by C S Vass
“Those imbeciles?” Brandon said. “No, Fiona. The Vaentysh Boys are far too dumb to be trusted with any real work. Like hungry dogs they leapt on the first opportunity that presented itself without thinking any of it through, and now they’re reduced to setting off rune-bombs and robbing caravans in the dessert. So don’t get any ideas about painting us with the same brush you do them. We are not the same.”
Fiona eyed him suspiciously, unsure if she could believe him. The mention of the rune-bombs made her think of Aureno, and the thought made her chest feel heavy with sorrow.
“They are in the city,” Brandon went on. “We believe Rodrick has joined them here. You don’t look surprised, so clearly you’ve found that out on your own by now. You should know Fiona that despite what I’ve said, the Forgotten do hold you in a higher esteem. We also hate the Vaentysh Boys, and that’s what we have in common.”
“Why?” Fiona asked. “They have the same goals as you don’t they?”
“In as far as seeing the old Duke dead, perhaps. But as an organization they’re essentially worthless, and now that they’re back in the shadows we find ourselves competing with them over control of underground markets more often than not. The Vaentysh Boys and the Forgotten cannot both exist in Haygarden. And therein lies the common goal you and I share.”
“Very well,” Fiona said. “So we continue to work together. We—”
“Unfortunately,” Brandon interrupted. “As I’m sure you can understand, because of our history we’re a little sensitive about working with deal-breakers.”
“I haven’t broken any deals!” Fiona growled. “I’m doing my best to find out what Donyo is working on, but I need more time.”
“It’s out of my hands, Fiona. This is bigger than me. My older sister requires a meeting with you.”
“Older sister?”
“Aiyana. She ranks above me, and she wants to speak with you.”
Immediately upon hearing Aiyana’s name Fiona thought of Smiley. If she could meet Aiyana, if she could kill her, then perhaps she had an opportunity to be rid of the Tellosian agents once and for all. But could she do it?
“Fine,” Fiona said. “Then let’s go.”
“Not now. She’s attending to other matters. But when the time is right, I will come for you. Just try not to get yourself in any kind of trouble until then. Aiyana would just kill me if something happened to you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Fiona turned over everything that had just happened with Brandon in her mind as soon as he left. She was grateful that she didn’t have to decide to assassinate Aiyana immediately, but the choice would still need to be made one way or another.
Then there was the business about Geoff Hightower. Perhaps she should have pressed Brandon harder to find out who his father was and how Geoff had betrayed him, but Brandon had acted so unpredictably and with so much rage that she didn’t want to provoke him unnecessarily. She sighed. Perhaps it didn’t matter. She should focus on the task at hand.
Fiona stared at the cracked wall of her living room. Its fragmented surface spider-webbed in various shapes, making it look as if it were some ancient map that hadn’t been completely filled in. What should she do? She was having such a tough time making the decision, and she realized it was because she lacked information.
There was only one thing to do, she realized. Martin Lightwing was Captain of the Guard, and if anybody had any information on Aiyana and the Forgotten it would be him.
Within five minutes she was outside and walking down the road. It was late afternoon, and the streets were lined with snow. Ten more minutes later she was at his front door knocking.
When nobody answered Fiona let herself inside. Martin and Donyo were seated at a table playing cards.
“Drunk again,” she scoffed. “The both of you.”
“Nice to see you to,” Martin said without looking up.
“Come join," Donyo said in a slurred voice. “We were just discussing plans to leave.”
“Leave?” Fiona asked. “Leave what?”
Martin scowled at Donyo, but the Master Architect simply shrugged. Scratching his chin he said, “Leave Haygarden. What else is there for me to do here, other than drink myself dead or wait for one of the many warring factions to come slit my throat in my sleep?”
“And you?” Fiona asked to Martin. “What about the city guard?”
“Fuck the city guard,” Martin said, still without looking at her. “And fuck Haygarden too. This city is shit.” She opened her mouth to say something but realized there was nothing she could say. How could she possibly tell them not to leave after she had just been gone for two years?
“I resigned. I’m done.”
Fiona looked at him uncertainly. Perhaps Martin had changed more than anyone else. It was a sad thought, but maybe he was right. What had Haygarden done to earn Martin’s loyalty?
“Why?” Fiona asked.
“I’m tired.” She waited for him to elaborate, but Martin said nothing else. There was a glossy look in his eyes.
“Sit,” Donyo said.
Begrudgingly she pulled up next to them. Donyo smiled broadly at her. “We said if I won five games in a row then the Captain here has to hop on a horse in naught but his boots and ride around the block.” He grinned and placed his cards on the table.
“Shit!” Martin swore.
“That makes four,” Donyo laughed. “Don’t be mad, lad. Some nice young lady might see your pride and glory and think to take you out of the cold.”
“I’m not doing it,” Martin said, his face furiously red.
Donyo shrugged. “It’s bad luck to break a deal.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “And where exactly are the two of you going to go? I doubt you’d make it to the city gates before passing out drunk at the rate that you’re going.”
“Don’t be a prude,” Donyo complained, and he shoved a cup towards her. She sniffed at it. The smell was strong and sour.
“Fine,” she said as she took a swig. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
Donyo shuffled the deck. “Maybe if Martin here proves his worth on his horse-ride, we can make some money off him in the Lordless Lands.”
Martin blushed more brightly than ever. “Just deal the damn cards, Donyo. You’re not going to win again.” Donyo grinned widely and obliged.
While Fiona watched them drinking and playing, she suddenly had a thought. She needed information from each of them, and they were both right there alone with her and drinking quite heavily. She felt a small pang of guilt, especially at the thought of betraying Donyo. But it didn’t really matter if he was going to leave Haygarden, did it? Plus having the information wouldn’t necessarily mean that she had to give it away to anyone. It was just a way of being prepared, really.
“Drink up!” she exclaimed as she raised her cup. “If I’m going to have to see Martin’s junk then I’m going to need a little help.”
Martin shot her a dirty look but held his silence. They raised their cups and the next round of the game began.
“So are you two really going to leave?” Fiona asked. “Or is that all just what you say when you’ve a drink in your hand?”
“I can’t imagine why I would stay,” Donyo said. He placed down two cards and shot Martin a triumphant look.
“What about Hightower? Will you wait for him?”
“Perhaps,” Donyo said. “But he can’t do anything to help me. We’re on our own as far as I can tell. He’ll be busy enough as it is. Not to mention there’s no telling when he actually will come back. No, I think it’s better we get out.”
“Well, surely this is the time to tell some old war stories then, isn’t it?” Fiona grinned. “Martin, as Captain of the Guard you must have had some skirmishes over the last two years. With the Forgotten, perhaps?”
“There’s blood in the streets every damn night,” Martin complained. “The city guard is only allowed to react, but we can never get to the root of the proble
m. Most of my superiors are paid off, and there’s naught to be done about that.”
“What of their leadership? I’ve heard the name Aiyana a couple of times. Can you tell me anything about her?”
“Shit,” Martin mumbled as soon as he put down a card. “Can I pick that back up?”
Donyo smirked. “You know the rules. Fiona, get the saddle ready, would you?”
“Aiyana. Why would you want to know about her?” Martin eyed her suspiciously. “I’m not dumb you know. You can be straight-forward Fiona. Whatever deal you’ve made with the Forgotten is nothing to me. But if you’re in bad with Aiyana, then you’re already dead, and there’s nothing that I can do to help.”
His coldness at the matter wounded her. “What makes you say that?”
“She’s a ruthless killer. She owns the underground and is unforgiving in her leadership of the Forgotten.”
“Fiona,” Donyo said with a paternal drawl. “Do you need to tell us something?”
“Everything is fine,” Fiona said quickly.
“If your brother was in the city, then I would have heard something,” Martin said bluntly. “Listen, I don’t care what you’re doing Fiona. But here’s some friendly advice. There’s nothing here for you. Rodrick is gone. That is, unless you’ve learned something that you’re not telling us.”
They met each other’s eyes. Fiona saw so much pain behind them. Martin Lightwing had had a difficult two years. She felt another stab of guilt. It seemed every day she had another reason to hate what Rodrick had turned them all into.
“That’s game!” Donyo yelled triumphantly, slapping his final card onto the table. He rose abruptly, sloshing his drink down the front of his shirt. “Come on. I’ll get the horse.”
“Eat shit.” Martin said.
“The honorable Captain of the Guard going back on a deal? I never would have thought it of you Martin.”
“I don’t care what simple thoughts float through your fat head. I’m not getting on the horse. It’s freezing outside.”
“Should have thought of that when the wager was made.”
“I said no.”
“It won’t be so bad. I said you can wear your boots so you won’t be completely—”
Martin picked up a jug full of ale and smashed it against the wall, causing it to shatter into a thousand frothy shards. “Do you understand no?” Their were veins bulging from his neck and a furious rage in his eyes.
Fiona and Donyo glanced at each other, unsettled by how quickly the atmosphere in the room had changed.
“Fine, fine,” Donyo said with his hands in the air. “You really need to learn how to take a jest though.”
Martin was huffing furiously. Fiona bent down to pick up some of the pieces in order to give herself something to do.
“Leave that,” Martin snapped at her. “We’re leaving here soon, anyway. It doesn’t matter. Let the next person to settle into this rat’s nest worry about it.”
Donyo produced another jug from a back room. “Truce?” he asked, filling Martin’s cup. Martin sighed and accepted it.
The afternoon faded with the three of them discussing things of little importance. There was a heaviness in the room, but it seemed that nobody quite wanted to acknowledge it. Several times she tried to find a way to ask Donyo if he had been working on anything important recently, but each time the moment wasn’t quite right.
When evening turned to night Fiona found herself sitting frustrated in a room with two sleeping men who she was fairly certain had just wasted an entire day for her. Tired, she stood to leave when she found herself at the front door face to face with Sasha Rains.
* * *
“Sasha…” It was the last thing Fiona anticipated. She found herself unexpectedly embarrassed. “You’re here for Martin or Donyo I take it?”
“Actually I came here hoping to find you.”
“Well, here I am.” Fiona blushed when she realized she was playing with a strand of her own hair. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had caught herself doing that.
“Fiona we need to talk about the way we left things.”
She was sure she would have responded more quickly but spending the afternoon with those two damn drunks had had its consequences. She found herself wanting very much to evaporate on the spot.
“Maybe we could talk about this some other time. You’ve been through a lot recently and—”
Sasha took Fiona’s hands in her own. “I need you to understand something, Fiona. I need you to understand it now. Two years ago—”
“Let’s not Sasha. What’s done is done right?”
“Fiona, we weren’t against you. I know you didn’t feel the support you were longing to have, but we didn’t want to see you get hurt. We didn’t want to see you…do something crazy.”
Fiona pointed her eyes downward. “Do something crazy. I see.”
“That came out wrong, but you know what I mean.” Sasha bit her lip.
Fiona turned to leave but Sasha placed a hand firmly on her shoulder. “Please, just let me say what I have to say Fiona. I just want to see us all safe. I don’t want our lives to be defined by what happened two years ago. I don’t want your life to be defined by Rodrick. I don’t—”
“You don’t want a lot of things,” Fiona interrupted. “But tell me, what do you want?”
To Fiona’s surprise Sasha’s eyes reddened. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before all of this happened,” she moaned. “I just want things to be like they used to be.”
Fiona moved herself away from Sasha’s grip. “Then you’re living in a fairytale. Things can never go back to being how they were. You want me to just move back into my old house, pretend not to know that somebody else used to live there? You want Reggie to go back into the knight that he used to be? These things cannot happen, Sasha. That’s the reality, and it’s time you accepted it.”
For a moment Fiona thought that Sasha might honestly start to cry. Her face was a wreckage of emotion, but she managed to keep herself composed.
“Maybe you’re right about some of that,” she admitted. “But things don’t have to be as hard as you make them out to be Fiona. We can move past this.”
“Spare me the platitudes Sasha. I’m really not in the mood for them. I didn’t ask anybody for help two years ago. All I asked was that you all not get in the way. But apparently even that was too much.”
“Don’t you get it?” Sasha yelled. “We would have helped, had you asked. But you were so busy locking everybody out.”
“Maybe if I had a prince charming I could run away to, then it wouldn’t have been so difficult for me.”
Sasha looked at her as if she hadn’t ever seen her before. “How can you say that? Are you so heartless? I’ve told you what my time with Reggie has been like.”
Fiona felt the humbling sensation of shame burning on her cheeks.
“I didn’t know what he was going to turn into,” Sasha pressed on. “I was just trying to keep the people close to me safe and supported—and you can’t have it both ways! That’s not fair. You can’t be angry that we tried to help you and angry that we didn’t.”
Fiona sighed. She was so damn tired. “I honestly don’t know why I even came back to this place,” she said.
“Because you have friends here,” Sasha said. To Fiona’s surprise Sasha took her by the hand. “We can all still work through whatever is going on together. It doesn’t have to be like it was.”
There was a warm wet bubble quavering in Fiona’s throat. To hide her emotions, she simply embraced Sasha in a tight hug. All of the pain and betrayal, it still was there thrashing in her heart like a caged monster. But there was something more now too. There were better feelings as well. Maybe not hopeful, but it was as if a part of her that she had forgotten woke up.
The two women sat down on the couch together, Fiona in her green hardened leather tunic and Sasha in auburn furs that matched her hair.
“We have to figure
out what’s next for you,” Fiona said. She gestured to the other room where Donyo and Martin were passed out. “We can’t leave you here with those two, that’s for sure. What about your father?”
A pained look clouded Sasha’s face. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea. Her voice was small and scared.
“Why?”
“It’s just…his damn ambition. I’ve already told you. He wanted the marriage so badly for the sake of Reggie’s respectable name being attached to our own. But then when that was ruined—”
“I know, I know,” Fiona said quickly. “But surely he can understand this?”
“Well, he’s been so surprisingly happy with the arrangement,” Sasha said. “It turns out despite the disgrace of his father Reggie still commands a great deal of respect in the business community and has been able to help my father in many ways. He’s surprisingly familiar with foreign merchants. To be honest, I have no idea how. But in any case—”
Fiona nodded sadly. “Sasha. When are you going to learn to put your own feelings in front of the men in your life?” She had meant the comment as earnest advice, but Sasha’s face darkened immediately.
“Considering the feelings of others isn’t a weakness, Fiona. You might do well to learn that.”
That night all four of them slept under the same roof. Donyo snored loudly in the next room, with Martin alongside him. Fiona and Sasha made themselves as comfortable as they could, huddled underneath a heap of fur blankets side by side. The house was freezing cold, but at least they were spared from the worst of the chill.
Fiona could hardly believe that Sasha had come back into her life again. She knew then that she would have to help Sasha before leaving the city. She couldn’t leave her to the likes of whatever schemes Donyo and Martin would find themselves in. She could do that much at least. She could try to make just one thing right.
Chapter Fourteen
Frozen mud clung to her boots as Fiona made her way towards the pond. It was the day after Sasha had come to speak with her, and she needed to get out of Haygarden.