The Warden, page 33
Deep down she slightly dreaded any letter from her father, because by now the Thorns had surely called upon the Urdimonte bank for the letter of credit she’d written them. It wasn’t a ruinous sum, but it was going to raise eyebrows, and the count would want explanations. He was entitled to them.
But she shoved all that to the back of her mind as she sliced one more piece of sausage and a hunk of cheese and stood.
“If you’ll excuse me. I’ll see you in the morning, Rus. Might take me a while to get here from the tower, but I’ll try not to keep you waiting.”
“Going to rain tonight, might freeze,” Martin answered her. “Stay if you wish. Plenty of beds available. No charge, of course.”
Aelis glided up the stairs with clouded thoughts and a mouthful of cheese and sausage. She hurriedly chewed and swallowed, then brushed at any imaginary crumbs on her chin and her robes. She found herself in front of Maurenia’s door far too quickly.
Aelis rapped at it with one bent knuckle.
“It’s open.” Maurenia’s voice sounded slightly distant through the door. Aelis carefully swung it open, slipped inside, and closed it quickly and quietly.
“Why, Warden Aelis. Like you’re sneaking into another student’s room in your schoolgirl days.”
Aelis could hear the gentle smirk in the half-elf’s voice before she even looked across the room at her.
Maurenia sat by the hide-covered window in the room’s only chair. She wore something between a robe and a dressing gown. It was loosely belted at the waist, but the hooks along the front were undone, exposing skin that was pale and luminous in the dimly candlelit room.
Aelis felt something not entirely unlike the burn of the whiskey in her chest and throat, only more pleasant, and more apt to leave her light-headed.
“Timmuk said you had a packet of letters from my family?”
Maurenia smiled and stood. The swing of the robe exposed flashes of her legs. “I do.” She pointed to the small table on the far side of the room. It held two pitchers, two cups, an empty plate, and a thick envelope.
“Why’d you not deliver it with those from the Lyceum?”
“Because this gave you a reason to seek me out,” Maurenia said. She came to face Aelis, and stopped barely a handbreadth away. Lightly, she took one of Aelis’s hands in her own.
“I probably would’ve done that anyway.”
“I don’t like leaving things to chance.” Aelis hadn’t realized she was still wearing her scarf loosely gathered around her neck until Maurenia unwound it and tossed it casually away.
Aelis swallowed hard. “I am going to need those letters.”
Maurenia lifted one arm and settled it around Aelis’s neck, letting her fingertips—the nails short but well maintained, not at all ragged—graze Aelis’s neck through her hair. “They’re right here,” Maurenia murmured. “If you need them now, feel free to take them and go read them. But I very much doubt whatever is written in them is going to change in the next hour or two.”
Aelis slipped one of her arms around Maurenia’s waist. Her back was well muscled, Aelis could feel that even through the thick lining of the robe she wore. She felt her own heart thudding hard in her chest. They closed the distance between them.
She could feel Maurenia’s heart thudding, too.
“Probably not going to change much, no.” I have to leave. In the morning. And go do dangerous things. Aelis dismissed those thoughts, but not before adding, All the more reason to enjoy tonight.
Maurenia’s fingers had twined into her hair. Aelis’s mind filled with questions. Did you come back here just for me? Was I a foregone conclusion? Are the Dobruszes having a good laugh at us downstairs?
Then she looked at the sharp line of Maurenia’s jaw and the dark pools of her eyes. She couldn’t make out the blue in the darkness, but she knew it was there, and then Maurenia’s hair was brushing her cheeks as they leaned toward each other, and she stopped thinking about anything at all but the warmth and the softness and the taste of the woman in her arms.
29
THE CABIN
Aelis woke with faint light coming in through the window. The fire had been well smoored the night before and had kept the room warm enough to sleep in, but she half expected to see her breath when she pulled her head clear of the bedding.
Beside her, Maurenia was a languid form, her warm skin soft in places, yet taut over the muscles life had built into her.
I still hardly know anything about her, Aelis thought, but decided she didn’t care as she leaned her head on one hand to study the half-elf’s back, the sharp planes of her shoulder blades interrupted in places by scars. She thought about reaching for them, lifted a hand, then let it drop back to the bedding. Somehow, despite having spent the night in Maurenia’s bed, that kind of exploration felt presumptuous, more private than sex.
Maurenia appeared deeply asleep. A part of Aelis wanted to bed down next to her, throw an arm around, perhaps start kissing the back of her neck.
But duty called.
Carefully, she slipped out of the bed. Maurenia stirred but did not wake. Aelis put her robes back on, gathered up her boots, gloves, scarf, and packet of papers, and tiptoed quietly out the door. She closed it slowly, leaned against the wall to pull on her boots, straightened her robes as best she could, and went downstairs.
Martin was in the kitchen; she could hear the sounds of the morning’s baking. Rus was standing behind the counter, cleaning mugs with a rag. In the far corner, right by the door, with a window-hide tacked up, Timmuk was smoking an enormous pipe with a carved ivory bowl.
“Do you never sleep?”
Rus only shrugged at her question, then bent to retrieve a mug he had sheltered beneath the counter, took a furtive sip. “Less than I’d like, more than I should,” he finally answered, in a voice that sounded like a hinge in want of grease.
But by then she’d already drifted over to Timmuk, sliding into a seat on the bench across the table from him.
“Didn’t take you for an early riser,” she murmured.
“Remember, I grew up a banker.” Timmuk spoke around his pipe stem, the muscles of his jaw bunching. “Money is not made while lying abed.”
Aelis studied his arms, bulging bare from the studded black leather jack he wore. “I’ve had cause to deal with a number of bankers in my life, Timmuk Dobrusz. I have never seen one with the kind of arms you have.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I meant the kind of arms accustomed to ending in a fist or an axe instead of a gloved hand.”
Timmuk shrugged. “Dwarfish banking can be a vigorous business.”
“So, what made you decide to branch out into running a royal post wagon?”
“What drives anyone into any business, Warden? Profit.”
“There’s profit to be made in bringing letters and seeds and tools to Lone Pine?”
Timmuk stood, took the pipe from his mouth, and tapped it carefully against the open window ledge. The dottle cascaded out, and he held the pipe casually in his hand as he turned toward Aelis and sat back down.
“There is if you know how to negotiate.” The grin that formed beneath his great beard was less like a cat in cream and more a mountain lion in a chicken coop, Aelis thought.
“I don’t think I like the thought of you reaping profit off the folk of Lone Pine,” Aelis began, only to have Timmuk sit up straight, his mouth crinkling.
“Come now, Warden. The people here don’t have money to take. I negotiated with the post’s purser. They agreed to pay by the mile.”
Aelis blinked her eyes wide. “That seems a stunningly bad deal.”
“What can I say? No other teamsters were eager for the route. The easy runs you’ve got to bid for. Going eight hundred miles from Lascenise to the tip of Ystain’s remains? Nobody’s too keen on that.”
“So you didn’t come here, or Maurenia didn’t come here, just…” Aelis trailed off, waving a hand vaguely in the air.
Timmuk held up a hand. “Between you and her, Warden.”
“So that ruse with the letters, and…” She sighed.
“I think I might know what you’re asking. We like Renia. She likes you. That’s all of a discussion needs having, right?”
Aelis shrugged. “I suppose.” She looked back to Rus, who was pulling a heavy woolen coat on. She stood and bundled herself up, swallowed her feelings about Maurenia, and prepared to head out into the cold.
* * *
Rus wasn’t talkative as they walked. Aelis couldn’t imagine he was hungover, not from just a few tots of whiskey, but he plainly didn’t feel well. The morning air was sharp in the lungs, the ground was cold mud that sucked at her boots, and she was frankly no more able to make small talk than he was.
They headed up into the pine forest that abutted the inn on a small rise behind it. Aelis recognized the place where she’d met with Tun before they’d gone to track down Elmo.
Rus seemed to know the way well enough, as he didn’t seem to pause to take any reference points. He stopped in a clearing, though Aelis couldn’t see why. He pointed.
The cabin was so cunningly hidden, nestled in a mess of pine branches and trees of varying heights to disguise its outline, that Aelis wasn’t sure she would’ve seen it even with her alchemy lantern, a map, and an hour to search the clearing.
“He’ll likely be home and glad of the company. If he’s out, I’d say don’t wait inside and try to surprise him, but I don’t think it’s possible to take him unawares.”
“Thank you, Rus.” She turned to him. A Warden is not meant to be priest, confessor, or counselor to the people she protects. And yet. “I probably don’t say that enough. I owe you and Martin for more than I’d like to admit since I arrived.”
He shrugged. This withdrawn man was not at all like the warm, calm veteran and innkeeper she had come to know.
“What is it?” she asked finally.
“Nothing and everything, Warden. Letter days. Remind me of everything we left behind. Cities. Family. That the world moves on without us. It’s nothing much. Go to your business. If I’m not back to help with breakfast, Martin will go to pieces.” He made a shooing motion at her, forced a grin to his face, and at last seemed rather more like himself.
Aelis felt a dozen thoughts surface and then vanish as she knocked on Tun’s door. Why Lone Pine? Why live this close to it yet this far outside? Why’ve I never been to his house before? Why has he not come to my tower?
There was a moment of silence, then Tun’s careful, measured voice. “Who is it?”
“Aelis.”
She strained to hear through the wood, but she caught not a sound until the door swung open and Tun’s massive frame filled it.
He wasn’t wearing the fringed and hooded jerkin she was used to seeing, but instead a woolen shirt that could’ve served nicely as a tent for a gnomish family. Even so, it strained against the muscles of his chest and arms. In the daylight, the gray-green cast of his skin was more apparent. Lying at the unbuttoned neck of his shirt was the rune-carved medallion Aelis had repaired for him.
“Warden,” Tun said, grinning around his tusks. “Please come in.”
He moved back out of the doorway—if he’d remained standing in it, Aelis would never have fit through—and she still had to duck past him.
She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the scrupulous neatness and homeyness of the cabin was not quite it. The floor was carefully dusted stone, layered with thick woven rugs. Hides were tacked above the windows but rolled up into dangling straps to let in what sunlight the trees allowed in. The modest hearth was so clean she could’ve eaten off the stones, and the poker, kettle, and pot were all so scrubbed and oiled they seemed new. A table with a chair that looked hardly big enough for Tun, a bed against the far wall with only a couple of blankets, and racks full of tools along the back wall made up the furniture.
“Please, Aelis. Sit.” Tun crossed the room with a step and pulled a stool out from under the table, offering it to her. She perched on it while he went to the hearth to tend the kettle.
“I was not anticipating company, or I would have prepared food.”
“I’m sorry, Tun. It’s not a social call.” She watched him carefully as she said that and thought that perhaps his shoulders slumped, just a tad. “Or … not just.” While Tun grabbed a poker and began raking the coals, she asked, “How’s the amulet working?”
He stirred the fire, selected a log—in his hand it looked like a stick, so Aelis assumed she would’ve needed both of hers to pick it up—and carefully placed it atop the coals. “As well as I had hoped. Better, perhaps. The change does not come upon me unless I will it.”
“Do you, ever? Or do you prefer to stay as you are?”
“As I am both the bear and the man, Aelis,” Tun said slowly, deliberately, “I must occasionally choose the bear lest it overwhelm the man. And it is easier to stay in control so long as the change is my choice. I had almost forgotten what that felt like. It is a gift I will be some time repaying.”
“Nonsense. No more payment is necessary than what was already made,” Aelis said, even as Tun crossed past the table in two strides and pulled something out from beneath his bed and held it to her.
It was a walking stick, much like the one she had carried into the wilderness with him before. That had been plain, if made with evidently masterful craftsmanship, and a bit too long for her.
This one, she could see as she stood up and took it from his hand, would fit her perfectly. There was a soft hide wrap where her hand naturally rested, and a strap to loop around her wrist, and a sturdy metal cap at the bottom.
Just beneath the grip were carvings that drew her eye. They were small, but detailed enough to be made out. A sword with a willow leaf−shaped blade, a dagger, and a wand.
Aelis’s breath caught in her throat.
“I measured your stride and height by eye while we traveled. I carefully marked where your hand rested on the staff you borrowed. It should serve you well on further walks. Perhaps as a weapon in a pinch, although it was not made for that.”
Given the solidity and the weight of the wood in her hand, Aelis didn’t doubt that it could be used as a weapon, and she remembered Tun whipping his own staff like a blade of grass that hit with the force of a club.
“Tun, this is … an astounding gift. I must make some kind of payment for it.” She held it half in her hands, half back to him. He reached out and carefully closed her hands around it.
Then he reached up and tapped the amulet he wore with one thick finger. “You have already paid.”
“This must’ve taken countless hours…”
He waved a hand. “I had the right length of wood ready to work. That made it easy. I am glad to see that it meets with your approval.”
“It’s a piece of art, Tun.”
“It’s a walking stick, Aelis. But it was made with care.”
“There has to be something I can do.”
Tun smiled gently. “I’m sure there will be.”
“Tun, I hate to have to do this … but I came here to ask you to look at some maps.”
“Maps of?”
“Old Ystain.”
“What do these maps show and why must I look at them?”
“Because I need to know how to get to where they are.”
Tun lowered a brow. “That only answers my second question.”
“I know. Because I can’t answer the first. It’s … Warden business.” That was close enough to a lie that the words felt wrong in Aelis’s mouth, like rotten food or foul water. It was Warden business, her business, but the secrecy of it stank.
Duvhalin has not reported this to the Warden command. He expects he can get me to deal with this problem by myself and raise no fuss, alert no one else to it. And he may damn well be right.
Aelis wasn’t sure where this sudden insight had come from, but she was certain it was right. She knew it in her bones, but she filed it away, pushed the certainty down where she’d remember it but not act on it. It was exactly the kind of leap to insight Bardun Jacques had taught would-be Wardens to embrace and be wary of at the same time.
“Warden business did not preclude my aid last time.”
“No, it didn’t. This is different. I’ve been tasked from the home office, as it were.”
“Is there actually a home office?”
“Not as such. Wardens are too many and too widespread for a complex chain of command. We’re loosely organized into regional Cabals, but I wouldn’t know my Cabal commander from any other wizard. We also need to respond to orders from the Lyceum, depending on who sends them.”
“Then how do you know whose orders you can ignore and whose you cannot?”
“A little bit of seniority, a little bit of demonstrated power. I’m rather far down the hill according to the former. When something rolls down, I can’t just pass it on.”
“You are telling me an awful lot of vague things without answering my questions.” Tun’s mouth tightened around his tusks, his eyes narrowed beneath his heavy brow. Aelis thought she read disapproval, perhaps even hurt.
“I’m sorry, Tun. I’m saying as much as I think I can.”
“I assume this comes from very high up the hill.”
“As high as it gets.”
Tun nodded. The kettle began its low whistle, and he went to attend it. Aelis dug into her packet of papers and began pulling out the maps. By the time she had them arranged, Tun had set two mugs down on the table.
“Are you a tea drinker, Aelis?”
“I always preferred coffee if it was too early to drink wine.”
Tun chuckled very quietly. A courtesy laugh, Aelis was sure. “Good. Then this will not strain your memory of tea overmuch. The real stuff is largely unattainable here. I make an herbal infusion that reminds me of the spirit of the thing, anyway.”
Aelis took the mug closest to her and sniffed. It didn’t exactly smell like tea, but was perhaps reminiscent. With a little time, she could probably piece together the herbs he used.
