Episode 7: In the Summer, in the City

Low clouds loomed overhead, darkening the sky.  Tam knuckled his back as he stood, preparing to roll the last of Master Barstere’s casks of cider into the back of the tavern.  The clouds threatened rain, but the breeze that should have accompanied the impending storm was notably absent.  Rather than cutting the heat, it felt like the air was being compressed, thick and heavy nearly to the point of choking off breath.  Tam glanced to the side, where Winnow sat in the (relative) comfort in the shade of the tavern’s back awning.  Master Barstere still believed the rumour that Winnow was pregnant, and had gone to no little trouble to try to ensure the comfort of Tam’s “wife.”  The fact that Winnow was neither pregnant nor his wife was something that Tam was willing to keep quiet until after he’d finished his obligation to the friendly, if loquacious, farmer. 

A glance over his shoulder showed Tam that Barstere was still speaking with the tavern owner, though the two men had been joined by a third.  A barker, the third man had been exhorting the crowds to ‘Witness the Spectacle of the FIGHTING PITS!!!’ since Barstere had stopped his wagon.  Tam was just glad the man had finally shut up.  Winnow, fanning herself slowly with a pale hand, seemed to be splitting her attention between the men and the crowds. 

Grumbling to himself, Tam finished with the barrel, heaving the blasted thing onto its end and walking it into place alongside the others.  This was the sort of work that Carter would have been perfect for: the man could probably have hauled one of the barrels under each arm, and never broken a sweat.  Diggs would have just talked the thing to death.  Who else could have managed the things?  Guard-Captain Chubain could have managed it, Tam supposed, though he could hardly imagine Magistrate Higgins’ chief thug demeaning himself with such a lowly task.  Honestly, just because he was in charge of a half a score of guys with swords…

Still grumbling, Tam exited the tavern, and saw that Barstere was finally done gabbing with the other two men.  That was conveniently timed… The barker was back to his trade, and screaming for people to go to the riverfront, to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that happened, from what Tam could gather, every other night.  He was surprised when Barstere reached into a pocket and drew out a few coins.  “You’ve done well for me, lad,” the man said.  “I don’t reckon you two have a lot to be getting along with, and whatever is really going on, I’d guess you and that girl don’t want to be drawing any more attention to yourselves than necessary.  You certainly put up with her driving you like a goodwife, but if there were any woman of age less pregnant, or married, I haven’t met her.”  Tam realized his mouth was hanging open, and closed it.  “Now you listen close,” the farmer continued, “There aren’t but a few reasons a young man would be on the run, and even less to choose from when he has a pretty young girl with him.  If you were the sort to be dodging some kind of obligation, you’d have lit out of here the moment I turned my back, with or without her.  No, the way I figure it, you have some other kind of trouble, or she does, and you’re trying to do your best by her.  I don’t want to know what it is, none of my business, understand?  But you keep on doing like you are, and you’ll manage.  A little coin will go a long way, if you manage it right, and maybe keep you from more trouble.  Best I can do.”

Tam pocketed the coins with a cautious smile.  “My thanks, Master Barstere. I… Thank you.”  He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this speech, but he knew what to do with the coins.  “I’ll be careful.”

The farmer nodded, and while he was checking the harnesses, Tam took a moment to pat the ox he had guided for the last half a week on the shoulder.  Princess broke wind in contented pleasure.  “Take care, girl,” he said softly.  He scratched between her ears.  “If only the other women in my life were as easy to deal with.”  Turning, he relocated Winnow, now standing and speaking to the innkeeper.  Just as Tam approached, he heard her drawl “Thank you,” in that flat, emotionless way she got when she hadn’t Soaked in a while.  The innkeeper went inside, and Barstere had already started plodding off, and just like that the alley behind the tavern was empty but for the two of them.  After three-and-a-half days constantly surrounded by the little train of farmers making their way to the market at Riverhead, Tam had almost forgotten what it was like to be alone with Winnow.

“So,” he said, unsure of what to do now. 

“So.” When Winnow said it, her voice was flat and unreadable.  “The innkeeper says the fighting pits are straight past the square, just upriver from the docks.”

Tam goggled.  “You can’t seriously be thinking I can win in the pits, can you?  The last time someone punched me, I wound up tortured and locked in a box!”

Winnow almost-smiled.  “And look how that turned out for you.”  While Tam was spluttering, she continued.  “As it happens, I was thinking more of myself.  I need to find someone who’s hurt, but can keep their mouth shut.  I didn’t dare cut in front of Barstere, and your pain was… enough to keep me alive.”

Tam scowled.  “What, you plan on having me get my ass beat so you can feed?  I suppose, but… Honestly, have I offended you somehow?”

Winnow did smile this time, a faint curve of her lips.  “Not that I wouldn’t find it amusing, Tam, but no… I was thinking more of finding someone who we can trust to hold their piece.”

Tam nodded.  Winnow could, he presumed, tell between those who would raise a mob against a Soak, and who would see a Paintaker just doing what came naturally to them.  “Do you want me to come along, just in case?  Or would it be better if I wasn’t there?”  He tried not to sound bitter. Things were still so unsettled between them, they’d never had a chance to really figure things out, and here she was going to go and… So. 

Winnow was already shaking her head.  “No, I’ll be fine.  Maybe you can find us rooms, then find me down by the docks.  Rooms,” she repeated, emphasizing the plural.  She nodded once, firmly, confident that Tam had understood her meaning, on all its levels.  She turned to go, and Tam forced himself to control the urge to catch her arm, her hand, for one last touch. 

Control yourself, boy, he thought to himself.  This isn’t your first time to market.  Somewhere inside, a snarky voice answered, As a matter of fact, it is…

He squashed both voices and went to find how far a few coppers and a silver penny would take him.

Carter sat straight-backed in his chair, the mug of ale in front of him as-yet untouched.  Diggs frankly lounged, though how such a feat was to be accomplished on the half-splintered benches was beyond him.  The innkeeper’s wife set a plate of food before him, steaming meat and vegetables piled high over noodles.  Carter nodded thanks, and Diggs actually sat up enough to place his mug beside his own plate, and begin eating with a bit more enthusiasm than strictly necessary.  “Thank you, Ma’am,” Carter said.  It always surprised people to hear his voice, which could charitably be called a light tenor in most circumstances, coming from such a large and bald body.  Her eyes flicked, as almost everybody’s did, to his sword, before coming back to his face.  He made sure to be smiling pleasantly, doing as much as he could to lessen the intimidating presence he normally made.  It helped that he was sitting down.  “I can’t imagine you get a lot of travelers through here, this far north.”

The innkeeper’s wife took a second to decide not to be terrified of him, and her normal personality started to make itself present again.  “Just you call me Elsbet, young man.” She even smiled a little.  “Not normally, no,” she admitted.  “Mostly we have the local farmsteaders in here of an evening, them as haven’t got a wife of their own to keep them home, but they’re all off to the market, of course.  We had a couple strange folk show up right before, though.  This adorable slip of a girl claiming she was a sorcerer, of all things, when anybody could see she had never sacrificed a baby in her life, not with that hair.  And this young lad and his wife, all pale and with child.  Poor things, she was starved half to death and pale as could be.  It’ll be a rough couple seasons she’s facing, that’s for sure.”

Carter caught the creak as Diggs’ knuckles tightened to white on his fork, and kicked him under the table.  Keeping his eyes on Elsbet, Carter tried not to let his interest show too keenly.  “A Sorceress?  No kidding!  My friend here keeps trying to explain how ugly his shirt is by saying it belonged to a Firewalker, but I think he just can’t admit how hideous it is.”  A food-muffled angry mumble from Diggs might have been “Is too from Firewalker,” but Carter kept right on, ignoring him.  “Pregnant girl, eh?  Must be pretty miserable in this heat.  I can’t imagine riding in this weather, or was she in a cart?”

Elsbet lowered herself to the bench across from Carter, and leaned in conspiratorially, glancing around at the empty room.  “They were walking, coming in.” She scowled at some unknown memory.  “That young husband of hers, pretty enough looking, but skinny, he had that poor thing walking.  Sounded like they were going to try to walk all the way to the south coast, and her with child.  I couldn’t have walked from one side of this common room to the other by the time I was in my seventh month, and here she was wearing all that leather and looking like she hadn’t eaten in a month.  That lad has some answering to do, if he ever shows up here again, I can guarantee that!”

Carter locked eyes with Diggs, and knew they were thinking the same thing.  There was only one reason he could think of for heading to the south coast, and if that was what she was up to, there was a world of trouble heading this way.  “Surely you didn’t make her walk on her way out of town,” he suggested.

“Great and little gods, no!”  The innkeeper’s wife seemed personally offended at the suggestion.  “I made sure the Council set them on old Barstere’s wagon, so she could ride to the market, at least.”

Diggs’ bench scraped loudly on the floor as he stood up.  Carter’s head swung around, and before anybody could speak, Diggs muttered, “Gotta pee,” and darted out the door.

Elsbet looked after him, shaking her head.  “He’s certainly a strange one,” she said.  Carter rose, more slowly, and thanked her for the meal.  Surprised, she looked down to see that his plate, too, was empty.  Carter thumbed a couple coins into her palm, and strode quickly out the door after Diggs.

Tam scowled as the third innkeeper in a row laughed him right out of the common room.  The clouds were growing so dark that it looked like dusk, rather than mid-afternoon.  His clothes were so sweaty it felt like he’d poured glue down the insides before putting them on.  His feet hurt from walking, and his temples were throbbing.  Rounding a corner, he nearly ran over a woman with a shock of bright red curls, held back with a dusty kerchief.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, putting out a hand to help steady her.  “Are you all right?”

Then he got a look at her face, streaked with dust and sweat, and realized who it was.

“Thank you,” she said, then looked up and seemed to recognize him.  “I… I’m sorry, I’ll be off-”

“Wait, hold on a second,” Tam said.  He glanced around, then pulled her into the small space between a couple buildings.  “Ok, Zarya, right?  For real- are you actually a sorceress?”

She scowled at him, then muttered something under her breath.  A glimmering, translucent butterfly shimmered into existence between them.  She glared at him, daring further challenge.

Tam grinned.  “Ok, lemme guess: you’ve had about as much luck getting folks here to believe you’re a sorceress as you did in that little village, right?  And you’re having about as much luck finding a room right now as I am, because, unless I misjudge, you’ve about as much coin to your name as I have to mine, right?” The woman continued to scowl at him.  Tam’s grin spread even wider, nearly splitting his face in two.  “Ok, I can work with this.  Is there anything else you can do, more of those little butterflies, or birds, or something else to float around you?”

Zarya rolled her eyes.  “Is there a point to all of this, or are you just looking for some kind of private entertainment?  I have business to be seeing to, and you are in my way.”

“Yes!  That’s great!  Keep that going!  Half the reason that council didn’t believe you was because you came asking, instead of demanding.  If you’d come on as cranky as you are right now, you’d have had room, board, and transport for free, just on the rights of it.”  Tam practically danced in place.  He looked around, trying to find… There.  Darting to the water barrel, he dipped his handkerchief and began scrubbing his face.  “OK, here’s how I see we can both get rooms, and maybe meals, and duck this storm before it hits.  You said you can do wards; can you work one to keep the rain off of you, just you, for a little while?”

“Oh, I can do more than that,” she grimaced.  “Scaling it down seems to be the problem.”  Tam glanced up, looking at the clouds overhead.  If anything, they looked heavier, darker.  His grin melted into open-mouthed astonishment, and he rubbed his hands briefly together.

“Hoo, boy, are we getting beds to sleep in tonight…!”

Tam leaned in close, and began to lay out his plan.

The innkeeper himself escorted Guard-Captain Chubain up the stair and down the hall to the suite of rooms the southland lord and his men had been given.  Wiping sweaty palms on an apron stained with food from serving the men with his own hands, Bertram was only too glad to let the hard-eyed man with the sword carry his letter from the Magistrate.  It wasn’t often that lords from far off came through Moldell, and one could never be too careful around men like that.  Best to let the Magistrate’s head soldier deal with them.

“This way, Guard-Captain,” Bertram whispered.  The lord had said that he didn’t want to be disturbed, and Bertram wasn’t planning on taking any chances.  Silently indicating the door, he backed away three steps before Chubain had even stepped up to the door. 

Chubain knocked twice on the door, firm raps that echoed down the hallway and made the innkeeper flinch.  Within moments, it was opened by a hard-faced man with an eyepatch and a scowl.  “My lord has indicated he does not wish to be disturbed,” Eyepatch growled, halfway to shutting the door.

With a grimace, Chubain blocked the closing door with his foot.  “Magistrate Higgins extends his invitation of hospitality to the visiting lord, and begs his brief indulgence.”  Chubain thrust the sealed envelope forward with as much grace as Eyepatch had demonstrated in his greeting.

“But of course, Dixon,” a voice drawled from deeper within the rooms.  “Let the good man in, and bring me his invitation.  One must observe the forms, after all.”  The voice was light and cultured, with the unmistakable tones of the capital.  Or so Chubain assumed, having never been anywhere near the capital.  But he sounded naturally the way Higgins tried to sound whenever he wanted to be his most impressive to visiting dignitaries or nobility. 

Dixon stepped aside with a blocky ill grace, and Chubain eyed him carefully before entering.  The man looked more like a shoulder-thumper than a butler, but who knew the ways of southron lords?  Maybe he’d hired bodyguards, and pressed them into service as servants along the way. 

Handing his paper to the lord, who sat enthroned in the room’s only good chair, Chubain looked over the other two men with him sat tending to chores- one, a man almost as big as Chubain himself, but with a scraggly chin-beard as opposed to Chubain’s clean-shaven look, was blacking the lord’s boots, while the other, long and lean with a hen-pecked look to him, was running an iron over some of the lord’s clothing.  The man with the iron might well have been a servant, but the man with the boots looked every bit the fighter that Dixon did.

The lord surprised Chubain by rising almost as soon as he’d finished reading the letter, tucking it into the inner pocket of a fine red coat with gold embroidery.  “Dixon, Bonn, Rushleigh, we are, excuse me, I am invited to dine with the Magistrate of this fine town tonight, or on any night I may find convenient.  I do believe that I find tonight to be sufficiently favorable.”  He chuckled at some joke that Chubain didn’t get.  “Yes, I believe that tonight fortune shall smile upon us all.”

Episode 6: Direction

EPISODE 6: DIRECTION

 

                Tam leaned into Princess’s hip, allowing the crowd of pilgrims to push past the cart without losing his place next to the ox.  He scanned each of the travelers with a quick glance, looking for the broad shoulders and bald head or tall lanky frame that would alert him to pursuit.  None of these pilgrims, even from behind with hoods, looked like they might be Diggs or Carter, however, and Tam relaxed muscles that had been tight from the moment he noticed the thin trail of dust rising in above the road behind him.

                “Bloody pilgrims,” Master Barstere grunted.  Tam concealed a sigh and tried not to roll his eyes.  Every single band of Brothers of the Grim they had encountered had evoked an almost identical speech from the farmer.  Wandering from town to town, begging from the locals… Tam knew the words by heart now.  “Wandering from town to town,” Master Barstere continued, “begging from the locals…”

                Tam stopped listening.  He knew the words, but all it meant to him was that Barstere thought the pilgrims should quit walking all over the gods’ green earth and settle down to a respectable trade, like farming or mucking pig pens.  As if anybody wanted to commit the rest of his life standing ankle-deep in pig shit.  On purpose.  And something about the difficulties reconciling concentrated distribution with decentralized allocations of goods, particularly perishable produce.

                Whatever.

                What mattered to Tam was that every time they passed a knot of travelers, whether pilgrims or groups of farmers headed to the market fair at Riverhead, or returning with the results of their trading, Tam’s butthole clenched up until he’d had a chance to look over each of the walking men from the corner of his eye, and make sure they weren’t the men who were looking for him.  Each day he plodded alongside Princess, picking up the smell of her sweat and shit just from spending the day tapping her flanks and shoulder with a stick, never mind tending her at the end of the day, every day took him a little bit closer to the walls of Riverhead, and the river that could take him to freedom.

                Tam’s eyes tracked the road ahead of the farmers’ train of wagons, off to the sides of the hard-packed dirt road to the treeline, and around the back as far as he could without losing his stride before returning to the road ahead of him.  Nothing.  No sign of bandits in the woods, no sign of pursuit from behind, nor of attack from before.  Tam knew he was no experienced woodsman, to be able to tell the difference between a rabbit starting from a half-concealed bush from a highwayman laying in ambush, but none of the farmers had the faintest idea what sort of trouble Tam might have brought with him.  The trouble they did know about was bad enough. 

                As if the gnarled old farmer was reading Tam’s mind, Barstere hooked his head back towards the wagon and grunted something that was out of sync with the “Bloody Pilgrims” speech.  Tam started, focused his attention on what the old man had said.  “What?  Oh, yes, she’s much the better for the time off her feet, thank you.  She’s… The delicate type, you know?”

                “City girls,” Barstere grunted.  “No stamina for the real world…  No offence, boy, I had a niece who was the same way when it came to travel and… such.”  Barstere seemed uncomfortable with Winnow’s cover story.  Most of the farmers had.  It had made such sense at the time, and the men of the village council had swallowed the tale whole, but there had been unforeseen ramifications.  Winnow had sown the seeds almost on a whim, and the butcher’s wife had taken the story and practically run through the town with it.  The lad and his woman who just showed up in town, all dusty from the road and with no luggage?  SHE’S WITH CHILD!!!  It was the salacious sort of tale almost perfectly calculated to light a town like a bolt of lightning in a dry bush.  The goodwives of the village had been kindly and solicitous of Winnow, providing for her ‘needs’, and the goodmen had treated Tam to a bruising round of drinks in the pub. 

                The upshot of all this attention had been that while Tam walked alongside Princess, soaking in her sweat and nursing a hangover the size of Magistrate Higgins’ manor, Winnow rode in the back of Barstere’s wagon, nestled in a bed of hay and surrounded by tightly-sealed wooden casks.  Each night, when the two of them bedded down beneath the wagon, separated by a respectable distance, Tam reeked of ox shit and sweat, and Winnow smelled nicely of hay and Master Barstere’s finest cider and whiskey.  Tam kept his distance respectable enough that his stink wouldn’t impose too harshly upon Winnow’s nostrils, which hadn’t seemed to mind being near his natural stink when they were running for their lives from Sol’s bandit camp.  The only contact they seemed to have was each night when he helped her down from Barstere’s wagon at the end of the day, and when, lying concealed in the dark beneath the wagon, she reached out her hand and lightly touched his, drawing from him the pain in his feet and the soreness of his body.  It was a meager diet for one who had grown used to drawing the pain of torture and battle from bodies near death, but it sustained Winnow without the need for self-harm.  That would have raised all sorts of questions that Tam and Winnow together, with his bullshit and her calm control, could not have managed without raising more trouble than they settled. 

                Tam had attempted only one conversation with Winnow, on their first night, and it hadn’t gone well.  Apparently, Winnow had no interest in being introduced to the source of Tam’s stink.

                “Who names an ox ‘Princess?’” Tam had seen Winnow furious, tired, amused, scared and horny, but he had never, till now, seen her… Offended? 

                “I don’t know,” Tam had countered.  “Princess seems a particularly fine name for her.  She’s sweet tempered, noble, calm and steady.  She bears her burden with a steadfast pride, and never complains.  What’s not honorable, or princess-like in that?” 

                As if to answer Tam, Princess broke wind, and relieved herself.

                Winnow gave an eloquent sniff and returned to her place beneath the wagon.

                That night, it had rained.

 

*****

 

                Diggs glanced sideways at Carter. 

                Nothing.  Carter was still walking, staring straight ahead, the sun glinting off of the bald spot on the back of his head.

                Well, most of the top of his head, really. 

                But he was still just walking.

                Silently.

                In fact, Carter hadn’t said a word since last night, when they’d agreed to take shelter in a conveniently located inn rather than rough it in the rain. 

                Nothing. 

                It was as if the big guy didn’t want to talk or something.

                Diggs couldn’t take it anymore.

                “So I was carrying this message one time, for the King in Alexandria…” Diggs started in on the time he’d first met a gnome, just for something to pass the time. 

                “She was named Myrella.”  Carter’s voice was low, tense.  Diggs was so surprised he stopped talking.  “Grew up a few villages over from me.  I ran into a group of boys casting stones at her, chased them off.  I didn’t know…  At the time, I didn’t know what she was, who she was.  Just that she was in trouble, and nobody would help her.”  Diggs glanced sideways at Carter.  He was still striding along the road, still staring straight ahead.  So why did Diggs think Carter wasn’t seeing the backside of the mule train in front of them?  “It was a few weeks later, I finally figured it out.  She wasn’t as strong as… She wasn’t that strong, the most she could soak was a broken arm maybe, but it was enough.  She was a Darkblood, a Soak, whatever you want to call it.  She could live without pain, she wasn’t that bad off, but she was never happy unless she’d taken in your hurts.  It was… difficult, trying to balance what was her real love with the euphoria from her taking the pain.”

                It was the most Diggs had heard Carter say at one go in a long time.  He could hear the pain in his buddy’s voice, but he had to hear the rest of the story.  “What happened?  Raiders?  Another man? Were there badgers?”

                Carter stopped walking, and gave Diggs an exasperated look.  Good.  Exasperated was way better than wallowing in bad memories.  “No, there were no badgers.  No other men.  It was just… It’s hard to manage a relationship when the only way to save her is for her to hurt you.  It’s not just physical, did you know?  Anger, emotions, she could soak them all.”  Carter looked square at Diggs.  “A tormented soul is candy to a Soak, but it brings no joy.”

                For once, Diggs had nothing to say.

 

 

*****

                Sol sat at his rough-hewn wooden table in his overstuffed chair, and glared at his lieutenants.  Dixon, Bonn and Rushleigh each wore different degrees of shame and defiance on their faces.  Dixon, fingering his eyepatch, was all defiance, and Rushleigh, at the far end of the table with his head low, was almost all shame.  Bonn, across from Dixon and fiddling with a tankard of rot-gut brew one of his raiders had brought in, was somewhere in the middle, embarrassed, but defying all to cast the blame on him.  How to bring them all in, and light the path to his next plan?  They had to act quickly, and they had to act together, but there was no way he could go on without calling them all to account.  Rushleigh was already as far down as a man could get right now, and Dixon was riding high on the fact that it had been one of his raiders who had spotted the missing lad, and one of Rushleigh’s who had let him get away.  How to bring them all in?

                “Bonn,” Sol started, his voice perfectly level.  Don’t give any emotion away.  Your control is your strength.  “Where are we on finding Joss?” 

                “My trackers have signs that they think are his.  Looks like he headed across the river and into the deep woods.  We know he’s not much of a woodsman, and he wouldn’t have gone far in the night.  I’d reckon we’ll have him back in a couple days.”

                Sol fingered the hilt of his belt knife, a bad old habit of anger.  “Two days might be too long.  Three is unacceptable.  If you don’t have his body in the ground tomorrow, recall your trackers and return to camp.  Rushleigh.”

                The miserable man lifted his head and met Sol’s gaze.  Interesting.  Sol had expected red-rimmed eyes and tears, but Rushleigh looked more tired than anything else.  “Sir.”

                Sol cleared his throat, changing on the fly what he had been about to say.  “What do we know about where they went?”  There was no need to indicate who “they” were.

                “Headed west towards the main road, then looks like they followed it north.  If they’re together, and they seem to be, I expect he’ll break off the main road and hit the first village they come to, and try to talk their way into passage.  Boy’s got a mouth on him, and he could talk a sparrow off her eggs if you gave him time.  Where they’ll go from there I’m not sure, but Diggs and Carter are on the trail.”

                Sol hadn’t expected Rushleigh to be this prepared, or this deep into the mindset of the escapees.  Maybe he was worth more than the carpenter’s apprentice-turned-bandit he seemed to be.  “Good.  I didn’t know you’d given orders to Diggs and Carter.”

                “Nobody gives orders to Diggs and Carter.  But I saw Diggs’ swords and bow are missing, and Carter’s taken his sword and pack.  One of my trackers said he found a couple of boot prints, might have been made a couple hours after the escape, and, well, you know about Diggs and the Darkblood.”

                Sol tried not to take offense at the implication that Diggs and Carter were beholden to nobody, because the fact of the matter was that they were, in fact, beholden to nobody.  The two men had showed up in camp a year and a half ago, helped out with some raids, and made themselves Sol’s unofficial right hand...s, but they were part of no squads and followed only the orders they felt like following.  “Well done.  This might not be a total disaster after all.”  Dixon, who had clearly been waiting for Rushleigh to get called down hard, looked disappointed.  Sol swung his glare to the other side of the table.

                “You, however, were responsible for making sure that the two of them had no opportunity to leave the camp.  Was that the best you could do?  A sorry excuse for a raider who couldn’t manage what an ancient wineskin with legs could and a couple of thugs walking the perimeter?  I expected better from the former leader of the Band, Dixon.” 

                “Kiss my ass!”  Dixon rose, slapping the table with one hand.  The other jabbed at Sol’s face.  “You think we’ve got the king’s army here to run patrols?  We barely have the men-“  Dixon glanced down.  It had taken that long for him to register the feel of the impact on the table the instant after he’d slapped it.  Sol’s knife quivered between his middle two fingers.  Sol hadn’t moved except to jam the knife in the table.  All three men knew that Sol carried more than one knife. 

                “Sit. Down.”  Sol’s voice was tightly controlled, and the softness with which he spoke made it all the more intimidating.  Dixon sat.  “We have an opportunity, one which we have little time to exploit.  Whether or not we get Joss’s body back, or Diggs and Carter take their time chopping that little weasel into little bitty bits before dragging back my Soak, we have the chance to score a raid so big we could ride out the rest of the summer on the takings before having to look for resources again.  Maybe even retire.”

                Dixon was still fuming, and Bonn was hesitating.  Again, Rushleigh spoke up, anticipating part of Sol’s plan.  “The boy’s master.  The magistrate?”  The story of how the boy had deflowered the Magistrate’s daughter practically from under his nose had spread throughout the camp within minutes of the telling of it, and the lad had earned a sort of incredulous respect from the various raiders.  Only Rushleigh seemed smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together. 

                “One theme recurred during our conversation: the magistrate prefers to lock his treasures away than allow them to see the light of day.”

                Bonn was trying to jump on the thinking bandwagon.  “You want to break in to his safe room, loot his gold?”  Apparently, thinking wasn’t working for Bonn tonight.

                “The daughter.”  Dixon was fine with the thinking, when he wasn’t trying to politick against Sol.  Amateur.  “He’d pay a king’s ransom for her, if we took her away unharmed, and he had reason to think attack would end with her hurt.”

                “Correct.”  Sol had called Dixon down, but he wasn’t going to lie about Dixon getting the plan right.  Sol still hadn’t taken the knife back.  Chastised, but not forgiven.  Not yet.  “The magistrate does well to protect himself and his… treasures.  His judgments rarely make everybody happy, and a magistrate’s guard sees more action in a month than the typical palace soldier sees in a year.  Of course, the usual is more along the lines of angry farmers with pitchforks, but a ten-foot wall is a ten-foot wall, and men with armor and bows on top of that wall would be too much for our little band.” 

                Sol met each of his lieutenants’ eyes.  Good, the promise of loot and a plan appealed to their most basic instinct: greed.  It was an instinct he knew well, and nurtured whenever possible.  “We’ll never take the manor by force.  A dozen men could hold it against all of ours, and Higgins has twice that.  Our best hope is to enter under guise of civility, and gain an audience.  If we can feign a high enough rank, we will be invited to dinner upon arrival.”

                “How high a rank would you need to pull in order to get yourself invited?”  Bonn was starting to warm up, good.

                “I have reasonable confidence that I can convince him…”  Sol leaned in to the table, drawing the men in to his plan.

                In three days, Sol would have his king’s ransom.

5. Like a Butterfly

5. Like A Butterfly

The breeze blew warm across the village, carrying with it the smells of a summer afternoon. The hard-packed main dirt road puffed dust up with each step of the townsfolk, mixing with the animal dung and fresh-cut hay. Few of the merchants bothered with hawking to draw business on a day like today; it was a day for sitting in the shade, trying to catch what little coolness there was.
Zarya turned her face into the breeze, ducking her head and arching her back, trying to get some of it on the back of her neck. It had been hours since she’d put her heavy curls up under her one piece of silk, a thin green kerchief, legacy of a different life. Sweat now dripped down her face, and pooled in the small of her back. Her green kerchief was dust-brown now, stained with sweat and trapping more heat on her head than it kept off of her neck.
She stopped for a moment, stepping off the road to lean in the shade of an aging elm. The tree had clearly seen better days- half of the trunk looked brown and dead. Split by lightning, perhaps? No way to tell, at this late date. Zarya hadn’t the skill with Divination to read that far into the past. Still, a few branches held life, leaves and, most importantly, shade. Master Sarutobi had done it for fun, the cranky old goat.
Zarya shook her head, hastily clearing it of all thoughts save her current goal- finding the Village Council and presenting herself. The grass was dry, browning and stubby, and felt like a velvet cushion when she sat down. Lords of magic, but she had been on her feet for far too long. Her studies had included little on daily village life. Where would the town’s important elders be? Surely, they would prefer to be out of the sun, and ought to have enough authority to not be out running errands. So, inside somewhere. And, in a town this small, the councilmen would almost certainly have other duties- a craft or trade- to be seeing to. So who would be the leaders, and how to find them?
“You have got to be kidding me!” Zarya flinched at the outburst, scooting sideways around to the back side of the tree on pure reflex. She peeked around the trunk, looking for the speaker. A young man in dusty forest garb, stood speaking to a pale-skinned woman with long black hair and a bodice cut low enough that Zarya unconsciously put up a hand to cover her own, fully-clothed bosom. “No way, they’d never buy a story like that, I don‘t care how much they‘ve had to drink,” the young man went on.
“Well, I don’t see how you intend to convince them of anything, looking the way you do,” the woman said. Her voice had a tone to it that suggested she was caught between terminal boredom and total exasperation.
The young man paused to pinch his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Loook, clearly, if we want to make the right impression, whatever that is, we need to find a place to clean up. I’m a little off rivers at the moment, but I doubt you’ve enough silver on you for a bath house, let alone a tavern. By the look of this place, I bet their idea of a tavern is a pub with a couple rooms for farmers who drank too much. Bath house…” His voice faded into something less challenging, and Zarya thought she heard something more creep into his voice. “Who am I kidding?”
He looked off to the side, and there was a long, awkward moment while the two of them just stood there, not-looking at each other. Something about the woman’s garb triggered a connection in Zarya’s mind. What was it? About pain, maybe? If the woman displayed that much skin that pale in this weather, she was certainly in for a painful rash…
“Fine, whatever,” the woman sighed.
The young man seemed to jerk himself out of some distant thought, and plastered one what had to be the cheekiest grin Zarya had ever seen. “Hey, I know you’re worried that if you saw me bathing, you couldn’t control yourself, and that’s fair. But I assure you… well, no, you’re probably right. Blindfold?”
“Only to keep myself from gagging,” the woman shot back.
“You know you want this,” the young man said, tossing back sandy brown hair.
The pair of the burst into laughter, and she chased him off into the woods, smacking at his head and shoulders.
“Philox,” Zarya murmured, and a shimmering, translucent butterfly landed on her finger. “I need to find a place to bathe, and…” What had the lad said? “A place to buy drink.” She blew gently on her little seeker, and it floated off on the breeze to do her bidding. Zarya smiled. This day was starting to look up.

***********

Tam and Winnow sat sweating on their bench before the councilmen, waiting while a young woman who claimed to be a sorceress made her appeal. She might have some magical talent, but ‘Zarya,’ if that was even her real name, was certainly not the master she claimed to be. No master magician would bother with such a little village, nor would she… fidget.
“And so, um, your Council…ness…es,” she stammered, “I am able to find your lost animals, or people, to determine whether someone has spoken truth or falsehood, forecast the weather, and tell you what crops will do well, and place protective wards around your town, fields, or domiciles.” The councilmen just stared at her, expressionless and silent. “All for especially reasonable rates, I assure you,” she said, clearly trying to find the magic phrase that would unlock the council’s approval.
Tam resisted the temptation to sigh and shake his head. The council’s reaction was every bit as unpleasant as he had expected, though he thought the butcher threatening to send her off to a Magistrate was a bit much. The girl kept her composure, though only barely. “Please,” she begged, “let me demonstrate-”
“Out!” the butcher roared, “Out before we have you brought up before a real sorcerer!”
“Great,” Tam murmured to Winnow as the woman fled the tavern’s common room. “Now they’re all riled up.” Winnow was seated next to him, occupying her portion of bench with a sort of bored, casual grace. Had ’Zarya’ had half that degree of self-possession and dignity, Tam doubted the council would have given her such short shrift.
“Next,” the mayor drawled. Since the girl claiming to be a sorceress had been the only other petitioner, Tam wasn’t sure if the mayor’s attitude was an attempt at an imitation of a big-city Magistrate, or a deliberate insult. In Higgins’ court, at least, he would have been sure of the matter.
Tam stood and bowed slightly from the waist. Not too much, no need to be obsequious, but the councilmen would expect the respect. “Mayor, Councilmen,” He bowed again, not quite so deeply. “I am honored to have this opportunity to come before you today. My name is-”
“Cut the crap, boy.” The speaker was the butcher again, a squat bald man in a blood-stained apron. He leaned forward. “What do you want?”
Tam’s nostrils flared. This yokel had no right- but of course he did. It was his job to cut through the fat and get the meat from the bone. So, then.
“Work,” Tam snapped. He took a deep breath. “As I was starting to say, my name is Tam-”
“What kind of work? You’re not claiming to have magical powers too, are you?” The rest of the council chuckled into their tankards. One man, the blacksmith to judge from his shoulders, rapped his knuckles on the table in approval. Tam watched their faces closely, how each held himself laughing, who looked to which members of the council to draw them into the joke. The mayor held himself apart from the laughing, drinking from his beer but not engaging with the other councilmen. So the mayor really did hold the power of this council, good. The butcher was the hound, used to flush the fox from the trees. Tam addressed himself to the mayor.
“I write a clean hand, sir, and can prepare any documents you wish to present to a magistrate or lord. I-”
“How old are you, boy?” This butcher was starting to get seriously annoying. Calm…
“This past midsummer was my twentieth birthday,” he lied smoothly.
The butcher snorted. “Sure you are. And who’s the wench, the King’s long-lost-”
“Look, if you don’t believe that I can write, bring me pen and ink. If you doubt my knowledge, test me. If you can’t, or won’t, then fine. I’ve a good many miles left to walk.” He half-turned, taking a step toward Winnow, and the bench.
The butcher opened his mouth, starting to rise with one hand flat on the table and the other stabbing a sausage-thick finger at Tam.
“Enough, Arnold.” The mayor raised one hand. “You’ve had your fun with the boy.” The butcher lowered himself back into his chair, scowling. The mayor looked at Tam. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Tam, sir. Tam Norry.” Winnow stirred on the bench behind him, but Tam kept his eyes locked on the mayor’s.
“There’s little enough work for a scribe in a village this size, Tam Norry. What brings you to us, a scribe with no in, a scholar with no books? You’re not in trouble with your master for making off with his daughter, are you?”
Somehow, Tam managed to keep his face straight. “My father served as chief of clerks to Magistrate Higgins, in Moldell. I learned from him, through service, and served on his staff until I came of age, whereupon I transferred my service to Mayor-”
“That’s enough, lad. I don’t want your life’s story. What I want to know is, are you in some kind of trouble, and are you going to bring it down on my people?”
“The only trouble I bring with me, sir, is and empty purse and a poor track record in choosing innkeepers.”
Amazingly, the mayor and councilmen swallowed this entire packet of lies without comment. “So, what brings you looking for work to my little village, Tam Norry?”
Tam quickly weighed his options. His initial assumption had been that, like Sol, these yokels would be either impressed with the mannerisms and speech of court, or overwhelmed by the useage of words bigger than their village. Clearly, that had proven wrong. Zarya’s timidity had gotten her nowhere, so servility was not the course. Long-winded explanations that covered all details were of no use, either. Bold, and to-the-point, then. “My uncle, sir. He wrote me that he has need of a scribe to handle legal affairs for his company on the south coast.”
The mayor accepted this equally flagrant fabrication with the same credulity with which he had taken in Tam’s other lies. He turned to the other councilmen, and they began discussing quietly amongst themselves. Tam remained standing, concealing his impatience and anxiety behind the relaxed, confident pose he had learned serving Magistrate Higgins. He used shifting his weight as an excuse to half-glance over his shoulder. Winnow was watching the council with the cool dispassion of a queen. Only the occasional tap of her foot belied her anxiety.
Odd… Enara would have insisted on being the center of attention, disastrous though it would have been. Winnow was content to let Tam take the lead in this negotiation, though she had certainly been forceful in helping plan this presentation.
The council members seemed to have reached some sort of agreement. The mayor nodded, and turned back to Tam. “None of our villagers have any need of a scribe, but Master Gillam, in whose fine establishment we meet, reckons he has work for you in the kitchens. Scrubbing pots may not be the kind of work you are used to, but it will earn you a meal and a bed, and you need not fear the theft of your possessions. In the morning, it happens that several of the farmers are headed to the market at Riverhead. You can ride with them, and you should be able to find passage down the river from there to the coast. Ship captains, as I understand it, always have logs and journals and customs papers to prepare.”
“The council is most generous. I thank you. And, ah… Does Master Gillam have room in his kitchens for two?”
The mayor raised his eyebrows. “It was assumed by the council, boy, that you would not make your wife work when you could provide for her.” A gagging sound turned into a fit of coughing from Winnow. “Especially when she is in such a weakened state. Gill, why don’t you show these two to their room. Arnold, you can send Mildred over to check on the girl. Any more business?” The mayor rapped his knuckles once on the table. “Then I say we’re done here.”
The members of the village council finished their ale with a bottoms-up pull that looked as formal and practiced as a magistrate’s gavel rap. A fleshy, straw-haired man limped around the end of the table, and shook Tam’s hand. “Alpert Gillam, lad. Pleased to meet you. Most folks around here call me Gill. I’ve a spare room to let in the back; we’re nearly full up what with all the farm folk headed to market. Yes, this is always a busy time for us, even with the heat we’re having to sleep two to a bed some nights…” The man hardly seemed to need to breathe, keeping up a running commentary as he led the two of them to their room. He gestured expansively as he opened the door to a small room in the back of the inn. “Now, we’ll just get your lady wife settled in, here-”
As the innkeeper talked, all Tam could see was the bed. Layered with wool-stuffed ticks, and covered with a faded quilt, it looked like a lover’s embrace. A bed… A real bed, Tam thought.
The innkeeper noticed Tam’s longing stare. “Not yet, lad,” he said with a grandfatherly wink. “It’s the kitchens, then a bath for you.” Settling Winnow into the little room’s only chair, he guided Tam away, promising that one of his daughters would soon be along to take Winnow to the bath house.
In the kitchens, Mrs. Gillam handed Tam a crusty old scrub brush and a bucket of soapy water. The smell of roasting mutton made it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. A bed! And food! Life was finally starting to look up.

***********

Carter knelt next to the ashes of the fire. He inhaled carefully, then held his hand over the coals.
“And then this guy comes at me, like he totally forgot I had a sword in my other hand, right?” Diggs was leaning against a tree, gesturing with his hands while he talked. Re-enacting the fight, probably. Carter had long ago learned how to keep an eye on Diggs without really having to watch him. “And he’s shouting, this whole time, he’s shouting, ‘You’ll never take-’”
“Four hours. Maybe five.” Carter rose from the fire.
“Which way did she go? Into the woods, or back into town?” Diggs pushed off from the tree against which he was leaning, and scanned from side to side. One hand began to creep up towards his shoulder, and the sword hilt sticking up over it.
“It looks like they,” Carter barely emphasized the word, but it was enough to draw a sharp look from Diggs, “built the fire to dry their clothes, then headed into town.”
“Dry their-” Diggs’ face darkened as he worked through the implications of what that meant. “That son of a… Let’s go.” Diggs was ten strides into the woods before Carter had taken his first step.  Tam Foltz was going to have a very bad day.

*********

Tam dragged himself up the stairs in the back of the inn and into the little room. Mrs. Gillam looked the part of the kindly innkeeper’s wife, but she drove her staff with all the mercy of a Magistrate’s enforcer. Tam had nearly fallen asleep in his bowl of stew (admittedly, thick and filling), and then again during his bath. At least he was clean… The kitchens and bath house had been so hot that it almost felt like the air had cooled when he made it out, but the air in the little room was getting to be thick and stifling again, even with the window open.
Winnow sat cross-legged on the bed, skirts fanned neatly around her, reading a small wood-bound book. She looked up as he entered, closing the book on her finger to mark her place. “Dreadful,” she drawled. “Mildred…” She paused, and Tam was certain she was about to spit, “Is nothing more than a village goodwife who spouts the most senseless drivel and thinks herself educated.”
“Spotted you for a soak, did she?” Tam grinned, dropping into the chair. “The fearsome black-heart, come to steal away all the village children?”
“I was chased out of a village not unlike this, once,” she said seriously, “On no more than a whispered rumour. I doubt that she even really believes my kind exist, but just the fear of it was enough to put her on edge. I had to work very hard to make her laugh, and draw her in before she left, so she wouldn’t be tempted to carry the wrong tales.”
“How did you manage that? I’ve never yet met a goodwife who doesn’t cleave to the worst or most sensational tales.” As morose and morbid as Winnow looked and sounded, Tam could sooner imagine Winnow getting a laugh from a corpse.
Winnow’s bleak face lit for the briefest of moments with a faint smile. “Told her I hadn’t slept since I found out that I was pregnant.”
“You- What?” Tam spurted out of the chair. “How- Why- What… What the hell?”
Winnow had folded over on herself, shoulders shaking. It took Tam a moment to realize that she was laughing.
“Ooh… You…” Tam growled. He had just started to crawl up onto the bed when he noticed a pallet, neatly made up on the floor. “What’s that for?”
Winnow was trying to hold on her laughter, clutching her arms around herself. “It seems that Mildred,” she even managed to drip acid on the name while sniggering, “Believes women who are with child shouldn’t share their bed.”
Tam turned around to check the door for a lock on the inside. “Well, what she-”
“And since Mildred is best friends with Elsbet Gillam, she assured me that Elsbet would be checking in to make sure I ‘get the rest I need.’” Her face turned serious. “I don’t think we had better share a bed, either. It’s too…”
“Complicated,” Tam finished for her. He wasn’t entirely sure that he had been successful at keeping the bitter note from his voice. He backed carefully off of the bed, and lay down on the pallet. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I could certainly use a good night’s rest. At least we don’t have to worry about bandits, here!” Tam forced himself to keep his voice light. He very much doubted that Winnow was gullible enough to be fooled by that, but it was easier than the truth.
It was too… complicated.

**********

Outside, thunder boomed, and a breeze stirred through the window, carrying the smell of rain.
“Menox,” Zarya murmured, and the shimmering butterfly winked out. So, the woman was a soak That certainly explained a great deal. And they weren’t man and wife, but she was with child? No, that was the false tale the Soak had told the goodwife.
Zarya leaned her head back against the trunk of her tree. She had thought at first that the two of them were man and wife, just by the way they acted, but the boy had taken to being rejected from the woman’s bed with no issue- clearly, there was no feeling there. Just traveling companions. The boy was cute, in a sandy-haired, loose and free sort of way. Zarya would at least have danced with him- if she knew how to dance…
Zarya’s little butterfly had listened in on their session with the Council, those miserable old crabs. If the farmers were willing to give two a ride to Riverhead, would they mind a third? She scrubbed the dirt from her cheeks, smudging the tracks her tears had cut through it earlier. The council had had no call to go calling her down like that…
Thunder boomed overhead, and Zarya pulled her cloak up over her hair. It was too hot for the cloak, but she had been unable to find better shelter than the elm tree just outside town. Pulling a small crystal from her pocket, she began to scratch lines in the dirt before her. Maybe she could find out a bit more about the tree. Was it lightning?
As the rain began to fall, Zarya’s glyph grew in depth and complexity. Gamph’s Third Conjunction overlaid with Benards’ Formula might reveal more about the atmospheric conditions at the time of the tree's demise…
Unnoticed by Zarya, the townsfolk, or the stars, the elm tree began to sprout small, green buds.

4. In the Still of the Night

It was well-past dark when Tam was led off to one of the huts, hastily cleared for his use. It was one of the inner-ring dwellings, with room for a bed and a small table inside, and a fire pit just outside the ill-fitting door. It had no windows, which put Tam uncomfortably in mind of a box, but he could stretch his arms out to either side without touching the walls, and the ceiling cleared his head by a good two inches. In the middle, anyways… A palace, compared to the box. In fact, compared to his room in Magistrate Higgins’ attic, the hut might actually have had a little more room, if a lower ceiling.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, pallet, really, and tugged off his boots. They were just a little too big, and he was starting to get a blister on his right heel. The evening’s conversation with Sol played itself through Tam’s head again and again.
Sol had been as charming and polite as any of the nobles or court officials Tam had encountered at Magistrate Higgins’ home, or at his own father’s house, the few times in the last couple years Tam had been there. Charming, working hard to make Tam forget the near-squalor of their surroundings, yet there was the glint in Sol’s eyes every time he’d asked Tam about his past. The same sort of glint Tam had seen in the barristers’ eyes when they’d visited his father, and the same glint he’d seen dozens of times in Higgins’ court, and at judgments.
Greed.
Identifying the emotion had been relatively simple, accomplished before they’d finished the stew. That had left the bread, meat, and fresh-cut wild apples and a spicy cheese to determine its target. It was perhaps no surprise that Sol had turned the conversation away from himself in favor of tales of Tam’s recent misadventures. After all, Tam had never rescued anyone from a box, either. Sol had wanted every detail of Tam’s torture and beating, and had expressed proper outrage at Higgins’ cruelty. So why did Tam get the feeling that Sol would have done twice as much with half the remorse? No stranger to torture, there.
He wants me to hate Higgins.
From one side, it made perfect sense. Any sane person would hate and fear the person who had done to them what had been done to Tam. And it was true, Higgins was hardly Tam’s favorite person at the moment. But in a weird way- and on some level, Tam recognized the weirdness- in a weird way, Tam could see Higgins’ point of view. He’d taken Tam in under his roof, fed and clothed him for ten years, trained him to judge the law and apportion justice. And then Tam had violated his trust by bedding his daughter. Tam had been living in Higgins’ back pocket for a decade, and had no illusions about what kind of man he was. He’d known from the first time he’d stolen a kiss from Enara what the risks would be. Later, when she’d invited/commanded Tam to attend her in her chambers, well… Thinking about consequences hadn’t been high on the list of Tam’s priorities. All in all, Tam couldn’t pretend he was surprised Higgins had reacted the way he had.
Sol had clearly picked up on this under-reaction, and taken care to try to fan the flames of Tam’s resentment. Trying to keep some sort of control over the conversation, Tam had not mentioned the Guard-Commander’s more personal reaction. How was Tam supposed to know he’d taken an interest in Enara?
From the other side, Tam could see no reason at all for Sol to have so enthusiastically empathized with him. That hadn’t been an attempt to coax Tam into emotional release and catharsis. Sol had wanted something. Still wanted something. What value could Tam have to Sol? He wasn’t a trained fighter, like the men who’d been practicing in the center of camp, and Tam was certain Sol had no concern for the technicalities of the law.
A shadow moved in front of the door, and Tam rolled off the bed, snatching up his boots and the belt knife Sol had given him after dinner. A gesture of trust, Sol had called it, though since most of the bandits carried staves and spears, Tam wasn’t sure how much good it would do him. The door creaked open, and for a moment, all Tam saw was a black figure, backlit by the low-burning cookfire behind it. The figure moved inside, closed the door, and did not move. Slowly, Tam’s eyes re-adjusted to the low light.
Winnow looked down at him, crouching in the corner with his little knife held before him.
“Relax, Tam,” she said. Her voice was low and had the same husky edge that had so heated his blood a few hours ago. “I don’t bite… much…” For all of its sultry edge, her tone was more clipped, business-like. The juxtaposition made Tam’s head spin. Winnow sat on the edge of Tam’s bed, where he’d been a moment before. Carefully, he pulled on his boots, and sat next to her, keeping the knife on the side away from her. Just in case. “You’re awful jumpy,” she noted, amused. “Don’t tell me this is your first time in bed with a woman.”
“Last time I was in bed with a woman,” last time he’d been in any sort of bed, with or without company, for that matter, “I got stuffed in a box. I’m a bit off beds, at the moment.” Actually, he was desperate for a bed, and some proper sleep. “I was giving some serious thought to sleeping on the floor. This blanket should be fine.” He tugged at the dirt-brown blanket, and heard something rip. “Well, what’s left of it…”
Winnow flashed him an appreciative grin, and seemed to be about to say something, then stopped, and the closed, business-like look possessed her face again. “How much did Sol tell you over dinner?”
Lost in her smile, it took Tam a moment to track the change in conversation. “Not much that I couldn’t figure out for myself. Practically nothing about himself, a little about the band. I think… I think he plans to try to use me to break into Higgins’ manor.”
Winnow eyed him in surprise. “He told you that?”
Tam shook his head. “No, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. Why else try to impress me with how strong his raiders are? He raved about how skilled they are. Why else try to dig as much out of me about Higgins’ manor and its valuables as possible? He kept comparing what he’d seen of other manors to the King’s palace. As if he’d ever been there… A common bandit? And…” Tam hesitated. Saying it out loud didn’t make nearly as much sense as thinking it in his head. “He really wants me to be mad at Higgins. I think he wants me to lead a raid for revenge.”
Winnow blew out her breath. “Well, you’re half-right. He plans on getting you to help him plan a raid on Higgins’ over the next week. He’ll probably pull off the raid, but it’s really just a cover to sell you back to Higgins.”
“No offense to Sol and his masterminding, but I really can’t imagine that Higgins wants to see me again.” Winnow started to say something, and Tam rode right over it. “Ever. Literally, those were pretty much his last words to me. ‘I hope you live long, and suffer greatly, betrayer of my trust.’ Actually, he used the Scholar’s tongue; I think he was quoting from a play by Theodus. It’s about this guy… Never mind. But you get the idea.”
Tam thought Winnow rolled her eyes at him. It was hard to tell, in the dark. “I doubt Sol intends you to go back to dusting the book-shelf, or whatever. Of course Sol wants to sell you. He figures to sell you to be tortured again, and me to heal you. Sol reckons that Higgins is pissed enough to be interested in working you over again and again.”
Winnow’s words chilled Tam. Yes, Higgins was sadistic enough to take a personal grudge to such great lengths. And Guard-Captain Chubain woudn’t mind the chance, either. Tam tucked the knife into his belt. “How many guards does Sol have on this hut?”
“Only the one right out front, that I saw. He thinks I’m here for more… personal reasons. I will distract him, and you can go around back of the hut. Wait for me there.”
“Personal reasons, eh?” Tam glanced over at her, and grinned. What he could see of her face seemed… sad?
“We can discuss that later.” Winnow hesitated. “I expect… we will have much to discuss, later. For now, we must escape.”
The playful grin slid off of Tam’s face at her tone. “I see.”
“Not yet,” she said with a sigh, “But you will. Are you ready?”
Tam nodded, and lay on the bed, blanked draped artistically across his body. Winnow waited a moment to be sure he was in place, then rose, and tip-toed carefully out. She left the door half-open, the firelight outlining her form as she approached the guard. She trailed one hand slowly across the back of his shoulders, circling around him. The guard turned, slowly, following her movement, and she ended facing him, the firelight making the skin of her shoulders glow. “Asleep,” she said, and her voice was its warm, intimate drawl again. “Such a pity…”
Tam was frozen in place momentarily, struck by pure aesthetic appreciation. Winnow moved closer to the guard, slipping one hand around his back. Her finger pointed sharply to the side before beginning a slow trail up the guard’s spine. Tam struggled to make his brain work. He rolled soundlessly off the bed, bundling the blanket with him. Two soft steps had him at the door, and he paused to make sure Winnow still had the guard distracted. She was up on tip-toe, whispering in his ear, but Tam could see her eyes, sharp on the hut’s entrance. Carefully, Tam eased around the door, and pulled it to. Tam froze, and nearly peed himself when the guard shifted in his stance, but it was only to put a thick, hairy arm around Winnow’s waist. Tam regained his breath, ducked around the back of the hut, and crouched in the triangle of pitch black shadow. He pulled the blanket over himself, and settled in against the wall.
Tam forced himself to breathe slowly. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, his feet, even his teeth. A warm night breeze stirred the leaves on the ground. Tam silently cursed the cover they gave to anyone else moving in the camp. The minutes crept by with agonizing slowness. One minute. Two.
Through the small holes in the blanket, Tam could just make out the shapes of the other huts. The moon was half-full, casting shadows more than providing illumination. Tam squinted through the veil of the blanket. Off to the left, a light bobbed through the trees, flickering. Was that Winnow? He started to rise, then hesitated. Winnow hardly seemed the candle-in-the-window sort of girl. And why would she tell him to wait for her in the dark, then light a torch to draw him out?
The light bobbed closer, and Tam could make out the absurd orange shirt of Diggs. The man strolled casually along the outer perimeter of the camp, whistling softly. Tam watched him pass, holding as still as he could. The light of Diggs’s torch was just passing behind the next hut when a cloaked and hooded figure slipped into the shadows beside him. It took Tam a moment to recognize it as Winnow. As it was, he choked on his whispered greeting.
Winnow tsk’d softly. “What an idiot… how does he expect to see anything like that?” She started to rise. “C’mon. Let’s get-”
Tam’s hand snaked out from under the blanket to catch her arm, and pulled her back down. She started to hiss something at him, but Tam laid a finger across her lips. “Where’s Carter?” He breathed the words, barely audible to his own ears, then carefully withdrew his hand, tucking it back under the blanket. Diggs’ light was maybe a quarter of the way around the ring, now; just at the edge of what Tam could see from his hiding place. A cloud rolled across the moon, and the night was inky blackness. Tam held very still, and breathed as softly as he could. On the other side of the hut, Tam heard the guard curse, then a thump and crackle as he added a log to the dying fire. The breeze stirred, and the fire’s light roared to life as the cloud passed from in front of the moon. After the pitch-darkness, the night seemed as bright as early morning. Tam felt Winnow stiffen beside him, going statue-still and marble-rigid.

Carter stood not three feet in front of them.

Lit clearly by booth moon and fire, Tam could see that Carter had one eye squeezed shut. The other squinted so only a faint glint told Tam the eye was open at all. Carter’s head was moving slowly from side to side, and twice Tam was sure Carter was looking right at him.
A small vexed hiss escaped Carter’s teeth, and the big man padded silently down the track between the rings of huts.
Tam realized that he’d been holding his breath, and let it out slowly. Beside him, he could feel Winnow doing the same. Tam pulled the blanket down off his head. He could see Winnow’s eyes, deep in the shadow of her hood. They were wide, shining in fear, or excitement, or both. Tam expected his were much the same. He nodded once, slowly, and she returned the gesture. They rose together to a crouch, and Tam pulled the blanket around himself for a makeshift cloak. The nights were not yet cool enough to make the warmth needful, but it had served him well as camouflage once already, and Tam was loathe to part with the sole scrap of comfort left him, holey and torn though it might be.
Keeping low, they moved together to the outer ring of huts, and ducked into the covering shadows. Tam poked his head around, looking for Diggs’ torch. After a moment, Tam spotted it, clear on the other side of camp. That should put Carter about a quarter of the way around, if he was pacing Diggs. Of course, if Carter was just circling Tam’s hut…
Tam reached out, and found Winnow’s hand in the dark. He gave it a squeeze, and after a moment, she squeezed back. Not letting go of his hand, Winnow led him off into the darkness.
　
*******
　
Joss was watching Diggs and his shirt make a circuit around the camp when his replacement arrived. Beadle reeked of wine, as usual, but he managed a tolerable semblance of competence. At this point, Joss wouldn’t have cared if Beadle passed out and drowned in his own vomit. For the last three hours, all Joss had been able to think about were the words the Darkblood had whispered in his ear. A fine looking woman, no matter what Kendrick claimed about her drinking the blood of the dead. True, she could be damnably cold and distant, but what woman wasn’t hard to read? And how many times had a woman promised to-
“Anything to report?” Beadle’s voice was gravel, a slow slurred drawl. Yep. Drunk as a councilman in deep winter.
“Naw. Sleeping like a baby.” Joss was turned around and three steps off before Beadle had his next question out.
“When’d you last check?”
Check? Why bother checking on a man too unconscious to bed a woman like Winnow? “Maybe a quarter-, half-hour ago,” he lied without hesitation. “Look, Bead, I gotta pee. Anything else?”
Beadle grunted and waved him off, and Joss lit out towards the river to wash.
Coming back, now with a relatively clean face and chewing a sprig of mint, he noticed a small patch of moon blossoms.
This was going to be a night to remember.
Joss spat out the mint as he approached his hut. It was one of the few outer-ring shelters to have a door, and he had it all to himself ever since Liam had bit it dueling a merchant’s guard. Joss eased the door open, put on his best smile, and led with the flowers. “Pretty flowers for my pretty lady?”
The hut was empty. Maybe she’d meant him to go to her hut? Winnow’s cabin was on the other side of camp, in the inner ring. Swallowing his growing apprehension, Joss crossed the training area where Rushleigh had had them putting on a show to impress the boy.
Winnow’s cabin had more of a curtain than a door, an odd, layered thing of beads and silk. Joss hesitated. How did you knock on beads? He rattled a few strings together, then tried his line. Again.
“Pretty flowers for my-”
Joss swore. The cabin was clearly empty. He sat on the pallet, and tried to think of what to do. Clearly, she’d chosen tonight to run off.
Joss’s brain hung, paralyzed, for a moment on that thought. The soak had split. It must have been right after she’d visited the boy, because then she’d talked to him.
Oh.
Shit.
Joss knew if Sol found out he’d been the one to let the two escape, nobody would ever find Joss’s body. Beadle was a drunk, but he’d been a bandit longer than Joss had been alive. Unless he passed out, Beadle would be checking on the boy in no more than half an hour. Joss hurried back to his own hut, leaving the flowers on the floor.
Sixty seconds later, Joss was deep in the woods, running for his life.
　
********
　
The sky to the east was beginning to lighten, the first pink haze of sunrise glowing behind the trees. Tam staggered to a halt, hands on his knees, and panted. His throat burned with every breath.
“Gotta… Stop… For a minute,” he managed to gasp out.
Winnow’s stride had lost its flowing grace some hours ago, but she wasn’t gasping for air the same way Tam was, either. She breathed deep, slow and steady. In the dress she wore beneath her cloak, it was attention-riveting. “Catch your breath while we walk, then,” she said.
Tam forced himself upright, then took a step. His heel burned from the blister that had formed, broken and bled. When had Tam ever thought these boots were loose? They pinched his toes, his whole foot, in fact. Far too small. He’d have done better to strap rasps to his feet and run across a bed to nails. Hot nails. Hot nails and sand.
Tam looked up, and saw that Winnow was a good ten paces ahead of him, walking slowly down the road they’d been on for the last couple eternities.
He took another step. It hurt worse than before.
He took another step.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Tam looked up, and didn’t see Winnow. No, there she was, behind him, and odd look in her eyes. “Well,” he choked out. “You coming?”
Winnow shook her head, then jogged a couple of steps to catch up. “You constantly amaze me, city boy. I certainly never expected to find the likes of you in Sol’s camp.”
Tam didn’t feel particularly amazing at the moment, but he put on the cheekiest grin he could manage with his lungs gripped in a giant’s fist and his throat aflame. “Well, I can’t help being what I am.” He glanced over, and caught the twitch at the corner of Winnow’s mouth. Encouraged, he went on. “I have to admit, I didn’t really have being locked in a box and being shipped off to my death on my social calendar, but it seems to have worked out well enough. After all, I did get to meet,” looking over at Winnow, he caught the expectant look in her eyes, and read behind it her preparing herself to reject him. Without pausing he changed what he’s been about to say to, “Diggs and Carter. What a pair! Do you think even half of what he says is true?”
Winnow snorted. “If it were, Diggs’d be one of the greatest heroes of all time. I think he really has been around, some, but lava-proof? Really?”
Tam laughed. “Yeah, I somehow doubt that, but what do I know? Not very many water nymphs in Moldell.”
“Is that were you’re from?”
“Mm, lately. I was actually born in Riverford, but my father arranged for me to apprentice to Magistrate Higgins when I was seven. I haven’t seen my own family but twice a year- Beltane and Samhain- for the last ten years. What about you?”
Winnow looked off into the forest for a long, silent moment. Finally, in a soft voice that seemed to come from far away, she said, “Guilford.”
Tam whistled soundlessly. “You’re a long way from the capital, my lady.” He hesitated. “At least, I think you are. Where are we, anyways?”
“About three, four days north and west of Moldell. If Sol doesn’t catch up to us first, we should be able to make it to Oakford by this afternoon.” She whirled on him, suddenly fierce. “And if you ever tell anyone where I’m from, I’ll make you wish for Higgins’ torture, rack, understand?”
Tam put both hands up, palms out, and tried for soothing. “Hey, my lips are sealed.” He smirked. “Would you like to seal them with your own?”
Winnow glared at him a moment, then turned, and continued stalking down the road.
This time, it was Tam’s turn to jog a few steps to catch up. His heel still burned, and his entire body ached from sore muscles and exhaustion, but his heart no longer felt like it was trying to beat a hole through his ribcage.
They walked alongside each other for a time, Tam with his hands clasped atop his head, Winnow with her hands buried in the sleeves of her cloak and head down. Every few steps, Tam would glance over at her steadily-pacing figure. It was easy to joke and flirt with Winnow in the moment, playing off of the momentum in her words, but trying to start a serious conversation from scratch, a dead stop, with no opening for him to work from put a cold feeling in his stomach. He kept trying to think of ways to work around to the subject, working around from an oblique angle, but nothing seemed to put the right spin on what he wanted to say. Then he tried to think of a way to simply start her talking, and drew an equally frustrating blank. Nothing seemed right. Finally, he tried, “It’s very subtle, the stitching on your dress. I hardly noticed, before.”
Winnow said nothing, simply continuing to walk down the road. Somewhere, deep in Tam’s brain, somebody was shouting at him to shut up and leave it, but he pushed on. “At first, I thought it was just all black, flat and plain. But it’s not- there’s all these little patterns all over it, black on black on black. And on your bodice and sleeves- the same patterns. But there’s purple and blue and green mixed in, some of it.” Still nothing. He should really shut up not. He was making a mess of this. Dammit, why had Tam gone and opened his mouth? Enara had loved nothing more than discussing her wardrobe. Everything Tam knew about women’s fashion, he’d learned from Enara. Idiot. In what way was this woman like Enara? He should stop talking now. His foot was squishing in his boot, and he realized it was filling with blood. He should probably stop and do something about that blister.
“Did you do all that yourself?” Tam’s brain was screaming at him to shut up now, and his stomach felt like he’d just swallowed an entire bale of wool. Moron. “The stitching, I mean?” Tam buried his face in his hands, and tried to hold his mouth shut by the sheer strength of his fingers.
“Some of it.” When Winnow started to speak, her voice was soft, gaining slowly in strength. “Most of it was done by… a seamstress. I had to show her the patterns, and she couldn’t understand why I would want it in a manner almost nobody would ever see. I finally had to tell her it was a costume, for Samhain. I don’t know if she believed me. I do know she told my father.”
“I take it he wasn’t too thrilled?” Yes, Tam knew all about repressive fathers.
“Not so much. It was… part of why I left. He said he couldn’t have a daughter in his household who couldn’t uphold the honor and dignity of-” she stopped suddenly, coming back from whatever past to which her memories had taken her with an almost audible snap. “I seem to be telling you a lot of things I’ve never told anyone before, Tam Foltz.” She paused, then in a still-lower voice, said, “Ask me what you wish to know, Tam. I will answer your question.” She still had not looked at him. Her head was still down, shrouded by the deep well of the hood. No cue of expression there to guide Tam. She seemed folded in on herself, physically, but she was opening up to him in a way far more intimate than the way she’d kissed him… only yesterday? It seemed he’d lived a lifetime since Higgins had put him tin the box. And he still hadn’t gotten to sleep in a bed since he’d slipped out of Enara’s.
“Are you in pain?” The question just popped out, not tracking any internal train of thought Tam could follow. It seemed to surprise Winnow, as well, for she stopped in the middle of the road and looked at him, her expression unreadable except for the strength of the emotions behind it. Her face was pale.
“What do you know of Paintakers, Tam?”
“Not much,” He admitted. “Mostly, just what I’ve seen first hand. Beyond that, just the same dark tales all mothers tell their children to keep them in line. The two… don’t seem to have much in common.”
“I see.” Winnow seemed to digest this, then turned and continued walking.
“Hey, wait!” Tam called, and staggered after her. “I don’t think so, Blue-Eyes. You promised me an answer. You don’t just get to walk off and leave me twisting for it.
She spun to face him, eyes blazing. “What do you know? What do you know about pain?”
“I know that at least I have stones enough to face the things that scare me, instead of just running and hiding from them,” Tam snapped.
He knew he’d gone too far, but was too angry to care. Winnow’s pale face grew dark, and her hands shot out to seize either side of her head. Her eyes locked on to his, then he screamed, back arching, hands thrown wide. The agony seemed to go on and on. His heart was beating its way out of his chest, his legs were afire, his throat had been ripped out. Somewhere, far away, someone else was screaming too. Finally, the pain subsided, and he felt as though he’d just woken from an afternoon nap. His knees buckled, and Tam clung to Winnow. She clung to him just as desperately.
Winnow looked up at him and whispered hoarsely. “They’re not just a ritual formula. Pain is my life.” Her lips glistened when she licked them, deep red and inviting. Somehow, Tam’s hand had started stroking her hair. He cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her.
The kiss was long, and deep, and this time they had no audience. Winnow’s body pressed against him, and Tam could feel her low moan, deep in her throat.
They broke for breath, and Winnow leaned her cheek against his chest. “Well, you certainly didn’t think of me as your mother that time.” With a sigh, she pushed away from him, face drawn. “The more pain I take in, the more filled I am with life. But both pain and life are passing things, and as one fades, so does the other. I don’t enjoy pain. I need it.”
Tam’s grin slipped sideways as he took this in. “Wow. You sure know how to show a guy a good time, don’t you?” The words were out of his mouth before he had time to think. Tam could see from the way she drew back that he’d hurt her feelings. Crap, that hadn’t been what he wanted to do. He really needed a filter between his brain and his mouth. “Aah, so… are you hungry?”
She looked at him, and evidently saw something in his eyes, for she hooked her arm through his, and resumed walking down the road for all the world as if they were on a stroll through the country instead of running for their lives. “Starving.”