For a moment he thought he had beaten the old Kuric. Then, “Would you kill him?”
“If it comes to that.” The words formed a lump in his throat. He did not like to think of the what-ifs. “He would have seen me dead long ago.”
Beneath Alviss’s withering look, Rurik had the uncanny feeling the last bit was as much to reassure himself as Alviss. No words followed from the Kuric, but they were not needed. Rurik could imagine the thoughts playing out in the Kuric’s head. There was little doubt as to Alviss’s loyalty, in his mind, but there was a difference between protecting and killing. Alviss protected Rurik. To ask him to kill his father, however—that would likely exceed the bindings of his dedication.
That was one important thing to always remember about Alviss the Kuric. Rurik had been raised under the man, as far back as he could remember. Teacher. Trainer. Bodyguard. Shadow. The man was many things to him, but he had been his father’s man long before he was ever born. Rurik knew not when exactly Alviss had come into their household—merely that he was not the first Matair youth to waddle beneath his steely stare. The boy had never been privy to how, exactly, his father had acquired the man, but he could guess. Kasimir Matair wouldn’t have been the first to bolster the ranks with one of the northmen. They had a reputation, and the reputation made them as much sought after as feared.
Appearances aside, Alviss was a guardian through and through. He always had been. The image of a berserker charging lines of hungering blades was a little off-touch with him. For Rurik, Alviss killed. For his family and his friends. Nevertheless, he was also the present company’s negotiator and unofficial representative. He was good at it, too—and with a minimum amount of talking required.
Sometimes Rurik wondered if Alviss regretted his decision to follow him into exile. Alviss had lost a great deal in the venture. Unlike him, though, Alviss never put his complaints to words. If they were there, they lurked in the recesses of his skull, for he alone to hold and he alone to bear.
“So fast you grow, so young remain.” Rurik scowled at the insinuation. “Think. You say a man would kill his son. Not so strange a thing. You say a man would kill his son, who sent another man to guard him. Queer, this. Who sends an axe to guard, while another to behead?”
More of this. Why do you defend him so? “Perhaps he grew weary of his Kuric slave,” he sneered. “Perhaps Cullick offered him a Zuti for his troubles.” If the words had any impact, they certainly did not show. Alviss never so much as twitched. “Is this all you wished to speak of?”
The Kuric nodded slowly.
“Are we done?”
He could imagine the skinny little baker whispering sweet nothings in Essa’s ear, kissing her hand, and leading her straight into the arms of the guards. He could see the guards marching for the tavern, the baker at their lead. The images made him fidget in his seat. I have other things to deal with.
“When will you go?”
If luck would have it, a day or two, and nothing more. He told Alviss as such. The longer they stayed, the more risk they were in. People knew him here, for better or worse. Him and Alviss both. The inn would hide them as long as they needed, but one could only stay holed up in such a place for so long. Coin alone would see their hideaway fade ere long, and they already had at least one loose end running around.
Rurik remembered Voren Bäcker. Essa had always had some strange affection for the boy, even when they were younger—a sort of big sister protection racket. Of course, the boy had needed that, and she had seen it—the girls were always picking on that one. Rurik had never liked him, though. He was a cowardly creature even then, prone to run to his parents or to Essa whenever something went wrong. Never once did he take matters into his own hands. And he adored Essa. Followed her wherever she went.
Couldn’t string two sentences together for her though. Girls made him fidgety and blush. Even when Bear Ryk had tried to get him a girl, Voren had bungled it up and gone scrambling down the street, wailing to his mother. The Bear had gotten a switch from his own mother for that one, and he nearly broke Voren’s arm over it. At least now he’s learned to speak. In truth, he could not decide if that was better or worse.
Then there was the Zuti.
The thought gave him pause. He had not considered the Zuti in some time. Glancing back, he did not see him, as he reckoned he had not for several hours. This made him nervous, as it always did. If there was one thing he did not like the Zuti to have, it was freedom. One could not make him forget the ways Chigenda had acted before he came into their company. Already secrecy was a prize—and he was the bane of secrecy. Not merely for his color, either.
Black men stuck out vividly in such a white land, but though color drew the eyes, his spear held them. Chigenda was many things, but patient and calm were not among them. The rest of them had reasons to their killings. Chigenda, as far he could see, had none. Or at least, none he would wish to know.
Stories said he murdered babies in their cribs, simply for the joy of seeing their blood. While Rurik did not put much stock in that, he had seen him fight, and he knew Chigenda loved to fight, if nothing else. They could keep him in a tavern for long whiles. But he did not drink, and he did not gamble, and the longer they kept him, the more restless he grew. Even coin did not govern him. Sometimes he took it as an insult. Other times he simply never saw the point. Eventually, the Zuti would pick a fight. Someone would bleed, and blood rarely kept quiet. People would whisper.
It was a whole chain of events Rurik had no interest in pursuing. Hence the question as to where their dear friend had gone. Alviss motioned over his shoulder, back toward the hall. Good. It likely meant his room, then—and meditation. His silly little habit.
Chigenda did not use beds. He did not like them, as far as Rurik could tell. He would just kneel for a few hours, back to the wall, eyes closed. Then he would rise, as healthy and awake as ever. Rurik found the practice a bit unusual, but given how often they had to leave the man behind, it at least kept him from trouble. When night fell, he supposedly repeated the same, though Rurik had caught him more than once lying against a wall and slumbering away.
But never, ever did Chigenda use a bed. Rurik had always meant to ask if it was some sort of Zuti custom—but he long ago resigned himself to asking it of someone other than the Zuti. That limited his options quite a bit. Alviss would be a likely source but he did not like discussing Chigenda with Alviss.
They disagreed on a few key points regarding him. Chief among them: his life. Under a scorching sun, Rurik had begged his guardian to see the man dead. Instead, Alviss offered him companionship, conversation and a healthy share of profit. As Rurik often told himself, Alviss had no support on that front. It did little to change it as a point of fact, though.
Rurik may have founded the group, and some silly people might even look to him as leader—himself chief among them, when the title so benefited—but there was not a one among them that doubted who gave the orders. Rurik shirked responsibility. He knew that. Alviss thrived under it.
After a moment, Alviss said, “You will not go alone.”
One minute you chastise, the next…It took all Rurik had not to throw up his hands in exasperation. “I see no reason to involve the rest of you further. I needed you to get this far—I can do the rest myself. And I mean to.” It was partly true, at least. The part about meaning to do it himself. The part about succeeding—that was less certain.
“You see with folds across your eyes. Essa see. You fight with the noise of a bear afield. Rowan gives grace. And you think like a mule,” the Kuric said without a hint of mirth. “And I a fox.”
You left one out. “And Chigenda?”
“He fights like drakkon-born. And with the noise you are sure to make, you should not bawk at such a thing.”
Chapter 3
“Voren,” the monster-mother shrieked. He cringed beneath the shrill note, sighing into his work. Quiet. He needed quiet. Too much noise for the rising. A crucial point—the yeast
was entering into its purpose. “Voren!”
Patting the flour off his hands, he turned and started for the door. An excellent final harvest for the year. The wheat made good flour and the flour, in turn, would make fine bread. It had a faintly sweet taste to it, and it had a thick, heady rise.
These final cycles of autumn always heralded the best harvests. It was a pleasure to work with them. Never to eat. The baker could taste, but never dine, upon his own works. At least, unless they burned or until they staled. It would no doubt appall some people to hear of the fine works he had deliberately overcooked simply for an extra bite or two between mother and son.
Some people thought they were better off, just because they weren’t out toiling in fields. They had a few nice things, but they were by no means wealthy people. If this was Voren’s kingdom, than it was a poor kingdom. They lived in town and never starved, true, but they were never full enough to live in satisfaction.
Passing from the kitchen to the fore, Voren found his mother readying another bellow, hands on her hips, a customer waiting. Her eyes, when they fell on him, came on in soundless fury. “My son, at last,” she quipped, as though he made a habit of disobeying her. He smiled broadly, despite it, choosing instead to focus on their guest. He apologized for his tardiness, but the farmer’s wife smiled back at him, her own harrowed features like as much from the cold as dealing with his mother.
“Morning, Goody Bess. Is Bierket not with you today?”
The woman shook her head, shrugging a little deeper into her shawl. “Helping his father this morning. Lots to be done. Lots to be done.”
“Always and forever. Such is life, I’m afraid.”
His days had their moments, but overall, Voren was not satisfied. He had never been satisfied. Not in hunger, not in love, and certainly not in life. He smiled through it, as Bess undoubtedly did, giving it the illusion of purpose, of contentedness, more for their own benefit than anyone else’s. The lords did not care what they looked like, as long as they did their work. The other peasants already knew how they felt. Yet they smiled anyway. Life was one great deception.
He went through the motions. He gave Bess her loaf—a thick, full-bodied rye—and took her pence in turn. They said their farewells, pleasant as could be, and she left, each to their own cycles of life. Then he was alone again with a woman that was no longer herself.
Bess, among others, was supposedly his mother’s friend. She never came around, save when she needed something. Gossip traded like currency between them, but in the wake of his father’s death, neither Bess nor anyone else, for all their vaunted language, did anything to help his mother persevere. There was only him, and her moods, and the knowledge that without him, she would have no one. He was tired of it, but a son had his duties.
Family. That was the all-important thing.
“I would give the last batch another hour. Has Irmgardt been by with the last of his flour yet?” His mother shook her head and pursed her lips distastefully, fiddling with some of the fabrics scattered along the counter. He started at that, but resisted the urge to correct her. He liked those things just so—but they were hers. Still. “Well. Between his and Cardelle’s, we should have enough to get us through. If you could—” She glowered at him, and he recanted. Too much to ask for. He would make sure the bags of flour were properly sealed, once his other duties were attended to. “Let me know when Irmgardt comes about.”
“Don’t burn anything,” his mother muttered as he left.
Such things did not hurt Voren as they once had. Or at least, that was what he told himself. She had not always been like that, and it was that knowledge to which he clung. He had memories—happy memories—with her. He remembered when she would sing him to sleep after a storm or a nightmare. She was a kind woman, but circumstances did her in. The death of his father was, in many ways, the death of her as well. For a long time after, she had drifted, nigh unreachable, a broken woman. It was a challenge just to get her to eat. Those were the hardest days.
It was nearly a year after that she regained herself—that is, a will to live. One day she just stood up and started going about her duties, without a word of explanation. Voren did his best to help her, but she rebuked him. Harshly. A mother left, something else returned to him. She loved him, still, but her means of showing it had been damaged. At first, it was hard to forgive her. He learned. She was all he had, after all. He dealt with her anger, which had seemed to settle into her very core. He moved on.
In the positive, it forced him to adulthood sooner. He was the provider. If he did not work, they would both starve. It forced him to make something of himself. Yet in so doing he lost the last of his family. Those people that had been his pillars of strength in a world that shunned him were gone. It provided an important lesson: you were the only reliable person in your own life. Essa could at least empathize with that one.
There, at last, was a touch of brightness to his day. When last he had seen that girl, she was still crying herself silly, and he was still nipping mutely at her heel. The blood had not yet cooled on her father’s back in all the places where the whip had fallen. It was that tragic moment when he was made to realize that the sins of the father do indeed pass on to their children. That was the moment Essa told him she was leaving, at her father’s insistence. Verdan, she said, was no more a place for them. They had cast her father down, and he could not bear it. On that day, Voren thought he was saying goodbye to one of the most integral parts of his life forever.
He had two people to blame. Pescha and the Lord Kasimir. Kasimir for his intransigence, Pescha for his foolishness. That was one thing Voren could never understand—how someone so sweet as Essa could come from someone as wretched as Pescha. Must have had a lot of the mother in her, because she certainly did not get anything from him. That man was a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered drunk, such that people in town still spoke poorly of him.
That was, perhaps, his one true gift: Pescha always left an impression.
Trying to put such unpleasantness behind him, Voren did his rounds. Checking the bread and the flour and the dough, he took his tabs and moved on. The bread was rising as it should. The heat was just right. He kneaded the dough, kept it loose. Any extra flour he knocked back into the bags, with the rest. He would need to take them down to the cellar later, when he was able. They did no good sitting around his kitchen.
Wiping at the sweat on his brow, Voren pondered when his apprentice would return. The boy was dutiful enough, but his mother had needed him for errands back on their ranch. It could be an hour yet, or more. Maybe not until after closing, depending on the horses’ moods. That would be troublesome.
With a sigh, Voren reconciled himself to the fact that he would have to do the cleaning, as well. It was a pity—Torsten was finally at the point where he knew how Voren liked the room to be.
Perhaps, when work was over, he might steal away for a few hours to see Essa. Voren smiled at the thought, though no one was there to see it. Sometimes, good things just fell into a person’s lap.
The others were a welcome addition as well. Any friend of Essa’s—for the most part, at least. The Kuric was intimidating, but peculiarly wholesome. Rowan, her cousin, was a delight of a man—something of a dandy, perhaps, but a delight nonetheless. They all had such stories. Stories like theirs made life a little more bearable, even if they highlighted his own mundane nature. Voren might have laughed if it were not so sad. An adventure for him was a journey to the next town. He would never go anywhere, see anything, but they had walked the length of a country and back.
All Voren’s power, if he had any, was vested here, in this shop. In some small way, he was the lifeline. Without him, a great many people would starve. But these people’s power stretched as far as their ambitions. A curious concept in an all too structured world.
And Essa—sweet Essa—how she had grown! When she had left, years before, Voren could never have imagined she might return in such majesty. Such a woman. His heart nearly br
oke his chest when those eyes laid upon him in knowing. That he would see her again—a dream. That she would know him if she did—a miracle.
Voren did not know the specifics of Essa’s return, but he knew it had something to do with Rurik, and Voren knew enough to know she did not intend it to be long. This unsettled him, but he tried to put it aside. Intentions did not always align with reality. Just so long as the exile’s actions did not endanger the rest of them, his business was his own. As for Voren, he had to take what he may, and Essa’s presence offered many opportunities. Perhaps, with time, he could recover some of what he had lost. He had grown. He would show her that, if he could manage it around the exile. From the beginning, he caught that look in Rurik’s eyes. Most unpleasant. He could expect no less from him, though.
But Voren was not the scared little boy he once was. Yes, given time, he could perhaps gain something he had never had. Time. That was always the factor. The trick, then, would be making more of it. Not an easy thing, but there were others more difficultly done.
In this, he saw an opportunity, but the thing with opportunities was that they were all too fleeting. Voren had to shore up his chances. The trick was in the looking.
* *
For all his efforts, Rurik could not reconcile himself to slumber. Sleep and reflection were not conducive. What moments allowed him were short, restless. He tossed himself back to the waking, time and again, until he wearied of even trying. For the longest time he merely lay on his cloak and listened to the high-note songs of the birds outside, which mingled with Rowan’s faint, fleeting snores. Alviss must have felt the same way. With the brusque, early light, there came the faintest rapping on their door. Sleepless, but undaunted, Rurik rose to greet it. Alviss awaited him, unsmilingly.
The others were woken in good order, for they all had something they needed to be doing, even if they did not know it. Alviss told them he was heading into town, before the other early risers were up and about. He had business there—an old friend he hoped to look up. With any luck, the man would grant them some insight into the intricacies of their would-be quest. Alviss did not say as much, but Rurik gathered Alviss’s “friend” was someone in the town guard. Whether or not things would be as cordial as Alviss seemed to imply remained to be seen, but he had visions of the Kuric stalking some poor man home and ringing him for information.
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