by Aaron Bunce
“I don’t think….why me? I don’t think I can,” Dennah stammered, confused by the request.
“I should have given it to him when his father passed. I should have told him about his mother long ago. I should have taken him in myself, not sent him to live with Garon. I am ashamed…I was in a position to help him, and I did not. Please do this for me, give him this. He deserves to know who his mother was,” Frenin said, pushing the package towards her.
“But they think he killed those people. They will put him before the executioner for sure,” Dennah said, refusing to take the package.
“The girl…Garon’s daughter, Alina, has been in my house since Roman found her. She will not speak. What she saw traumatized her beyond words. I believe she knows who is responsible for what happened to her mother and the others. Teague knows of the girl, but with no voice, she cannot proclaim witness, and cannot prove his innocence. I have to go back to her now. I have to help the girl find her voice. Please, I am giving this to you. He should hear it from you,” Frenin finished softly.
Dennah looked between Roman’s ghostly form on the bed, wrapped in chains and shackles, and Frenin’s sad eyes.
What have I gotten myself into? She tried to make sense of it all. A thought fired into her head. The girl knows who killed all of those people. Who was responsible? It could be someone in town, someone who will kill again.
Dennah reached forward and took the package, her hands visibly trembling. Frenin smiled appreciatively, but there was pain and sadness in his eyes.
“Trust in him, he is a good man. Like his father before him,” Frenin said, his voice shaking, and then he turned and walked away.
Dennah straightened Roman’s blanket, wishing only for the strength to break him from the chains, even if just for a moment. She stepped back out of the room and settled into the chair, cradling the package in her arms.
Roman came to her after he found the bodies in the orchard. He came to her because he was scared and trusted her, and she repaid that trust with doubt, indignation, and anger. Frenin was with the only living witness, trying to help the girl clear Roman’s name.
And I’ve been moping around feeling sorry for myself. Nice, Dennah.
Dennah realized that Roman was going to need her help if he wanted to survive. She couldn’t sit idly, not when she could make a difference.
The storm was a blessing in disguise. Without it, Teague and his men might have already left the town with Roman in chains. It was up to Frenin now. He had to help Alina break her silence.
Dennah unraveled the folds of the blanket in her hands, one fold at a time. The fabric was soft, and of a finer make than anything she had ever owned. She looked around before pulling the last of the blanket aside.
Within the concealing folds of the blanket was a box of exquisite make and quality. It was crafted of wood as dark as the night sky. A single massive ruby was set into a plate of solid rose-colored metal adorning its lid.
Someone had painstakingly carved vines and leaves all around the stone and its mount. Dennah ran her fingertips over the carvings and the rest of the box’s surface, marveling at its detail.
Dennah understood why Frenin covered the box, especially amongst the crowd downstairs. Half of the guards in her caravan couldn’t be trusted with their own gold, let alone a box of such value.
Her fingers caressed the scalloped edge of the lid, the small brass hinges responding to even the smallest amount of pressure. She looked around nervously, scanning from the stairs to the hallway and the doorways of the surrounding rooms.
What if someone sees me with it? What would they say? What would I tell them? She couldn’t afford such a box, let alone the stone set in its lid, even if she saved every coin she earned all season, every season.
Banus would steal it, and if he couldn’t, he’d accuse me of stealing it, she reasoned.
With that thought, Dennah started to wrap the box back up. She decided to hide it under her chair and stash it in her room once she was relieved. She froze in the process of folding the blanket. If she was going to help him and do what Frenin asked her to do, she needed to know what was inside.
She hastily pulled the blanket open, and this time there was no hesitation as she opened the box’s lid. The light was poor but sufficient as she took in the contents before her. First, she lifted out a ring. The band was large and worn.
It must have been his father’s, she thought, sliding the overly large band onto her finger and back off again.
Dennah rolled the ring over in her fingers, letting the flickering lantern light reflect off its flat face. Even in the dim light she recognized the embossed fist etched in silver.
She remembered how a select few of her classmates flashed similar rings in her face when they were accepted into the Silver Guard. Not all gloated over her, though. There was a young man from a notable family in Ban Turin, the same one who regularly bested her in sword training.
“Julian,” she whispered, finally remembering his name.
She set the ring down and moved several pieces of parchment aside, allowing the light to fall upon a sparkling, decorative comb. Dennah lifted the piece up and turned it in the light. She had seen high-born women wear such pieces in their hair, as was the fashion in the larger cities. A handful of small diamonds crested its outer edge, flanking a single large sapphire, clasped in a radiant blue metal.
Dennah turned the comb around and spun it. She noticed something within the large blue gem and pulled it closer to her eyes. The form was only shadow until the wind died down, and the lanterns flared up again. In the renewed light, and floating within the sapphire, was a strange flower, grown in the shape of anA.
A thought nagged at her, hanging just out of reach. Dennah puzzled over the intricate stone for a pregnant moment, confident that she had seen something like it before. Then it hit her. She remembered flipping through an old tome at her grandparents’ home. A shiver shot down her spine as the cover of the weathered volume finally crystallized in her mind. The tome detailed the “stones of royal succession”.
“Oh my goodness!” she gasped, and promptly slammed the box shut.
Chapter 35
Complications
Dennah quickly wrapped the box back in the blanket and stuffed it beneath her chair. She sat nervously, biting her nails and wondering what she would do. She kept glancing behind her, from the room to the door, and back to the stairs as she waited for someone, anyone to appear.
Lucilla will be coming back to continue looking after Roman. But can she help him? She wasn’t able to save his mother.
Frenin wouldn’t leave Roman’s bedside until Lucilla returned. He also couldn’t return to his house and check on Alina until Lucilla returned. If he couldn’t get Alina to talk, to speak of what she saw, then Roman would have to answer for murders he did not commit.
What if Alina never spoke again, or never saw the murderer herself? And what if Roman died from the fever before it all mattered anyway? Dennah’s mind spun around and around, the endless questions making her sick.
Why did I have to look in the box? She cursed her curiosity and knew that things were even more complicated than she had feared.
She heard the groan of creaking wood, and turned, watching hesitantly at the top of the stairs. She held her breath and waited.
Now I’m hearing things.
A doorknob squeaked, and Dennah jumped as a door crashed open down the hallway. A woman emerged, her hair falling in tumultuous tufts everywhere. She held her untied dress up with one hand while clutching to a fist full of silver with the other.
Blain emerged behind her, his heavy boots thudding harshly against the floor. Dennah snapped her gaze to the wall across from her, trying to appear uninterested. Blain slapped the woman on the butt, sending her on her way back down the stairs.
“Oh…pardon,” the woman said, sauntering out of sight.
Blain adjusted his pants and let his sword belt sag back down into position. Dennah watc
hed him out of the corner of her eye. He ran his tongue across his front teeth and scratched the stubble on his neck and chin. He took a deep breath and walked her way. Dennah used the heel of her boot to kick the box deeper into the shadow beneath her chair.
“I’ll sit for a while. You can go,” he said, stopping a few strides away.
“That’s okay. I’m fine here,” Dennah lied. She considered what he would say or do if she had to retrieve the box before leaving.
“I weren’t asking, I was telling. Now go…I’ll sit and guard the murderer,” he said, studying her face to see if she would react.
He wants me to react.
“Okay!” Dennah said defensively, and tentatively bent over and reached between her knees. Her leather armor was stiffer than normal, thanks to the soaking rain and subsequent dry by the fire. She couldn’t reach the box.
“What are you doing?” Blain asked irritably, the crowd downstairs belting out yet another tune.
“I just…need to get my…” she grunted and slid from the chair, finally able to wrap her hand around the box, “my blanket, just need to get my blanket.”
“Ain’t that cold in here,” Blain grumbled.
Dennah bounced to her feet, the blanket wrapped box securely in hand. “Okay, it’s all yours,” she said, motioning to the chair.
Blain towered over her, his eyes bloodshot and his nose piggish and squat. He glanced at her face and the concealed box in her hands once, and then, ever so subtly, he looked over her shoulder and smirked.
Dennah heard floorboards creak behind her, but before she could turn, something hard smashed into the back of her head, and stars exploded everywhere. The ground rushed up to meet her as everything went black.
* * * *
Frenin sat at Roman’s bedside, confident in his decision to give Dennah the box. He had failed Roman more times than he cared to count. He carried the guilt like an invisible badge, one that he would carry to his grave. He just had to make sure that Roman didn’t beat him there.
“You should have given the boy the box when his father passed, Frenin, you old fool,” he whispered, watching Roman twitch.
He thought that he was protecting him from doubt and possibly even more pain. But who was he to decide what was best for Roman. It wasn’t his place to withhold what he wanted most of all.
I would have just saddled him with even more questions.
With the loss of his father so fresh, he feared that the enigma of his mother would consume him. Frenin knew that the contents of the box would only pose a host of innumerable questions, most of them, Frenin knew, might never be answered. While others might provide answers too painful to bear alone. It was simple logic, or so he thought at the time. Why lead a grieving boy down a path that might take him even farther away from where he needed to go?
It sounded so simple to him at the time. He was protecting Roman, but if that was true, why did he feel so guilty? Would he withhold food from a starving man or water from someone dying of thirst? With absolute certainty, Frenin knew that he would not, no…could not.
“Please forgive me,” he whispered, replacing the cool rag atop Roman’s forehead, and then resumed his pacing.
Lucilla would be back soon. He knew she couldn’t stay away for long.
Then back to the girl. She must find her voice!
Frenin knew she was Roman’s only chance. Teague seemed like an honorable man, but his charge was to find a murderer in Bardstown, and unfortunately, Roman fit the part. If not for the storm delaying their departure, the soldiers would have already returned to Fort Falksgraad and washed their hands of the whole ordeal.
Frenin heard the deep rumble of a dog’s growl reverberate from beneath the bed. He leaned back in his chair as Tusk’s muzzle emerged from the shadows. Never fond of openly admitting his fears, Frenin slid his feet around the chair and inched away.
He was very fond of dogs in his youth but had developed a distrust of them in his older age, especially Tusk. With his boisterous energy and fondness for wrestling, Tusk always made Frenin’s knees feel weak and his feet much less steady. It wasn’t the pain from falling that scared him, but his inability to get back up.
“You been under there the whole time, boy?” he whispered. Tusk looked at him, but his head snapped back to the door, his neck extended and his ears rigid.
Roman shifted in the bed, the jingle of chain sounding like festive bells in the still, quiet air. His eyes continued to move beneath his lids as if he was searching for something Frenin could not see. Tusk growled again, this time baring his teeth.
Is there something beyond the door that only he can hear? he thought.
Frenin knew the dog was loyal to Roman, and fiercely protective. Made evident by the fingers and hands bitten when they tried to remove him from Roman’s side.
Frenin looked to the door, wondering if it was Lucilla returning. He instructed her to get food and rest, but she was never one to be bossed around. He also knew that she would not stay away for long, as long as Roman’s health continued to flounder.
The ruckus in the tavern below made it hard for him to hear what was going on. It didn’t help that he struggled to hear at the best of times.
Damned old age, he thought but heard something again.
It could have been a door closing or heavy footsteps. Frenin gripped his cane and pulled himself to his feet and shuffled towards the door. But then he heard muffled voices.
Has Teague returned to check on Roman? he wondered nervously.
Frenin’s heart fluttered. He was halfway between the bed and the door, staring at the handle, waiting for it to turn. Then he jumped. Something thudded heavily out in the hall.
Frenin shuffled the last few steps to the door and paused, his fingertips settling on the brass handle. He held his breath and listened, waiting. After a moment of silence, Frenin turned the handle and opened the door. He turned to the chair, but it was empty. Using his cane, Frenin leaned out and looked up the hallway and then down towards the stairs.
“Oh no,” he whispered, bending painfully to scoop up the empty blanket off the floor.
He looked around but saw no sign of the box. A small dark droplet on the ground caught his eye. Frenin pressed his knobby finger to the ground and pulled it up close to his face. The blood appeared dark against his pale fingertip, and it was warm.
Frenin rubbed the blood between his fingers, dull pain starting to build in his chest. He pulled the nearest lantern from the wall and held it low to the ground. A trail of dark droplets appeared in the light, leading down the hallway and onto the stairs.
He hobbled down the stairs, his heart starting to race and hand shaking against the railing. His feet felt clumsy, but he wouldn’t slow or stop. He would crawl if he had to. Frenin set the lantern down on the bottom step and paused only to straighten his flyaway hair. He had to look composed.
He turned, taking in the tavern of the White Crowe in one sweeping glance. The room was full of people milling about or sitting at the bar. Then he saw them, a large man helping along a smaller figure. A shorter man walked ahead of them, his hair glistening greasily in the tavern’s warm light. He motioned with his hand, tipping it towards his mouth whenever they caught someone’s eye. No one seemed to pay them any mind.
Frenin worked his hand over the wolf head of his cane, feeling the ache flair in his stiff joints. He suddenly felt very old, and for the first time, he considered whether he was fit to lead anymore.
But what could he do? He was an old man barely able get himself out of bed each morning. What could he possibly do against younger, stronger men, trained to fight and kill?
Frenin looked frantically about the packed room, searching for friendly or sympathetic faces he could ask for help, but all he saw was strangers. He thought of Berg. The burly blacksmith would surely help, but how much time would it take Frenin to make it to his house in the storm?
Frenin wasn’t naïve. He knew what would likely happen to Dennah. He couldn’t be
ar the weight of that on his conscience. Time was of the essence if he wanted to prevent her any unnecessary pain.
Without another thought, Frenin turned and mounted the stairs, hobbling upwards as quickly as his legs would carry him. He pushed through Roman’s door and closed it quietly behind him. Tusk stood before him, growling a quiet but easily understood challenge.
A number of scenarios spun through Frenin’s head. His body may have become enfeebled in his old age, but his mind was still his own. Dennah had befriended Roman and provided him friendship when he needed it most. She needed him now, and Frenin knew that he would want to repay it in kind.
Frenin also couldn’t deny that them leaving Roman’s room unguarded was a bit suspicious. If he died, smothered by a pillow in his bed, and no one was around to witness it, then Teague’s business in Bardstown would be done. He could return to Falksgraad Creek with the body of a killer, and a laurel for his breast.
Frenin’s mind reeled, and it started to make him dizzy. Am I just paranoid? Am I too old and burdened by senility? Can I truly be fair and honest? More importantly, what if I am wrong about Roman?
Frenin pressed his palms over his eyes to settle his frantic thoughts. Tusk’s wet nose broke him from his tortured thoughts. He pulled his hands away and looked into the dog’s large brown eyes. There was no judgment in his gaze, only genuine concern.
“Easy, boy…I’m here to help,” he said, smoothing back the unruly fur on Tusk’s large head.
Frenin let out a steadying breath and moved to Roman’s bedside.
He will not be helpless, he decided, and bent over and started freeing the locking cylinders of Roman’s iron shackles.
* * * *
Roman flitted between consciousness and a troubled sleep for an undecipherable amount of time. The pain blurred together…in his gut, in his head, and at some point, in his wrists and ankles.
He didn’t feel cold, but hot. The shivers that wracked his body were from something ominous inside him, something fighting for control. Roman could feel it, and dreamt of it. It was fire, a raging torrent of living flames that continually burned and scorched him. He wasn’t saved from the fire when he awoke, for some reason, he couldn’t feel the cool, fresh air around him.