The Earth-stepper's Bargain: A Short Story

by Jennifer Bresnick

Copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Bresnick

  The Earth-stepper’s Bargain

  The soft green scent of the warm, loamy shore in the distance made Cal think of his childhood home, the one he had raided and burnt to the ground last year. There had been no survivors, but he hadn’t intended for there to be. Geilya was dead, and so the place was dead to him. He had had no other choice. But he was returning to the mainland out of duty only; the sea had long ago swept the last of his sentiment away. Roland Ironhand had called him, and his chief was not to be disobeyed, no matter how reluctant he had been to answer the summons.

  “You need to stop that, Cal,” Hewryn said, leaning on the rail beside him. “Thinking has never done you any good before, and it certainly won’t start now.”

  “I’m not thinking, I’m remembering.”

  “Even worse.”

  “I know. You could just turn around with the ship if you wanted. I’m not asking you to be here.”

  Hewryn laughed, a deep, hearty sound of mirth that matched his massive frame. “You never ask. I’m here because you need me, and I’d prefer if you stayed alive until you’ve had a chance you pay off your debts.”

  “I’ll never be able to do that, Hew.”

  “Then you should never die,” the man said simply.

  Cal nearly smiled. “I don’t intend to. Roland might have other ideas, however.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Liked,” Cal corrected. “There was that little misunderstanding that came between us, if you recall.”

  Hew shrugged. “You did him a favor when you married Geilya. No one was going to take her off his hands after the Sepami came. She was damaged goods, in his eyes. He should be thanking you.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” Cal said sharply, fighting down the stinging ache that shot through him every time someone mentioned her name. Every damn time. “You want to swim home? Without any arms?”

  “Sorry,” Hew said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. Put it away, Cal,” he warned when his friend seemed to have no intention of backing down. He placed his hand on his own sword’s hilt. “Do you hear me? I said to put it away, soldier,” he repeated, snapping like their old sergeant in the Guards in a voice his hindbrain instantly obeyed.

  Cal blinked and looked down. “Bloody hell,” he swore. He had the Rhaveren in his hand, but he had no memory of drawing the enchanted blade. It glittered with malice in the sharp ocean light, an eagerness that both disturbed and excited him. Anger, he thought ruefully, shaking his head as he sheathed the sword, extinguishing its radiance for the moment. Anger would get him every time. “I didn’t mean it,” he mumbled, slumping back against the ship’s side.

  “Yes you did,” Hewryn replied. “I probably deserved it. I’m an ass.”

  “Stupidity and rage,” Cal sighed, rubbing his temples, echoes ringing in his ears. “What a pair we are.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Hew said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re not always that stupid.” Cal glared at him. “Come on, Your Holy Humorless Highness,” he laughed. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  ***

  Bavennoth was the largest and wealthiest city this side of the Kimither Pass, but it had a tiny harbor, barely big enough for their ship to inch its way past the oversized stone jetties. Bobbing dories lined up along their length narrowed the opening to the port even farther, the fishermen gazing up blankly at the merchant vessel as it navigated through the obstacles. Cal held his breath, as they squeezed past, even though he knew it wouldn’t help. He was getting in the way, by being on deck. He didn’t care.

  Cal jumped out onto the dock as the ship kissed up against its berth, ignoring Hewryn’s annoyed calls behind him. He hoisted his canvas bag of belongings onto his shoulder and wove through the crowded marketplace that pushed up along the shore. There was only one thing he had missed during his self-imposed exile, and Hew knew the way there as well as he did.

  “Calebert Percival Denaldor, where the hell have you been?” a woman’s voice cried sternly from the second story window before he could even knock on the door of her modest home. “I expected you days ago. I’ve been worried out of my mind.”

  “Ma, why do you always have to do that?” he called up to her, exasperated and a little embarrassed when a passing group of girls giggled at him. There was a reason he never used his full name, and a reason he had never quite forgiven her for saddling him with it. No matter how famous he got, or how many times he pleaded with her to call him by his chosen nickname, she persisted in making sure that everyone knew he had been christened Percival after her father. Luckily, neither of his given names rhymed with much, and they rarely made it into the bards’ songs. “You’re going to fall on your head if you keep leaning out like that, Ma. Open the door and let me in.”

  “Where’s Hew?” she asked, not moving.

  “He’s right behind me.”

  She looked past him, down the block, and her face lit up as she spotted Hew, his height putting him well above the crowd. “Not dead yet, my boy?” she shouted as he hallooed and waved, grinning like an idiot. Cal sighed.

  “Not just yet, Mama,” he replied, blowing her a kiss and making her laugh. Hew had wandered into their little family when the two of them had been young boys, a few years after Cal’s drunken father had finally gotten himself killed and they had moved to the city to start a new life on their own. Hew had been just another orphan scrabbling to survive on the streets of Bavennoth, but Esmela had taken him in and raised him as her own, partly out of pity, but mostly as penance for the life of her second son, the one she had failed to protect from her husband’s alcoholic temper. The baby had been buried back in Nar Taigar, the quiet village Cal had infinitely preferred to Bavennoth’s brutal, uncaring urban ways.

  “Well hurry up and come in, then, or you might not have that long to live,” Esmela told Hew. “Preidwy came to find you the day after you left, and that girl would cut out your beating heart and eat it for her tea if you gave her half a chance.”

  “Oh. She’s still angry, then?”

  “You told her you loved her and then you slept with her sister,” Cal reminded him. “I’d say she’s still angry.”

  “Shut up, shut up,” Hew tried to quiet him, bundling Cal inside as Esmela finally came downstairs and opened the door. “First of all, you don’t say that kind of thing out on the street. And second of all, you know that’s not what happened. Her sister is crazy and she made it all up. It was a stupid lie.”

  “But it’s still a funny story,” Cal grinned as he tossed his bag onto the floor in the entryway.

  “You pick that up this instant and bring it upstairs,” his mother said, bustling into the kitchen to make them something to eat. “Take Hew’s while you’re at it.”

  “He can bloody well get his own,” he said under his breath, but took both pieces of luggage up to the tiny bedroom they still had to share when they were home, even though Hew barely fit in his bed anymore, and Cal, despite his strenuous denials, snored like a stricken mule.

  But it was cheaper than an inn and more accommodatingly private, which was useful now that his fame had spread beyond his control. He did have his own house, the cottage on the outskirts of the city that he had bought for Geilya, but it had been shuttered up since her death, and though he couldn’t make himself sell it, he couldn’t bear to set foot there again, either.

  It was nothing more than an abandoned monument to a life that had never been; a ruinous remembrance that defined him, drove him, and slowly leached the life out of him with its po
isonous guilt and grief. He had wanted to keep it until it became just a house again, just a building that couldn’t break his heart, but he knew he would be as cold in the ground as his wife was before that ever happened.

  He had knelt by her bedside and wept like a child the day she bled to death, trying to hold the papery skin and delicate veins of her wrists together, to keep her life inside her as she stared at him with that glassy look of resignation and hidden hope, but she had done her work too well. It was what she had wanted for as long as he had known her, and his love had never been enough to change her mind. As her lips parted around her last breath, she had smiled…

  Besides, he thought, shaking himself out of his dismal reverie and wiping his blurring eyes on his sleeve as he dropped the bags onto a chair, as much as he and his mother complained about each other, and bantered back and forth, they were actually quite fond of one another. It had been a long time since he had been home. After Geilya’s funeral, he had left Bavennoth for one of the small coastal islands, hoping a new environment would help ease his heartache. But Cal greatly cherished the time he got to spend with his mother, even if he rarely gave her the satisfaction of hearing it.

  “What does Roland want with me, Ma?” Cal asked as they settled down at the table for a midday meal, trying to block out memories of the past with thoughts of the future.

  “He wants that sword of yours,” she said, nodding to the weapon he had placed carefully against the leg of his chair. He didn’t like being away from it. “Whether he wants you with it or not will depend on how charming you can be.”

  “Then your days are up, brother,” Hew laughed around a mouthful of seed cake.

  Cal made a face at him. “Does he need someone killed?”

  Esmela shook her head. “He wants something recovered. You should ask him. He won’t be pleased if you know before he tells you.”

  “He’s never pleased.”

  “I know, dear, but I’d rather have him annoyed at you than at me,” she said, patting his hand. “At least you’re used to it.”