Fired

by Liam Reese

  Irae and Thorn hastened after her.

  The inside of the hut was sparse, as Thorn would have expected. It did truly remind him strongly of his own home, far away. There was a stuffed straw mattress on the floor, and a cooking pot in the corner, and a trunk, closed and locked, just beside the doorway. Braeve deposited Karyl onto the mattress, quite gently, and shrank down to her more regular size, almost as an afterthought. She pressed a hand to his forehead, briefly, and shook her head.

  “I don’t know what you expect me to do,” she said. “I don’t know why you expect me to do anything. What kind of foolhardy are you, girl, to come here and ask this of me?”

  “You took a vow of good,” said Irae, sounding sulky.

  “You’re as innocent and round-headed as a pollywog,” said Braeve. “Well. I will tell you what. If you have trusted me thus far, you can trust me a little further, and step outside while I work.”

  Thorn could see Irae open her mouth and straighten up, ready to protest. He clapped a hand on her shoulder and pulled her gently towards him.

  “We will go,” he said. “Let us know when we can see him, please.”

  Braeve wagged a finger at them.

  “You wanted me to do whatever I could, mind,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Thorn, pushing Irae towards the door. “Whatever you can.”

  “Have a drink from the well,” Braeve called after them. “It will do you good.”

  He got both of them out the opening of the house successfully and pulled her around the corner to lean against the wall, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “What?” said Irae, shortly. She was clearly disgruntled with him, unless he was reading her signals wrong. If she wasn’t disgruntled, then she was downright angry. She was angry and upset, and he had seen this before. He didn’t like it. He looked about for something to distract her and spied the well. It was stone in the old style, before the invention of pumps, and had a small wooden windlass that had seen better days. It wasn’t far from them, and he made his way over to it even as he spoke.

  “Well, she’s a mysterious woman. And can become as big as a house when she wants to. And already very much wants to kill you.”

  “Yes,” said Irae, guardedly.

  “Well, it’s only a thought, but — perhaps we could not go out of our way to make her angry.” The windlass creaked in protest as he drew up a bucket, and he found a dipper on the other side. He filled it and took it to her solicitously. “Here. Take a drink.”

  Irae folded her arms and leaned against the wall, frowning.

  “Is that an order, Thorn?”

  “I would hardly presume,” he said. “If you don’t take a drink, then I will.”

  She took a drink, with a murmured thanks that he could scarcely hear, and handed the dipper back to him. He sipped off the other side of it, briefly at first, then a long pull, a few swallows. The water was cold without being frigid, and fresh. It had a taste of iron faint and far away. It soothed the ache in his throat but made his ears ring. He could feel the prophesied headache coming on, a little bit ahead of the schedule.

  “You took my arm,” she said. “Don’t pull me about. I’m not yours to do as you like with.”

  “I know that,” said Thorn, stung. He turned away from her to return the dipper to its place, a little hurt that she would see the need to point out something so obvious. What gave her the idea that he didn’t know his place?

  “You shouldn’t step in and take over like that,” Irae carried on lecturing him. She rubbed her hands through her hair, abstractedly: a worried motion. “She knows who I am, she knows what I’m entitled to and what I’ve come from. What I’m capable of. With you acting so familiar, it’s a wonder she would have any respect for me at all.”

  “I don’t think that her having any respect for you is an issue you will have to deal with,” said Thorn, possibly unwisely, as he returned to the wall. Irae turned her frown on him, a little puzzled now, and he looked away from her quickly. It was her worry that was making her like this — he could understand that much. But he wasn’t about to let her mistreat him simply because she felt guilty and ashamed over a foolish decision she had made.

  “Anyway,” he said quickly, before she could take him to task, “we’ve come this far, and we’ve done what we set out to do. Now it just remains to wait.”

  He sat down, stretching out his long legs in front of him and crossing one over the other. There seemed nothing else to do. He could have gone back and found his way to the others to let them know that they were successful but leaving Irae alone with Braeve did not seem the wisest course of action.

  “What would you do if you were home in your own woods?” said Irae, settling down beside him cross-legged. She seemed to have relinquished her anger, in her quick and changeable way, and was breathing deeply as though trying to keep herself calm. “What if you had a similar injury yourself, and you had to treat it. What would you do?”

  Thorn thought about this.

  “Die, probably,” he said. Irae scoffed at him. “No, I would, more than likely. I do mean it. It’s a wonder that I made it through my childhood, really. I think that was why I used a sling and a snare instead of a bow and arrow; I was never too confident of my ability to kill something else without deadly wounding myself in the same blow.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Irae, nudging him hard with her elbow, but Thorn sensed that she was secretly rather amused by the thought. Strangely encouraged, he went on.

  “I did break my leg once. Fell out of a tree. I was trying to snare a squirrel and I went about it the wrong way.”

  “Oh, really? And what did you do?”

  “Strapped myself up to a branch and hobbled around for a good long while. It’s a wonder I don’t have a limp. Never have much-liked squirrels since then.”

  She chuckled and shook her head.

  “That’s terrible. How old were you?”

  “Seven, I think, or eight.”

  “Oh.” She sobered a little. “That’s quite young for learning to heal a bone. I don’t think I’ve ever broken anything; though I did have to learn to sew up my own cuts. Not till I was twelve, though.”

  “And you had someone to teach you.”

  “Yes, my uncle.” Her voice dropped suddenly, and she looked away and swallowed hard. Thorn put his hands in his lap and looked at them, empty and useless.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone about that before,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No. Although, to be fair, up until a few weeks ago, I’d hardly spoken to anyone at all.”

  Irae nudged him again, a bit more gently this time.

  “We’re a sad pair,” she said, her anger seeming to have dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, and the light that she had kindled in Thorn’s heart trembled and glowed. He had never been part of a pair before, either; he’d never been part of a group. He’d always been alone, as long as he could remember.

  It seemed a terrible responsibility.

  He looked out to the forest and saw the fox sitting there.

  She was at the very edge among the small trees, and she was sitting straight-backed and alert, her head lifted, her ears perked. In the shadow of the trees, it was hard to see much about her other than her outline, and the eyes in the dark, reflecting the light from the sinking sun.

  Though he wasn’t aware of it, he must have made a noise, or a movement, that alerted Irae to the fact that something was there. She sat up straight.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He looked away as quickly as he could, but it was too late. She had followed his line of sight and seen the fox for herself. She sucked in a deep breath.

  “No,” she breathed. “Is that —”

  “Don’t.” He put a hand on her arm as she started to get up, but she shook him off and stood anyway.

  “Can it be?” she said. Her voice walked a fine line somewhere betwe
en awestruck and horrified; she sounded like someone who had finally seen the aftermath of a hurricane after having heard about the possibility of a deadly disaster. “It can’t, can it?”

  He knew that she wanted to be reassured, and there was only one way in which he knew how to do it.

  “Of course not,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “How could she have possibly found us here?”

  “She followed us.” Irae took a few steps towards the fox, inadvertently, as though she couldn’t help herself. “How can she have followed us all this way without us even noticing? It’s been days.”

  “It’s a fox. Foxes blend in.”

  She wasn’t even listening.

  “Does she know what we did?” she said. “Does she remember? Why else would she have followed us here?” He reached out again, more tentatively this time, to touch her shoulder, and she turned to him, eyes wounded. “Can they do that, Thorn? Can the things you have Forged — the people — can they remember?”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes, and after a moment she gave a slight scoff.

  “You’ve known this whole time, haven’t you?”

  There seemed to be no point in lying again, not about this. She was already as hurt as she was going to get. He swallowed, and cleared his throat, and opened his mouth, and Braeve said from behind them, “Is that a fox?”

  Irae, startled, said, “Oh, hells,” and stepped away.

  “It’s a fox, isn’t it?” said Braeve. She sounded almost angry; something she had in common with Irae at the moment, oddly enough. “Explain that to me, young man. Who are you to bring a fox here?”

  Thorn couldn’t quite put his finger on why the strange woman was so upset and was none too sure of how to reply. Self-defense seemed the wisest course, upon reflection, and so he said, “I didn’t bring her here. She’s not my fox.” He turned to the princess, earnestly. “I don’t know why she’s following us.”

  “Dreams of revenge, no doubt,” said Irae, but she was sad, rather than bitter. He recognized that look, that tone of voice — like him, he realized with a shock, she believed that they deserved it for what they had done. Irae had turned towards them again but was not looking at them.

  “Revenge?” repeated Braeve. She gave a slightly strangled laugh. “Indeed? Are you that terrible of a queen that even woodland creatures conspire against you, my lady?”

  That did earn her a look from Irae, but it was not a kindly one. It didn’t faze Braeve at all, of course; the tall woman was eyeing the fox again, thoughtfully.

  “Revenge from a fox,” she said. “Unless it isn’t a fox. Is it more than a fox? Or less than a fox? When is a fox not a fox?” She slid her eyes sideways towards Thorn. “When it’s something else, of course,” she said, as though he had answered her with something both incorrect and utterly stupid. “Now, who was she? What was she? Why does she want revenge?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she stalked forward across the little clearing.

  “No, leave her alone!” said Thorn, quick stepping after her.

  “No fox comes into my domain without my permission,” said Braeve sternly. “Only the creatures that I allow can live in my woods — and I do not allow any at all.”

  It was true, of course, and now that it was pointed out to him it was obvious. It had been bothering him from the start, dancing around the edges of his distracted mind. Nothing lived in her forest. No birds sang in the trees, no creatures darted amongst the undergrowth, not even any spiders spun their webs in the crooks and crannies of the branches. There was a silence there that was more than the silence of the wild; it was the silence of the absence of hearts, of breaths, of brains, of life. This was what had given Thorn such a strange and melancholy feeling upon entering the woods.

  Apart from themselves, and the fox, there was nothing.

  The thought sent a sudden dart of fear into Thorn, and he put on a turn of speed that surprised even himself and came to stand between Braeve and the fox.

  “Don’t hurt her! It isn’t her fault.”

  “Oh, no?” said Braeve, growing a little taller and looking over the top of his head easily. “And who’s fault is it, then, exactly?”

  “My own, more than likely,” said Thorn. “At least, it’s my fault that she is — what she is. As to where she is, I’m not entirely sure, but if Jelen is right and her motive is revenge, well. That is my fault too.”

  “Jelen,” said Braeve. She swung a casually interested glance backward at the former queen. “Ah. Irae. The princess of your heart is the young doe of your eyes. I see.”

  To his shame and embarrassment at this ridiculous moment, Thorn felt himself blushing.

  “No,” he said. “Jelen is — that’s how she introduced herself. That’s what I call her — what she is, to me.”

  “I see. And the fox? What is she, to you?”

  He turned halfway, still on edge and alert to protect the fox — though that, as well, was ridiculous, after everything he had done to her — but he could see her now, too. His back wasn’t to her anymore.

  She was looking at him.

  She stood, and padded forwards. In this light, he could see more clearly that she was actually a strange color, unusual for a fox; almost a golden orange, rather than the more normal rusty red that he had seen on foxes back in his own wood, or the clean red that he thought he remembered from — from before. There was something else odd about her, as well, and it was something to do with her eyes, which looked at him as though the fox knew things, suspected things, doubted things —

  Had seen things —

  The fox stepped neatly past him and up to Braeve, who shrank down in response until she was almost the size of a child, nearly eye to eye with the fox. The fox sat down once more, curling her tail around her feet. They looked at each other face to face for a moment, and then the fox looked away and blinked.

  “Not a fox, then,” said Braeve.

  Thorn swallowed past his throat; the dryness of it was renewed. Braeve looked at him with something clear and certain dawning in her eyes.

  “I see who you are,” she said, “you are something different.”

  “No,” said Thorn, “I’m nothing and no one.”

  “A nothing and no one who keeps the company of a fox that is not a fox. Of a fox that was once a girl.”

  Irae gave a slight gasp, and as Thorn turned to look at her, he could plainly see that, while she had suspected the truth, she was still hoping that it was all a bad dream. That this could not be the girl who she had ordered turned into a fox, fearful that she would turn on her. That this was not the ghosts of her recent past come back already to haunt her.

  But the hope was gone now.

  “Now,” said Braeve, in her curious voice, which was now full and satisfied, as though she had had a rumor confirmed, “I will not ask questions. But if I were you — either one of you — I would be asking myself who this little fox will be telling stories to. I don’t know who she is, but surely someone must be looking for her — and when they find her, she will have a few things to tell, won’t she? What it’s like, sleeping under the stars. Catching fleas. Going on four legs like an animal.” The strangeling reached out to the fox, who stood up and backed away by a few steps. “Perhaps she doesn’t mind it,” said Braeve, “but I wouldn’t place any bets.”

  “We must be going,” said Irae abruptly, as though she couldn’t help herself. “I must — I have to get out of here.”

  Braeve eyed her for a moment, and then gave a little chuckle that sounded as though it had broken free from a full-on belly laugh.

  “Must you,” she said, “so soon? You can take your friend with you, if you’re ready for him. I can’t make any guarantees; no one can, though, and so I will not carry any guilt for what happens, either. I’ve warned you that my specialty is illusions. And so, I see that illusions are something of a specialty for you, as well.” She addressed this last bit to Thorn and nodded deeply at him. “I always respe
ct any member of the trade.”

  “I belong to no trade,” said Thorn, “I’m no one.”

  “Ah well, no one,” said Braeve, shaking her head. “The fox says otherwise. Methinks that you’re in for more than what you suspected, with these little tricks you can pull.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said Thorn, but he said it mostly under his breath, and even as he spoke, he did not believe it. The fox was looking at him, again, then turning her head away and blinking, sleepy-eyed, like a cat. She seemed perfectly content to sit there, and not at all inclined to move.

  Thorn thought he would almost rather have preferred it if the fox was acting more like — well, like a fox. Like a wild animal. Like the only feral creature in all of Braeve’s woods.

  Given the circumstances, it probably would not have been polite to request it.

  Irae turned from them and went into the house. When she returned she was leading a pale, ashen-faced Karyl, who was walking as though half-blind, as though he didn’t really believe anything of the world around him but needed to learn the feel of it once more, like a child. He took each step as though feeling it out, as though not at all certain that the earth beneath his feet would hold him. Irae had him by the hand, and she took him to the horse and helped him take the bridle. He required a little assistance to mount but was able to do so mostly under his own power, much to the relief of Thorn, who was not at all certain about their ability to get Karyl back on the horse without the help of Braeve herself.

  Irae approached Braeve, who watched her with amusement in her eyes. Thorn could see that she was warring between her diplomatic upbringing as a queen and her own innate forthright strong-headedness, which did not at all want to offer any gratitude to someone who had once tried to kill her.

  The diplomatic upbringing seemed to win out.

  “My thanks for saving the life of my friend,” she said, biting her lip, and after a moment she went so far as to extend her hand.

  Braeve took it and held it. She had grown to her normal size once more, and her own hand swamped that of the younger woman.

  “Don’t thank me till you see the outcome,” she said. “It is not a sign of weakness to be wrong, you know.”