The Warden, page 29
“To what?”
“Lone Pine.”
“And you did this because…?”
“To see if I could, because I could envision scenarios where it might be necessary, and because I might need help focusing.”
“So when Nath hit us with her enchantments, you resisted because of … a compulsion you laid on yourself?”
“Not quite. It made resisting easier.”
“Did it occur to you that passing these amulets to me and to Elmo would’ve been advantageous?”
“Advantageous, certainly. Also very illegal without your permission.”
“You would’ve had mine.”
“If I’d fucked it up, I would’ve been handing you into Nath’s clutches.” Or to whatever was driving her, she thought.
“Point.” Tun took a deep breath. “You knew she’d come back?”
“No. Not at all. I hoped I’d never see or hear from her again. But this business with … with…” She faltered.
“Dalius,” Tun supplied.
“Dalius,” Aelis nearly spat through her gritted teeth. “Dalius. Dalius. Dalius. This business with him. I decided that being on my guard in every possible way was better than the alternative.”
“Next time, Warden, I ask that you share any such concerns with me. Honesty is essential to working together.”
“Next time?”
Tun shrugged. “You’ll repair my amulet in payment. Your term in Lone Pine is for two years. You’ll need a tracker again.”
“Onoma’s frozen tits, I hope not. No offense, Tun. I find your company calming and you … erudite beyond my expectations. Honestly,” she added quickly, aware of how that might have sounded.
“No offense taken, Warden. There aren’t many folk in Lone Pine who’ll talk to me. They don’t make warding signs with their hands, pray to Anaerion or Stregon when I pass, or mutter about half-breeds and what the Crowns should have done in the war anymore. But few are inviting me over for beer and bread.”
“Rus and Martin might.”
“They would, and they do, but I don’t want to hurt their custom. Besides, until my amulet is fixed and I … have control … it’s best I don’t mingle too much.”
“Fair.”
Silence reigned a few more moments, but for the crackle of the small fire. Aelis hadn’t questioned when Tun had built it, though he’d largely been against it so far.
“Why’d you decide it was safe enough to build a fire tonight?”
“It seemed important to have something to gather beside and talk.”
“Waiting for me to weep and fall to pieces over taking a life?”
“You don’t seem the type, no. But if you were?” Tun shrugged. “I’ve seen it.”
“I’m not naïve. I know that becoming a Warden means projecting force into the world. During my training as an Abjurer I assisted in some operations against local thieves’ guilds and the like, so I’d seen a bit of a fight.” Aelis paused, looking for the right words, lips pressed firmly together. “But I hadn’t had to deal a mortal blow.”
Tun took as deep a breath as Aelis had seen in her time with him. “I doubt this’ll be the only one, Warden.”
“Most people fear Necromancers, Tun. They think we’ll tear out their souls or animate their dead grandfathers or rot their hands off the bones. What we really do, what we train the most to do, is save lives. I’m a physician. A surgeon. With that knife in this hand?” Aelis held up her right hand in the fire’s dim light. Her fingers were long and dexterous, her wrist thick with fencer’s muscles, her palm callused from the hilt. “She didn’t have a chance.”
“Well, she wasn’t going to give us one. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, considering our man there was a few moments from trying to dig out my liver with your sword.” Tun tapped his left hip. “I like my liver where it is.”
“It’s on the other side,” Aelis said absently.
“Hardly the point,” Tun said, though his sternness melted into laughter and they shared a chuckle for a moment. A moment of silence drew itself out, the fire crackling, before Aelis spoke again.
“I’m not sure why I put that knife in my other sleeve. But once it was there I saw no other way to play it.”
“Because there wasn’t. You have training and you have intuition. You used both, and you saved lives doing it. If you want to get drunk when we get back to Lone Pine and get it out of your system, I’ll drink with you. From where I’m sitting you did the right thing, the only thing you could do in the moment, and I’m glad to know that you had it in you.”
“You’re right, at least insofar as I need to save the bathos until we get back to Lone Pine.” She looked over at Elmo, who slept as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Gods, I hope Otto isn’t dead.”
“Otto is a good man. It would be a terrible thing for Phillipa to lose the last family she has.”
“It would. And Phillipa herself is yet another thorny question I’ll have to deal with.”
“Oh?”
“The child has magical talent. How much, in what direction it lies, and whether she can be taught or encouraged, I don’t know. But she has it.”
“Why confide this in me, Warden?”
“You see anyone else lining up to be my confidant?”
“I think that is a new role for me.”
“Well, it suits you. Either that or I don’t like the looks of sleep and talking is better than playing at parlor tricks like pyroscopy and capnomancy.”
“You’re not a diviner.”
“And here I thought I could find a gap in your vocabulary.”
Tun grunted, and they fell silent. Elmo shifted in his sleep. The fire crackled.
“Talk may be better than sleep, Warden. But you’re going to wish you’d done the latter when dawn breaks.”
“I’m only just out of university, Tun. You think I’m not used to doing on no sleep?”
“Writing exams is less strenuous than a long hike on short rations through hostile wilderness while managing a prisoner, no matter how students pride themselves on the difficulty of their lives.”
“Fair,” Aelis answered. “You want the first watch?”
“No. I have no wish to keep dwelling on how powerless I felt under the sway of Nathalie’s power.” With that, Tun unfolded himself and stretched out, crossing his legs at the ankles.
The conversation thus abruptly ended, Aelis stood up, stamped feeling back into her feet and lower legs, and began walking a small circuit.
For all that Tun’s words resonated—she had done, in the moment, the only thing she could have—she still wondered if she could’ve planned for a better contingency.
Nath’s face bothered her; not because she had watched the woman die, but because there had been something wrong in it.
“Dalius, Dalius, Dalius,” she muttered, repeating the name like a prayer in the hopes of remembering it. She fixed his face in her mind, but it lasted only a moment. She thought again of the spell he cast; harmless, barely formed illusion.
“And yet Nath said his name. And for a woman who looked to be my age, give or take, it felt odd to be called ‘child.’ Or ‘barely trained.’” She tried to make a list in her mind. It would read; 1. Elmo. 2. Otto. 3. Dalius. 4. Pips. 5. Investigate history of wizards and Mahlgren, which she instantly amended to 5. Write to Lyceum to request information on said history as no copies are likely to be in Lone Pine. 6. Find my missing book. 7. Write to Maurenia? 8. Write to Father. 9. Get day-after-exams drunk.
It was the tenth item to occur to her that surprised her. 10. Find out who Nath was.
All I have is an old locket with a badly painted miniature portrait.
“Am I a Warden or not? I will find out who she was, and why she became what she became. I owe her that much,” she said, though she didn’t find the words terribly convincing.
The rest of her watch passed in relative calm. Elmo snored. Tun didn’t make a sound as the hours rolled by. Finally, as if some kind of alarm spell had woken him up, or a window-knocker had come by, he sat up, stood, and beckoned Aelis back to the dying fire.
She slept rather more easily than she expected to. Her dreams were a curious mix of Nath, Dalius, a stabbing with a knife, and Maurenia.
24
THE RETURN
The long walk back to Lone Pine passed without incident. Elmo grew more talkative and yet also more grim with every step. When at last they stood on a small hill overlooking the village a few hours past midday, Tun pulled up the hood of his coat and cleared his throat.
“I think you should take him back yourself,” he said. “My presence will only raise questions. And being seen bringing him back yourself will do you no harm with the villagers.”
“Tomorrow, Tun,” Aelis said. “Tomorrow, I will come to study your amulet and see what repairs I might make. Tonight I have…” A judgment to make, Aelis didn’t say, because Elmo was standing close by, after all. She watched Tun melt into the trees, took Elmo by the arm, and started down the hill and back into Lone Pine proper.
She was practically at Rus and Martin’s door before anyone noticed them. Bruce, whose sheep pen she’d helped to fix, came into view. Upon sighting her, he gave his head a shake and yelled.
“Warden!”
“Bruce. Greeting me or warning everyone else?”
“Little bit of both,” he said, his cheeks coloring a bit. It was only then that he seemed to realize that she was bringing Elmo along with her, and the color faded into pale shock.
He tugged at his forelock and scurried away.
Aelis resettled her hand lightly around Elmo’s arm and they walked in silence to the inn’s front door.
To his credit, he’s not fighting, running, or crying. She paused before the door and sighed. “You ready to go in?”
“Don’t matter if I’m ready, does it?”
“Any questions?”
“If Otto’s dead, are you gonna hang me?”
“Let’s answer the first part of that question before we think about the second.”
Aelis pushed open the door. The inside of the place was largely empty. Behind the counter along the back wall that separated kitchen from common room, Rus and Martin stood arm in arm, with the shorter, stockier innkeeper resting his head against the taller man’s chest. She smiled despite herself and delicately cleared her throat.
They looked up, both having had their eyes closed. Rus smiled to see her, and Martin’s eyes widened. He took a half step toward the kitchen but stopped himself short of leaving Rus’s embrace.
“Warden!”
“Please, Rus. Aelis.” She guided Elmo to a bench and he sat down. She resisted the urge to take a spot on the bench next to him. Nothing for it now. “How’s my patient?”
Rus said nothing. Instead he nodded at the stairs. Aelis steeled herself and climbed, trying not to let her hands shake or her steps falter. Once she was up the stairs and in the hallway, she heard a faint voice speaking like a chant, over the unmistakable scritch of pen or writing stick on paper.
Aelis came to the slightly open door and peered in. Pips sat in a chair next to the narrow bed, bent over a flat piece of wood, scratching away with the nub of a stick of writing coal. As she wrote, she whispered.
“A. Lish. Ky. Ree. Stee. Oh. Na. Dee. Lentee. Un. Tir. Ah. Val. Phillipa. Otto. Elmo. Emilie. A. Lish.”
Aelis pushed the door open and took a loud step. Otto was laid out on the bed. She saw that he was breathing, even and steady, and she wanted to cry. Pips sat up, her eyes blinking into focus from her close concentration on her writing practice.
The girl threw her work aside, flew off her chair, and tumbled so hard against Aelis’s legs in a hug that the Warden was nearly bowled over.
Pips said nothing for a moment. Then she tried to say everything all at once.
“Did you find Elmo? Is he all right? Otto is alive but he doesn’t get out of bed for very long. I practiced writing every day. Emilie took good care of Otto. Rus said you weren’t coming back, and Martin told him he was too … sinkull?” Pips stopped for a breath and Aelis seized the opportunity.
“Cynical, Pips. He said he was too cynical.” Aelis pronounced the word slowly, making sure to enunciate each syllable. “And I am happy to see you too. Elmo is downstairs but I’d ask you to stay here. I have to see how Otto is.”
She disentangled herself from Pips, who clung to her leg anyway, and bent over Otto’s bed. She grasped her dagger with one hand and laid the other over his head, which was cool to the touch.
She laid down a simple diagnostic using the magic bound into her dagger. Otto was in pain and probably would be for a long time. He might have stomach trouble in the future, and he had a touch of fever so slight her fingers alone couldn’t detect it. But he was alive, and Elmo’s knife was not going to kill him, and she came damned close to letting a few tears fall from her eyes before she fought the desire down.
“Pips. Stay here. I’m going to get Elmo. And a witness.”
She was down the stairs and back with the girl’s other uncle and Rus in tow a few moments later. Elmo, for the first time, tried to halt outside the room, but Aelis was having none of it.
She marched him to Otto’s bedside, leaned down, and gently prized open one of the wounded man’s eyelids.
He flickered awake, grimacing almost immediately, then started as he saw Elmo standing over him.
“Otto,” Aelis began, seizing the moment, “is this the man who stabbed you?”
“Course it fuckin’ is,” Otto wheezed.
“Had you threatened him?”
“Only tried to take his gold away.”
“Then we have an extenuating circumstance. The gold was not gold,” Aelis said. After a bit of prying she pulled free one of the bronze brooches. “It was this. Glamoured to look like gold, and enchanted to make the carrier do anything to defend the Earldom of Mahlgren, such as it is. Neither you nor Elmo had any way of knowing that. Elmo, have you anything to say in your defense?”
“This an assize now?”
“No. It’s an inquiry, which is why Rus is here, so he can attest that what I say happened happened. I ask again if you have anything to say in your defense.”
The innkeeper remained half-in, half-out of the room, and leaned forward when he heard his name.
“I wasn’t myself,” Elmo said. “It’s a bad excuse, but there it is. I have my moments, since the war. I wake up angry, screamin’, confused. I got a coin and suddenly I had a purpose, like I was a soldier again. I had to go north. Had to.”
“Did you know that stabbing your brother Otto was wrong?”
“S’pose I did. But I couldn’t stop myself. He was between me and … and what I had to do. What I needed.”
“To keep the coin and to serve Mahlgren?”
“Aye.”
Aelis turned to the convalescent brother. “Otto. Do you agree to abide by any sentence I pass and to waive appeals and legal recourse?”
“I don’t want you to kill my brother, Warden.”
“Answer the question. Rus, make note of his answer.”
“Aye, Warden.”
“I don’t know what the question means.”
Aelis leaned down over Otto and whispered, “Just say yes. Place a little trust in me.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then, Elmo, my sentence is thus for the crime of stabbing your brother. Your knives and any other weapon that is not expressly made for farm or domestic work such as you have is forbidden to you for the period of a year, at which point I will review the case. I will decide what is a weapon and what is a tool. You will also subject yourself to any meeting or intervention I ask for regarding your episodes—your moments of ‘not being yourself.’ Otto: as compensation for the loss of income due to your injuries and your brother’s absence, the Crowns and the Estates House as represented by me, your Warden, will pay you fair market value for whatever crops or animals you lost. Fair market value to be determined by averaging what three other farmers with comparably sized herds and fields made and comparing it to what you made, and providing the difference.”
Otto blinked up at her. “What’s all that mean?”
“It means Elmo is free to go but is not allowed to have knives, and he has to talk to me sometimes and perhaps accept an enchantment to help him stay calm if I think he needs it. It means I’m going to pay you in silver for whatever you lost as a result of all this. It means that this inquiry is over, and will not become an assize.”
Elmo and Otto and Pips continued to stare at her with wide eyes.
“It means this is all over, and Elmo’s free to go.”
“There was somethin’ in it about coin?” Otto sat up a little, wincing and placing a hand upon his stomach. His fingers curled as if to scratch, and Aelis quickly snatched his hand and moved it away.
“Scratch that wound even once and I swear I will tie your hands to the bed!” Her voice snapped more than she had meant it to, so she took a deep breath. “As to coin, yes, if you lose value of crops or herds from being unable to work the past few days, or for the immediate future. Are there any further questions?”
Pips practically jumped. “Did y’see any orcs? What about bandits? Werewolves? Fight any battles? Any magical duels?”
Aelis wrapped one arm around the girl’s shoulders and squeezed. “Much of it was boring, and all of it I have to write down, while it’s fresh, for my superiors at the Lyceum. So I’m going to have to go do that. Right after I check your uncle’s dressings and adjust his medicines.” Otto groaned, but then he lay back and pulled down the blanket.
* * *
Aelis hadn’t been allowed to leave until Rus and Martin had fed her. Fresh bread, goat’s milk cheese, and sausages fried with butter and onions had tasted a good deal better than the hard biscuit and dried meat she and Tun had been eating on their journey. She was only just beginning to feel the weariness of what she’d done, the running, the walking, the fighting. She’d had the sense—and surprisingly, the willpower—to drink no more than one cup of wine, as she’d too much writing to do.
She was almost happy to see her tower as it grew in her vision; she was less happy to see that goat milling about in front of it, chewing a patch of grass. At least she thought it was the same goat; she hadn’t yet learned how to tell one from another, frankly.
