Lucretia was neither of those things now. She was hurting and haunted by the awareness that no matter how kind Kestrel was to her every night, she would awaken the next morning and still be a slave, owned and controlled by humans. Kestrel would kiss her occasionally, usually as a friend, sometimes with compassion, and her eyes would reveal the conflict within her – a wish that she could truly feel desire, even under the circumstances, mixed with a wary distrust, and even fear.
Kestrel was driven to the conclusion that he had to send her home to Center Trunk, so that both her body and her soul would be free of the stress of her circumstances among the humans.
One night, when Lucretia was asleep, he slowly rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. “Dewberry, Dewberry, Dewberry,” he called his friend in a slow, gentle voice.
“Beloved Kestrel, I am glad you called, so that I could find you, because I need to talk to you. But where are we, and why do you call so late?” the sprite asked as she arrived several moments later. The room was dark, and Kestrel could only see her outline.
He told her where he was, in the city of Graylee. “Why did you want to find me?” he asked.
“Jonson believes there is a way to vanquish the monsters in his swamp, but the solution is in a place that is not a part of the world you know. There is an object there that he believes may be used to sweep the monsters away from our lands It is not part of the world I live in either, and our loving words and thoughts do not travel from here to there as they do in the world we know,” Dewberry explained, though her words seemed unusually unsettled.
“Dewberry, whatever you wish to say, do not feel nervous,” Kestrel said softly. “I trust you with my life, you know.”
She smiled at him. “You are the best human and elf friend I have!” she laughed, and he laughed with her.
“Well, I want to tell you that I am going with Jonson, and I will not be able to hear or respond to your summons for many weeks, perhaps months. The other place is isolated from this world – totally and completely. There is only a single portal through which any travel can occur between them,” she told him. “I cannot be here to help you, and I know you are in a place where there is danger.”
“Dewberry,” Kestrel held out his hand, and fumbled in the dark until hegrasped hers, then held it gently. “You must go with your husband and do what is best for his nation. That is most important. When you are back, we will find one another, and we will laugh at how boring my life has become!” he told her.
“Can I do anything for you before I go?” Dewberry asked. “We will be leaving very soon – within a day or two.”
“I called you because I do have a favor to ask,” Kestrel said. He opened the door of the bathroom. “In my bed in there is an elf woman, one who is a captive slave of the humans, who has been treated badly. I want you to please get friends, and take her back to Alicia tonight, back to safety and freedom among her own people.”
“Among your people, too,” Dewberry whispered gently.
“I think so,” Kestrel agreed. “Sometimes I’m not sure what people I belong to, who will claim me,” his voice trailed off. “But yes, among the elves.”
Dewberry patted him softly on the back. “I’ll return soon,” she said, and disappeared.
Kestrel gently pressed the door wide, and slowly walked across the room, then looked down at the sleeping Lucretia, faintly illuminated by starlight coming in through the windows. There was a shadow of sorrow on her face even in her sleep. Kestrel quietly mourned the treatment the girl had received and the harm that had been done to her once-vibrant spirit, until the silence of the room was gently interrupted by the whispered arrival of Dewberry and two other sprites.
Lucretia stirred, perhaps uneasy under the surveillance, and her eyes opened as the sprites descended upon her and she looked up at Kestrel, her eyes widening. “What’s happening?” she cried.
“You’re going home Lucretia. You’re so unhappy here, and I don’t want to see you this way; it hurts me to see you hurting so much,” Kestrel told her.
“I don’t want to leave you alone here!” she said, sitting up.
“Lucretia, I care about you too much to want to see you living like this,” Kestrel responded, as the sprites shifted restlessly.
“You care, even now? With what I’ve become?” she asked in a tone of doubt. “You haven’t tried to do anything with me despite every opportunity in the world.”
“You’re spirit isn’t ready for intimacy, not here in this land – nothing that would happen here would ever be tender. Go home and find peace. I’ll see you again one day, I promise– and I’ll keep my promise this time too,” Kestrel told her. He stepped back. “Take her home, Dewberry,” he commanded, and saw the sprites descend around her, and then emptiness appeared in his bed, and he was alone.
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and rested his forehead in the palms of his hands, and sat there motionlessly, considering what he had done, until Dewberry surprised him by reappearing a few minutes later. “She is crying Kestrel-lover,” the sprite told him. “We woke up the doctor woman you lust after when we brought this broken one to her. The broken one is crying, she wants to be back here with you. She told the other one that she thought you did not care for her, and she does not want to leave you alone.”
“Thank you Dewberry,” Kestrel answered. He put his arm around the sprite’s shoulder and hugged her.
“Do you want me to bring her back, or do you want to go join her?” the sprite asked.
“No,” Kestrel answered after a long pause. “It’s best that she become accustomed to life there, and get healed – both her body and her spirit have been hurt while she was here. I know Alicia will take good care of her.
“Thank you for your good deed so late at night Dewberry,” he said appreciatively. “Now go home and snuggle up to Jonson and tell him what a good person you are,” he directed,
“I’ll do as you command!” she told him as she kissed his cheek and disappeared.
Kestrel had no good plan for explaining Lucretia’s disappearance. He intended to simply say that he had last seen her in his room, and let the rest remain a mystery. He lay alone in bed that night, getting little sleep as he thought about the departed girl, and prayed to his Elven gods that she would quickly find peace and contentment through her restoration to freedom in her native land. He wondered if trying to live the shadowy life of a spy had caused him to secretly plan Lucretia’s removal, and to carry it out without informing her in advance, without giving her a voice in deciding her own fate. Would she, could she ever trust him again, he wondered.
When he awoke late in the morning, Kestrel walked downstairs, carrying his staff, but not using it as his injured hip continued to mend little-by-little. Margo was sitting at the breakfast table alone, and Kestrel realized as he sat down that the two of them were alone together for the first time since the night he had found Lucretia.
“How are you today?” he asked. “What plans do you have?”
“Picco and Creata are leaving today to go visit their mother down by the shore of the East Sea,” Margo answered. “After we see them leave, I’m going to a concert at the temple of Shaish. Picco would never let me go to something like that if she were with me. I’ll be thirty years younger than the next youngest person there,” she gently smiled.
“And what will you do? Go to the armory?” she asked.
“As soon as I’m done here, unless I can do anything for you,” he replied.
“No, thank you; I don’t need anything. I believe Philip is already at the armory this morning. Please remind him that he promised to go to the concert with me, and make him come back here by noon so he can see Creata and Picco on their way before they go,” Margo asked, and soon thereafter they departed as Kestrel headed to the armory. The conversation had been cordial, but there was an air of reserve about Margo that Kestrel felt keenly, a barrier that kept the two apart still.
When Kestrel arrived at the armory, Phil
ip was there, and was being sorely tested by Sleek, who demonstrated a blazingly fast blade against which Philip, a good swordsman in his own right, was hard pressed to defend. Kestrel laid aside his staff as he put on pads and picked up a practice blade.
“Kestrel, care to help your friend, mighty warrior?” Sleek mockingly called out.“Want to try a doubles battle?”
Sleek’s tone in addressing Kestrel, and his implied belittlement of Philip rasped on Kestrel’s raw nerves, which were still acutely fragile from the decision to set Lucretia free, and the subsequent lack of sleep. “If Philip wants a partner, I’ll accept,” he said, as he picked up his staff and carried it over to the practice mat. The staff was little used and not understood at all among the nobles of Graylee, who saw it as a common man’s poor weapon. Kestrel knew better though, that with his staff he could easily best an overconfident swordsman who had no experience against the weapon.
“Kestrel saved me once; perhaps he’ll save me again,” Philip said through gritted teeth, but he smiled as Kestrel gave a surreptitious wink. Sleek motioned to a friend, and an extremely large man, one who had been at Creata’s dinner party on Kestrel’s first night in the city, and one who Kestrel had seen savagely practice boxing several times, joined the group.
“I’d like to use my staff for a bout, if that’s acceptable,” Kestrel held the weapon up. “I’ve only used it as a crutch since I came to Graylee City, and I’d like to try to knock some of the rust off of it.”
“It’s your bout to lose,” Sleek smiled brilliantly, looking forward to another victory. “And it’s Philip’s to lose as well, of course.”
They all took positions, then commenced on the count of three. Kestrel was opposite Brace, the boxer, and as the man charged at him with an evident intent to skewer Kestrel with a hard stab, Kestrel employed his staff to come down hard on top of the blade, trapping it momentarily on the floor, then he wheeled the upper end of the staff around to catch the slicing motion that Sleek was delivering against Philip, raising Sleek’s blade out of its plane of attack, and opening an opportunity for Philip to deliver a telling blow against Sleek.
Brace recovered from his surprise, and when he found his blade trapped he responded with a step forward and a vicious forearm blow to Kestrel’s temple, an attack so far out of the bounds of allowed practice maneuvers that it caught Kestrel completely unprepared. He fell to the ground, nearly unconscious, and when he opened his eyes, both Brace and Sleek had left him behind to attack Philip, trapping him in the corner of the mat.
Kestrel rolled over and swept his staff hard along the ground, hitting both men in the ankles and knocking them to the ground in pained surprise.
“I guess that’s the match, since you’re both down,” he spoke up quickly as he rose to his knees. “Good victory Philip.”
“That’s no victory!” Sleek said in outrage. “That’s not even a real weapon you’re using.”
“You’re saying that I’m unarmed and I beat you?” Kestrel asked with a wicked grin. He knew he shouldn’t be goading the men, that he needed to be on good terms with everyone he could if he was going to be successful in his role as a spy, gathering information from everyone he could, but Brace’s blatantly illegal blow, and Sleek’s willingness to overlook it drove him past his good judgment.
“That’s a good lesson for everyone,” Mills said, stepping onto the mat. “A staff is a highly effective weapon when properly used,” he said. “Now, you go take a breather,” he told Kestrel. “And you go look at his head to make sure he’s got his senses,” h e directed Philip.
Kestrel sat on a bench against the wall, and Philip did indeed examine his head. “You’ve got a welt forming there,” the observer announced.
“I feel a headache starting already,” Kestrel replied as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “That was outrageous,” he added.
“You don’t want to get in the way of those two when they’re together,” Philip answered. “Sleek will try to maintain an appearance of being a good sport when he’s on his own, but when he knows he’s got Brace behind him he’ll bully anyone in his way.”
“Is he a friend of the ambassador from Uniontown?” Kestrel asked.
“One of his biggest fans,” Philip confirmed.
“I’m going to go upstairs and practice archery for a while,” Kestrel decided. “My head hurts too much to do anything else.
“And you promised Margo you’d see Creata and Picco off, then go to a concert,” he remembered to add.
Philip smacked his head. “You’re right!” he exclaimed. He started to strip off his pads. “Thanks for the reminder, and thanks for fighting with me just now,” he told Kestrel as he walked away.
Kestrel rose and went upstairs to the nearly deserted archery range. Only one person was using the cramped facility, a slender youth Kestrel hadn’t seen before. Silently, he selected an isolated spot at the far end of the room, and began to systematically shoot his arrows, firing shot after shot as fast as he could, until his arm was sore. He took a break to go retrieve his shafts from the target, and came back to find the other archer observing him.
“You’re very good. You could win the tournament,” the other boy said.
“What tournament?” Kestrel asked, as a fleeting memory of meeting Lucretia at the Center Trunk tournament flashed through his mind.
“The prince is going to hold a tournament to find the champion archer in the city. The tournament starts next week. That’s what I’m practicing for,” he added proudly, “but I’m nowhere as good as you.”
“How do you enter the tournament?” Kestrel asked, his mind eager to learn more. It would be a good event for him to enter, he figured, and to do well in, gaining more contacts. He needed to start producing some tangible information to pass along to Center Trunk, he told himself.
“Mills downstairs can take care of it for you,” the youth assured Kestrel, whose head continued to hurt so badly he decided to go home and rest for the remainder of the day.
“I’d like to enter the archery tournament,” Kestrel told Mills as he returned downstairs.
“Would you? You’ll be a tough one to beat. There’s an entry fee of one gold,” the trainer informed Kestrel, who fished a coin from his pocket and paid his fee, then left the building and returned to Creata’s home, where he laid down on his bed and closed his eyes as the headache continued to trouble him.
There was a knock at the door, sometime after Kestrel had lain down, and he rose to answer the door. One of the maids stood timidly outside as he looked at her quizzically. “Master Kestrel, we wondered if you have seen Lucretia, your friend, the elf? We’ve not seen her since last night when she came up here to, visit, you,” the maid stumbled in her wording as she inquired.
“I saw her last night, but she wasn’t here when I woke up this morning,” Kestrel answered. “Could she have gone with Creata and Piccodown to their home estate?”
“I suppose that’s possible,” the maid said dubiously. “I’m sorry to have interrupted,” she added as she quickly moved down the hall away from Kestrel’s room.
He lay down again and considered the fact that Lucretia’s disappearance was now noted. He might have bought a few days of grace by offering the suggestion that she had traveled away, but at best it would only be until Creata and Picco returned before questions would be asked again about the missing slave girl, and he would have to simply keep saying that he hadn’t seen her since the night before.
He slept on and off throughout the afternoon and into the night, then rose very early the next morning, and went out for a stroll through the empty streets as dawn slowly cast its light through the city. When he returned, Margo was at breakfast, and he sat down to join her.
“How was the concert?” he asked as he began to eat his sliced fruit.
“The concert was lovely, and Philip was there, thank you very much,” Margo replied. She paused, then added, “He said that you came to his rescue once again yesterday at
the armory, and he’s grateful.”
“He shouldn’t give me any credit,” Kestrel said modestly. “He was up against a bully or two, and holding his own as well as he could. That Brace is a tough brawler; I wouldn’t want to meet him unarmed.”
“Nor would I want to meet him alone,” Margo said vehemently. “Oh, by the way, a message came that your clothes are ready at the tailor’s shop,” she said in a brighter tone.
“I’ll have to go pick them up today after practice,” Kestrel said with more enthusiasm than he felt. The clothes had seemed to delight Margo and Picco more than they had excited him.
“Would you like for Philip and me to come with you?” Margo asked tentatively. “You’ll have to try them on to make sure they fit, so you’ll need an extra pair of eyes along with you.”
Kestrel had missed Margo’s company since he had taken Lucretia as his supposed lover, and Philip had kept so busy that their paths had seldom passed in the city either, except for the times they all went to parties together in the evening. Though Kestrel enjoyed Picco’s warmth, charm and humor, acknowledged that she was a pretty girl, and found that Creata had a good heart, it was Philip and Margo who he looked to as the most admirable pair of humans he had become acquainted with. The next few days beckoned delightfully in terms of their promise of more time spent with the siblings.
“I’d be delighted to have you join me,” Kestrel told her, giving a genuine smile of delight that brought a responding smile from Margo.
“Let me go collect my things and head to the armory then, so that I get back in time for our outing,” he said as he stood and climbed the stairs. He entered his room, and was struck by how empty it felt given his knowledge that Lucretia would not return. After a moment of reflection, he gathered his weapons, went downstairs and out the door to the armory.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace Page 12