She knew then, he would certainly be here... somewhere.
Across the room she finally saw him. A sable-clad man of older years who leaned to the side of his chair, a leg extended parallel to his table and his shoulder comfortably pressed against the stone wall. His back was mostly guarded by that wall. His fingers played with the jeweled hilt of the short sword at his hip. Above him, the upper stairs glowed brightly from lanterns in the stairwell, and the creak of the wood boards would have announced any’s descent. Before him, laughing and filling their short cups with spirits, a pair of merchant sons reveled in some story he was encouraging from them. His grin showed white teeth through his smooth, thick beard as he chewed on a mint taper. He nodded at something the two said, eyes rounding through the crowd haphazardly.
He was becoming lax in his assumptions, Adrian noted. The rains had begun to pour and the thunders lashed with lightnings outside. The weather was altogether too nasty for anybody of sense to be traveling in, and he was beginning to think he would be safely unhindered for at least another night.
She ordered a bowl of mushroom barley for dinner. She could afford to wait and let him grow assured.
He looked straight at her. But her face was not particularly hidden and her manner drew no attention. The bar was crowded with quieter locals towards her end, and her greyish cloak faded in with their drab browns and greens. She mimed the hunch of those about her well, their hoods bared just enough to invite a friend’s conversation and hide enough to discourage a stranger’s frivolity. Again his gaze swept past her.
Gryert had indeed become careless since the years she had known him. But then the Twins’ magics had undoubtedly given him less need for caution.
Or perhaps, she was under-rating how her own skills had grown.
She watched, and as the night drew on his back inched further and further away from the wall. She ordered another ale and asked about rooms.
“Plenty, if you’re willing to share?” the bar’s tender prodded agreeably.
“The room yes, the bed no.”
“Still got a few to choose from.”
“Something with less noise would be best.”
The jovial grin took on a somewhat more ironic twist. “You’ve got a choice ’tween kitchen clatter an’ customer chatter.”
A slow smile answered him, although he couldn’t have said if it was good-natured or sarcastic. “The kitchen's will do fine.”
“Good enough then.” He fished a great ring of keys out from beneath his apron and extracted a wooden one from the set. He held it out of her reach. “Money up front.”
She slid a pair of small, but flawed jewels across the bar to him. “Instead of coin stick?”
“Acceptable.” On a merchant’s route, it wasn’t such an unusual thing. He pointed at the stairs behind Gryert. “Top floor, back hall not front. You’ll find space in the double, third room on the left. Fire’s not lit, but your wood’s included. So’s breakfast porridge an’ breads.”
She nodded and stood, pausing for a last pull on the weak ale as she saw Gryert rearranging his chair. She put her stein down as he faced himself towards his table, drinking a parting toast with his companions. She moved along the bar, slipping between elbows and shoulders unnoticed. The merchant boys left to join the dicing games, and Gryert reached across the table to grab a half-emptied glass and drain it. The motion freed his sword’s pommel knob, an octagonal gem bright in its bloody redness, and she recognized the talisman from the Twins.
He stretched again to retrieve the bottle. This time she closed in, the slender length of her short sword skritching as it left its sheath. He rounded at the sound, hearing it even in the tavern’s noise. His hand went down, but too slow, and the scabbard belt sliced, his sword falling. She grabbed for his hair as he shoved the chair back hard into her belly. She missed and the table went over in his scramble.
They faced each other then, across the width of the suddenly silent room. His long knife was drawn. His dark eyes squinted, his confusion apparent as he tried to fathom why a lone swordarm would be attacking him; he’d anticipated a mercenary crew. She unfastened her cloak and let it fall aside, covering the red gem of the weapon at her feet. Her baggage dropped with it.
With a silent command, she allowed the most intricate of her spells disguising the more recognizable features of her face to flicker, long enough that only he would see.
His stance widened as did his eyes, disbelief and fear mixing as he rasped, “But you’re dead?!”
A knife flew from her hand, his blade angled up to deflect it. The second he never saw coming, and it pinioned his arm into the wood beam above him as the knife fell from his fist. She slammed his freed hand against the wall as the point of her blade jabbed beneath his sternum, barely stayed by the chain mail beneath his sable vest.
“Kin blood!”
“They said you were dead!”
“Not quite.”
Intense, furious eyes stared into his fear, steady and unflinching. She could read his thoughts, images of the Twins dancing through his mind. All their plans, all their ambitions...
“Tell me who rides east and who southeast?”
He swallowed thickly, knowing what would come. In a whisper he said, “No.”
“Aravin sith vin....” The slender steel of her blade slid through the chain mail, her magic turning it to less than butter.
The room’s silence was deafening save for that last gurgle of breath, and then his head rolled to the side. Only then did Adrian step back, letting his carcass fold down into a heap. She wiped the slender length of her sword clean on the silk of his blouse sleeve. Her blade returned to its sheath upon her right hip. Then she stood, shrugging as she did to resettle the heavier weight of the larger weapon strapped to her back. Most in the tavern had not even noticed she carried another sword before now; they’d all been too intent on the conflict itself. Adrian bent once more, snatching a leather tag from Gryert’s neck and snapping its thong with a deft twist.
She looked around the hushed crowd slowly. “Who travels west?”
An uncomfortable murmur ran through her audience, but quiet fell again as a dwarf stood and stepped away from his table. Another of his kind followed, placing himself at his friend’s elbow. Their unruly long beards were tucked into wide belts, and both were armed with short, fat knives and heavy, two-bladed axes.
“We do, Warmage,” the first one rumbled, thumbs tucking into his belt as his chin thrust forward. “We go all the way to your capital city.”
He surprised her. This far from her country’s borders, Adrian had not expected to find any that knew of the Grey Exiles from the Core. She lifted the leather bit. “Will you take this with a message to the Tribunal?”
Her gentle tone was utterly surprising to the folks; she spoke clearly with question and gave no hint of command. The dwarf stalked forward, halting a pace from her outstretched hand to eye the tag cautiously. There was nothing more than the family seal embossed on it. He grunted and nodded. It made sense; she had cried for kin blood.
Adrian gave it to him and gestured at Gryert’s body. “He’ll carry gold stick in his purse. Whatever he has, it’s payment for the favor.”
A rumble assent of sorts accepted her terms. Then he faced her more squarely and prompted, “You said a message too.”
“Tell them, it has begun.” Their gazes met, and the dwarf understood. It would be the last thing her people ever heard from her; but it was a testimony more than a message. It meant at least some price had been extracted for the crimes, and her folk would not be forced to hire mercenaries to pursue the matter more.
He honored her with a waist deep bow, a thing almost unheard of with a dwarf’s pride. She returned it in full.
He went to retrieve Gryert’s purse as she rounded towards the bar and the tavern’s tender. She flipped a gold stick through the air before he could protest the dueling. He sized it in his palm, then her in her grey leathers. His fist closed about the money, and
he turned towards the patrons.
“House pays for the ale! Set yourselves down’n we’ll bring it right to you!”
The tender sent a pair to clear away the body, and Adrian retrieved her things near the stairs. She took Gryert’s sword, too, careful to keep her cloak draped about it. But she wasn’t concerned that someone might accuse her of theft. She was wary of the talisman gem. It was still a thing to be dealt with.
In the dim passage above she found her room quickly. It wasn’t surprising that it was empty; the hour was still early. Although, given her display downstairs, the one who’d paid for the bed next to hers might think twice about claiming it. That, and it wasn’t the sort of room that one would generally spend a lot of time in. The place was clean, but stark. A pair of cots with worn but thick woven blankets and a small table with a single chair were its complete furnishings. There was also cut wood in a heavy ceramic pot next to the fireplace and a matching set of oil lamps suspended in sconces above the mantel. It was not a particularly comfortable place for entertaining. But it would serve Adrian’s needs.
She dumped her gear on the bed, carefully laying the cloaked sword beside it and lit one of the wall lamps. Turning to the plank table next, she shoved its shorter end up against the wall. She took a step back, decided there was too much light and dimmed the wick some. There was no reason to tell the Twins where she was, if they should notice her use of their talisman. She wasn’t certain they’d ward it against a stranger’s use; she suspected arrogance might have made them too sure of Gryert’s skills to bother with such charms.
From her rolled pack, she extracted a bundle of thin but sturdy hide tubes and chose one. The parchment map shook out and spread easily; she kept them well oiled so they’d be malleable and fairly waterproof. She hung the sheet over the table, tacking it into the wall with two small knives that had made a false buckle on her back sword’s harness. Then she retrieved Gryert’s weapon from the bed and beneath the cloak, unsheathed the blade. She drove the end into the table top with a thud and then cautiously moved away, holding her cloak up like a curtain behind the bespelled thing.
The red gem glittered atop the sword’s hilt, bound by a little wire cage. With an unnatural splay of sparks, it spat and hissed for a moment. She waited patiently for it to settle into a steady, pink glow and then drew nearer again, still keeping the grey cloth high. A beacon-like stream of ruby-blood light began sweeping — rotating — in a full circle. Adrian watched from over the edge of her cloak with a growing satisfaction; there had been no warding.
“Questions for thee,” she rasped in a low, low voice that mimicked an elderly sage or a hoarse demon tone. The jewel responded, drawing its auras back into its center in readiness. “Two masters thou have, aside from the fool bearer. Fashioned were thee as the eye for the Twins. Now comes the time, these Two must thee find. The First is Eldest, Laik by name...”
The red light flashed out, singeing a brown smote on the map’s line of the East Trader’s route.
“... and the Second, the younger. Foxsen by name.”
Again the light burned the map. This time it lit a fainter mark on the Southeast Road. Adrian smiled grimly. “Now Fire Eye, another query of thee. Show the place they will meet, to join again as Two.”
Beyond the denser forests, the red glow shadowed a village-small town labeled Cont. It was less than she had hoped, the light left no singed flecking; their plans were tentative, at best. She tried a last question, knowing those distant masters were probably already sensing something wrong.
“There are targets to be struck, precious goods to reap — all will come before the Two meet. Point to these places thy masters ride for, point to the rape and the war.”
Lightening struck out in scarlet bolts and left smoke curling about a ragged, charred hole. It pointed deep into the deserts of the southern continents, a place unmarked on her maps. There wasn’t even a nearby road’s turn or a caravan’s trail indicated in that sandy landscape. But there was something on that Southeastern route...something so vitally important to the Twins that their ambitions were completely united for it.
“Sleep now, thy rest is earned.” Adrian was almost haphazard in remembering to cover the talisman again.
It was a puzzle that remained, even as she bound the gemmed hilt with shredded blanket cloth and laid it in the hearth. With her uttered spell, fires engulfed both sword and talisman in cold, white flames of magic. She stood, watching that steel and ruby weapon evaporate into harmless nothingness, and then when it was gone, she struck a match to the other candle sconce, carefully packed the map away, and drew a small bowl from her things. She settled on the hard wood floor, ignoring the cold drafts and emptied a bit of powdered incense into the blue-black swirls of the ceramic piece; the center depths looked like the starry sky on a clear night. She sat herself down solemnly, feet flat against the floor on either side of the bowl and elbows on knees. She drew a breath and clasped her hands, head bowing, and a tiny blue-white flame leapt into life in the shrine bowl.
And she prayed, for the soul of the boy Gryert had once been, for the waste of the man that had turned from gentler ways... for the potential of the life she had taken. Silent tears fell to sputter the flame, but it did not go out. She sent what she could of his soul to the Star Strider, what little good was left in the depths of his blackened heart, but she did it without reservations and the faint essence of what could-have-been crossed back into Her mercy at the plea.
Then the flame finally died. Adrian blinked the scorched, salty tears from her vision and steadied her breathing. She rose to find her bed.
She never thought to pray for herself. She had been through Hellthorns and returned whole; the Star Strider must have seen some use in unsheathing Her Weapon. Adrian had accepted the role without question, trusting that Her Need was great enough... even knowing that this was only the beginning and that she might very well lose her way — and her soul – before the end.
Chapter Three
Rox crept through the underbrush, her steps as silent as owl’s wings. She scanned the trees as she moved, looking for the tell-tale footprints or crushed brush that would indicate the presence of other humans -- anyone who might be tracking her party. A scuffle nearby caught her attention and she spotted the fluffy tail of a tree rodent leaping up a willowy sapling. The forests had been growing thinner the further she and the Circle traveled south, the massive silverpines of the north dwindling to the spindly trees she wove through now. If they traveled further south the land would open up into dense, hilly brushlands and then to the deserts that consumed most of the southern continent.
Rox’s leather cloak was heavy and wet, the rainwater still clinging to the trees from the storms earlier in the day soaking her to the skin. Her rough, wool clothing rubbed uncomfortably against her skin, the scratchy fabric pressed tight against her by the heavy cloak. Her cropped, damp dark golden curls clung to her nape and forehead, sending tiny riverlets trickling down her narrow cheeks and chin. Still, she would rather be wet cold here in the forest than back with the Circle. There were worse things than skin burns from cheap clothing.
She paused in a small clearing of particularly tall trees and glanced up through the branches. Raccoons and other tree rodents slept in the branches, birds dozing in their nests. No sign of anything out of the ordinary. No bowmen. No warriors. Rox had always been able to see in the dark. Her green eyes glinted like a wolf’s as she moved expertly through the night. If it was a form of magic, it was the only one she had. Still, she thanked the Mother for it as she easily scouted a perimeter around the Circle’s camp. If there was anyone hiding in the forest, she’d find them. More than one assailant had been caught by assuming she couldn’t see them and becoming careless.
She made her way back to camp, shrugging her bow off her shoulders to relieve some of the weight off her back. She traveled almost five hundred paces when the forest split open into a large clearing. The contrast between the forest and the camp was jarring, like
stepping off the edge of the world.
The Circle’s camp was sparse: a couple dozen bed mats laid under waxed canvas tarps to ward off the storms. She stepped around the massive marauders, sleeping with their swords and daggers in their arms. A few held treasure they didn’t trust a courier to take home, gold and jewels they’d gained through murder and destruction. Trinkets and tokens of their depravity. Their snores and muttered curses as they dreamed of raids and murder cast a heavy fog around the clearing that made it hard to breathe. Still, it would soon be worse: another dozen members would be arriving before dawn with messages from the Twins on where to reposition. Until then, they waited, and Rox ensured their safety.
She felt a tremble and silken sweep across the back of her neck as Fisk woke. He crept out of his safe haven between her nape and the folds of her hood to rest on her shoulder, his long, pointed nose sniffing at the air, his tiny claws digging into her sleeve for balance. As a waterferret, Fisk’s sleek fur repelled the rain but he still hid in her cloak and jackets to avoid the storms.
Rox grinned wryly, the expression crooked, good-natured and rarely seen. “It stopped raining.”
Fisk grunted deep in his chest and skittered down Rox’s arm, dropping into the deep pocket at her hip with practiced ease. Rox patted her dear friend through her pocket and he emitted a rumbling sound not unlike an eitteh’s purr. “You’re lucky you found me. You never would have survived as a fishing ferret.” Fisk nipped at her finger through the cloth of her pocket in response.
Rox laid out her thin, woven bedmat along the edge of camp, where she could see every member of her traveling party. Her scouting hadn’t turned up any threats, but she was still cautious. She would have to keep consistent watch over the camp as new segments of their party rejoined the camp and do another perimeter sweep before dawn. There was always a chance an angry villager or assassin bent on vengeance would try tailing the raiding parties back to camp. Rox didn’t blame them. She’d hunt them down, too if she’d lived in one of the villages the Circle targeted. Part of her wished she could let a few angry villagers pass, give them a chance at vengeance, but if even one member of the Circle died due to her negligence, she wouldn’t get paid. And at the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.
Sands of Aggar: Amazons of Aggar Book 3 Page 3