Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  “Said you’ve been traveling eastward, right?” she asked casually. “Why all the way to Selif? Saw the plumes of smoke while the city burnt, didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t fully tell you. I’ve been following a feeling, hoping it becomes clearer.”

  She gave him a strong smile, the sort used to hide polite criticism. “Has it?”

  “A little,” he replied with a nod. “We’ll be figuring out our next steps once I return. One of my friends has likely dug up a map by now.”

  “Oh? Not just you then?”

  “We’re a small group.”

  They were nearing the fork in the road and Shea slowed her pace. She finally came to a stop and gave one last look at the manor, now barely visible in the distance. “You’ve been inside. What’s become of it? Peeked through the windows more than once. Hadn’t the nerve to step in.”

  “Dirt and webs,” he replied. “The roof, and some of the floors, have rotted away in places. The furnishings are still there, like the looters lost heart halfway through.” This elicited no response; Shea only watched the forlorn manor like she was taking that last moment with her. “Who used to live there?”

  For a moment, her eyes lost focus, like she had tuned out of the conversation entirely. She shook her head and asked, “Pardon?” and Flynn repeated the question. Shea laughed at the implication. “Not the prestigious Bagwells—that what you’re getting at? No…” With one last look, she continued. “The den Viers once governed from that house. Taxes and all that. Every last one of them, dragged to Selif and executed in the public square. Saw it as a girl. Mum tried to cover my eyes, but I peeked. Saw it all.”

  As she finished, they reached the fork in the road and turned left, heading toward Selif. Flynn asked, “What brings you back?”

  “Someone’s got to remember,” Shea said. “Whatever bad they did, doesn’t mean they were bad themselves. Won’t be written such in books, but I’d have people know.” She smiled at him and said, “Don’t forget, right?”

  “It may not mean much…” Despite his denial, Shea seemed content just to have shared. “You don’t have much time here, do you? So I find myself asking why you concern yourself over a dead family of nobles.”

  Shea flinched. Her left hand fell back and rested on the grip of her sword; not to draw it, but to reassure herself that it was there. The wooden hilt was cold comfort, but it seemed to help her focus. “I’d want people to know the same of me. Travel to distant lands, kill because our lords and theirs quarreled over territories and writs? Least have them think I’m not there ’cause I want to be. Better thoughts, you know?”

  “The things you have to do to survive…” Flynn replied, to which Shea gave an affirmative nod. The war across this continent, Tryna, was still murky to him, but it seemed the locals had not been the victims of a first strike. “You’ve maintained perspective. Most people lose themselves in the day-to-day milieu.”

  “If that’s a compliment, Flynn—” They rounded the path, and she never finished. The forest road had come to an end, with brighter skies in wait. The grasses ahead were brown, and scorched in places from recent flames. Even from afar, Selif looked little better, the ruin of a city still recovering from a recent siege.

  Shea looked at him, and both innately knew their conversation was coming to an end. He could have escorted her farther, and knew he wanted to. Their conversation had been an escape from himself, from the larger problems of his life, and Flynn realized at last the source of his ill feeling when they walked together. He saw himself as Shea did, she and every stranger he might meet and seem common and unremarkable to. For a fleeting moment, he’d been allowed to forget what he had become, and that alone was cause for alarm.

  “We part ways here, don’t we?” she asked.

  “I … need to get back,” Flynn said, though he didn’t want to. “When do you go back to war?”

  “Few days,” she replied. “Bit of work with the cleanup, though we usually slack off. Downtime, then we sail from the sunrise.”

  Nothing Flynn read of her wanted to go.

  “Like you said: duty calls.” She continued alone, leaving Flynn standing by a tree as their way divided. With a brief glance back, she said, “Ta-ta for now, mate.”

  Flynn would have delayed her farewell, if he could. It was odd, he considered, as he wasn’t normally so sentimental.

  * * *

  Den Vier Manor was as somber in daylight as it had been at night, and Flynn felt no welcome in returning. It seemed a poor choice, trading the company of one who’d have stayed with him longer for those who hardly wanted him at all. But if Shea truly knew me… he reminded himself, and knew then that it made no difference. At least here, he was needed; for what he was, if not who.

  At the manor entrance, he better appreciated the damage Jean had done in kicking it in. One of the doors seemed uneven on its hinges even when shut, and cracks had formed across the frame, splinters having since popped and fallen to the floor.

  As Flynn grasped the knob, instinct took over, and he leapt back just in time. The frame collapsed, one door striking the ground in a cloud of dust while the other wobbled uneasily in place. A few more boards fell soon after, but the rest remained intact.

  Flynn laughed. “Even the house wants to kill me.”

  As he stepped inside, Zaja came running up, her hands outstretched. “Geez! Are you okay?”

  “It’s fine, I’m—” Flynn paused, perturbed by the silence. He awaited the hurried footfalls, the gleam of swords, and admitted, “Actually, I was more expecting Poe.”

  “I think he’s sleeping. Long night, I guess. I’d—” She began to offer her hand, then hesitated. “Do you need any help?”

  Flynn declined as he hefted the old door up, straddling it against what remained of the frame. There was no way to close it now without rebuilding the whole thing. “The last of Jean’s handiwork,” he commented. He noticed then that Zaja’s hands were bare, and streaked with grease. “What are you working on?”

  “Oh, just trying to fix a clock in the hall. Come on, I’ll show you.” She led him through the drafty sitting room to the dining hall, where an old grandfather clock rested against the wall, its door open and its face in pieces. “Weird, isn’t it? Only four hour markers.” Flynn studied the face resting on the table as she went on. “I’ve been cannibalizing parts from a bunch of other clocks to fix it. There’s not much else to do here except warm up by the fire, but at least this keeps my hands busy.”

  “It’d be better for you in there,” he replied, speaking of the hearth.

  “Well, you know me: I’d rather live now than just a little longer.”

  Flynn realized then he should have known not to say it, even if Zaja had paid his comment no mind. While she returned to her self-appointed task, he decided to leave her be. Though he’d not damaged his goodwill with her, such clumsy comments could alienate fierier tempers. He instead moved through the dining room, down the west hall to the kitchen, from whence a faint aroma drifted. There, he found Chari, stirring a boiling pot of stew.

  “I would warn you, this is liable to taste terrible,” she said as he entered.

  He peered into the pot, but found the broth had taken on almost no color. “It’s just meat and vegetables … and not much meat at that.”

  “May it be said in my defense that I was never allowed to cook our group a proper meal when there were better ingredients at hand,” she replied, then took a sip and grimaced. “Goddess, that’s sour.”

  Had she forgotten her condemnations the night before, or was she simply letting the matter drop? “I didn’t mean to insult your cooking,” he said softly, and she gave a faint nod in a reply. She’s brushing me off, he realized, and finally admitted, “I’m lost.”

  On some level, this registered with Chari, who stopped stirring and turned to him in earnest concern. “From what stems th
is worry? Is it the ways between worlds, or—?”

  “It’s everything. There are many ways from here, yet for all we know of where they are and where they’ll take us, we might as well be traveling blind. But it’s not just that, it’s—” Flynn’s voice died in his throat. He could see Zella through the window, tending their steed in the stables. “It’s the things I’ve done.”

  “Recent history?” Chari sought confirmation. “The railway. The tunnel.”

  “Behaviors I thought I’d never show again,” he agreed. “It’s easy to act like you can do no wrong when nothing truly bad comes your way.”

  “A bitter truth I’ve also tasted.”

  “I’ve done considerably worse. But what if I’m letting this pull me back to my old ways? What if there are no other alternatives, if we’re only going to win this through ruthlessness?”

  “Our enemies carry themselves as a more moral lot than us,” Chari sadly agreed. “Yet grave acts are oft performed by self-proclaimed paragons of virtue.” Seeing she had not comforted, she looked within for a moment and tried to find some better council to offer. “There is no more reward than there is punishment for what we seek to do. Whether we drown in a mire or walk untarnished through the light, history cares not, so long as the end is the same. All that remains is finding our own meaning, and weighing failure against upholding our principles.”

  Neither Flynn nor Chari felt any solace in her words, but as he looked her in the eye, he at least felt her sympathy.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It’s something to think about, at least. For the time being, I need to try and make peace with Jean. We need to figure out where we’re going next, and I’d like to be on the same page when we do.”

  “Now that you make mention…” A troubled expression crossed Chari’s face, and Flynn’s stomach sank. “I’ve not seen her this day.”

  * * *

  An old baok tree had once stood as the gatekeeper to Selif, its girth wide, its largest branch pointing to the sea and hosting a child’s swing. The tree that greeted Shea upon her return was scorched, its branches shattered by cannonballs, the swing strewn several meters away. That the baok’s trunk survived was astounding, but she no longer recognized it as the same one beneath whose foliage she had read fairy tales to her siblings. Seeing this tree—and Selif beyond it—reduced to this filled her with a mixture of guilt and relief.

  The fighting was over. The row houses had crumbled and burned, and her more studious comrades were still sifting the rubble, trying in vain to unearth survivors. The scales of death had settled, and it was only as the fires died and the road was pocked with cannon shells that Selif felt safe once more.

  “Oi! Bagwell!”

  Shea flinched before recognizing her own name. His voice had cut through the bleak atmosphere as loudly as any gunshot, and as she turned to its owner, she took solace in the fact that he couldn’t see her up close. “Tarly?”

  “Two days!” he shouted boldly, perched atop the ruins of a home that might well have been his own. “Two days, then we sail back and show those fuckers what-for!”

  “Right!” she called back with a half-hearted nod, then hurried along before he could ask her to lend a hand. If she’d had the nerve for it, she’d have spent her time visiting the Bagwell family home, or checking on her mother, who’d been pulled from the wreckage. If she’d had the time, she’d be hiding in Brinnegan’s pub—which was miraculously still standing—and drowning in another pint while praying these last remaining days never passed. But she had neither, only an urge to avoid being accused of dereliction of duty, and with a heavy heart made her way to the town square.

  This square had once hosted the execution block where the den Vier family had been killed and, since witnessing it as a child, she generally took care to avoid it. But the 13th Division was gathering here, Sergeant Bodang standing atop the remnants of a statue idolizing some forgotten hero. While her comrades chattered, Shea idled in solitude; she had friends in the ranks, but had felt distant from them since coming home.

  “Whole bloody town’s a wreck,” one commented in her ear. “Can’t believe those tossers are just sticking us back in the fire like this.”

  Another, Vackie, had overheard, and glanced back. “Fuck yourself, knob. Cavonish fucked us over, and we’re to give them what they’ve got coming.”

  Vackie was a volunteer, enlisted by choice, and a conscripted soldier like Shea had no place disagreeing. She waited in silence, thumbing her cigarette case, eager for another smoke. “Line up!” Sergeant Bodang commanded, and her hand fell obediently from the case, nerves still on the rise. Bodang surveyed the crowd from his perch and asked, “We’re missing a body?”

  There was a moment of silence before one of Shea’s comrades cleared her throat. “Private Kallen’s house … fell on her, sir. She thought it safe, was trying to snatch a book out.” Another pause. “Just, thought you’d already heard.”

  “Hmm.” Whatever Bodang felt at this news, he shared nothing. “Enough of that. Final orders have come in: 13th’s being merged with the 17th in Bheln. They’ve held everything west of the Inven River, but the Gorrati are beating them back.” There was some dissent in the crowd at this news, and Bodang had to belt out a stern “Silence,” to get everyone back on the same page. “I’m well aware that more than half of you are Selifian locals, and I know you had your hearts set on revenge for the Cavonish betraying our alliance. Retribution will be had in time, but the Inven River is simply too important to lose now.”

  Losing this chance for revenge should have meant something, but in truth, Shea was more afraid to return to the front than she was angry at seeing Tryna’s countryside scoured, or half the town she grew up in beaten apart. She craved the rage that Vackie and her other comrades burned with, if only to drown the anxiety fighting to break free within her. Returning from den Vier Manor, she’d passed mounds of corpses—neighbors and friends and the father who’d raised her—all burned, for there were too many to bury and too few hands, and still it was not enough.

  Bodang carried on, reminding them what they were fighting for, but one thing he said stood out in her mind and weighed in her heart: Only the best of us are indispensable. He challenged them to fight to prove their worth and survive, but Shea had survived at the expense of soldiers far braver and more skilled than she.

  She waited until they were dismissed, then lit up a smoke at the first opportunity. They were not always so easily attained on the front and were one of the few comforts she had left in Selif.

  * * *

  An impressive library occupied the entire northeast corner of den Vier Manor, accessible from the second floor and descending into the first. Chari entered the musty chamber reluctantly, but couldn’t suppress her awe; the former masters had a collection that dwarfed her own. She could have spent the next decade in a collection such as this, if only she could read a word.

  As she circled the railing, her head sank in disappointment. “Stripped of all other valuables, yet they leave this room untouched. Hooligans,” she spat as she made her descent, bearing a candle to light the way.

  The light from the windows above the library pit passed from dull morning to eager noon, and through the hours, a stack formed on the second-floor table. First a few stained maps, then a flourishing stack of texts—anything presenting the local geography, with drawings or engravings pressed inside.

  At times she would stop and thumb through the pages. Keltian script, she had concluded, was not based on a set of phonetic symbols, but was composed of hundreds—if not thousands—of characters, each with specific meaning, all cryptic to an outsider like herself. She studied carefully, noting consistencies on the maps she found and matching them against the titles of volumes and chapters.

  Daylight was waning and she found herself needing more candles when the door opened, after hours of perturbing quiet. Her heart sank apologetically when
it was not Jean herself or even Flynn coming to bear the news, but Zaja, whose reluctant face told Chari all she needed to know.

  “You’ve found no trace of her, have you?”

  “I called it hours ago,” Zaja replied. “Flynn … he held on for a while. We checked the rooms, and the stables, and all around the grounds. We even searched the woods, at least far enough to know she wasn’t walking in the fringes.”

  The volume in Chari’s hand nearly slipped to the ground, and she had to slam it shut to steady it. She would realize later that she hadn’t marked her place, losing the last hour of work, but even then, it wouldn’t matter in comparison.

  “I am hard-pressed to believe she would abandon us,” Chari confessed.

  “To be honest, I’m not. Ever since we came to Keltia, she’s seemed tired. Burnt out. Like she was ready to leave and trying to find a reason to stay.”

  Chari looked out the nearby window and watched the trees rustle in the wind, and Zella guiding their steed on a walk through the estate grounds. There was no reason to expect Jean to emerge from the woods as though nothing had happened, but she hoped for it anyway.

  “Of course she’s not coming,” she concluded at last, turning away from the window. Zaja was struggling with one of the maps, its corners all fighting to roll back while she studied it. “Has it been decided how long are we to wait? I am not so hurried that I would pack and leave the moment our destination is set; already have I suffered one rude farewell from a dear friend. I do not wish to know another.”

  “So why didn’t you help look around her for her?” Zaja asked, an undercurrent of accusation in her voice.

  Chari balked. “Whatever Jean’s whereabouts, I do not believe her to be in harm’s way, but the longer we remain, the more likely we are. Rest assured, my friend: I’d have felt more remorse in searching for Jean than scouring these texts.”