once into a trance. I am here, my Lord.
Rafe, I have a special task for you.
As you command, so shall it be.
There is a man I need found. He is, from the intelligence I have gathered, in the South.
Rafe listened attentively as Lord Mirengi described the man.
He is a Marshal, which may help you locate him, Lord Mirengi continued. It will prove difficult, for I have not been able to discern his exact location, but I have faith in you.
You wish me to kill this m
an, my Lord?
Yes. However, if possible, capture him first. Learn what knowledge he has of us and if he has any allies. I chose you for your proximity to his presumed location, but primarily for your particular talent for extracting information.
Rafe’s mouth grew wet with hunger. It would be my pleasure, my Lord.
Learn what you can, but my primary wish is that this threat be neutralized. Be warned, this man may have allies and is not to be taken lightly. He has already slain one of our best operatives, and your Lieutenant, Slade Kezia.
Rafe bristled at this news. Slade was a good man. I will see that this Marshal pays dearly for this affront.
Make all possible haste. We have worked too hard to infiltrate the Galacian political arena to have our plans waylaid by a rogue Marshal. We cannot afford any loose ends.
Consider it done, Lord Mirengi. I will not fail you.
Chapter 14
Leavetakings
They left three days after their palaver at Phinneas’s house. They took the most direct route, riding through the town proper. Elias realized this would draw attention, but to do otherwise would invite speculation and rumor. The party struck quite the sight as they road through the town and drew more than a small crowd.
Elias had donned his full Marshal regalia, from hat to gloves. Lar had retired his wood axe and acquired a more suitable long blade, which he wore on his back in the Southern fashion. Danica traded in her Academy whites for a brown riding skirt and a cream blouse. Still somewhat drawn from her ordeal, she had an ethereal look, which struck a stark contrast to the vibrant, towering Lar who rode at her side in brown breeches, a white homespun shirt, and a hunter green cloak.
Phinneas looked dashing in a linen v-neck pullover tucked into black trousers. A vermillion cloak, a vestige from his service in the war, lent him the aspect of a matured swashbuckler.
Bryn had donned dark riding pants and a blouse of House Denar crimson that opened at her creamy throat. She brazenly wore her damascened rapier at her waist and had sheathed daggers tied to either thigh with leather cord.
Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 16
