by Jeff Wilson
“But why leave Nar Edor?” Ruach said, wanting more of an answer, certain that there was something Ledrin had not revealed.
“He thinks that I betrayed him, and blames me for what happened,” Ledrin said, looking pained as he openly acknowledged his role in Aisen’s disappearance.
“For what happened to his brother… how can Aisen blame you for that?”
“He has reasons, and they are all good ones,” Ledrin said. “If I had taken him into confidence, shared my plans, if I had just trusted him, it could have been prevented.”
Ruach waited for Ledrin to say more, but the commander remained silent. “If I am going to be of help to you in this, I need to know,” Ruach said, urging Ledrin to tell him the full truth.
“I kept things from him, important things,” Ledrin said, hesitant about being more specific. Ruach kept silent and waited for Ledrin to continue. “Among other mistakes, I interfered with a messenger from Lord Pendren, who was trying to warn Aisen about what Beonen was planning,” Ledrin finally explained.
It was a startling revelation. Aisen had been kept from learning that his younger brother had been planning to murder him. Ruach reacted as could be expected. He could not hide his disapproval as he looked on at his commander in stunned silence.
“I didn’t know what the message was,” Ledrin quickly qualified. “The messenger refused to speak with me or anyone else. I believed that Lord Pendren was trying to persuade Aisen to cede his claim. I knew he had been leading a group that was advocating for Beonen to inherit.”
“That might have been for the best,” said Ruach, struggling to figure out what this new information meant. “Beonen did not need to kill Aisen in order to inherit. In truth, I think Aisen would have preferred to remain in the Sigil Corps if he could, and let his brother run the House.”
“That is precisely the thing that I feared most. I could not let it happen, and for that reason, I kept your captain out on patrols where no one would be able to find him.”
This was making more sense to Ruach now. He had been with Aisen on those patrols along unpopulated reaches of the northern coasts, for months at a time, lasting right up until Aisen left them when he received word that Kyreth Edorin had died.
“If you had let Pendren’s messenger speak with Aisen, none of this would have happened,” Ruach summarized.
“I didn’t trust Pendren,” said Ledrin, “but worse than that, I didn’t trust Aisen.”
Ruach could better understand now why his captain would have had reason to leave. Aisen had many more enemies than friends in Nar Edor, and his allies had now failed his trust as well. “He really is gone then,” Ruach said. “But there are not many ways a man can leave Nar Edor. How would he have gotten away without anyone knowing?”
“That is what you need to figure out,” said Ledrin. “Go to the Rendish districts and the dockside areas and learn what you can, but absolutely no one can know why you are there.”
It was going to be difficult to investigate when he couldn’t ask any questions that would betray his purpose, or seek help from friends within the Sigil Corps. Ruach understood, though, why the circumstances required exceptional caution. It would weaken the position of the Sigil Corps if it were confirmed that they were defending the succession claims of a man who had abandoned them.
“There are foreigners recently arrived in the districts,” Ledrin continued. “Drab looking men, asking questions about Aisen. One would assume their interests may be to his detriment, but we aren’t sure who they are or what their purpose is. If you learn anything, I need to know as much as I can.”
“And if I learn where it is that Aisen has gone?”
“Then take your friend Oren with you, and go after him,” said Ledrin.
“Why Oren?” wondered Ruach, “and why me for that matter?”
“Aisen will still trust you Ruach, and if it comes to it, Oren is the only man among your company who could equal Aisen in a fight,” Ledrin explained.
“If Aisen refuses, you’re saying we should force him to return?” Ruach asked. The situation might be desperate, but Ruach was surprised that Ledrin would suggest this. Aisen wasn’t going to be of much use if he did not return willingly. Quite the opposite, he might even become a hindrance to Ledrin’s ambitions.
“No, I don’t want to provoke him further,” Ledrin clarified, “but it might aid your cause if he believes that you are capable of making him do so.”
The domineering approach that Ledrin was suggesting, did not strike Ruach as being the best way to restore Aisen’s faith in the Sigil Corps. Then again, Ruach realized, Ledrin was entrusting him with this matter, and that at least, demonstrated his commander’s reputation for wisdom.
Chapter 6
The Blood Prince
After two days spent resting in bed, interrupted only by regular cold baths, the swelling and pain had eased, but the prolonged inactivity left Edryd restive and in need of an excuse to work out the soreness in his muscles. Though the pain was subsiding, the bruising looked even worse than before, with black regions fading into expanding edges of yellow and green. His range of motion was returning, but Edryd often felt cold and weak to a point where he would begin to shake.
Irial, calling his condition of form of dyscrasia, said it was an imbalance of black bile building up in his body, and had suggested switching to heated baths, extra bed coverings at night, and a regiment of exercise to help speed his recovery. She had refused to further discuss what they had talked about on that first day, and remained unwilling to elaborate on how she had meant to aid him in his desire to leave An Innis. That was all he could think about, finding some way to get away from this place. He could feel his past catching up to him, and he needed to stay ahead of it.
Seoras, seeing him actively moving around this morning, had suggested a light sparring session. Edryd declined the invitation, but his host insisted that they would resume tomorrow. Tolvanes appeared not long afterwards with the shorter of the two arming swords. Seoras, it seemed, presumed to know what kind of weapon Edryd was most accustomed to and was picking the sword for him this time. Though Edryd was looking for an activity to get his blood moving, he wasn’t ready to fight Seoras. He was lightheaded just from walking around the barracks buildings.
Insisting that he was not sufficiently recovered, Edryd stressed his doubts about the wisdom of fighting Seoras again so soon, and made an effort at persuading Tolvanes to help make the case to Seoras for a delay. This accomplished nothing, aside from prompting the older man to offer unwanted advice. “He will be easier on you going forward,” Tolvanes reassured. In an attempt at encouragement and praise, Tolvanes then followed this up with a compliment. “You are actually the more technically skilled fighter,” he said. Edryd could not tell if the man was being sincere.
These expressions of faith and confidence in his abilities did not make Edryd believe he could win, though after the debasing defeat he had suffered, he desperately wanted to believe that he could. As the day faded into evening, and the time in which to prepare continued to shrink, Edryd began to feel trapped under the unpleasant knowledge that fate was pulling him in a direction that he could not control.
Edryd would have liked to dismiss this mood as the ordinary anxious apprehension that naturally came before an impending conflict, but he understood himself better than that. He knew it for what was—a rational and well placed terror at the prospect of facing Seoras. In this ominous frame of mind, he went to bed and unsuccessfully tried to get some sleep, feeling weaker now than ever. Before even the first hints of light crept over the mountains to the East, Edryd dressed silently. He secured the keys which Irial had returned to him between his hip and his belt, and pocketed the emblems that he had once worn on his cloak. Leaving the sword behind, he slipped away, feeling relieved but also more than a little ashamed.
His linen shirt held in little heat, so Edryd felt rather exposed while walking through the cold morning air. He had not been willing to wear the soldi
er’s coat that had been given to him, and Irial had not made good on her promise to procure a replacement for the one that had been burned. He could only shiver and bear it a while longer as he waited for the sun to rise and warm the earth. He did have the deposit note from Seoras, which would help in negotiating the purchase of a good inconspicuous cloak, which he could hope would serve to keep him warm and also help him blend in. It was too early for that now. He was going to have to wait a while before anyone would be opening up a shop for the day.
Heading west through the curving streets of An Innis, Edryd had no specific destination in mind. He watched as the sun began to brighten the skies while leaving An Innis covered in shadow, blanketed beneath outlines of the forested mountains which rose up on the mainland, across the causeway to the east. Gradually, the palace high atop the island became a point of solitary illumination. Bathed in bright light, its white walls and towers stood alone above the darkness, which at this early hour extended out for miles over the open water beyond the island.
When Edryd reached the western shore he felt disappointed. The two piers, composed of massive stones which had been concreted together, were crowded with aging vessels in varying states of disrepair, but in something of an oddity, there was almost no human activity anywhere along this sea-side anchorage. This time of morning would have prompted a bustle of fishing crews anywhere else, but An Innis had little in common with other places in the world, and its inhabitants were not fishermen. The earliest intervals of the morning were not prime operating hours for swindlers, marauders, and clandestine markets.
With one basic goal foremost in his thoughts, Edryd went looking, hoping to find someone, anyone really, who might be connected to one of the docked vessels. He needed to find a ship that would take him somewhere far away from An Innis, but the deserted condition of the waterfront was making it a challenge to acquire the information that he needed. He had passed no one on his way here, and if not for a scattered handful of men out on the piers, the entire town might have been a deserted ruin.
When he made his way out beyond the shore and onto the northernmost of the two flat stonework pilings, Edryd quickly learned from the workers that there were no independently captained ships in An Innis. Everything was under the power of the Ard Ri and the four harbormasters. In what was, at times, a conflicting combination of coordination and competition, these men controlled the city and dominated its criminal enterprises. They owned all of the moorings and all of the local seagoing ships, all of the seafront warehouses, and most of the businesses that could be found in the city.
It was these men that Greven had warned him about, but there was no other means to arrange travel off of An Innis. Making a decision based on proximity, Edryd headed for a large building built up out of rough cut stone, positioned directly opposite the northernmost pier. This building unofficially housed, in something of an open secret, the offices for one of the four harbormasters, a man named Sidrin Eildach.
While speaking to the attendant manning the desk just inside the front of the building, as part of his enquiries into securing passage on a ship, Edryd made a hushed reference to the letter of deposit Seoras had given him. This man, looking a little frightened, told him in quite definite terms that there were no ships leaving An Innis, and that it would be quite impossible to arrange anything. He hadn’t said so directly, but the attendant didn’t seem to care much for the resident blade master of An Innis, and had become visibly anxious from the moment Edryd first whispered the name Aed Seoras. Sidrin Eildach’s organization apparently wanted no involvement with him, and Edryd was quietly but firmly ushered out of the office.
Edryd wasted no time in covering the distance some few blocks away to the headquarters of the next harbormaster. It was the home of Kedwyn Saivelle. The man owned many of the town’s local businesses, and he exerted pressure on and influence over the few establishments that he did not control outright. Saivelle had accomplished this through the ruthless use of a loyal mob of laborers and extortionists who answered directly to him. Edryd, who knew very little of this, guessed by the appearance of their respective buildings and the men who frequented them, that Eildach might have had more wealth, but Saivelle seemed to be the more powerful of the two.
At Saivelle’s home, he met with a man named Deneg, one of Saivelle’s several lieutenants. Edryd had learned the wisdom of concealing his connections to Seoras, but this left him without anything to offer as payment for arranging travel aboard one of Saivelle’s ships. To get around this, Edryd tried to find a position working his way onto a departing ship’s crew, but Eildach’s attendant had spoken not so far from the truth when he had said that there were no ships leaving An Innis. Ships that braved the waters near An Innis were consistently raided by local marauders. When a ship did leave, it did so in secret. Hiring on an unreferenced stranger onto a crew was too much of a risk.
In the interest of establishing his reputation, and ultimately working his way onto a crew, or at least obtaining a more complete understanding of the power structures in the town, Edryd accepted an offer for work as a longshoreman at a complex of warehouses adjacent to the southern pier. If nothing else it would provide reliable income to get by on while he worked out a way to leave An Innis.
Edryd was put to work beside another man, who with the use of a crudely constructed cart, was consolidating stockpiles of oil from two small cellars into more secure storage in a larger guarded building. He hadn’t met many people in his time here, so Edryd was surprised when he recognized the man that he would be working with.
“I was wondering about you,” Ivor remarked. “Couldn’t figure out where it was you ended up.”
“I’m still wondering myself,” Edryd deflected, not wanting to give Ivor an accounting of the past several days. Assuming Ivor didn’t know already, one less person who could make an association between him and Seoras would be for the best.
“I’m glad to have help,” Ivor said. “It isn’t what you would call desirable work, but it is honest. Well by An Innis standards, leastways,” he qualified.
“Should I be concerned?” Edryd asked, not at all sure how moving jars of oil was in any way a suspect activity.
“I don’t ask questions, you understand, but I expect this here once belonged to someone who wasn’t never compensated for it. Same would go for everything in An Innis, I suppose.”
Taking Ivor’s meaning, Edryd chose not to explore the subject further, and he set about doing the task for which he was being paid. It was mindless and tiring work, for which Edryd was particularly ill-suited in his present weakened condition. When Edryd questioned the purpose for moving the jars, Ivor just shrugged and cryptically offered what must have passed for a bit of local wisdom: you owned anything of value only by virtue of having the means to forcibly secure and protect it. That was a general truth, and a rather obvious one, but nowhere more so than An Innis. The cellars were vulnerable, and the oil stores were valuable enough to be a tempting target. Together, Ivor and Edryd worked to fill the cart, loading it up with a couple dozen jars from one of the cellars, and once it could hold no more, they proceeded to pull it to a large structure a few streets over.
There were a rough dozen men at the wooden warehouse. Not one of them made an effort to assist in any way. Two men in the front of the building had swords at their sides. Three others on the roof were equipped with crossbows. All of them had long knives on their belts. This was Kedwyn Saivelle’s solution for securing things he had taken. No one challenged Edryd or Ivor as they pulled the cart into the building, and no one acknowledged them either. They were expected, and beneath notice.
Passing through a wide set of doors, Edryd was impressed by what he saw when he crossed into the interior. The cavernous space was loaded with stacked crates, barrels, and sacks of varied shapes and sizes, often piled right up to the ceiling. The accumulation in this building alone far exceeded the local population’s possible needs for the kinds of items Edryd could see. There were stores of fo
od, bales of wool, carpets, animal skins, and who knew what luxury items secured away in endless rows of wooden containers.
“This is incredible,” Edryd marveled. “It has to be worth a fortune.”
“Would be if it were saleable,” Ivor agreed. “Trouble is, there’s no real market here for much of it—there being an overabundance. Without some means by which to transport the stuff, it isn’t worth what you might think. Not much ever leaves so it just piles up.”
The look Edryd gave Ivor suggested he thought him a little dim. “There are a dozen or more merchant ships docked in the port,” Edryd objected, “how can you suggest there isn’t a way to move the goods for sale elsewhere?”
“You are not taking the Ash Men, the Ascomanni, into account,” Ivor explained. “They attack everything that leaves.”
Edryd had in fact learned this much earlier that day, but he hadn’t given it much thought. “It’s really that bad then?” he asked.
“Merchants stopped coming for slaves and cheap trade goods long ago. Leaving An Innis with a loaded ship usually means losing both ship and cargo to the Ascomanni. We don’t even have slaves to sell anymore. It’s too expensive to feed and maintain what you can’t hope to sell in a reasonable amount of time.”
“The Ascomanni can’t target every ship,” Edryd protested.
“Years ago, when they started out, they were a minor but painful nuisance. There are more of them now though, and in the last couple of years they have become well-coordinated. As of late last winter we are as near cut off from the rest of the world as it can get.”
Edryd wanted to know more, but he did not want to appear too curious, and Ivor was already becoming heated as he discussed the situation. After unloading the contents of the cart, they headed back and continued to work without rest, making steady progress on the first of the two cellars. Three trips later, on their way back to the warehouse with a fourth load in the cart, it began to rain. The work became quite miserable then, with sharp droplets of water blowing in against their backs from the direction of the ocean.