“Let go,” Willum said. Though Doudy looked like a man again, his grip was like iron.
“Ah! Representative Doudy,” said a woman’s voice.
Doudy turned his head to look at the speaker, but he didn’t let go. “Huh?”
“Hello, so good to see you. I was wondering-.”
Doudy snorted. “Yeah-yeah. If you’ll excuse me, miss, I have a little disciplinary issue I’m dealing with.” He yanked Willum into the light.
The woman stood just outside the doorway to Tad’s quarters, a sheathe of papers tucked under one arm. She was beautiful and looked to be perhaps in her early forties, with deep brown eyes and a charming smile.
“Ah! Good! I see you’ve found my guard.” A stern look replaced her smile. “Willum, where have you been all morning?”
Willum felt as confused as Dann Doudy looked. “I-I was looking for you.”
“Excuse me. Who are you again?” Doudy asked the woman.
“I’m Darlan Begazzi, provisional mayor of Reneul. I was voted in last night, remember?” she said, bringing on her smile again. “I’ll tell you what. I’m sure that we will get the chance to speak again in the council meeting later. As for now, if you’ll excuse Willum and I, I am quite busy, what with all the things to arrange after Jenn’s death.”
She stepped forward and when he didn’t immediately let go of Willum’s wrist, she laid one finger on Doudy’s hand. He blinked and let go. “Thank you,” she said and walked down the corridor. Willum followed after her, taking one glance back to see Doudy glaring after them, his face red as a cherry.
Willum didn’t say anything until they exited the rear door of the Council Building. “Thank you, uh, miss Darlan, I-.”
“Shut up, Willum,” she said the smile gone from her face once more. “Just follow me.”
Willum closed his mouth and followed the woman, confused. Why had she saved him back there and why was she so angry? There was something familiar about her name. What was it? He brushed the thoughts aside and wondered how he was going to get back in the council building.
She led him to the assignment office and tapped her foot while he checked in. The student on duty looked through a stack of papers until he found one for Willum, then handed it to him. Willum turned it over in his hands. The word ‘reassignment’ was written on the front.
“Willum, son of Coal, reassigned to the position of personal guard and assistant to Darlan Begazzi, provisional mayor, the City of Reneul?” Willum said in shock. The student on duty snickered, Willum turned to Darlan. “I thought that was just a ploy.”
“A ploy? Follow me and don’t you make me twist your ear the whole way,” she snapped, but as she walked down the crowded pathway, the smile reappeared on her face as she greeted everyone she passed. They all seemed to know her and smiled back, most calling her by name.
Willum still could not figure out why her name sounded so familiar. It wasn’t until he heard someone jokingly call her ‘Darlan the Fierce’ that he understood. This was Sir Edge’s mother, the wife of Faldon the Fierce. Sir Edge had asked after her at the beginning of the siege, but once Tad had told him she was safe, Willum hadn’t thought about her since.
She led him to the far side of the grounds and to a set of stairs leading down into the bowels of the academy. The academy was actually several levels deep, full of storage and training areas along with extra barrack space and kitchens. This was also where most of the City of Reneul and the Training School students were now housed. Families took up most of the barracks and unused storage rooms, while trainees took up the old training areas in the lowest level.
Darlan walked through the press of people and though she moved quickly, she also took the time to smile or say a few words to people along the way. Several times he saw her pull sweets from a pocket in her dress to hand to a crying child. Finally she arrived at the entrance to one of the medium sized storage rooms that had been converted into the Reneul Mayor’s office.
The right side of the room was still piled high with barrels of stored goods, but the rest of the room had been cleared. A wide table stood in the middle with several medium sized barrels around it to be used as chairs. People stood around inside arguing with one another and when Darlan walked in, everyone began speaking at once.
She immediately took charge. While Willum watched in stunned silence, she lined up everyone in order and began hearing their issues. They ranged from squabbles over sleeping arrangements, to disagreements over rations.
As Darlan handled each separate issue with quick efficiency, Willum wondered what in the world he was doing there? Why had Tad placed him here with Sir Edge’s mother? How did this help him expose Dann Doudy and clear his parent’s name?
It was an hour before she heard the last complaint. She then turned the rest of the business over to the other city officials and ushered Willum through a door in the back of the office.
Beyond the door stood yet another storage room, this one much smaller. It smelled of spices. All along the back wall were shelves of small tins. Again, barrels had been cleared away and stacked. In one corner was a makeshift bed. A straw mattress on top of some barrels covered by a quilt and with a small embroidered pillow. Somehow to Willum it felt like a tiny slice of home in the middle of all this chaos.
“Sit down, Willum,” Darlan said, pointing to a barrel a few feet away. Then she sat on the bed and put her face in her hands.
She stayed that way for a while, her shoulders shaking silently and Willum realized she was crying.
Willum glanced around uncomfortably, not knowing what to do. She had obviously been through a lot already today. He felt like he should comfort her somehow. He walked over to her and patted her shoulder. “Ma’am I’m so sorry-.”
“Sit down, Willum,” she said and he rushed back to the barrel.
She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and full of grief and he felt a lump rise in his own throat. He forced it away. Tad was alive somehow and this was part of a plan.
“What a blasted horrible day,” she said. “Tad was an old friend. A dear friend. Jenn too.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Willum said, looking down.
“You don’t believe it?” she said. Willum continued to look down. “Look at me. You think this is one of Tad’s plots, don’t you? Well listen to me now. When I awoke this morning there were two letters here from Tad that made me so angry I went to the council hall first thing to talk to him. I barged in just after they found their bodies. I forced my way through. I saw them.”
“Whatever you saw, it wasn’t him,” Willum said, his voice shaking now.
“The room was covered in blood. His head and Jenn’s were both sitting on the table.” Her voice shook and tears streamed down her face as she spoke. “He did not fake that. He is gone and we need to figure out what we are going to do.”
“W-what do you mean?” the lump in his throat had returned and he wasn’t able to swallow it away this time. It just sat there thick and painful.
“You are not alone, Willum. We are in this together.” she said and stood. She wiped the tears off of her face with the back of her hand. “Tad told me what you two were up to. What he thought you were up against. He told me that he was going to need my help at some point. Damn him, I told him I didn’t want to do this. ‘A time of war,’ he said.”
Darlan’s lip quivered, her sadness giving way to anger. She raised a fist in front of her eyes and to Willum’s surprise, flames sprouted from her knuckles. Her face glowed in the light of them and Willum could feel the hairs on his arms stand on end. “Tad is forcing me to become something I haven’t been in a long time. Something I wanted to give up forever.”
She shook her hand and the flames went away. “Tell me, Willum. Tad has always been too secretive for his own good. How much has he told you?”
Willum blinked, unsure what he should tell her. “Tad told me not to speak about it with anyone.”
“Of course he did.” She sighed. “I shall start then. For a while before the
siege began Tad had been convinced that one of the members of the Academy Council was passing on academy secrets to someone outside the school.
“Every time the academy made a move against the goblinoid forces, the enemy seemed to know about it ahead of time. They moved their troops around the academy’s patrol routes no matter how often they changed them. When the council would try to clean out a certain area of goblinoids, they would have already fled. It was giving the enemy growing confidence.”
“But the council members are his friends. They have all been comrades for years,” Willum said. “Why would it have to be someone on the council? Couldn’t it have been one of the sergeants or field commanders? Even one of the Dremald captains?”
“I argued the same points, but Tad said that the enemy’s knowledge was too pervasive. They knew things that only the council members knew,” Darlan said. “Then the siege hit and Dann Doudy showed up on our doorstep. Tad was convinced that our enemy now had two spies on the council. With two members, they might be able to flip a vote one way or another.
“So he hatched a plan to get another member on the council that he could trust. That’s where I came in. Tad knew about my past and what I’m capable of and since the new War Council included the Mayor of Reneul, he tried to find a way to have me take Demon Jenn’s place.”
“B-but why not just confide in Demon Jenn? She wasn’t part of the council before the siege. She couldn’t be the one,” Willum asked.
“Because he had uncovered other things about Jenn.” Darlan shook her head. “Tad discovered that Jenn had been siphoning funds away from city coffers for a few years. She was planning on retiring and living out the rest of her days in some mansion in Razbeck. I was able to confirm his findings and he confronted Jenn and threatened to turn her in. At the council meeting yesterday afternoon, she resigned as mayor and Tad nominated me to be the provisional mayor until the siege was over. Everyone on the council knows me, so they voted me in.”
“So that’s why he had me reassigned to be your guard,” Willum said.
“In one of the letters he left for me during the night he said that you had brought him new evidence and that he was going to confront Dann Doudy. If it worked, he might be able to get Doudy to tell him the identity of the other spy. If it didn’t, he feared for your safety. Since he couldn’t watch over you day and night, he had assigned you to be my personal guard so that I could watch over you.”
“Why my safety?” Willum wondered.
“I’m not sure. What was this evidence you found?” she asked.
Willum told her about the dagger.
“I see. So that’s the leverage he was going to bring against Doudy,” she said, frowning. “Well since he failed, we can only assume that Dann Doudy knows your father is coming with the dagger and since you know about it, he is going to want you dead. And I don’t know Jenn was doing there, but since she was found with him . . .”
“We have to assume that he learned about your part in it too,” Willum finished. He swallowed. His first guard duty assignment and it was protecting the mayor of Reneul and the wife of Faldon the Fierce against something so strong it tore Tad the Cunning apart. How was he going to watch after her and at the same time keep an eye out for the dagger in his own back?
Darlan cocked her head at him, “You’re doubting my ability to protect you, aren’t you?”
Willum’s eyes widened. “I-I, well no, of course not.”
She pulled a silver coin out of her pocket and set it on the open palm of her left hand. Waves of distortion rolled up from her skin and the coin began to glow red. Willum could feel the heat of it from where he sat. The coin melted to a puddle in her hand, then floated up above it to form a perfect sphere. She gripped the sphere between her thumb and forefinger and blew on it, then tossed it to him. He reached out and caught it by reflex. It was cold in his hand.
“Willum, if I wanted to, I could broil every man alive within two hundred paces of where we stand,” she said. “Believe me, I can watch your back.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, feeling a chill run up the back of his neck. “What are you, anyway?”
“Never mind that. But I can’t protect both of us. That’s why Tad sent you here to watch over me too. Without my husband here, I need someone as skilled with physical weapons as everyone says you are.” She held out her hand, “So, Willum, since it is the two of us in this alone for now, will you protect me in turn?”
He clasped her hand. “I will.”
“Good. Now we have about twenty minutes before the next council meeting. We need to plan out how we’re going to figure out who the traitor is.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Willum said.
“Good,” Darlan smiled. “And once we get back from that meeting, you are going to tell me the truth about how you communicate with your father. Then you are going to tell me every single thing that Tad has left out about my son. Understood?”
Willum hesitated, but she was Sir Edge’s mother. She was going to learn about bonding magic soon enough anyway. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Alright then,” she said. “So on to our plans . . . If only we knew what Tad’s next move was going to be.”
“Oh!” Willum’s hand flew to his pocket as he remembered the letter. He handed it to Darlan. “He said to give it to my new commander.”
She broke the seal and opened the letter. Her eyes scanned the message. “He says to have you watch the council member’s assistants . . .”
“That makes sense! Whatever the council members speak about in meetings is usually passed on to their assistants. The spy could be one of them,” Willum said with a smile. The thought of one of his teachers being a traitor had been weighing on him.
Darlan hadn’t stopped reading. A frown grew across her face. She tipped the envelope and a small silver key fell out into her palm.
“What is it?” Willum asked.
“He said that there was a small chance he was making a grave miscalculation. If at any time between now and the end of the siege, he should lose his life, he wanted me to give you this and . . .” She looked up, her eyes flaring with disapproval. “The blasted fool planned to give you his cursed axe.”
Chapter Nineteen
I’m big!
Gwyrtha had in fact doubled in size, and though Justan felt a sense of triumph, he checked to make sure that his body still clung to her back. Thankfully, he was still there and the saddle still held. Justan was grateful that Coal had the foresight to have Benjo rune the leather to stretch under these conditions.
I’m big, Fist! Gwyrtha ran forward and pranced around the ogre, her hind quarters now at Fist’s shoulders. Want to ride?
“Yes!” Fist said. Squirrel ran and jumped from his shoulder to Gwyrtha’s back.
Not now, please, Justan sent. I’m not fully in control at the moment.
Samson trotted up to them. The centaur laughed. “You look good, Gwyrtha!”
I’m big! she said and ran up to nudge him. She pushed a little hard and Samson had to canter to the side to avoid being knocked over. Master Coal was nearly jostled out of his saddle.
“Woah, woah!” the wizard said. “Good, Edge! Fantastic work. Now if you’ll notice, the larger you make her, the smaller her core of energy will be. Can you see?”
Justan looked to the core of her through his spirit sight and saw that the wizard was right. The amount of energy she produced was lesser than before, perhaps by a fourth. He told his body to nod.
“That is the trade off with making changes to your rogue horse,” Coal said. “It takes a lot of energy for her to maintain the changes. If you continued to make her larger the energy would continue to shrink until she eventually had the energy levels of a normal creature. This would mean that she would tire quicker and you won’t be able to siphon her energy if you need it.”
Justan nodded again.
“Alright, now shrink her back down and we’ll practice again,” Coal said.
No! Gwyrtha replied and took
off at a run. She veered off of the narrow trail and plunged down a steep incline heading towards the flat grassland below.
Justan felt his body being jostled around and worried it would slide off. He hurried and rushed back through the bond just in time to right himself. The wind rustled his hair and the scent of the verdant spring filled his nose as she hit the grassland and plowed along, startling tiny grasshoppers and butterflies into the air.
Riding a large Gwyrtha was a new sensation. The ground sped by faster than normal and yet the ride wasn’t as rough. He felt Gwyrtha’s joy and a smile spread across his face.
Justan noticed a weight on his shoulder and turned his head to see Squirrel sitting there. It was calmly shelling a seed. Justan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Squirrel normally ignored him. “Uh, hey, Squirrel.”
The War of Stardeon (The Bowl of Souls) Page 28