Then it was his turn. He shuffled forward, in his mind seeing himself as only another hopeless beggar.
“What’s your business?” the guard said, wrinkling his nose. He put the back of his hand to his nose and gave Fen a surly look.
“Shantytown,” Fen said, barely glancing at the guard. The glance was enough to show him that he knew the man. He’d sat in the mess hall and talked with him, sweated on the practice field with him. He winced inwardly, fearing that the man would recognize him.
“Gods, what’s that rotten smell?” the guard said, his mouth twisting in distaste. There was no sign that he recognized Fen. “What’s that you’re carrying?”
Fen thrust the dead dog toward the guard and pulled back the edge of the sack. “Dinner.”
“Oh, ugh…that’s horrible. That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” the guard choked, backing away. He waved Fen on through. “Go on. Get out of here before I get sick.”
He was still complaining as Fen walked through the gate.
Chapter 17
Once on the path to Shantytown, Fen tossed the dead dog away. The smell was getting to him too. Shantytown loomed before him, a welter of ramshackle dwellings and suffering humanity. He’d never been in Shantytown before. It wasn’t the sort of place anyone went to if they didn’t have to. Wild stories about the place’s degradation, violence and pestilence were commonplace. He touched the dagger hidden under his clothes, making sure he could get to it quickly if he needed to.
The foot path led to a twisting lane of sorts that led through the rubble. The first dwelling he passed looked like a pile of garbage, all rotted boards, pieces of torn cloth, and broken bricks. He wouldn’t have known it was a dwelling at all if he hadn’t seen the feet sticking out of it. A closer look showed a tiny open space under the pile. One of the feet twitched and a moan issued from under the pile, so the man wasn’t dead.
He stepped over someone who was stretched out across the path, face down in the dirt and snoring loudly. A broken clay pot lay by his outstretched hand, a dribble of sour wine staining the dirt.
Beyond, sitting with her back against a broken wagon wheel, was an old woman with scraggly white hair. She wore the remains of a dress with a large, faded bloodstain on the side. She was chewing on something that looked like a piece of hide, fur still attached to it.
“Where’s Argid?” he asked her.
She paused in her chewing and looked up at him. There were no teeth in her mouth. No comprehension showed in her eyes.
“Argid?” he prompted her.
She pointed with a bent finger deeper into the morass and went back to chewing.
Fen walked in the direction she pointed. How had Wallice and Eben survived growing up in a place like this? No wonder they were so different. He tried to imagine surviving out here and couldn’t. He’d always thought of himself and his mother as poor, but now he saw that they weren’t poor at all. There was a lot further down they could have fallen.
Twice more he asked for directions. One man only stared at him blankly, his mouth hanging open. While waiting for an answer, Fen saw a fly crawl out of his mouth. The other one was a boy about the age he’d been when the Fist took him in. The boy smiled at him witlessly, grinning and chuckling as if he’d said something funny. Finally, he pointed at a structure that was taller than pretty much anything else in Shantytown, most of which wasn’t much more than waist-high, as though the whole village was a wounded animal huddled on the ground waiting to die.
As he made his way toward the place, he realized something. He’d come here afraid, like a child going to confront the monsters hidden behind a partially-open door. But now that he was here, he felt more sad than anything. These were people, not animals, yet they lived worse than any animal did. It wasn’t right.
He stepped out into a bit of an open area in front of the taller structure and got a surprise. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find—Ravin huddled inside in fear, maybe—but it wasn’t this.
Sitting in front of the hovel, leaning against it, was a giant of a man. He was picking his teeth with a long splinter. He had to be Argid. His eyes rose to Fen, then shifted off across the clearing. Fen turned, and there was Ravin.
She was kneeling beside an old man, talking softly to him. The old man had his eyes closed, and he was nodding as if agreeing with her.
Fen walked over to her. “Ravin?” She turned her head. Her eyes lit up, and she jumped to her feet and threw her arms around him.
“You’re here,” she kept saying over and over as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “You’re here. You came.”
“I would have come sooner, but—”
She put a finger over his lips. “It doesn’t matter. I know you came as soon as you could.” Her eyes searched his. “How are you?”
“I’m good. I got my power back.”
“I know. I heard Lowellin and that thing talking. That’s when I knew I had to run. I didn’t want him to grab me and use me against you again. I won’t let that happen.” Her lips pressed together stubbornly.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to leave everything and come here.” His eyes swept the place and returned to her.
“I don’t care. What you’re doing is far more important than anything that happens to me. As for this place…well, it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“Not so bad?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It is bad. It’s terrible that people have to live here. I meant that it’s not as scary as I always imagined it would be. It’s mostly sad. The people here have nothing. There’s so much suffering.” Her voice caught, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She sniffed. “Even for this place, you smell.”
“It’s dead dog.” She gave him a questioning look. “Part of a disguise. I’ll tell you about it someday.” He held out the food he’d brought her. “I brought you some things.”
“That’s great,” she said. She knelt by the old man, broke off a piece of bread and pressed it into his hand. “It’s bread. Eat it.” His eyes flicked open, fixed on her for a moment, then closed again. His eyes were very red and caked with dried discharge.
Fen crouched down beside Ravin. “I brought the food for you,” he said awkwardly. He knew it sounded bad as soon as he said it, but he couldn’t deny that he was worried about her.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “I’ll get by. But I’m worried about Poll. He hasn’t eaten in days.” She glanced over at Fen. “This is Poll, by the way. Poll, this is Fen.” The old man nodded but didn’t open his eyes. “Poll served in the army too, Fen. Until he got too old and had to retire.” She looked back at Poll. “Fen’s in the army, Poll. He’s the one I was telling you about.”
Poll turned his face toward Fen, and something that might have been a smile creased his lips. “She’s proud of you, you know,” he said in a whisper.
“Don’t take it wrong that he doesn’t look at you,” Ravin said. “It hurts him to open his eyes. He has some kind of infection. I wish there was a way to get a healer out here.”
She managed to get the old man to eat a little more bread and a dried fig, then she stood up. Fen stood up too. “I also brought you some different clothes.”
“That’s great,” she said, taking the dress he handed her and holding it up to the light.
“I hope it fits,” he said.
“It doesn’t need to.” To his surprise she began tearing strips of cloth off it.
“What are you doing?”
“Bets needs bandages,” she said. “She was set on by wild dogs last night, and they chewed her up pretty badly. Come on. You learned how to bind wounds in the army, didn’t you? You can probably do this better than I can.”
She started walking away. When she did, Argid levered himself up and made as if to follow. She turned to him. “It’s okay, Argid. Fen’s here now. He’ll protect me.”
Argid looked Fen up and down suspiciously. He grunted and sat back down.
�
�Argid basically raised Wallice and Eben. Their mother brought them out here when they were really small. She died soon after. He took them in and looked after them.”
“Really? You’d never think that, looking at him. I mean, he looks like…”
Ravin turned around suddenly. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? We see only how people look on the outside and forget there’s anything else. I’ve spent my life serving people with money and power, people who wear the finest clothes and eat the finest foods. They have their hair cut and styled just so. Their nails done. Makeup. Corsets. Everything you can imagine to make them more beautiful. And yet most of them were so ugly on the inside, bitter, hateful people who see others only as obstacles or stepping stones to get where they want to go.”
Her cheeks flushed slightly as she spoke, so intense was her passion. Fen thought she’d never looked more beautiful than she did right then.
“Out here,” Ravin said, “all that gets stripped away. The people here don’t have any falseness left. Are there ugly people here too? Of course, there are. Without Argid’s protection, I don’t know if I’d make it through a single night. But there are also beautiful people here too, people who fell to the bottom of life’s barrel and can’t get back up.”
“I’m sorry,” Fen said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” she said, touching his arm and smiling briefly at him. “It’s just…I’ve had some time to think. You know, when you’re king, you need to do something about this. You need to help these people.”
“Wait a minute.” Fen was startled by her statement. She’d said it so matter-of-factly. “When I’m king? What about Lowellin and the Ichthalids? Won’t they have something to say about that?”
She squeezed his hand. “You’ll defeat them.” Her voice was earnest. It was like she was willing him to believe. “I know you will.”
“Okay, say I do.” Privately Fen couldn’t imagine how that was going to happen, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. “Still, king? I’m pretty much just a peasant. If things had gone a little bit differently, I might have ended up here too.”
“Who else?” she asked him, putting her hands on her hips. “Who else would be a better king? You’re strong. You’re a born leader. You care about people. You don’t seem to realize this, Fen, but people look to you for direction. If you gave them half a chance, they’d follow you.”
“I don’t know…”
“Well, I do. You’d be a great king.”
“Maybe we can talk about this later. There was someone who needed bandaging?” The truth was that this talk made Fen very uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure he was even a very good lieutenant. The thought of being king made his head spin.
He bandaged the woman as best he could, then followed Ravin back to Argid’s home. Along the way Ravin spoke to two more people who were sick, sharing her food with them and comforting them as best she could. Fen had to admit that he was surprised. He’d never seen this side of Ravin before. There was a strength about her, a renewed purpose. It made him love her all the more.
“Are you listening to me?”
“What?” Fen realized she’d been talking to him.
“I asked you if that was all the food you brought.”
“It is. I’m sorry. I would have brought more, but I was afraid the guards at the gate would search me, and it would look like I stole it.”
“It’s okay. Argid said he could get some more later.”
“You didn’t eat any of what I brought you.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said, smoothing her dress. “I just—”
She stopped talking as he suddenly took her in his arms and kissed her. For a long moment they clung to each other. Fen could feel her warmth radiating through him, renewing him. When they pulled apart, his legs felt unsteady.
Ravin looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Well…that was…well…” She grabbed him and kissed him back. This one went on even longer. When they parted, she said, “I don’t know what brought that on, but I’m glad of it.”
“I love you,” Fen said. “More than anything.”
She took his hands in hers. “I love you too, Fen.” He wrapped her in a hug, and they stood there, pressed together. “Will this ever be over?” she asked him. “Will we ever get to just be together?”
“It will. I promise you that.”
“You can defeat them, can’t you? With your power?”
“Sure. I only have to wait for the right time.”
She pulled back and looked up at him. “Don’t lie to me, Fen. Don’t ever lie to me. I chose this, remember? I chose you. I chose us. And you told me you’d stop trying to protect me and tell me the truth.”
Fen lowered his gaze and sighed. “The truth is that I don’t know. I don’t think so. Twice I’ve tried, and twice I’ve failed.” He told her briefly what had happened.
“You can’t fight a war by yourself,” she said when he was finished. “You need to find others to help you.”
“I wish I could, but I don’t think there are any. The squad will help as much as they can, but the Devourers are too powerful for them.”
“You’ve seen those scars on Lowellin’s face? When I was his prisoner, I heard him say he got them when he was trying to get the piece of the key that’s across the sea in Qarath.”
“He did?”
She nodded. “I bet there’s someone else, someone like you over there.”
“You could be right.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Why else wasn’t he able to get it?”
“Others like me…” Fen mused.
“Whoever it is must be pretty powerful, if they were able to do that to him.”
“That’s…I hope you’re right,” Fen said, feeling excited. “If there really is someone over there with powers like mine, and he and I can fight together…”
“What makes you so sure it’s a he? Maybe it’s a she. Why not?”
“Uh…I didn’t mean…well, that is…”
She smiled at him. “I’m only teasing you. It doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is you have allies out there. You just haven’t met them yet.”
Chapter 18
Fen spent much of the rest of the day after he left Ravin sitting up against the wall of a building across the plaza from the front gates of the castle, watching who came and went. He didn’t see any of the Ichthalids. Squads of soldiers came and went regularly, none of them Wolfpack. His disguise continued to serve him well. People either completely ignored him or went out of their way to avoid him.
His thoughts kept returning to what Ravin had said about there being someone else like him in the kingdom across the sea. The idea excited him. It helped lift the creeping despair that he’d been struggling with ever since the Devourers first appeared, a despair that only intensified after last night’s defeat. Your power is nothing against chaos, the Ichthalid had said. And so far, after two attempts, those words felt true. Both times they’d shrugged him off like he was nothing.
But if there was another one out there with power, one strong enough to defeat Lowellin, then things might be very different. The two of them together could be a serious force. If there was one, could there be others as well? he wondered. It was an intriguing thought.
It also changed his plans. Burning the ships no longer seemed like as high of a priority. What was important was to be on one when they sailed and make every attempt to join up with any new allies he could find over there.
But that didn’t mean he was going to sit around and do nothing. He still wanted to learn more about the Ichthalids, what they were capable of, what their strengths and weaknesses were. There was also the chance that if he could attack one of them alone, with all the force he could muster, that he might be able to kill him.
Which meant he needed a plan. He needed to set a trap. As the day passed, and he sat there waiting, a plan began to form in his mind.
Late in the afternoon the
one-eyed Ichthalid came walking out of the gates. He was alone. He walked across the plaza without looking around, seemingly oblivious to the citizens who scurried to get out of his way. Fen stayed where he was, watching. He realized that he could sense the Ichthalid. His presence was like an angry insect whine just at the edge of hearing. As he came closer, Fen felt his palms begin to itch. His skin grew warm.
The feeling receded as the Ichthalid reached the other side of the plaza and headed down a street. Fen closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the distant whine. As the time passed it grew fainter and fainter, but he could still sense it. He could tell what general direction it was coming from.
As his inner senses became attuned to it, he realized that he could sense the other two as well. They were still in the castle, not moving.
Finally, he opened his eyes. This was good. Knowing where his enemy was would make it a lot easier to ambush him.
After the sun set, he moved to a spot closer to the gates, so that Wolfpack squad wouldn’t slip by him in the dark. He felt certain they would be sent out on patrol again tonight. Other squads were issuing forth regularly, replacing weary squads who returned, having finished their patrols. Sooner or later it would be his friends who emerged from the castle.
But the time passed, and they didn’t show up. Fen began to worry that they’d been caught, that they were in chains while Lowellin tried to force them to talk. What should he do? he wondered. Should he try to sneak into the castle? Or should he continue waiting? It was with great relief that he finally saw them emerge, Lukas leading them. Fen stood, stretching to remove the kinks in his back and legs, and shadowed them as they walked down a street, gradually closing the distance.
He was about to call out to them when Wallice, who was in the rear, looked over his shoulder and nodded at Fen. Lukas led them down a quiet side street, and the squad stopped.
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