Kiri swallowed back bile and tried not to look at the Untouchable again. This time wasn’t like the Standing stones. She knew without a doubt; there was no question. She was a killer. But there was no time to think about it. Some of the others were stirring, and the sooner she and Gilliam were far away from here, the better.
He came to her side, stumbling a little in the rubble-strewn mess. Kiri made herself meet his eyes.
“You’re the Firebrand.” His voice was quiet, but tense, his expression awed and hesitant.
Kiri sucked in a breath. “Yes.”
Gilliam shook his head a little bit, and as though he had thrown off his shock with the movement, his face warmed. His lips quirked up in a half smile. “So the two most amazing women I’ve ever met are actually only one woman.”
Embarrassed even though she was sure her blush wouldn’t show in the dim light, Kiri turned away quickly. “Let’s go,” she murmured, leading the way out of the cave.
It took them a while to figure out how to get back up when they reached the entrance. There was a coiled rope nearby, but no obvious place for it to catch above. Kiri and Gilliam took turns throwing it up to the surface, but a quick tug always brought it slithering back down. Kiri tried to climb up, but found her bulky dress made it too hard to find footholds. She was wearing her Firebrand costume underneath the dress, but she didn’t want to take it off. Even though Gilliam already knew who she was, she was embarrassed at the idea of wearing the costume in front of him, so she tried to climb in the dress.
She slid to the ground again as she failed to get enough friction against the rock. At this point she admitted to herself that she was being stupid. It didn’t matter if it made her uncomfortable, they had to get out of here.
Without a word of explanation to Gilliam, probably causing him no small amount of embarrassment of his own, Kiri turned her back and undid her apron and the laces of her dress. She pushed the sleeves off her shoulders and let the dress fall to the ground. When she stepped out and turned around, she caught Gilliam grinning at her.
“You really are her,” he said. He bent over and lifted her mask, which had slipped out of her pocket.
Kiri took it and tied it in place. She lifted her face upward to the daylight and scaled the wall easily. The rain had stopped and the clouds had broken. The light made her eyes hurt after the darkness of the cave. Once she was up, Gilliam threw her the rope and she held it while he climbed, digging in her heels against the pull of his weight. When Gilliam joined her at the top he reached down and began hauling up the rope.
“No point making it easy for them to follow us,” he said.
“I guess not,” Kiri agreed. “Though they might have more rope.”
Gilliam shrugged as he pulled up another length and added it neatly to the coil at his side.
They were now standing under the overhang of rock, and the shadow it cast on the ground was crisp and jagged. While Kiri watched Gilliam coiling the rope, the shape of the shadow changed. She twirled around, her hand coming up automatically in a clenched fist, the power already gathering.
Three men stood at the peak of the boulder now in front of her. Two she didn’t recognize, one of them with the muscled body and poise of a soldier, the other an ugly, middle-aged man with the rough look of the docks about him. The third was Lord Useph.
Kiri snapped the fingers of her free hand at Gilliam to get his attention. He cursed and she heard him scramble to his feet. She never took her eyes off Useph, but she stayed silent. With no idea why he was here, let him speak first.
“So, Firebrand,” he said. “I came to see your demise, but finding you quite well, I find I must ask, have you taken care of that Untouchable for me?”
“For you or the King?” Gilliam asked.
“Both of us are well rid of the man,” Useph said. “But I was speaking for myself. Well, Firebrand, have you eliminated my problem?”
Kiri’s mouth was dry, her hand burning with contained power. She swallowed hard and released it slowly. “Yes,” she said. He’s dead.”
“You can tell the King that,” Gilliam said. “The bandit problem is over.”
“The bandits, yes,” Lord Useph said. “But vigilantes are as much a problem for the law as they are for thieves. A bit of advice, Firebrand, let this be the last of your murders. I will not bring you before the King’s law this time, but I will not always turn a blind eye.”
“Won’t you be returning to Laed now?” Gilliam asked.
Useph smiled. “I will linger a while longer,” he said. “The lovely Mala has accepted my hand in marriage.”
“You said you came to see my demise,” Kiri said.
Useph’s eyebrows knit together and he gave a tiny shake of his head. “I did say that,” he said. “A slip of the tongue.”
Kiri slowly raised her hand back up. “If you knew what was going on here, why didn’t you help? You just waited. Where is Lord Westfall’s guard? Are they looking for Gilliam?”
“I told him Gilliam was running an errand for me,” Useph said. “You see, Firebrand, I had no interest in having Lord Westfall’s guard here. It makes little difference to me that it was you and not the Untouchable who climbed out of that cave. I’ve come here to see that both of you will be no more trouble for my master.”
“You don’t mean the King,” Kiri said.
“The Thief Lord,” Gilliam said.
Useph nodded to Gilliam. “The Untouchable was flouting the rules of the Thief Lord. He was an upstart. You, Firebrand, are a different sort. Continue as you have been, and you will be the Thief Lord’s enemy. But you’ve shown you will break the King’s Law when necessary. The Untouchable is not the only scum that needs to be taken care of. If you will point your vigilantism in the direction the Thief Lord points you, he will find you valuable.”
“It’ll never happen,” Kiri said, clenching her fist.
“Then,” said Useph. “We are at an impasse.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Kiri said. She decided to give him a show, and poured more heat into her hand. Little sparks began to lick at her fingers.
“I call it an impasse,” Useph said. “Because, if you were to release that lightning at me, your friend and yourself would be shot dead instantly.”
“I don’t see any archers,” Kiri said.
“Of course not,” Useph said. “That is the point.”
Kiri stared at him for several slow breaths. “Fine,” she said finally through gritted teeth. “Get out of here, and I won’t kill you.”
“One last thing,” Useph said. “Remember what I told you, Firebrand. Defy the Thief Lord, and you will pay. Every time.”
“Go!” Kiri forced more power into her hand, causing the sparks to flare.
Useph smiled, but he walked away, gesturing for his companions to follow.
Gilliam shook his head. “That was enough excitement for one day,” he said. “Let’s go home.” He stepped out from under the overhang, into the light.
The arrow took him in the throat. Kiri didn’t see it coming. It was just there, grotesquely impaling him, draining his life away. Gilliam fell to his knees, then slumped over sideways. His mouth was moving, but he had no air to speak with. His eyes looked confused, afraid.
“It’s all right,” Kiri said. “I’m here. You’ll be fine. I love you.”
He smiled, staring right into her eyes.
~
Instead of taking the boat back across the river, Kiri took the long way home. In case Useph had tracked the bandits it felt safer to find the road and take the bridge than use their routes. She was dressed in her everyday clothes again. They were not easily recovered, but any of the bandits still living seemed to have been scared enough of her to stay in the cave and let her take some time at it.
As Kiri walked, putting one foot in front of the other because she must, she tried to think of what the normal girl she was pretending to be might have done all day. Maybe she would have sat and read, or gossiped with the farm girls about the latest scandals and romance. In all her time spent becoming the Firebrand, she hadn’t realized that she was turning her normal self into her disguise. Now the simple dress was just a costume for the person she was hiding behind. The blood-soaked Firebrand clothes she was wearing underneath, those were her real clothes. This girl, walking home as though her friend wasn’t lying dead was the fake one. The Firebrand who had cried over him was real.
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It had been so hard to leave him. And not to run home and tell what had happened, that was worse. But she couldn’t risk anyone putting together that she was the Firebrand. The Thief Lord must find no one else who could pay for her actions. The bandits who still lived had most likely fled, but any bodies left behind would bear the distinctive marks of her lightning. The body of the Untouchable at least would still be there. Someone would find his and Gilliam’s body eventually. Maybe Lord Useph would send someone that way to keep Gilliam’s disappearance from becoming a mystery that might attract the attention of the court. When they brought word of Gillaim’s death to Kiri, then she could cry in front of them all.
But not now.
It was after sunset when she reached the town. The fading light showed Mala, standing impatiently by the fountain. She was beaming.
“Kiri!” she said. “Where have you been all day?!” She didn’t wait for an answer, just rushed forward, her skirts swishing against the cobbles. “You will never guess...I’m going to be Lord Useph’s wife!”
Mala hugged Kiri excitedly, and if Kiri’s arms were stiff and her expression strained, her friend never noticed.
~
Kiri hugged her knees against her chest and leaned her cheek against them. She looked out the wide window at the many colors of Lord Westfall’s rose garden, vibrant in the full bloom of early summer. In the open lawn beside the garden as many colors swirled in the dresses of the dancing wedding guests. Mala’s white dress shone out among them, the sunlight skipping along it as she spun. The dress was studded with tiny gems, showing the vast wealth of the bridegroom who had bought it for her. It was beautiful, and Mala hadn’t stopped smiling since the first time she put it on. Kiri knew she should be out there, enjoying her friend’s wedding, for Mala’s sake if not her own. But she couldn’t move from the bench.
“At least it isn’t a masquerade.”
Compelling her reluctant limbs, Kiri turned to Garon. She was frustrated to find herself blinking back tears, angry at herself for having become such a useless person. It should not be so hard simply to live, to go about the normal things that normal people do. Lately she had found it so hard just to get up, do her job, and talk when the situation required it. At the strangest times she would find her eyes stinging with tears she couldn’t explain. She could tell her friends were worried. After news of Gilliam’s death had reached them, she’d allowed herself to grieve, and everyone had understood. What they couldn’t understand and she couldn’t explain was the fear that woke her up at night, the nightmares of her other friends falling to the Thief Lord’s arrows.
Kiri hadn’t been the Firebrand since that day. She couldn’t risk the others paying for her actions, so the Firebrand was finished. But it still felt like she was only pretending to be herself. The deep unshakable reality of the Firebrand, the enemy of the Thief Lord, who held the power of life and death haunted all of her thoughts. It didn’t fade just because she didn’t talk about it, or act on it.
Garon was looking at her now with concern furrowing his brow. Kiri couldn’t take it. She swept her legs off the bench and patted it the seat beside her. Garon looked immediately happier and sat down. He put his arm around her waist, a liberty he took quite easily these days.
“If it were a masquerade, you wouldn’t have come, I remember,” Kiri said. “You swore. That would’ve been awkward, not coming to your own sister’s wedding.”
Garon glanced over his shoulder at the party, then leaned in close to talk softly to Kiri. “She looks happy,” he said. “Do you think he’ll treat her right?”
That question came too close to the Firebrand. Kiri looked down at Mala, spinning in her sparkling bejewelled gown. “She doesn’t care about him. She’s marrying the money.”
Garon snorted. “Still,” he said. “I hope he’s kind to her.”
“I don’t really know him,” Kiri said.
“Neither do I,” Garon said. “Neither does Mala.”
“She’ll be a noblewoman with a giant castle,” Kiri said. “If she doesn’t like him she can just avoid him and spend all of her time in her rooms.”
“That’s not a life I’d want,” Garon said.
Kiri shrugged. “Mala does.”
Garon’s arm tightened, pulling Kiri closer. “And what about you?” he whispered. “I haven’t said much, since Gilliam...” He swallowed hard. “I knew you needed time. But what about you, Kiri? Do you want to live in a palace, or in a little house, in a little village, where you will work shoulder to shoulder, work hard, but with someone you know and love? Would you, Kiri, marry me?”
Kiri looked into his eyes, so close, and she felt a “yes” coming to her lips, but it was stopped by an abrupt vision that came from that Firebrand part of her. She imagined an arrow bursting out of Garon’s neck, the light in his eyes fading like Gilliam’s had. Her tongue turned to lead and she pulled back, pushing Garon’s arm from around her waist. She was crying again, and at the confused look on Garon’s face she only cried harder.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I...can’t,” Kiri gasped. “I can’t marry you.”
“Why not?” Garon pleaded. “Why?”
Kiri covered her face with her hands and took slow breaths, trying to calm herself. She owed him an explanation, she knew. He deserved the truth, but she could not give it to him. So, she tried to give him some piece of the truth, lifting her eyes to his face. “I’m not...a good person for you to marry,” she finally said.
Garon laughed and laid a hand on her cheek. “Of course you’re a good person.”
“No, I’m not,” Kiri said. “You don’t know...” She dropped her eyes and bit her lip. He couldn’t know what he didn’t know; he couldn’t suspect.
“Kiri,” he said, intensity deepening his voice. “You are good. You are the best person for me. I love you. Don’t you love me?”
Kiri blinked at the hot tears, eyes fixed on her lap. He slipped his hand under her chin and gently lifted it until she was forced to look at him. “I do,” she said. “I do love you.”
“Then marry me,” he said. “What could be wrong about that?”
Kiri slipped away from him, getting abruptly to her feet. She couldn’t stay. She wanted so badly to tell him, to sit in the shelter of his arms while she poured out all her troubles. But she’d given up her right to that when she’d put on a mask and split her life in two.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at Garon, because she couldn’t take the look on his face. “I can’t.”
She fled before he could answer.
~
“I think she took everything,” Karey said. “But you’re welcome to look.”
Garon sat down on the stripped mattress that had been Kiri’s. He’d come to the inn this morning to talk to her, to tell her the pressure was off, if she wanted more time before talking about marriage that was fine, he could wait. Instead Halden had told him Kiri was gone, packed up and off to the docks.
“That girl doesn’t know how to settle down,” he’d said. “You’d best give up the hunt.”
Garon couldn’t give up. It didn’t make any sense, the way Kiri was acting. Even after her mother’s death she hadn’t been so...skittish. So he was hunting in her room now, though he didn’t know what he was looking for. He saw that the top drawer of the end table was slightly open and yanked it the rest of the way. It was empty, of course. He started to close it, but stopped as he noticed a white piece of cloth wedged in the works at the side of the drawer. With a little bit of maneuvering he pulled it out. It was a white piece of cotton, like a woman’s underclothes, in one long strip, jaggedly torn along the edges. It was stained with blood.
With the cloth laid across his open hands, Garon stared at it. Why would Kiri have hidden bloody cloth in her nightstand? She must have been hurt, and hid her injury from everyone? Who or what could have hurt her such that she would have thought she had to hide it? Garon thought of Gilliam, talking about the desert, and the Thief Lord, joking that Lord Useph might be one of his agents. What if he really was an agent of the Thief Lord? And what if Kiri knew it? She never talked about where she had been the day Gilliam died, killed by bandits. What if his killers were agents of the Thief Lord?
An imagined scenario was playing out in Garon’s head. He imagined Kiri there when Gilliam was shot, her getting hurt, and fleeing, too terrified to tell anyone. What if she was still fleeing now? Maybe that was what she had meant when she said she wasn’t good for him. Dangerous people were after her. If she was running from danger, Garon’s duty was clear. He had to find her, and help her. If she had some knowledge about Lord Useph, that only made it more urgent that he find her. Mala might be in danger, too. Garon fist closed on the bloody cloth and he shoved it deep in his pocket. He stood up with new resolve and prepared himself to face the first trial of the mission he had set himself. It was time to ask his father for money.
Lord Useph dismounted at the edge of the circle of stones. He ran his hand along the weather-roughened surface of a standing stone and leaned back to take in its height. It truly was a relic of a past age, utterly unlike anything the people of the kingdom ever made.
Neal cleared his throat. He was standing in the center of the circle, beside the stone that had fallen against the central pillar. His face neutral, he gestured at the top of the leaning pillar.
Useph nodded and made his purposeful way forward. He walked surefooted along the fallen stone until he reached the top of the pillar. Once there, he crouched down, sweeping his cloak behind him out of the way. He reached down and brushed the dust away with his fingers, revealing a silvery line cut into the rock. When he touched it a little of the silver clung to his fingers. It felt warm for a few moments, and then the color and sensation faded. When he touched the line again exactly the same thing happened. Turning his hand over and back, studying his fingers, he abruptly rose and trotted back down to Neal, who was waiting below.
“Is this the only Eldan ruin in the Valley?” he asked.
Neal nodded.
“No matter,” Useph said, mounting his horse and turning its nose away from the stones. “I know of others.”
Kiri leaned against the stern of the small riverboat, watching Westfall Manor fade away. It was the last landmark to go, all the others had shrunk into obscurity as they drifted downriver. She was going to Laed now, to the scribe’s school Gilliam had told her about. She’d finished Lord Westfall’s taxes and had the full payment which had been intended for Gilliam in her purse. At first she hadn’t known what to do with so much money. Then she remembered Gilliam inviting her to Laed. She could still go, without him. The day after Mala’s wedding she had given up her position at The Leaning Pillar and bought passage on the next boat to Laed. There was still plenty of money left. Enough for tuition at the school, and maybe even room and board so she wouldn’t have to work for that. It would be enough to set her up in her new pretend life at Laed, because she would be leaving her nightmares behind, and there was nothing to stop her becoming the Firebrand again. There would be no way for the Thief Lord to connect her to her friends and make them pay when she was all the way in Laed. She would even change her name. If he uncovered her identity, she was determined that it was not her real one. His identity was the one which would be in danger. He would be the one to pay for his crimes. The Firebrand had the power to collect.