by Carol Berg
“Don’t look like aught’s comin‘, Sheriff. P’raps you got a bum turn.”
Sheriff … The word froze my steps.
“When the clock strikes, we’ll have him. Lynch drives his route as regular as clockwork.” The dry chuckle held no mirth. “Remember you’re only to hobble the beast, so he can do no harm until we have him properly restrained. Kill him and your own life is forfeit. Understood?”
“Aye. I’ve never seen one, you know. A priest told me they can set a man afire with their eyes.”
“He can do no harm if you’re quick and do as I’ve told you. There’s reward enough in this to pay well for any risk.”
Heart racing, I crept back along the stable wall until I could peer around the far corner of the stable into the yard. Like two great spiders, the strangers from the common room lurked in the shadowed niche where the tall wooden fence met the stable building. One of the men wore a broad-brimmed hat with a feather. The flaming sword blazoned on his cloak glared boldly in the failing light. The giant body of his companion slouched against the fence. That one’s leather vest, worn over a long tunic and baggy trousers, along with his wide belt with a short sword dangling from one side and an iron bar from the other, named him a hireling thug of the sort one could find in the alleys of Monte vial. He would have four more knives hidden in boot top or sleeve, and perhaps a vial of lye tucked in his sleeve. A soft cap was pulled low over his brow.
When the clock strikes… Lynch drives his route… And the weaver was expecting a wool cart at five. I imagined I could hear the grinding of the gears in the clock tower. How long had it been since the last quarter struck? No time to plan.
Yanking the narrow brim of my hat lower to shade my face, I marched out of the trees toward the sleeping boy. “You lazy beggar, I’ll have you flogged.”
The poor lad sat up, rubbing his eyes.
Calling to mind every tantrum of spoiled nobility I had ever witnessed, I stamped my foot and yelled. “Idiot boy! If I miss my reunion with Uncle Charles and Aunt Charlotte because of you, I’ll personally remove your ears! My whole life is at stake-—my inheritance, everything—and to have it ruined by a filthy stable beggar is insupportable.”
As the bewildered child shot jumped up and ran into the stable, I hurried across the yard to the two lurkers. “I commanded this lazy, insolent boy to have my horses ready so I can leave this dunghill before nightfall, but he’s not even got them saddled. And my cousins have contracted for a reliable guide to lead me out of this pestilential forest. I suppose there’s no possibility that either of you is my guide?”
“No possibility, madam,” said the cloaked man. His eye sockets were almost flat, his eyes protruding like those of a fish. His bulbous lips, protruding from a thicket of dark, wiry black beard, curled in disdain.
Several passersby stopped to see what was the disturbance. Good. I wanted a crowd. “Good fellows, I’m not an unreasonable woman. I’ll pay you well. But I must insist— Ah, you, sir!”
The sallow-faced proprietor had stepped into the stableyard, looking annoyed.
“I must have an escort, hostler,” I said. “My party has not arrived, my cousin is laid up with the gout, and your fool of a stable boy is only now saddling my horses, though I’ve no one to ride with me.” I dragged the speechless proprietor into a position that would prevent the two lurking men from leaving their corner without walking over us. From the lane, a plodding horse’s hooves clopped on the cobbles, and the wheels of a wagon creaked and slowed. I forced myself not to look. “Tell these two to escort me. If I don’t get satisfaction at once, I shall remember the poor service I received in Threadinghall and at the Bronze Shield, in particular. You’ll get no more trade from my family…”
The jolly hunters from the common room had wandered out into the yard, as the proprietor scratched his head and questioned the stable lad who had just returned with my horses. The poor boy was likely more befuddled than ever, having remembered how I’d specifically instructed him not to unsaddle the pair when I’d arrived.
The creaking wheels turned into the stableyard. The two strangers stiffened and shuffled their feet. Grabbing the reins from the boy, I maneuvered the horses to where they would block any view of the yard.
“Sirs, are you honorable men?” I said to the two. “Does your road take you north? I know I’m bold to ask it, and Aunt Charlotte will be horrified at the impropriety, but if you deliver me to my relations at Elmont Castle this night, you can demand a prince’s ransom. I’ve an extra horse—”
“Get out of the way, woman, and your filthy beasts with you,” said the sheriff. “We’ve business with this wagon.”
“Curse you, black-hearted villain,” I shouted as loudly as I could, praying that Karon was listening. “What business with this wagon could possibly be more important than my inheritance?” I backed away from the men, keeping close enough to prevent any passage around my horses, and clapped my hand to my breast. “Why, I’ll wager you plan to rob it! Help! Thieves! Driver! You on the wagon! These two plan to rob you. Beware!” My brother had always accused me of having the most piercing scream in the Four Realms.
Several bystanders closed in on the two angry men, who were now trying to force their way past me and the horses. The situation quickly degenerated into chaos. “A pox on you, whore!” With a bone-cracking grip, the fish-eyed sheriff shoved me backward into the horses. “I am a king’s sheriff. Get out of my way.”
I pulled back just enough to make room for the hunting party who had crowded up behind me growling. The cornered pair tried to push their way out of the ring, but my rescuers had drunk enough ale to make their courage and honor invincible. The red-bearded storyteller quickly pinned the sheriff against the wall. As I slipped backward, the pushing and shoving gave way to serious fisticuffs. The crowd was large enough and confused enough and drunk enough that no one could tell who was who.
Oh, please, Karon, be ready.
The proprietor was shouting at the combatants over the heads of the crowding observers, and I thought matters were well in hand. But as I led the horses away from the melee, the sheriff’s thuggish companion dodged the flying fists and squeezed along the shadowed edge of the stable toward the yard, where the wagon had come to a halt under a spreading oak.
A dark figure dropped lightly from the back of the wagon. The thug crept up behind him, iron bar in one hand and a loop of heavy chain in the other.
Karon! Watch out! No one was watching. Everyone was occupied with the brawl. Holy Annadis, he didn’t see…
I drew my knife. Ducking between the two horses, I called up every skill my father and his soldiers had taught me and let fly my weapon. With a harsh expulsion of air, the brute straightened and pitched forward into the dirt. Satisfyingly still.
Heart and stomach threatening to choke me, I dragged the horses toward the wagon and the newcomer, who had slipped behind the bole of the great oak.
“Please, madam”—I flinched and spun backward, but it was only the flustered proprietor who had popped up at my side—“forgive this misunderstanding. Allow me…” He gestured toward the horses and offered his hand.
Taking a quick breath, I stiffened my chin and raised my foot purposefully. The proprietor quickly linked his hands and gave me a leg up. “Since my honest guide has not arrived to escort me, I suppose I must ride alone,” I said.
“So sorry, madam, but for me to leave the inn—”
“I am the guide hired for you, madam.” The figure in the hooded cloak stepped out from behind the tree and bowed, interrupting the innkeeper before he could grovel further. “My apologies for my tardiness.”
“Hold up there,” yelled the grizzled driver of the wagon, as he stood shading his eyes and peering into the noisy fracas. He waved his arm toward the corner, but the sheriff was fully occupied, and Karon was already on Karylis’s back.
In moments, we were racing out of Threadinghall and down the forest road, back the way I had come earlier. The full moon lit ou
r path with the brightness of day.
For an hour we rode without stopping and with no possibility of speech. When we emerged from the dense trees into the rolling moonlit meadows, Karon pointed to the right branch of an upcoming fork in the road. We thundered down the dusty track, winding through gentle hills until at last we came to a grove of willows bordering a wide stream. The water rippled merrily in the silver light.
We pulled up, and I slipped from the saddle straight into Karon’s arms. I whispered into his neck, “I was so frightened for you.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, stroking my hair and pressing me fiercely to his breast. “I had no idea. Never, never would I knowingly call you into such danger.” He was trembling.
I pulled away and laid a finger on his lips. “Judge on the merits of the deeds alone, not on what the circumstances of life have made of them. Have I got it right?”
“Yes. Of course you do.” He smiled weakly. “My chief counselor never forgets anything that can be used to refute a fool’s premise.”
“Should we not ride on now? I can go farther, you know.”
“We should, but I can’t. I have to rest for just a bit.” Karon’s trembling was not just the released anxiety of the evening’s events. His skin was hot and dry, a fever that had nothing to do with sorcery, and his rigid posture told me that sheer strength of will kept him upright.
“What have you done to yourself?” I asked, stroking his haggard face.
“Nothing that a year of sleep and a lifetime of you will not take care of. And to my great regret”—leaning on my arm, he sank to the spongy ground of the willow thicket— “a little of the sleep must come before anything else.” His eyes closed as he mumbled. “Just an hour, no more than two, then we must go…” And while holding my hand as if it were his last connection to life, he was asleep.
For a long while I sat and watched him sleep, knowing full well that the night’s events had changed my life forever. Karon had come a finger’s breadth from capture. I had killed a man to protect him. Full of uncomfortable musings about what else we might have to do to keep him safe, I pulled his cloak around us both and fell asleep.
The moon hung like a huge yellow lantern low above the mountains in the west when I woke. Karon slept unmoving, his scarred left arm thrown over me. “Wake up,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “You said two hours, no more.”
He buried his face in my tunic and emitted a muffled groan. “But this feels so marvelously fine.”
“Our own bed will be much nicer, and perhaps you’ll be clean. Happy as I am to see you, there is definitely an aura of the stable about.” At least his fever seemed to have cooled a bit.
He rolled over wearily. “I was the only passenger in Lynch’s cart, but chickens, and sheep, and pigs had most definitely preceded me. I was in no position to be choosy.”
I pulled out the provisions from my saddle pack. That roused him a bit. First he drained two waterskins. Then he downed half a loaf of bread, a knob of cheese, and three apples, and did not protest more than once when I gave him my portion, too.
“The man who laid the trap was a sheriff. He knew about you.”
He rubbed his neck and stretched his shoulders. “I was sure I’d shaken them… careless… unforgivable—”
“I told you, it’s all right. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
We didn’t return to the main road, but continued on a longer, less traveled route back to Montevial. As we rode, I told him Tanager’s story, and then he told me his own.
“I’d gone into Xerema to hire guards to protect the site. It was a fabulous find—at least seven hundred years old, built deep and hidden to protect it from graverobbers— but, of course, it’s all gone again now. I was on my way back to the site when the earthquake struck, out in the open. Though I used everything I knew to find Rinaldo and Damon, I had to give it up early on; I sensed no hint of life and had no hope of digging through that mess.
“But I couldn’t leave the area without trying to help. Unlike at the mountain, there were pockets in the city ruins where people could survive for a little while. Whatever I did, it wasn’t enough. Every few hours I’d have to forgo use of anything but my hands, and I could still hear people screaming and crying. But somehow I managed to do more than I could in ordinary times. As did everyone.”
The beautiful morning seemed at odds with his dreadful tale. Hawks soared through the haze of dayfires, hanging over the patchwork grain fields. Karon stared at the weedy path ahead of us, lost in the telling. “After a week or so, there was no one left living under the stones, and no one who hadn’t crossed the Verges, and I thought I’d come home. But I met up with a surgeon named Connor. We’d worked together at several sites, and he had guessed there was something out of the ordinary. He asked if I had medical training, and I told him I did, though perhaps different from his own. He said that if I’d continue working with him. he’d ask no questions.”
Karon looked up at me with a sadness that tore my heart. “He was extraordinary, Seri. Never have I met anyone who gave so much of himself. For days he would go without sleep, treating all who came to him: nobles, beggars, peasants, soldiers. Never did he lose patience or fail to treat even the least of them with kindness and respect, as if each were the most important person in the world. And he was skilled beyond any physician or surgeon I’ve known. I would assist him as best I could, and when he found something he couldn’t handle, he’d ask if I might have some insight into the case beyond his own. If I thought I could do it, he would find a private place and see that I was not disturbed…”
“You speak of him in the past.”
He nodded. “There was a little girl. Only five years old or so. A beautiful child. We got to her too late. With all of Connor’s skill and all of mine, we could not undo what had been done.” He spoke as if the terrible scene still lay before him. “The child’s father went mad. His wife and five other children had died in the earthquake, and the little girl was all he had left. When Connor told him she was dead, the man pulled a knife and stabbed him to the heart. It happened so quickly”—Karon’s face was a portrait of grief—“and just as with the Writer and his daughter, it came at a time when I had nothing left to give him. Before he died, he whispered that he had hoped he could at last witness what it was I did. Oh, Seri, would that I could have saved him. It was very hard to keep my own teaching in my mind.”
“Because he was an uncommon man and a friend in terrible times.”
“More than that. The murderer was a man I’d brought back from the dead.”
We rode in silence for a long while. What ordinary words of comfort could ease such extraordinary sorrow? But eventually Karon took up the tale once more, shaking his head as if to rid himself of his own thoughts. “That was about twelve days ago, I think. I knew I couldn’t keep up the work indefinitely. Someone would see or guess, and I was very tired, sick enough that I was endangering people I wanted to help, seeing two of everything or things that weren’t there. And without Connor my work was far more difficult. A day or two after I buried him, I began to suspect I was being followed. I’ve been running ever since. Every time I thought I was clear, that sheriff would turn up again. Finally I heard about this carter that plied the Leiran road, so I believed I could get to Threadinghall. I’d be safe there. But I knew I could go no farther without help—”
“—and you called me.”
“Inexcusable. I should have known they’d find me again. But I was at the end of my resources, and you were so much in my thoughts. I don’t think I could have spoken to anyone else at such a distance. I couldn’t conjure a broomstraw after it. Still can’t. The certainty that you would be waiting was the only thing that kept me moving yesterday. But invading your mind, stealing your thoughts—it violates everything I profess…”
“Would it make a difference to you if I said it was all right? If I gave you my consent to speak to me in that way any time?” The idea had been with me since I had first hea
rd him in our library. “Last night, I needed to warn you. I wanted you to hear. I trust you, you know, and I welcome you into every part of my life. It doesn’t frighten me.”
“Gods, Seri…”
We reached home without incident and with no evidence that Karon’s pursuers had any clue as to his identity. He believed they had never seen his face. He worried that I’d be recognized, but I assured him the light had been poor and my face shaded by my hat. For good measure I burned the clothes we had worn.
I didn’t tell Karon that I had killed to protect him. Keeping the secret caused me far more guilt than the killing, but I told myself that I would reveal it as soon as time had blurred the event. Perhaps by then Karon, too, would realize that the Way of the J’Ettanne was not the way of the world.
Karon’s illness passed quickly with rest and decent food, but I had never seen him in such a desert of the spirit. In the weeks after his return, he ventured out of the house only once—to visit the families of his two assistants, offering them his sympathy and what help he could in dealing with their loss. Though he hadn’t asked me to do so, he seemed relieved that I discouraged visitors. The effort of communicating with anyone was so monumental that even a quarter of an hour’s company left him pale and sick. He had spent everything he had five hundred times over. Now smiles and laughter and even words came hard.
But on one morning in early autumn I awoke to find him gazing down at me, head propped on one elbow, a sober demeanor belied by a sparkle in his blue eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me, my lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are there more secrets than this one?”
“Who ever said you were to know everything that goes on?”
“But I believe I have an interest in this matter.”
“Have you been prying with this fiendish talent you have, sir?”
“I confess to it. You’ve seemed unwell these few weeks, and I was worried.”