The Warden, page 7
Maurenia seemed about to speak up, but Timmuk raised a hand. “Not a problem, Warden. You’ll have no trouble from us. See to it, Renia,” the dwarf said, fixing a look on the elfling that didn’t seem to brook disagreement.
With a there-and-gone frown, Maurenia hopped up onto the wagon in one stride and carefully picked her way past all the lashed baggage to begin fiddling with the arbalest.
“Our Renia is a tinkerer and a designer of lethal tools,” the dwarf said conversationally as he turned back to Aelis. “That arbalest, its mounting post, and the platform it stands upon are all of her design. She’s got it working just the way she wants it, and we’ll have no end of fuss from her when she has to fit it back together.”
“I do apologize. But something that size, and with the kind of power it must have … I’d just prefer it inoperable while you’re here. I’m sure you understand,” Aelis said as she handed the documents back to Timmuk, who slipped them into the case and capped it with the heel of his other hand.
“Of course, Warden, of course. Now, are there any other rules or local customs you’d like to instruct us about?”
“Well,” Aelis said, “I’m not about to ask that you surrender your weapons, and I’ve got no wire to make peace bonds. But if you could show some discretion about how much steel you wear at any one time, I’d be grateful.”
“You’d leave us to the mercy of our enemies, Warden?” Timmuk was grinning behind his great beard, but Aelis didn’t join in with a smile.
“You’re not likely to have any enemies here, Timmuk,” Aelis said. “All I ask is a little consideration for village folk who are heartily sick of war and its implements.”
“You get to carry a sword.”
The voice that spoke those words was low and throaty, scratched, it seemed to Aelis, from little use.
“Luth,” Timmuk began, “there’s no call to—”
“Carry a dagger, too. Who’re you to tell me what I can’t carry?”
Luth, who’d so far been the only member of the company Aelis hadn’t gotten a good look at, threw back his hood.
Aelis wished he hadn’t.
Half of his face and head were smooth and hairless, the skin white and livid—burned, Aelis knew, and likely by magical fire. It wasn’t easy to look at, with his lips burned away and half a rictus grin exposed. The other half of his face was that of a man who lived rough and outdoors, heavily lined, thick brown and gray stubble on his scalp and chin. His eyes, dark brown, focused on her with an intensity that answered too easily to the word feverish.
“Who I am,” Aelis said, trying to focus on the unmarred side of his face, “is the Warden of Lone Pine. And I haven’t told you to do anything. I’ve merely asked.”
Luth shrugged his cloak over his shoulders, then reached up and unclasped it with one hand, letting the dark green garment pool at his feet. He wore the same leathers as the rest, only up to his chin, his armor buckled just beneath it in a series of iron-banded collars. He wore a sleeve and a glove on only one arm—the same side as his burns, the left. His right arm was free from the shoulder down, scarred and inked with designs Aelis didn’t have time to study.
There were axes on his belt; she was right on that first guess. But beneath the cloak there had also been hidden a long, slim sword with a lovingly worn hilt wrapped in shagreen. While it had a foot of length on hers, she was just now realizing that he was so tall—he towered over her by close to a foot—that it didn’t show beneath the hem of his cloak.
“Luth, the Warden is makin’ an easy and sensible request,” Timmuk began. “I’ll not have you endangering—”
“I agreed to take your orders out in the wilds, dwarf. We’re no longer in the wilds. And it seems they make children into wardens now.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Timmuk said. “Trying to pick fights all the way back. What is…” On the back of the wagon, Darent and Dashia had frozen in place like frightened game. Maurenia looked as though she wanted to hastily reassemble the arbalest. Andresh muttered something to Timmuk in Dwarfish.
Luth dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. Aelis kept herself relaxed, her hands loose at her sides, though her palms were moist. Breath was held.
“You can have my sword if you can take it away,” Luth said, slowly curling his fingers around the hilt.
“A fair bargain,” Aelis said, then she twitched her wrist. Her wand fell into her left hand and as she brought it up she was already speaking the two words of the Second Order Enchantment she’d called to her mind and repeated, silently, over and over while things had started to turn sour. By holding the spell in her head, ready to gather power and project her will through the wand, she’d honed it till it was like a blade that could’ve cut silk. Had it been a blade, and had it been meant to hurt, that is.
What it was meant to do, which it did, was manifest as a green flash that only briefly seared the eyes of anyone standing in front of her wand—and made them forget, for a moment, their aggression.
What it did, solely to Luth, was reach out to his mind and instantly flood him with weariness by suggesting that he’d not slept in some time.
His sword slid back into its sheath with a loud click and he stumbled forward onto the dirt like a felled tree, stirring up some dust about a foot from Aelis’s boot. She stepped carefully to his side, bent down, unhooked his sword’s scabbard from the frog on his belt, and stepped away.
She had a moment before the rest of Timmuk’s company would remember what was happening, so she seized it, strolling over to their dwarf leader and holding Luth’s sheathed weapon out to him. Timmuk took it uncertainly, blinking away his daze.
“Timmuk Dobrusz and the … the Thorns of the Counting House,” she said, trying to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “Collect your man. While you are in Lone Pine he will not be armed, and you will keep his weapons under lock and key. Had his blade cleared its sheath, he would have committed a crime of serious consequence. As it is, I will leave him in your parole, and this entire incident will be labeled a misunderstanding. Am I understood?”
As she spoke, Aelis kept her voice level and calm, her wand raised, and her free hand on her sword’s hilt. Maurenia recovered the fastest, no surprise there, and Aelis believed she read something new in the elfling’s features; respect, perhaps fear, but none of the earlier disdain.
The dwarves and the humans came around at the same time, and Timmuk was nodding at her suggestion as though it were eminently sensible. He rattled some quick Dwarfish to Andresh, and he and Dashia hopped off the wagon. The former began stripping Luth’s other weapons away. Dashia gathered his hands and slipped some cordage from her belt, began tying them together at the wrist.
Meanwhile, Luth snored like a man in a deep and guiltless sleep.
Aelis uncurled her hand from her sword hilt, grateful no one could see the sweat her palm had left behind on the leather.
* * *
A few minutes later, Aelis was relaxing in the inn with a mug of small beer. Rus had set it down in front of her and leaned close. “You’ve never drawn that sword when it mattered, have you,” he’d said, his knowing glance making it more a statement than a question.
“Depends on what ‘mattered’ means,” Aelis had mumbled in response.
Instantly her mind flashed back to her Abjurer’s test.
Lavanalla, that long two-handed monstrosity of a sword in her hand, battering at Aelis’s wards with her own. Desperately parrying that curve of bronze—Lavanalla had always said that she couldn’t stand the touch of steel—constantly giving ground, letting her weight fall too much onto her back foot.
“You can’t always run, girl!” the elf shouted at her, as she bore down on Aelis’s sword, pushing her toward the ground. More than just the clash of blades, there was the clash of magical power. Before the duel had even started—seconds that felt like hours ago—Aelis had been instructed to call up her strongest ward. She managed one of the Third Order, she had thought; it should have been proof against blades, missiles, and Lower Order Evocations. It projected from the hilt of her sword and she made herself a low target behind it.
Lavanalla had bowed, drawn her sword with one hand—Aelis wasn’t sure she could’ve lifted it like that—called up a ward with the other, and attacked her with both.
She’d known that wards could cut down other wards. They had practiced it, tested it, smashed their own shield-sized wards against one another in their practicums. She’d hardly been the brightest would-be Abjurer in the College, but she’d always held her own in that contest of will, focus, and intellect.
Lavanalla’s ward ground through hers, smashed it to tatters like an axe would an overripe apple. Startled, with tingling hands, it had been all she could do to knock aside the flashing bronze blade that had cut at her neck.
“Poor form. Slow hands. Weak wards. You are no Abjurer.” Lavanalla had pressed her attack; every time Aelis bought herself enough time to call another ward—each one a little weaker—the elven Archmagistress simply battered it away.
“What will you do when it is not one attacker, but many?” Lavanalla had swept at her legs, forcing Aelis to awkwardly hop the blade. Some distant part of her told her that the hop wasn’t awkward if she landed back on her feet without losing one of them or her balance.
“What will you do when there are monsters, and your wards are all that stands between them and the folk you want to guard? What will you do when your magic must hold a murderer to account? What will you do, Aelis de Lenti un Tirraval?”
Aelis had gritted her teeth, not answering, not having the breath to answer. The circle of light around them seemed to be growing smaller; the darkness beyond the twenty feet allotted for their duel was so complete it could only have been provided by a skilled Illusionist.
“You cannot hurl your money at them,” Lavanalla taunted. “They’ll kill you and take it anyway.” Aelis brought up another ward, bashing it forward as though it were a shield clutched in her left hand, leaving only her right on the hilt of her sword.
She was startled when the elf’s own ward was knocked away. Not destroyed, no—but Aelis had pushed back for the first time in their fight. Lavanalla’s almond eyes widened a touch.
“Your name will be meaningless to the nightmares of the frontier, or the orc band that’s refused the treaties, or the company of robbers intent on plunder!” The elf brought every point home with a swing of her sword. Aelis’s arms ached with the effort of being lifted, much less parrying, but she did, though each blow grew sloppier.
She pressed forward with her ward again, though she felt now as if the shimmering disc of air was no bigger than a duelist’s buckler. Still, she pressed forward with it, grinding it into the ward extending from Lavanalla’s left hand, caught the glittering bronze sword in the upward twist of her hilt’s crosspiece.
For the first time in their fight, Aelis took a step forward. Her teeth ground together. Sweat blurred her vision, but she didn’t dare blink it away.
At closer quarters, the elf’s longer arms and longer blade became a liability. Aelis had it locked up. She pressed forward, her shorter stature and denser arms suddenly giving her an advantage.
She dimly remembered the rules of the duel—that it was to involve the blade and Abjurations only.
That memory was all that kept her from smashing her forehead into Lavanalla’s chin.
From above them, a voice yelled, “Time!”
Instantly, the elf flowed away from Aelis’s press. There was the orange-gold glitter of bronze as Lavanalla sheathed her weapon.
“What will you do, Aelis de Lenti un Tirraval, if any of those things come to pass?”
With a deep breath, sheathing her own weapon slowly and carefully, Aelis said, “Stand my ground, with my blade and my ward and whatever else I have to hand.”
“That you will,” the elf said. Then she paused, and slowly added, “Abjurer.”
Aelis was pulled from the memory by the loud squeal of Pips from the seat next to her.
“That was AMAZIN’!” the girl yelled, holding out with a stiff arm the same stick she’d been swishing in the air outside, then saying, “That’s a fair bargain.”
The only thing that stopped the flattery from going straight to Aelis’s head was the nasal quality in the imitation of her voice. “Now now, Phillipa,” she muttered, “there’s no call to go boasting.” She had an eye for the stairs to the upper floors, which Maurenia and Timmuk were even now descending. They made an odd pair, with the elfling’s slender grace and the dwarf’s barrel-chested swagger, but they shared some quiet words Aelis didn’t catch, and both of them laughed.
The dwarf went to Rus at the long counter that served as a bar and to separate the kitchen from the common room, while Maurenia came toward Aelis’s table, ducking her head to indicate a bench and ask to sit. Aelis nodded even as she saw Timmuk lay a heavy purse upon the bar and tip out a piece of gold so bright it seemed to grasp at all the light in the room, from the open windows to the small fire in the hearth.
Aelis had never lived a life short of coin and was no stranger to the sight of gold, but she’d a hard time tearing her eyes away from the glint of that open bag, the heft of it.
Until she traded it for a view of Maurenia, anyway. The half-elf had pushed her hair behind her ears, leaving her high cheeks and strong chin unframed and somehow even more intriguing.
“I’m sorry for how Luth acted,” Maurenia said, which apology Aelis took with cool disinterest. After a moment of silence, Maurenia added, “He’s always been … unpredictable.”
“I’d think a company like yours wouldn’t want someone who answers to that description,” Aelis noted.
Maurenia pulled free the studded gloves she wore and set them on the table with a sigh. Her hands had long, delicate fingers, but thick wrists, and Aelis would’ve bet the palms were thickly callused. “You can count on him in a tight spot. He did every bit of the work we needed done in the frontier; did the same last season. But we never can tell how he’ll act in the clean light of day.”
“And what kind of work did you do?”
Maurenia shrugged. “The usual. Tried to dig up old hoards, dodge any orc bands—”
“Did you?”
“The former, yes. The latter, largely, and what orcs we did see were as happy to barter, swap stories, and trade news as they were anything else. We shed no blood there.” A beat. “No orc blood.”
Aelis raised an eyebrow, something she could only accomplish with her left brow while simultaneously lowering her right. But it got the job done.
“Remnants of some of the mercenary companies gone marauding. Rabid now. They tend to run if you show them a fight, and they don’t like to hear my arbalest sing a second time. We saw a horror or two, as well…”
“Now now, Renia,” Timmuk rumbled, having strolled up behind her with a stealth that was uncanny for a dwarf, Aelis thought. “Don’t go telling tales out of turn.”
It was only on reflection that Aelis supposed that a giant dragging a tree-trunk club could sneak up on anyone staring at Maurenia from across a table. In the moment, she was entirely surprised by the dwarf’s sudden intrusion.
Maurenia turned around to face him with a sigh, and the dwarf invited himself to a seat at the table. Aelis felt Pips clutch her shoulder and half hide behind it; when she looked down the girl had leaned over and only the top of her head and her eyes, glued to the adventurers, were visible.
“We’ll have tales to tell, of course,” the dwarf said, “of harpies and gigants, of desperate men and cunning monsters. But not for such a small crowd, y’see? Never tell a story twice in the same place, I say.”
He set down mugs, larger but likely with the same small beer Aelis was sipping, for himself and Maurenia. The elf sniffed at it lightly and shoved it away, while the dwarf half drained his at a toss.
“I have to know,” Aelis asked, “why The Thorns of the Counting House?”
“Ah,” Timmuk said, wiping at the foam that had caught in his prodigious beard when he drank. “Well, you see, Andresh and I … we come from a family of moneylenders and traders down in Tyridice, with the sea to our east and the long Desert Road to Usir to our west. Plenty of ways for a man to get rich there, what with all that coin flowing both ways—”
“With all due respect, Timmuk, I do not need lessons in basic economy and geography.”
The dwarf harrumphed, but the sound turned to laughter quickly enough. “A woman with things to do, I see.”
“A Warden,” Aelis corrected. “Who always has things to do.” She saw Maurenia smile and the dwarf color a bit beneath his dark tan.
“Very well; our eldest brother had inherited control of the concern. Darent and Dashia were employees. Luth was a … contractor,” the dwarf said, after taking a moment to choose a word. “Our brother Lavosh had some plans. Extended nearly everything we had to fund a massive caravan and to hire ships to carry gemstones, books, and alchemical instruments that came to us from Usir up here to Ystain and Imraval, and bring furs back.”
“Allow me to guess. Neither paid out.”
“I was the best caravan master the firm had. But with our father gone, and Lavosh childless, he wouldn’t let me or Andresh take the field. We were confined solely to local collection. They never did come back, not even one. Even so, we’d have been able to cover the losses if one ship hadn’t fallen foul of pirates … so Lavosh did the honorable thing and had to pay ransom just to get the crew back. A king’s ransom,” he added with a theatrical sigh. “Between that, the losses of the caravan, and worse prices than we’d expected—” He shrugged. “There was no longer enough money to lend or invest. Lavosh sold the counting house to the Urdimonte for a new branch and took a job with them. I’d been working with Renia here to design wagons to try to sell to the army, mobile siege platforms, that sort of thing. We couldn’t keep simply hanging around, thorns in my brother’s side … so we quit counting houses and ledger books forever.”
