The Last of the Renshai

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “Then why?” Arduwyn started. Losing momentum, he tried again. “I love you. You love me. I can make enough money to support you and the children. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is you.” Bel drew her legs to her chest and watched Arduwyn from over the tops of her knees. “You’re a runner.”

  “A runner? What do you mean, a runner?”

  “After we slept together, I needed someone to talk to. Usually, I could do that with Kantar. I would have told him. If he chose to leave me because of it, well, he deserved better than me. But, for whatever reason, he held you in higher regard than anyone else we knew. I couldn’t destroy that friendship.” Bel pursed her lips, looking even more beautiful to Arduwyn. “The only person I could have talked with was you. But you chose to run instead.”

  Arduwyn cringed, and now nothing could keep him from crying. His vision blurred, and a tear rolled down his face. Through a maze of colored pinpoints, he could see Bel had started to weep, too. He took a seat beside her, glad that this time she did not move away. “I was wrong. I was stupid. I’m sorry, I’m stupid. Can’t you ever forgive me?”

  “I forgave you a long time ago.” Bel’s voice went breathy. “But I’m twenty-seven years old with three children and a job that feeds us irregularly. I need a husband with a sense of commitment. I need a man who will accept my children as his own, who’ll come home every night with enough money to keep us fed and clothed, who can protect us from thieves and keep my bed warm at night. Men like Kantar are hard enough to find. Your presence will make it impossible.”

  Arduwyn dared not believe what he was hearing. “But I can do those things. I love Kantar’s children. He was my closest friend. I love you. I’ve worked before, and, if that isn’t enough, I’m a tolerably good hunter. I’m not big nor good with a sword, but I’ve never known a thief who could outrun an arrow.”

  “No!” Bel’s fist crashed against the stone. “It impressed Kantar, the way you made friends so easily yet were so dedicated to the woods you were willing to forgo the simple pleasures most men take for granted. But I see with a woman’s eyes things men don’t understand. When you wander, you’re not really looking for adventure, you’re running from responsibility. Always, you believe you’re seeking something more, something you think is special out there, maybe over the next hill, something other men can’t find. You spend so much time looking, you’re blind to the small pleasures that you have. You’ll die searching for something that doesn’t exist, never having recognized or enjoyed what you had.”

  Arduwyn opened his mouth to dispute, but Bel’s severe expression told him she had not yet finished.

  “And I’ll spend every day worrying over whether this is the one when you don’t return. Do I have another week? Another month? The months or even years you stay will be wasted, and I’ll have nothing but bitter memories and the knowledge that I’m that much older, that I may have lost a thousand chances to find a stable man. You’ll leave hating me, believing I stole your chance at true happiness, your opportunity to make a glorious mark upon the world, mourning time lost from your chase of nameless ghosts and dreams that don’t exist.” Bel lapsed into a bout of tears.

  Arduwyn drew her to his chest. This time, she did not resist, appreciating the comforting despite its source. His first urge, to deny Bel’s accusation, passed quickly. He had never looked at the situation in that light, and he needed a chance to consider her words. One thing seemed clear. I love Bel so much more than I ever knew. “Bel, give me a chance. Please, give me a chance. I love you. I want to be with you. I want to help. I can change. I just want to be with you. . . .” Arduwyn trailed off, clutching Bel to him, torn in a thousand directions yet valuing the feel of her warm, soft curves against him.

  Bel clung, and they sat together, each mired in thought. Arduwyn’s feelings flipped back and forth, hoping the moment would never end, then wishing it had never begun.

  Finally, Bel pulled free of his grip. “You want a chance? I’ll give it to you this way. Choose. Me or the forest. You can’t have both.”

  Arduwyn licked his lips, stalling. He wanted to hold Bel again, to pull her close and tell her everything would be all right. But he knew he had to find peace within himself before he could keep such a promise. To make that vow without dealing with his inner confusion could only be a mistake, opening him to breaking the promise and Bel’s heart or trapping himself in an intolerable situation. “I . . . need time to think.”

  Bel relaxed. A smile appeared on her face, and she seemed relieved by his answer. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  * * *

  Mitrian awakened to a menacing growl followed by high-pitched giggling. Startled and confused, she tried to sit up, her rounded abdomen turning her sudden movement into an awkward, flailing roll. She lay on a knitted rug beside a tidy, unlit hearth. Sunlight streamed through the eastern window, blinding her. She threw an arm across her forehead to shield her eyes as wild thumping noises, interspersed with childish screams of delight, rang in her ears. The floor shuddered.

  A young, female voice wafted from deeper in the room. “Hang on, Effer! I’ll kill the bear!”

  Memory seeped back into Mitrian’s sleep-dulled senses. She recalled falling asleep in Garn’s arms on the main room floor of Bel’s cottage. Now, she lay alone. She twisted toward the noises, her gaze trailing over the door to the outside, across crates pushed away from the center of the room to the single couch. There, Arduwyn sat, staring out the window behind him, one arm curled around a three-year-old girl with frizzled, dark hair. She bounced on his knee excitedly. To the right of the couch, a ladder led up to the loft bedrooms. Beyond it, a doorway opened into the kitchen. Toward the center of the room, Sterrane romped on all fours, a towheaded boy of about six on his back. A girl several years older swatted at the huge man with a broom.

  Suddenly, Sterrane wheeled. The boy teetered, giggling furiously, then regained his balance. The eldest girl fled with a shrill noise.

  Mitrian smiled at their play. “Good morning.”

  Arduwyn looked over. “Ah, Mitrian, awake at last. Couldn’t imagine how you managed to sleep through the bear hunt, but I’m glad you got your rest.”

  When Mitrian and her companions had arrived at Bel’s cottage the previous night, the youngsters were asleep in the loft. “Bel’s children, I presume?”

  “The bear rider is Effer. The brave woman warrior with the wooden sword is Jani, and the spectator . . .” Arduwyn tightened his grip on the toddler. “. . . is Rusha. I believe you know the bear.” He inclined his head to indicate Sterrane.

  Jani’s tone went singsong. “Sterrane the bear can’t catch me. Sterrane the bear can’t catch me.”

  Sterrane made a sudden lunge for the girl. She retreated with a shriek, but the bearded man hooked her ankle. Effer tumbled to the floor. Rusha slipped from Arduwyn’s lap to her sister’s aid. “Don’t leave, Uncle ’dune,” she chided him in a serious tone. “I come back.”

  “All right,” Arduwyn promised.

  Mitrian pressed her rumpled clothing with her hands. It seemed strange to watch her traveling companions settle so comfortably into domestic life. Sterrane appeared capable of adapting to any situation. But despite Arduwyn’s experiences with cities, the hunter had always seemed far more comfortable in the forest. She remembered his words from the day they met: “I’d kill myself before I let anyone lock me in a cage.” At the time, she had taken the words literally. Now, she wondered if village boundaries and cottage walls penned him equally as severely. Colbey’s lessons had dominated Mitrian’s time nearly to the exclusion of all else; yet she had still noticed that it had been Arduwyn who prodded them to keep moving from one town to the next and, if any member of the party was missing, it was always Arduwyn. She found the same restlessness in him that her father displayed when too much time passed between forays, a feeling she knew well herself. More than once, she had caught Santagithi staring at the creases in his hand, as if he mourned losing somet
hing extraordinary, as if every moment he spent on everyday responsibilities and concerns was one forever lost.

  Mitrian watched Sterrane romp about the floor, three children hurling themselves at him at once. For a moment, she envied his simplicity, the way he amused himself with whatever situation life gave him whether that meant living alone in a cave, the impermanence of travel, or the stressful, constant hustle of a trading city. Always before, she had been attracted to men like Rache and her father, heroes who lived for the moments of glory, dreading the routine that fell between those peaks. Now, near term and protective of her son and his future, Mitrian worried that Garn might find cities and cottages as confining as Arduwyn did.

  Unconsciously, Mitrian’s arms looped around her bulging abdomen. Suddenly, she became acutely aware of her husband’s absence. “Where’s Garn?”

  Rusha ran around Sterrane in a crazy circle, then hurled herself back into Arduwyn’s arms. “Miss me?”

  “Terribly,” Arduwyn replied with a straight face. He addressed Mitrian’s question. “Garn walked Bel to work. He was bored, and we thought it would be safer for her. He should be back shortly. Your pack’s upstairs, and there’s fruit in through there.” He motioned first toward the ladder to the loft then to the entryway to the kitchen. “Why don’t you eat, get washed up, and dressed? Then Sterrane, Garn, and I will have to go out and find ourselves jobs. We’ll need some steady income.”

  “Why?” Mitrian patted the pouch of gems at her belt. “I have plenty of money. You’re welcome to it.”

  Arduwyn hauled Rusha into his lap, his lips pressed into a stern line. “That’s your money, and I think you should keep it for emergencies. I wouldn’t feel right using it, and I believe Sterrane would feel the same way. As for Garn, he’ll get bored if he’s not working.”

  A chill shivered up Mitrian’s spine as she realized how closely Arduwyn’s words fit her previous line of thought.

  Sterrane rolled. Children flung themselves out of his path. Jani gave him a sharp poke in the ribs with the broom, and he rushed her.

  Ignoring the antics, Mitrian spoke confidentially. “Garn’s not really, um, trained for any trade.”

  Arduwyn smiled. The same bold confidence returned that he had displayed while disputing over a deer in the Granite Hills. “Arduwyn the Job Finder can handle Garn.” His gaze fell on Sterrane, and his grin went crooked. He said nothing more, but Mitrian suspected he would find Sterrane’s employment needs more difficult. As glib as Arduwyn sounded, Mitrian knew from Nantel’s stories that paying jobs were exceedingly difficult to find. The citizens generally apprenticed to trades. Unskilled labor positions were quickly filled by transients who had lost their money to whores, thieves, or Pudar’s gambling parlors.

  Mitrian opened her mouth to contradict him, then thought better of it. Arduwyn knew the obstacles he was up against. Undermining his confidence could achieve nothing. She headed into the kitchen to wash and eat.

  * * *

  To Mitrian, the Pudarian market became a wild buzz of colors, noise, and odors. Stands and shops lined the streets, packed so tightly that no finger’s breadth of space was wasted. People wound in an endless procession between the stands. At first, the traffic seemed aimless to Mitrian. More than a dozen times her pregnant abdomen jostled into other passersby. Each time, the other turned a hostile look on her. Then, the strangers’ gazes naturally fell to her paunch and the sword at her hip, and their expressions changed to haughty disapproval. Apparently, Pudarians thought little of armed women, or pregnant ones roving their market square. Having passed judgment, each stranger would disappear wordlessly back into the crowd.

  Gradually, Mitrian mastered moving amid the steady flow of people deeper into the city on the east side and toward the exit on the west. She gawked her way from seemingly endless displays of silks to stands laden with pastries, fruit, or meats, then on to weaponry or household goods. Each time she believed she had discovered every conceivable ware, she found some necessity or novelty she had forgotten. Spices perfumed the air. Remedies with multihued labels promised to cure every ailment from toothache to end-stage consumption. Mitrian’s ears ached with the cries of merchants raising their voices to a volume that drowned out their neighbors, all vying, it seemed, for her attention.

  Wanting to see it all, Mitrian missed most of the Pudarian bazaar, including the trio of white-robed figures who exchanged knowing glances and glided into the crowd. Dazzled by diamond necklaces, blankets, and rattles shoved toward her amid a rapid-fire sales pitch, she never found her tongue before the items were withdrawn for more interested patrons behind her. She had almost forgotten that she had companions until Garn nudged her.

  “Can you move like her?”

  Mitrian followed his gaze to a buxom dancer, scantily clad in two strips of gauzy fabric.

  Sterrane shook his head. “Not me. Belly get in way.” He performed a series of awkward, spinning movements that sent Garn and Mitrian into peals of laughter. Oddly, though some passersby stepped around him, no one stopped to stare at the hairy, pot-bellied dancer.

  Even Arduwyn seemed unamused. “Come on,” he said stiffly, waving for them to catch up. Irritation tinged his voice, and Mitrian watched to see what troubled him. She let the crowd split and flow around her as Arduwyn approached a man unloading crates of vials onto a table. A short exchange followed, the merchant shaking his head throughout it. Arduwyn wandered away, looking more confounded than before.

  The sight sobered Mitrian. Arduwyn must be having enough trouble finding employment without his three companions acting like fools on a drunken revelry. Guilt seeped into her at the thought that she was too busy staring at crafts and jewelry to keep Garn and Sterrane from creating an embarrassment. She studied Garn, glad to see he appeared more overwhelmed than defensive and resolved to watch his antics more closely.

  As morning trickled into afternoon, exhaustion wore on Mitrian. Her head sagged, and each step seemed an effort of will. Whenever Arduwyn paused to speak with merchants, she found a crate to sit on or a shop wall against which she could lean. It became increasingly difficult to stand. The cries of the merchants merged into a shrill and piercing annoyance. She and Arduwyn had left Garn far behind, riveted to a stand displaying shields and armor. Sterrane continued to look around in silence, stuffed with a variety of exotic foods Arduwyn had chosen and bargained for, the larger man only slightly more subdued than earlier in the morning.

  As the sun sank lower in the west, Arduwyn grew more irritable. After what seemed like his fiftieth rejection, he drew up a crate and flopped down next to Mitrian.

  “No luck?” Mitrian asked out of politeness. Despite Colbey’s conditioning, a full day on her feet while flagrantly pregnant had exhausted her. Her ankles felt as thick as tree trunks.

  “Luck has nothing to do with it,” Arduwyn snapped. “I’m doing something wrong.” His gaze tracked the milling crowd. “I’m sorry I dragged you along. I didn’t know it would take this long.” Despite his words, Arduwyn sounded more aggravated than regretful. He pounded his fist against his leather-covered thigh several times, deeply thoughtful.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Mitrian’s offer sounded no more sincere than Arduwyn’s apology.

  “I’m doing something wrong. Something wrong.” Arduwyn’s words sounded more like a chant than shared conversation. “Something wrong. Merchants. Sales.” A smile raked over his face. “I’ve got the answer. Why didn’t I think of it before?” His annoyance fled, replaced by the confidence Mitrian had seen in Bel’s cottage. “Mitrian, you’re about to watch a master job finder at work.” He leapt to his feet. “I’ve decided to work here.” He gestured to an area so choked with patrons that Mitrian could hardly see the stand.

  Despite his size, Arduwyn shouldered his way through the throng, with Mitrian trailing curiously after him. He stopped before a table spread with a wide variety of merchandise, from vials of perfume and powders to ornamental letter openers. Two youngsters attended the patrons.
Behind them, a middle-aged man dressed in blue silk stood, grim as a statue, with legs widely braced. Clean-shaven, he sported a headful of dark curls. A frown scored his features.

  With surprisingly little effort, Arduwyn maneuvered through the crowd to the man in blue. Mitrian pressed to within hearing distance.

  Arduwyn used a booming voice, speaking in a swift patter that precluded interruption or pauses for breath. “Hello. I’m Arduwyn, and I consent to being placed in charge of your sales provided I receive three silver chroams for every ten I sell.”

  The merchant jerked his head toward Arduwyn. “What?”

  Arduwyn rubbed at his chin, still rambling. “Perhaps three seems a bit much, so I’ll settle for two provided you have no Béarnides in your company.”

  The merchant’s frown deepened. His eyes narrowed to slits. “Who the hell are you? And what business is it of yours if I have Béarnides in my company?”

  Arduwyn stepped closer, neatly blocking the merchant’s escape. “A shrewd businessman indeed, sir. But you can’t have the best salesman for less than two chroams for ten. And I’m adamant. You mustn’t speak my name in front of Béarnides. It seems their most august ruler purchased forged documents from a rogue with my name and general description.”

  Mitrian filled her lungs in a deep, shuddering gasp, as if to fulfill Arduwyn’s need for breath.

  The merchant’s cheeks reddened in offense. He stared. “Why on Ruaidhri’s great earth would I hire a thief hunted by the king of Béarn?”

  Mitrian wondered the same thing, though, doubtless, Arduwyn had captured the merchant’s attention.

  “Do you consider selling an item at the highest price you can thieving? I call it good business, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” the merchant admitted, his normal rhythm sounding abnormally slow in the wake of Arduwyn’s rapid-fire speech.