Bounty

by Harper Alexander

  After a moment of feeling utterly corrected, Godren nodded, then remembered that she couldn’t see him. “Forgive me. Please proceed.”

  Catris reached into a well-concealed pocket in her voluminous skirt and withdrew a scrap of parchment, handing it to him – or at least, offering it to the emptiness before her.

  As Godren took it, it faded in reaction to the spell that encompassed him – but not completely, and his own form materialized ever so slightly. It was as if the spell was only designated to his specific proportions, and taking on another object forced him to ‘share’ the illusion and see it balance out between them.

  Granted a visual, Catris took the opportunity to focus on him, to study him. He turned his attention to the parchment, however, and went still.

  ‘My heart belongs to the wind,’ he read. ‘I was told I would learn to cut it out and bury it in the street if I didn’t want it destroyed. Perhaps I am a rebel, or maybe it is merely that my heart belongs to a rebel. Or, there is the possibility that it is simply too late. But I cannot find it in me to cut it out – with a sour twist of irony, I realize I don’t have the heart to.

  ‘But for safekeeping, I pour my soul out onto the wind. The pieces of my heart are scattered everywhere now, and only if someone finds them all and puts them together can they truly then break it. For how can you break something that is already kept in pieces?

  ‘This piece belongs to the rebel in my life – though, bless her blissfully ignorant heart, she may never know. I will not write her name, for the wind knows it. But I will say this: it would be wise to end this here, to do her proud and be a rebel in my own way – a rebel against my feelings. So I’m signing my feelings over to the wind, that the wind would tear out my heart as I open myself to it, and carry it far, far away, where these sacred things can live wild and free – or, if fallen into someone’s fateful hands, may they live sheltered and protected.

  Godren stared at the memo, the entry to his diary that he had unleashed to the will of the elements from atop the Ruins’ walls. How could she have this? A sensation unlike any other came over him then. Something greater than intrigue, but graver than awe – a humbleness, a wariness, and the strangest angle of unwelcome hope he had ever experienced, that he didn’t dare even consider.

  Gods…

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  The princess shook her head. “It was just a scrap on the wind. Could have been anyone’s, or any thing.”

  “But…?”

  “It’s your handwriting. It looks just like the missive you sent through my window. Same style, blood and all.”

  Godren looked back at her, duly affected, but what was her point? “It is mine,” he confirmed. “But what of it, your Highness?”

  “It carries enough of its own implications,” Catris said, but it was dismissively. “But it’s been inconsequently in my possession for quite some time, and it wasn’t until my father designed my leave just days past that the real phenomenon voiced itself. I went out in the grove to anchor the feel of it into my head, and… As if the trees could sense that I would soon be gone, they shed their life and fell dormant. And caught throughout the branches, I found these.” Reaching back into her pocket, she produced a sheaf of additional scraps, and, with a mix of dismay and awe, Godren took them and shuffled through them. Countless snippets from his criminal life flashed before his eyes, pieces that should have been strewn far and wide, destroyed by weather, or at the very least picked up by dozens of deviating strangers. Yet here they were, all in her possession.

  “I cannot begin to guess what I am supposed to make of it,” Catris said as he looked them over in disbelief. “But I put great stock in the magic of that grove. It seems the least I can do is acknowledge that you have demonstrated an incredible will to serve me; recognize that you have expressed a humble and restrained desire to pursue me; and investigate the depth of those things with my own judgment.”

  Forgetting about the scraps in his hands, Godren looked up in alarm. “My lady,” he protested.

  “You will not continue to run away from the respects that I owe you, Ren. I’m through with you having some noble conflict that interferes with you showing the respect of accepting your dues, and I’m not asking for your permission to appraise you.”

  Unable to refuse the princess her firm wish, Godren stood there helplessly.

  “I want to know the extent of your feelings for me.”

  Appalled, Godren tried shaking his head. “My lady…” She couldn’t ask that. Princess or not, no human should have the right to demand he pour out his secret feelings to them.

  “I’ve seen it in writing, so I have the right to address it,” the princess said. “And you have expressed enough regrets for issues such as the inability to be together to make it a topic that would rest much easier rectified than ignored.”

  “My feelings are irrelevant,” Godren said. “Because, my lady, we can’t be together. Regrets expressed in that area are of no consequence whatsoever, not when any man across the nation would kill to be with you.”

  “But the man who would not kill is then a rare man indeed.”

  Godren stopped dead. What, in the gods’ names, did she mean to imply by that? “You don’t know what I’ve done,” he told her gravely.

  “I know good things you’ve done. Do those not count? Will you measure yourself only by the bad, Ren?” the princess challenged, gently exasperated. “No, I don’t know what you’ve done. But I know who you are; I know you are Godren of Wingbridge, one of the city’s most wanted, and I know what you haven’t done.”

  As he stared at her, spine prickling at her implications, Catris offered him one final piece of parchment. It was folded neatly down the middle, and Godren braced himself for the significant content and peeled it open. What he found, written in his blood with all the sincerity a hand could relay, was the meaningful statement:

  I didn’t do it.

  All the weight of the unjust accusations, and the unheard protests of innocence, suddenly rushed up from the depths of Godren’s being and choked him, sparked by the essence of wretched memory that had spawned this first entry back when it all started. Something caught in his chest, piercing his breath, and a pain deep and long wrote itself on his face.

  Catris watched his reaction, seeing the emotions as they surged to the surface. A twilight of pity and fortitude curtained the window of her eyes.

  Godren held his breath, and closed his eyes, enduring the reminder of all that had gone wrong, waiting for it to pass.

  “I cannot prove anything with that,” Catris said after giving him a moment. “But I summoned you to test the ambition of greater forces in the fates intertwining us, and the fact that you received my contact, on top of the rest of this, is enough to convince me that you need to get out of where you’ve been cornered, Godren. Greater things still have a place for you. Still have faith in you. If you did not do the things that are marking you as a lost cause, that are marking you for condemnation, then you had better be fighting them with every breath in your body. If you are loyal to me, then I will accept nothing less from you. Not when you could be serving me in far greater and more personal ways than you have even already.”

  Stunned out of the deepest recesses of his pain, Godren stared breathlessly at her. A part of him was stricken by her mercilessness, another part motivated beyond any previous extent.

  The chapel doors clicked open then. Godren had just enough sense to drop the scraps of parchment so as not to be seen in his half-visible state, but then he bowed in on himself and stood there as the king came to retrieve the princess, raw and stricken and invisible among them.

  *

  Discovering the slaves may have been the last straw, he thought as he headed back toward the crime alleys of the city. They had certainly put him on the last edge. It had been the lack of any way to oppose his bonds that stayed his rebellion. But now, way or no way, he had no choice. Aside from a direct order from his princess, there
was the expectation, the requirement, from the one he loved.

  I thought love was supposed to be unconditional, he thought, but then dismissed the notion. After all, she had not said she loved him. The only relevant thing was that he loved her. And the direct order notwithstanding, she had reinforced something deep inside him, a motivation lost to him.

  To hell with the impossible, he decided. I will no longer be ruled by what cannot be changed. I didn’t do it, and they are all going to learn to live with that – because, by the gods, I am going to live again.

  It was no quaint coincidence that the princess’s grove had snagged the many pieces of his wayward story. Fate, it seemed, was trying to hold him together.

  Something Alice had said came back to him, and he almost laughed at its relevance.

  In this storm, you have to grab the elements by the horns, she had said.

  But one could not grab wind, Damious had objected.

  Then you must become the elements. Become the wind…

  The pieces of the wind had all come together to motivate him. Maybe, he thought, it was time to do just that.

  31: Ambition and Irony

  His term, he realized, might be close enough to its end to force into swift recession after all. Tipped about Damious’s possession of the three bounty hunters Devlin, Osbourne, and Graver, and knowing Kingston had taken out Rogue, left only Wolf and a few small-timers – and Damious himself. Alice had been a dreaded character to have on the loose, but now she was safe in Damious’s care as well. He had helped see to that himself.

  Damious, of course, was fairly large game. Godren did not expect to take him down without a highly inconvenient fight. That in itself might prove to be a job all its own, and require more force than Godren had in him even inspired to ‘embody the wind of the storm’ that he was caught up in.

  Unless… Becoming the elements didn’t necessarily mean embodying the ultimate force of something. He could become something entirely more clever – the eye of the storm. Subtle but central.

  A manipulator.

  Don’t be ridiculous, part of him scoffed. You have always avoided politics as much as possible. You don’t know how to play.

  But this isn’t a game anymore. So I have to play.

  How could he manipulate Damious? What could he possibly bring into play that would prove relevant to the other man at all, and how did he ensure that he could come through with what he offered? There were too many angles to hold together.

  Godren shook his head. He was not in a position to manipulate.

  But I’m going to try, the motivated part of him decided. It was not going to be dissuaded.

  Well, he could not begin to string angles together until he considered them all. He must look everywhere for potential, inspiration and risk. Then he could progress. If he didn’t succeed, so be it. But biding his time and hoping were no longer enough.

  *

  The shadows in the corner of the common room fell just short of covering the tip of Godren’s boot. When Damious entered and consulted the bartender, receiving the tip that someone was waiting to see him, he looked toward the back of the room, picked out the conspicuous boot, and followed it to Godren’s face. Turning briefly back to the bartender, he inspired two drinks out of the fellow and then made his way to join Godren in the corner.

  “Well, lad,” he said in greeting as he plunked himself down at the table. “It’s nice to see you again so soon. What’s the occasion?”

  “I have a sort of treacherous proposition for you.”

  “Oh?” Damious asked, interest piqued, and took a swig of his ale.

  “I was thinking about what Alice said. About grabbing the elements by the horns.”

  “And then you realized a mastodon has perfect horns for grabbing and thought to yourself ‘it’s doubly significant, and I must consult Uncle Damious about his esteemed philosophy of coincidence and fate’?”

  “Much more treacherous than consulting you, I’m afraid.”

  “Delightful. Let’s get started, then.” Taking another drink, Damious leaned forward intently.

  “I have come to need out of my arrangement with Mastodon.”

  “Inconvenient.”

  “Quite. The idea is mostly impossible, but perhaps not if I take it a step further and try my hand at opposing her, rather than merely escaping her.”

  Impressed, Damious shrugged his eyebrows. “Ambitious.”

  “Bound by blood, I of course cannot be free until I finish what I have agreed to do, and that involves bringing you in, an idea I grow quickly weary of being motivated enough to consider. I am not ashamed to admit that I have no overwhelming desire to grapple with a professional assassin who has been around longer than anyone else in the field of backstabbers has any business being. I’ve no interest in flattering myself, when you could squash me like a bug.”

  “I understand,” Damious granted empathetically.

  “So I thought maybe we could work together,” Godren revealed, watching the other man’s reaction.

  “I like to work alone,” Damious expressed his preference.

  “Well we wouldn’t exactly be employing a buddy system and watching the bonding beauty of plotting social schemes together,” Godren said. “But there’s something you could do for me, which might benefit your ambitions as well.”

  “And that is…?”

  “Seeing as I also need the other bounty hunters you possess to fulfill my deliverance to Mastodon, I was thinking you might be so kind as to bring them in now, and allow me to take you captive while you’re at it.”

  Damious stared at him as if waiting for the punch line. When Godren said no more, he blinked. “And that benefits me how?”

  “Well, you see, once free of Mastodon, I have another plan to put her out of business. Finishing my service to her is the only thing I’m having trouble with, so I came to see if you’d be willing to comply with my scheme. If you allow me to catch you, you will indirectly be contributing to her following demise.”

  “A little too indirectly, for my taste, but tell me about this other plan. How you contrive to be successful opposing her afterward.”

  Readying himself for being ridiculed by the unsuspecting man, Godren considered his words and then unleashed his plan on the assassin. Damious listened without interrupting, showing no expression. But when Godren had finished, he took a long drink and then turned disagreeable.

  “And you expected me to agree to this preposterous idea?”

  “I thought you might like the irony.”

  Damious tapped his finger thoughtfully against his tankard. “Let Xinna think she has me only because it helps put her out of business,” he mused aloud. “Appreciate the irony I do.”

  “And,” Godren said, “it would only be putting her out of business. That could be viewed as less of an incentive to make such a big sacrifice of yourself, but I also thought you might like to satisfy your own ambitions and finish her yourself. Directly. I propose only a first step, and perhaps the advantage of getting you near her while she’s disoriented.”

  “Hmm,” Damious pondered, absently stroking his mug.

  “There is one hitch, however.”

  Brought out of his mulling, Damious refocused. “A hitch?”

  “Aye. I can’t return to free you again.”

  “Oh well that’s thoughtful of you. Ask me to sacrifice myself with the incentive of a small advantage that will only taunt me out of my mind because it’s close enough to see and not touch, and then leave me hanging while you get away with murder in the form of absolute and eternal freedom, not to mention your other objective that is so sickeningly terrific I can’t even bear to say it for the taste it would leave in my humble mouth.”

  “I understand if you refuse to have any part in this whatsoever.”

  “Refuse? Boy, I should be smacking you silly and rendering you immobile for even thinking of it! For your sake, my sake, the country’s sake – by the gods, even the gods’ sake. And if you had
any sense return to you, you’d be thanking me. Refuse? Ha! Refuse is putting it lightly. That’s the grossest understatement I’ve ever heard. I bloody, absolutely, completely, downright, thoroughly, wholeheartedly accept!”

  After that threw him way out of proportion, Godren recovered and reconsidered the man he had come to conclusively dismiss as a willing participant. “You do?”

  “It’s the irony, I’m afraid, my boy. Where it used to be a hobby, it is now, unfortunately, a weakness. An obsession. I can’t resist.”

  “But what about having no one to set you free?”

  “You let me worry about that, lad. I can bide my time.”

  “What if she kills you?”

  “Gods, boy, don’t try to dissuade me now that you have me! You ought to work on your aristocratic finesse. Especially for your future,” he said with a wink.

  “Well, I’ll worry about my future if you’ll worry about yours.”

  “Fair enough.” Damious downed the rest of his ale. “Won’t you drink to our success?” he asked, seeing Godren had not touched his tankard.

  “You might as well drink double to yours,” Godren said. “You’re going to need it, and it’s the least I can offer. I am not exactly being generous with the rest of my demands.”

  “My generosity given back as your own,” Damious remarked with a twinkle in his eye, sliding Godren’s tankard to his side of the table. “I think, Godren, you might have a small taste for irony as well.”

  32: Breaking Chains

  When he returned to the Underworld, Seth had news.

  “A bounty hunter that goes by ‘Kingston’ brought in Rogue,” he announced. “We paid him and then took him down as well. Got a refund.”

  “Good,” Godren approved, trying not to let his eagerness show on his face or manifest in his voice. “Any news of Wolf?”

  “The ravens saw him in the forest, but there’s no easy way to find him in all those trees. He didn’t have a camp. I can deal with thieves and murderers, Ren, but I don’t know about uncivilized barbarians. How am I supposed to know what’s socially acceptable when taking him out? I mean what if he gets offended because he’s antisocial and doesn’t want to be touched?”