by C S Vass
“Fiona,” Harken looked deeply uncomfortable. “If… if the worst should happen, with Geoff—”
“If the worst should happen I’ll thank you again for everything you’ve done to help us. I’m in your debt Harken, and I know that you’re doing everything you can to make sure that Geoff will be okay.”
Harken granted her a warm smile. “Of course. Thank you.”
“Fiona!”
Fiona turned and saw Jet approach from around the back of the house.
“I need to speak with you,” Jet said. Harken glanced back and forth between them and left them to to speak.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Another meeting, Fiona. Tonight. That is, if you were serious about what you said to me earlier.”
“Of course I was serious about that.” Fiona almost added that she would want to see how Raejo would react before doing anything rash, but that didn’t need to be said now. She didn’t want Jet to think she was creating a way for herself to avoid helping him. She decided that she should hold her silence until meeting the rest of this mysterious group of rebels Jet worked with.
“Good,” he said. “That’s what I was hoping for. All the same. I have to ask you once more, Fiona. Only because the rest of them will ask as well and be more insistent than I am. Why do you want to help us? Even if you can’t leave immediately, you could stay here with my father. He wouldn’t kick you out for not wanting to be a part of this.”
“I know,” Fiona said. “But all the same… it’s just something that I need to do. Is that not enough?”
“It’s enough for me,” Jet said slowly. Fiona could tell he was growing uncomfortable by prying into her affairs. But all the same, what could she tell him? That it was a better way to spend her remaining time before inevitably dying.
“I’ll need more than that, Fiona. They all will if I bring an outsider to this. It’s just… you understand how it could look suspicious. Raejo has so much money. You’re clearly highly skilled, and you just show up out of the blue from another continent and say that you’re on our side? What’s stopping the others from saying that he hired you to spy on us?”
“I don’t know, Jet,” she said. “Call it justice if you want. Call it revenge. I feel like ever since I landed on Morrordraed I don’t really have a reason for anything. I’m just taking things one step at a time but the road I’m walking on is shrouded in fog, and I can’t see where it’s taking me.”
Jet frowned while he slowly chewed his lip. Clearly he was looking for something more assuring than that.
“Fiona, what’s going on with you? Ever since we came back from Naerumi you’ve been… different. You’ve been alternating between looking like you want to cry and like you want to punch someone in the face. I’m just confused. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I don’t like it. What happened between the two of you while I was gone?”
“Nothing,” Fiona said flatly. “We got what we went there for. She assured us we would have her blessing if there’s fighting in the future.”
“We got what we went there for, or I did?” He took a step closer, his face torn between worry and suspicion. “Fiona, I need you to tell me what she said to you.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you’ll have no part in the meeting tonight, or anything else to do with our rebellion.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but stopped herself. Why was she so angry at the exclusion? This wasn’t her fight. She was doing this out of kindness, wasn’t she? Why did she care so much?
Fiona didn’t have the answers to those questions, and she found her lack of insight into her own motivations deeply troubling. When she had pursued her brother across Tellos, she knew exactly what she was struggling for and why. What was so different about this? Was it possible that since Rodrick had slipped out of reach she was simply replacing that conflict with a new one? And if she was, what did that mean for her? What did it say about who she was?
She turned away from Jet feeling dirty. She didn’t ask to be thrust into this situation. If Rukaro and his damn pirates knew how to steer a ship through a storm, she never would have been in this mess in the first place.
“Fiona, you haven’t answered me.”
She sighed. What did it matter if he knew or not, anyway? “Listen, it’s complicated. All I can really tell you is that I’m sick. Naerumi is the only one who is capable of healing me, and that’s why I sought her out. Happy?”
The suspicion in Jet’s face lessened somewhat while he looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “You’re sick? What kind of sickness?”
“Listen, you don’t need to concern yourself over it. I didn’t want to tell you but you kept insisting. So there it is. I have an illness, and that’s why I went to Naerumi. She can’t heal me. My days are numbered and I’d rather not talk about it.”
A look of understanding slowly crept across Jet’s face. “I don’t get it. I thought you told me she did heal you. Why didn’t she?”
Fiona felt no temptation to tell him of the choice she made in the psychic’s house.
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “I guess the great Naerumi isn’t so great after all. I don’t want to keep talking about it, okay?”
She could tell that Jet wanted to ask another question, but he bit his lip and held his silence. “Alright,” he said at last. “I’m sorry for prying. But you have to understand, the others will ask questions. The more we can tell them the smoother everything will go. I just don’t want any unnecessary distractions.”
Jet looked as if he were about to say something else, but when Fiona looked at him expectantly, he held his silence.
Finally he said, “Listen, I have some things to do before the meeting begins. I’ll be back here in a few hours, and the two of us can go together. I’m…” the look in his eyes was deeply troubled. “I’m grateful for your assistance,” he finished lamely.
Fiona nodded. “I’ll see you when you return then.”
Jet departed to fulfill whatever tasks he had to and left Fiona to wander down to a stream behind Harken’s house. She wasn’t quite ready to go back inside and face Geoff. It wasn’t right. The old knight deserved to leave this world in comfort, surrounded by his friends in the city he had lived a long life defending. Instead he was dying painfully in a swamp across the ocean, and she was the reason why.
They never should have come to Morrordraed, Fiona realized. The only things there for either of them were ghosts and disappointment. Putting a hand in the muddy stream, Fiona thought back on everything that had brought her there.
Nothing had felt real in her life ever since Rodrick killed Helena Fiercewind and betrayed Haygarden. She had spent long years as if trapped in a nightmare, and now it was all coming to an end. She realized that she hadn’t thought much about Rodrick since beginning this new journey to find Naerumi. Perhaps it served as a suitable distraction, or perhaps she just didn’t have the energy to care anymore.
She wondered where her brother was, but thinking of him didn’t bring the same starving rage that it used to. She doubted that back on Tellos she would have been able to part with Rodrick’s dragon-pommel blade, though she couldn’t have said why. But now, here on Morrordraed, all of that was coming to an end. They had failed in their quest, and she would never see her brother again.
With surprise Fiona realized that tears were falling down her cheeks. Was she sad that she was dying, or sad that she would never be able to take revenge on Rodrick? It was hard to tell because she didn’t feel any emotion at all. Did her body know something her mind didn’t, or was she simply growing sensitive now that she had a moment by herself?
Ultimately she decided it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the luxury to sit there wallowing in her own mysterious feelings. She and Geoff were still both alive, and she had a purpose to fulfill while in this strange land. Resolving herself to do everything in her power to bring Lord Raejo’s tyranny to an end, Fiona wiped her eyes and stoo
d up.
There was still time before the meeting to sit with her friend.
Chapter Twelve
Jet returned shortly after sundown. There was an awkward tension between the two of them, and Fiona was certainly not going to address it. She suspected that Jet regretted prying into her reasons for seeking out Naerumi as much as he regretted not pushing her to fully explain everything once he had.
On the way he told her that the meeting was to be between several delegates from each of the eight villages in Lord Raejo’s province. They would certainly discuss Greythor’s death, as he was well known throughout the province, and what an appropriate reaction to it might be. If all went well, each of them would agree to return to their villages and recruit people willing to fight so that they could have an army-in-waiting to take on the provincial lord’s men.
“The biggest problem,” Jet said as they walked to the meeting location, “is that it will be difficult to get us all to agree on a unified plan. If half of us are ready to plan an attack and half of us want to wait and see what Lord Raejo does, you can be certain that nothing will get done.”
Fiona listened patiently while Jet explained bits and pieces about each of the villages, who their delegates were, what their concerns would likely be, and a hodgepodge of other random information that she was having trouble keeping in her head.
“Don’t worry about the little things,” Jet said. “You’re here because you’re good in a fight, I trust you, and you want to help. It’s good enough for me, and it’ll be good enough for the rest of them.”
Fiona nodded, hoping he was right.
The meeting was to take place in an inn whose owner was friendly to their cause called Wolfskull. When they walked inside Fiona saw right away that there was no need to ask how Wolfskull got its name. Mounted above the hearth was a demon of a wolf skull, so large that it looked huge even for a bear skull. Laughing at her wide eyes, the innkeeper explained.
“My grandfather fled from a civil war in his homeland long ago and came to this swamp.” He cleaned a metal tankard while his laughing blue eyes lit up. Clearly it was a story he enjoyed telling. “He was thinking about moving on when he found a wolf three times bigger than any he had ever known. Well, maybe the wolf was full that day because my grandfather didn’t end up in its belly. So he started worshipping the damn thing, bringing it chickens and goat legs and such. He built this inn and on the day it was finished his wolf god died, so he picked the bones clean and mounted its head. You’ll be looked after well here at Wolfskull.”
Jet rolled his eyes while Fiona listened politely. She got the impression Jet had heard the story many times before.
The innkeeper looked around and then leaned in closely to them. “But you didn’t come here to hear stories, did you? You came to make them.” He slipped a small key into Jet’s hand. “In the basement, friend. You came in seeking a room and didn’t have the coin so I turned you out, and I’ll gut any man who claims otherwise. Understand?”
Jet nodded. Taking Fiona by the arm he guided her through the maze of tables, discreetly unlocked the basement door, and descended.
Downstairs a group of some twenty-odd men had assembled. They were in a large room with a stone floor. Barrels of ale had been pushed to the side to make room for them to assemble on the floor, sitting on their butts like school children. Fiona quickly noticed that every person there was armed.
“You’ve decided to come,” said a bald man with fierce eyes and a long curved sword at his side. “And as promised you’ve even brought a friend.”
Jet nodded. “This is Fiona. She has an interest in seeing us succeed in our struggle against Raejo. She’s very good with a sword. I trust her with my life.”
To Fiona’s surprise the men in the room nodded. She had been ready to be forced to fiercely defend herself. The last time she was in such a situation it had been in Duke Redfire’s court, and the old duke made sure to humiliate her at every turn.
“We thank you for being here, Fiona,” the bald man said. “I would introduce myself, but it may be safer if the rest of us conceal our names. Please forgive the rudeness. Jet tells me you come from Tellos. Your business here is your own, and that does not concern me, but tell me, why do you want to help us?”
He looked at her with unblinking eyes. While there was nothing hostile about the man, there was nothing friendly either. His face was a completely unreadable mask.
“I want to help Jet,” Fiona said. “My companion and I were shipwrecked upon entering Morrordraed. He’s grievously ill and Jet and his father took him in and are caring for him even now. As such I will do what I can to be of service to Jet.”
Fiona had prepared her answer to that question with Jet on their walk to Wolfskull. The response was both simple and true, so they hoped nobody would push her much harder on it.
“It is very admirable that you would seek to help your host,” the bald man conceded. “Yet it leaves me one worry. You may be devoted to Jet, but that is very different from being devoted to our cause. What if things should become difficult? What if Jet should die? Will you no longer be concerned with us?”
“Fiona is—”
“She can answer for herself,” the bald mad said firmly, cutting Jet off.
“I can,” Fiona agreed. “While it’s true I haven’t been here long, I know an injustice when I see one. Lord Raejo’s men are out of control. I cannot allow good people like Jet and his father to live under such tyranny. As for the fact that I’m Tellosian… it may not mean much. I’m sure you’re all aware that the Imperial government has greatly increased their border security. I was smuggled out of Tellos by pirates, but they’re all dead now. I have no way to get home. For all I know, Morrordraed is my new home.”
Those final words stung Fiona bitterly as she said them, but what choice did she have? Now was not the time to hold anything back. If the group decided that she couldn’t be trusted she wouldn’t be able to help them at all and even worse, it might throw suspicion on Jet as well. It was better to play it safe and do everything in her power to make sure that they accepted her.
The bald leader watched her with unblinking eyes after she spoke. She felt as if he was searching for any trace of dishonesty in her face. “What say the rest of you?” he asked after a few moments.
“Your reasons for wanting to help us are well enough,” a low voice said. Fiona turned and saw a man with a long ponytail that fell down his back and sharp eyes had spoke. “But if you are truly in this for the altruism then it would seem safe to assume you’re not going to ask us for any favors after the fighting? Is that the case, Fiona, or are you really helping us in hopes of winning some boon?”
“I ask nothing in return,” Fiona said, confidently meeting his eyes. The man nodded.
“I mislike this,” a sharp voice said. “The risks outweigh the rewards tenfold.” This time the one who spoke was a short, heavyset man with a piggish nose and narrow eyes. “Should we accept this aid, then we get one warrior along with the risk that it will be the end to everything we have built. If we turn her away, we’re safe. Everyone else here I know and trust. Why should we bring in an outsider?”
“A fair point,” the bald man said. He turned his attention back towards Fiona. “Can you provide an answer to that?”
Fiona looked to Jet, but there was nothing on his face except a look of mild anxiety. “I’ve already seen your faces,” Fiona said, hesitantly. “If you were going to turn me away it should have been before I even got here. If I am a spy, then now I know what you all look like. Better to keep me close in that case, isn’t it?”
“We could simply kill you,” the bald man said calmly.
Fiona blinked. “I’d be glad not to be in your service in that case. It would make you little better than Raejo.”
“Enough with your barbarism,” Jet interjected. “This is absurd. Fiona has demonstrated her bravery and loyalty to me at every possible chance. It’s one thing to question her, but I will not have you
throw around such reckless threats without consequence. We have crossed the line of if you trust her into the territory of if you trust me. I am willing to put my life in Fiona Sacrosin’s hands. I will take full responsibility for her. If you toss her out, then you do the same to me.”
He threw his eyes around the room, looking for any sign of challenge. It grew very quiet in that basement where the candles burned all around them, a dozen flickering fires.
“Very well,” the bald man said in his same even-tempered voice. “If that’s truly how you feel, Jet, then we have no reason to put you through any more questions. I for one am inclined to believe her. Should she prove false, then she won’t be the only one to suffer the consequences.”
Jet nodded. “Good. Then I trust that we can get down to the business that we came here to discuss. Greythor is dead, and though he sacrificed his own life, I see blood on the sword of Lord Raejo. The question now is how do we proceed.”
“We wait,” a gruff voice said from the back. A tall bear of a man with a thick healthy beard rose to his feet. “Greythor was an honorable man, and a friend of mine. He sacrificed himself to give us time, to let Lord Raejo make his next blunder. I call that a true blessing. We should take this opportunity to prepare ourselves for whatever our provincial lord’s next move will be so that we can be ready to recruit new bodies when he offends the people even further.”
“Nonsense!” the man with the ponytail replied. “Greythor certainly did give his life, but not so that we could sit on our hands and wait. That’s exactly what Raejo would want us to do. We should take the fight to him, right now, when he least expects it!”
There were some enthusiastic supports at the idea of taking the fight to Raejo.
“A plan that could easily backfire,” the bearded man replied. “Then, once again, Raejo will say that we’re the ones provoking the conflict. We would lose the support of the people, and perhaps even some of the village elders.”
