“Let’s hurry,” Lotte said, wiping sweat from her brow. “I want some distance in case they decide they liked the taste of us.”
“If I could just get some pants from my pack . . .” Brock said. He stood shivering in his boots, pulling his tunic low to cover as much of his bare legs as possible. It was like wearing an extremely short dress. He looked ridiculous, and he knew it.
“Keep moving!” Lotte barked, and Brock didn’t argue. He marched through the snow and past his tittering teammates, who he was sure caught a glimpse of his underclothes with every step.
Brock was shivering and miserable by the time Lotte was satisfied they’d put enough distance between them and the swarm. The light was fading, and a deeper chill was settling in for the night.
“Let’s rest for a while,” she said, peering at her compass in the low light. “Girls, gather some wood. Jett, get a fire going. Brock . . . pants would be good.”
“Oh, thank you,” he said, pulling off his pack.
Fel was somehow just as energetic as she’d been at the long day’s start. By the time Brock had laced up his trousers, she had already dropped a small pile of branches at Jett’s feet.
“Ah . . .” the dwarf said. “About my assignment . . .”
“Yes?” Lotte said curtly.
“Well, Zed normally does this bit. You know, with the . . .” He waggled his fingers at the pile of sticks.
Lotte huffed. “You kids rely entirely too much on magic. Fel, can you start the fire, please?”
“Yes! On it!” Fel said joyously, rushing back with another armful of branches. She set to work with flint she pulled from her belt.
“Why aren’t there more mages in the guild?” Liza asked.
“Frond does recruit them,” Lotte answered, dropping onto one of the small logs Liza had set in a circle around the pile of kindling. “But they tend not to last as long as the fighters.”
“No kidding,” Brock growled. He dabbed at his fresh cuts with a minty salve.
“It’s the healers we’ve really coveted, though. To have an actual healer in our ranks, on journeys with us, instead of having to carry the wounded back to town—it’s only been a month or two and Micah’s been a huge boon already.”
“What’s that mean? Boon?” Fel asked, stoking her small fire.
Brock, Liza, and Jett all spoke over one another in their rush to answer.
“Half-wit!”
“Menace!”
“Rock eater!”
“It means he’s been helpful,” Lotte insisted. “Imagine if we had ten of him.”
“There’s no reason to be cruel,” Brock said. He patted Liza’s shoulder, and she pretended to pull her hair out.
“Anyway,” Lotte said, passing around a small satchel of cured meat. “Maybe now that Pollux is in charge, we can use the draft to enlist more healers in the future. Even Frond didn’t care to cross the Luminous Mother.”
“Really?” Jett stroked his chin. “I didn’t think Frond was afraid of anybody.”
“I don’t know that it was fear, precisely,” Lotte said. “But Frond would do anything for the guild. Sometimes that means playing politics.”
“Right,” Brock said. “That Frond, so politically savvy.”
“It’s a fine art,” Lotte said pointedly. “Pushing back just enough. Knowing the difference between a line you can cross and one you can’t.”
Jett leaned over to Brock. “I think she’s talking about you,” he whispered loudly.
“I’m sorry, but . . .” Brock glanced to his left and right, looking for support from his friends, some sign they were thinking what he was thinking. They only looked back curiously. “Is no one else going to say it? You’re talking about the draft, about . . . abducting people from their lives. Frond isn’t collecting painted pebbles; she’s collecting cannon fodder.”
“Some of us volunteered, Brock,” Liza warned.
“Well, sure, but you’re weird.”
“ ‘Some of us’ includes you, idiot! You volunteered, too!”
“Oh, right,” he said. Sort of.
“I volunteered,” said Lotte.
“Really?” Brock was surprised. All he knew about Lotte’s life outside of the guild was that she originally came from intown—Brock often saw her consulting an ancient timepiece, some treasured family heirloom worth a small fortune.
“I was in the Stewards Guild,” she said. “And I was good at my job. A born administrator.”
Fel wrinkled up her nose. “Administrator?”
“It means . . .” Brock paused. “Um . . .”
“An administrator is a person who . . . administrates,” Liza said.
The fire crackled in the silence.
Jett shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”
“An administrator is a person who makes things happen,” Lotte said. “The stewards keep Freestone running just as much as the merchants do, but with less posturing and fewer rewards. They coordinate the Guildculling, file important paperwork, schedule construction projects for the Works Guild; they’re judges and chancellors and pages . . .”
Jett pretended to snore.
Lotte laughed. “Okay, you’re not wrong. It’s important work, but it’s boring. Which is probably why I fell in love with Jak.”
“Oooh,” Fel said. “Lotte and Jak, why don’t you plant a tree? Let it bask in your mutual affection as it does the light of the sun!” She giggled.
Brock gave Fel a confused look, and he wasn’t the only one.
“I’m guessing you don’t have that saying,” she said bashfully.
“I recognize the sentiment.” Lotte smiled to herself. “Jak was fearless and . . . rowdy. We were from different planes, as they say. The adventurer and the administrator. I wouldn’t have even met him except that I’d had to fine him for making rude noises during Master Quilby’s speech at a public ceremony.”
“Love at first citation?” Brock said.
“Something like that. We began seeing each other. My parents were very unhappy about it. I was still living at home, and this was the first time I’d ever defied them. The first time I’d ever put my own needs first.
“One day, there was a knock at my door. It was Alabasel Frond, looking about as out of place intown as a dog in fancy dress. But there was nothing funny about her expression. I knew what had happened before she said a word—Jak was dead.”
The humor around the campfire dried up in an instant. Fel uttered a little gasp; otherwise, it was silent until Lotte finally spoke again.
“My parents were . . . pleased. They didn’t even try to hide it. I could finally get past my rebellious phase, is how they put it. They locked me inside my room to keep me from going to his funeral pyre.” Lotte smirked. “First door I ever kicked down.”
Fel clasped her hands together. “And you joined the Sea of Stars in Jak’s memory?” she asked dreamily.
“I tried,” Lotte answered. “But Frond said no.”
“No?!” said Jett.
“She really turned you away?” Liza asked.
“She did,” Lotte confirmed. “Told me that she couldn’t accept my application unless she was certain I’d thought it through. Told me to come back in a week if I still felt the same. Seven days later, I was knocking on her door at the crack of dawn.” Lotte frowned. “The whole guild slept until third bell that day, so it was a long and frustrating morning for me.”
She fixed her gaze on Brock. “My point is, none of us is ‘cannon fodder’ to her, Brock. The rest of Freestone might take what we do—what we sacrifice—for granted. Frond assuredly does not.”
Brock nodded, keeping to himself the fear that Zed or Jayna or even Micah might already number among those sacrifices.
Despite his worries, Brock slept easily and deeply beside the fire. It took a long moment to get his bearings as Lotte shook him awake.
He tried to ask if it was his turn to keep watch, but his words came out slurred with sleep.
Lotte shushed him. “Come
with me,” she whispered.
Brock kept his blanket around him as he stood and trudged in the snow, following Lotte a good thirty paces from their campsite. The cold was invigorating, and by the time Lotte came to a stop, he was fully awake.
“What is it?” he asked. “Did you see something out here?”
“Oh, I’ve seen something,” Lotte said. “Empty your pockets.”
“Uh, what?” Brock said.
“Do it now,” she insisted.
Brock repositioned his blanket so that he could reach his trouser pockets, turning them inside out. He gave Lotte a look that said: Satisfied?
“This one,” Lotte said, tapping a small pocket woven into his tunic.
Brock hesitated, but there was no getting out of it. He produced a folded sheet of waxed parchment. Lotte snatched it from him, unfolding it to reveal a clutch of cottony spheres, fuzzy tufts no larger than a walnut.
“Do you know what these are?” she demanded.
“No,” Brock said, and at her hard look, he said, “No, Quartermaster. I thought maybe the material would be of use, though. I was going to ask you—”
“These are cocoons,” Lotte said sharply. “Bladewort cocoons. You ever see a bladewort? They blend right in with the trees in the springtime. Look like leaves. Pretty little green butterflies.”
“What’s a butterfly?” Brock asked.
“Doesn’t really matter; they’re extinct by now for all I know. But the bladewort thrives out here. They’re small and hard to capture or kill. Their wings are as sharp as Frond’s throwing stars, and they use them to cut you open so they can lap at your blood. Sometimes they nick a minor artery. Sometimes they cut your throat right open. What do you think would happen if they hatched in your tunic?”
Brock dropped his gaze to the snow, chastened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“And did you know what would happen with that . . . that pitmunk spit or shelled rat urine or whatever it is you had in your pocket today?”
Brock felt the color drain from his face. “It wasn’t urine,” he protested.
Lotte sighed. “Look at me, Brock.” He lifted his eyes from the ground; Lotte looked serious, but not angry. “I’ve seen you poring over Hexam’s monster manual. And I want to encourage your curiosity. But with Dangers, the smallest mistake could have disastrous consequences. Consequences that could kill you, or worse, kill somebody else and haunt you forever. So you have to run everything you do by me or Hexam, you understand?” She held his eyes, waiting for an answer.
Brock nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“And no souvenirs without our consent, all right?”
“Yes, Quartermaster.”
“Good,” she said. “Now go toss these in the fire, and we’ll rouse the others. It’ll be light out soon.”
They plodded back to camp, and Lotte watched as Brock approached the fire with his handful of cocoons. He hadn’t known what they were, and it obviously wasn’t a good idea to bring such a thing into Freestone. But his mind still swam with the possibilities. Wings like sharpened steel? A town with regular shortages of metal could use that. And the creature must somehow produce this silky cocoon. Could bladewort larvae be used to produce material for clothiers?
“Go on,” Lotte said, and Brock realized he’d hesitated. He quickly dumped the cocoons into the fire. Only then did Lotte turn her back and begin waking the others.
Brock cursed himself silently. Lotte wasn’t likely to take her eyes off him now. Which meant his work for the Lady Gray had gotten a lot more complicated. She wouldn’t be happy if he came back empty-handed. And if she wasn’t happy, Zed wasn’t safe.
The cocoons popped and sizzled in the fire, marring the morning’s crispness with the acrid smell of burning.
The morning after the stalking shadow’s attack, Zed felt numb. He moved listlessly around the camp, packing his gear and tying his bedroll. His thoughts were thick as syrup.
I’m your uncle.
Callum’s revelation throbbed like a headache, pulsing just behind Zed’s eyes.
Last night a million questions had been at his tongue, a torrent beating against a dam. But the dam had held. The stalking shadow’s attack had left Zed feeling poisonous and tired. His throat burned. Frond had immediately set Micah to work on him, shooing Callum and the rest of the elves away.
Zed tried to protest, but the guildmistress had placed her cool hand against his chest.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Right now you must heal.”
So he’d healed, as Micah’s glowing hands illuminated the night.
Now tomorrow had finally come, but Zed found his questions had all dried up, replaced by a not-unpleasant emptiness.
Micah, at least, was giving him a wide berth. If Zed didn’t know any better, he’d say the boy looked almost pensive as he stared out into the muddy morning. Perhaps the long night of healing had finally exhausted his endless reserves of snark.
As Zed stooped to pick up his scepter, a lanky shadow passed across the snow, jolting him with panic. He snapped up to find Callum looming, those wide green eyes unreadable.
Zed felt a flare of irritation that disturbed his stupor. He frowned as he slid the scepter into its leather holster. The camp had suddenly cleared out. Glancing around, Zed discovered the adventurers had all joined the elves on their side.
Traitors. Brock would have backed him up.
Well, Zed wouldn’t speak first.
He’d already asked his questions—had been asking them for weeks—and Callum had chosen to rebuff him over and over. Zed didn’t owe the elf a single word more, and he was determined not to give him one until Callum begged for forgiveness.
“Why?” Zed asked.
He bit down on his own cheek.
Callum flinched softly at the word. “Is there any answer I could give that would satisfy you? That would absolve me?”
Zed’s anger squalled again at that. He scowled at the elf. “No,” he said. “But you don’t get to do that to me now. I’ve been begging you for answers about my father, and all I’ve gotten are lies.”
The High Ranger frowned. “I never lied to you, Zed.”
“A lie by omission is still a lie!” Zed shouted. His voice echoed through the forest. Zed heard the startled cries of birds in the distance.
He knew he was being foolish. A tantrum now would just attract more Dangers. He should rush past Callum and rejoin the group, march glumly behind Micah while the boy attempted to scratch himself beneath layers of winter clothing, or listen in while Jayna snuck Hexam her clever questions.
Instead, Zed began to cry. This infuriated him even further. He spun around and wiped angrily at his eyes. The ache for familiar things—for his mother, and Brock, and the safety of the city—throbbed deeply in his chest.
“You think I’ve failed you,” Callum said from behind him. He placed his hands on Zed’s shoulders, turning him gently back around. “And you’re right. But how could I tell you the true extent of it? That I’ve been failing you since before you were born?”
Callum kneeled, putting them at eye level. Zed found his gaze locked with the elf’s, and he was unable to look away. “My brother and I were together on that journey to Freestone,” Callum said. “It was his first to the city of the humans. On the giddy night of our arrival, I watched as Zerend introduced himself to a pretty young servant girl who had been waving from the crowd, ignoring the strange looks he received from both humans and elves. I loudly toasted them when they thought they’d snuck a kiss at the tavern and listened to my brother’s breathless professions of love as we left the city two weeks later. I physically restrained him when he tried to double back and return to her.” Callum’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “We lost him on that very same journey. He was slayed before my eyes by a monster that I missed.”
Zed stared, dumbfounded.
“Six years later, I learned from the Adventurers Guild that the pretty human servant had birthed a child with pointe
d ears. And do you know what I did, Zed?” Callum suddenly gripped Zed’s arms, his eyes burning with a terrible intensity. “I did nothing,” the elf rasped through gritted teeth. “I told them that Zerend was lost and sent them on their way. I took no responsibility for you, or the many things I owed you. How could I? You had a mother, so what claim could I make? I was the leader of the queen’s rangers; I couldn’t very well abandon my obligations to live among humans. To bring you the news that it was my fault your father . . .”
Callum’s voice faltered, a lute string breaking midsong. Slowly, the manic light died from his eyes, and his grip on Zed’s arms loosened. “I left you and your mother alone, because of my shame.”
The elf stood, ignoring the snow and dirt that now caked his trousers. “And then there you were. An adventurer, of all things. So different, and yet so like him. You’ve repaid my unkindness by risking your life to save us. You rescue a people who won’t even claim you as one of their own.” Callum’s hands were clenched into fists at his side. “And we betray you even now. Even as I say this.”
Creeping fingers began to scale Zed’s spine. That didn’t sound good. “ ‘Betray’? What do you mean?”
“A lie by omission.” Callum watched him for a long beat, his eyes large and sorrowful. “The queen is lying. To all of you.”
Ripples of dread exploded along Zed’s arms.
“I’m so sorry,” Callum said. “I’ve brought you into terrible danger.”
And at that moment, the Danger arrived.
Zed heard the screams before he saw anything.
Voices shouted from the other camp, the elven and trade tongues knotting in alarm.
Callum tilted his head to the side. “What—?”
Which was when the arrow found him. It plunged into his shoulder as suddenly and quietly as a bird alighting on a branch, sending the High Ranger spinning into the dirt with a grunt.
“Callum!” Zed screamed. He fell to his knees by the elf’s side.
Twilight of the Elves Page 15