He wouldn’t be able to see Kreewhite if he waited until evening, and that was the only reason he wanted to go to the beach. “I’d like to go now,” he answered.
“I didn’t have any children of my own,” Albany muttered again. “My sister did though. I always felt a little envious of her. Now that I’ve had the pleasure of being your mother for a couple of hours though, I don’t feel so envious.
“Go get your sword,” she told Marco as she stood up. “The first place we’ll go is to the armory, to get a belt and a scabbard for you to use. Then we’ll probably be mobbed to death. Then we’ll go to the beach.”
Marco obligingly fetched his sword, and followed Albany out a small back door that led to a narrow alley. “Maybe folks will take a little time to figure out where I’m keeping you if we play a couple of hide-and-seek games,” she said as they emerged from the alley onto a deserted street, and walked down into the heart of the small commercial sector of the village. They immediately drew a crowd of observers as they began to walk along the main street.
“Careful Albany, you’ll be sent into exile next,” an anonymous voice called.
“Aren’t you two supposed to hold hands?” someone else asked.
“Want me to give you a break and watch him for you?” another voice asked, as they passed by the others in the village. Marco felt their eyes upon him, and he felt his cheeks grow warm as he blushed from all the unwanted attention. They both gave sighs of relief when Albany turned and they entered the door of a large stone building, which turned out to be the armory.
The building was loud with a wooden clacking noise that Marco didn’t identify until they walked through the short entry hall, and he saw several pairs of woman fencing with wooden practice swords. “The equipment is over here,” Albany indicated, as she led Marco to a small room that was full of leather harnesses, belts, scabbards, vests, and other objects. Marco selected a belt, tested three scabbards to find one that was the right length, and then put the two together and placed his sword on his hip. It felt slightly awkward; he hadn’t carried a sword when he worked as an apprentice, and he had no experience with the weapon except for what he had gained that day, using an enchanted sword that seemed to fight its own battles on his behalf.
“This is good. I’m ready,” he quickly told Albany, and they left the room.
“Hey Albany,” a voice immediately called out. “How would you and your new champion like to go a few practice rounds?” Marco looked over and saw that the voice belonged to one of the guards he had fought earlier, when he had been ambushed.
“What do you say?” Albany instantly asked him with a gleam in her eye. Marco could see that the idea appealed to her, though he had no desire to rely on the magic of the sword.
“I’d rather go to the beach,” he answered his guardian in a low voice.
“Come on, just one match. I’d like to see you in action, the boy who singlehandedly beat the three guards in her Ladyship’s house,” Albany wheedled him.
“Okay – one match,” Marco agreed.
Albany led him to the dressing room to put on protective pads for the match, and Marco hurriedly backed out when two guards who were changing out of their own pads looked at him while they stood bare-chested in the room.
“Sorry, we don’t have a men’s room,” Albany called. “They’ll be out in a second.”
The women exited the room a minute later. Marco hung his head and refused to make eye contact as they laughingly walked past him. Marco went in, and found a set of pads that loosely fit him, and he let Albany tighten them up on him. “These would fit better if you had a chest,” she muttered.
“I wouldn’t be in so much trouble in the first place if I had a chest,” he retorted, making her grin.
He picked up his sword as they prepared to leave the dressing room. “Hold on! No sir, no metal blades on the practice floor,” Albany abruptly told him, making him wince in horror, as he realized he would not have his enchanted sword to give him any proficiency in the match.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he answered. “Let’s just go on down to the beach.”
Albany reached out and grabbed his elbow in a firm grip, then pulled him forward. “I haven’t been able to beat Marcella for the past two years, but with you as my partner we’ve got a chance. Just win this one match and then we’ll go to the beach,” she spoke in a low, urgent voice.
The match lasted less than a minute. Marco was thrashed soundly and lying on the ground within ten seconds, and Albany stood no chance when both opponents teamed up and rapidly drove her to surrender as well.
Albany didn’t speak a word to Marco as they got up off the mat. She didn’t say a word when they quickly stripped off their pads, and she didn’t speak to him at all as they stalked through the streets and out into the countryside, and then down to a beach, where Marco stood on the pebbly strand and stared out at the setting sun on the western horizon.
“You made me look bad,” she finally barked out the single statement, then walked away from him, leaving him alone and miserable. He stared at the water, desperately wishing that Kreewhite would appear and miraculously whisk him away. The sun set quickly as its bright disk disappeared into the sea, and he stood there alone in the dark for a long time, feeling miserable.
“Albany?” he called. “I’m ready to go,” he said as he turned, and then gave a shout and threw himself onto his back in the water as a dark-garbed assassin swung a sword at him.
The blade whistled over his chest as he fell, and he grabbed for his own sword where it sat on his hip. His hand grabbed the hilt, and he felt the blade whistle free of the scabbard, and lunge itself at the assassin even as his body fell away.
He rolled over in the shallow water and came back to his feet with surprising speed, to begin immediately fencing with the darkened woman who he could barely see. He felt his sword lunge and make contact, then slide upward and chop down to make contact again. His blade feinted high, then corkscrewed back down, and he felt the momentary resistance of the killer’s hardened leather, before his sword pierced the material and drove into her flesh.
He pulled the blade quickly free as the woman gave a momentary scream.
“Mitment, what’s happening?” he heard a voice ask.
Marco crouched low, and started to move towards the source of the voice.
“Mitment?” he heard again, and he stopped, then realized that he was only a few steps away from where two women held Albany captive. One held a knife to his guardian’s throat, while the other swept her head back and forth, looking through the murky darkness to try to see what was happening.
Marco felt himself spring forward in a summersault, and he rose out of the gymnastic movement just inches from Albany’s captors. He brought his sword straight up, letting it pass virtually a fraction of an inch in front of Albany’s chest, so that the blade missed his guard but violently struck the wrist of the assailant who held her, and knocked the threatening knife away from her throat. He turned even as his blade’s momentum carried it upward, and his other hand formed a fist as it struck at the throat of the other attacker, causing her to gag and grasp at her neck as she collapsed.
He brought his blade down so that it stopped just above Albany’s shoulder, and his point was pressed against her captor’s neck. He gave a slight jab, and the woman cried, then fell backward in fear.
“Are you okay?” he asked Albany as he reached around her and moved her out of his way so that he could stand over her captor with his blade pressed against her cheek, while the woman stared up in fear.
“How did you do that?” Albany asked.
“Take her weapons,” he told her, as he actually sensed the intentions of his sword, which seemed to have a will of its own.
“Are you okay?” he repeated.
“I’m fine, just a couple of scratches. They snuck up on me,” she said. “And I was too busy being angry and full of self-pity to notice them until it was too late,” she admitted in
a lower voice.
“I have her weapons,” she added a moment later.
“Tie her hands and feet together,” Marco told his companion.
“Do you know who they are?” he asked, as he heard the rustle of something being bound.
“Based on these two, they’re the three guards you fought this morning,” Albany said.
“Where’s the third one?” she asked.
“She’s dead,” Marco answered, feeling the sword’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the outcome of the battle on the beach. He swung the sword away from the woman who Albany was binding, and pressed the point against the woman who was kneeling on the sandy ground, retching from the force of Marco’s attack. She would be no threat to them for several minutes.
“Dead?” Albany repeated the word in horror.
“It was either her or me. She tried to kill me, and I killed her instead,” Marco said. He sensed that Albany was rising, standing up after finishing tightening the bindings on her captive.
“Let’s go back to town,” Marco said. He finally put the sword back in its sheath, and as he removed his hand from the hilt he felt the influence of the weapon ebb away. He gave a shudder at the realization of what he had just done, and stepped over the bound captive, followed immediately by Albany.
They walked again in silence for two minutes, until Albany suddenly grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to a full stop, bringing the two of them face to face in the dim star light. “How can it be that you lose a practice match in record time at the armory, then turn around and beat three of the best fighters in the land just an hour later?”
“It meant something this time, and I was ready,” he answered. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get back to the library,” he said.
The streets were softly lit by light that shone through windows of houses, and the two of them silently walked without incident to the library door. “You go in and wait there. I’m going to go get some blankets for us to sleep in,” Albany told him.
“Could you bring a candle too?” Marco asked.
“I don’t think I can go to sleep right away. I’d like to read a book for a little while,” he explained in reaction to the puzzled look she gave him.
“Bedding and a candle, yes sir,” she spoke with a momentary burst of false jocularity, then turned and left Marco alone as he entered the library’s dark space, and sat down on the floor in the dim rectangle where the starlight from the stars above fell.
He felt his hands start to shake, in a delayed reaction to the battle on the beach. He had never killed a person before, yet just minutes earlier he had killed a woman and nearly killed two others. He buried his face in his hands, and sat in that posture until he heard the door open, and saw Albany come into the room, her features lit by the candle she carried in front of her, while her figure was deformed by the large lump of material she carried on her back.
She placed the candle down, then removed the bundle from her back. “Here,” she tossed half the bundle of cloth to Marco, and then threw the other half down on the floor a short distance away.
“What’s that for?” Marco asked as he unrolled the thick covers she had tossed to him.
“That’s where I’m sleeping,” she said, “and don’t think you’re going to take any liberties with me tonight!” she told him gruffly, her smile unseen as she turned her back to him.
“You’re going to sleep here too? Why?” Marco asked.
“Let’s see: I’m supposed to be your guard; you were just attacked on the beach, and you wonder why I’m spending the night near you. Does that sum it up?” she asked.
“What’s going to happen?” Marco asked.
She knew what he referred to.
“It depends,” she answered as she pulled her boots off, then lay down. “It depends on what they say, and what they do. With one dead guard, there’s going to be something happen, that’s for sure, but I don’t see that you did anything wrong, so don’t you worry about it for now.
“Now read your bedtime story and go to sleep,” Albany told him, then rolled onto her side, facing away from him.
Marco carried the candle to find the book of alchemy, then lay down on his own thin layer of covers, and spent the next hour reading the various formulae for tonics and potions and liniments until his eyes grew heavy, and he blew the candle out.
Chapter 11 – The Shepherdess’s Cottage
The two of them awoke within a few minutes of one another, as the entrance of the morning sunlight through the windows brightened the library room. Marco lay still on his back, with his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, as he bemusedly wondered what adventures he would endure in the new day.
Albany left a few minutes later to get food and news. Despite his anxiety over the repercussions from the battle on the beach, when Marco rolled over and opened the book of alchemical formulae, his attention became quickly absorbed by the extraordinary information that was revealed. Treatments for arthritis, kidney stones, sprained ankles – the breadth of ailments treated was extraordinary. And the breadth of ingredients called for was just as extraordinary too, he noted. Quicksilver, antimony, rosehips, apple seeds – many ordinary items he was used to preparing were used. But gorgon’s blood, venom from a cobra, ever the tears of a mermaid – many exotic and impossible elements were also required in several concoctions – or elements he had assumed were impossible to acquire, he thought to himself as be considered the mermaid tears. Still, gorgon’s blood had to be impossible to find, a mythical element at best.
He heard the door open. “Nobody said anything to me about last night,” she told him as she laid the bundle of fruits and breads down by where he sat.
“After you eat, we’ll have to go report what happened,” she directed him. “I can’t let this go.”
Marco looked over at her, ready to object, but saw the determination in her express. “You’re sure?” he weakly tried to protest.
“Absolutely. We were ambushed last night. You say you killed someone last night. I’m an officer in the guard – I can’t pretend those things didn’t happen,” she said.
“Finish eating your food, and then we’ll go down to the guard offices,” she told him.
“Can’t we go straight to Lady Iasco?” Marco asked.
“She’ll hear about it, believe me, but this is a guard matter, and we need to start there,” Albany insisted.
Marco turned his eyes down to the book in his lap and absentmindedly read the formulae as he ate a handful of figs and pondered what would happen next. He had no control over his destiny now, none whatsoever, and he felt certain that if he was taken to the guard headquarters as a result of the battle on the beach, the whole affair would end up badly. He chewed slowly, and then suddenly could eat no more, as his appetite vanished in the midst of his concerns.
He took a last look at the book, whose contents seemed to imprint themselves on his mind with little effort on his part, then stood up and placed the book back in its place on the shelf.
“This isn’t going to be good,” he told Albany flatly as he stood and looked at her.
“Let us see; don’t be so worried. Lady Iasco will watch out for the truth, and for you,” Albany told him.
Together, they left the library and walked out the back way to emerge on the side street. As they arrived on the main street, Marco instantly attracted attention, though most of the women only stared without comment on the second day of his well-known presence on the island.
They arrived at the armory they had fought at before, then went past it to the next building, where Albany led Marco inside.
“What are you doing bringing that lump of walking trouble into our headquarters?” a woman at the desk asked.
“We came to report a crime,” Albany said evenly.
“Well of course there’s a crime; there’s a boy on the island,” the deskbound woman retorted.
“The boy is under the protection of the lady Iasco,” Albany pointed out. “But last night, whil
e he was on the beach south of the village, Mitment, Marcella, and Portia sprang a sneak attack on him.”
“He doesn’t look any worse for the wear. Girls will be girls; just keep him out of their sight for a few days while he’s here, and I’ll tell them to stay clear of him,” the woman at the desk said.
“The boy’s fine. But Mitment is dead, Portia was tied up, and Marcella was in bad shape,” Albany answered evenly. “We left them on the beach last night.”
The woman slowly rose to a standing position behind her desk, staring at Albany. “What?” she asked skeptically.
“The boy and I were at the beach, and the three of them attacked us,” Albany answered. “The boy took out Mitment, then came back to where the other two held me, and he beat them as well.
“We tied up Portia so he wouldn’t have to do any harm to her,” Albany said evenly, “and then we left. And now we’re here to report.”
“Stay right here,” the woman told the pair. She walked over to a door and passed out of the room. They heard urgent voices come through the door, and then she returned a minute later. “I’ve sent a messenger out. Just wait here until we get some confirmation.”
She sat tensely at her desk, as Marco and Albany were left to stand nearby. Five minutes later a woman came and whispered in her ear. “Where did you claim you left the others?” she looked up at Albany and asked.
“South of town, below the green stones spring, where the beach has dark pebbles,” Albany answered. The woman jerked her head, and the other woman left the room again.
Half an hour later, two women burst into the room. “We found them right there!” one of them spoke immediately.
“Stay here with these two,” the woman ordered one of the pair. “Come with me,” she told the other, and they left the room.
“Albany,” Marco whispered after several minutes of further waiting, “what’s happening?”
“I’m not sure,” his guard answered.
Marco looked at the unknown woman who was watching them closely. “Is it safe to stay here?” he whispered.
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