by Liam Reese
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” said Thorn. “I may not know much about much, but I do know that you’re not going to succeed without a fight. If you’re going to fight, you should make sure you at least stand a chance of winning.”
He watched her breathe, watched her think; he listened to her heartbeat, and heard it quicken.
She marched quickly over to Lully, who stood by Graic, who was knitting something green with her long, knobby fingers. The little kitchen-maid looked up at her princess, eyes narrowing.
“Something’s going on,” she said. “I recognize that look.”
“I will not take you into the Badlands,” Irae told her. “You or Graic. You must carry on without me.”
“Why?”
“Why? Have you not heard stories of the Badlands? You must have.”
“Of course, I have,” said Lully, putting her hands on her hips, clearly aggrieved, “but I don’t know that it could be much worse than we’ve already been through. You’ve taken me through bands of rogues and highwaymen, to fight with giants, and allied me to a stranger with eldritch powers. How can wastelands be so much more terrifying or dangerous?”
Thorn could see Irae smile, as though despite herself.
“It isn’t so much more terrifying or dangerous,” she said, “but you are right — I have put you in enough danger. You and Graic both. I need you to do something else for me if you will allow me to give you an assignment. Please, Lully.”
In the face of a simple plea for help, the fiery maid melted.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “I suppose so. What is it that you want me to do?”
“You’ve gone to your own people,” said Irae. “You’ve tried to rally supporters for me there with no great success. But Graic may have a better chance.”
“What? Graic?”
The old woman in question looked up from her busy work but avoided eye contact with any of them. Rather, instead she looked up at the sky, squinting as though someone up there was talking loudly at her.
“I can hear you,” she called upwards, “stop shouting!”
“You must be joking,” said Lully.
“She’s wool-gathering, to be sure,” said Irae, “but she has an extensive family. Her sister, I believe, lives in a little village just outside the Pluron Woods. She knows the way, and it is quite close. If you leave now, you can reach it tomorrow.”
Thorn gave an involuntary start, and came towards them, his feet moving without having been given any orders to do so.
“You’re sending her to my old village?” he said.
“To her village,” Irae corrected him. “If I understand right, you have not lived there in quite some time.”
“Yes, but —”
“And for that matter, they can gather information on your family at the same time, if that’s what you desire. Graic has family all over the kingdom, and given her connection to me, it’s likely that there will be some loyal subjects among them.”
“Yes, but —”
“And, as they live in a smaller village in a more rural area, they may be even more affected by the faults and lacks of my uncle’s reign. Where there are unrest and injustice, there will be those easily rallied for a chance.”
“Yes, but —”
“If we send them on the Malpas route, they can stick to the larger town areas and avoid most of the rogue activity. I have a little money left — they can stay in inns, so long as they are careful to keep to their assumed identities.”
“Yes, but —”
“Thorn,” said Irae, as aggrieved as Lully had been a moment ago, “I am organizing it so that you can go to Keler as you so avidly desire. Why do you keep objecting?”
He hardly knew himself. Her about-face in the decision was so sudden that it felt as though he had been leaning against a rock, only to have it give way beneath him. It was a wonderful feeling, though, that sudden fall — she was giving in to him. She was making it so he could do what he dearly wanted to do. Her concern for him, if that was indeed what it was, was enough to make his heart jump inside his chest.
“But,” he blathered distractedly, “you’re sending them off on their own?”
“They will be alright, if they stick to the plan and don’t attempt any heroics.” She gave them a stern look, stern enough to seem slightly out of place since it was to a waifishly slight maid and a studiously knitting old woman. Something caught her glance, and she turned her head. “Yes, Ruben? Why do you have your hand up?”
“I can go with them,” said the bard rapidly. “If they need someone to accompany them. I am more than happy to oblige. It isn’t that I’m afraid to go through the Badlands, of course, but there is the issue of finding a stick big enough.”
“Your obsession with a bigger stick is troubling,” said Thorn. “What do you know that I don’t know?”
Ruben smiled nervously at him.
“Nothing at all,” he said. “I do have a small compendium on the Badlands. Just a little light reading material.”
“If you don’t want to go with us,” said Irae, “then leave your books with Thorn. He can read, after all, and he can give us direction as we go.”
“Not this language, he can’t,” Ruben declared. “Even I have my troubles. The compendium was brought out of Henschot and written in one of their older tongues. There are —” He dropped his pack to the ground and squatted beside it, rummaging so deeply into it that he nearly disappeared. “There are illuminations in it,” he said, voice muffled, “so that may be of some assistance.”
Thorn made a face, which Irae caught, and she laughed at him.
“Don’t look so disappointed,” she said.
“I can’t help it. What’s the point in knowing how to read if there are just going to be pictures?”
“Would you give it up?”
He hesitated, thinking of the time when he had learned and of the girl who had taught him. Coming to see him out in the woods, forging a friendship. He flinched.
“No,” he said. “Not for anything.”
“Then that is the point.” She took the little book that Ruben held out to her. It was bound in brown leather, quite beaten up, and one of the covers looked as though someone or something had taken a bite out of it. Thorn could readily believe that it had traveled through multiple kingdoms. She thumbed through it as she spoke. “Keler is a day’s journey away, from the start of the Badlands. I suppose it might be considered Henschot’s territory if anyone was eager to claim it. As it is, the only difficulties we should have will be from the Badlands themselves, not from any other kingdom. I will conceal my identity of course, as I have done. Just to be on the safe side.”
“On the safe side,” repeated Ruben, with a slightly strangled laugh. “This side of the Badlands, that would be.”
Thorn shot him a sharp look, but Irae only went to Karyl who had been standing silently by the whole time. He had scarcely said a word since they returned from Braeve’s woods with him traveling under his own steam again but instead watched everything with hollow eyes. He may have been standing upright, Thorn thought, but he was far from healed.
There was something unnerving in his fixed stare.
Thorn thought of his dream, and how the dream-Lisca had told him that Karyl was dead, and he shuddered. The big man wasn’t dead, of course — Thorn had seen dead people, he was reasonably certain that none of them were able to stand straight up after being deceased. But he wasn’t entirely right, either. Whatever it was that Braeve had done, it didn’t feel like a healing.
Thorn wondered what the wound from the arrow looked like, under the dingy bandages that were wrapped around Karyl’s torso. But he was a too afraid to ask.
Irae did not seem to think too much about the situation, though Thorn had caught her watching Karyl with worried eyes once or twice as the night had gone on. Now, she directed him gently towards his horse.
“Is he coming with us?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him.
“I just thought,” said Thorn, swallowing hard, “it may be a good idea, while he’s moving on his own, to send him to a physician, someone who can do something more than what Braeve did.”
“I don’t know that any doctor could have done what Braeve did,” said Irae, though it looked as though the words pained her to say. “He is standing up, he is moving, he is talking and breathing, he is alive. Perhaps he isn’t quite back to himself, but that’s only to be expected.” She looked up at Karyl, who had pulled himself up onto his horse with absolute silence. “Are you all right?” she said. “Should you go with us?”
“I am fine,” said Karyl, “and I will go with you.”
She hesitated for a moment, peering up at him, seeking out his gaze, then seemed to steel herself and come to a decision.
“Very well, then,” she said. “You heard him. He’s perfectly all right.”
“That isn’t at all what he said,” Thorn objected. “I think you are in denial.”
“We may need him,” she said. “Ruben can go with Lully and Graic, and the three of us can go through the Badlands till we reach Keler and find the answers we need. Stop arguing with me, Thorn, I’m doing this because you want to.”
Which was perfectly true, and he couldn’t fault that. It was positively bizarre to have someone do something for his sake — bizarre but lovely. Delightful, even. He wondered nervously if he would ever have the chance to get used to such a thing.
He decided that it was safer not to tempt fate.
“Page fifty-one,” Ruben told Thorn. “The maws. Pay particular attention.”
“I will.”
“Perhaps you should take a stick with you.”
Thorn patted the walking stick strapped to the side of his horse. “I’ve got one.”
“Oh, good,” said Ruben. He hesitated for a moment, then seemed to compel himself to speak. “Stick together. The facts in the book may not be entirely true — they are based on legends, after all — but you stand the best chance if you stay close. Other than that —” He shook his head, as though shaking something off. “No, you’ll be fine. I think.”
“Thank you for the encouragement,” said Thorn, somewhat amused by the bard. He had no great love of danger himself, but Ruben seemed to err heavily on the cautious side, even by his own standards. It was true, he didn’t know what the Badlands held — but he was with Irae, and he had a horse and a stick and a book. For the moment he was confident that he could handle whatever the adventure might throw at him.
For the moment.
The second interview with the rogues was not going as well as the first had.
The trouble was that the first had been nearly an unmitigated success. With that as his background, with the surprising ineptitude of the first little band of rogues — now, sadly, deceased and nothing more than a pleasant memory — he would have expected something better. From his perspective, of course, not from theirs.
But the Damn Rogues were something different.
They had seen him coming. They had scouts — well, the other group had scouts, too, but the Damn Rogues had competent scouts. Perhaps the scouts had scouts. And all of the scouts were armed.
So here he was, hands tied behind his back, bleeding from the right side of his chest. It wasn’t much more than a scratch, and it was the only opportunity they had to land a blow. There were at least three rogues on the ground now, one clutching a broken nose and the two more not moving very much. All in all, he considered that he had acquitted himself very nicely, and he could be proud of what he had done.
Nonetheless, that didn’t change the fact that he was all tied up with nowhere to go.
Still, they hadn’t killed him. Which was odd in itself. He turned to the black-haired rogue who had him by the left arm.
“Excuse me,” he said pleasantly, “why haven’t you tried to kill me yet?”
The rogue gave him a look that spoke volumes, mostly about his bleeding right pectoral.
“Ah, yes,” said Serhiy, “that. Still. You didn’t try very hard, did you?”
“You should ask Gerick about that,” said the rogue, “only you can’t, because he’s dead now.”
“Gerick was the unfortunate one with the black mask?”
The rogue at his side said nothing.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Serhiy, snapping the fingers of one hand behind his back. “You all wear black masks. How do you tell each other apart? I mean, when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror, how do you know that it’s you?” The only response to this was a more strenuous twist of his arm. But it was more of a response than he had gotten thus far, so he took heart from it. “You raid people for money and valuables,” he went on, “of which I have neither, apart from what was in my purse, which wasn’t much, and which you took. Apart from that, you take rich people for ransom, from their family or friends. I am not rich, obviously, assure you I have no family, and having spoken with me you can’t possibly still think that I have friends. So why are you taking me to your leader, as I assume you are doing?”
“You killed two of our number.”
“Yes, that’s so, I did.”
“You deserve to die.”
“For so many reasons,” said Serhiy, still pleasantly, “but we’re all sinful, aren’t we? Don’t tell me that your leader doesn’t allow you to make decisions on such things without his input.” He tsked. “That seems like very bad management, to not have more trust in your underlings. Now, see, my superior gives me a task and then allows me to carry it out exactly as I see fit, with only minimal intervention afterward. He understands that the ends justify the means, you see? Your leader seems to be lacking in confidence in those who follow him. His name is Raff, isn’t it?”
He didn’t think he was imagining the sharpness of the look this earned him, or the sudden jerk of his other arm from the opposite side. Everyone was listening, suddenly on the alert. Serhiy smiled to himself, and to other people. He knew perfectly well that there was always enough of his smile to go around.
“On the other hand,” he said, gently, “I would be absolutely delighted to meet him.”
The Damn Rogues lived in the sort of forest that made Serhiy regret that he had not taken more time to investigate the trees for their climbing potential. It was cool and dry with enormously tall trees. In a kingdom that was heavily wooded, the forest of the rogues stood out as a jewel in Serhiy’s mind.
“I would very much like to spend more time here,” he said, as he was conducted into the camp. “Who should I see about that?”
But the black-haired rogue on the left had had enough of Serhiy’s conversation, stimulating as he no doubt found it. He caught the young man a crack on the head with the knuckles of his fist, knocking Serhiy sideways into his other companion. Serhiy did his best to take this in good grace and fought off the urge to bite.
They were with the leader, at any rate. He had been brought to the middle of the camp, surrounded by canvas lean-tos and cooking fires, the rogues going about their business but watching him curiously. It was newly evening time, and everyone was stirring. The man in front of him, standing in front of his own canvas lean-to with arms folded and a forbidding brow, was clearly the one he wanted to see. Serhiy could tell by the way others were looking at the man; they looked at him with much the same reverence that Serhiy felt when looking at the December King. The king had done much to inspire such reverence in Serhiy — taking control of the kingdom as he had done, taking Serhiy under his wing, giving him a job that he was so very good at, being kind to him, and not kicking at him as had happened so often in Serhiy’s life — and he could not help but wonder what this rogue, this Raff, had done to deserve such expressions of admiration from his followers.
He was handicapped by the fact that his hands were bound, he was bleeding, and he had so recently sustained a blow to the head. Nevertheless, he managed an elegant bow. He was good at those, h
e knew.
“Your servants did not cover my head when they brought me here,” he said, just as a start. “That tells me a few things.”
“They are not my servants,” said Raff. He was a tall, spare, rangy man with a shock of pale-yellow hair. Despite the black clothing he wore and the black mask that covered his face from chin to just below his eyes, the impression he gave to Serhiy was one of paleness. He looked as though he scarcely saw the sun, and knowing what he knew about the rogues, Serhiy could well believe it.
“That tells me a few things too. Either you intend to kill me, or rather have one of your men kill me, or you have a sneaking suspicion that I am more important than I may seem.”
“I am told that you killed two of my friends,” said Raff. He stepped back into his lean-to and gestured to Serhiy’s captors to bring him in as well. The early autumn night air was chilling down as the sun dipped below the horizon. There wasn’t much in the little tent — apparently Raff’s takings, however he got them, were spent elsewhere. Serhiy appreciated this; a man who could concentrate on the important things in life and kept it simple was someone that he could understand. “If Azur hadn’t suspected that there was something different about you, your corpse would be cooling in the woods. So.” He sat down and gestured companionably to another little wooden chair. Serhiy was settled onto it abruptly, trapping his hands between his back and the chair, and his two companions loomed over him with their arms folded. “Tell me what it is, that is different, and then I will decide whether it is enough to let you live.”
Serhiy gave a little cough.
“I came here only for information,” he said. “I didn’t intend to kill anyone.” He hadn’t intended to actively avoid it, either, but that didn’t seem like a relevant point at the moment. “If I seem different, I imagine it’s because of who sent me.” He watched Raff very closely, waiting for any movement of his eyes that might give his thoughts away. “Perhaps an air of regal authority has been transferred to me, though I am but a humble servant and chief executioner.”
A telltale flicker and a slow, deliberate exhalation.