Steeled

by Liam Reese

  The leader of the rogues conducted him a short distance away from the mass of common rogues, with only one guard to assist him in keeping Thorn in check. Thorn had a feeling that this was a commentary on his helplessness, and perhaps he should be offended, but since it worked in his favor, he held his tongue.

  “Now, then,” said the leader of the rogues. “What news do you bring me, and from whom do you presume to deliver orders?”

  “The December King Lev sends you his compliments from his exile,” said Thorn readily, “and wishes you to remain in readiness for the next stage of his campaign. Also, he requests that you hold off on abducting anyone else for now, until he sends word,” he added, as an afterthought. If he was going to do any good at all, he might as well do all that he could.

  “He requests, does he?” murmured the rogue leader.

  “Well, he demanded it,” said Thorn, thinking better of his own word choices after the fact. “I was only attempting to be polite.”

  “Indeed. Not something that your former Regent was known for, was it?”

  “No, of course. He was legendarily rude.”

  The rogue leader gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. “So. The December King. You claim to be his representative?”

  “Yes.”

  “A bold claim. And what makes you — or your king — think that your words mean anything to me?” He spread his hands. “I am, after all, merely a humble rogue.”

  “You’ve been doing his bidding for months now,” Thorn said, bravely. “You scarcely make a move without his say so. He is in control of all the highwaymen activity taking place on the roads of Ainsea, and the foreigners being brought in to join them — you.” He watched avidly to try to ascertain what effect this was having on the rogue leader — curse the masks! He couldn’t tell whether any of this was hitting home or not. In a burst of courage, which was perhaps misplaced, he said, “Or have you forgotten your deal?”

  “Deal?” said the highwayman, softly.

  Thorn’s heart sank.

  “You know,” he said, and lifted a hand to rub his thumb and forefinger together, like a cricket. “Money.”

  The rogue leader laughed.

  “The last refuge of the clueless is a vague allusion to money,” he said. “I appreciate your delicacy; indeed, you’re almost as polite as the December King was always known to be. I question your timing. You think that I’ve been taking orders from the December King.”

  Thorn swallowed. His throat was so dry that he almost wondered whether Braeve was somewhere about.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you think that if I know you’re in league with him, a king’s man so to speak, I will let you and your companion go without contacting the newly minted queen.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this before? Last night, perhaps, when you first were captured. Why spend the evening in such discomfort and unpleasantness? Why not tell me right away?”

  “Would you have listened?” countered Thorn. The rogue leader cocked his head at him.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You — really?” Thorn blinked at him. “Because it seemed like you were awfully concerned over your toast.”

  “You think I wouldn’t have listened to you because you were with the Queen when she escaped,” said the leader. “And you may be right — I may not need to listen to you at all. You have already made mistakes, errors in judgment which I don’t believe you can easily explain away. Therefore, what proof can you offer me that what you say is true?”

  There came a long, still moment while Thorn pondered what to say. He hoped vividly that it looked as though he were pondering what to say, rather than that he had absolutely no idea and was grasping at straws. Blustering was only going to go so far; perhaps he had made a mistake in his judgment of the December King’s personality, perhaps he had made a mistake in not speaking up at once — that was the trouble with not having a plan. But he was quite sure, now, that there was definitely some connection between the rogue leader and the former December King. Otherwise, he would have been sent back to the camp unceremoniously, and the murderous rogue would probably have been allowed to finish strangling him. No, there was definitely something there.

  Finally, in the end, his mouth opened, and the truth fell out.

  “Nothing,” he said. “No proof at all. In fact, all I can tell you is that I know what really happened to the December King, and I know where he is right now. He’s in no position to give orders to anyone, really. And if you want some, well — you’ll have to wait for seven years.”

  The rogue leader stared at him — it was another long, still moment, this one with additional tension as Thorn waited to find out whether he was to be paid attention to or thrown back into the ranks of the rogues to be at their mercy.

  Finally, the other man said, “Seven years, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you the exact location,” said Thorn, “but he’s probably eating a blanket somewhere. He’s been turned into a goat.”

  The leader of the rogues threw back his head and laughed.

  It was not the reaction which Thorn had been expecting, exactly, but it wasn’t an entirely unwelcome one, either. The end result was that it made him a bit nervous. He shifted on his feet, waiting for the leader’s mirth to subside. At long last, it did, and the other man reached behind his head to untie his mask, revealing a pale, shallow moon of a face, thin-lipped and bland. It was the sort of face that wouldn’t have been looked at twice on the street; Thorn couldn’t be entirely certain that he had never seen him before. It wasn’t at all the sort of face that the voice had led him to imagine. The rogue leader wiped at his eyes with both hands and favored Thorn with a smile.

  “Well,” he said. “So, he’s been Forged. That does change things somewhat.”

  The rogue’s unquestioning acceptance of the Forged sent warning signals throughout Thorn’s brain; never before had anyone so easily made that leap in logic. He proceeded with caution.

  “For Lev, it changes things quite a lot.”

  “Indeed. Indeed.” He gave way to another spurt of chuckles but got control of himself quite quickly. “Forgive my amusement. I never liked him, and the thought of him being turned into a goat is curiously perfect. I don’t suppose you are the Forged, yourself?” He watched Thorn with narrowed eyes, and Thorn swallowed hard.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “I don’t even know if they really exist. I am not convinced.”

  “Despite the evidence of the goat? Oh, you needn’t worry. I don’t feel the need to collect any Forged, myself — I’ll leave that to the queens and kings to do. It’s an expensive, dangerous sort of game, having that much power ready to do your bidding. No. I’m quite content with my life as it is.” He sighed, appearing to turn suddenly maudlin, and shook his head. “However, it is evident that my own status is about to change. Your new queen is quite set on cleaning up the countryside, isn’t she? A determined little thing. So much like her father, from what I have heard. Well, and why not?” He leaned forward, arms on his knees. “The times change, and we must change with them. I have good news for you, my strange young friend. With this information, you have earned your freedom.”

  Thorn stood up straight. “What? How?”

  “I wouldn’t ask too many questions,” cautioned the rogue leader.

  “But I — very well. That’s probably good advice. I wish I had gotten it earlier. But —”

  “But what must you do in order to go free? Evidently you have the ear of the Queen Irae. That is valuable to me. I want a complete pardon, and to come into Balfour as a free man.” He flicked an invisible bit of fluff off his sleeve. “If there is a knighthood in the bargain, I wouldn’t say no. I’m a weak man when it comes to bestowed nobility.”

  “And what will you offer Queen Irae in return for this generosity on her part?” said Thorn, still mystified as to what was
happening, and how, but trying gamely to shelve the questions for later when he was actually free rather than just chasing after the dangling promise.

  The leader of the rogues smiled a dangerous smile.

  “Information,” he said. “All the information she could want — why King Lev had the throne to begin with, for instance. Who is likely to betray her. Why he was directing the Damn Rogues and others to kidnap nobles for ransom, and what he was doing with his share of the profits. What he owes to Elgodon. And — and this may be of particular interest to you — what has happened to the other Forged in Ainsea.” He nodded at Thorn and looked pleased with himself. “If that doesn’t pique her interest, then she isn’t as royal as she thinks she is. No regent can resist information, any more than they can resist adding to their own power.” He stood up and nodded briefly at the rogue behind Thorn, who took a knife to his rope obediently and set him free in a matter of seconds. “And if she asks who it is who offers her this information —”

  “Yes?”

  The leader of the rogues gave an elegant, if theatrical bow.

  “You may tell her Raff, leader of the Damn Rogues, former Duke of Brenov Province, in Elgodon,” he said. “And send her my compliments, will you? Queens love compliments.”

  6

  On the Road Again

  After finally attaining his release from the rogues — packed off with jeers and insincere good wishes, allowed to have only one of the two horses and half the supplies they had started with — Thorn assisted Berren to mount and steadied him as they started off. The wounded man had woken at last once Thorn had returned to the camp after his interview with Raff, dazed and disoriented but more or less himself. Thorn filled him in on the goings-on as they left the camp; Berren chuckled in disbelief and shook his head.

  “And somehow you talked your way out of both being strangled and captive by highwaymen,” he said. “Either you’re extremely lucky, or I’ve underestimated you.”

  “Both may very well be true,” said Thorn, modestly.

  They traveled slowly now, Thorn on foot for part of each day, allowing the horse a lighter burden. Berren cleaned his wound and doused it with more pash each morning and each evening and rode with his leg stretched stiffly outwards. The sheep farmer was surprisingly jaunty about the whole thing, making the occasional remark about having at last got the point of the whole venture and wondering if they were making the journey shorter by traveling as straight as an arrow.

  “You’re rather cheerful for a wounded man,” said Thorn, whose feet were sore. “Suppose your wound festers and we have to cut your leg off.”

  “Then I’m practically guaranteed a lifetime of care and comfort from Lully,” said Berren, displaying a grin behind his beard. “That girl is a paragon of womanly feeling.”

  “That may be so,” said Thorn, “but if you think womanly feeling makes her more likely to take care of a wounded man, you don’t know her as well as you might think.”

  Berren scrutinized him for a moment. “You’re on the side of the bard, aren’t you?”

  “I’m on no one’s side but my own,” said Thorn, irritated now, “and I couldn’t be less interested in pursuing the hand of Lully, fair though she may be. Any man who is chosen by her is in for a lifetime of henpecked troubles.”

  “I disagree. Though you could hardly expect me to do otherwise.”

  “Indeed.”

  The journey was quiet for a while after that. But Thorn did his best to help Berren when they stopped for a rest and helped him as well to remount the next morning. Berren did not seem to be developing the feverous infection that had so quickly plagued Karyl after his wound, and Thorn found comfort and cheer in that fact. He was growing weary of Forging his own companions — he didn’t much want to Forge anyone, anymore. When he slept each night, wrapped in his cloak beside the fire, he dreamed of the rogue that he had begun to work on, and his mind’s eye saw spring green tendrils sprouting from the man’s mouth and eyes, curling around the rogue’s insides.

  As he walked a measured pace toward the place of his birth, he thought of Elseth, long ago, and how she had been changed.

  “Are we going slowly on purpose?” Berren asked him on the second day. Thorn looked away, towards the stand of trees to his left. They had been unbothered by rogues since dealing with Raff and his gang, and Thorn had his own suspicions that they would not have to confront any more roving bands, at least not until he had the chance to speak to Irae on Raff’s behalf.

  “No,” he said. “Why would we be?”

  “Because,” said Berren, “you’re afraid of what we’re heading towards.”

  Thorn snorted so violently that he nearly knocked himself off balance, taking a misstep and having to clutch suddenly at the horse to right himself.

  “Of course not,” he said at last, in case the intended message had not been received.

  “Aha,” said Berren, his tone warm with poorly concealed amusement. “Clearly. All my suspicions are allayed. Quite seriously, though, son, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Either she will wake and be changed, or she will be the same as she was when you Forged her seven years ago.”

  “I don’t think you understand. Both of those options could be things to be afraid of.”

  Berren reached over and down to clap him on the shoulder.

  “Either way, she will be alive,” he said. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Thorn said nothing. It wasn’t untrue, of course — he wanted Elseth to be alive. But he wanted something other than that, too, and he wasn’t sure how to articulate it. He wanted what she had been, years before, when he was just a youth still, and she was with him in the woods, leaning on his shoulder and pointing to letters in a book. If he couldn’t have that, he wasn’t sure if he wanted anything.

  He was afraid of what might have changed while she slept.

  “I wonder what she will make of Irae,” he said at last.

  That evening, seated beside the fire with his legs crossed, poking at the flames with a

  stick, Thorn looked up to see the orange-furred fox sitting across from him, her eyes squinted nearly closed. He held his breath; alerted by the sudden stillness and the change in the air, Berren looked up from his mug of ale. Thorn could see his eyes widen at the sight of the fox; but he held his tongue, and kept still, and looked to Thorn to see what to do. Thorn shook his head at him, silently.

  “Ahh,” said Berren, quietly. “Another of our friends.”

  It was on the tip of Thorn’s tongue to tell the fox everything that had occurred — the

  capture by Raff and the rogues, the conversation with Rickerd, and especially the charge that he had been given by Batrek Felcin. But the fox was peaceful, giving way to a sleepy yawn after a few moments and apparently ignoring everything around her. At the last, Thorn kept his peace.

  Later, perhaps, he would tell her.

  After he had returned her to herself.

  In the morning, the fox was gone, though Thorn was quite certain that she was still following

  them, from a distance.

  All in all, it took three full days longer than expected to reach the village where both Thorn

  and Berren had been born and raised. They rode and limped into civilization in the early afternoon close on a week after they had left the castle.

  Perhaps civilization, thought Thorn, with the new perspective that travel had brought, was too strong a word.

  The village — Lovesick, it had been called when Thorn was young, though he hoped it had been changed by now — was not a great deal different than it had been, from what he remembered. There was a roadway of hard packed dirt, a few shops with the living quarters of the shop owners behind them, hand-painted signs set up and hanging from the eaves. The houses were smaller than he remembered; the thatched roofs were ill-tended, the doorways cavelike, and the people —

  There were fewer passers-by than he expected, at this time of day. It was meant to be a bustling Saturday
afternoon, just after lunchtime, and here he saw only a handful of older men and women, giving suspicious glances to the two men and the horse. The suspicion relaxed somewhat once people saw that it was Berren, though none of them got any friendlier. The sheep farmer nodded and smiled at them all graciously, apparently not caring a bit whether they returned his regard.

  Thorn, however, continued to get nothing but hard stares.

  “Come along,” said Berren, directing the horse towards the outskirts of the town. “My house is this way. If you would like to call it a house. It’s really just a shack, but it’s mine, as they say.”

  “Shouldn’t we go to the clearing?” asked Thorn, anxiously. Now that they were here, there didn’t seem any point to postponing the inevitable. “Or to Elseth — to her house?”

  “There would be no one there worth talking to,” Berren informed him. “Her family’s long gone now — mother and father dead, and no one else left. Marten took over the baker’s shop after Confir — well, he got sick, it was true, but honestly there was no heart left in him when he went to fight, anyway. He’d been a dead man walking since his daughter left him.”

  Thorn shut his eyes, to close out the sight of the village, and the sound of what had happened after he’d left.

  “I believe that,” he whispered softly. “I — I knew that, somehow. Everything changed here, after I left, didn’t it?”

  Berren smiled down at him. “Indeed. The good people of Lovesick turned their attention elsewhere. They had always claimed that your presence was proof of a curse — well, after your presence was not an excuse anymore, another proof of cursing was required. You’ll be glad to know that your parents did not betray your place in the woods.”

  “Glad?” said Thorn. “You think so?”