“Um … yes, ma’am!” Marcus said, still at attention.
Willow collected her thoughts for a moment.
“Private, we have been assigned a mission. I have been instructed to travel south for a few days.” She swallowed hard. “You will come with me. Now,” she continued eyeing his rapier on the floor with disgust, “do you know how to use that?”
“To do what, ma’am?”
She was sorely tempted to tell him what to do with his rapier. Instead, she shook her head. “I’ll take that as a no. Do you know how to fight at all?”
Marcus just shrugged, looking lost.
“Do you have any useful skills at all?”
Marcus thought about it.
“Um, I know how to ride,” he said, “And I own my own horse!”
Willow sighed. It was a start, anyway. Few recruits could ride. Perhaps she could find some use for the nitwit.
“Pick up your rapier, clean it properly, and prepare to ride within the hour. You’ll also want to put on a uniform that isn’t torn.” She started to walk away, but then paused. “And dammit, Marcus, put your boots on the correct feet.”
Chapter 8
Marcus bounded about like a puppy as she headed for the Guard’s stables. The sun was approaching its zenith and its heat was at last beginning to dispel the cold of the autumn morning. The air was filled with the scents of snacks and spices, and the calls of merchants mixed with the general cacophony of passersby. The stables were just off the Square, which stood at the Castle gates. The streets were packed, and it irritated Willow that she had to weave her way through the crowd.
“Where are we going?” Marcus called from the side of the street. He threaded himself through the crowd in the general direction of an aromatic jerky merchant’s booth with surprising alacrity.
Idiot. This was supposed to be a secret mission, yet he was quizzing her about it in the most crowded place in the city.
She ignored him, but he didn’t get the hint.
“I say, Captain? Where are we going?”
“To the stables,” she growled. “Now be quiet.”
He spotted a group of young children running towards another booth and his head lifted like some kind of prairie rodent.
“Sorry?” he said.
“Shut up, Marcus.”
He eyed the booth with eagerness. At last, he started edging his way over to get a look. For a moment, Willow almost relaxed, but then he called across the crowd, “What am I supposed to do on this mission?”
She half-heartedly considered the bow and quiver she carried strapped to her back. Ooh, how satisfying it would be to fire half a dozen arrows through that flapping mouth of his …
“You will do what I tell you,” she said, just loud enough to cut through the crowd. Heads turned, but their owners quickly found something else to occupy their attentions when they saw who had spoken.
“But—”
“You will do what I tell you.” The implied violence in her voice thinned the crowd around her as its members suddenly decided to go elsewhere.
“I say, Captain Willow”—if he made one more comment about the mission, she would break him over her knee like a dried branch—“I say, they’re doing you.”
Willow blinked. That was unexpected.
Marcus stood in front of the booth that had attracted all the children. Around him, the children clapped and laughed in delight.
She knew she should keep moving. She wanted to catch the late afternoon ferry to cross the river, and if they delayed too long, it would cost them hours. Yet curiosity had a hold on her. They were “doing her.”
That did not sound good.
She pushed her way through the crowd, not quite as gently as before. Angry looks turned to fearful glances as they realized who she was. Parents started to pull their children out of harm’s way.
At the booth, hand puppets cavorted around upon a “stage” designed to conceal the puppeteer. Delighted children surrounded the booth in a half-circle, and the occasional satisfied parent threw the odd copper coin into a large wooden bowl set in front of the booth.
As she approached, she saw that most of the action centered around a wooden puppet with yellow yarn for hair. It held between its hands a crude sword carved from a stick. The puppet was garbed in a manner roughly similar to that of the Guard. The puppet also had definitively pointed ears.
Willow’s jaw dropped. If every man, woman, and child in the crowd had turned out to be an army in disguise, she would have reacted instantly, relying on countless years of training and experience. However, she had no training or experience that told her how to deal with this.
The blonde puppet bounded back and forth across the stage, cooing unintelligible nonsense. Now and then, another hand puppet would appear, also carrying a sword, but attired differently. The puppet Willow would “kill it” with its sword. Each time the puppet did this, the audience applauded.
Occasionally, other figures appeared on stage. For instance, on the right appeared a handsomely dressed puppet carrying an imitation bouquet of flowers. As soon as he caught sight of Puppet Willow, he swooned, and the children laughed.
The suitor puppet looked at Puppet Willow nervously, as though bewitched by a goddess, and he looked to the audience for encouragement. The children cheered and egged him on, and buoyed by this, the suitor worked up the nerve to approach Puppet Willow … who killed him as she had the puppets with the swords.
The audience found this hysterical. More coins landed in the basket.
Willow could not believe the affront. Was that how the citizenry of Bryanae viewed its protector: as a kill-crazy idiot? Did they perceive her as some kind of sexless killing machine? Worse yet, someone so stupid that she couldn’t tell an admirer from an enemy?
A cold rage filled her. Before she could help herself, she stepped up onto a stone bench, drew her throwing knife from its sheath on her belt, and threw it. It spun end-over-end above the heads of the children and their parents before embedding itself in the solid wood head of Puppet Willow.
The puppeteer beneath the stage yelped and Puppet Willow vanished. Children screamed, parents rushed to collect them, and the crowd scattered in all directions. The puppeteer dashed from under his stage and ran off down an alley, Puppet Willow with the embedded knife still on his hand.
Willow cursed herself for her lack of discipline. What a spectacularly stupid thing to do.
That had been a very good knife. In fact, it had been the same one she'd used to kill Kel and Sil Runjun.
“Move it, private!” she shouted at an astonished Marcus.
He gaped at her for a moment, then ran to her side.
“Yes, ma’am!” he said, eyeing her with trepidation.
Chapter 9
At least the idiot knew how to ride. Marcus's parents were minor nobility of some sort, so he’d been trained since birth in all the various and sundry skills needed by nobles. Willow supposed that should they encountered a Parvarian diplomatic party while en route to Venucha, Marcus might come in handy by knowing on which side the forks went.
They exited through the Southern Gate at a fast trot and made the late afternoon ferry, crossing Frost’s Vice into Rhysfandale well before dusk. The Chancellor had been clear that time was of the essence, so they rode well into the night. To Marcus’s credit, he didn’t complain. He did, however, prattle on endlessly about the various pets he’d owned over the years.
“Jack-rabbits are very fast runners,” went one of his keen observations. “Or rather, hoppers.”
“I know,” Willow had said. “Shut up.”
Marcus never took offense at being told to be quiet, but neither did he take the order to heart. He’d be quiet for a few minutes, and then point out that crabs made terrible pets because they pinched.
When the sky was almost black and the woods through which they rode were almost impenetrable even to her keen eyes, Willow decided it was time to make camp. She had been dreading trying to fall asleep to
Marcus’s never-ending monologues. This was, in fact, one reason she rode so long into the night: to exhaust him to the point of silence.
She found a clearing and had Marcus tie up the horses. Then she lit a torch, thrust it into his hands, and ordered: “Firewood.”
Marcus looked at the torch in confusion. “That’s not going to last us very long. Shouldn’t we gather some more wood?”
Willow was tempted to use Marcus for firewood, but she ground her teeth and counted silently to ten.
“Marcus,” she said when she was done. She pointed into the woods. “Go into the woods—over there, where all the trees are—and fetch some firewood. Carry this torch”—and here, she pointed at the torch for clarity—“to use as a light source.”
“Oh! Why didn’t—?” Marcus started, but fell silent when Willow grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him close.
“Marcus,” she said, her lips inches from his face. “If you utter the words ‘why didn’t you say so?’ I will kill you, dig a deep hole, and bury you in it. Or perhaps I’ll just bury you. Do you understand?”
Marcus nodded, eyes wide.
“Now, where are you going to go?”
Marcus pointed towards the trees that surrounded the camp.
“Good,” she said. “And what are you going to do there?”
“Gather firewood?” he croaked.
“Excellent.” She released him. “Now get going.”
Marcus stumbled off, the light from his torch receding until Willow was in complete darkness.
And complete silence. Oh wonderful, blissful silence!
Willow sat with her back to a tree, the rough bark unforgiving against her spine. In the Guard, you quickly learned to sleep whenever you could, so she closed her eyes to catch a few minutes’ rest. Alas, all too soon, she heard the trampling of feet across leaves and twigs. Willow was facing the direction in which Marcus had left; the footsteps were coming from the opposite direction.
It was almost unimaginable that even Marcus could have gotten so lost that he had circled around the camp, though she supposed you never could tell with him. Just to be on the safe side, she stood and drew her rapier.
“Hello? Is someone there?” came a male voice that definitely did not belong to Marcus. The voice was deeper, for one, and there was a confidence and intelligence to it that Marcus certainly lacked. “Unless my ears deceive me, that was the sound of a rapier being drawn from its sheath. I hope that’s not on my account!”
“It depends,” Willow said into the darkness. Now, she saw a dim, flickering light approaching. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” the man snarled. “I want you to lay down your arms, and hand over your coins and your jewels. And be quick about it!”
Of course. These woods and roads were infested with brigands. Well, there would be one fewer in a minute or two.
Willow raised her rapier into a guard position. She pivoted, trying to estimate where the man was. She listened carefully to the forest, alert for any sign that the bandit had friends.
The figure entered the clearing, and she could see his outline. He carried a weakly flickering lamp, and held no visible weapon.
“Sorry,” the man said, his face distorted by the flickering shadows of the lamp. He sounded young: perhaps in his early twenties. “Just kidding. I couldn’t resist.”
He removed his hat, wide-brimmed with a garish plume, and did a little flourish and bow. He wore a white shirt, and a shiny broach clasped his dark cloak to his neck. His hair was a curly brown mess. Despite how oddly he appeared, Willow couldn’t shake off the vague feeling she had seen him somewhere before.
“In truth,” he said, “I’m lost. You haven’t seen Rhysfandale around here somewhere, have you? I seem to have misplaced it.”
Misplaced a town? This man was a liar, an idiot, or insane; Willow wanted nothing to do with him. As he approached, she brought her rapier in line with his throat.
He took two more steps in the half-dark until he saw the light reflected from her blade, at which point he halted. He was a head shorter than Willow, and his frame was slight.
“Ah, I see the blade was for me, after all,” he said, holding up his hands. “Wait! Are you robbing me? Because if that is your intent, I think it only fair to warn you that I intend to fall to my knees and beg for mercy. I’m not proud.”
His face was hidden in shadow, but Willow heard no fear in his voice. Insane, then.
She ground her teeth again. Couldn’t she have a minute’s peace without dealing with imbeciles?
“Keep walking in the direction you’re headed. You’ll come across a road. Turn right and travel along that road for a few hours, and you’ll reach Rhysfandale.”
The man doffed his hat.
“Thank you for your kind assistance! Permit me to introduce myself …” he said, and was about to perform another flourish when Willow pointed her rapier at his throat once more.
“I don’t care who you are. Just. Go.”
He stood immobile for a moment, but then laughed. “Very well. I shall leave you to your trees. Thank you for your most timely directions. I bid your farewell. Please,” he added, “exercise caution. You never know what manner of miscreants might inhabit these woods.”
He skirted a wide circle around her and then proceeded in the direction of the road.
“Fare thee well, kind lady.”
He walked off, into the night, whistling an annoyingly cheerful tune.
Willow stood there, rapier drawn, an odd feeling in her gut. There had been no bloodshed, yet somehow, she felt the encounter had gone horribly wrong.
Chapter 10
Willow had a secret. It predated every living citizen of Bryanae. Its existence was probably not even suspected, let alone known.
Long before King Eric the Strong had graced the Kingdom of Bryanae with his lecherous presence, King Roderick the Potent—Eric’s great-grandfather—had ruled. In those days, the then-Private Willow had served as his personal bodyguard. She had been very good at her job.
King Roderick had a mortal terror of being kidnapped; he feared it more than death itself. Often, he would cry out in the night from terrible dreams of being held captive by faceless, remorseless tormentors who tortured him endlessly for no purpose.
Magic had been stronger back then, and King Roderick himself had been a mage of no small skill, though he kept that to himself. Yet eventually, his constant dread overcame his desire for secrecy and he told only one person: Willow.
By now, Willow had proven herself as both relentless and effective in the execution of her duty. When she was near the King, he felt no fear. So one night, he had summoned her to one of the many secret rooms concealed behind the stone walls of the dungeon. There, he placed a single symbol just behind Willow’s left ear, where her pointed ear and long blonde hair would conceal it.
The symbol was of course magical, and it wasn’t so simple a matter as merely drawing it on her. King Roderick needed to use a special process that involved implanting miniscule amounts of his own flesh beneath her skin. To call the process painful would be akin to calling a tidal wave a trifle damp.
The process took five hours, nearly all of it involving flames, knives, needles, and blood. Willow did not so much as flinch.
When the King had finished the glyph, it began to pulsate, as though tiny veins of blue flowed within. This glyph, Roderick had informed her, would enable her to find him or his successor whenever he wasn’t in Bryanae.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple, as she quickly learned. Locating the King was a bit of an ordeal: an ordeal she would now undertake in the hopes of locating King Eric.
She had tried this before, of course, but with no results. That meant one of two things: either the King was dead, or possibly more disturbing, he was in alive somewhere in Bryanae and Willow had not been able to find him. King Roderick had never considered the possibility that a kidnapper would dare to hold him within his own kingdom, and thus had left this ann
oying loophole, which had plagued Willow since King Eric disappeared.
Now that Marcus had finally fallen asleep and the night had quieted to only the wind whispering through the trees, Willow prepared to use the glyph to take another reading on the King. Why she thought she might get results now when all the other times had failed, she did not know, but at least she wanted to try.
She sat cross-legged with her back to a tree. Sometimes, using the glyph was easy. Sometimes—especially like now, when it had been a long time since she had last tried—it proved to be more challenging.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She brushed a lock of her hair aside, touched the glyph, and concentrated.
And then she was in the Other Place. The forest was gone; instead of sitting, she was standing by a frozen river that wound its way through an empty valley. To her sides, pale stone walls climbed almost as high as she could see. Creeping over the lip of one of them was a whitish-blue sun.
A frigid wind whipped along the valley, chilling Willow to the marrow. She wrapped her cloak tightly around her, covering her mouth and chin with its fur lining.
This place had changed since she last used the glyph. Then, it had been summer, and she had had to deal with the oppressive heat. She wasn’t sure she preferred this.
Oh, well. The sooner she got started, the sooner she’d be done.
Once more, she placed her finger on the glyph—only this time, in the Other Place. She concentrated for a moment, then relaxed; it was done. She needed only to wait for the blue line to point the way.
Something cold and wet landed on her back. She swiped at it with her hand, and felt a fiery burst of pain in her index finger. She drew her rapier, and used it to sweep her back like a broom. She hit something, and felt it give.
She turned in place, and saw a crushed white spider-thing dying, its icicle legs curling up and melting. She grimaced. She hadn’t encountered these before.
She looked up just in time to dodge another ice-spider that had leapt at her from the canyon wall. She sliced it in half with her rapier, and the two dead pieces began to melt before her eyes.
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