Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  The houses grew less well-kept as they moved east, and at some undetermined point Selbey and Hask began insisting on searching the houses themselves. Graegor waited with the horses, wincing when he heard something break or shouts ring out, which seemed to happen more and more as the afternoon became evening. The residents who came out for Graegor’s review looked sullen and fixed him with stony eyes, softening only slightly when he reported that he had seen none of them at the riot. Some had dogs, but if they growled, Hask and Selbey simply drew their swords, and their owners would call them to heel. Several times Hask and Selbey came out of the houses with chicken or fruit, and once they offered Graegor some, but he shook his head. He was ravenously hungry by now, the dough-ring long digested, but accepting bread—stolen bread—from these two wasn’t a line he had to cross.

  Every so often other bluecloaks would ride up. They would all mutter to each other, and then it was on to the next house. Graegor managed to infer from these discussions—since no one spoke to him directly—that while some of their quarry had been caught and confirmed as heretics, most were still at large. He wondered how far the search had spread and what would happen to the men they caught.

  Not far from the city’s eastern wall, they came to an artisans’ quarter, with streets of potters and glazers and other crafts. After two more fruitless streets, Hask pounded his heavy gloved fist against the door of a shop advertising decorative ironworks. “Open up! Duke Richard’s business!” Nothing happened, and he pounded at it even harder. “I know you’re there, your chimney’s smoking!”

  A piece of iron slid back from a peephole in the door. “What is it?” Clear blue eyes framed by wrinkles peered back at them.

  Hask made as if to stick his saber through the opening, and Graegor heard the old man on the other side trip and fall. Hask and Selbey nodded at each other, Hask counted three, and they threw their shoulders against the door and broke through. Graegor heard a cry of pain, but the bluecloaks strode into the workshop, pushing things over as they yelled for anyone inside to come out. Graegor looped his horses’ reins over an iron railing, propped his staff against it, and hurried inside to see the old ironweaver just rising to all fours, his left cheek bright red where the door had struck him. “Are you all right?” Graegor knelt and held out his arm, but the old man shoved it away, picked up a hickory cane, and braced himself to stand again.

  He glared at Graegor under a white shock of hair. “You with them?”

  “Well—yes, but—”

  “Then you get out.”

  Graegor lowered his eyes. As he was leaving he heard something clang and break, and he wondered what it was. It sounded big—it could have constituted the ironweaver’s entire income for the month, if not the season.

  When Hask and Selbey came out they were showing each other some belt buckles and hand tools. Graegor’s throat was constricted and his teeth were clenched. The urge to say something was almost overwhelming, and he very nearly did when they met up with two other bluecloaks down the street and all four of them displayed and admired each other’s loot. This was pillage, is what it was, and it was sickening to see the polite “I’m so sorry, sir, but please, if you’d be so kind as to request your household to come to the door, just for a moment, it’s the duke’s orders, you see” give way to vandalism and robbery as soon as their targets hadn’t the money or clout or size to stop them.

  He imagined telling Jolie about this, and realized that his first instinct was to leave it out of the story. He didn’t want to talk about this. It was not what he’d believed about lords’ sworn men.

  Then they came to a glass-blower’s workshop. Graegor at once recognized the man who opened the door. He was a shovel-man. There was no doubt about it. He was not trying to hide, but to blend, lying low—the other shovel-man’s attack on the horseman put all of them at risk. He was acting like an honest craftsman and hoping no one would recognize his broad face, but he hadn’t been standing very far from Graegor at the chapel. A young woman stood behind him, and as Hask and Selbey shoved past them to search the shop and house, Graegor saw two tiny children peering out from behind their parents.

  He looked at the shovel-man, and the shovel-man looked at him, first curiously, then with frozen fear. Graegor clenched one hand on the reins of the horses and the other on the shaft of his quarterstaff. When Hask and Selbey emerged, seemingly empty-handed—though who knew what they had put in their pockets—they didn’t ask if he recognized anyone, and they didn’t notice that he didn’t volunteer the information. They went to the next house, and Graegor followed, not daring to look back at the shovel-man, but it was several moments before he heard the door shut.

  The evening wore on. Other bluecloaks brought them torches, since this part of Farre had no streetlights. Hask and Selbey pounded on doors, pushed people outside, ate people’s dinner, stole small valuables, leered at women, drank, and basically took thorough enjoyment of their license to terrorize honest folk. On the two occasions that his keepers asked him what his problem was, Graegor only shook his head, because calling them bullies and thieves to their faces was not likely to do any good.

  How could Duke Richard condone this? It wasn’t how elite horsemen should behave. It certainly wasn’t how a Khenroxan cavalryman would behave. Was it?

  Graegor didn’t know what to think. Was he just too naïve and provincial? Did this happen all the time in the cities? At home the sheriff and his two constables handled law and order without anything like this. It was rare that soldiers turned up on the village street, and nine times out of ten it was either the small squad who traveled with the baron as he reviewed his lands, or a pair of guards with a tax collector. The constables did have to get rough with some people, like Ted’s father, but only when he was drunk and causing trouble. Graegor couldn’t imagine the constables bursting through his father’s door and breaking pieces that had taken hundreds of man-hours to craft. No one in town would put up with it. If it ever did happen, his parents and all the craftmasters would complain to the baron and get reimbursement. But it was obvious that none of these people would, or even could, complain to the duke. There was no fear of reprisal on Hask’s or Selbey’s faces, no furtiveness in their thievery, no thought of any consequences.

  It was full dark when another pair of bluecloaks came riding up to Graegor and Hask and Selbey. “We’ve got one!” their leader yelled, and pointed at Graegor. “Is that your witness?”

  They quickly mounted up and kicked their horses into a gallop. Graegor heard doors open behind him as curious people glanced out to see who was making a racket. He found he could manage the reins with one hand while he held the quarterstaff in the other, the butt end braced on the stirrup. It felt good to move fast, even though his face and hands felt very cold. He hoped that after this they would let him go, although it was just as likely that, having found one heretic, their efforts to find the others would be redoubled rather than called off.

  Their destination was another chapel. This one was smaller than the one with the blue dome, and it was squeezed between a tavern that was plainly a whorehouse and a wig shop that was plainly a front for a whorehouse. It was lit only by torches and Lord Abban’s Lights, although these were just smoking, guttering ruins of tallow candles in a rusty rack. There was not a priest in sight.

  On the public side of the rail bisecting the chapel, several bluecloaks stood around a man who sat facing the sanctum on one of the backless benches. The bluecloaks looked up when Hask and Selbey greeted them. As everyone kept talking—God, he wished they would all stuff a sock in it for one second—Graegor walked up to the man they had captured.

  This was definitely one of the ringless ones who had come out of the chapel—maybe even the one who had insisted that he and his fellows not be shackled. His clothes were plain, his cheeks concave, his wrists now chained together. He didn’t look at Graegor, but continued to stare straight ahead, past the railing, to the oval altar and the Godcircle suspended above it.

 
“Well?” a bluecloak holding a torch asked Graegor.

  Graegor nodded. “Yes, he was there. He’s a ringless one.”

  “My name is Ahren and I am a white herald.” The man’s voice conveyed worlds of scorn. He still gazed at the Godcircle. “We herald the coming of the One.”

  Graegor nodded again. “All right.”

  Maybe because Graegor’s response wasn’t what he expected, the man looked up. His eyes widened, and suddenly he stood up and stared hard at Graegor, exactly the same way the other ringless one—the other white herald—had. One of the bluecloaks pushed him back down on the bench as Graegor backed up a step. The man tried to pull his hands apart and cursed when the chains prevented it. “You need to come with me,” he told Graegor, his voice low and urgent, his eyes pinning Graegor in place. “If they take me, follow me!”

  Follow you? Graegor stared back, holding the quarterstaff in both hands—the quarterstaff ... the white herald’s eyes were on the quarterstaff now, and his lips moved as if in prayer. When he again met Graegor’s eyes, Graegor’s hands tightened on the purpleheart. The certainty, the panic, the awe on the man’s homely face told Graegor as clear as daylight that if no one else had been there, the white herald would have been kneeling at his feet. He’s crazy. He must be.

  The white herald tried to stand up from the bench again, but the bluecloaks jostling around him forced him back down. “Please.” The intensity of his eyes on Graegor never diminished, but the emotion behind them softened. “Please. We need to go to Orest.”

  Orest? He’d never even heard of the place—or was it a person? “Why?”

  “He was there?” The new voice, cutting through and silencing the cacophony of voices, belonged to the tall knight commanding the bluecloaks, who was picking up his helm from the bench and looking at Graegor expectantly.

  As Graegor nodded and opened his mouth to agree, the white herald whirled his head around to the knight. “Sir!” he yelled. “Sir, please. Mercy. Take me to the city gate. I’ll leave tonight, I’ll never come back.”

  The knight snorted. “Do you think I’m that gullible?”

  “No!—I mean, I ...” As Graegor watched, despair and hope kept chasing each other across the white herald’s narrow face, but he didn’t look at Graegor again. In fact he seemed determined not to, as if afraid to pull Graegor into his predicament. “Sir.” The man composed himself to address the knight. “I have—I have resources. What would it take to ...”

  “Be quiet,” the knight snapped, and crossed the chapel to stand in front of the prisoner. “You’ll be lucky if—”

  “You don’t understand!” His voice went shrill and he yanked at his chains. One of the bluecloaks took hold of his shoulder, and he threw his elbow and caught the bluecloak in the chin.

  That was all the rest needed—three of them jumped on him immediately, and the others were just a little slower. The sudden crush knocked Graegor back, and he tumbled over the thin low railing separating the sanctum from the congregation. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled to his feet within inches of the altar, but he didn’t touch it—at least, not until he nearly jumped out of his skin when an emaciated priest burst out of the shadows where he must have been watching everything. “Get out!” he hissed and waved his arms, and the folds of his black robe flapped like bat wings. “You’re not allowed! You can’t be back here! Get out, get out!”

  “I know!” Graegor snapped, bending to pick up his staff. The knight was just starting to break up the dog-pile on the prisoner. Graegor stepped back over the railing and the priest threw himself to his knees where Graegor had landed and started polishing the stone floor with the hem of his robe. Graegor bit off what he was tempted to say to that. It was true that only priests and acolytes were allowed in the sanctum, but he was pretty sure that his own village priest would say that crossing the rail wasn’t a worse sin than beating someone bloody on the congregation floor.

  The bluecloaks were dragging the man toward the door, his face a pulp. Graegor couldn’t ask him how he and the other white herald knew him. Or maybe it wasn’t him, maybe it was just the purpleheart staff. Both white heralds had seen his quarterstaff. Did magi carry purpleheart staves? Was that what the ringless ones were really looking for?

  They’re heretics, they’re fanatics, he told himself. Who knows what they want? He sure didn’t, and now he’d never find out.

  With considerable disgust, he decided he’d had enough. He walked boldly up to the knight, who was fastening the silver clasp of his blue cloak. “Can I go now?”

  “What?” The tall knight glanced down at him, then stopped and really looked at him in the orange light cast by the torches. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.” And a half.

  The knight cursed under his breath. “Who’s your father?”

  “Aric Wright. He’s a craftmaster. We’re staying with his broker.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the Broadmoor neighborhood.”

  Another muttered curse. “Do they know where you are?”

  “No. Your men grabbed me for a witness and I’ve been with them ever since.”

  An out-loud curse, and a shout: “Hask!” When Hask came over, the knight nodded at Graegor. “Take him home.”

  “I can find my own way,” Graegor protested.

  “With the curfew you need an escort. Hask, take him home, up to Broadmoor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The ride north and west across the city was swift and blustery. Fortunately Hask didn’t try to talk to him. Graegor found the way back easily—it was mostly along main streets, and, of course, he’d never been lost. One of his few talents. Like not being sick. Both were useful, but neither suggested a career.

  Graegor reined up at the private stable at the end of Johanns’ street. “We’re here. The house is just three doors up.” He dismounted and pounded at the stable’s rolling door with the heel of his fist.

  “Hey!” Hask called after him.

  When Graegor turned around, Hask said, “We may be back for you, to bring you to testify at court. Wouldn’t be surprised if our lord duke expels all heretics after this.”

  “My father and I are leaving in the morning.”

  “If the gates are open.” Hask reached into a pouch. “Here—for your trouble.” Graegor heard a ting as Hask’s arm jerked up, and as if by instinct he reached out and caught the coin that Hask had undoubtedly tried to flick past him. By size and weight it was a silver quarter. Hask turned and kicked his horse into a trot.

  Graegor stood outside the stable door and held the silver coin for a long moment. On the one hand, he could use the money. On the other hand, Hask had probably stolen it from someone who could also use the money.

  In the end he put it in his belt pouch with his smaller coins and Jolie’s scarf. He’d just be sure he did some good with it.

  He pounded the stable door again. Finally a portal above his head opened and a groom peered out. “What are you doing? Don’t you know there’s a curfew?”

  “That’s why I’m trying to give you my horse.” Idiot.

  The groom opened the rolling door, just wide enough for the horse to go inside. Graegor tipped him, not that he really deserved it, then turned to look up at the clouds that shrouded the entire sky.

  How late was it? How much had this neighborhood been told about the riot? What did his father think had happened to him?

  A wild idea jumped into his mind: he could disappear. He had money, a staff, and a knife; he could just ... go.

  And do ... what?

  Not be a lord’s sworn man. He knew that.

  Besides, he still had the scarf to give to Jolie.

  He turned toward the row of tall, matching townhouses. The third door belonged to Johanns. Graegor shifted his grip on his quarterstaff to avoid knocking over the potted flowers lining the terrace steps as he took them two at a time. Only seconds after he had knocked, the door opened and Elbin, the old butler, smiled in reli
ef when the light of his candle fell across Graegor’s face. “Oh, thank Abban! We were afraid something had happened to you. Come, come.” He quickly ushered Graegor inside, patting his shoulder as if to make sure he really was all right, and shut the heavy door. “I’m so glad to see you’re safe.”

  “Thank you, Elbin.”

  “Are you hungry? Would you like me to fix you a plate of dinner?”

  “Yes, thank you, I’m starving.”

  “Master Wright and Mister Johanns are in the counting-room,” Elbin said as he moved past Graegor, holding his candle high. “I’ll take you. Come on by the kitchen once you’ve talked to them.”

  They moved through the dim house to a door near the back, and Elbin opened it after a brief rap of his knuckles. “Master Wright’s son has arrived,” he announced grandly to the large, well-lit room, and stepped back to let Graegor go in.

  “Graegor!”

  If there was any actual relief in his father’s voice, it was overridden by the more familiar anger. He strode across the carpet and took inventory with a sharp eye, grunting a little when it appeared Graegor was whole. “Where were you?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “No,” Graegor answered truthfully, and looked over his father’s shoulder to Johanns, who was leaning against his massive worktable piled high with books and paper. “I’m sorry for arriving so late, sir.”

  “Just happy to see you, my boy, just happy to see you.” Johanns’ smile was understandably strained—he had very likely just endured several hours of Graegor’s father’s worst mood. The tall pendulum clock in the corner showed an hour shy of midnight. Graegor realized that he hadn’t been hearing bells tolling the hours; at least, not since they had left the good neighborhoods. Bells were expensive.

  “Where were you?” his father repeated the exact words, the exact tone, as he did when he was trying to stay calm.

  “It’s a long story—”

  “Tell me you weren’t anywhere near the riot!”

  “Um ...”