“I wasn’t robbing you” The Priest said “I had planted those notes in your purse and was putting it back when you caught me. I tried to tell you.”
I suppose I hadn’t let him finish what he was saying when he was picking my pocket. Would’ve been hard to convince me of anything in the state I was in. It was plausible. Still, it gave me more questions than answers.
“So why’d you plant them in the first place?” I asked, “and why do you have that?” I said, pointing at Dreamdrinker.
“This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.” he said wringing his hands. He said it more to himself than to me. “I wanted… well I don’t know what I wanted.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Alright.” he started “Let’s begin with introductions. I am Locklake. You are Co—”
I stopped him before he finished. “That name is dead. You can call me Sab. “ I responded.
“Alright, then. Sab.” he smiled, “I suppose that’s fitting. I am Locklake. The Starcarrier for this House of Reverence.”
I squinted at him “you can’t be twenty even”
“Well, since everyone else in the clergy died from the Greypox last winter, I was promoted. They keep saying they’ll send someone to take over, but no one has shown yet.” he replied
“So, what do you want with me?” I asked “I’m not gonna go to the capital and fetch you a new boss.”
“No, no. I understand that quite well,” he said, then paused a moment, looking down at the floor then up at me before saying “What I need isn’t a new supervisor. The heavens have provided me with the Eight to guide me. There is a man who believes himself to be above the church though. Above the Gods’ laws. Above Man’s Laws. He must be removed.
“You know who I speak of.”
It took a moment to register, but I eventually understood it. It hit me like a cold bath.
“Verisius.” I murmured. How many times had I thought of killing him since Balmeth. How many times had I cursed his name? How many times had I watched my people die in my mind?
I wasn’t there when they were trapped. Killed. Burned. I still saw their faces though. I still felt their pain. The techniques had ensured that.
“I can’t do it,” I said, rising to my feet “That’s a road I can’t walk anymore. Even...” I shook my head “Even though he deserves it. I am not a man who kills Kings.”
“You’re too modest, Sab. From what I know of you you’re the domino that crumbles regimes.”
“Not anymore” I told him “Now I’m just an old man, and I’m too tired for revenge. Even if Verisius deserves it.”
“Wait.” he pleaded “It’s not something I ask of you today. Or even tomorrow. It is, perhaps, the end game. Please come back tomorrow night. I have a meeting of The 15th. I can show you what we wish to do.”
“I’m sorry.” I replied, moving past him and toward the door. I was leaving Dreamdrinker behind, but I’d done that before, so it wasn’t any harder this time. Let the Eight deal with that curse. Maybe they’d have some luck with it.
“Do you want to know how we got your face on the bill?” he asked, as I was nearly outside.
It stopped me, though it shouldn’t have.
“Yeah that was a neat trick.” I responded.
“Come back tomorrow. Let me show you what we’re trying to do. Let me convince you. Please give me that.”
It was the please that snared me, so I agreed.
I left then, the road to camp before me and my answers behind.
----
I slept rough that night. It wasn’t just that the rain had come back and I had forgotten to grab one of those canvas tarps from Carsten. It wasn’t just that I was shaky and in need of a drink from my forced sobriety. It wasn’t even that the kid’s words rolled around in my brain causing as much ache as that tooth had.
Well maybe not that much.
It was my proximity to Dreamdrinker. I had let down my guard over the ten years we were apart, so the phantoms came as hard as the first nights I’d had her. Was harder because back then there were only one or two shadows inside of her, where now there were dozens. Was easier because I knew what they were and how to rise above them. Not like those first nights.
I woke before dawn knowing that I’d lived to see another day. I wondered briefly if I was happy about that or sad about it. Then I figured it didn’t matter my feelings on it, today had come. I coaxed the fire back up from its coals and waited for the afternoon, and Carsten, to arrive; thoughts still jumbled in my head.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
I got the brush out of my saddle bag and brushed Reluctant out. He had just turned seventeen, and I had him since he was a colt. He was from Portez’s stock. One last gift from the King before we were given to the Grensch to try and seize back their borders from the Empire. It’s funny, you fight to stop one country from growing too big and in turn, you cause another to grow. The Grensch have taken more land than the Empire ever had on the Anawond Continent. And so far they hadn’t given an inch of it back.
The brush caught a little in his long mane, but I untangled it and swept it till it came through clean. He was nearly all-black, as the King’s stock usually was, but he had a white star between his eyes and a white boot on his left hind leg. He was given to me as a colt due to those markings that would never suit royalty and they apologized to me for having to accept an inferior breed. He could have been tan with pink spots for all I cared, best horse I'd had yet, and I'd had many.
The day I went to pick him up he didn’t want to leave his brothers and sisters behind. So as a jest I gave him that name. A name he definitely grew into.
He could be stubborn when he didn’t want to do something, but he never spooked and never shied away from battle. He would’ve been a great charger, but because of his markings he’d never had the chance. Guess it’s the same as people. The world’s greatest General could be out there hoeing a field right now and we’d never know it. Simply cause they weren’t given the chance.
Carsten returned just before noon with a couple of Grensch pastries I didn’t recognize. They were flaky and spicy. Felt like I could’ve eaten a dozen. He asked me about what I’d done the night prior, so I told him about Locklake and the House. I left out Dreamdrinker. I still wasn’t sure how she fit into this. I wasn’t ready to let anybody know about our connection - even with as close as me and Carsten were getting.
“So you want me to go with you tonight?” he asked
“Nah,” I told him “I don’t think they know about you yet. I’d rather keep you like an ace in the sleeve. Follow along though, if I’m not out after a few hours you have a gander.”
I leaned back away from the smoke that followed me around the campfire. Seems like I can never sit in one spot too long without it trying to say hello.
“So what did you find out in town?” I asked, waving the smoke out of my face again.
“Well. Wasn’t a lot. Apparently there’s a bunch of mercs that’re out of sorts because they ain’t getting paid. Usually that ain’t news, mercs’ll grumble even when they are getting paid. These ones weren’t getting paid by the King though.”
My ears perked up at this. If Verisius couldn’t keep his mercs, that’s a big chunk of his army gone. I was sure this wasn’t a coincidence.
“Other than that, not too much. I asked about your 15th, but it sounds like you know more than I do on that front. Nobody else heard a peep.”
“I expected as much,” I told him “this would be something they kept under wraps. Especially if it’s gonna be treason.”
Selfishly, I wanted Verisius dead. I had every day since the betrayal. I wished I could be the one to kill him, to avenge my losses, but I knew I couldn’t. Sometimes there’s a piece missing out of you and all you can do is rub your hands on the jagged edge. So even though I knew I couldn’t do it, I wasn’t against it either. Man deserved death.
But he wasn’t just a man. He was the King. If he dies there’s a big question mark on this whole country? As far as I knew he hadn’t produced an heir yet, and even if he had, who would follow a boy ruler? No stability. Place would tear itself to shreds.
“One more thing,” Carsten told me, breaking my thoughts up “Went to stock up on ammo, but the whole town is out. Not like in Prentice though where they haven’t been shipped any. From what I can tell it’s up and vanished”
Ammunition shortage at the contested line and now here too? Another coincidence I was sure wasn’t a coincidence. I imagined this had to be a part of Locklake’s plan.
Time to go find out what that was.
---
“I’ve got a few more questions for you,” I said to Locklake.
“I’ll answer as I can” came his quieted response.
We were heading down into the basement of the House of Reverence. He had a long white candle in a candlestick of ornate beauty. If the candlestick was melted down the gold and jewels could keep the full Grensch army marching for a year. This is how things were in a House: the tools used were gilded and ornate while the furnishings were simple and drab. They ate off silver plates, but sat on jackpine. The duality of the Eight.
“Why did you plant those bills on me? Why not just plan a meeting?”
“I had every intent to,” he said, “but according to my man you weren’t in the proper humours that night for a meeting.”
“The merc from the bar” I said.
“If Sansmith heard you say that he’d be…” he paused here and started again with a chuckle “Well he would absolutely hate being referred to as a merc. In his eyes he is a man who does the will of the Gods.”
“A Crusader?” I asked,
“Like that,” he replied, “but also, unlike that.”
After that cryptic sentence we came upon a cellar door within the basement. I wondered how far down the church had dug. He stopped before moving on.
“Sansmith was supposed to bring me to you, to introduce us. When you left in the middle of the night, our plans changed. We had to find you. Took us most of the night to figure out your trail. Then, when I saw you laying there, I suppose…” (he gestured vaguely here) “I felt as if the moment wasn’t right. But I knew I still needed you to come here.
“So, as the Seventh favors bravery, I tried to deposit the notes. The rest, you know.”
He produced a short, stubby brass key from seemingly nowhere. He placed it in a heavy lock that hooked into the cellar door, turned and removed it. He gripped the brass ring and pulled opening the door to an inky blackness. He extinguished the candle. “From here, we travel in darkness” he said.
For anyone else this may have been a problem, but the techniques gave me a sort of darksense. I knew we were heading into a tunnel, but to where I couldn’t ascertain. Anyone else would’ve needed to hold onto their guide, but I followed behind Locklake steadily. As we moved through I understood the edict on no flames. The darksense told me what my eyes couldn’t: we were surrounded by barrels. My mind, honed by several lifetimes on the battlefield, told me what the darksense couldn’t: those barrels were filled with gunpowder.
Now I knew why the town was out.
After a walk of about ten minutes, hunched over in that darkness, we reached another door.
“These tunnels were put here when Bazroba was little more than a shepherd’s rest stop.” Locklake said to me, whisper-quiet. The surrounding walls of the tunnel seemed to eat the sound.
“There’s a saying in the fourth book. Trust in the Eight, but understand their eyes may be elsewhere. We always had a way out if war ever came to us.”
He knocked twice fast, once slow, then twice fast again. The door opened to a blinding light.