The Warden, page 17
“I don’t know if Elmo did it, Pips. But I’m going to find out who did, and why, and mete out fitting punishment.”
“What’s meat got t’do with it?” the girl asked through a muffled hiccup as she buried her face in Aelis’s hip.
She sighed. “I mean I’ll … find the right punishment for them.”
“Is Uncle Otto gonna die?”
“I don’t know,” Aelis said, instantly regretting the truth spoken aloud. “I will do everything I can for him.”
“You can’t find who done it and keep him alive at the same time, can you?”
Fuck. Aelis only just stopped herself from speaking the curse aloud. Girl just pointed out the contradiction in your obligations.
She decided to ignore that for the moment and focused on Otto. His temperature seemed normal, his breathing even if not easy, but he was deep in sleep. Going to need to come up with something for the pain when he wakes, she thought. And prepare dressings. She realized that Pips was still clinging to her, but that the girl had stepped back and kept rubbing her hands.
Aelis looked down at her, lifting a brow. “What’s the matter?”
“Stung, when you did that … thing. The magic whatsit that pushed me and Emilie away.”
“Stung? You should have just been pushed away.”
Pips flexed her hands and stepped away, looking up at Aelis. “Hands are tingly, like I sat on ’em, yeah?”
Worldsoul, bury me so deep that even Onoma couldn’t find me, Aelis thought, a curse she wouldn’t have dared to speak aloud.
“Pips,” she said, “after I make some preparations we’re … going to have to have a talk.”
“What about?”
The fact that you shouldn’t be able to feel anything from a ward, and that you did probably means you can learn to do more than feel it. But I can only deal with one gods-damned crisis at a time. “About your future,” she said. “Now, go on. Otto needs rest and not to be bothered. Outside with you.”
The girl led the way out but the hallway was blocked with the glowering Emilie, staring daggers at Aelis. Rus had apparently quit the field, and frankly Aelis couldn’t blame him, given the way the tall woman looked ready to do immediate violence.
“Pips,” Aelis said, “go out to the taproom, would you?” She gave the girl a gentle shove on the shoulder, and then let her hand rest casually on the hilt of her sword. The girl walked off, slowly, with a worried backward glance. Aelis fixed her eyes on Emilie and didn’t bother to hide the weariness in her deep sigh, though she hoped it came across as casual indifference to drawing her sword and spilling blood.
“Emilie, I—”
“You did some kind of foul magic to him. I could smell it on him. The magic of death.”
That stopped Aelis in her tracks, and she could only blink stupidly. “What?”
“I could smell the magic of death, of the Queen of the Void on him. It is foul.”
“And it was the only thing keeping him alive while my instruments were fetched,” Aelis snapped. “And what do you mean, you could smell the magic?”
Emilie lifted her chin defiantly. “I may not have been to your decadent Colleges, but—”
Aelis cut her off with the raised edge of one hand. “But you’re the local cunning woman, with just enough knowledge to make my life miserable and not enough wisdom to know when you’re overmatched.” She took a step forward, clenching her jaw, and wrapped her fist once more around the hilt of her sword. “What you smelled or sensed or detected or however you need to believe you perceived what I did, all I did was keep Otto’s soul, or his spirit, or the spark of life—whatever you might like to call it—within his own flesh for a little longer than it naturally would’ve been. It bought me the time I needed to save his life using precisely what I learned in my decadent Colleges, specifically the College of Necromancy in the Lyceum. The important work I did—what that same College taught me—was done with thread and needle, astringent and tincture. And if you attempt to interfere or question my work again, I will show you more of what I learned. Do you understand me?”
“I will not be ordered about by some girl ten years my junior,” Emilie began, only to hush when Aelis’s wand came to rest below her chin, its tip glowing a very faint green.
“You will be ordered about by the Warden of Lone Pine,” Aelis hissed. “Who,” she added, stepping away and lowering her wand, “would rather ask for and receive your help than order and compel. You do have medical training, yes?”
Emilie’s eyes remained fixed on Aelis’s wand and its glowing tip, which tiny trick of its construction Aelis dismissed. But the tall woman nodded and Aelis sighed again.
“I need someone to tend to Otto while I’m away. To clean and dress his wounds, to give him medicaments and infusions on a schedule, and to be able to brew new versions of them according to my instructions if the supplies I make don’t last. As far as I can tell, you’re the best person available for the task.”
“Why would I help you, after you’ve shown me your contempt, your disregard?”
“Because you said Otto was your friend, and because I think you care for Phillipa.”
“And where will you be going?”
“To find the man who stabbed him.”
“It was his brother Elmo. And he is long gone.”
“Then I’ll find someone who can track him down,” Aelis said, turning and stomping into the taproom, knowing Emilie would follow with more questions.
Her eyes immediately went to the Thorns in the far corner, or the table where they had been, only to find it empty. Rus was making himself scarce behind the counter. Aelis caught his eyes.
“They’ve left?”
He shook his head slightly. “Don’t think so. Gone to make their last preparations, though. I don’t think the dwarf is leaving without your bank note.”
“He can damn well wait for it. Who’s the best tracker in the village?”
“Elmo,” Rus answered, without missing a beat.
“Who’s second best, then?”
“Otto, probably,” Rus replied. “And he wouldn’t be good enough to find Elmo if he’d a mind to be lost.”
“There’s got to be someone here who can.”
Rus set both his hands, palms flat, on the counter and lowered his head for a moment. “There is one person who could find him. If … and I stress if … he can be convinced to help.”
“Silver is not much of an object for me. If I’m already annoying my father with one extravagant letter of credit, a second won’t do much harm.”
Rus chuckled grimly. “I’m afraid that the man I have in mind has no use for silver. You’re just going to have to talk to him. And hope he’s willing to listen.”
Rus’s words triggered something in Aelis’s mind: an enormous figure covered in fringed hides, carrying an elk on his back as though it weighed no more than a bundle of sticks. A shambling mountain of a man who disappeared into the woods on the hill above the inn with less noise than a fox.
“Well. Where does one go to take a meeting with Tun, then?”
* * *
Two hours later, her bare arms slick with sweat, Aelis cursed as she tripped over yet another knotted root. She was half certain the damn things were animated by some mischief-minded Conjurer and set to grabbing at her ankles and pulling her to the ground.
Based on Rus’s directions, she should be getting close, if she wasn’t already horrifyingly lost.
“If worse comes to worst,” she muttered, “I can wait till it gets dark and Onoma’s moon sheds enough light for me to find my way clear.”
She thrashed around in a general westward direction for a while longer, her arms getting scratched by low-hanging tree limbs. Her sweat, and the small scratches on her skin, began to attract tiny stinging insects and she wished she still had the strength of will to summon the kind of low-intensity but long-lasting ward that would keep them clear of her skin. Precisely the kind of waste of power Lavanalla would’ve chided me for, she thought.
“Or I suppose I could start setting fires until someone comes looking for me,” Aelis said out loud as she came into yet another small and unremarkable clearing and leaned against the thick trunk of a tree.
“I would prefer you didn’t,” said a quiet voice from just behind and above her. She whirled, her hand falling to her sword and drawing it partway out of the scabbard.
Standing between two trees that looked like mere saplings next to his bulk, Tun was only a yard or two away from her, wearing the same leather jerkin she’d seen him in before, the hood up. His masses of hair—some of it braided with small ornaments and charms, much of it hanging in loosely gathered strands—and the shadows of the trees obscured most of his face.
Aelis was immediately conscious of how enormous he was. Easily a foot taller than her, probably more, with a huge breadth of chest and shoulder, his arms strained the sleeves of his jerkin. The hands that emerged from the sleeves had enormous, swollen-looking knuckles, and she thought there was something odd about the color of his skin, but the movement of light through the trees kept her from determining just what that was.
There was also a powerful scent about him. Not an offensive body odor, and one hardly got far in the College of Necromancy with a weak stomach. Even so, Aelis couldn’t help but notice it, a kind of strong animal smell.
“Well,” he said. “You came all the way out here. What do you want? Need to trade for meat, furs?” His voice was surprisingly gentle, careful almost, and at odds with his wild mountain man appearance.
“No,” Aelis said, finally unwrapping her hand from the hilt of her sword. She swallowed hard, not out of fear, but to buy herself time to find what to say. “I came to ask for help.”
Tun didn’t move, and she couldn’t see his eyes aside from a deep glimmer beneath the shadow of his brow, but she had the feeling of being intensely studied. He was so still that she wouldn’t have known he was breathing if she couldn’t hear it.
He waited a long moment before finally breaking the silence. “Help with?”
“There’s been a stabbing in the village,” Aelis began.
Tun lifted a hand, his forefinger extended. She paused, nodded slightly.
“Who was stabbed? And by whom?”
“Looks like Elmo stuck his brother Otto, then ran.”
Tun gave a small sigh. “Elmo. Scout?”
“The same,” Aelis said. “Rus told me that the only person in the village who had a chance of tracking him might be Otto.”
“Is Otto dead?”
“No,” Aelis said. “But…” She shrugged, saw no reason to hide the truth. “He may yet die. The wound was bad. I’ve done what I could—”
“Which was what?”
“I closed the wound. Sewed up as many of the cut pieces of Otto’s guts as I could as cleanly as I could. But his bowels were pierced, torn in places. Lots of ways for illness to seize him.”
Tun nodded slowly, but she knew that wasn’t yet an assent to her request. “Are you certain Elmo did it?”
“Their niece says it was his knife.”
“Saw-edged blade?”
Aelis nodded.
Tun heaved a bigger sigh, turned his head, and spat into the dirt. She thought that she dimly heard him mutter words in a language she didn’t recognize, then he turned back to her.
“Those knives are a sin. Always were. Never much liked the men who carried them.” Another pause as he studied her, his features and eyes still hidden from her. “If you find Elmo, what do you plan to do with him?”
“Sort out what happened,” Aelis said. “Bring him back to the village to face his brother, and an inquiry, maybe an assize. It’s possible he wasn’t in control of himself.”
“Oh?”
“He has problems, from the war. And there’s a chance that a malign enchantment was working on him when he did it.”
“A malign enchantment.” Tun said the words as if tasting them. “You have a way with phrases, Warden. I must ask: By assize, do you mean that you will bring him straight home to the gallows?”
“Only if the law that I am duty-bound to demands it.”
“That answer abdicates your responsibility.”
“If he has to die, I will take all the responsibility. I’m not going to avoid that. Allow me to rephrase; the best outcome is that neither of these brothers dies. The best outcome, the one I wish for, is that they both find ways to go on living, for themselves and for Pips.” She paused. “An old Warden once told me that I should wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which fills up first. I won’t hold tight to wishes.”
Tun tilted his head very slightly, then began to laugh. It started out as a slow, quiet rumble, and grew to a roar that seemed to shake her teeth. He slapped a massive hand against his stomach and ceased laughing but slowly a few moments later, little wheezes and chuckles rolling out of his mouth.
“I like you, Warden,” he said finally, the laughter replaced with careful, almost solemn speech. Aelis suddenly wondered if he spoke around some kind of injury or impediment, his words came so slowly and cautiously. “But I do not know if I will help you.”
“I would pay you. Generously.”
“Silver is of no use to me.”
“Gold? Jewels?”
“Can’t eat them, can’t make decent tools with them, won’t keep me warm in the winter.”
“What can I offer you, then?”
“Perhaps a favor,” Tun said. “But I have decided, regardless. I will help you track down this man, and bring him back to face whatever justice is due.”
“That was a quick decision.”
“Not as quick as you might think.” Tun paused. “I will track him for you, but I will not kill him for you.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking.”
He came forward, extending one huge arm toward her. “If we are to work together, we should know each other’s names. Formally.” He paused, hand waiting in the air before her. “Tunbridge.”
“Aelis Cairistiona de Lenti un Tirraval,” she replied. Her hand disappeared into his. The skin of his fingers and palms was thick with calluses, and she imagined his wrist was as thick as her biceps. As they shook, he reached up and pushed back the hood and some of the mat of hair that obscured his features.
Light hit his face. His skin had a gray-greenish cast. The ridge of his brow was more prominent than she’d imagined; not so much that it overhung his eyes completely, but they were huge, dark, cavernous.
But what Aelis truly fixated on was the source of Tun’s slow and careful speech; the elongated canine teeth that peeked over the edge of his bottom lip. They were beyond teeth; they were tusks.
She was conscious that she looked too long and too directly, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away till Tun released her hand and turned away.
“I will go find his trail,” Tun said. Now that Aelis knew to listen for it she could hear the way his lips and tongue moved around his long teeth and extended jaw. “I will meet you behind Rus’s public house before moonrise.”
“We’re going to set out in the dark?”
“The man we are chasing has a day’s head start. He can move faster than you and knows where he’s going. The hours are precious, though we will not run all night.”
“Is the dark going to be a problem for you?”
“No. You?”
“Not for a few more nights, at least,” Aelis said. “Behind the inn, before moonrise?”
“Yes. Pack lightly. Wear sleeves; if he goes to higher country, it will be colder. And then there is the sun.”
Aelis sighed. “I had to rip my sleeves to bind Otto’s wounds. I do not normally go about like this.”
Tun, once more a still mass of half shadow framed by tree trunks, shrugged so faintly she hardly caught the gesture. “I make it a point not to take for granted what you people know and don’t know.”
“You people?”
Tun snorted in a way that might have been amused or dismissive or both. “City folk.”
“How did you know I’m—”
He heaved a great, long-suffering sigh. “By the evidence of my senses. You smell of it; you’ve not been here long enough to wash it away. I could see it in how you walked and the noise you made and hear it in your voice. Then you told me your name; un Tirraval is rather unmistakable. What parts of that county that are not city are hardly untamed wilderness, hmm?”
“Don’t approve of cities?”
“Cities don’t approve of me.”
Aelis paused, felt the moment stretch awkwardly. “Is there anything else you’d like to criticize about me or my place of origin before we work together?”
“I was not criticizing. I was observing,” Tun said. “I will add this: I expected your hand to be soft, your wrist weak. They were not.” One of his trunk-like arms raised, a thick finger extended toward the sword she wore. “You know how to use that.”
“I do,” Aelis said, feeling a measure of her confidence filling the words as she spoke them.
“You have a city dweller’s confidence, too.” He pushed away from the tree. “We have spent too much wind trying to impress each other. Go see to your wounded man, pack. Lightly. Best if I don’t have to carry anything for you.”
“I can carry what I’ll need,” Aelis said, though she had the sense that Tun was no longer listening to her. She watched him stride away with an easy gliding movement that seemed unlikely, at best, from someone of his size. In fewer steps than should’ve been possible, even in such a dense wood, he vanished from sight.
13
THE KISS
“You didn’t tell me he was a half-orc,” Aelis blurted in response to Rus’s query of how her meeting with Tun had gone.
“You didn’t ask. And I’m not sure I’d go throwing that precise term at him.”
“Well, then, what term do I use?”
Rus blinked, drew out the silence. “His name?”
“You know what I mean,” Aelis nearly spat.
“Listen to me. Tun is no more interested in continuing the old enmity than you are. He agreed to help you, which is a victory in itself.”
