Forged

by Liam Reese

  She gritted her teeth. “Yes,” she said, with an obvious attempt at patience. “In fact, she has a great deal to offer you in exchange for your help. She believes that the Forged should be treated like anyone else — she can offer you the chance to strike against prejudice and earn your rights. To be human, and to be dealt with as such. To re-enter society, when and as you will. And, of course, a great deal of money.”

  “Hmm.” He folded his arms. “That’s about what I would have expected.” He carried on quickly, ignoring her frown of dismay. “But look at it this way. A deposed ruler, with a scarce band of supporters? What guarantee do I have that she will be able to follow through on her promises?”

  “More of a chance than you would if you do not help her at all.”

  “Ah, I see, we are basing our argument on hope.” He twisted his head to one side, looking upwards into the trees. “Hope? Such a faint basis as that? Yes,” he answered himself, “something impossible to define or to clutch onto. Ah well. I suppose it’s better than basing it on my indestructible greed.”

  “I would have done if I thought it would work,” said the girl.

  It was ridiculous, of course, but this was, after all, his longest conversation for a very long time. Nearly six years — he was greedy for her words, for her faint smile. If she had based her appeal solely on willing companionship, it might have been just as acceptable.

  He was quite sure that acknowledging such a thing would prove disastrous.

  “And in exchange for this handsome offer of hope, I assume I would be required to Forge the December King? Into what?”

  “A tree, if that is what you can do.” This time, she ignored his frown and carried on. “It doesn’t really matter. He needs only to be silent and out of the way. Something that cannot wear a crown, no matter how hard it tries.”

  He stood quietly for a moment and looked at her, thinking. Finally, he said, “What makes her think that she can regain the throne, just by him leaving it? He must have loyal companions.”

  “There are also those who are loyal to the Queen.” Her eyes were like steel, her chin firm and determined. “The people will rally to her side.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “Very well. Against my better judgement, I will come with you.”

  “For the cause!” she said He swore that her eyes glittered. “For the Queen! For the country!”

  “For money, for fame, and for more money,” he countered. “But to each their own. I won’t stand in the way of your nationalistic fervor as long as you don’t stand in the way of my reward. I will need to pack a bag. Please wait here.”

  He pushed away through the woods, not allowing her a chance to disagree. As he went, he could not keep the beginnings of a half-smile from sliding across his face. He had been in these woods for three years, and had thought about adventuring again, going out into the world and seeing what had happened in his absence. Now he had a reason to do so.

  There was, of course, the small issue of his faltering powers— but he resolved to cross that bridge when he came to it.

  If he came to it.

  If the ragtag band of loyal supporters were anything like the woman who appeared to lead them, he had his doubts about the success of this mission. At any rate, he could string it along for as long as he needed.

  He didn’t have much in his small hut to begin with, but it was almost completely cleared out by the time he had finished packing his rucksack. The few treasures he had found, or stolen, over the years went in first. Perhaps it was foolish to take them with him, but it would be more foolish to leave them behind. He didn’t know when, or if, he would be returning, and suppose someone stumbled across his hut while he was gone? It was unlikely in the extreme, but he wasn’t willing to take the risk. He was jealous over his few small possessions and couldn’t quite imagine them in the hands of a complete stranger.

  He tucked his only other set of clothes in on top of them, as well as what little food he had stored. He re-wrapped his leather snare around his left hand and tied it tightly. That, and a small knife that he kept in his boot, were the only weapons he had ever needed to use.

  He had never thought of his power as a weapon. It was an ability that set him apart, cursed him, made him different and strange, but the idea of using against another person gave him a chill. So he decided not to think about it. Let the girl think about it, if she wanted; she was the one with all the plans.

  He realized as he was leaving the hut that he had not even found out her name yet.

  He remedied this as soon as he got back to her. Well, as soon as she had finished yelping when he appeared out of the gloom directly at her side.

  “My name is Thorn,” he said, shouldering his pack a bit more comfortably. “I suppose you may already know that, though.”

  She regained control of herself and managed a smile. “No, I did not. It is nice to have a name to put to the legend at last, though I would have thought a different one would have suited you.”

  “There is a reason for it, trust me.”

  “I will, in this instance. I’m certain there will be enough time sitting around the fire as we travel for me to hear all your stories. In the meantime, shall we go? I would rather not spend the night here in the woods, regardless of whether you would be more comfortable or not.”

  “Yes, certainly,” he said agreeably. “This way.”

  He led the way, a winding path through the tree trunks and over boulders and stumps. The path made by men, rather than animals and Thorn, was not too far away. She would never have found it on her own, but she didn’t go so far as to admit it, or to thank him. He was not entirely pleased with her manners.

  “By the way,” he said over his shoulder as they went, “I believe it is traditionally viewed as polite to give your name in return, when someone introduces themselves to you.”

  “Is it?” She fought her way free of a tangling branch, which had poked its fingers into her

  hair and seemed very unwilling to let her go. “I wouldn’t have taken you for the type who cared much about what is traditionally viewed as polite.” He said nothing in response. It was true, anyway. Mostly.

  “Fine,” she said to his back, at last, and hesitated only a little. “I am called Jelen.”

  “Jelen.” He thought for a moment. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a word in my mother’s language. It means deer.”

  “Fleet,” he said. “Fleet like a deer, sunspot to shade.”

  “You read poetry?”

  “I found a book once.”

  “You found a book?”

  “In some rich man’s library.” It was in his pack now. He didn’t have many treasures, seeing the point in stealing food more than things, but the book had been the prettiest thing he had ever laid eyes on. It still was, although he had collected two others over the years. Not many people that he had ever known how to read, and he treasured the ability as deeply as he had treasured his teacher. “Do you know what happens to the deer, in that one?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He didn’t believe her. “She gets shot,” he said, with a certain grim gusto.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “That is what tends to happen to deer,” she said at last, and then they were at the pathway that led, in the end, out of the woods.

  4

  Sunspot To Shade

  Castle Balfour looked a bit the worse for wear.

  Serhiy ran his fingers along the balustrade and squinted at the tips.

  “Dust!” he called.

  One of the army of maids that he had assembled — cleaning maids, serving maids, bootblacking maids, he didn’t care what variety — rushed forward and polished the balustrade frantically, clearly expending extra effort to clear the offending dust away. Serhiy watched as her bustle bobbed from side to side, then put a hand on her shoulder.

  “While I appreciate your efforts,” he said, “you are making me sea sick.”

  He wasn’t sure
that he deserved the expression of terror that this garnered. It seemed like a perfectly straightforward objection to express. But he was beginning to become accustomed to receiving similar looks of utter fear from those around him. He only hoped that it was not a reflection on his personal appearance.

  He stepped away, deciding to let her sort it out, and moved on down the steps. The army of maids followed him.

  Perhaps “army” was too strong a word. There were surely not more than twenty of

  them. He hadn’t stopped to count, of course — he hadn’t time for that. The king would arrive the very next morning, according to all reports, and the last thing he wanted was for His Eminent Majesty to immediately get a white glove full of grey dust as he ascended the stairs to his bedchambers.

  His Majesty deserved better.

  He pushed on down the stairs, intending to head into the throne room, which would undoubtedly require hours of work. But there was a great noise from outside, the sound of the people getting excited. The people were almost always getting excited about something; it was one of the things that he most disliked about people. You could give them a hanging or give them a wedding, and they would gather and yell. It made his ears hurt.

  He would just go outside and have a good cleansing yell at them.

  He pushed open the double doors to the main castle courtyard. Above him rose the

  sheer walls of tawny stone, and on either side the new wings of the castle, still undergoing construction, were slowly taking shape. He was dismayed to find that the people were being loud about the arrival of the king.

  At least the guards were out and waiting. Pennants waved from the top of every spear, the sun gleamed from their silver armor, and he approved of the general air of festivity. His sensitive ears picked out the calls of the peasants who thronged around the castle entrance — a few welcomes here, a few calls for audience there, a sobbing woman who threatened to kill the king herself if he didn’t release her husband from the dungeons —

  All completely ordinary, apart from the fact that it was happening today rather than

  tomorrow. Here. Now. With the castle in a state of what he would almost term untidiness.

  Gritting his teeth, he went down the front stairs to greet his favorite royal.

  The king was handed out of his carriage by the footman, shaking his black tunic free of wrinkles. He spoke briefly to the driver and clapped one of the horses on the haunches, sending them on their way to the stables, then turned towards the castle, followed closely by his small entourage.

  Serhiy had only entered the king’s employ recently, not long before he had taken the throne, but he could vaguely remember before Lev had been the December King. Back when he was the uncle of the November King, who had led the charge of enlightenment, as bloodily as necessary.

  Lev had stayed in the background, apparently content to do so, but always ready to greet anyone with smiles and kind words. That was what gave him such a youthful face, it was generally thought. Serhiy was a big believer in the power of a smile to transform a face, which was why he smiled as often as possible. The king’s smile had kept his eyes from growing cold and fixed. The light in his eyes kept his smile from growing grim, a grimace rather than an expression of friendly interest. With the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders, with the neighboring kingdom of Elgodon chanting war, and his rebellious, misled great niece claiming that the peasants would back her, the king still had a smile and a friendly word for everyone who was worthy of his interest, and even a few who were not.

  He was also immortal, but that was a difficult quality to pin down to a certain physical characteristic. He truly was an inspiration.

  His Eminent Majesty did not disappoint Serhiy’s fond reflections. As he made his way up the stairs, he clapped Serhiy on the shoulder with a black-gloved hand and smiled broadly at the army of maids ranged neatly behind him.

  “What’s all this, then?” he said. “Did you turn out the entire household to say hello to me? That was kind of you, indeed, Serhiy, but hardly necessary, considering that I’ve only been gone two short weeks.”

  “I wouldn’t have interrupted their work for such a thing,” said Serhiy. “I know Your Majesty’s ways too well for that. No, I’m afraid that we have been keeping up with this castle of yours, my lord. It seems to have got away from someone.”

  “You mean you’ve all been cleaning?”

  “Yes. All of them. I have been leading them.”

  The king had not stopped his patient smiling, but there was a little crease between his eyebrows, a little furrowed, confused crease. “Why?”

  “Because it had to be done,” said Serhiy simply, resplendent and noble in his spirit of self-sacrifice.

  “But, Serhiy,” said the king, laughing a little and shaking his head. “This is sheer absurdity. You are my executioner, not the overseer of my household affairs. This is Gark’s job.” He looked about himself swiftly, as though Gark might be hiding somewhere within the army of maids, waiting only for the chance to pop out and surprise his lord. “Where is Gark, anyway?”

  “The truth is, Your Majesty,” said Serhiy, “you were away for so long, and Gark is, indeed has always been, legendarily lazy about getting things done unless you stay on top of him. He was a terrible overseer of the house, Your Majesty, is what I mean to say.”

  “Well, that may be true, I’ll allow that,” said the king. “He can have a tendency to forget what he is about without a reminder now and then.”

  Serhiy stood up a little straighter.

  “Exactly! Exactly, well said, Your Majesty. He needs a reminder now and then. Well, I did my duty, as I see it. I reminded him.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “And he ignored me.”

  “Oh, dear.” The king shook his head. “Well, he does tend to be a little bull-headed about things.”

  “Yes, yes, precisely! I’m so glad that Your Majesty understands what I was up against. The last thing we could put up with was an overseer who let the balustrades of the king get dusty. What would the people think?”

  “Well, then. He ignored you when you reminded him. Where is he now, sleeping off his punishment, I expect?”

  “Well, no, not precisely. I didn’t want his laxness about fulfilling his job to infect the other heads of task, and so I exercised mine, just to set a good example, and chopped his head off while he wasn’t looking.”

  The king stopped, foot raised to the next stair. “You killed him?”

  “Executed, Your Majesty,” said Serhiy, with an air of mild reproach. In doing so, he had discovered to his delight that Gark had, in fact, made a noise much like his name. He wanted to share this interesting fact with his king, but suspected it was the wrong time.

  The king looked from Serhiy to the army of maids, who were trying desperately to look anywhere but back at him. He looked behind him to his chief advisor, Selten, who gave a gentle shrug.

  “Well, you did remind him,” said the king. “To be fair, I can’t say better than that.”

  Serhiy relaxed and gave a charming smile. “I thought you’d see it that way,” he said. “Welcome home, Your Majesty.”

  The king looked about him and heaved a contented sigh. “It’s good to be back.”

  Once on the pathway, Thorn allowed Jelen to take the lead. This may not have been much comfort— after all, now the strange woods-dwelling man was behind her— but she didn’t say a thing as she walked past him and kept going. After all, it only made sense. He avoided this path as much as possible, and she knew where they were meant to go. Speaking of which—

  “What is the plan? Where are we headed?”

  “I have left my companions some ways away,” she said. “I traveled more swiftly alone. We are to meet in the village of Deen, if you’re aware of where that is.”

  “I’ve been through it.”

  “Do they know you there?”

  “They nearly captured me, but I don’t think they got a good look at my face.”

/>   “We won’t be there long. My companions are garnering support for the queen, so we have only to collect them and then we can be on our way.”

  Thorn grumbled, “We’ll see what their efforts yield, shall we?” under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  “I said, why couldn’t we meet out in the field, silly?”

  “Don’t call me names. Because it’s a field. There is no cover around there, and it would be quite as obvious to meet there as it would be to meet in the town. Anyway, it’s a busy little place. We’ll blend in.”

  “Oh, well then,” said Thorn, “as long as we blend in.”

  She turned around and walked backwards, watching him, her brow furrowed.

  “I thought,” she said, “that you spent all your life in the woods, a virtual outlaw. The story I heard was of a man who hardly knew what to do with human companionship, beyond twisting and corrupting it and making people afraid of him, even if by accident. Now I find that you are reasonably well spoken, point out when you feel I’m being rude, and you have evidently traveled. Also, you have a book. And you think sarcasm is funny. I’m finding that you’re not at all what I expected. How do you account for that?”

  “How do I account for your expectations?”

  “How do you account for befuddling them? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  He chose his words with caution. “I have only to say that you should, perhaps, learn to trust your own judgement, rather than relying on stories from others.”

  She looked at him for another moment, then said, “Hmmph,” and turned around once more.

  “If anyone comes,” he said, “we should perhaps travel through the field.”

  “I do know how to take precautions, thank you,” she said, her voice tight and shoulders stiff.

  They traveled on in silence. The road grew smoother, the countryside around them changed. The trees had fallen far behind them, to be unexpectedly and swiftly replaced by farms and grazing land. The ground was not good here; crops did not thrive. There were rocky knolls dotting the land as far as the eye could see to the west and east. They were traveling north, heading for the mountains. The foothills were dusty purple and blue in the waning light.