Valverna

by A Clarkson

  The hazel-eyed man told a story that she had no way to deny. But that didn't make it true.

  He seemed sincere in his sympathy, however here she sat, bound to a strange bed with no idea where she was.

  Why should she believe his story? She didn't know anything about him. She realised, she didn't even know his name.

  It wasn't long before a young man joined her and claimed the stool.

  He was short and stocky but not fat. He looked like the kind of person that would be able to hold his ground against a charging bull. He had the same colouring as the men she had seen on the barge the other day, skin like milk chocolate with dark hair and eyes. His heavy brows shadowed his eyes and his full mouth was turned down in a disapproving grimace. He wore the uniform of his companions, the burgundy tunic looked old but we'll cared for, his belt simple in design and without embellishments, but held a weapon that was clearly well used.

  His most striking feature was the large jagged scar on his right cheek. It looked as if someone had tried to take the eye with a serrated blade and stopped only after hacking half of his cheek off.

  Ira flinched involuntarily when she saw it. Wounds like that hurt, and she wouldn't be surprised if it still troubled him.

  He either didn’t see her flinch or simply pretended not to. With the proficiency of one who tended many injuries, he quickly assessed her leg.

  Hoping to gain a bit more information about her current situation, Ira asked, "Where am I?"

  She had been trying for calm and reasonable, but the day had clearly taken more out of her, and it came out sounding more growly than she intended. Ah well.

  His stern expression didn't change, and his eyes never left their task.

  She felt her knee growing warm under his touch as he rubbed some kind of ointment onto her leg, and tried to glance down at what he was doing, but the handcuffs kept her immobile. The warmth was soothing, and she felt her body relax as the pain dulled. Mmmm she would like to get her hands on whatever cream that was.

  Ira had nearly given up on him responding, realising that she didn't even know if they spoke the same language.

  "You'll need to speak to the General about that." His voice was deep and gravelly from disuse. He spoke with a slight accent that made his consonants heavy and accentuated the deep timbre of his voice.

  She considered what he said. The General? So his air of command was well earned. Did mercenaries have ranks?

  At least Pete was right, these guys certainly weren't traders. At least not civilian traders.

  "Do you know why he has me handcuffed? Am I a prisoner?"

  That felt like a redundant question. A sense that was further confirmed by his arched brow. If she wasn't a prisoner, she wouldn’t be bound.

  "Fine," she ground out. Her poor teeth were having a bad day. "Do I at least get to know who exactly holds me prisoner?"

  The medic was just pulling her trouser leg back into position, satisfied with his assessment, and started packing up the few supplies he brought with him in a practiced action that he had clearly done thousands of times.

  "I am Lee. For the rest, you'll need to speak with General Karimi."

  Once again she was left alone, still cuffed to the bed with no idea where she was or who was holding her. Great. Just great.

  At least her knee was hurting less. Whatever he had done had relieved the dull ache that plagued her leg since she awoke. Small victories indeed.

  With the medic gone, Ira was left with nothing to distract her from her thoughts, and her brain was suddenly flooded with images of Clarisse laying sprawled and beaten on the kitchen floor. The look of desperation and resignation on Bill's face as he tried desperately to reach her.

  Her throat burned, her chest ached, and she felt wetness on her cheeks.

  No! She couldn't let herself go down that path. That way lay madness.

  She needed to stay active, force her brain to think through the scene, and work to find out what happened. Why were Bill and Clarisse attacked?

  Assuming Mr. Karimi told her the truth, a fact she was still not completely sold on, these men - her kidnappers, her brain tried to remind her - were looking for the murderer.

  If that was the case, they were after the same thing.

  Ira knew the cottage like it was her own home. She may have seen something these men have missed. Something that would help to explain what the murderer was after, why he attacked Bill and Clarisse, and where he would strike next.

  If she helped these men maybe together they could catch him before he killed again.

  She knew convincing them to let her help their hunt might be a long shot, given her current status as their obvious prisoner. But she didn’t feel hostility from either Lee or the General, so perhaps they wouldn't dismiss the notion outright.

  Stirred with a renewed sense of purpose, Ira was able to push down her grief, and focus her mind on the task of finding who had taken her family from her.

  She would help these men find the man who taken her parents, and when they did, she would kill him. She would make him regret ever darkening Clarisse and Bill's doorstep. He should never have attacked them. Should never have touched a hair on Clarisse's head. And Ira would make sure he knew it.

  Chapter 5

  The Bargain

  Magnus sat at his desk in his private quarters of the barge. It was a necessary evil, this awful boat. But he knew that they would need a base while in the city that was free from prying eyes.

  A visit in any official capacity would have been too restricted with all the pomp and circumstance. Magnus wanted to stay as under the radar as possible. This wasn’t state business. At least not yet. So they traveled as merchants.

  His duplicity worked well for the most part, only needing to send a few letters to smooth the ruffled feathers of a handful of clients who perceived his lack of an audience while in the city as an insult. Although needy, the merchants tended to be easy enough to appease when you made them feel as though they were let in on a secret. Making a slip about the trip being highly confidential, or needing the utmost discretion, usually made the worms feel important enough to leave him be.

  His attempts to remain discrete had no doubt been eased along by the relevant parties in the Citadel. They preferred when Magnus kept his visits to Valverna quick and quiet, it suited their interests better, and he was more than happy to oblige.

  Unfortunately being waylaid at the lock the other morning attracted a larger audience than was desirable. He received an angry message about it from one of his clients later that day, who Magnus happily reminded that he had no control over the locks, and if they wanted greater discretion, they should do a better job in bribing the city guards. The incident would likely result in Magnus needing an audience at the Citadel, and with the increasing number of murders in this city, he would not be surprised to receive a formal summons.

  Valverna’s royal family couldn't technically summon him, they weren’t his monarchs after all. But as the most powerful royal family in the world, they could send a sternly worded invitation that he would be unable to ignore. All things considered, he would rather they not feel the need to do so.

  He hated Valverna. It was the worst kind of place, full of sniveling rich men trying to cut out each other’s throats. Magnus could play courtier with the best of them, but he found no pleasure in it. Quite the contrary, he generally hated it. This city held the purse strings of the whole country and the wealthy knew it, and would take full advantage of it at every opportunity.

  Magnus visited this city only when required to do so for a job, and even then he usually tried to send someone in his stead.

  When he saw Ira at the dock he thought for once he may find a pleasurable reason to visit this wretched city full of greedy snakes. He learned her name easily enough. This city was filled with spies who were more than willing to share information in exchange for some gold.

  Ira Valvern, a ward of the city who was raised in an orphanage in one of the rougher
parts of the city, and became an employee of the Citadel at age eight.

  She had thrown him when she claimed those people were her parents. Aside from the fact that someone as ebony skinned as the poor woman on the kitchen floor would be hard pressed to bear a child with Ira’s alabaster colouring, Magnus’ team found no mention of Ira having any living relatives in the city. Nonetheless, she seemed to have a close emotional relationship with the couple, so they clearly filled that role for her at some point, even if it wasn’t recently enough for his spies to pick up on it.

  There was a knock on the door and Lee entered.

  Magnus folded his hands over the papers on his desk and waited for the medic’s assessment. Magnus noticed that Ira was favouring her leg this morning when he watched her in the market buying fruit, something she hadn’t been doing at the lock.

  "The leg will be fine by the end of today." Lee grabbed the seat in front of Magnus' desk, leaning back and relaxing, his hands behind his head and elbows spread wide. "She was actually a fairly docile patient, I’m not sure what you were all carrying on about.”

  “You should have seen what she can do with a pineapple. I’m not sure Rhys will be touching the fruit for a while.”

  Lee snorted, “That looked like it hurt like a bitch. Took me twenty minutes to get all the spikes out."

  Magnus nodded and continued to wait. He knew Lee well enough to know when the other man had more to say.

  "What are you planning to do with her?"

  Ah, there it was. Lee was turning protective already. Good. That would come in handy.

  "I'm not sure just yet."

  Lee scowled a bit at that. Oh ye of little faith. "Do you trust me so little?"

  The question made the other man blanche.

  "Of course not General! I would never! It's just… I..." Lee rushed to say.

  "It's fine." Magnus reassured the man earnestly, cutting off any further apologies.

  Magnus knew his treatment of Ira wouldn’t be taken lightly by the men. They were working hard to make things better, and her abduction was a bit impulsive.

  But when he saw her at that awful cottage, among all that bloodshed, her eyes glassy with grief and disbelief at the scene around her. That pain had morphed into burning anger the moment she saw him, and Magnus had known he couldn't leave her. Some part of him rebelled at the idea of her thinking so negatively of him that she would believe him responsible for that carnage.

  So, when Rhys knocked her out, Magnus decided to bring her back here. And then, perhaps not entirely necessarily, and in retrospect not one of his best thought out plans, he handcuffed her to the bed. It strangely seemed a reasonable precaution at the time. The anger and violence he had seen in her gaze was not something he wanted to face again. Not without her having heard the truth.

  He and his men were no stranger to restraining prisoners, however Magnus’ treatment of Ira led to his own men questioning him. Doubting him. She was a victim, not a prisoner. This might not have been such a good plan after all.

  He rubbed a hand over his face.

  "I appreciate your concern, but you needn’t worry. She doesn’t seem so hell-bent on cutting my eyes out any more, and if you think she will listen to the doctor's orders and stay off the leg, we can let her up."

  Looking relieved, though still guilty at having doubted Magnus, Lee nodded and left the room.

  Ira lay as he had left her, stretched out with her arms handcuffed above her head.

  How she managed to look so casual with her long limbs stretched as though this was a comfortable position, was beyond him. He had never seen someone look so very at ease while restrained.

  Ira was not what one would call a pretty woman. She was strong and lithe, her frame built for speed and swift movement, something she demonstrated back at the cottage. Her black hair was pulled tightly off her face in a way that exaggerated her already angular features. And she had piercing grey eyes that speared you, as if you were a rabbit and she, a bird of prey waiting to strike.

  Magnus had never been a rabbit, and he held her gaze with equal intensity. He knew she was spitting mad at him for tying her up, and refused to show even an ounce of remorse.

  There were many things he could have said. "Sorry for handcuffing you to a bed", would have been a good start. But he didn't think "sorry, but you were really really angry when I knocked you unconscious and abducted you, so I thought it was wise", would go over well.

  So instead he simply watched, staying silent, as Lee released her bindings. Once he was finished she calmly sat up and rubbed her wrists where they had been held, before inspecting her injured leg where Lee had treated her.

  In an instant she was up, mere inches from his face. He felt the point of a blade in his testicles, and a sharp sting of a second knife at his neck, as well as the feel of something wet trickling down his throat.

  He barely saw her move. He wasn't even sure he would have been able to stop the attack if he had been expecting it. Where had the weapons come from? He searched and disarmed her himself when she was first brought aboard. The look of shock on Lee’s face made the slight prick on his neck worth it. Magnus wouldn’t need to worry about Ira being a delicate flower that his men would fall over to protect.

  "If you ever tie me up again" she said softly in her husky voice, made all the more intimate by her soft lips being mere inches from his own, "I will take your balls and shove them down your throat."

  Magnus’ gaze moved to the knife in her hand and saw that it was one of his personal weapons. The one he kept strapped to the inside of his ankle. How did she get that?

  Looking back into her grey eyes, Magnus grinned.

  ***

  This man was crazy.

  He was grinning at her! Really grinning at her.

  His eyes lit up as though she had just made his day by stealing his weapons and threatening to castrate him while holding a knife to his throat. She was tempted to follow through with the threat just to wipe that look off his face. Would you still be so calm and collected without your balls Mr General? Hmm?

  It appeared to take a gargantuan effort for him to reel back his grin and return to his stoic expression. "You need to eat. Follow me."

  He spun on his heel and walked out the door, as if she hadn't just been holding him at knifepoint. Yep. Definitely crazy.

  "He's right." Ira had almost forgotten the other man in the room. "Eating will help your leg heal faster."

  Glancing briefly his way, Ira saw Lee wore a matching grin to his leader. They were all crazy. Of the two men, she knew the General was by far the greater threat. It seemed in her best interest to keep an eye on him as much as possible.

  Following him through a dark corridor, she was led into another small room that was equipped with a desk and a few chairs. Ira could see a small bed up against a wall in a small room set off to the side, similar to the one she had just been freed from. The rooms were both filled with personal things, and were clearly well used. Papers were strewn across the desk, a trunk in the corner sat open with a number of items sitting in and around it. The bed looked as though it had been quickly made after the owner rose this morning. Not messy, but definitely lived in. This was his room.

  She also noticed a small circular window on the wall across from her that looked out upon the busy water of the city docks.

  So they were on the barge.

  She was surprised she hadn’t noticed the movement in the water. Now that she realised it, the back and forth was obvious. That was sloppy of her. She needed to pay closer attention. She couldn’t afford to be so oblivious to her surroundings if she wanted to hunt down the man who killed Bill and Clarisse.

  Ira had let her mind wander and she quickly refocused on the man in front of her. He was watching her with that same stoic expression as before, patiently leaving Ira to her thoughts.

  She hadn’t been discrete in her perusal of the room. Ira didn’t feel that she owed this man any privacy after he so boldly abducted her. She wo
uld look through his underwear drawer if she felt so inclined. Well, maybe not his underwear. Was that weird? Did men have underwear drawers?

  Ira brought her attention away from his hypothetical underwear drawer and refocused on the man standing before her. Who was he? Why was he parading as some kind of merchant when he was quite obviously military. She wasn't sure what kind though. Certainly not someone who spent years in a barracks. No guardsman she ever knew would leave his quarters anything other than perfect.

  So a highborn officer. One who hadn't needed to work his time up the ranks.

  She needed to convince him to let her help in the search for the murderer. Her best course of action would be to persuade him that she was invaluable to their search. Better yet, she needed to make him believe that her involvement was his idea, his brilliant plan that he would then talk her into. Yes! That would do it.

  This would take subtlety.

  Caution.

  He sat down at his desk and learned back comfortably as he continued to stare at her.

  "I want to help find the murderer."

  So maybe subtlety wasn't her strong suit. She always had found more success in the upfront and straight to the point approach. Blurt it out and hope for the best. It worked about half the time. Maybe.

  He was silent for a time, as if considering what she said. Or perhaps waiting for her to continue.

  Many people felt compelled to fill silences in conversation. Ira liked to think that she was not one such person, having spent her formative years as a message runner forced to wait silently as a message was drafted by some high profile merchant or city official. Ira had become even more comfortable with the silence that came when stalking animals through the woods, a skill she had mastered. Now that she said her piece she felt no need to fill the void. She had cast her net, baited her trap, and was now perfectly content to wait for her prey to come to her.

  Or at least, this is what she was telling herself as she waited impatiently for him to respond.

  The silence in her mind wasn’t calm today. It roared. The anger and fear and need to just do something - anything - pounded through her veins. She would combust in this silence.