The Way of the Shield

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  They arrived at her carriage, waiting near the edge of the plaza. Amaya and Dayne loaded Jerinne in, and she got on the outer runner on the other side without even looking at the rest of them.

  Lady Mirianne touched Dayne’s face, “However long it takes you, I’ll be here.” She got in the carriage with Jerinne. Dayne turned to Hemmit and Maresh.

  “Are you coming with us?”

  “We better not,” Hemmit said. “I . . . I still need to find Lin, make sure she’s all right. And . . .”

  “I understand,” Dayne said. He took Hemmit’s arm with friendship. “When I can, I’ll come to the Rabbit. We’ll . . . we’ll talk things over, all right?”

  “Good,” Hemmit said.

  Dayne got on the runner and the carriage drove off.

  “Are you all right?” Maresh asked once they were alone.

  “Nothing two days of sleep and a bottle of wine won’t cure,” Hemmit said. “As long as Lin is well. Oy, Harns!”

  Harns had stayed lurking about within earshot, which didn’t surprise Hemmit in the slightest. “Well, well, looks like the little Veracity has an inside line. Good friends with Tarians, are we?”

  “Leave it be,” Hemmit said. “Look, the injured from the riot, where are they? Where’d they get taken?”

  Harns shrugged. “Depends on quite a few things. The dead—”

  “There’s dead?” Maresh asked.

  Harns nodded. “A few, they got brought to the church until they can be sorted out, identified. Yellowshields took off the ones who were really bad. Hartfort Ward, I would think. Maybe the RCM Ward. The ones who could walk and weren’t ironed up went off on their merry way.”

  Hemmit went through that list. They’d check the church for Lin, then Hartfort, and RCM. He silently prayed to a few choice saints that she wouldn’t be at the first place.

  “So, really, you’re in tight with this Tarian?” Harns asked. “Because there’s something not right with him, I can tell you that.”

  “How so?” Maresh asked.

  “Just what I saw from up in the galleries. That big guy, Tharek, he’s killed one Parliamentarian, threatening the rest, and what does your Tarian friend do? Goes in and talks all nice. Acts like his friend. Puts his weapons down. I’m telling you, something’s not right, like a wolf in the barn.”

  “Dayne’s not a wolf in the barn,” Hemmit said. “He’s—”

  “Well, that’s for me to find out, hmm? What a real newsman does. I’ll be off.”

  Once he was gone, Hemmit and Maresh walked over to the church. An idea started to gel in Hemmit’s head. Sentences were crashing together into arguments, truths he had to tell. He knew what they were going to have to do.

  “Once we find Lin, we need to get to our press,” he told Maresh. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “Saints know we’ve got plenty to write for the next issue,” Maresh said.

  “Not an issue,” Hemmit said. His fingers itched with the desire to write down what was percolating in his brain. “I’ve got something bigger in mind.”

  Chapter 27

  NO ONE SPOKE on the ride in Lady Mirianne’s carriage to the chapterhouse. Very few people were around when they arrived, save members of the staff and a handful of Initiates. Jerinne was quickly swept up by a few of the staff and brought to the infirmary ward.

  Dayne wanted to linger with Lady Mirianne, but Amaya spoke before he could. “We’ve been ordered to confinement. Given our prior difficulties with following orders, we should comply. Immediately.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dayne said. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “I am but your servant, noble friend,” Mirianne said, bowing with a flourish. She then came up and gave him one more kiss, this one genteel and chaste, as Amaya stared at the two of them. Lady Mirianne then bowed to Amaya. “Madam, I am at your disposal as well.”

  Amaya nodded back, grim-faced. Mirianne took that with grace and returned to her carriage.

  Dayne followed Amaya through the lobby and up the stairs to quarters, Amaya dropping her belt, boots, and tunic along the way. Once he caught up to her, she was in just shirtsleeves and slacks.

  “Quite the lady she is. And she is but your servant,” Amaya said.

  “She has been my friend for a very long time,” Dayne replied. As much as he respected Amaya, he didn’t feel he should have to justify his relationship with Lady Mirianne to her.

  “I’m glad she’s there for you, because you’re going to need her.” Amaya reached her own quarters, and turned on him. “I think we can say with near certainty that you will not be promoted to Adept.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dayne said. It had occurred to him that the one man still alive on the Parliament committee was the one who hated him. He looked at her, blood still on her face, stitching and bandage on her forehead. “Shouldn’t you go to the infirmary?”

  “Yellowshield patched me fine, gave me a dose of something, said to rest. And we were given orders.”

  “Even still—”

  “I’ll be getting plenty of rest in confinement. This isn’t my first head injury.” She held herself in the doorframe. “You know, Master Denbar would have been very proud of you out there today.”

  “Proud of me breaking orders, letting members of Parliament and who knows how many marshals get killed? I remember a very different man.”

  “No, I let a member of Parliament get killed,” she said. “I was sloppy, got ironed, and was in no position to save anyone. Cotton died right in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything.”

  “I got there as soon as I could,” Dayne said. Though he wondered if he had spent too much time talking to Maresh and Hemmit, and not enough time chasing after Tharek.

  “And as soon as you got there, no one else died. You arrived, and put down your weapons, and still stopped him. And once you had him, you made sure he stayed alive. If that . . . if that’s not a Tarian, I don’t know what is.”

  “I appreciate that you think so.” Then he found himself saying something that he didn’t know he felt with all his heart until he was saying it. “It doesn’t matter, though. Because no matter what a Parliament committee or the Grandmaster decides, they don’t change me or who I am. Tharek kept ranting that they had no right to define him, but . . . he let them.”

  “So you don’t want to be an Adept?”

  “No, of course I do,” Dayne said. “But no matter what happens, I am the man that I am, with the skills that I have, and I’ll do whatever I can to help whoever I can.” He pointed to her tunic, lying on the ground by her feet. “I don’t need them to approve me to be worthy. But the fact that you do . . . that means a lot to me.” He started for his quarters, then turned back to her. “Everything I did in there, disarming myself, talking Tharek down . . . I was able to do because I knew you were there. I knew you would free yourself and have my shield.”

  She looked down at her tunic, and picked it up off the floor. “No matter what either of us is wearing, Dayne . . . I’ll always have your shield.”

  “And I yours.”

  She smiled one more time—a melancholy, halfhearted smile, and went into her quarters.

  Dayne did the same. He could live with not becoming an Adept. However, he wasn’t going to tempt fate any further by not going into confinement.

  * * *

  Amaya sat down on her bunk, every part of her body hurting. Dayne was probably right, she should check in with the infirmary. The Yellowshield had treated her head and wrists, and that was probably enough. The sew-ups in the infirmary weren’t going to tell her anything new.

  Confined to quarters for saving the Parliament. That was definitely a sign of trouble. She had been feeling that for a while, but now she was certain. Things were wrong in the Tarian chapterhouse. Wrong in the Order.

  The package had been the tipping point. It
had arrived the same day as Dayne, probably on the same boat, but Dayne clearly knew nothing about it. Perhaps that was for the best. Presumably, Master Denbar arranged for it to be sent to her in the event of his death.

  She reached under her bunk and pulled out the box, needing to look at it all again. The box itself was nothing—an innocuous keepsake box, decorated with Lacanjan seashells. Chosen because it looked frivolous, no doubt. It was a lovely box, but what mattered were the three things inside.

  First, the locket. That was there to authenticate everything else. She pulled it out of the box. Simple chain, the whole thing painted tin and copper. Not remotely valuable. Except she knew it on sight.

  Her mother’s.

  Her mother. Master Denbar’s cousin. Their secret. She insisted that no one in the Order know their relation to each other, not even Dayne, lest she be considered favored for reasons that had nothing to do with her skills.

  She was already fighting enough battles on that front.

  Second, the letter. That had confused her at first. It started with random nonsense, about the beauty of Lacanja, how much Master Denbar missed her and hoped for the best in her career. If anyone else read it, they would find it a testament to how much Master Denbar cared about her, at least as a student.

  Sentimental fluff. Master Denbar would never write things like that to her. She had seen through that quickly, and decoded the message he had embedded within it, hidden in the first letter of every sentence.

  Lacanja is an exile. Be wary. Find them. Stop them. Save Druthal.

  “Them,” she could only presume, was part of the third thing in the box. This, she still hadn’t fully understood—it was decidedly odd—but she presumed Master Denbar felt even in this posthumous gift, he had to be careful.

  Ten cards from a playing deck. Only the ten high-trump cards. The Grand Ten: The Parliamentarian, The Man of the People, the Lord, The Duchess, The Lady, The Priest, The Soldier, The Justice, The Mage, and The Warrior.

  There was a Grand Ten out there, he was saying. Ten people who needed to be found, needed to be stopped.

  If he knew more than that, if there was some other clue, she hadn’t figured it out yet.

  She looked at the cards one more time. They were from an unusual deck, certainly. Rather than the Grand Ten depicted as the explicit Ten from history, they were symbolic icons. Not The Parliamentarian, Geophry Haltom, but more the idea of a Parliamentarian. Same for all of them.

  Which stood out especially with The Warrior. Not Oberon Micarum. Not a Spathian Master. No specific tunic at all, marking him of any Order. Just a warrior with a sword and shield.

  Or shield and sword, she mused.

  She put it all away and slid it under her bed. She needed to rest, close her eyes, and think about this when her head was clear.

  But for now, share this with no one. Especially not Dayne. Not yet.

  * * *

  There had been medicine for the pain. Jerinne didn’t know what it was, but it was certainly glorious. A few minutes after drinking it she no longer felt any pain in her leg. A few after that she no longer felt her legs at all, and she had to force herself to look down and see that they were still there.

  “Don’t you dare cut it off,” she mumbled to the physician.

  “That isn’t my plan,” the physician said. “But plans do sometimes get away from us.”

  He then took his blade and cut into Jerinne’s leg right by the break. Jerinne didn’t feel a thing, but it was still a blade cutting her leg. Somehow seeing it but not feeling it was far worse than any pain Tharek had caused her. Jerinne’s stomach churned and threatened to leap out her throat until she lay back down.

  “Happens every time,” the physician chuckled.

  Jerinne closed her eyes, and opened them a moment later, but clearly more than a moment had passed, as Raila and Enther were hovering over her.

  “When the blazes did you get here?” she asked.

  “Been here for a bit,” Enther said. “Can’t you manage to keep a uniform clean?”

  “That wouldn’t be any fun.”

  Raila looked her over with a critical eye. “Your leg is set, and the physician seemed pleased with the work he did. I think you will get to walk again.”

  “Walk, or fight?”

  “I think it’s one and the same for you,” she snorted. “I doubt I can convince my cousin to work her magic a second time for you.”

  “It’s not a dress uniform,” Jerinne mumbled.

  “And it’s not mine,” Vien said. When did she get here? And where did Enther go?

  Jerinne laughed, and then looked again, but Vien was gone, as well as Enther. Now her leg was a dull ache, but in a strange way it still wasn’t there. Raila had sat next to her. Jerinne was losing time between the moments.

  “Clearly I’m not passing Trials,” Jerinne said. She wasn’t sure why she said it, but with Raila there, it seemed like the thing to say.

  “I didn’t see you until this morning,” Raila said. “You came back in with Heldrin. And I barely saw you then. Was it a marvelous evening at Lady Henson’s household?”

  Words poured out of Jerinne, as if she had no idea how not to say them. “The lady’s household is amazing. Understated, in its own way, but she has a style that . . . the food was unlike anything, and so much. And the play!”

  “There was a play?”

  “Strangest thing I ever saw. Some sort of Tsouljan or Kieran version of Whit’s history plays, with masks and something else. And then I ended up in the water closet which is where I woke up.”

  “You slept in the water closet?”

  “On the floor.”

  “Sounds uncomfortable.” Jerinne thought she sounded amused about this. Or pleased.

  “I think it was. Not quite as uncomfortable as I was a bit ago, though. I mean . . .” She looked down at her leg, now heavily bound and splinted. “That was quite horrible.”

  “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Fine but out on the street.” Raila opened her mouth to protest, but Jerinne interrupted her. Her head was clearing, and her leg throbbed with ache. She liked feeling it, knowing it was real. “Can I pass Trials? I don’t think I can, not like this.”

  “But—”

  “But I let a member of Parliament die on my watch?”

  “You’re just an Initiate! You shouldn’t have been put in that position!”

  “But I was in that position, Raila! I was given a shield and told to be the one who kept . . . to keep . . . they all . . . five men murdered in front of me. And I was useless!”

  “You’re still alive.”

  “Five dead men, and I’m still alive,” Jerinne said. “Which makes me the worst Tarian on record.”

  “I think we might want to check the records,” she said. She smiled, clearly thinking she was joking. Normally, Jerinne would find that charming, even disarming, but at the moment it just annoyed her

  “I need to rest,” Jerinne said. “You better do the same. You have Trials in the morning.”

  Chapter 28

  FOR THREE DAYS Kemmer had stayed holed up in a dingy dockside inn, sharing a room with Braning and Gillem. Yand had been killed in the riot, Kemmer wasn’t even sure how. Wissen and Jala, those two . . . Kemmer and Braning had managed to get them out of harm’s way when the riot first started, but then lost track of them both. And Jala, especially, was more than she let on. A mage. Probably a spy from Druth Intelligence. Which meant so was Wissen. Unless he was as much of a dupe as everyone else. Could Druth Intelligence do that? Make a man believe he had a sister? Kemmer had heard stories of things like that. Maybe it was true. He wanted to believe Wissen was a good sort. But last he had seen, the man’s skull had been cracked, and he was taken below when Tharek went down there.

  Tharek. Kemmer wasn’t sure what to think of that man. The n
ewssheets had made him the story, like he was the voice of the Patriots. Perhaps because he was the one who held the Parliament hostage with nothing but a blade and his own force of personality. Kemmer was amazed he had been taken alive.

  Lannic was dead. The newssheets made that much clear, but there was still a lot of mystery as to what exactly happened. “Investigation” was a key word used. “Inquiry.” “The full details are still being explored.” It stank of cover-up, which it surely was. Four members of Parliament were dead, by Tharek’s hand, but the rest was unclear. And even though the Parliament was the victim of Tharek’s crimes, the public’s distrust of the whole august body was at a new high.

  To that degree, Lannic’s goal was achieved. He might have even considered that martyring himself for that was worth it. Kemmer didn’t think so. He’d far rather return to the life he had a few weeks ago, sharing coffee and ideas with his friend.

  If Tharek was naming names or giving secrets away, there had been no sign of it. They had spent the three days convinced that Constabulary or marshals or Intelligence was going to kick down the door at any moment. Gillem had ventured out from time to time, picking up newssheets and checking out other things. The inn was their last resort, after they attempted to return to Tharek’s safehouse. Tharek had locked the blasted thing down when they left, and none of them could figure out how to open up the secret doors.

  But three days came and went, and they remained unmolested.

  “I’m going back home,” Gillem said on the evening of the third day. “If they even had a clue about us still being out and about—or cared—they’d have swarmed the place by now. Ain’t anyone even sniffing around it.”

  “You’re sure?” Kemmer asked.

  “I got neighbors I trust. If sticks were looking, they’d tell me. And keep their traps shut. And I’m sick of smelling the two of you.”

  “That’s the truth,” Kemmer said, looking over to Braning. Braning had been pretty quiet the whole time. Kemmer hadn’t heard a word out of him all day.