by Sandra Elsa
The desk sergeant escorted them to an office in the back of the first floor. They heard no noise as they walked down the long hallway but as the sergeant unlocked and opened the door the strained voices of Captains Torel and Farren could be heard raised in argument. “You can’t send a recruit on a mission like that,” Captain Farren shouted.
Captain Torel responded in a calmer voice, “She’s more talented then eighty percent of your slackers, and she would be an unknown. She would blend right in.”
The sergeant who brought them in cleared his throat to get the attention of the officers. They stopped immediately and turned toward the door.
Trace saluted. “Sergeant Gunter, reporting as ordered.” The officers returned the salute and Torel extended his arm and shook hands with Bella. Not to be outdone, Farren followed his lead.
“As you probably just heard, we have a slight difference of opinion,” Torel said. “Without a doubt, we wish to enlist you in the Army. There are of course, several questions. Among them of course are, ‘Where will you go?’ and ‘Will you receive further training?’ First we need to know a bit more about you. Most importantly I need to know why you lied to us on the practice field this morning. Sergeant Gunter was a bit sketchy on details yesterday. I need to know all there is to know about Bella. Starting with this morning.”
Bella reflected on the events of the morning, what she’d said and hadn’t said, there were so many lies which one was he calling her on? With a boldness she didn’t feel, she met and held his steady gaze. “What is it you're so certain I’ve lied to you about, Sir?”
“Let’s start with, why you claimed Sergeant Marner as your weapons instructor?”
Bella smiled. “As I told you this afternoon, the person who finished my training does not wish to be known. Sergeant Marner did in fact instruct me in basic swordsmanship, so that was not a lie.”
With dogged persistence, Captain Torel asked, “Why would your instructor not want to be known? If he is that talented, he could work with Master Manlin training the Guard.”
Bella searched her mind and found Conall absent. It would seem this room even cut him off from her mind. She was glad, she didn’t want to hurt him with her next excuse. She chewed on her lower lip picking her words carefully. “He does not wish to be seen by anybody, because his form is not natural.”
Captain Torel stopped his pacing and stared at her. “How does a deformed man teach swordsmanship?”
“I did not say he was deformed. I said his form was not natural.”
Captain Torel glanced at a door in the back of the room, and went on to his next question. “I’m tempted to believe you did begin learning over a year ago, because if, as I suspect, you were at Sergeant Marner’s house shortly before my men arrived there, you have learned your swordsmanship at an incredibly rapid speed.” A hand brushed his shoulder, where first she and then Angel had struck him. “I would hate to think that someone with less than six months experience drew first strike on me. But a few casual statements by locals in the north and the ravings of my prisoner, lead me to believe you were the one who so ineptly stitched him up.”
Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “There was nothing inept in my treatment of that man.”
Captain Farren smiled, joining the interrogation for the first time. “So it would seem Torel, perhaps you need to brush up on your swordsmanship skills. If I understand the young lady’s statement, you have been bested by someone with less than six months experience.”
Farren turned to Bella. “Why did you not want us to know you sewed him up? Did you do something to cause his madness? My man, Sergeant Garalan’s message said he was alive, healthy and well worth the trip to collect him for the information he could pass on. Yet even the wizards can get nothing sensible from him.” Farren turned to Torel, “Truth spells only work if the person telling lies believes they are telling lies. The wizards tell us the prisoner believes he is telling the truth. So somebody must have convinced him, his nonsense is the truth.”
Bella shrank from his words. She would in no way implicate Johann. In a hushed tone of voice, not certain how much trouble she was in, she asked, “What exactly is he saying. His Ronese was very broken. I could not understand more than bout four words he said while I was there.”
Torel looked to the back door again and scratched his chin. “He rocks in his corner repeating, ‘The Prince lives, the copper changeling pink for the Prince.’ That is all he will say. Sometimes it seems he wants to say something else but then he starts looking over his shoulder, and starts rocking again. If you didn’t do this to him, can you tell me who did?
Bella's skin chilled. Firmly she looked into his eyes and said, “No.”
He strode to the closet and lifted a hand to the latch then turned back around. “No you cannot? Or no you will not?”
Bella considered the question. In all honesty she did not know if Johann had caused this or not. The man’s injuries had been severe. It was entirely possible that by the time he made the trip back to Relante it had been a result of the journey. She stopped ruminating and stared straight into Torel’s eyes as she said, “No, I cannot.”
“Do you have any idea, what his words could mean?”
“They could simply mean that he is a scout for the enemy and this was some sort of code that would pass the truth spell.” It was even possible the man was not being nonsensical. That brought her back into it because she was reasonably certain, the both the copper and the pink referred to her and Johann had said he claimed the changeling was the Daughter of the Wind. Hadn’t Lorn called her by exactly those words?
“We thought of that,” Farren said. “If it is code, it is unlike anything we have dealt with before.”
Torel returned to the beginning. “Why did you not want us to know you were the one who sewed him up?”
“I took the advice of a wiser person than I. When we discovered that Garalan was regular army my grandfather advised that I keep my involvement quiet. We knew the man was very badly off and there is only so much herbs can do. We did not wish to be held accountable if he died.”
Farren and Torel both turned to the back door. They turned back around and Torel said, “Very well, tell us about Bella Gunter. We need to know everything there is to know. Part of the prisoner’s statement is not so nonsensical and it may involve a very dangerous journey for which I'm searching for just the right person.” He raised a hand and forestalled Captain Farren’s arguments. “ Tell us all there is to know of your life.”
Bella looked from one captain to the other and then stared at the door in the back of the room where they had made it blatantly obvious they had a wizard hidden. She turned back to Torel and began just as she and Johann had rehearsed. “It’s not very exciting. I was born in Swadan. My father died just after I turned six.” She fast-forwarded ten years (in the tale, the time frame was undefined). “Mother couldn‘t properly care for me and Johann took me in. Grandmother was an herbalist. I learned about herbs from the old woman.” A strange way to put it but Johann had told her they would use a truth spell and worded that way it was the truth if not chronologically correct. She wanted to emphasize her herbal knowledge since Trace‘s unit needed a healer, and they already thought she had messed up her last patient. “I learned more herbology by reading.”
She paused in the recitation long enough to breathe, then rushed on. “When I was sixteen I had trouble with a powerful merchant when his offer was refused. Johann and I left the village and decided to come visit Trace. We took the long way around to visit Johann’s friend Tomas first.”
Bella paused, reining in the flood of words. She wanted to get them out without being interrupted and having the captains ask questions. But she needed to slow down, too much speed would raise the questions she wanted to avoid. She should not be this nervous. She’d already seen Torel’s eyes light with questions more than once.
“Tomas gave me my horse. His dam was Tomas’s old plow horse Bess. At the time he w
as two years old and still a runt. Tomas didn’t see him being useful at his size and the colt attached himself to me.” Torel’s interest sharpened but after a glance at Farren she could see him rein in the question on the tip of his tongue. “When we left, Tomas allowed me to take Angel. He started growing as soon as we left and hasn’t stopped since.
“We ran into Dylan and his son a couple of days east of Trell. His son was in a bad way. They‘d run into a Telgarn scout. I managed to save his life, but while we were camped, I ran into an extremely large wolf and I started thinking about personal defense. Dylan agreed to help me learn basic weapon skills in exchange for services rendered in helping his son. I worked on perfecting those skills on the trip here. That’s about it, not a very exciting story.”
From a door in the back of the room, a wizard in blue robes appeared. “That tale was all truth,” he announced, “Ambiguous in places, sketchy in others, but all truth.”
“What is it you’re hiding from me Bella?” Captain Torel asked softly, looking into her eyes.
She remained silent. She had several secrets she didn’t want him to know.
In low undertones he consulted with the wizard in the back. When he returned he said, “We will play a little game of question and answer. When did you meet your second weapons instructor?”
“The same night I met the first,” she answered promptly.
A glance towards the blue robe gave him a nod, truth.
“Then the first knows the second?”
“No.”
Truth.
“Why won’t you tell me about him?”
“Because he doesn’t want me to. He fears people and finds interacting with some of them painful.”
Truth.
“Because of his deformity?”
“You choose to use that word, not I. But yes his problems are largely tied up in his form. And the cause for his form.” She considered her words closely. As soon as she left this room he would know what had been said. She had no wish to anger or hurt him.
“Could he be a threat to me or anybody you might work with?”
“Not as long as I’m not threatened.”
Truth.
“Could anything you’re concealing become a danger to you, or anybody you might work with?”
She hesitated—Torel focused his attention on her, waiting for the lie. “Possibly,” she responded.
Truth.
Trace shifted uneasily beside her. If Delia hadn’t just told her about the people searching for her by description and another name, she would have dismissed it and honestly not have considered it a danger.
With the threat of being discovered by Garec, in spite of what Johann and Trace told her about the army taking precedence over prior claims, she couldn’t help but be concerned. She looked at Trace who simply shrugged.
“There is a man who is looking for me,” she said.
Truth.
“Who?”
“The merchant that caused Johann and I to leave home.”
Truth.
“Why?” Torel watched her with unblinking eyes.
“I omitted a part of my story…” she paused, thinking hard how best to say it without making it appear that she was not Johann’s adopted granddaughter and Trace’s sister. “I didn’t exactly leave my mother’s home—she remarried after my father died. My stepfather was cruel and lazy and when we ran out of money to survive, he sold me into slavery. While I was a slave, Garec stopped at my owner’s house as he passed through on a buying trip to Swadan. He decided he wanted to buy me.”
She stopped. Farren stared at her, his expression unreadable. Torel remained friendly but reserved. Gathering her courage she continued on. “My Mistress would not sell me, but after he left, his interest created other problems for me. That’s when I left. Garec returned from a long buying trip and stopped to try again to persuade my Mistress to sell me. When he found out I ran away he offered to purchase me anyway, on the chance that he could recover me.”
Bella lost courage. She broke eye contact with Captain Torel and stared at the floor. No matter how she told this, it was going to be apparent that she hadn‘t known Trace until arriving in Relante. The one thing she didn‘t want to do was cause trouble for the men who had helped her.
She drew a ragged breath, looked up and stumbled on with the tale. “He returned to his home. It was my misfortune his home happened to be in Johann’s village. By the time he returned to the village, Johann had adopted me and we had come to care for each other. I saw Garec in the market place one day and decided it was time to leave. Johann volunteered to come with me. He wanted to look up Trace.” She finished lamely, “Garec has many connections, and just today I got word from a friend in town that he is still searching for me.”
Truth.
Torel received this information stoically. She watched him silently consult Captain Farren. No matter the antagonism in the room, these two men respected each other. They were quiet for so long that Bella began to think she would be asked to leave. Beside her Trace stood stiffly, the tension high. Torel broke the silence by asking, “Do you wear a brand?”
“Not any longer.”
Truth.
“How did you have it removed?”
“With magic.”
The wizard shook his head. From the back of the room he said, “That was not quite the truth. I get the feeling the answer was correct. The question was wrong.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry I know something’s not right in her answer but a truth spell doesn’t tell exactly where the falsehood lies.”
Torel‘s head swiveled back around to her. A cat prepared to pounce on a mouse. “Who removed it?”
“I'll not tell you.”
Truth.
“Was it Johann?”
It was important to her that it be known that Johann had not done it. Removing a slave’s brand was illegal and something like that could jeopardize his new position. She was glad this question had been asked. “No,” she replied. “He does not possess the Healing skills required for such a task.”
Truth.
Trace relaxed a tiny bit beside her.
Torel noticed. His gaze transfixed Trace and he asked, “You didn’t know that did you?”
“No, sir,” Trace replied.
Truth.
“It is not the policy of the Army to enlist runaway slaves,” he said, turning back toward Bella. “But we do make exceptions. In some cases, we don’t know about it until after all the paperwork is signed. In others the person presenting themselves is precisely suited to the needs of the Army.”
Captain Farren had been silent until now. “Your ‘brother’ made a powerful case for you yesterday. His unit does need a skilled healer and your other skills would also be useful there. I think you fit into the category of suited to the needs of the army.”
Torel reached out to Bella and she dared not move. He pushed her hair behind her ear and cupped a hand around her chin, turning her head to the side as though examining a strange new creature. Power washed over her. The familiar sensation of having her aura examined by outside forces caused her to snatch away from Torel. His fingers tightened reflexively, causing a sharp pain before he released her. Her gaze shifted wildly between him and the wizard in the back of the room. He walked back and spoke to the wizard but she was prepared this time.
She erected shields firmly against the intrusion of power directed at her as they both looked her way. She spun around to leave only to find the door locked from the outside. Fear brought her power surging to the surface and she clamped it down. She didn’t want to become an enemy by destroying the office, in an uncontrolled burst.
Trace laid a calming hand firmly on her shoulder and she shook as she stood there waiting for the axe to fall.
Captain Torel turned around, his expression grim. “I do not approve of secrets. I cannot trust somebody that will not confide in me.” He looked her squarely in the eye and said, “You are hiding a bit more than I wish to deal with. I do
not know your reasons, and I’m not sure I want to turn you over to Farren either, without more facts laid on the table. You cannot adequately perform the job I wish to have you do if you will not be honest with me.”
He noted Trace’s steadying hand and searched both their faces. “I’m not sure I want to give up on you, yet…”
Chapter 27