“Yes,” Clarence said, after getting off his horse. “Let’s you and I go inside. I want to see this fine home of yours.”
Pleth showed more backbone than Clarence gave him credit for.
“I know why you are here,” Pleth said. “I’ll go quietly. Please. Not in my home.”
“Why do you imagine I am here, Pleth?” Clarence asked. He turned to Jank and the men and said, “Stay here. This won’t take long.”
Pleth stood trembling in his front yard. Clarence strode forward and grabbed Pleth by the sleeve, then pushed him into his house.
“You have a lovely home here,” Clarence said, looking around at the polished wood surfaces and the expensive marble floors. “The life of an Assessor can be a good one, don’t you think… ah… What is your name?” Clarence turned to Pleth’s wife.
“Karla,” the woman said as her boy and girl clung to her skirt and peeked out from behind her hips. “Please tell me what this is about.”
“Karla, I—” Pleth stammered.
“This is about your husband’s poor choices,” Clarence interrupted. “He has kept information from his Protector, namely, a letter.” Pleth hung his head. “Without this letter, we didn’t know about a threat to the Protectorate before it got out of hand. Your husband is costing this Territory much time and treasure!”
“Lieutenant, I—” Pleth began to grovel.
“And you still aren’t going to fetch me my letter!” Clarence bellowed. The children began to cry.
“I’ll get the letter, please, can we take this outside? My children… ”
Clarence lunged forward, and Pleth bolted from the room. He ran upstairs and crashing sounds came from the ceiling above as he tore through whatever room served as his hiding place.
Clarence smiled at Karla and the terrified children. “This will all be over soon,” he said.
Pleth rushed back down with the letter in his hand. He opened his mouth to say something, but Clarence silenced him with a glare. After reading the note, Clarence locked eyes with the cowering Assessor. He stared for several moments while the children whimpered.
“Tell me where you stashed the skim,” Clarence said.
“The what? I never skimmed tribute,” Pleth lied.
Clarence smiled, then raised both his hands and made fists in front of his chest. The cloth of Pleth’s shirt balled up and the man suddenly slammed into the ceiling. Clarence walked beneath him, fists raised. “Children,” Clarence said. “Your father is a liar, and he has cost you your future.”
“No!” Pleth wheezed as Clarence pressed him against the ceiling until the plaster cracked. “Leave my children alone, I beg you.”
“Believe me,” Clarence said. “I’m doing your family a favor by exposing you as the weakling you are. They deserve to know.”
“Leave my daddy alone!” the little girl screamed and charged at Clarence, who let Pleth fall to the floor in a heap with all the wind forced from his chest.
Before the girl could reach him, Clarence whirled and knocked her to the ground with a simple look. Her brother gave an animal scream and charged in to defend his sister while Karla collapsed to her knees and begged for mercy.
Pleth stared on in shock. Clarence knocked the boy down just as he had the little girl, and held both children in place with his magic.
“No! Stop! Please!” Pleth begged. “I’ll tell you everything. Please leave my family alone.”
“I will take your full confession now,” Clarence said. “Including a description of how you had Argan village produce wine off the books so that you could gift it to the Protector and sell some of it for your own profit. Be thorough, and maybe I will show some mercy.”
Pleth jumped to his feet and stumbled to his desk in the corner of the living room. “I’ll do it right now,” he said. “Please don’t hurt my family.”
“I can’t hurt your family more than you already have,” Clarence sneered.
Clarence shook his head at Karla and the children who struggled under his telekinetic grasp. Pleth scurried back into the room with a two-page confession in his trembling hands. Clarence took his time reading it. He glanced from the paper to Pleth occasionally when he found the more interesting parts.
“Your skimming goes back far longer than I thought,” Clarence said. “All to find a cure for your unfit, weakling boy-spawn. And you managed to draw in your whole crew. You’ve ruined their lives as well, Pleth. How does that feel?”
“Wh—what does he mean, Daddy?” the boy inquired through his tears.
“Your illness, Adi. The seizures you get—”
“Julius, don’t,” Karla implored.
“He deserves to know, Karla,” Pleth spoke, but couldn’t make eye contact with anyone. “I was trying to get the money for a cure. There’s a woman in the Fortress Wards, she knows how to make medicine. But the ingredients—”
“You’re a bigger fool than I thought!” Clarence howled with laughter, cutting Pleth off. “That old woman sells nothing but false hopes.”
Pleth stared down at his fancy boots and shook his head. He knew it was true. All the money he stole was just to buy himself some denial. He just had to do something. None of the doctors knew how to make Adi better. How could I have been so stupid, he thought. “What will you do with me?”
“I will spare your life,” Clarence said. “But as of this very moment, you are dispossessed. Leave this house right now, with only the clothes on your back. Everything you own now belongs to The Protectorate.” Clarence released the children, who immediately ran to their mother.
Karla gasped and wrapped the children up in her arms.
“But where are we to go?” Karla asked.
“Please,” Pleth begged. “Take my life, but let my family have… something… ”
“Don’t pretend to be noble now, Pleth, you greedy worm,” Clarence growled. “Leave now, before I change my mind.”
The Pleth family fled the house and Clarence followed them outside. He kicked Pleth in the ass on the way.
“Seal the house,” Clarence ordered. The men set to work boarding up the doors and windows by breaking down the fence and using the pickets as planks.
Pleth lead his family up the Toll Road without looking back.
Argan Village
The second harvest presented Argan with a welcome, but pressing problem. They simply didn’t have any way to store so much food. The barrel maker-blacksmith, his two sons, his daughter, and his wife had worked all day to make barrels to hold grains, but it still wasn’t enough.
Shifts of villagers had worked from dawn and now into early evening cutting oats, rye, and picking cabbages and beets. They left the hot peppers and thought they would simply let them rot on the vine. Even the bandit camp pitched in to help.
Working in the fields alongside the villagers and the woods people gave Astrid an idea. She set down her bushel of cabbage and walked over to Woody.
“How many bandits are in the surrounding woods?” Astrid asked.
Woody leaned on his scythe beside a pile of cut oats. “About fifty,” he replied. “Maybe more near the territory borders. Why?”
“Call them in for the harvest,” Astrid said.
Woody looked at her blankly for a moment, then laughed in her face. “These townies are lucky we’re here doing this work. We’re only doing it because they are paying us.”
“Don’t you think the others want to get paid?”
Woody considered that for a moment. “Fuck them. We get paid more if it’s only us.”
Astrid laughed. “Is that how bandits always do each other?”
“Mostly. The tribes don’t work together often, and then only if there’s something in it for us.”
“I’ll make it worth their while,” Astrid said.
“How?” Woody asked.
“Look, this harvest is one-hundred-percent profit. I’m sure Popova will pay handsomely.”
“Bandits don’t work for cabbage. We work for coin and plunder
,” Woody replied.
“Bring them in,” Astrid said. “They can have cabbage and plunder. I plan to pay back this Clarence fuckhole for murdering Alisa.”
That got Woody’s attention. He stared at her for a long while, then said, “If it were anyone else that said something like that, I’d think they were full of shit. I will send out some feelers.”
“Besides,” Astrid said. “We’ll have other work for them to do. Keep 52 is filling up with Jank’s men. We’ll need to patrol the roads leading to the village.”
With that, Astrid turned back to work.
Gormer convinced Charlie to pull wagons from the field. When he arrived and picked up the wagon tongue, the villagers dropped their tools and cheered. At first, Charlie looked scared. Then, he saw the faces beaming up at him and smiled back with a huge, gap-toothed grin.
He pulled the wagon easily, then came back for another. The villagers shouted their thanks and Charlie started moving faster. He seemed eager for more praise.
They all worked until the sun set, then settled in for a community meal. Astrid squeezed in at a long table and someone handed her a big bowl of stew. She ate heartily, savoring the thick broth with rye, barley, and big chunks of pork.
“This is ridiculous,” Popova said, standing up from the head of the table.
“What’s wrong, Elder?” Tomescu asked.
“He’s just standing there in the woods staring at us. Has nobody offered him any food?” Popova put her hands on her hips and nodded over at Charlie. The giant stood in the shadows of the treeline just beyond the torchlight.
Popova snatched up a big, empty bowl, then marched over to a pile of beets taller than her. She threw in a bunch of the root vegetables, then added a couple of cabbages. She walked over to where Charlie stood with the bowl raised high.
“Come and eat with us!” Popova said.
Charlie shrank back and made himself smaller.
“Don’t be shy, you’ve earned this,” she said, raising the bowl higher. “Come on. You sit at the table with us, now.”
Charlie inched out of the woods and bent down low to pick up the bowl. He moved to turn back into the woods.
“No, no, no,” Popova scolded sweetly, waving her finger. “You turn right back around and you follow me. You’re part of this village now, and you eat with us. I won’t tell you that again.”
When Popova turned to walk away, Charlie stood blinking for a moment. He put the bowl under his arm and walked back over to the table with hunched shoulders.
Five people jumped up from the long table to make room for him. They smiled and urged him to sit, then surrounded him, all trying to talk to him at once. They thanked him for the help and peppered him with questions. “Where are you from?” “What do you like to eat?” “Will you go fishing with us tomorrow?” “How tall are you?”
“Let the boy eat!” Popova scolded. “I’m not sure he speaks, anyway.”
“What?” one of the men said, raising his hands. “We want to talk to him. He gave us a second harvest!”
“You can talk to him later,” Popova said. She turned to Charlie. “I know you’re hungry.”
Charlie looked around wide-eyed, then gave a smile that consumed his face. He lifted his head and made a happy grunt, then ate half a cabbage in two bites.
The village ate their fill as the moon began to rise. As people began clearing the tables and cleaning up, someone came over with a fiddle. Someone else brought out a wooden flute. A guitar player appeared, and soon, the air was filled with music.
Charlie gasped when he heard the sound. Half-chewed beets dropped from his mouth into his lap.
“Ahhh… ” he said, then rose slowly. He walked right into the circle of musicians and stood there swaying.
The shocked musicians nearly stopped playing when Charlie began to sing. His wordless song blended perfectly with the instruments, and the players rose to the occasion. Astrid had never heard a more beautiful song. She tried to hide the mist in her eyes until she noticed there were no dry eyes around her.
Everyone stopped and gathered around to listen.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Argan Village
Astrid woke before two in the morning. It took her ten minutes to silently climb down from the loft in Popova’s single-room hut. She didn’t want to wake the old woman as she slipped through the front door and into the village square.
Just as she suspected, a shadow moved toward her. It was Moxy. Another figure moved less gracefully across the courtyard. That was Gormer. A few seconds later, the unmistakable round form of Vinnie trundled into view. Tarkon strode briskly into view behind Gormer. They gathered by the well in the center of the village square.
“If we hurry,” Astrid said. “We should be at Keep 52 before dawn.”
“What’s the plan?” Gormer asked, voice gummy.
“Recon,” Astrid said. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“It’s likely they’ve increased security,” Tarkon said.
“Gormer will lead us there,” Astrid said. “Then he’ll keep watch while the rest of us gather intel.”
“I say we retrieve Alisa while we’re there,” Gormer said. “For Woody. Give her a proper burial.”
“You didn’t want to do that yesterday,” Moxy said.
“I just said that so Woody wouldn’t run in there like the madman he is,” Gormer said. “He didn’t care about dying.”
“Huh,” Astrid grunted.
“What?” Gormer growled. “I’m not completely callous. Woody is my friend.”
“I thought you didn’t have friends,” Astrid said.
“Well, as close as I get to a friend,” Gormer replied with a shrug.
“Enough banter,” Tarkon said. “Let’s ride.”
They walked the horses into the woods from the stables.
“From now on,” Tarkon said. “We need to post guards overnight. If we can do this, anyone can.”
“You’re right,” Astrid said. “I didn’t want that today, though.”
“Why the secrecy?” Gormer asked.
“I didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to object,” Astrid replied. “Also, we need to know for ourselves.”
They made their way by moonlight to Keep 52. They had to leave the horses deep in the woods to maintain silence. They split up near the Toll Road and Gormer climbed up into the branches of a tall beech tree.
“You’ll hear me in your head if shit goes wonky,” he said as he started his climb.
Astrid and Moxy headed toward the Toll Road while Tarkon and Vinnie turned toward the keep. Astrid stopped dead in her tracks when she peeked out of the brush by the side of the road and saw Alisa swinging from the lamp post in a gentle morning breeze.
Two guards passed each other not too far away. They stopped to exchange words.
“Damn it,” the tall guard said. “I looked up.”
“How can you not look?” the shorter one replied. “She was just nineteen years old.”
“Try not to think about it,” the tall one said.
“Fuck you, Arthur” shorty said. “Don’t think about it… ” he mocked. “How can I not think about that?”
“I don’t know, Marty. What else can I say?” Arthur stared down at his feet and let his crossbow hang by his side. “This shit ain’t right, what the Lieutenant did. She should have gotten jail time. We’re supposed to uphold the law. But this… ”
“I want to quit,” Marty said. “But they’d probably evict my family. Like they did Pleth. How can I look my wife in the eyes now? I can barely face my kids. They think I’m a good guy. Aren’t we supposed to be good guys?”
Astrid heard enough. She stepped out into the road and held out her hands. She thought about drawing from the Well, but didn’t want to scare them. Moxy took to the trees and scurried through the branches, stopping above the guards.
“You can let us take her down,” Astrid said, voice calm and even. “We’ll take her to her family for a proper
burial.”
The guards practically stumbled over each other and raised their crossbows in their trembling arms.
“St—stop!” Marty stammered. “You’re under arrest.”
Astrid raised her hands till they were even with her shoulders. “I’ve done nothing but defend myself and keep innocent people safe. That sounds a lot like what you want to do.”
“You murdered Jank’s men at the day camp and stole the tribute,” Arthur said, raising his crossbow.
Astrid glanced at Moxy, who hung upside down with the backs of her knees gripping a branch. She had her blowpipe ready. Astrid shook her head every-so-slightly and said, “Those men were torturing an innocent person. They were going to rape my friend. They didn’t carry tribute, they carried plunder. They took more than their tribute from Blue Creek, where they did rape a woman.”
The short one lowered his crossbow. “I heard rumors,” he said. “But I thought they were just that. We’re not like that.”
“You don’t have to keep looking the other way,” Astrid said. “I know the forces arrayed against you are vast. I know you feel powerless. But you have something much more powerful.”
Arthur lowered his crossbow and listened.
“You have heart. I heard it just now,” Astrid said. “You know that a lot of shit happens around here that just isn’t right.”
“It’s not enough,” the shorter guard said.
“Maybe not now,” Astrid said. “But soon. You’ll know when. I’m sure you’re not alone.”
“I’ll be back with a blanket for her,” Arthur said, turning back toward the keep.
“I’ll cut her down,” Marty said. “Though it will probably mean my family goes homeless.”
“Fuck that,” Arthur said. “You come stay with me if that happens.” He jogged down the road.
Moxy was already moving. She jumped from the trees to the lamp post, landing on two feet, balanced perfectly.
“What the fuck is that!” the guard exclaimed, raising his crossbow.
“She’s a friend!” Astrid said, lunging forward and gently nudging the crossbow down.
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