Theus turned, and saw that Vanline was behind him, holding a sword against Theus’s back.
Vanline saw Theus’s face, and the caravan leader suddenly paled.
“It’s a ghost!” he exclaimed. “There’s a walking dead man right here in front of me!”
Vanline backed away from Theus, who turned to face the man. Theus heard a noise behind him, as the girl at the counter ran in fright after hearing her employer’s extraordinary claim.
“What are you?” Vanline whispered.
“I hope I’m going to be a customer,” Theus said, starting to grin, as the ludicrousness of the situation became apparent. Vanline did not believe that Theus has lived after falling off the bridge.
“I’m alive,” he said more vehemently. “I’m real,” he repeated his claim. He held out an arm. “Pinch me, you’ll see,” he offered.
Vanline stood, sword still extended, but beginning to droop slightly.
“What? You can’t be real. No one could have survived that fall from the bridge. And even if you did survive, why are you just showing up here now? That happened a year ago,” the caravan leader laid out his logical explanation.
“I’m not just getting here. I’ve been in Greenfalls three times in the past year, and a whole bunch of other places. I just happen to be in Greenfalls because I’ve been,” he stumbled, then stopped. He couldn’t blurt out all that he had done, he realized. He would sound preposterous.
“Wait, stop,” Vanline spoke into the awkward silence. He reached out and touched Theus’s arm.
“By all the gods, you are real!” he exclaimed. He thrust his sword into his belt and grasped Theus’s hand in both of his, pumping up and down with a firm grip.
“Dinner! Come to dinner with me! Tell me everything that’s happened. I want to hear what you and Grant did after you left the caravan. It makes sense now, why the old man left us,” the caravan leader enthused.
“What? Wait!” it was Theus’s turn to be amazed. “What happened to Grant?”
“You tell me,” Vanline responded.
“I don’t know; I haven’t seen him since I fell from the bridge,” Theus protested. “I waited in Great Forks, expecting him to show up there. I was there for months.”
“Great Forks? Grant wasn’t with you? He left the caravan the day after you fell off the bridge. We woke up the next morning, and Grant was gone; there was no clue, no sign. I chewed out the sentries pretty good for letting him sneak away in the night,” Vanline explained.
“I don’t know what to say,” Theus said softly, stunned by the news.
“Well, come to dinner. I’ll ask Eiren to join us,” Vanline suggested.
“Meet us at the Blue Coach tavern on Broad Street, will you?” Vanline asked. “Now, where did that dratted girl go?” he asked. “I don’t know why I keep her around. Well, I do,” he answered his own question.
He moved toward the counter and around it. “Dinner? Blue Coach?” he sought confirmation from Theus.
“I’ll be there,” Theus agreed. Vanline nodded, and then disappeared out the back, searching for his employee.
Theus found that he was grinning, delighted to know that Vanline was alive and well, and due to have dinner with him. Then the grin disappeared as he remembered that Grant had gone missing. The kindly old man who had treated Theus so well was gone. Theus couldn’t imagine what could have happened. It made no sense. Few things in his life did though, he told himself ruefully.
He left the shop and walked down the street. A vendor gave him directions to Broad Street, and the Blue Coach. Theus strolled slowly, casually observing the city as he walked. There were numerous guards and members of the patrol about the city, he was surprised to see – many more than he’d seen in Great Forks or Stoke. And the people of the city seemed to scurry away from the patrols, or ignore them; there was no friendly interaction.
He thought of the conversations he had heard in Currense’s temple, the evil works of Bened that he had learned by reading the high priest’s memory stone. It was all connected somehow, he vaguely knew, but he didn’t truly understand.
Coriae would have known how to put the pieces of information together, he told himself mournfully.
When he reached the Blue Coach he was the first of the trio of caravan members to arrive. He took a seat at a table, and ordered a mug of wine. It wasn’t the sweet kind of wine that he had shared with Torella in Southsand, but after a few sips he determined that the dry wine wasn’t bad.
“Theus!” the voice in his ear was loud and high and full of emotion. He felt arms squeeze him from behind, and then Eiren was with him. He stood up into a smothering embrace, and he unexpectedly found his lips pressed against hers.
“You taste like wine,” she murmured, and then they sat down side by side on the bench.
“Theus, you’re really alive!” Eiren was quieter as she repeated the phrase.
Theus studied her. Her hair was longer, and her face was slightly thinner, slightly more mature. But she still seemed the same.
“Tell me everything that’s happened to you since we lost you,” she insisted.
“Everything would make you think I’m a liar and crazy,” he grinned.
“Tell me just the good parts then,” she grinned back.
“I stayed alive,” he began.
“Out in the big, wide world. That’s pretty good. I thought you’d be too soft,” she told him.
“I learned to read memory stones,” he said.
“Memory stones? That’s nice; lots of people use them.” Eiren responded, not understanding the nuance of Theus’s claim.
“I learned a lot of healing remedies; I can help people with most sicknesses,” he tried something else. He wasn’t sure he was going to admit to any of the truly extraordinary claims.
“Maybe you could sell them at the market,” Eiren sounded as if she was trying to be helpful with her suggestion.
“So, tell me about your life,” Theus decided to put the girl on the defensive.
The waiter came by, and Theus motioned for two more cups of wine to be delivered.
“I’m making my last journey as an indentured servant for Vanline,” the girl was breathless as she pronounced her biggest news.
“After this trip, I can go where I want, when I want,” she emphasized.
“Where are you going this time?” Theus asked with great interest.
“We’re taking a small caravan down to Great Forks,” Eiren answered. “It’s an easy trip.”
“When do you leave?” Theus wanted to know.
“Oh, in a couple of days. Why are you so curious? Are you ready to come back and ride with us?” she asked with a smile.
“No, I need to go somewhere else,” he replied, erasing her smile. “But I would like to work with Vanline on a project,” he decided to hint discreetly at his need.
“If it pays well, he’ll be interested,” Eiren told Theus, “as long as it’s not bridge-jumping!” she laughed at her own humor so hard she snorted, then covered her face with both her hands as she blushed in embarrassment.
“So, do you have a girlfriend?” she asked Theus after a pause in the conversation.
“I did, for a while,” Theus told her.
“There they are,” Vanline’s voice spoke heartily as he arrived and stood at the table. “Look at my two favorite caravan workers,” he smiled as he pulled a chair out on the side of the table opposite the other two and swung his leg high over the back to sit down dramatically.
“Of course, you can’t tell the forty-seven other caravan workers I’ve had that you’re my favorites. I can’t have jealousies, you know,” he warned them.
“Theus, I found Shimma – the girl in the office who you scared away, you know,” Vanline continued. “And once I calmed her down and assured her that you weren’t a walking death figure, she said that you were very confident in your swordsmanship. I told her of course that I taught you everything you know – which is why you were one of my all-time f
avorite caravan workers; no one else would have put up with that much sword work for that long that consistently.
“But she said that you arrogantly claimed that you’d beat me if we matched in a challenge. That can’t possibly be true, can it?” Vanline motioned to the waiter for a new round of mugs of wine while he leaned in to challenge Theus, an intent look on his face.
“I’ve had the chance to practice more since I left the caravan,” Theus spoke a little more freely than he might have without so much wine in his belly. “I think I’ve gotten pretty good.”
The waiter arrived, put more wine on the table for all three of them, took their meal orders, then departed.
“Gotten pretty good, eh?” Vanline asked with a feigned casualness. “So, you’d be up for a match to test?” he asked.
“I haven’t done much in the past month. I’d want a bit of practice to knock the rust off,” Theus agreed.
“There’s an armory just a hundred paces west of here,” Vanline was watching Theus carefully. “Let’s meet there tomorrow at noon, shall we?”
“For a friendly match? That sounds fun,” Theus suddenly felt the need to downplay the importance of the match. Vanline clearly intended to take it seriously, while Theus knew he needed practice.
“Enough of you two trying to deceive one another,” Eiren slapped her hand down on the table top. “Theus tell us about your life!”
He stumbled at first, but then began to slowly tell an abbreviated version of surviving the fall from the bridge and going first to Greenfalls, and then by barge to Great Forks.
“We lost time getting to Greenfalls after we lost you and fought the robbers, then delayed looking for Grant,” Vanline explained. We were two days late getting into the city. You’d probably already shipped out on the easy barge cruise,” caravan workers didn’t hold barge workers in high esteem, Theus discovered, since the sailors were believed to just lazily let the current carry the boat down the river.
Theus told of working in Falstaff’s shop, and practicing swords with Forgon, then entering the city tournament. “I didn’t win,” he said modestly. Nor did he mention Coriae, and his romance with her.
Then he turned to the story of Southsand, and the black magician and evil he saw in the palace and in the invasion. The two caravan members listened raptly to the extraordinary tale, after which he glossed over the details of traveling to Stoke and Great Forks and Southsand again, and mentioned white magic and Limber not at all.
“You’re not the same green farm boy who started his first trip with us, are you?” Vanline asked in disbelief. “You’ve seen just about the entire known world.
“The black magicians – are you exaggerating some of that, or is it that bad?” Eiren asked.
“They frighten me. A sword won’t do much good. And I can tell that they plan to spread their evil,” he emphasized. “Our gods and our people need to fight back.”
The three of them sat in contemplative silence for a while.
“There are cheerier things to discuss after dinner, so that we end on a happy note,” Vanline broke the quiet. “Eiren is learning swordsmanship now from the master, the best teacher in the empire,” he stated. “Perhaps after I beat you, you can contest with her to see who is my prize pupil!”
“Perhaps she’ll beat you after I do,” Theus teased back.
“Perhaps you’ll both lose to me,” Eiren joined in the baiting.
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Vanline said. “Now, I need to go finish up a few things,” he started to rise.
“One more thing,” Theus decided on the spur of the moment to make his plea.
“I need a caravan,” he blurted out, as Vanline half stood over his chair, poised to listen to him.
“Can you put together a caravan of food supplies and goods and take it towards Waterspot as quickly as possible?” Theus hastened through the words. “I’ll pay you immediately.”
Vanline gaped at him with a mouth hung half-open.
“What’s the punch line?” the man asked after an awkward pause. “I don’t get the joke.”
Theus grunted and raised his heavy pack up onto the table, then untied the cover and opened the mouth of the pack to reveal the hoard of coins he was carrying around.
“This is heavy and my back aches from carrying it. It’s to pay for the caravan and the supplies,” Theus began.
“Close that thing up!” Vanline’s hands slapped the pack closed. “Don’t be flashing that around here – you won’t make it out alive!
“Gods above, below, and all around! Where did you get that!” the leader hissed.
“Theus!” Eiren added in astonishment.
“It was given to me. I’m supposed to buy supplies for people in the east,” Theus answered warily. He still remained convinced that if he used the name of Limber, he’d be called insane.
“In the east? Are you going to go feed the population of the entire Jewel Hills?” Vanline asked.
“Not exactly. Will you do it?” Theus asked. “As a favor? I trust you,” he added.
“We’ve got a contract to take a group of merchants to Great Falls in just a couple of days,” Vanline responded. No, there’s no way.”
“Couldn’t you give them to some other caravan leader, so that you could lead this caravan for me?” Theus asked. “I could get more money if you needed,” he offered.
“Theus, what are you doing, stealing from the governor’s vaults?” Eiren asked. Her hand was gripping his arm, he realized.
“I can’t tell you, yet,” Theus replied. “But if you do this for me, I’ll tell you the story, the whole story,” he offered emphatically.
“I tell you what,” Vanline answered. “If you can beat me tomorrow, I’ll do this for you. I’ll contract out my clients to someone else, and I’ll put together a caravan for you, and I’ll lead it for you. If you beat me tomorrow in the first match we have against one another.” He was sitting again, and he leaned back in his chair, wearing a smug air of satisfaction that he had won. “And if I win, you’ll still have to tell us the whole story of what’s going on.
“And,” he offered magnanimously a second later, “I’ll even help you find a crew to work your caravan.”
Theus thought about the proposal. If he had faced Vanline at the time his skills had been honed for the Great Forks tournament, he would have been ready to take the bet. But without training, even with the light fog of wine swirling in his mind, he knew he’d have trouble fighting against the caravan leader in a fair fight. Except, he suddenly thought, maybe he could make the fight less fair for Vanline, and more fair for himself.
“Alright,” he agreed. He held his hand out for Vanline, who grasped it and shook firmly.
The caravan leader shook his head. “You’ve had too much to drink. Watch out for him tonight Eiren!” he grinned as he stood up. “I’ll see you at noon at the armory,” he pledged again, and then he was gone.
Theus exhaled.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” Eiren asked, sitting back against the bench.
“Things that are way over my head, it feels like,” he confessed.
“You’re a smart boy, and a lucky one, if you can fall off the Ester Road bridge and survive,” she patted his shoulder as she spoke. “Whenever we take a caravan across that bridge, we pause to tell people about the time one of our workers fell to death fighting the robbers there. It sobers them all up.
“I suppose we’ll have to change the story. It might even be better now,” she mused.
“I’m ready to go. Where are you spending the night?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I just got to town today and I haven’t made arrangements,” Theus answered. He began to consider. He could go to the temple of Currense and ask for Alsman, to spend the night there. He thought about the contentious currents at the temple though, and wondered if it was a good idea or not.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, or I will use a sword on you,” Eiren spoke up. “You can spend the ni
ght with me – just in my flat, that’s all I’m saying – not in my bed!
“It’s clean and safe and not far away,” she explained. “I can put some blankets down on the floor for you.”
“Thank you,” Theus answered. “I won’t make you regret it.” It was a simple answer, and he was grateful for her trust. But when she got up to lead the way out of the tavern, he couldn’t help but momentarily study her figure as she walked towards the exit.
Chapter 19
Eiren led Theus through the streets of Greenfalls.
“This is where the armory is,” she told him as she stopped after a five minute walk, They were in front of a trio of double doors in a plain, brown brick building; the faint sounds of practice swords striking one another slipped past the doors for them to hear. “I brought you this way so you’d know where we’re headed in the morning.”
They walked on three more minutes, then entered a building and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Eiren opened the door and let Theus in.
“Curse it all!” she exclaimed. “Where is my flint to light the lantern?” Theus heard her fumbling with items on a table.
Without pausing to think, he illuminated a pair of fingers and held them high. “Does that help?” he asked.
“Thank you,” she turned. “Where did you find it?” she looked up at the fingers in the air, then gasped, and fainted.
He knew he’d made a mistake.
The flint was visible in the light from his glowing hand. Theus picked it up from where it’d fallen onto the floor behind the table, and he lit a lantern, then extinguished his fingers. He knelt and rubbed her cheeks and shoulders without successfully rousing her. He sighed with discouragement, then slipped his pack off, and grunted as he picked his friend up, to carry her to her bed.
Once he had laid her on the thin mattress, he pulled her boots off her feet, and spread her blanket over her. She appeared to be slumbering peacefully, and he stepped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind himself.
He took cushions from a chair, placed his pack in the floor, and lay down on the impromptu bed. His mind was drowsy but not ready to sleep. He had to beat Vanline, he told himself, to have a caravan. And he could win, although there might be consequences.
Unpredictable Fortunes (The Memory Stone Series Book 3) Page 18