The Adventurers Guild

by Zack Loran Clark

  “Lotte’s talking with a visitor,” Jett mumbled, suddenly shy. His face pinkened a shade. “A recruit.”

  “Who?” asked Liza.

  Jett’s face reddened even further. Unable or unwilling to answer, he just pointed toward the door with his thumb and looked away.

  Liza, Zed, and Brock wormed through the crowd, peering between bodies to get a better look. Zed spotted Jayna standing alone in a far corner, but when he raised his eyebrows questioningly, the girl simply ignored him. Then he heard Lotte’s clear voice rise above the whispers.

  “And why should we take you, then?” the quartermaster asked wryly.

  “Because you have to!” demanded a familiar voice. “That’s your deal, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, Fie,” Liza cursed, just as a clump of journeywomen parted to reveal Micah, formerly of the Guerras, standing in the open doorway. He was carrying nothing and wearing the shabbiest set of Golden Way robes Zed had ever seen. They were faded and threadbare, the once-vibrant sunburst blanched from gold to beige.

  The former noble’s hair had been shorn since Zed had last seen him, cropped close to the skull. His face was dirty—had he been sleeping outside? Despite it all, though, he was still as handsome and arrogant as ever, and the full force of that aristocratic gaze was now leveled at Lotte.

  To the quartermaster’s credit, she didn’t seem ruffled.

  The woman shrugged. “We certainly can take anyone. Whether we have to is another matter.”

  Micah’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t play games with me, you fey-brained dolt. I know the laws of this city.”

  Lotte just smirked. “‘Fey-brained,’ is it? Perhaps my mind has gone to Fey. Tell me again why the Healers Guild would relinquish such a promising young novice into the streets?”

  “That hag Brenner has it out for me!” Micah barked. “I didn’t even do anything.”

  “Ah, perhaps that was the problem, then,” Lotte said, clapping her hands. “Most guilds expect you to do a thing or two.”

  Micah’s eyes burned. Zed saw desperation creeping in behind the boy’s bluster. It was the same look he’d had at the Guildculling, when he’d begged Ser Brent in front of practically the whole city. Zed had never heard of a guildless noble before, but then he’d never heard of anyone getting kicked out of the kind and tolerant Healers Guild. There was more to Micah’s expulsion than he was saying.

  Micah searched the faces of the assembled guild. Zed steeled himself as the boy’s gaze passed over him, but it didn’t linger long. Micah soon caught sight of his sister, and his face brightened with recognition.

  “Liza!” He practically shouted the name. “Tell this idiot the Adventurers Guild has to accept me!”

  Every eye in the guildhall turned to Liza. The girl’s cheeks flushed and she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, Micah,” she sighed. “What have you done now?”

  “Nothing!” Micah insisted. “I was just walking around after curfew. Two nights ago I ran into Brenner and some guildless guy who came in for healing, and I said he stunk—which was true.”

  “Ah, then that must be irony I smell wafting up from your robes,” Lotte cracked.

  A door crashed open above them. Frond stood at the top of a stairway leading up to the guildmistress’s private chambers, buckling her glove. She took a long, stony look at the proceedings.

  “What’s this?” she asked, her eyes landing on Lotte.

  The quartermaster’s smirk was gone. She nodded toward Micah. “This one’s newly guildless, dropped by the Golden Way.”

  Frond studied the visitor, no doubt also remembering the events of the Guildculling. Micah’s face would be a hard one to forget. “Can he heal?” she asked.

  Lotte snorted and shook her head. “He’s been a novice for less than—”

  “I can heal!” Micah spoke over her, staring imploringly up at Frond. “I healed a bird on my second day—Sister Maeve said I was a natural at tapping into my anima.”

  “And yet here he is, guildless at our doorstep,” Lotte marveled. “The most talented young bird healer that the Golden Way has ever seen.”

  Frond finished buckling her glove and crossed her arms. She glared down at Micah for a moment.

  “He’s in,” she said finally. “Set him to work with Hank, and see that he does whatever healers have to do to get their power. Meditation, starvation, flagellation—I don’t care. Within a moon, I want him healing more than pigeons.”

  Micah let out a celebratory howl that had most of the guild hooting and cackling after him.

  “We’re out of apprentice quarters,” Lotte said officiously, calling over the laughter. She pointedly ignored the smug face Micah was making right beside her. “He’ll need to double up until one opens.”

  Zed was already sinking into the crowd when Frond said, “Give him a cot and put him with Zed.”

  She began walking briskly down the stairs. “In the meantime, I’ll need Hexam, Zed, Liza, Brock, Syd, and Fife. Get dressed fast, people. We’re leaving for the castle before second bell.”

  Zed held the copy of Bonds of Blood and Fire to his chest, frowning over his already cramped room.

  Where could he possibly hide the book from Micah?

  Hexam had said that members of the Adventurers Guild had freedoms that others didn’t, but he didn’t exactly say that witchcraft was permitted. And somehow Zed doubted Micah would be very understanding if he discovered his elf-blooded roommate was squirreling away forbidden tomes.

  Zed thought about hiding it under his mattress again, but decided that was too obvious. For all he knew, the first thing Micah would do was snoop around.

  Eventually he wrapped the book inside a clean bit of linen, then placed the bundle under his dirty laundry. If there was anywhere Micah was likely to avoid, this would be it.

  When Zed was satisfied that the book was as safe as he could make it, he pulled open the drawer to his bedside table, where his small collection of keepsakes blinked up at him: the wooden fox on the silvery chain and his Adventurers Guild token. He scooped up the chain, fastening it around his neck and tucking the charm underneath his shirt—better to keep it on him for now—then glanced down at the remaining token.

  Scuffed and dull, the Adventurers Guild coin looked pretty drab. The blue and white paint depicting the Sea of Stars emblem had faded long before Zed ever held the thing. His mind flashed briefly to the pristine token he’d been forced to return to the mages when he was drafted, still literally glowing with promise.

  Zed closed the drawer and left the room.

  He paused in the hall. A pair of hushed voices crested and fell in quiet conversation. They weren’t whispering, exactly, but the low tones indicated a private conversation.

  He started down the corridor toward the barracks’ exit. The others would be waiting—and besides, his mother had taught him better than to eavesdrop.

  “You shouldn’t be out there.” Frond’s voice cut through the hall.

  Zed snapped around, an apology already on his lips, when the guildmistress spoke again.

  “You aren’t well enough, Jett. With what’s to come…your body needs rest.”

  Zed realized the voice was coming from Jett’s room. Frond’s tone held a softness that Zed had never heard the woman produce. She didn’t sound angry or scolding. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that she sounded worried.

  “It was only the main hall,” Jett grumbled. “Hardly a dangerous journey. Yesterday you took the others out past the wards.”

  A long moment of silence passed between the two.

  “Once I return, I’ll have Hank look you over,” Frond said coolly. “In the meantime, stay in bed. That’s an order, Jett.”

  The door creaked as Frond moved to depart. Zed nearly scrambled away, but Jett’s voice brought him up short.

  “An order?”

  The dwarf’s usually sturdy voice cracked with naked despair. In all the time Zed had known Jett, he’d never once heard the boy so much as whimpe
r or whine.

  “Why am I even still here?” Jett continued. “I’m no use to the guild anymore. I’m broken.”

  The last word echoed through the hall like shattering glass. Zed’s shoulders slumped and his arms went limp.

  Jett. All that confidence and optimism. All the dwarven bluster. Was this what he’d really been feeling this whole time?

  Zed saw Frond’s shadow pause at the door. He heard the shift and scuffle of boots as she turned around.

  “Jett, I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.”

  The boy’s voice broke into a sob. “It’s true! Just send me to the Golden Way and give my room to Micah. At least then it can go to someone useful—someone who’s whole!”

  Frond’s shadow disappeared from the door. A moment later, Zed heard Jett’s bed creak as the guildmistress sat down.

  When she spoke, her voice was gentler than Zed had ever imagined it could be.

  “I’m going to tell you something, dwarfson,” Frond said. “Something my guildmaster told me when I was first drafted into this infernal guild. The truth is, not a single member of the Sea of Stars is whole. And I’m not talking about our injuries. Or our scars. These…” Frond paused and let out a husky sigh. “These are nothing.

  “Every one of us,” she continued. “Liza, Brock, Zed, me, and you—we are all just small points of light, burning desperately against the darkness that surrounds this city. Separately, none of us could ever hope to survive that much darkness for long. But together…together those points of light can become something more. Something truly whole. A handful of stars working together can make a constellation to guide the lost. A skyful could illuminate the world.”

  The bed groaned as Frond rose again. “You acted to protect your friend and fellow guild member,” she said kindly. “You did it without hesitation, and may very well have saved his life. Nothing is broken in you, Jett. You are the heart of this guild, and I have never been more proud to call someone my apprentice.”

  The door creaked open as Frond exited Jett’s room. She closed it gently, muffling the sounds of the dwarf’s quiet weeping. Frond turned and her eyes found Zed’s, which were wet with tears of his own.

  She passed by him without a word, but as she did the guildmistress rested a hand on Zed’s shoulder and gave it a single squeeze. Then she strode briskly into the main hall.

  “Frond is wrong,” Brock whispered.

  He squinted into a mirror that the guild kept tucked away in a low-ceilinged dressing room under the stairs. It was tarnished and warped, but it gave him a clear enough view of himself. His eyes were bloodshot, and he’d slept in his clothes—briefly, and fitfully. But looking bedraggled would only help with his performance before the king.

  He considered the mirror as he ran his hand over his hair, which he kept short. Sheets of reflective glass were not easy to come by, and this was a large one. Where had the guild come across it? The answer was likely gruesome and terrible. Maybe it was plundered from the dungeon hoard of some creature with worms where its eyes should be. Maybe it wasn’t glass at all, but the coagulated gore of a hundred silver-blooded goblins. Maybe it was the scale of some tremendous reptilian beast that glowed like a furnace in the sunlight and all but disappeared in the dark.

  Brock shuddered. There might or might not be a mirror-scaled monstrosity lurking outside Freestone, but there were certainly plenty of things out there to fear.

  When he turned back to the mirror and saw a pair of dark brown eyes glaring out at him, he took a startled step backward—and collided with Liza.

  “I wasn’t scared!” he yelped.

  Liza shoved him aside. “Get off of me! And stop hogging the mirror.”

  Brock crossed his arms and pointedly avoided looking back at his reflection. “I wasn’t hogging anything. I was spending a perfectly acceptable amount of time with it.”

  “I don’t know, Brock,” she said, stepping forward to consider her own reflection. “I’ve seen some scary things the last few days, but your ego might be top of the list.”

  The dressing room was small, barely large enough for a three-legged table with a bowl of water for washing, and Liza had positioned herself between Brock and the door. She undid her ponytail and her dark hair fell loose to her shoulders. The effect was extraordinary—immediately she looked less like a soldier and more like a noble. He could see the evidence of her former life in a half-dozen features he’d overlooked before. He saw it in the manicured arch of her eyebrows, the whiteness of her teeth, and the little dimples in her earlobes where jewelry would go.

  But she didn’t have the floral scent of most noble girls. She smelled like oiled leather and whetstone. It was an honest scent. Brock found himself leaning subtly toward her.

  Liza clucked her tongue at the mirror as she ran a comb through her hair, forcing it through a tangle. “I should cut this off,” she said.

  Brock opened his mouth to tell her not to—that she should keep it just as it was.

  But then she added, “I see why Frond keeps hers short.”

  Brock bit back the compliment on his lips and made a rude sound in the back of his throat instead. Their eyes met in the mirror.

  “Speaking of Frond,” Brock said. “I keep forgetting to mention how she’s a delusional, despotic nightmare who’s going to get us all killed.”

  Liza threw her hands up as if surprised. “Is that what you think? Well, thank goodness you said something. You’re so civil, I never would have guessed what you were thinking.”

  They glared at each other a moment more, and then Liza resumed her combing. “Zed disagrees, you know.”

  Brock pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I wish you’d leave him out of it.”

  “We’re all ‘in it,’ Brock! Everybody in Freestone is in danger.”

  “That’s funny. I’m pretty sure the rest of Freestone got to stay home while Zed went all alone down into a crumbling death trap. And for what?”

  Liza shook her head sadly. “I didn’t like it, either. But it was the right call. And you know who else thinks so?”

  Brock sullenly refused to answer.

  “You and Zed have been friends a long time, haven’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Brock said. He kicked absently at the baseboard. “His mom used to work on my block. She wasn’t very…popular, I guess. I heard stuff as a kid. She had a hard time finding work, for a while. I think my mom had something to do with it.”

  “Your mom?”

  Brock shrugged, his eyes on his boots. “My mom had something against her. Against Zed. She’d never even met him, and she had all these opinions. I think I…I think maybe I sought him out just to get on her nerves.” He bit his lip. “Just at the beginning.”

  Liza didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “Zed doesn’t really know any of that,” he added.

  “Well, I think it’s sweet,” Liza said. “You’ve been looking out for him for years now. But he’s really capable, Brock.” She laughed. “He’s a mage! And he’s measured up to every challenge he’s faced since I’ve met him.” Her voice softened a bit. “Take it from someone who knows: There’s a very fine line between protective and overprotective. Even if your heart’s in the right place—after a while, it’s insulting.”

  She appeared momentarily lost in thought, then found his eyes in the mirror again as she gathered her hair and pulled it back. “I know you mean well. I know you hate seeing him in danger.” She fastened her ponytail in place with a bright red ribbon. “But Frond is looking out for everybody. She puts herself between Freestone and a hundred Dangers every single day.”

  Brock tried to look defiant, but he felt his certainty cracking. “Even if it’s all true,” he said at last, searching for the right words. “Even if there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot and not just bad luck…why do we have to be the ones who deal with it?”

  Liza shrugged. Her ponytail made her features sharper, but the hardness had gone from h
er eyes.

  “Who else, Brock?”

  Zed was waiting for them in the common room, perched upon the edge of a table. He had put on a fresh shirt, but his hair was a disaster, reaching in a dozen directions at once. As Brock watched his friend, trying to imagine him as a font of magical skill, the boy swatted at a fly, lost his balance, and nearly toppled off the table.

  Brock sighed.

  Frond stormed into the room a moment later, dressed for war in dark leathers studded with metal. “We’re due to see the king,” she said. “He’s not going to like what we have to tell him.” She turned toward the door.

  “Good pep talk,” Brock grumbled.

  Frond threw open the front door—and took a step back in surprise when she saw a steward standing there, poised to knock.

  “Ugh,” Brock said under his breath, recognizing Peter Magniole from their trip to the palace. “Not that kid.”

  “What? He seems nice,” Zed said.

  Brock rolled his eyes. “Don’t you start, too.” He pointedly avoided looking at Liza, who had probably gone all weak in the knees.

  “The king requests an audience,” Peter said, his perfect cheekbones infuriating Brock.

  “We know that,” Frond said. “We’re on our way now.”

  “You misunderstand,” the steward said. “The king requests an audience…now.” He stepped aside, and there in the small courtyard beyond the door stood a full complement of knights, all four High Guild guildmasters, and King Freestone himself.

  Even at a distance, his eyes blazed with anger.

  It was immediately obvious to all that the guildhall was no place for royalty. A pair of stewards stepped past Frond and began to fuss about the common room, but there was clutter everywhere and precious little space.

  Brock quailed at the thought of bringing the leaders of the town down below. The only room large enough to accommodate the full party was lined with gruesome weapons and the severed heads and limbs of a score of monsters.

  In the end, they convened in the training yard, with the knights stationing themselves in a broad semicircle. Shoulder to shoulder, they made a wall of flesh and steel that afforded some privacy for those within the yard.