Adrift

by Travis Smith

  Antonio Staig answered the door after a few moments and gave a grunt of surprise to see Bernard outside.

  “Surprised to see me, my good man?” Bernard asked.

  “A wee bit, mayhap,” Antonio replied in his thick, twangy accent. “Well, ’t ain’t s’ much a bad s’prise!”

  “Of course not,” Bernard agreed. “I’ve had a hell of a time these past few days, and I thought an evening stroll with my number one may do me some good.”

  “Well o’ course it’ll do ye good,” Antonio grinned. “Lemme grab me clothes fit fer the masses.”

  Bernard remotely resented having the door pushed to in his face and waiting on the stoop like some commoner, but when he heard Antonio inside talking to someone, he leaned forward to try and listen to the conversation. It had been quite some time since he and Antonio worked together as they had in the old days, and all Bernard needed now was a conniving right-hand.

  He could make out murmurs of a female voice and Antonio’s responses, but no real snippets of conversation. Nonetheless, he relaxed a bit. Antonio had always enjoyed his fair share of strange company. This was surely one such instance.

  “Shut yer fuckin’ whingin’, ye trollop! Ain’t got time fer grouse from yer sort. Take this spoilin’ meat to yer whore friends, and b’ gone ’fore I come back. If I find anythin’ else missin’, it’ll be yer arse ’n’ theirs, ’n’ I won’ be so gentle as I was last night!” Antonio yelled from inside the door.

  Bernard smirked as his friend came back out and slammed the door behind him. “Exercising your newfound power with great finesse, I see,” he remarked.

  “Oy, these trollops think they c’n speak as they please soon’s they’ve stroked yer dick once or twice,” Antonio replied. “I’m sure y’ know o’ such wiv yer new shrew,” he said with a lascivious grin.

  “Fuck you, fine fellow. Fuck you very much.”

  Antonio laughed as they walked slowly down the steps toward the market in the center of Reprise. “Still no luck wiv the lovely Baroness?”

  “None at all,” Bernard sighed. “The bitch is useless. The moment her shit of a son opens that door for me, I’ll sink the pair of them into the shallow bay.”

  “That’s where the most of ’em belong,” Antonio grumbled. “I’m ’bout keen t’ drag a half dozen out there m’self.”

  The duo finally reached the central market, a once bustling, vibrant square, now quiet, deserted, and in disarray. There was still a little time left in the day before the sun set, and a few of Antonio’s most loyal men were hard at work keeping the slaves in line. A few milled about, chains around their ankles, while tired, angry men in officials’ garb barked orders and prodded them with sword points. One nearby man with a black eye and a long, deep gash on the side of his face looked fit to collapse as he struggled to drag a wild hog’s carcass along the street. The man behind him carried a longbow on his back and was talking animatedly with a fellow hunter while their slave carried their hefty kill.

  “Y’ see that scabby git?” Antonio asked Bernard, pointing to the worn-down slave man dressed in dirty, tattered garb.

  Bernard grunted in acknowledgment.

  Antonio chuckled. “Over’eard ’im t’ other day foul-mouthin’ ye.”

  Bernard grunted again. “You think they’d learn from the mistakes of their peers,” he muttered moodily. The subject of dissention always set him on edge, perhaps due to the utter success and destruction that came from his own dissention.

  “Oy,” Antonio said, “’im said ye’s a buffoon ’n’ it’s ironic ye walked all over ever’one else t’ be the king, yet y’ still call yerself The Baron.”

  Bernard turned toward the man and moved as if to accost him in the streets himself, and Antonio grinned with glee, but Bernard seemed to think better of it and turned back to his friend. “What is it with these fools who think they know better than I why I do the things I do?”

  “I know, I know, ’t’s what I says to ’im,” Antonio replied. “Ain’t no reasonin’ wiv some folks.”

  “It’s not about the power,” Bernard snapped. “It’s never been about the power.”

  “Oy, ’n’ I guess he didn’ know who I am, ’cause he says to me, ‘He’s but a baron, yet he taxes our goods ’n’ locks us up at will.’”

  Bernard scoffed. “Oh, the times I’ve heard such as that! I’ve shown these people that anyone can be a leader, that anyone can help the populace! I’ve done them a favor, and yet these lazy scum want to bitch and moan they can’t walk into a shop and take some cutlets as a handout just ’cause they’re feeling ill today? I’ve removed the power from their lives, those rich snobs who ruled over them all, looking down their pointed noses at them all the while. I am no king; I am The Baron, and it is little price to pay your savior a bit of food to feed his own and some cloth to cover his back!”

  Antonio laughed at his friend. “Oh, I do loves it when y’ rant so!”

  “This is no power play!” Bernard repeated. “I have removed the rule and left them all to fend for themselves. No one deserves to have his hard-earned meal taken away and shared with his neighbors because they themselves could grow no crops. Every man for himself, I say, and if you’re too lazy to live your own life, you die. If you’re too bullheaded to alter your way of life, if you decide to resort to thievery or blaspheming, you’ll be imprisoned and enslaved for the good men and women who know how a nation should be!”

  7

  “Where we headed?” Antonio finally asked after he and Bernard had walked to the outskirts of the market center of Krake.

  “I must stop by to speak with an associate for a moment.”

  “What’s the business?”

  “What business is that of yours?” Bernard asked defensively.

  Antonio was momentarily taken aback. His friend had been moody and aloof since returning from retrieving the baby and his mother, but he’d never snapped at his right-hand man so. Antonio had been his number one since the beginning, carrying out all of Bernard’s most unsavory affairs, dealing with the most disreputable characters, and always being the first to hear the news of things to come or of things going awry. “None, sir, apologies,” he replied briskly, clearly conveying his offense to Bernard, whom he had never before called sir.

  “Now don’t get all huffy,” Bernard said, amicably enough, clapping Antonio on the back. “I need to speak with someone, and you wouldn’t know the man, nor would you need to.”

  “Ain’t no problem,” Antonio replied. After a moment’s pause, he asked, “Got more word o’ the catastrophe in Onton?”

  “You’re my ears and eyes, Antonio, the only words I care about are yours, so why do you ask me that to which you already know the answer?”

  Antonio shrugged, clearly just trying to change the subject. “The, uh,” he paused, searching for a word that wouldn’t set Bernard off, “preparation seems to ’ave backfired a bit.”

  “How do you figure?” Bernard asked curtly.

  “Well all they doin’ over there is buggerin’ ’n’ bitin’.”

  Bernard scoffed. “I fail to see how that’s a backfire.”

  “They’s jus’ monsters, mate! Ain’t no reasonin’ wiv ’em. May’s well be dead!”

  “Do you know what the aim of the concoction was?” Bernard snapped.

  “O’ course,” Antonio began.

  “Tell me,” Bernard demanded. “What was the aim, to the best of your limited knowledge, of that operation?”

  “Well,” Antonio stammered, “Ye infect ’em so’s they learn servility in such a way as they can pass it to their kin.”

  “Precisely,” Bernard said. “Infect the masses such that they lose a portion of their free will. They live only to serve the barony and to generate offspring to serve the barony. It was a test operation, chum, and if the reports say they’re only buggerin’ and bitin’ over there, it sounds like a bloody well good one!”

  Antonio nodded, resigned, and the two walked in silence through the out
skirts of the city until they reached a remote road winding through the woodlands. The sun had fully set, and neither of them had brought a torch. A full moon was in the sky, but it was partially covered by the thick, incoming storm clouds.

  “Little outta the way, innit?” Antonio asked.

  “My associate likes his privacy,” Bernard said plainly.

  “I’ll say. Y’ ain’t gonna gut me ’n’ dump me body out here, is ya?”

  Bernard laughed but said nothing.

  At last they reached a plain, tiny hut encircled in a dense copse. The small yard was unkempt and untouched, and the thatch roof was degraded and hardly intact. Each of the small windows was meticulously boarded so that not a sliver of light shone out into the night. Bernard ascended the small, decrepit porch and ordered that Antonio wait outside without turning to face him. He then knocked once upon the door, paused, and knocked twice more in quick succession. Without hesitation, he entered the hut and closed the door behind him.

  “You brought another to my cabin?” a strange voice hissed instantly.

  Antonio heard no response from Bernard and no more voices at all from inside. He sneered at the impudent bastard who would question his attendance with The Baron, and for a moment, he considered storming in the door and sticking his sword in the fool’s face. In the end, though, Antonio was overcome by an eerie notion of unease and decided to simply stay put. Not ever a man to be compelled by his nerves, the mere fact that he felt this way put him even more on edge. He glanced up at the glowing moon as it reemerged from behind one of the thick clouds. As he stared at the dark patterns on the massive circle in the sky, his strange, out-of-place feeling redoubled itself in his gut. For the first time in his life, Antonio felt tiny, insignificant. He stared up at the moon and wondered what else was out there. What exactly was that moon, how far away was it, and how was it simply suspended in the sky? He shook his head in an attempt to clear it from these inconsequential questions that most of the world bothered not to ask.

  He looked back at the dark, silent cabin and felt petty in his curiosity about what was going on in there. He felt uneasy and improper by Bernard’s side for the first time since he’d known the man. Nevertheless, he looked back up at the moon and continued to wait in silence.

  8

  When Bernard emerged from the cabin some time later, his face was as blank and brooding as ever before. He closed the door behind him and hurried down the stairs toward Antonio.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Anythin’ t’ report?” Antonio asked suspiciously.

  Bernard only shook his head.

  The two walked in an uncomfortable silence down the long, winding path back to the outskirts of Krake. Something inside that hut had changed Bernard’s mood completely and for the worse. Antonio tried several times to make conversation, but nothing worked.

  “M’ boy’s jus’ returned from Fordar,” he said. His thick eastern accent pronounced it “For-dah.”

  Bernard grunted in absent acknowledgment.

  “Said they got ’em a nice big crew o’ workers. Apparently since you ain’t there person’ly, them fellas think they c’n spout off ’s much nonsense ’s they please. Lucky we’s got so many loyals ova there as is,” Antonio said with a laugh.

  Bernard merely nodded his head and looked straight ahead.

  “They got ’em a nice big prison. Jus’ set the whiners t’ work ’n’ throw the rest behind bars wiv the crazies ’n’ retards.”

  “That’s what we need over here in Reprise,” Bernard said with about as much conviction as a newborn calf.

  Antonio finally gave up and grew sullen, too. The pair walked through the market square and back up the never-ending steps toward Antonio’s manor and Bernard’s castle in silence. When Antonio turned away to enter his manor, he moodily said, “Good even’, sir,” to which Bernard made no reply.

  9

  Bernard sat alone in the empty council room. The expansive window lent an extraordinary view of the distant thunderheads raining down blue, jagged bolts of lightning onto the sea, but Bernard remained unfazed. He sat alone brooding until the sun began to peek over the horizon and light the sky above and behind the incoming clouds. Before the dark sky could turn to blue, those clouds had moved directly overhead and turned everything grey. Booming thunder shook the heavy glass in each window, and rain poured down from the clouds in crashing sheets, driving into the windows with every gust of wind.

  A new day, Bernard thought, a new attempt.

  The fact that this new day was besmirched by a violent storm was about as apt a symbol as Bernard could have predicted. He hadn’t slept a wink all through the night, and he couldn’t afford to do so now.

  After a while, he approached the door to the Throne Room and closed his eyes, focusing on what he’d learned in the cabin. If he didn’t get this door open, all of this will have been for naught. If he couldn’t get inside this room, he may as well send himself sailing out the window and into the frothy, stormy sea below.

  Eyes closed, Bernard placed a palm against the cool marble. Quietly he began to mutter an unintelligible incantation. When he finished, he repeated the recitation.

  Then he repeated it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  10

  Antonio lay awake through the night until the storm rolled in and he could hear the violent thunderclaps out over the sea. He agonized over Bernard’s affair in that cabin in the woods until he could no longer keep his thoughts straight. At last he closed his eyes and allowed an uneasy sleep to overtake him.

  The next day Antonio paced his empty manor. He felt deeply uncomfortable in his solitude, a sensation he’d never once experienced. He spent a time watching the storm from his windows and glancing up at the castle, wondering what Bernard was up to.

  Before his thoughts could drive him mad, he decided he would return to that cabin himself and set his mind at ease one way or another. He fastened his blade to his waistband and set off out the door. Most of the storm clouds had passed by now, and only a light, grey drizzle remained.

  As he passed through the city, a few men greeted him politely, more likely because they feared him than to be friendly. Antonio wasn’t a man who was well known to embrace friendliness. He passed through the outskirts of the city and hit the winding trail leading to the cabin. This far from the market center and in this area of Krake, there was no one nearby, even in the middle of the day.

  He reached the cabin some time later and drew his blade from its sheath. After looking around to ensure no one was watching him, Antonio marched up onto the small, ramshackle porch and rapped once upon the door, then twice more in quick succession, just as Bernard had done the night before. Steeling himself, he pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  The hut was so dark that Antonio had to leave the front door standing open just to be able to see his surroundings. He held his sword out in front of him and listened to the silence, waiting for any sign of life whatsoever. With the windows all boarded, no light at all could enter, and the light shining through the door seemed stark and out of place. A table was overturned in the middle of the main room. Small pieces of furniture and knickknacks and dishes lay forgotten, strewn about the cabin in disarray. A layer of dust overlaid everything therein, making it appear as though no one had inhabited this abode in quite some time.

  “Oy!” Antonio called into the silence.

  He listened, but heard nothing.

  “If anyone’s ’ome, come out now. I got me blade, ’n’ I’m comin’ in!”

  No response.

  Antonio propped the door open to provide enough light to see by and wandered into the small cabin. A kitchen as rancid as Antonio’s dining table at home was adjoined to the main room, but otherwise, only one small sleeping chamber existed in the hut. Antonio checked it out, but it was as vacant and forgotten as the rest of the building.

  Antonio sheathed his blade and stood for a few moments more, deliberating
on what he’d heard and experienced last night. What was Bernard hiding?

  As he walked back out the front door, Antonio noticed a small inscription carved into the wooden frame. He ran a finger over the strange insignia and stifled an odd notion of déjà vu.

  He made the trek back home just as the afternoon sun was becoming visible beyond the thinning clouds, and he was greeted at his front door by a surprise.

  A man he vaguely recognized as meeting once or twice stood impatiently and uncomfortably outside the door to Antonio’s manor. When Antonio approached up the stairs, the man turned to face him, and his eyes widened in surprise, surprise perhaps at how intimidating Antonio was up close and alone.

  “What’re ya doin’ at me door?”

  “A—apologies, sir,” the man stammered. “Me name be P—Paulie.”

  “Oy,” Antonio nodded, finally remembering from where he recognized the man. “Of Julian’s crew.”

  “The very one,” Paulie said grimly.

  11

  Bernard stood, eyes closed and arms outstretched, leaning against the marble door to the Throne Room. He’d recited his incantations until his throat grew parched and speech grew raspy, but nothing had happened. He contemplated going to get the boy again, but what good had that ever done? If he had to listen to that incessant screaming right now, his head might implode. Part of him thought that perhaps he should get some rest and try again afterward, but there was no time for such!

  What could be wrong? The door must recognize William’s touch. The ancient magicians had made it so. Was it even possible for the child to will the door open? Would Bernard be forced to wait until the child was old enough to comprehend what he was doing?

  A knock upon the castle door interrupted his musing.

  He closed his eyes and ignored it. The problem must lie in that little brat. The door should open at his mere touch. The magic that controlled this kingdom dictated that the door open at the touch of the next heir to the throne. When the king grew too old to perform his duties or actually died, the throne was bequeathed to the next living man who possessed the blood of the king.