by Jordan Reece
Recognizing Westen from that program, the guard named Ilowen greeted them warmly as he opened the gate. He would speak of their presence to no one, as per the program, and once they left, expunge them from his memory.
The carriage path was lined with dragontrees. Blithely indifferent to the season, many of them were in full bloom. The radiant row of trees stopped at an estate house so massive that it could have held every man, woman, and child of Alming with space to spare. Elario wandered it for hours in astonishment. Hundreds of tapestries and paintings covered the walls on each floor. There were bedrooms and studies and sitting rooms and sunrooms galore; a ballroom and courtyards and game rooms; three vast kitchens and two enormous banquet halls and a fleet of offices presumably for the staff necessary to propel this large and obscenely wealthy family through the day. The servant quarters alone housed ninety, Elario counting the beds.
At night he slept in a nobleman’s bed, overlooked by a mounted stag’s head, and by day he wandered the halls and paged through books. Hobbe was gone when he arose on the third day, returning by late afternoon to join them in the library on the second floor. A family tree gilded an entire wall of the library, going back eight hundred years and so threaded with the throne through multiple marriages that kings and queens were up there, too.
Westen had sent his mechanical man to acquire information, but none of it was good. As Elario reclined in a chair at the window, Westen and Hobbe considered their options around the table. A map was laid out upon the surface. Rain pattered against the window in a steady tempo as the gray day turned to a dark evening. A fire warmed the library, placed there solely for Elario’s sake.
They needed to get to the Wickewoods in order to get to Nevenin. The problem was how best to accomplish that goal. Hobbe had seen it for himself. A mixture of Dragons of the Blood and Red Guard soldiers were stationed every ten paces along the Argonauth Road as far as he walked. Even more soldiers paced upon the wall that blocked anyone from witlessly trespassing into the Wickewoods. The guard continued just as heavily through the night hours.
“We could backtrack,” Elario suggested. “Backtrack to Penborough and catch an aerial to-”
Westen dismissed his idea. “There isn’t time. No pleasure cruises go to the Great Cities after Hallowmas. They will not begin again until spring.”
“Then we backtrack to Penborough and steal a boat, which we use to cross the Avys to the Wickewoods.”
Hobbe shook his head. “That is most unwise, sir. Forgiveness. From that direction, we must cross the whole of the Wickewoods to reach Nevenin and Olehalem.”
“We would run out of ammunition by Kingsprow, and that is if luck favors us,” Westen said. “Leaving us to our bare hands and blades far short of our destination.”
“What about approaching from the east?” Elario queried.
Pensive upon the map, Westen said, “If not for the time of year, I would do just that.”
Elario went to the table to look at the map himself. The Argonauth Road stretched northeast from Ruzan, passing a multitude of towns and curving to the mountains. At their foot, it turned south to trail along the border of the Wickewoods.
Westen’s finger slid down the road there. “Even on horseback, it will take many days to make the mountains, and they likely have soldiers stationed the entire length of it. If they recognize us, we’ll be out of bullets before we encounter our first dervesh. Say we do reach the mountains . . .” His finger tapped on that branch of the Argonauth. “The road is no longer whole in this region. It hasn’t been maintained since the fall of the Great Cities, nor was it in good shape back then. We’ll encounter very difficult terrain along this route. Each day we waste in traveling increases the chances that we’ll be fighting snow on top of dervesh. We need to get as close to Nevenin as we can without setting foot to soil.”
“This is impossible!” Elario exclaimed.
“We could try to steal a war aerial,” Hobbe said. “The military has a stronghold in Cathul.”
“Better luck stealing a widget duster from a farmer and sailing over their heads into the Wickewoods,” Elario said, sighing in defeat. “I suppose we have to winter here, and hope their guard is not as thick in spring.”
“A widget duster,” Westen mused, his finger trailing back along the Argonauth to where it ran below the city of Ruzan. “Can you fly one?”
“I spoke in jest.”
“That was not my question.”
“I watched a demonstration of a widget duster years ago at the Grand Market. It is not a matter of flying but programming a route for it to fly, though a farmer can ride along if he or she wishes.” In disbelief that his joke was being taken seriously, Elario argued, “There is a limit to the fuel they can carry. A widget duster would not bear us all the way to Nevenin.”
“But it would take us some of the way, sirs, and swiftly,” Hobbe said.
“They are shoddy farm droids!” Elario cried. “Even if they are better in the north than the-”
“Hobbe, go and speak to Ilowen,” Westen interrupted. “Ask him where the largest farms are around Ruzan, and if he knows of any farmers that use a widget duster. Do it now; time is against us in this.”
Hobbe took that to mean he should run. His feet pounded down the hallway to the stairs. Calling for Ilowen, he received no response. The front door opened and shut, Hobbe going outside to search for wherever Ilowen was doing his rounds.
Westen traced a line from the location of the Thranan estate down to Nevenin. “This will put the soldiers at our back. It’s a good idea, Elario.”
“Won’t they just climb into a war aerial and fly after the widget duster?”
“Those aerials are grounded in Cathul. They don’t use them for much. Getting an aerial with which to chase after us will take them time. Once we land and travel below the tree cover, it will be even harder for them to find us. I suppose we cannot pack horses into a widget duster?”
“One or two at most, and their weight will affect the fuel.”
“Then no horses. We shall go on foot after we land. Well, it is all a trade-off. We cannot go as fast on foot, but we can go more quietly. They are quite noisy things, these dusters.”
“Terribly noisy.” They made a whine like a giant bee when they flew.
“So that is the trade-off for getting past the soldiers; the noise will attract the dervesh.” Westen laid his forearms flat on the map and rested upon them, staring down to the cities of Nevenin and Olehalem. “All of them, all of the ones I successfully traced, were born within these seven miles. But there were many who I failed to trace back to birthplace. Here . . .”
His finger tapped below the ink to spell out Nevenin. “Oak’s Knoll is where Endes Sevelio, noted dervesh knacker, was born to the Lord and Lady Sevelio. This I know for certain. And here . . .” He touched an open space aside a river called the Andren. “It was much more often a man’s skill than a woman’s, the dervesh knack, but there were a few exceptions. Three, to be exact. Here is where Chaissa Quane was born to a traveling troupe of merrymakers. Their wagon broke down as they were passing from Nevenin to Olehalem. She grew up to wield fearsome power, far more than the other women to bear this knack, and she was so judicious in its use that she was still creating spelled objects in her dotage. Radically different from the life of Indaru Flett, born upon the Flett farm just over the border into Olehalem. A weak knacker who burned himself out at nineteen, as did his grandson quickly burn out his own weak knack in time. Here is the birthplace of Grant at’Venes, who started life as a servant upon his lord’s estate and died owning three estates of his own, his children all marrying into nobility . . . Codlo and Etan Prens, twin dervesh knackers of middling skill . . . Elyza at’Watten, taken away by King Denelan’s soldiers and history loses sight of her there . . .”
His voice had grown feverish yet thick as his finger jerked around the map to indicate each knacker’s birthplace. When Elario looked up, he was startled at the gleam of tears in Westen’s e
yes.
One tear fell, splashing onto the map. Westen’s voice cut off, and he touched the dampness as it soaked into the parchment. Then he touched his cheek, appearing just as startled as Elario. Abruptly, he turned away from the table and went to the window. Water sluiced down the glass.
Elario was uncertain of what to say or do. In the end, he retook his chair in silence. He could have touched Westen’s sleeve at their proximity, but hesitated to offer comfort for a grief he was unable to fathom in full. His back straight and his shoulders still, Westen surveyed the grounds as he composed himself.
“You must have questions about Olan.” Westen’s voice was accusatory and unexpected; a minute had passed in quiet.
“No,” Elario replied. “You loved him, and you lost him, and you do this for him.” The details of their relationship, how they had come to be separated upon that road . . . These were not things he needed to know. Some wounds were so deep and vicious, so all-encompassing and excruciating, that they never healed. Time failed to scab them; comfort would not ease them. They were mortal injuries scoring the soul, darkening or even remolding the spirit so that one never stood apart from what had happened. These wounds could only be borne, raw and bleeding and invisible, until death.
Unless one could not die, and bore it always.
“It is not just for him that I do this,” Westen said. “Or myself. It is for all of us who were there, those who died so cruelly, and those who bore the crueler burden of living. It ended, our world. Everything we knew just ended on a day that was like any other day. Without warning, without time to prepare, without time to say one last goodbye. It ended. But you cannot know this.”
“I have lived a pale shadow of it, Westen,” Elario said. “I kissed my family goodbye and left Alming five years ago for the Grand Market. It was just another brief jaunt north to buy herbs, no cause for alarm. But then the contagion struck.”
He had seen many frightening things since receiving the dragon’s eye, but what stung his heart the most was long before that, in that terrible month he was unable to get home as contagion raged south of the Hopcross. The horror of his helplessness had not dimmed in his mind. Nor had the horror of the silence waiting for him when he at last returned to Alming.
He would carry that mark with him forever. Elario knew what it was to lose.
“I am sorry,” Westen said. “Yes, you know some of this.”
“I still wake up in the night wishing I had never left Alming. What use was my herbal knack so many miles from home? If only my father had come with me, as he usually did, but my mother hurt her ankle tripping upon the stairs, and he stayed home to care for her. If only I caught the last cutter south before the quarantine was laid, then I might have gotten home in time. If only things were a little different . . .”
“But they were not,” Westen said. “As they were not for me.”
“Who were you? Before?”
“Who were you?”
“Just a boy, another farm boy.” Elario looked into the dancing flames of the fire, remembering. “I worked hard at my studies and chores, or at least hard enough. I got into small scrapes and misadventures, which seemed very large to me at the time. My friends and I fancied ourselves mighty warriors and fought with sticks on the Green. My herbal knack pushed forth, and everyone rejoiced. A healer holds the heart of the community. The study of herbs was the one I took most in earnest. It was a very happy time.”
That child believed he understood the world, and what he did not understand failed to trouble him. Elario had clothes to wear, a roof over his head, a few coppers to spend at Hallowmas, and there was always food on the table. Many others in Alming had much less. “I never counted my losses, for I had none in those years. Nor did I worry that I would lose. It was something that happened to others, but always passed over me, and I assumed this enviable state would continue. It was foolish to believe that, inexcusably foolish for an herbal knacker who sometimes failed to heal his patients. That was who I was: diligent and honest, but a little arrogant and prideful.”
A fork of lightning brightened the window, and a growl of thunder rattled over the house. When it faded, Westen said, “I was just another boy, too. Though not like you; I rarely labored at my studies, nor cared overmuch when I displeased my tutors. To sit still and mind my tongue was a trial to me; I was a chattery little fellow never above a prank or rude joke.”
“That has not changed.”
“No. But I was the first to leap up for an errand wherever two swift feet were needed. My mother hoped to make a master sommelier of me, as my father was, yet I was better suited for horse work or groundskeeping. I fought far better than the Lord Inamon’s sons, though they were older than me, and my parents took me aside and warned me to let them win a little or earn their ire. It goaded me to lose, but I obeyed without question. Far more important was the honor we received by being a part of a lordly household than a little servant boy’s tweaked pride. At’Inamon! I loved to say my last name, and in truth, speak it to make other children envious of my station. They were merchant children, laborer children, nothing special. I fear I was a brat.”
Elario chuckled. “You were a boy. Did you become a master sommelier?”
Westen’s laughter was dry. It made a cloud of white fog on the window. “Never. By then, in the insanity of the last years of King Denelan’s rule, all pretense to civility fell apart. Noble children were kidnapped and ransomed or killed; estates were attacked and plundered by gangs. People vanished in the night. Shops and homes were torched. The executions . . . Well, the household had more need of a bodyguard than a sommelier. I was young and strong and hale, a formidable fighter, and with a tongue as tin for wine as it was silver for talk. The choice was made for me, as I assume it was made for you.”
“Alming needs an herbal knacker.”
“Have you ever resented it?”
Elario regretted not being stronger; to hear tales of the powerful women herbal knackers to precede him rankled his pride. “No. I stepped into my rightful place. Did you resent becoming a bodyguard?”
“On the contrary: it excited me. I was eager to prove myself to any thug who thought to take advantage of the Inamon family or holdings. A few did, testing my mettle, but I held true in combat. The lord often wished that I did not need to eat or sleep. He grieved that I was going to age and lose strength, or be killed in battle; he felt safest when I was at his side, or accompanying members of his family. There was an entire crew of guards, Olan included in those last years, but I was the lord’s preferred. And that is who I was before: kind to those I loved, fearsome to those I despised, yet a little arrogant and prideful, and likely more than a little.”
A door closed down on the first floor. The voices of Hobbe and Ilowen mumbled together in the foyer.
“So one has been found,” Westen said to himself.
“What do you mean?” Elario asked.
“If Ilowen had no knowledge of where to acquire a widget duster, then Hobbe would have returned immediately up here for further instructions. There must be one such droid nearby, and tomorrow we will leave for the Wickewoods.”
Elario was not ready for this, but he would be no more ready if they stalled for a day. He pressed his fingers to his eyelid, wishing for reassurance from the dragon’s eye that his death was not so close at hand.
The eye was slumbering, and thus silent. If he died . . . as the last of the Repse family, his property would be turned over to his houseman. That was written in the private papers of the household, scrawled many generations ago.
Would Yens and Nyca be harassed for the rest of their lives about Elario’s whereabouts? Easily could the property be seized from them, if the Crown ordered it, and they would have no recourse but to surrender. Worse would befall them if the Dragons of the Blood acted in spite and ordered them taken into custody. Agitated at these possibilities, Elario said, “May I ask a favor of you, Westen?”
Westen put a hand on his shoulder. “You may ask any
favor.”
“If I die doing this, will you deliver gold to my houseman and his son? With enough money, they can lose themselves in the world. They should not live under the eye of the military, nor be punished for my deeds.”
“I will,” Westen promised. “They will live in ease to the end of their days, and I will watch over them to ensure it. If for some reason I cannot carry out this wish, I will program it into Hobbe, and he will do it.”
Then that was done. Elario got to his feet, feeling restless, and stood beside Westen at the window. Night had erased the grounds, and the clouds blocked the moonlight. All was black as a grave out there.
Rapid footsteps clipped up the stairs, as equally measured as Hobbe’s laugh. The bald mechanical man entered the room, raindrops slipping down his face and his shoulders damp. “Ilowen knows of a Ruzan farmer who once employed a widget duster over his fields, sirs. The property passed on to his son when he died, and the son hired out the work to a farm management company that has its own dusters. Newer models. The old one has been sitting unused in a barn for years.”
“Did you get directions?” Westen asked.
“Yes, sir, the property is only a few-”
Elario quit the library, unable to bear the conversation. Going to his bedroom, he shucked his clothing for the nobleman’s nightdress and slid into the bed. He stared up to the ceiling and listened to the rain, wondering which of the dervesh would take him.
That was hardly a bracing thought. It could just as well be soldiers who took Elario down, or torturers in the Shivves if they were caught. He shivered beneath the blankets, which refused to warm with his body heat, and he took this as a dire sign. A grim premonition of the cold earth.
No. He shook the morbid thoughts away. Closing his eyes, he conjured up the Greenspry. The clatter of dice, the shuffling of cards, laughter and ale . . . It slipped away from him, the smiling faces of his imaginary gaming companions turning to the ghoulish leers of dervesh.