by Terry Brooks
Beyond that, as they continued to round the slough, lay a cluster of dilapidated homes, lit from within by guttering oil lamps and evening cookfires. Aback of these farther still, tucked in amid a swath of decaying brambles, stood a lone, tumbledown cottage that might have been deserted for all the light that burned in its empty windows. Someday soon, it would be, if gods there were—though Kylac had his doubts.
Brie slowed as they neared its sagging porch, halting when they were yet a stone’s throw away. A foul breeze blowing in over the slough seemed to cool her anger.
“I do thank you,” she said, peering at her feet. “For my gift. I quite enjoyed it.”
Kylac could not say whether she was being snide or genuine—until her big brown eyes found his, and she gave him that hint of her lopsided smile. Like that, his own bitterness became as dry sands swept in a wind, his angrier thoughts buried by a wash of guilt. Though hardly the prettiest girl he’d ever caught stealing glances in his direction, she was the only one he’d found himself glancing back at. “Chipmunk,” her crueler friends had dubbed her as a child, making mock of her puffy cheeks, heavy freckles, and slightly bucked teeth. In truth, she hadn’t fully outgrown the resemblance. But she possessed also a chipmunk’s curiosity, playfulness, and athleticism. And when she gazed at him as she was gazing now—
“Bray!” the old man barked, emerging from the depths of the seemingly abandoned house. “Is that you?”
He came sniffing onto the porch like a mole, his pink nose twitching, sightless eyes clouded and milky beneath a wrinkled brow and the stray white wisps still clinging to it. His back was stooped, his joints and limbs as gnarled and crooked as the staff to which he clung. To see him curdled Kylac’s blood. If Brie was a chipmunk, then she had done well, coming from such wretched stock, even a generation removed.
“Bring another viper home, did ya?” her grandfather snarled, and spat from the edge of his porch. “I can smell its venom.”
“It’s me, sir. Kylac.”
“Don’t you hiss at me, viper, or I’ll give your hide a tanning that’ll have you pleading for the next molting.”
Kylac readied a retort, but gulped it down when Brie put a restraining hand on his chest.
“I’m coming, Grandfather.” She looked back at Kylac, only to turn without a word and shuffle dutifully toward her home.
“Have you no notion of the hour?” the old man groused. “Or did the sun go and take a longer route than usual?”
“Apologies, Grandfather.”
“I don’t want your apologies. I want my dinner,” he said, as she shuffled past him and into the cottage. To Kylac, he hollered, “Well, go on, viper. Back to your nest. I’ve told you before, my Bray ain’t your concern.”
Bray, he called her, for nagging worse than any mule. Her name is Briallen, Kylac wanted to shout. Her friends call her Brie. Instead he said, “Today is her birthday, sir.”
“You fear I’d forgotten? That I can’t still hear her mother’s blasted wailing and her own damnable squalling from the day she was whelped?”
Within the cottage, a taper flared to life, its soft flame set to chasing shadows and no doubt sending the roaches skittering.
“Away, viper. I catch you slithering ’round my home again, I’ll have your fangs.”
Brie spoke not a word to him over the next week. Though Kylac saw her every day in the arena, mopping and hauling and scouring while he trained, she kept her head down and her eyes bent to her tasks. Ordinarily, she would discreetly observe him and the other combatants, learning what she could at a distance before joining up with him when both had completed their work. Instead, she made sure to finish up while he was still at his lessons, and rather than wait for him, hurried from the school grounds without so much as a nod or a glance.
Unusual behavior, though not without precedent. She got this way sometimes, become angry and aloof. On the heels of their disobedience in the arena, however, Kylac worried this time that he might be responsible. She’d forgiven him that night, hadn’t she? There at the end?
Regardless, he’d learned not to pry when he found her in these moods, leaving him little choice but to wait her out. If history could be trusted, it might last days, or even weeks. In most instances, he suspected these withdrawals had to do with her grandfather’s mistreatment of her. Though she’d never spoken of it, Kylac had seen the bruises, and noticed her ginger strides. He’d considered spying, to ensure her safety, but felt that would be a violation of their trust as friends. Short of that, he’d suggested she leave the old man. Her response had been that her grandfather was her only surviving family member, and she was all he had. She wasn’t going to abandon him.
How much could Kylac do to help someone who claimed she didn’t need it?
The question had long gnawed at him, and continued to do so. Seven days into this new episode, he could ponder little else. When at skills or studies, he would picture Brie’s cold shoulder or her grandfather’s age-spotted face, and feel a rush of anger. Sometimes, the emotion would work in his favor, giving him an added burst of energy against an opponent, say, or the conviction to tear through a puzzle or equation. More often, it led to some lapse in concentration that left him scratched or battered, or having to rework a failed calculation or bungled recitation. Somehow, the latter always occurred under his father’s watchful eye—not that it had any discernible effect on the man’s appraisal. Rohn looked upon him now, as always, as a blacksmith might a piece of brittle steel. No matter how well he performed, he could not escape the inherent flaws his father perceived in him.
He was back in the arena, demonstrating techniques for staving off a pack of assailants to a cluster of younger pupils, wishing Brie would slip even a glance his way, and half hoping his father would find another target for his chilly disapproval, when the stamp of booted feet marching in formation betrayed the unannounced arrival of an armored company. Twoscore in number, their hard leather soles drew notice from even the neophyte students, who ceased their wrestling, tumbling, and swordplay to mark the commotion.
City watch, Kylac realized, as they neared the arched entry to the arena. Advancing with grim purpose. Dorravian, the school’s chief steward, hastened alongside.
“Master,” Dorravian called. “I bade them halt. They claim to have a warrant.”
A soldier on the left flank shoved the steward aside as the forward ranks fanned out in shell formation, as if to seal against any attempt at exit. Revealed at the heart of the regiment was Captain Traeger, immediately recognizable by the cleft in his lip. A deformity he’d been born with, though he would have others believe he’d earned it in battle. Whichever, it gave his face a permanent sneer that seemed somehow fitting for Atharvan’s most notorious enforcer of civil ordinance.
“Headmaster Rohn,” the captain greeted. “Pleasing it is to at last be welcomed into your hallowed sanctum.”
Rohn regarded Traeger with his typical, stone-crushing glare. “I trust this warrant of yours bears royal seal, for you to be foolish enough to invade these halls.”
Traeger brandished the small scroll clutched in his gloved fist. “By special order of Royal Magistrate Aarhus,” he announced with barely bridled glee.
He may as well have pronounced them all traitors to the crown, for the grim murmur that swept through the arena. All knew of Magistrate Aarhus, a ruthless inquisitor said to be little more than a torturer in silk robes. A year earlier, under pressure from powerful factions at home and abroad after a rash of escalating murders among some of the wealthiest guildmasters throughout the realms of Pentania, King Galdric had granted Aarhus commission to root out and eliminate members of the fabled Seax Lunara—a secret order of assassins rumored to have originated here in Partha centuries earlier, before the foundation stones of Atharvan’s curtain wall had been laid. Most snickered at the time, suggesting that the magistrate had been set to chasing ghosts and mummers’ tales, and whispering loudly that the deaths of a few high-ranking merchants and noblemen well
known for their rivalries and contentions did not mean the proud city of Atharvan was infested with assassins.
In the months since, however, Aarhus and those serving him, given free rein, had somehow managed to round up and imprison or execute half a dozen confessed members of the Seax Lunara. Wherever the magistrate pointed a finger, it seemed, the guilty boiled to the surface. And with each new kill or capture, they claimed to be closing in on the order’s unknown leader.
“And what purpose do you serve here?” Rohn inquired coolly. Neither his expression, nor the tenor of his voice had changed—though Kylac noted that Xarius, who’d been leading a series of advanced scaling exercises, crept close now to his father’s shoulder.
“They search your chambers even now, Master,” Dorravian reported from where he stood pinned against the wall.
“And the grounds entire, until we are satisfied,” Traeger added.
“Should you tell us what you seek, perhaps we can aid you in your search,” said Rohn.
The captain’s cleft-made sneer stretched higher. “Salveris, son of Governor Tehric of Crylag, was killed last night, robbed in an alley. We have witnesses to the account that finger you, Headmaster.”
That sparked another murmur among the arena’s occupants. Kylac looked toward Brie, stood frozen in the far corner holding a fistful of bloodstained rags. He felt her gaze flick in his direction before pinning back like everyone else’s to Master Rohn.
“Salveris,” Rohn echoed. “I know the lad. As likely staggered drunk off a tavern stoop, cracked his skull, and was fell upon by scavenging urchins.”
Xarius and a handful of the older students sneered or chuckled. Most of the younger students could only observe in awe.
Traeger himself was not amused. “The trail led here. The evidence we seek will be found here. And when it is, this little empire of yours, and the plague it breeds, will be put to the torch. And I’ll be there, flame in hand, to crush the fleeing rats underfoot.”
Kylac’s father hadn’t built this “empire,” but none could deny it had flourished under his watch. While Talonar was not the only combat school in the city, it was far and away the most renowned. They did not limit themselves here to the practice of brute fighting techniques. Rather, they explored all aspects of death and injury, covering human contest with and without weapons, acids and poisons used alone and in combination, methods of stealth and infiltration overt and secretive, mental exercises of interrogation and deception and skullduggery, the effects of torture and deprivation, and more. Surgeons and healers trekked from the westernmost shores of Alson and the southernmost Kuurian peninsula to learn anatomy and the precise impact of various wounds and diseases. Foreign military commanders crossed tempest seas to share and develop battlefield tactics, siege strategies, and the logistics of troop movement. If it related in any way to the physics or psychology of warfare, it was entertained in a manner both scholarly and practical within these walls.
Given the subject, it was only natural, mayhap, to draw rumor of dealings more sinister. For decades, even before Rohn’s time, the school had been accused of harboring a darker motive and purpose. Yet Kylac’s father and those before him were not without powerful friends. King Galdric himself had visited the grounds and taken private lessons. Several of his personal guard had trained here, as well. Many of the city’s finest pit fighters were forged in this very arena, representing a significant, ongoing investment on the part of their masters. Rivers of coin ran through these halls, breeding envy and resentment among some, but limiting those who dared to challenge Rohn with any open accusations.
Clearly, Magistrate Aarhus and Captain Traeger were beholden to no such fear.
“Your fervor is remarkable, Captain,” Rohn allowed, “if ultimately misguided. The skills purveyed at this institution are tools, nothing more. What men do with those tools is their business. If some murder”—he shrugged—“others defend and save lives. Or is the blade on your own hip merely for ceremony?”
“The blade at my hip is an instrument of lawful justice, duly blessed, and held in plain view. Not some poisoned barb, secreted in shadow, to be plunged into an unsuspecting man’s back for a purse of gold.”
“Most are worth far less, I would say.”
The ever-sneering Traeger cocked his head to one side. “Enjoy your japes. Doubtless, you believe His Majesty will save you. Not this time. The only—”
“Captain!” a watchman shouted from the fourth tier of the arena, at the mouth of a hall that led to Rohn’s personal quarters. A youthful soldier, full of eagerness. He held up what looked to be a jeweled medallion. “Captain, we found it! In the headmaster’s chambers.”
Traeger’s smile stretched so high, it seemed the cleft in his lip might tear further. At a signal, his fellow soldiers presented the tips of their pikes or swords. “Headmaster Rohn, you are hereby placed under royal arrest, for the unnatural death of Salveris, son of Tehric, Governor of Crylag. By order of Royal Magistrate Aarhus, you will attend us peacefully, or die where you stand.”
Xarius drew his swords. Nearly a dozen elder students followed his lead. Kylac found himself clutching a blade of his own, though still in its sheath. He preferred not to think of what might happen should he draw it.
Sweat beaded on the foreheads of Traeger’s watchmen, while their gazes skimmed around in anticipation. The captain’s own face underwent a set of contortions as he reweighed the task before him. Rohn, by comparison, stood deathly calm, unmoved, arms crossed. If he cared whether or not he—or all of them—were to die, there was no hint of it in his visage.
The standoff lengthened, the tension in the air thickening until Kylac feared it would snap like a drawn bowstring. He dared not look for Brie, but hoped she had the sense to flee when the arrow was loosed.
Then his father’s eyes found his, seeming to darken at the sight of his sheathed blade.
“As you will, Captain,” Rohn said, stepping past Xarius with wrists held out before him. “Let us see where this little game of yours will lead.”
Before being ushered from the school grounds in manacles, Rohn pronounced Masters Vashar and Stromwell chief regents in his absence, and charged them with ensuring that operations proceeded without deviation. He did so in a booming voice from the front courtyard, with nearly the entirety of Talonar’s occupants looking on, as it became clear that a sizable faction was preparing to join Kylac and Xarius in pursuit of Captain Traeger’s prisoner escort. Even so, it took Master Stromwell’s beefy hand and a personal rebuke from Rohn himself to collar Kylac and prevent him from following when Traeger’s pikemen prodded his father through the front gates.
Only when the day’s duties were finished was Kylac permitted to make his way to the royal prisons, where word held it his father had been delivered. Not surprisingly, he was denied entry by a bullish master jailor, who would allow only that Rohn was a guest in the complex’s central tower—the Gilded Cleaver, as it had come to be known. A cage typically reserved for accused nobility, the jailor pointed out, bestowed with comforts beyond his father’s station. Rohn’s treatment would be better than he deserved.
“Even if he’s innocent?” Kylac asked.
The jailor had a barking laugh. “Show me a blue-feathered pig, I’ll show you an innocent man.”
He fared no better the next day, or the day after that. His father would be permitted no visitors lest they be approved by Magistrate Aarhus or King Galdric himself. Rohn had counselors and advisors already working that tract—men who did little more than grumble of petitions and precedents and patience. Whispers filled the school’s halls, but Kylac could find nothing substantial in any of them. Vashar and Stromwell were as blind and deaf as he. While sympathetic to Kylac’s concerns, they preferred to focus on the duties they’d been assigned, and urged him to do the same.
By the third day following his father’s arrest, Kylac was seriously contemplating an unauthorized incursion into the Gilded Cleaver. A perilous proposition, he knew—not only for
himself, but for the damage it might do to his father’s chances of formal pardon should the act be perceived as an escape attempt. And yet, how long could he stand idle when they might be torturing his father toward a confession even now?
He was deliberating privately in one of the open-air wards, working through a series of leaping and climbing exercises on the labyrinthine porcupine tree, when Brie entered the yard below with a hand rake and a pair of pruning shears. Kylac gave her a moment to retreat upon spying him there, up in the tree’s highest rungs. When she knelt instead amid the hedges of evenshade and thanesbloom to one side, he knew with a spear of hope that her coming was no accident.
A series of drops, tucks, and descending flips brought him to his feet at the tree’s base.
Where have you been? he wanted to demand, but had learned well enough the foolishness—and unfairness—in that. Instead, he approached tentatively, drawing to a stop a pace away, where he commenced stretching. “Been wondering when someone was going to trim those hedges.”
Brie kept her gaze in the dirt. “Any word of your father?”
“Little of note. And none I can trust.”
“What are you planning?”
“Who says I’m planning anything?”
This time, she spared him a look—the sort meant to remind him that she was not a fool. “The servants think him guilty.”
Kylac bristled at the implication. The evidence against his father had likely been planted—quite possibly by one of his own servants. “And you among them?”
“He did not deny it, as I recall.”