The Jack of Souls: A Rogue and Knight Epic Fantasy Series (The Unseen Moon - Epic Fantasy Series Book 1)

by Stephen Merlino

  —From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, collected by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

  10

  Fingers Over Fist

  Harric froze, his legs still straddling the windowsill. He looked back to the door, beyond which he’d heard the voice. “Caris?”

  “Hurry, Harric. I mean it.

  He swung his legs back in and crept to the door. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes! Open up.”

  Harric moved the chair and lifted the latch, but cried out in alarm when he saw the glint of armor beyond, and tried to close it again. Caris cursed, and slammed it inward, staggering him back. Only then did he realize it was she who wore the steel.

  “It’s me. Calm down.”

  She shouldered past him in an enameled blue breastplate and matching shin and knee cops on full quilting. The blood color alone would cow any groom to silence or obedience, but a glance down the stairs confirmed she hadn’t relied on that. In the dim candlelight from his room he glimpsed all three of the grooms lying crosswise on the landing. She’d knocked them senseless. He blinked in silence, stunned by her quick justice.

  “Wow, Caris.”

  She shifted impatiently. “They stole your things.”

  “Hey, I’m not complaining. Don’t get me wrong. It makes my escape a lot simpler.”

  From her shoulder she dumped a heavy bundle of oiled canvas on the rug. Her hand went to her nose. “Gods leave me. What’s that smell?”

  “Harts-horn. I needed the room to myself.”

  “Hart’s what?”

  “Ammonia,” he translated, though she gave no sign of recognizing that name either.

  Harric slipped down the stairs to retrieve his purse from Leader, and his boots from Tartar. Leader groaned. The side of his head was swollen and blue.

  “Caris,” Harric hissed up the stairs. She appeared in the doorway above. “Help me move these guys.”

  “I need your help arming. Come back up here.”

  “Arming will take a while. They could wake and raise an alarm while I dress you.”

  She exhaled loudly through her nose, then stumped down the stairs. With Tartar and Leader suspended by the collar in each fist, she dragged them up the stairs like they were mere woolsacks. Harric struggled up with Third (who, fortunately, was the smallest), and they stashed all three in the narrow storage room off his apartment.

  When he’d pegged the storage door shut, she handed him a piece of shoulder armor. “You know how to do this, right?”

  He nodded. “Part of my mother’s training.”

  “Then start buckling, squire.”

  Harric smiled, and buckled according to what he remembered from when his mother bedded a knight for a season in exchange for his training in the deployment of arms.

  Caris reflected none of his humor. “There’s a Royal in the lodge. A Westie Royal, Harric, so he’s sure to practice the Old Ways against bastards. He’s with the Sapphire. You need to get out of here.”

  “I’m going. I’m not crazy.”

  She brushed his hands away from the shoulder piece. “Good enough. I can do the rest of that one.” From the canvas she unearthed a pair of clamshell thigh pieces: more steel enameled in cobalt blue. “Start these. Then the skirt.”

  Harric buckled, admiring the craftsmanship. “I’d guessed you were of gentle blood, like I am. A noble, maybe, but I had no idea you were a Sapphire.”

  “It’s Cobalt.”

  “Either way, that’s high nobility.”

  “You have blood rank on the brain.”

  “All bastards do.” But it was more than that. She was a noble runaway. A staggering secret, really. And no wonder she’d fled her home. A nobleman wanted a daughter for marriage alliances and as few embarrassments as possible, not some giant-sized genius horse handler. Her father might be searching for her just so he could bring her home again and hide her.

  “Stop gawking, Harric, and buckle me. If they find me with everything dangling I won’t be able to move.”

  He kept his fingers buckling, but his mind spun with the revelation of her blood. If it weren’t for the Royal in the outpost, who outranked her, she could practically walk them both out of the place unmolested. Reflexively he ticked through the Cobalt houses he’d memorized in his youth.

  House Ratingale, of western shores,

  House Conaddos of highland moors,

  House Tilling in its southern post,

  House Moss Isle, the northernmost…

  Moss Isle, he guessed, by her accent. She hadn’t enough drawl to be of the others, which were farther south.

  “I don’t know what happened to me today,” Caris muttered, as she worked a stubborn hasp. “The squire, I mean. I felt…” She scowled, unable to find the words. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Like you were drugged. I know. Me too. The Sapphire’s squire seemed just as confused.”

  Her eyes lit with this confirmation. “We were witched. We had to be. There was an Iberg with the Sapphire in the yard. Did you see him?”

  “No.”

  “He was all dressed in blue, and riding with the Sapphire, so he must be under the Sapphire’s protection. It had to be him. He must have witched us.”

  “If the witch is with the Sapphire, he wouldn’t witch the Sapphire’s squire.”

  Her brow pursed with worry. “Oh, right.”

  Harric draped the armor’s skirt around her waist from behind and held it as she fastened it to the quilting in front. The closeness thrilled him. For all her size and uncanny strength she was still very much a woman, her face and figure neither unattractive nor unfeminine. Not for the first time he wondered what it would be like to taste that shy mouth and feel those generous curves against his skin. He wondered too if he could love her with more than just his flesh. Or if his mother had destroyed that part of him in his conditioning.

  Caris had turned to watch him, brows bent and serious.

  He smiled. “Just admiring how good you look in blue. I’d bed you right now, but we’d have to unbuckle everything.”

  She frowned and looked away. “Don’t joke about that, Harric. I’m…horse-touched.” Her eyes flickered as if in an attempt to meet his eyes, but failed and remained steadfastly on the floor. She scowled, gaze distant and inward. “Never mind. Help me pull this up,” she said, struggling with the bolster beneath the skirting.

  “You’re afraid you can’t love,” he said, trying to make it sound simple and matter-of-fact, to put her at ease. “I’ve heard that about horse-touched.” As he said it he realized it was partly this that made her attractive to him; that there was safety in her emotional detachment. “I like that, Caris. It’s pretty much the same with me. I mean, my mother tried to burn the heart right out of me. We’d be a perfect pair.”

  She threw down a cloth, her face darkening. “That’s not funny, Harric.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “And I’m not afraid of anything like that.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Just shut up!”

  She raised her hands to her ears and clenched her eyes as if to shut him out. It didn’t look to him like she was going to fall to the floor in one of her fits, but he stepped back to show he was done, hands raised in surrender.

  “Sorry, Caris. Look, I misunderstood. Anyway, forget that. How about you and I leave this place together,” he said, trying to change the subject. “I’m heading south, of course, since the Sapphire’s going north.”

  Her hands unclenched. She lifted her gaze with what seemed like great effort. “I’m going north. I’m following that Phyros-rider.”

  Harric blinked in surprise. “That old fraud? Caris, you noticed the Phyros, but not the rider. His skin isn’t blue. He’s old as dirt. He stole that Phyros.”

  “I don’t care. In the last month I’ve asked three knights to mentor me. One laughed. The others attacked me. I have a feeling about this one.”

  She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes. She didn’t meet his gaze, but this w
as a look he’d seen before when there was no talking her out of something.

  A scream drifted through the window on the market side, followed by shouts from the revelers below, and an eerie silence. Harric crossed to the window with Caris at his elbow, and stared in shock at what he saw below. A gigantic knight in wine-black armor entered the market lane through the south gate on a scar-torn Phyros. In the white light of the porch lamps, the rider’s extraordinary size was cast into stark relief. Blue skin shone from behind his open visor.

  “A Crown of Horns,” Harric said, pointing in horror at the ring of spines atop the helm. “Gods leave us, the Old Ones are returning.” In a flash he understood this Old One hunted the Phyros-thief who had passed through the market that evening, and why the Sapphire hadn’t attacked the old man then; the Sapphire only tracked him until the Old One caught up.

  The rider halted his Phyros below the steps of the porch and raised a curled black horn to his lips, blasting a note that rebounded between cliff and inn like the thunder of a rockfall.

  A woman at the foot of the stair screamed, and the immortal horse lunged as if taunted. Its massive head struck forward as nimble as a snake’s and slashed sideways at her pale throat. Blood showered the stair, and the woman sprawled at its feet.

  “Bow before the Phyros!” the Old One roared.

  Knees hit planking. Eyes averted, as described in the ballads. Though four floors above, Harric felt his knees grow weak at the boom of the command.

  A lord in emerald robes hurried from the lodge with a dozen purple-liveried servants, who kneeled. The emerald lord bowed at the waist. A stiff smile thinned his lips as he placed a fist to his chest in greeting. “Sir Bannus. Your chambers await.”

  The immortal surveyed the lord and the prostrate people around him. The circlet of horns rotated with the motion, then tilted upward to the faces peering out of the upper windows.

  Harric glimpsed cruel eyes and scars like a nest of adders inside the helm, then ducked away, heart pounding in his throat.

  Caris turned and stalked from the window to her pile of gear, her face intent as her hands moved quickly through her canvas bag. Harric followed, dazed with horror of what he’d just witnessed, and what it meant for Arkendia. Old Ones had returned. Did the Queen know it? Had Willard and the Blue Order been alerted?

  Caris belted on a heavy longsword and donned an open-faced helmet, then started stuffing oilcloths in the canvas.

  “Caris. What are you doing?”

  She said nothing. She stood, slung the canvas on her shoulder.

  “Caris, you have no delusions about…confronting an Old One, do you?”

  She met his gaze, face pale and drawn. “I’m not an idiot, Harric.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “I’m getting out of here. And you should, too.”

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, adjusting his pack. “So, I guess this is goodbye, then.” A pang of regret surprised him, distorted and amplified by the fear still buzzing through his body. “Here…” He produced the bundle of silver he’d prepared for her. “A token to remember me by.”

  He tossed it, and she caught the bundle in one hand. “What is it?”

  “It’s your share of the squire’s purse. It wouldn’t be right for me to keep it all.”

  Caris froze. Her jaw nearly clanged against her cuirass. “You stole this?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he explained. “I was witched, same as you.”

  She tossed the sock back as if it were an infectious rag. “You stole that! You’re a common jack!”

  “Jacks don’t share this way. Nor do they serve justice, or the Queen. I’m sharing it out because it wouldn’t be right for me to keep it. Sort of a code of honor.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Honor? You’re a jack and a liar. You’re trying to tell me there’s honor among jacks?”

  Harric sighed. “Look, I don’t want to part this way. But I wanted to tell you the rest of the truth about me while I can. I know you aspire to be a Queen’s Knight, and you follow their code of honor. But try to look at it this way. In card games, the jack is wild—outside the rules—so he’s one of the most powerful cards in the deck. He can make a royal hand unbeatable. Like the secret sisterhood of courtistes help her.” He hadn’t said it outright, but he’d come as close to naming his art as he could.

  “More lies.” She seethed, fists balled at her sides. “You lied to me, Harric. You said your father was a knight. That your mother trained you to serve in court.”

  “She did, Caris, but by—”

  “Conning lords? Like that lord in the carriage? They say that’s what you were doing today. Is that true? Is that what you’ve been doing all this time I’ve known you? How dare you say that’s serving the Queen.”

  Harric’s heart fell. He had no words she would understand. He stepped forward, instead, and pressed the Phyros-thief’s nut in her resisting hand. “The Phyros-rider gave this to me. If you won’t take the silver, take this. It’ll bring you luck.”

  After a heartbeat, she balled her fist around it. “This better not be one of your tricks.”

  “No trick,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t regard the joke he’d penned as a “trick.”

  She turned to the door just as hurried footfalls sounded on the stairs.

  “Prepare, Bastard!” Rudy cried, his voice strained with excitement and magnified in the narrow stairwell. “Your judgment is upon you!”

  Harric crossed to the west window and slung a leg over the sill. “Caris,” he whispered, motioning her to follow. “This way.”

  Caris tied her cloak behind her. “This knight doesn’t flee out windows, Harric.”

  “Oh. Well, this one does.”

  The door thumped, jumping the latch in its slot. “Open up, lord-boy, or we’ll break it down!”

  “Leave, Harric.” She did not look his direction. “I cannot be seen with a lying jack.”

  The words stung, but they also struck fire in his heart. “If I live long enough, Caris, I’m going find a way to serve the Queen. I owe her everything, and it’s what I was trained for, and I’ll do it as well as any knight,” he said, slinging his legs out the window. “Better. I’ll prove it.”

  *

  As soon as Harric left, Caris unlatched the door. Rudy and two grooms stumbled in like clowns. She hurled an armored fist into Rudy’s vapid mouth, sending him backward over a groom into the stairwell, where he hit the wall so hard he broke three boards and fell partway into the resulting hole.

  The grooms gaped, speechless. As she polished the knuckles of her gauntlet for another blow, they broke into stammered apology, retreating.

  “Your Eminence! So sorry.”

  “This knave here told us a—

  “—very sorry—”

  “—a bastard jack—”

  “—you know our master, Lord Ellentane?”

  The four bowed and scraped and backed from the room, stepping on each other and on Rudy’s unconscious body, nearly tumbling down the stairs in their haste.

  When the sounds of their muttered oaths faded, Caris opened the purse and examined the nut Harric gave her. Her nose creased. It was wrinkly and brown, vaguely obscene, with ink scratchings:

  My ♥.

  —Harric

  She sensed he meant it to be funny. A reference to the size and hardness of his heart? She turned to toss it out the window after him, but it opened and nearly spilled its contents.

  It wasn’t a nut, after all. It was a very clever container. A tiny hinge held the two halves of the nutshell together on a spring, revealing three delicately crafted circlets of witch-silver inside. Each circlet was about the size of a lady’s finger ring, but looped with the others like a three-link segment of chain. The metal wasn’t precious, but the craftsmanship was very fine.

  Any meaning it would have had from Harric was sullied by his dishonesty. Even thinking of it made her angry, and sad. He’d been the only man beside her brother who didn’t think her sim
ple and wasn’t put off by her hugeness. Ultimately, however, the circlets of the ring hadn’t come from Harric, but the Phyros-rider, and as such they were a symbol of hope, not betrayal.

  She studied them in the palm of her glove, where they fell naturally into a common center, as if a single ring. Tugging her glove off with her teeth, she slipped the rings on her smallest finger. Warmth and regret filled her, and she realized she would miss Harric in spite of herself. The realization surprised her, but, unaccountably, it pleased her as well. It also seemed not only possible but probable she would find the Phyros-rider and, against all odds, find a mentor in him.

  As she replaced the gauntlet over the trinket, her mind turned toward the stables and escape. Her rank would protect her, if it came to a confrontation, but the Sapphire would almost surely know her father, and she did not want word of her whereabouts to reach her family. If she could saddle her horse unmolested, she was as good as free. With any luck, her armor would in fact be an effective disguise; she did not want trouble or bloodshed to complicate things further.

  As she made for the stairwell, her wrist brushed an unfamiliar lump on her belt. Her brow furrowed as she uncovered a sock of coins tucked carefully behind a buckle. After a moment’s puzzlement, she recognized it, and muttered a curse that included Harric’s name.

  It was her share of the squire’s coin.

  Yet even as Krato knew victory, the mortal horse Imblis stumbled, gravely wounded. Krato’s power was not in healing, nor could he persuade the goddess Selese to aid him. So the Lord of Dominion opened his veins and joined them with the mare’s. Thus by his Blood was she made immortal and cruel like her master, and he renamed her Malhourig, mother of the immortal herds.

  —From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

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