“I should’ve said ‘no’ to this,” Raulin said to the group, flicking the list with his fingernail. “He’s really stretching the rules here.”

Anla looked over his shoulder at the piece of paper that had thirteen items on it. “How is he not breaking them?”

“It has to do with the translation. Merak tends to be a rather unspecific conversational language. For instance, if I say ‘hirk gi‘, it translates in Ghenian as ‘go over’, but Merakians would understand it means ‘go over there’. In this case, a theft contract translates as ‘something taken from one person or place’, not ‘one item‘. This Kilden has interpreted that to mean he can list a catalog of items and call it his ‘family’s treasure’ and that I have to get all of them.”

“Loopholes,” Al said. “You can’t be mad at him for finding a loophole; it’s fair and square.”

“You’re right. I wish Arvarikor would hire a nice translator for each country they accept contracts in, but I can’t be mad at a man who sees an opportunity and takes it.”

“So, what do you plan on doing?”

Raulin crossed his legs and leaned forward, pressing his fingers against his mask. The bed creaked as he moved. “I’m going to need all of you, if you’re interested. Ten percent? It’s not a lucrative contract, I warn you, so that will amount to about twenty-two gold. And we’ll need to prepare for the worst. We’ll bring our camping equipment and food for a few days, get a few lanterns, oil, and matches.”

“I’m in,” Al said.

“No offense to Anla and Tel, but I think your ax and your wizardly balance will help the most here. I’m glad you said ‘yes’.”

“Do you need us, then?” Anla asked, a wry smile on her face.

“I think it would be stupid not to take you two. Your abilities and input have been invaluable. Are you two in?”

Anla nodded. Tel, however, seemed as lost as he’d been for the last week or so, his gaze far away. Raulin turned to the other two and said, “We’ll meet with our things in the common room in about fifteen minutes.”

After they had left, he turned to his friend. “Still thinking about home?”

Tel heard him that time and turned, nodding his head. “It’s gotten worse. More dead, more foreigners, more incarceration. There are others on islands, like I would be if I hadn’t left. There are heaps of coins surrounding the throne; my brother wears necklaces and bracelets of metal and jewels. They drink and eat at banquets every night while some of the people have begun to starve. And Kelouya…”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She stays in the palace. Her door is locked and she is treated like Ghenians treat their prisoners. Raulin, she’s not a woman to keep indoors. She needs to be free, to walk the land, to gather and harvest. She will wither inside.”

“And what have you done?”

“Nothing,” he said miserably. “Kouriya has not led me to any action.”

“And what would you do, could you do?”

He shook his head. “I won’t let myself think about such things.”

“You need to. You might not act on it, but you have to weigh all options.” Tel looked at him with soulful eyes. “You’re a prince. You may rule one day and rulers need to consider things outside of their own wants. It’s a noble thing, you following kouriya, helping the world progress in measured chaos, but it’s not what a king would do.”

“You think I should stop listening for kouriya and react differently to the situation?”

“I’m saying you should consider all of the possibilities. And maybe listening to kouriya is the correct one. But, I’m going to doubt that. You have been miserable for some time now. I think your inability to react to what’s going on is tearing you apart.”

Tel nodded meekly at this.

“If there’s anything I can help you with, let me know.” He placed his hand on his shoulder. “Will you be joining us?”

“Yes,” he said, standing.

“Good. I might need you to reach some things up high.”

* * *

“This is much worse than I was expecting,” Raulin said.

The four of them disembarked from the carriage, Tel stretching the muscles that were aching from being too long hunched over inside. (“Just outside the city,” Kilden had said. More like halfway between Acripla and Cataya, thirty miles south along the coast.) The manor house, a true monument to grander days gone by, sat a quarter mile from the road. Even from the distance, it was still visibly in ruins.

“You said it was ‘unkempt’,” Al said. “This is derelict.”

“I agree. I was just repeating what I was told. For the record, I’m beginning to dislike Kilden.”

Raulin paid the driver and dismissed him, knowing they were going to have to walk back to the city. There was no way to gauge how long it was going to take and the road saw wheels as often as the Viyaz saw rain. The nearest neighbor was so far away they might as well be not home.

“All right,” he said, once the horses’ hooves were barely audible. “We’re going to stick to the…pathway? Stay behind me. Tel, if you could let me know if I’m going to step in a rather large hole or on a snake, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

They made their way cautiously past the massive pond with creatures no one knew lurking below the surface. The “path” continued on as the area of the grounds that had less weeds, the place in between gnarled and winding oaks draped in moss.

The steps were traversable, but only if one took a winding path. The knocker on the door was gone, stolen likely. Raulin pulled the key from his pocket and pressed against the door to steady himself while he unlocked it. It opened anyway. He sighed and pushed it open all the way.

“This is much worse than I was expecting,” Raulin said again.

Not an inch of tile in the foyer was clear of rubble or dust. Raulin scraped the toe of his boot across the floor. Ah, black and white with deep red diamonds, he thought. Classic. The sun strewn in through an open ceiling where the chandelier should be. That was off to one side of the room, leaning against one of the pillars that had fallen.

“Right. It looks like this has your standard two wings with two floors. I want everyone to pick one and investigate. Do not go into any rooms, understand? Just look in, figure out what it is, and move on. Be careful. Meet back here when you’ve finished. If your not here within an hour, we’re coming to get you.”

Al and Anla seemed keen to get started. They rushed the stairway and took to their respective wings. Raulin stood perplexed for a moment before he realized that he was much less nimble than both of them, meaning they were better suited to the second floor and its pitfalls. He clicked his tongue a few times, then directed Tel to the left while he took the right.

His wing was mostly concerned with entertainment. On either side of the hallway he checked rooms and found the living room, library, smoking lounge, games room, den, and a few other rooms he couldn’t quite identify due to the debris. This hadn’t happened in the two years the patriarch had been living alone; this had happened over decades of put-off repairs and ignored problems. Raulin found himself oddly sad as he scouted the wing, a witness to a great family that had fallen far. He wondered what his childhood home looked like. Was it as glamorous as he remembered? Or had it fallen by the wayside in the almost two decades he’d been gone? Did rats nest in the shreddings of old chairs and curtains there, too?

He was the first to return to the foyer, but everyone made it back intact. Al had taken the wing above Raulin, which contained the master bedroom suite with the office and balconies. Anla’s was the guest and childrens’ wing. After a little deciphering and process of elimination, Tel reported that his sections contained the kitchen, larder, and pantry.

“Good, thank you. That leaves the fifth wing, which is where we’ll start together,” Raulin said, gently opening the paned doors between the grand staircase. “My assumption will be that Kilden didn’t bother trying and that we’ll find things in obvious places.”

The room appeared to be a greeting lounge of some sort, with the repetition of several other rooms in part. It contained couches, coffee tables, end tables, chess boards, fireplaces, and bookcases, none of which were in sound condition. “My guess,” Raulin said, “is this would be a good place to show off your family’s status. Let’s keep our eyes peeled especially for the sword, crest, and painting.”

“I’m thinking someone already found the first two,” Al said, pointing above the fireplace in the center. As Raulin moved closer, he could see the white marble held two shapes much like a sword and a crest. “What do we do if they were stolen?”

“It falls to due diligence.”

“And what’s to stop you from saying you tried for two weeks, but in actuality you nipped off to a bar?”

He pulled his notebook out from his knapsack and held it up in the dust-mote beams of light. He flipped past the contracts to a few sections where entries were made. “I have to make a very good case that I tried by keeping highly detailed records of what I did each day and why I think things were stolen.”

“We could be here for two weeks then?”

“Yes, but I have a theory. Kilden mentioned his father lived here by himself for some time and that he was also bit off in the end. I suspect he might have moved things around to strange places as the senile sometimes do. So, not stolen but hidden.”

“Senile or off?” Al asked. “If he was nutty then there might be some sort of pattern to it. Or none whatsoever.”

“Not sure, Wizard. Let’s see what the rest of this place holds.”

Beyond the lounge was a ballroom and beyond that a conservatory. The greenhouse wrapped halfway around those two rooms, letting in plenty of waning light, but holding no family heirlooms. As a joke, Raulin suggested the family tree might be in that room, but all he got for his effort was a small chuckle from Anla.

They went through each room in the two wings, discovering staircases down to the cellar and servant’s quarters. They quickly checked the underground section. Not surprisingly, they found none of the family’s heirlooms.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

When they came up, full dark was upon them. “We’ll take turns,” Raulin said, unlatching the bottom part of his mask. “One of you can borrow this and come with me to search. The other two rest. We’ll begin again in the morning.”

Anla took the first night, Tel the second. Although Raulin and they had some good conversations while they hunted, they came up empty-handed. It was on the third night, with Al in the office, that they made any progress.

“I’ve been trying to put my mind into the brain of deranged old man. Where would he put things? Why would he move them?” Al asked.

“The world may never know,” Raulin said, removing a seat cushion to look underneath.

“True, but in his world it made sense. The normal experience things similar. At home I had a stuffed calous from my childhood that sat on a bookcase. He had to face a certain way. If Marnie moved him or played with him, he had to go back that way or else it bothered me to distraction. I don’t consider myself insane, nor was that a moment of insanity, but the senior Kilden could have had many moments like that. If there was some clue as to where his mind was, we might be able to think like he did.”

“What’s a calous?” he asked.

“It’s a big desert animal from Br’vani. I mean it, though. What else do you know of the man?”

“Nothing.” He searched under the next chair and felt up the tall back for slits or moth-eaten holes. “Kilden dismissively said his father lived here by himself until he died. What kind of son does that, abandon his father to a crumbling house and let him live in isolation?”

“What if he wanted that? If my father was dying and he asked me to buy him a boat to go fishing, I probably would, Raulin. My father loves the sea. It would mean I was less likely to see him alive again, but at least I would know he died happy.”

Raulin thought on that. “You make a good point, Wizard. I don’t know their relationship. Maybe this did bring the man joy.”

“What things did your father like?” Al asked.

This question surprised Raulin. “You’ve never asked about my family before.”

“Well, you know something about mine. I thought it would be good to ask about yours.”

“My father was stern, but fair. I don’t think he handled pressure well and he lived with enough of that. A mischievous little boy didn’t help things. He was very proud of my older brother, though. He was his pride and joy. Did well in fencing and his studies, was polite, never got into trouble.

“Not much more to say. He worked a lot and I didn’t see him all that much.”

“You didn’t eat dinner with him? Tell him how you did in school?”

“I did, but it wasn’t much more than him absorbing more information, smiling, then moving on to something else. We all can’t have engaging fathers that care about whether you did well in your Kintanese lessons.”

“Swap Kintanese for Berothian poetry and you have my father,” Al said. “He’s a good man, but not a man who enjoys children. Quiet, keeps to himself, would rather talk about fish.”

“Shh,” Raulin said.

“Yes, he said that a lot, mostly when my siblings and I were too loud.”

“No, I mean I’m concentrating and would like you to be quiet for a moment.” He moved carefully to the fireplace, avoiding the large hole in the floor. “What do you see in the hearth over there?”

“Soot,” he said. He laughed, then sobered, holding the bottom part of Raulin’s mask up. “Something…small. Shiny. Shouldn’t it be covered in debris?”

“That’s what I was thinking. Now why wouldn’t something be covered in decades of dust and plaster?”

“Because it hasn’t been here for decades.”

“Come on. I need to figure out a way over there.”

The floor was completely open from the hearth to three feet in front of it, swooping to the walls. There was a gap on either side of the hearth, the hole on the left only about two feet wide. Al took a running leap across the left side to the undisturbed corner and landed, stopping himself by slamming into the wall. Raulin opened the window, gripped the sill, and slowly dipped his body down into the hole. He shimmied to the other side and used his upper body to pull himself up and over the ledge.

“Right,” he said, dusting off his pants. “Do you think you can climb on the mantle and reach down?”

“I can try.” He leaned over the gap and pressed his palms into the marble, his elbows locked and his arms shaking. Al pulled himself up. “I don’t think there’s enough room for me to stand.”

“Okay. Get down. Let’s see if I can swing over.”

Raulin leaned over and gripped the mantle for support as he lowered his body across the gap, ending with his legs split low. “This is why you do those stretches,” Al said.

“This is why I do those stretches. Okay…got it,” he said, snatching the metallic item from the top of the logs on the hearth. Al reached over and took it, holding it up to look at it in the scant light coming from the lantern in the doorway.

“Great! One down, twelve to…”

There was a horrible creaking sound from the floor as Raulin tried to pull himself up. A moment later the floor gave way, dropping both of them to the room below. There was a flash of white across Raulin’s vision as his body twisted into a strange position mid-air. He landed with a loud crash on some debris, nearly missing being impaled by a poker sticking up from the rubble.

“Raulin! Raulin!” he heard Anla yell before the rest of the floor fell, a corner hitting him in the head, knocking him out.

* * *

Raulin felt the pressure lift from his leg. He gritted his teeth, almost screaming, until the pain subsided into a sharp throb. “I really hate Kilden,” he moaned. Large hands lifted him like a child and moved him swiftly through rooms and hallways until he landed on something soft.

He groaned, tried to lift himself, then collapsed. “Stay here,” Tel said. “We need to find Al.”

Find him? No. That meant he was still buried under the debris. He tried again to stand and suppressed a scream as he put his weight on his left leg. Broken, sprained, something. He hobbled to the other side of the couch he had been laid on and looked around for something to use as a walking stick.

Raulin remembered an umbrella stand in the foyer and found one he could use. Damn, his leg hurt, but time was crucial. Al could be suffocating. His head was still fuzzy, so it took him a few moments to remember where they had been and which direction he needed to take. He heard them shifting things and turned into that room, moving to the pile as fast as he could.

Neither of them said anything until Anla found Al’s hand. Anla took it and tugged, not budging anything. They furiously concentrated on the debris above it, lifting planks of wood and slabs of marble out of the way until his head emerged. Anla hissed. “Look at his head. That’s a bad injury.”

“Let’s get him out, then look,” Raulin said. “Quickly and carefully. We don’t know what’s pressing against him.”

They ripped at the debris atop Al and after a few minutes, were finally able to pull him gently from the rubble. His head was soaked with blood, smearing his face and trickling down to his neck. A nail had punctured his left hamstring. He likely had other injuries, but they couldn’t tell in the night.

Raulin followed Tel and Anla, the latter holding the board with the nail against his leg until they knew what to do. They placed him in his side in the makeshift bed in the kitchen they suspected Kilden’s father had been using. Raulin leaned over and pressed his fingers to Al’s neck, everyone sighing in relief when he found a pulse.

“Assuming the nail isn’t stuck in his bone, it needs to come out,” Raulin said. “It will likely gush, so we’ll need a clean cloth to stanch the blood. We need linens and phenol, or alcohol if there’s none here. Thread and needles. I need a splint for my ankle and a better walking stick, if possible. Please be careful.” He sunk to the ground, his leg straight in front of him, and nodded off almost immediately.

He awoke a half-hour later when Tel began patting his head. “Thank you. I shouldn’t be sleeping.”

“This is like when were in the jail?” he asked.

“Yes. Another head injury. My skull is probably so dented that I’m now banging it back into place. A wonderful technique to pioneer: falling forgery.”

“Other than your head, ankle, and sense of humor, how are you doing?” Anla asked, pulling taut the thread she was sewing Al’s leg with.

“My sense of humor is intact, mezzem. It was never good to begin with. I am feeling sore, but otherwise all right.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re halting our search until we know Al is stable. Then, we’ll see.”

Al’s color and breathing returned to normal by the next morning, though he was still unconscious. Raulin stayed up for most of the night until he felt it was safe enough to sleep with a possible concussion. Anla had moved their bedrolls from the lounge to the kitchen and was up when he rose.

“Good morning, mezzem. Sleep well?”

“I did. I was thinking of trying something.”

“Pray tell, what is it?”

“There was a passage in the book I read about baerds healing.” She smoothed out the crumpled paper and read, “’Kiema Mossgrove is a woman of extraordinary talent, and though this person must confess to being colleagues with her and mayhap a touch biased, her records speak for themselves. She resides in New Wextif and owns lavish apartments and knows many in high society due to her ability to heal with singing. A rare gift even for a baerd, she manages to sing people to robust health from all manner of dis-eases, conditions, and poxes. She has even been known to accompany the King, Magrithon protect him, should he or his family be off need.’”

“I take it you want to study music, then?”

“Yes. I wanted to try it, since neither you nor Tel know how to heal.”

“You’ve tried this before, when I was hurt after Shingden.”

“I thought it would be okay, since you were alone, but nothing felt right. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“There are many seasoned composers who feel the same way. I’ll do what I can; I saw a piano in the conservatory.”

His ankle was likely sprained, not broken, since he could put his weight on it. It was bound tightly and he had someone’s cane to use, so the walk was bearable, if slow. “I won’t be able to tune this,” he said, sitting down at the bench and lifting the fallboard,“and I don’t have a great ear for pitch, so it might be off.”

He patted the seat next to him and she sat. “The white keys, what we call echarrin in Arvonne, are your main notes. The black keys, edilio, are half-steps, either sharps or flats. This is C major, the easiest scale to start with.” His fingers flew quickly across the whites. He started back at the beginning hitting the note several times.

“Is that the healing note?” she asked.

He laughed. “We just call it ‘C’. I don’t know what that note would be.”

“There’s nothing more to these notes than making music?”

“You make it sound like music only drives men to tears, inspires before battle, and brings joy in dance. Have you ever had a song touch you deeply?”

She shook her head. “I only know some of the songs people would sing while working or some would play at a dance or celebration. They were fun. They weren’t really meant to inspire.”

“Okay. Close your eyes. Tell me how you feel hearing this…”

He played a jaunty tune, his fingers dancing across the keyboard. He reached over her for a few chords, and moved back the right, punctuating the tune with a certain panache. It almost sounded as if the tune were telling jokes to her, and she said as much. “I want to laugh, sing along with it, clap.”

“It’s an Arvonnese drinking song called ‘The Milliner’s Wife’. Don’t tell my mother I know that one; definitely not appropriate.” He sighed and removed his mask. “Feels weird playing with it on.”

“Aren’t you afraid of Al catching you?”

“If Al crawls out of unconsciousness and makes his way here without either of us hearing him, then he deserves it. All right, close your eyes again. What does this song make you feel?”

This time he was much slower, his left hand dominating the song with chords. “Sad,” she said. “Like I just came across two lovers who died in each others arms.”

“Close. That’s called ‘Julet’s Lament’. It’s about how she feels hearing her love died at sea. Very different from the first song, yes? And with both, you were able to hear the story they were trying to tell just by the music. I didn’t give you any hints, didn’t even tell you the name of the song. Yet you knew how you were supposed to feel about those songs.”

She nodded, then turned to look at him. “I’m not sure how this will help me.”

“Everyone always writes shanties, anthems, and dirges. Let’s see if we can’t write a panacea.”

* * *

They spent most of the morning in musical training, working on her pitch for singing, then constructing what felt like a tune that would heal someone. After lunch, she sat next to Al and sang the melody while Raulin looked on.

“It doesn’t seem to be doing anything,” she said after fifteen minutes.

“You just learned what a scale was a few hours ago. It takes musicians years, decades even, before they’re ready to perform.”

“I know that. I was hoping to see some improvement, to know if what we did is working.”

He leaned forward. “I had a fever when I was six or seven. My mom sang to me every day for hours while she wiped my sweat away. It’s one of the things I treasure most about my life. Whether it works or not, you’ll get practice and Al will have some comfort in his pain.”

She nodded, lowering her eyes and looking away for a moment before returning to her song.

Raulin hobbled to the foyer, where Tel was resting against the remaining newel at the bottom of the stairs. He called his name softly until he finally inhaled softly, but deeply and opened his eyes.

“How are you doing?” Raulin asked, leaning on the cane.

“Thinking on the decision I need to make.”

“Which is?”

“I think it can be summed up to whether or not I want to rule. If I take action against my brother, things may lead to his death. I cannot leave Gheny now, not while under the spell, but after that I would be free to return. And I ask myself if I’m ready for that.”

“No one is ever ready for that. No one is ever ready to leave home, be a parent, or get married, either. You just begin your journey and continue until you die.”

“These are true words,” Tel said. “I have doubts that my way will be the right way.”

“There is no ‘right way’. If you’re wise, you listen to your council when presented with a choice, then you choose. You live with that choice, for better or worse, and you learn from it.”

“You make it sound like an easy thing.”

“It is and it isn’t. It’s easy to command, it’s harder to live with a mistake.”

“You make it sound like a familiar thing.”

Raulin paused at that. “I think a man can give advice on something he’s never done. We can pull from other walks of life and shape the situation to mean it, to find common ground in our own understanding of life.”

Telbarisk didn’t speak, he just made eye contact and smiled softly. “If you need to speak to someone, I’ll be available.”

“Same with you. I know you have a lot to dwell on,” he said before hobbling away.