“So, while I didn’t teach him how to inlay his armor with iron—wouldn’t want to put myself out of business, you see—I did help him heal and removed from him a burden that hijacked his being.”
“It sounds like you had a profound effect on his life, Oo.”
“I can’t blame him for ultimately following his own path, even though it carried him far from me. I’m sure he didn’t want to be constantly reminded of what he gave up. It’d be hard to stomach, surely.”
“Be reminded of how you saved him? Yeah, why acknowledge the help and service that you did for him.” Jean spat into the snow. She felt wisps of anger steaming in her blood.
“Jean, it’s not like that,” Oslow said. “He—”
“We’re here,” she interrupted. “We’re at the manor.”
Chapter 20
Everyday, each prisoner was granted an hour, free of their chains, to move about and stretch. On the morning of the third day, when Gnochi was freed, he made to stand over Ren, though he stopped along the way to look out the window at the passing countryside. The snowfall had steadily increased, no ground remaining uncovered. Gnochi nudged Ren with his foot.
The man stumbled out of his dream, sputtering as though he was drowning. He looked up, then offered a pitiful grin. “Your time to walk around?” he whispered. “Good. Have at it then.”
Gnochi pointed to Ren’s mouth, then made the motion for reading a book.
“Oh, you’ve come to collect that then?” he asked. Gnochi answered with a terse nod. “Okay, Ren,” the pirate mumbled to himself. “It’s just Jackal and Gideon. Where to begin? It was just over a decade ago. I was newly in control of the sailors, my lions, you know? Had to fight my way through near a dozen of the scummiest of the scum, but eventually found myself on top.
“Not long after that, I got a message from a man in the eastern lands who wanted to discuss a global proposition. Promise of unrivaled power, unmatched wealth. Basically, everything a man could want. And I had to at least hear him out. He offered good money just to hear his pitch, so I went. It was a month of dreadful planning. Turns out this guy Gideon actually plans to dominate the world.” He paused as if expecting Gnochi to respond.
“While world domination was his goal, it wasn’t his objective for calling us together. Across the world, he explained, were these installations of power and knowledge from the first age. They were scattered around, not limited to any land, so Gideon wanted us to infiltrate every nation, find these places he calls ‘libraries,’ and destroy them.”
Gnochi’s eyes widened. He rolled his hands, encouraging Ren to elaborate.
“We didn’t know much about them besides that they contained immense amounts of first age technology and knowledge. We didn’t know what kinds of stuff. Just general, you see. But regardless of what it was, Gideon wanted them found and destroyed.
“There were a dozen of us. Gideon’s ‘limbs,’ as he called us. My group of lions became known as Oceanmane. Jackal, as you know, was put in charge of assassinations and politicking. Others were more specific. Gideon’s ground army was led by his right-hand man, Pallius. The point is, Gideon’s influence extended through all faces of society, from the pampered arses of kings to the dirty mouths of sailors. And all are looking to single out these libraries to destroy ‘em.
“I happened to be on a boat with Jackal after these meetings. We were both tasked with finding the library within Lyrinth. He persuaded me that my efforts would be better spent on a path that would not only disobey Gideon but would directly antagonize his plan. I’m telling you, I was convinced. Jackal is one silver-tongued demon. If, instead of destroying that knowledge, we harnessed it, he claimed we could be more powerful than anyone. So, instead of burning the library, we plotted to find it and learn its secrets.” Ren studied his shackles, buying time.
“When we landed on Lyrinthian shores, Jackal and I split up, under the same plan of attack. But tragedy struck. This scamp I had employed, escaped. She cut out on her bargain and stole my bloody pendant.” Ren clutched at his throat as if expecting it to have materialized.
Gnochi felt the trident warm against his skin as if knowing that it was the subject of discussion.
“She stole my trident pendant. A gift from Gideon himself. The only way I could prove my loyalty. Gideon had some first age technology working in it. He’d’ve known right away that I wasn’t keeping the pendant safe. So, our plan would’ve been found out years and years before we were ready.
“I spent the next chunk of my life tracking that girl down. She had teamed up with some shapeshifter echoer, and the two evaded me for the better part of the last ten years.” He blushed, looking down to the floor. “Then I saw you and the girl. You can’t fault me for imagining my luck had finally turned around. I thought you two were the two scamps responsible for all my grief these past years. And imagine my frustration to see you working for Jackal. In my head, it made sense, though I’ll admit my brain isn’t used to being on land for years at a time.
“I ratted him out, I did. Sent a message to Gideon explaining what had happened, begging for mercy. The way I saw it, Gideon could stop Silentore, and I’d be pardoned for my role.” He let out a huff of air. “I doubt my message even got to him.”
A few slow minutes dragged on without Ren further elaborating. Assuming him to be done, Gnochi rose and turned toward his makeshift prison cell.
“For the record, I’m sorry I shot you.”
On the way back to his shackles, he stopped to glance out the window at the ever-falling snow.
◆◆◆
“I want the everyday decisions made by you,” Dorothea explained, leading his page around the castle. “Save anything important for a vote among the remaining councilors. I expect to be gone for however long it takes to solve this squabble. And I’d better not return to find my city in shambles.” The two had stopped before the council’s audience chambers.
“Yes, my king,” the page replied.
“Good, now be a dear and fetch the first six councilors you find in the chambers,” he ordered. The page ducked behind the doors, then returned in a minute with six confused councilors in tow. Dorothea smiled when he saw that his newest councilor, Skuddy the entertainer, was among the six chosen.
“You requested our presence?” One of them asked.
“Pack your things,” Dorothea said, waving his page away.
“May we ask why?”
“You may not, but I’ll tell you anyway. The amassing fleet off our shores has dropped anchor. And seeing as the tundra has overtaken it, potentially damaging their ships, they won’t be moving anywhere. I need to be present, a safe distance back, to lead my troops, lest someone on either Jackal or Gideon’s side decided to go to war on my lands. Plus, I’d like to meet with both parties.”
“And we are coming with you?”
“Of course you are, don’t be daft!”
◆◆◆
Gnochi had finished eating his generous rations and was hunkering down to rest when Rush and Floyd began playing a rudimentary game of cards. Cyrus had lifted the pack from the back pocket of one of their Lyrintian guards.
“If I win,” Rush said, a thick grin shaping his face, “you have to come clean about why you joined the Ludders. Oh, and tell us what their game is.”
Floyd considered the wager for a moment, then said, “Fine, but if I win, you have to kick in his teeth.”
Gnochi looked up sharply and saw the Luddite’s grubby finger pointed at him.
“Come on, the game is between you and me. Let’s keep the wagers that way.” Rush’s eyes flickered to Gnochi with a condescending pity.
For his part, Gnochi was not about to plead the case that he was not a defenseless welp.
“It’s that or I won’t play,” Floyd whined.
“Come on,” Ren said, joining the conversation. “You want to play, I’ll play you, Rush.”
“I already know your story,” Rush beamed. “And the thief isn’t too hard to p
ick out either.” The baker scratched at the growth under his chin. “Fine, Floyd, I’ll play you, but don’t expect me to lose.”
Rush, who was on his chain-break, sat close to the Luddite.
The card game held the collective attention of everyone below deck. Despite the insinuation that Cyrus was easy to read, he cast cursory glances at the game from time to time to quench his curiosity. Ren, the farthest from the game, stood and strained his neck to get a better view. He winced and hissed every time Rush made a move that he was not fond of.
“You keep making noises at my moves, pirate, and I won’t have to lose for blood to spill because I’ll kick your teeth in.”
Ren balked at the threat but kept his reactions non-verbal thenceforth.
Gnochi’s eyes flicked between the game and Ren’s face, which seemed permanently twisted in a sneer of disapproval. He wondered how poorly the baker was playing.
After nearly an hour of prolonged stalemate, Floyd erupted. “No! You couldn’t have won. How was I bested by such a lummox?”
“This lummox has the patience of a snail,” Rush said, grinning. “Many slow days in the store were passed over the faded faces of a deck of cards. Now pay up,” the baker said, gesturing with his fingers.
Ren sunk to the floor, unloading some heavy burden from his chest in a loud sigh.
“Why are you so protective of Gnochi? Can’t he fight his own battles?” Floyd asked of Ren, ignoring the baker.
“I feel responsible, at least partly, for his current predicament,” Ren explained. “Who knows? If I hadn’t revealed your being a Silentorian, maybe you wouldn’t have been found.” Gnochi shook his head at Ren’s remark, discouraging further comments.
“Plus,” Ren said disregarding the gesture for silence, “shooting you in the leg has left you with a limp, however you try and downplay it.”
“Took an arrow to your knee, did you?” Cyrus’s voice sounded from his place near the engine. Gnochi shook his head.
“A gunshot,” Ren said. “First age gun.”
Gnochi’s forehead sagged at the freedom of the pirate’s tongue.
Set off by a mention of the first age, Floyd sprung against his chains, thrashing around as though he was on fire.
Rush, the only man freed from his restraints, encircled the Luddite in the thick snare of arms, calming him down. “Easy, Floyd. There’s nothing first age here. Well, except for the engine,” Rush said, grimacing at his admission, though his words eased the tension from the Luddite’s face. He relaxed into a fetal ball.
“You got a scar from that?” Ren asked Gnochi.
“Yeah,” Cyrus added. “Let’s see it.”
With reluctance, the bard stood and pulled his thin trousers up past his thigh. His skin, despite its weeks of battery and bruises, had healed over the place where the bullet had impacted. The light brown of healing skin paled over the exact scar. He always found scars’ tendencies to pale intriguing, as if that section of skin was dead and that which remained was its ghost.
“Damn,” Rush said, approaching and prodding his fingers around the scar. “Does it still hurt?”
Gnochi swatted the baker’s fingers away, then shrugged, waving his hand over his whole body, offering a gesture as if to say that he felt pain all over, not just in one spot.
Rush returned to where Floyd lay curled up on the warm floorboards. “Hey, Ludder,” he said, nudging Floyd with his foot. “You owe me a story.”
The Luddite stirred, sitting up. He maintained his cool though, as if he had no memory of his previous behaviors. Without moving from his prone stature, Floyd began his tale.
“I lived all my life in Punnkit, a small town south of Blue Haven. Always in its shadow, yet too far to allow for quick travel. News came quicker from traders than it did from heralds. All we had was a granary taller than most inns, and two smiths; one who only made weapons for Lyrinth’s army and another that served the town.
“To be honest, the only reason our town existed and survived is because Goodman, the smith making weapons for Lyrinth, refused to move his operation from his land. He claimed that the spirit of his father, who first tilled the land, went into each and every piece he forged, tempering it as greatly as the flame.
“Living so close to the city, we had seen some Luddites before, though they rarely frequented our patch of soil, save for the occasional propaganda visit. As a country boy, I always found them so odd. Shaving their heads bald, silken robes. Totally against anything that would make life easier. But they never paid us heed.
“Until this event in a town half-way across Lyrinth. A town called Pike’s Cathedral.”
Gnochi shot up from his prone position, banging his scalp on the rusted metal of the pipe over his head. The others looked at him, wondering at the intrusion, but reverted their gazes back to Floyd.
“Of course, we didn’t know anything about what happened, being as secluded from the city as we were. But one day, a regiment of fifty heavily armed Luddite enforcers, dressed for open battle, dragged all twenty of us, elderly and children alike, into the town’s square at the foot of our granary. Goodman’s entire shipment was destroyed, and fire was set to our foodstocks. I knew that without the granary, there was no way we could survive there through the winteryear.
“One of the locals had enough with the Luddites sniffing around after them and opened up the man’s gut, groin to ribs, spilling his entrails on the ground. The killings started after that point. The man was killed, then his family. Then down the line of us, blood was spilt, necks cut. Goodman managed to incapacitate two enforcers by slamming his hammers into their helmets, denting deep enough to crack the skull, though the remaining enforcers ganged up on him and killed him.
“An officer stood before me, his armor gilded. Looking through the slit in his helmet, I saw eyes of green steel. Neither malice, nor pity radiated from behind his visor.
“‘Wait,’ one of the enforcers said. ‘They left one of ours alive to disseminate fear, so we should do the same.’ I felt a heavy weight knock into my head, and I must’ve blacked out, because I woke the next day in a Luddite compound. I was already bald and branded.
“I later learned that what happened in my town was a direct retaliation for a small group of Luddites who were killed in Pike’s Cathedral. Since I couldn’t be allowed to go free, for fear that I would alert Lyrinthian authorities about the highly illegal retribution in which the Luddites partook, I was given a choice. Join or die.
“They indoctrinated me. Tied me to the crimes at the town, after all, my body was the only one not recovered. So, running away was not an option.” Floyd shook with fear at the recounting. His eyes drooped with fatigue.
“You can give it up now,” Ren said. “Clearly, it was their intention to have you arrested and probably their idea to have you sent south.”
“How? Did they test me by putting the lanterns in the chamber to see how I would react?” None of the others appeared to know what Floyd was talking about.
“What loyalty can you possibly have to them after everything they’ve done to you?” Ren asked.
Floyd offered no response. He relaxed, resting his head on the floor. Then, a minute later, to no one, and everyone, he said, “They’re all I have, at this point.”
Chapter 21
Scattered across the kitchen’s thick table were the makings of a strategy. Oslow sat at one end. With his beard tucked under his shirt, the tanner appeared to be wearing a gem-encrusted bib. “Jean, you’ve outdone yourself,” he said, moaning as he licked his fingers. “The dry rub on this venison is a perfect match for its gamey texture.” He dabbed a napkin to his lips, then sipped at a glass of concord wine.
Aarez and Nora, the woman who he and Cleo rescued, sat across from each other and ate in silence.
“Yes,” Harvey added. “And this eggplant is ambrosia. I didn’t think you were sane adding as much garlic as you did, but I’m suddenly infatuated with your style.”
“You both do me too much ju
stice,” Jean said, feeling her cheeks warming. “Cleo, you didn’t tell me that you were in company with such a connoisseur.” She picked at a plate of steamed vegetables, nursing her own glass of wine. “Everything tastes better when you don’t have to make it.” She laughed until she spied Cleo and Roy hunched over a map on the other end of the table, their untouched plates flattening the curled paper on its edges. “Why don’t you two work on your plates? The map isn’t going anywhere, and an extra ten minutes won’t kill anybody.” She looked down at her plate after uttering the words, suddenly realizing how wrong she could be.
“I have no appetite,” Cleo said.
“And I’m more than happy to wait,” Roy said, fingering some aspect on the map.
Harvey placed his fork down on his plate and poked at his teeth with a small pick. “At least include us in your plans,” he said.
“According to this map’s scale,” Roy said, repositioning a straight edge. “The swamp is about four hundred miles, as the crow flies, from here. Account for, say, seventy-five miles on horse a day.”
“There is no way that we’ll make that much distance in a day. Maybe thirty or forty miles if we’re lucky,” Harvey said. “And that’s if we can stick to roads. Once we deviate into deeper snow, you can cut that distance in half.”
Roy frowned, ran his fingers along his nose as if unaccustomed to its shape, and then counted out numbers on his hands.
“I don’t have a horse,” Nora blurted out. All eyes fell to her concealed face, causing her to flinch with embarrassment. “What? I am coming with you. I’m not going to stay in this drafty manor by myself.”
“You could come live with us,” Oslow offered.
“No, we’ll make do,” Cleo said. “She can double up with me or Aarez on our horses. We’ll just have to alternate whom she’s riding with each day.” Her tone discouraged further debate on the matter.
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