Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  “Watch your mouth,” Korin hissed back at Tymon. “Tzimena is my guest here, which makes her welcome and safe. If that’s a problem for you, we can take it up together later. For now we need some solitude—just a little. I need to make sure her head’s in the right place.”

  “Fine, then,” Tymon said. “Later. But know, sir, this isn’t over. We’ve suffered losses by hewing obediently to your commands. Sooner or later you’ll need to justify yourself and answer for them.”

  “Later, then,” Korin said. Once more he had Tzimena by the arm. “Come on,” he said to her quietly, “follow me.”

  Tzimena let herself be led away. They moved through the crowd around the cookfires, crossed the little clearing, then climbed over a number of rocks shouldering their way out of the hillside until they finally reached a little stone table under an outcropping that lay farther up the slope from the camp. It was like being on a balcony of sorts, and it gave Tzimena a wonderful view of the world she was now engulfed by. What she saw was the camp itself—the outdoor mess area hugging the rocky slopes, sentries and evening strollers moving about on the rocks and ledges above. Now that she was closer, and at a higher vantage point, she could see the cave entrances more clearly, as well as the lights burning within them. A small, shallow stream—spring fed, no doubt—spilled out of a fissure in the rocks, flowed down the rocky hillside, and burbled its winding way through the camp below before heading off into the distant woods. Beyond the caves and the hillside and the camp, however, the rest of the forest below and around them was black as a pot of ink, with no light or sign of civilization anywhere. The stars above were bright and cold in an almost-cloudless sky, a lonely crescent moon frosting the endless miles of breeze-stirred treetops and black mountains that bounded the valley in pale silver.

  Korin bid Tzimena sit on a boulder. He took the one beside her. It was hard, but not a bad perch. For a time they sat in silence, staring at the activity throughout the camp, listening to the distant wash of sounds drifting up from the forest that surrounded them, studying the stars in their endless millions as they crawled across the firmament above them.

  “What now?” Tzimena asked.

  “That’s up to you,” Korin said amiably, as though they were a pair of lovers on holiday.

  Tzimena tried to study Korin’s face, but there was very little she could discern in the dark. The dim light afforded by the torches and lamps of the camp just picked his silhouette out of the darkness and made him solid. It did little to truly illuminate his features.

  “I’m your prisoner,” Tzimena said slowly. “I fail to see how I have any choice in what comes next.”

  “You’re not my prisoner,” Korin said, “you’re my guest.”

  “Then I can leave anytime?” Tzimena asked.

  Korin paused before answering. “Not right away. Better to wait.”

  “Then I am your prisoner.”

  “Would you prefer to be his? Verin’s? You know well that a prisoner is what he would’ve made of you.”

  Tzimena sighed. “I thought I explained myself—”

  “You tried,” Korin said. “We had very little time before the lord marshal arrived and I had to flee.”

  Tzimena shook her head. “What were you thinking? Coming all the way to the city? You had to know you’d be caught, one way or another.”

  “I honestly didn’t,” Korin said, chuckling a little.

  “And your men? The four who accompanied you? What happened to them?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure. I haven’t seen them since we were separated in your quarters.”

  He fell silent again. Tzimena tried to read that silence, could not, but made her own assumptions, at any rate. Korin’s infernal coolness was infuriating.

  “So,” Tzimena said, “four of your men could be rotting in a dungeon or shipped off to a mine right now, and you don’t give a damn? Seven of your companions—your friends—died on the road today trying to free you and kidnap me . . . and you don’t give a damn?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Korin snorted. “Of course I give a damn. Those were my people. But once I learned of your betrothal—”

  “Once you learned of my betrothal, you couldn’t countenance letting your brother have something you wanted . . . even though you left everything else that was yours behind?”

  He turned to face her now. She saw the tiny glint of his eyes in the darkness. “That’s not fair.”

  “Oh, I think it is,” Tzimena said. “What else could drive the mighty, cunning Red Raven to such foolhardy lengths but unrequited love and undying sibling rivalry?”

  “I didn’t come to humiliate him,” he said, a little too earnestly, “I came because I loved you.”

  “Once, perhaps,” Tzimena said. “But honestly, Korin, what am I to you now? It’s been ten years since we last saw one another. Eight since our last correspondence. Or had you lost count? Do you really think I can live here? Thrive here? I can ride and fence and loose an arrow as well as anyone in my country, but I’m a creature of the court. That is where I belong. I can’t stay here. Not for any length of time.”

  “That’s not what you said in Yenara.” His voice was dark, full of betrayal.

  “I said I missed you. I mourned you. And, finding you again, I wished we’d had more time. But this . . . bringing me here. It won’t work, Korin. This place will kill me. And if this place doesn’t, your people will.”

  “That’s preposterous,” he said. “They are my people. What I want, they want—”

  “Is that so?” Tzimena asked. “You are so, so dear to them? Tell me, then—how did you come to be their leader? What makes you so special that you could adopt the mantle of an outlaw who’s been terrorizing these woods since we were both children, and get that outlaw’s compatriots to follow you?”

  Korin’s silence was instructive. Tzimena swore she could hear him smiling, but that was her imagination, of course. Nonetheless, if there had been a candle nearby to allow her to see that there was, indeed, a self-satisfied smirk on his face, it wouldn’t have surprised her. Korin had always been sweet and dashing and brave and bold and earnest—but he was also entirely too much in love with the stories he told himself. Even the ones that weren’t true.

  “I’d wanted to hunt in these woods for years, but our father wouldn’t allow it. Said it was far too dangerous, what with all the bandits about. But, of course, when he died and the throne fell to me, there was no one to tell me no any longer. So after the dust settled and the duchy was done with its mourning, I finally decided I’d do what I’d always dreamed of doing, and put together a little hunting expedition for myself. Just me, my squire and page, and a pair of trusted companions with their own assistants. I left Erald in Verin’s care and told them all I’d be back in a week or two.

  “Unfortunately, Verin had paid my companions to assure my death in the woods. Broke my heart, really; they were the two best friends I had, like brothers since we were children.”

  “But easily bought, apparently,” Tzimena said.

  “Apparently,” Korin agreed, nodding. He drew a deep breath. “They were chasing me, promising to make it quick if I’d just stop running, when the Red Raven and his Devils of the Weald found us. They killed my would-be assassins, then tied me up and dragged me away.

  “They knew I was valuable, so they held me for weeks. Finally, word arrived one day that they’d received a message from Verin himself, delivered by a trusted adviser. The new Duke of Erald said that he was assured that his brother had died in the woods, on a hunting expedition, and that anyone the Devils presented as said brother was clearly just an impostor. He advised them to do away with me posthaste, and gave them twice the ransom they’d asked for my return. I must say, I was fairly impressed that he could deny my existence and pay handsomely for my execution with such ease.”

  Tzimena sighed. “Gods, Korin . . . Twice the price of your ransom, to kill you instead of returning you alive?”

  Korin nodded again. “My de
ar brother. Honestly, he proved more cunning than I ever would have given him credit for. I knew he was always eager to please Father, but I never imagined him capable of wielding the power he so coveted.”

  “So what happened?”

  Korin shifted on his boulder, turning to face her now. He sat forward, leaning, elbows on his knees, head below hers. “The Devils decided to kill me in ritual combat. They put a wooden stave in my hand, tied my ankle to a stake in the ground, and sent some of their best to do away with me for sport. I killed three and had the fourth on his back before the Red Raven himself—my predecessor—called an end to it. Dumb luck, really. I had nothing to lose, so I fought better than I ever had in my life.”

  Tzimena reached out then. Her situation was precarious and untenable, true, but there was still a great deal of the old love in her. And now, hearing his tale, beginning to understand what Korin had gone through to survive betrayal and abandonment, only to return to her now as the Lord of the Woodland, an outlaw of great renown . . . It struck her as most astounding. Almost romantic.

  Almost.

  But even if she could not entirely countenance his choices, she still pitied him. That was what led her to take his face in her hands and raise it so that she could look into the dark hollows where she knew his eyes to be, even though she could not see them in the deep gloom they occupied.

  “Your brother betrayed you,” she said. “Twice. There is no forgiveness for that.”

  Korin shrugged. “Perhaps not. In any case, the Raven gave me a choice: join his company and earn my keep, or die quick—a warrior’s death, with honor. I chose to stay and earn my way. In truth, though the going was rough and the Devils never showed me any pity or understanding, I was happy during those months. I was earning my own way in the world, proving my worth. It was a good feeling.”

  “Did you have a plan?” she asked. “The desire to escape? To return home?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “I made plans all the while—for months—trying to decide what I needed to go back to Erald. Money. Weapons. A plan to retake the throne and reveal myself. But one day, I rose and realized something: I simply wasn’t that man anymore. If I returned, I’d just be another nobleman’s son, wearing ermine and pronouncing edicts, getting soft and fat. But here—in the wild—I was someone. I’d earned the love and respect of my captors. I’d learned to finally love and respect myself. I was capable. I was deadly. I was a man. If I returned, I could only be less . . .”

  Tzimena nodded, understanding. Presented in that fashion, she supposed it made sense. She supposed every child of noble birth wrestled with that doubt, that vague feeling that all the deference and opportunity they were afforded was a sham . . . an accident of birth . . . and longed to prove their mettle somehow, by some means concrete and unassailable.

  “They adopted you, then,” she said. “How did you finally come to lead them? Don’t tell me the Raven took a shine to you and named you his heir when he sought to retire?”

  “Oh no,” Korin said, and she could hear the smile in his voice once again. “Surely not. He was a bastard, the Raven was. Bright and brave and brilliant, but a thorough, unmitigated bastard. My trials and my rise to prominence coincided—by sheer good fortune—with the slow dissolution of his own faculties. Maybe it was hard living—because life out here, make no mistake, is hard. Maybe it was the drink, for he certainly swilled enough. Everyone saw it, though. He started missing shots. Making mistakes during raids and ambushes. Dropping things. Failing to note details that nearly undid us.

  “So I challenged him.”

  “Challenged him?” Tzimena asked.

  “Aye, challenged him,” Korin said. “To a duel, for the leadership of the Devils of the Weald. He fought hard . . . but I won. But even after he was stripped and left for the wolves, I knew there was value in the name. Just because the man who’d been the Red Raven died didn’t mean the legendary, immortal Red Raven had to. And so I simply became him. And if I do say so myself, I think I’ve quite elevated the mantle. Some of the best songs now sung about the Raven in the taverns of the west are of my exploits since taking over, his own largely embellished or forgotten.”

  Tzimena was shaking her head in answer to the whole of his fantastic tale, not just its culmination.

  “And yet,” she said, “you’ve still chosen to stay here? All this time? To so harry your brother’s caravans and military parades that he put a price on your head? And how did he even manage that, seeing as you were once the Duke of Erald?”

  Korin shrugged. “I suppose it’s not so hard,” he said. “How many people ever see a duke, after all? Or a king or queen? And even if they have, isn’t it usually from a great distance? No, all Verin had to do was replace most of the soldiers who knew me once he claimed the throne. After that it was easy.”

  “But you could have come forward,” Tzimena said. “Made your own claim! Demanded justice! Shown the whole world that Verin stole what was rightfully yours, and tried to kill you in the process!”

  “To what end?” Korin asked, and she heard the ardor in his voice. “I’m free here, Tzimena! I rule by the consent of these people! They chose me, and I keep them happy. We are all castoffs here . . . unforgiven convicts, unrepentant sinners, people of no means or renown. Out in the world, we are all targets, or criminals. In here everything is ours, provided we can take it.”

  “Like you took me?” Tzimena asked.

  “I haven’t taken you,” Korin said, and there was real frustration in his voice. “If anything, I rescued you! Did you really want to marry my brother? Was that your idea? Or his? Or, let me guess, your mother’s?”

  Tzimena lowered her eyes—a foolish gesture, she knew, since it was probably too dark for him to even see her face. “Mother,” she said quietly. “She vaguely recalled that we once met—many years ago—but she had no idea we’d become so attached to one another. Even across the years. I suppose I managed to keep that secret too well from her. When your brother made his offer to her, she actually explained to me who he was, and where Erald lay on the map . . . as if I didn’t already know.”

  “To be fair,” Korin said, “we were never in Erald together.”

  “We were barely anywhere together,” Tzimena added. “At any rate, I had no good reason to turn down your brother’s offer—not in Mother’s eyes, anyway. Besides, the one time I met him, he reminded me of you.”

  Korin shook his head. “Words to pierce me like a dagger . . .” He sounded as though he were trying to laugh, but she sensed real sadness in his voice, as well.

  “Korin,” Tzimena said, “when I heard you’d died, I mourned. I mourned for months, silently, alone, because I could tell no one of the secret I’d been carrying. My mother, my companions . . . They saw the grief in me, but they couldn’t reason out the cause. And I wouldn’t tell them.”

  Even now, she felt childish saying it aloud. She had been seventeen when they first met, he nineteen, sent to the university in Toriel by his father. Face-to-face in a students’ grogshop on the seedier side of town, they’d been instantly struck by the thunderbolt of some potent and pagan love goddess. While he studied, they carried on their clandestine affair, knowing that, as they were both of noble birth, but separated by a great distance, they could not simply choose one another. He’d been her first love—physically and emotionally—and he’d always sworn that she was his, though Tzimena had her doubts. And yet, during those years, he had seemed earnest. Unwavering. His letters were full of passion and poetry, and their times together nothing short of magical, now all tinged in her memory with the twin crowns of dashed hopes and sweet nostalgia. But then his father had learned of their association and forbidden his son from pursuing it further. He’d withdrawn Korin from the university and had him dragged home. After that Korin continued to write, and they managed once—just once—to meet in the free city of Orbhen for a last week of intimacy and adoration. Korin had left that encounter promising to make it all work; he would convince his fathe
r to allow their marriage, or he would simply await the old man’s death. They need only be patient, and not give up on one another or their dream of being together.

  Then the years flew by. The old duke died and Korin took the throne. The last letter he sent urged her to wait for him, just a little longer. Once he was crowned and settled on the throne, he could finally make their dreams into reality.

  And then she’d received word. It was offered as gossip at a holiday feast, visiting dignitaries clicking their tongues and shuddering over the fate of that poor, misguided Lyr boy who’d insisted on hunting in the Ethkeraldi. Tzimena remembered well how she’d felt when she heard them speaking; how she’d assured herself they had the name wrong, or the duchy, and looked into it herself, only to learn that it was all true.

  Korin was dead. Gone forever. Never to return. His last promise would remain forever unfulfilled. The strength of her grief was beyond even her own understanding. It had dulled and been packed away in the center of her for years now, but still, if she reexamined it, its potency left her more than a little puzzled and ashamed.

  She’d met a young man, had a fling with him, and hoped to marry him. Those hopes were denied. Perhaps they were misplaced to begin with.

  And yet something had kept that fire burning in both of them. Something pure and childish and hopeful . . . and probably lost. They knew there was little chance of their marrying, seeing as their separate homelands were so far apart and their political requirements rarely in accord. Hadn’t Tzimena considered it the cruelest of ironies when her mother had first broached the subject of romantic interest from Verin Lyr, the Duke of Erald? Impossible, she’d thought. Erald has never been interested in Toriel, nor Toriel in Erald. Why now? Is this just one more of fate’s cruel jokes? First keep me from marrying the man I always loved? Then steal him from me by slaying him in the wilderness? And finally, when he is gone, send his brother a-courting, offering me the alliance I’d always hoped for at last, but with the wrong man?