Chapter 6 – The Knight Errant
Zaphyr sighed aloud, shaking her head slightly. She and Zull had been wandering the streets for what felt to her like hours. She looked to Zull, an expression of weary confusion on her face. “Do you know where in the city the Empress is staying?”
Zull scrunched his face up in a thoughtful frown as he tried to remember. “There are several options. The governor’s palace, the fort at the northern end of town, perhaps one of the finer inns…”
“Shouldn’t we just ask someone?” Zaphyr asked, crossing her arms in annoyance at her brother’s stubbornness.
“And risk letting the Plague Rats know we’re sneaking around the city, looking for the Empress of all Waed?” Zull asked incredulously.
Zaphyr groaned in frustration but said nothing more. The twins continued down the street, the only sounds they could hear the soft squelching of their feet on the cobblestones, which were damp from the omnipresent fog. Neither twin was sure exactly how much time had passed since they had left the abandoned tenement building to search for the Empress as Gerok had requested. Zull, however, felt reasonably certain it had been most of the night, at the very least. However, the unbelievably dense fog, which made it impossible to discern anything at all, put even that assumption into question. Zull hoped that the sun would rise soon, banishing the mist with it, but he had no way of knowing for certain when exactly that would occur.
The ghostly streets seemed abandoned save for them, with other travelers merely the faintest impressions in the mist. Every one of these mist-wreathed phantoms who approached them made Zaphyr and Zull panic a little, fearful that this one might turn out to be a Plague Rat on patrol, but each time it had proven a false alarm. Adding to the twins’ paranoia, they thought they could hear, in the distance, the clanking of metal armor in the streets behind them, as if followed by a great metal beast of some kind, but whenever they turned to look there was nothing to be seen. After the dozenth such time this occurred, Zull laughed nervously and said, “It’s just our imagination. It must be.”
Zaphyr grimaced a little, sniffing at the air, before wrinkling her nose up in disgust. “It smells like wet dog.”
Zull tilted his head to the side as he gazed at his sister in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Can’t you smell it?” Zaphyr said, confused.
“Beneath the scent of fish, it’s difficult to smell anything,” Zull objected, but he did agree with her that there was an unusual, dank scent in the air, one which made him uneasy, although he couldn’t have said exactly why.
“Wait a moment,” Zaphyr said, then, turned back to look across the street at a small fish merchant’s store across from where they stood. “That’s Zeid’s store. Teacher always had us buy our weekly provisions from him.”
“So?” Zull asked, keeping a wary eye out for any passer-byes on the street as he did so.
“So, if there’s anyone in this city we can trust, it would definitely be him!” Zaphyr said excitedly. “We can ask him about the Empress! Zeid was always a gossip, he would certainly know. Besides, he owes us for helping to heal his horse.”
“Very well,” Zull said reluctantly, following behind his sister as she walked to the building and, opening the door, stepped inside.
Zeid’s store was much as Zull and Zaphyr remembered it from their last visit, a damp, tiny space filled with the previous day’s catch of fish, all gutted and hung up as they waited to be sold. Zeid himself, a burly man with his sleeves rolled up as he prepared for the start of the business day in the back of the small store, looked up to see Zull and Zaphyr enter with an expression of surprise on his face.
“Zaphyr? Zull? I heard you were dead! Wasn’t that horrible fire at your house?” Zeid asked worriedly, carefully setting the knife he held in his hand down as he spoke to the twins.
“Indeed, it was,” Zaphyr confirmed.
“The Plague Rats tried to have us killed, although why they did so we don’t know,” Zull said. “Can you help us with that?”
Zeid thought about it for a moment, scratching at his beard, before shaking his head regretfully. “No, can’t think of any reason that crew of no-good thieves would want to try and kill our town’s greatest healer and his apprentices. Gerok never did anything to harm anybody. All he did was help where he could. Why, the three of you saved my horse just the other day, did you not?” He looked up as a sudden thought struck him. “Did he make it?”
Zull and Zaphyr shared a sorrowful glance. “No,” Zaphyr said quietly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zeid said sincerely. “What can I do for the two of you? Do you need a place to hide from those thieves?”
“No, actually,” Zull replied. “What we need is to know where the Empress is staying. We have an important message for her, from our teacher.”
At that, Zeid winced and glanced to the side, licking his lips. “I have bad news for the two of you, then,” Zeid said quietly.
Zull and Zaphyr both stiffened, bracing themselves for the bad news. “What is it?” Zaphyr asked quietly.
“The Empress…she left yesterday, along with her entire retinue. She’s well on her way back to Melkis by now,” Zeid the fish-monger said.
Zaphyr and Zull were both taken aback by this news, unsure how to respond. “Are you sure?” Zull pressed.
The fishmonger broke away from their stares as he turned to continue gutting his fish. “Absolutely sure. If there is anything else you need, I will do my best to help; I still owe you for fixing my horse’s leg, after all.”
“No, thank you, Zeid,” Zull said blankly.
“And thank you for the news,” Zaphyr added.
Taking his sister by the hand, Zull then said, “Come on, let’s go.”
The twins walked outside, sitting down on the cobblestones outside Zeid’s shop as they considered what they had just heard.
“My fault,” Zull said miserably. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been so cautious, kept us in that tenement for a full day, we might have made it to the Empress in time.”
Zaphyr put a comforting hand on her sibling’s shoulder. “Don’t be too harsh on yourself, Zull. You had no way of knowing. You were trying to keep both of us safe.”
Zull rolled his shoulders and shuddered slightly, then said, “I know. But what do we do now? Stay here in Varin? If we do, it’s only a matter of time until the Plague Rats catch up with us, and then we are as good as dead.”
“No,” Zaphyr said, shaking her head vigorously as she did so. “We have to follow the Empress.”
“Follow the Empress? All the way to the capital?” Zull said, a smile crossing his face at the very idea. “Neither of us has ever even left Varin, and we don’t have any money. How would we find our way? How would we afford anywhere to sleep at night, or pay for food and drink?”
“Well, the alternative is to just surrender, and we can’t allow that,” Zaphyr insisted. “To do so would be to disgrace Teacher’s death.”
Zull couldn’t meet his sister’s eyes. “I know,” he whispered. “But it seems just so…so…impossible.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
Both Zull and Zaphyr jumped in surprise upon hearing a third, unfamiliar voice interrupt their conversation. The twins stood up and spun around to see standing behind them a stranger wearing a suit of heavy, well-polished armor. Additionally, the stranger had a pair of swords slung at his waist on either side. The helmet of the stranger’s armor was strangely elongated in the front, with a tiny slit for seeing through and a grate along the mouth to facilitate breathing. None of the stranger himself could be seen beneath his armor. He didn’t look to the twins like the type who would work with the Plague Rats, but there was nevertheless something about him that made them both alert and cautious.
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“Who are you?” Zaphyr asked suspiciously.
Ignoring her query, the stranger took a casual step forward, making both Zaphyr and Zull took an instinctive step back. The stranger moved with an ease and grace that Zull thought no one wearing that amount of armor could be capable of.
“How strong is this stranger?” he muttered softly under his breath.
The stranger paused, thinking. “Strong enough to do what needs to be done,” he said after a moment.
Zull’s eyes widened even as Zaphyr’s narrowed. After a moment, she stated, “You were the one who was following after us earlier.”
The stranger, without speaking, dipped his head slightly in acknowledgement of that fact.
Zull raised an eyebrow in curiosity as he asked, “How can you tell?”
“The smell of wet dog. It’s all over him,” she said after a moment.
That seemed to make the stranger uncomfortable, and he tensed up, placing his hands on the handles of his swords.
“What do you want?” Zull asked as calmly as he could manage, while Zaphyr at the same time as her brother asked, “What is your name?”
The stranger considered both questions. “To answer the damsel first, my name is…Kyr. Sir Kyr. And, in answer to your other query, I wish to aid you, in any way that I can.”
“Aid us?” Zull asked suspiciously. “Why?”
Sir Kyr removed his hands from his sword handles, letting them hang casually at his side as he seemed to relax somewhat. “You two are hemomancers, are you not?”
“Apprentice hemomancers,” Zull and Zaphyr corrected in unison. “But, in essence, yes.”
“Good. I have need for some trained hemomancers, and so I will protect you on your quest, in return for some hemomantic services,” Sir Kyr said, as if that simple statement explained the entire situation. “I hereby pledge by my honor to protect you on your journey to get to the Empress safely and protect you against any and all attackers.”
“Really?” Zull asked suspiciously. “And what ‘hemomantic services’ exactly do you want in return for such a generous favor?”
Sir Kyr considered the question, then, after a moment, said again, “you are hemomancers,” as if confirming this statement to himself. He nodded to himself, then added, “I have a…debilitating condition. One that cannot be healed under any circumstances, save for hemomancy. A hemomancer did this to me, and hemomancers are required to undo it.”
“That seems reasonable enough, in exchange for you protecting us and helping us to find the Empress,” Zaphyr said pleasantly.
Zull had to agree with her, although he still had several lurking suspicions at the back of his mind, like what condition exactly their new ally happened to have. If hemomancy can aid him, then the most logical answer would be some kind of blood illness, such as Prince Blyth possesses, Zull speculated. It would explain why he is wearing full armor while just strolling through the city: the armor’s protection makes up for his body’s frailty. But if that were the case, how could he be strong and agile enough to move with such grace in that armor with such a disease crippling his body? Besides, I have never heard of a hemomancer being capable of causing such an illness permanently without a blood binding. Blood bindings, the highest level of hemomancy, were so far beyond the capabilities of both Zull and Zaphyr that the twins had only the faintest of ideas how they worked. Gerok certainly had never explained it to the two of them. The little that Zull knew was that, ordinarily, as soon as a hemomancer stopped focusing on whatever effect they were trying to create, or even got too far from the target of their hemomancy, the effect would cease. Blood bindings were a way to circumvent that limitation.
As far as Zull had been able to piece together, creating a blood binding was an incredibly exhaustive and lengthy process, requiring a sample of blood both from the hemomancer or hemomancers involved and whoever they wished to implant the blood binding on. Should it prove successful, the binding would allow the hemomancer to maintain whatever effect the blood binding was intended to protect until one of them died or the hemomancer chose to break it. Normally, it was used to mitigate the worst effects of a physical illnesses, as with Prince Blyth, but both twins had been warned repeatedly by Gerok that much of the darker side of hemomancy built upon the principles of the blood bindings.
“Do you know what blood bindings are?” Zull asked Sir Kyr, curious to see his reaction.
“Oh, I am well aware of the foul things,” Sir Kyr said, and the twins thought they could almost hear a guttural growl at the edge of his voice as he spoke.
Zaphyr jumped back into the conversation then, saying, “Do you want us to create one for you? Because if so, I am sorry, but that is far beyond what either of us is capable of.”
Sir Kyr brushed off her complaint with a wave of his hand. “I don’t require either of you to make another of those cursed things. In fact, what I need is for you to break one.”
This piqued both twins’ interest. Zull had never heard of any hemomancer besides the one who had created the blood binding being capable of undoing one, but the challenge of learning to do so intrigued him.
“Would you give us a minute to discuss, please?” Zull asked politely. Sir Kyr nodded and stepped a short distance away, and Zull pulled an arm conspiratorially around Zaphyr to draw her close.
“What do you think?” Zull asked her in the quietest whisper he could manage. “He has told us barely anything about himself. How do we know we can trust him?”
“If he worked for the Plague Rats, he would have simply killed us by now,” Zaphyr pointed out. “He’s offering to protect us and take us where we need to go, what more do we need?” She smiled slyly at her brother. “Besides, don’t try and tell me that you aren’t intrigued by his problem. That’s exactly the kind of little hemomantic puzzle that you love to work on until you can figure out the solution.”
Zull nodded his head, admitting that, in that regard at least, she was correct. The twins turned to look back at Sir Kyr, who had been waiting patiently for them to finish making their decision.
“Very well, Sir Kyr, we accept your proposal. You will escort us to the capital and help us meet the Empress, and, once we have delivered our message to her, we will do whatever we can to aid you with your…ailment.”
“Very good,” Sir Kyr said. “Now, the first thing that we must do is leave Varin. Whoever is using the Plague Rats to hunt you down knows you are still within the city, so we must get you out of this port as soon as possible. If we can do so within the day, that should purchase enough time for us to get a head start over the Plague Rats towards the capital.”
Zaphyr tilted her head to the side, confused. “‘Whoever’s using the Plague Rats?’ What are you talking about?”
Sir Kyr seemed genuinely taken aback. “Did you think that a small-time crew of thieves like the Plague Rats, who can barely maintain their paltry control over a small section of this port, were acting of their own volition when they slew the Empress’ own ex-hemomancer while she was within the city? There is a greater force at play here, someone who does not want you meeting the Empress under any circumstances. Who they are we can only guess at.”
Zaphyr shuddered, repulsed. “To think that someone would go to such lengths to have us killed.”
“Whoever they are, you’ve clearly upset their plans,” Sir Kyr said, helmet craning as he looked up and down the street around them. As Zull predicted, the newly rising sun was accompanied by the gradual clearing of the fog. The shadowy figures around them began materializing into small groups of travelers, their robes pulled tight around faces and bodies against the bitter chill. Sir Kyr’s gaze froze for a second on a young man standing directly across from them. The man leaned against a wall, peering at them. His gaze met Sir Kyr’s, then he turned and sauntered away. Sir Kyr watched him until the young man turned a corner and departed from view. Continuing as if nothing had occurred, Sir Kyr said, “But all of that is beside the point, for the moment. We need to leave Varin, within the next couple of hours, if possible.”
“How?” Zull asked simply.
“There is a coach house by the western end of the city. We can rent a carriage there, and I have enough coin to afford about a few days’ journey,” Sir Kyr said. “That will get us just about to a little town called Velinshire, by a river. From Velinshire to the capital, we can walk or beg our way along. It is roughly a two weeks’ journey, on foot. But that’s all in the future. Our first task must be leaving Varin.”
Zull and Zaphyr shrugged in unison. “Seems like a good enough plan to me,” Zaphyr said. “We’ll follow you.”
Without another word, Sir Kyr turned and strode down the street, his long stride and quick steps meaning that both Zaphyr and Zull struggled to keep up with him as he charged ahead, seemingly oblivious to their pleas for him to slow down.
As they walked, Zull couldn’t quite shake off one nagging suspicion in the back of his mind. There is something that Sir Kyr isn’t telling us. Some piece of the puzzle. Something very, very important.
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As soon as the youth had turned the corner and was out of the sight of the twins and their new protector, he sprinted down the street and into one of Varin’s countless alleys, quickly rendezvousing with a group of three burly thugs standing around chatting amongst themselves. When they saw the youth approach, the three uniformly grimaced in disgust.
“What do you want, kid?” one of the thugs asked as he crossed his arms, revealing the tattoo of a rat along his right arm.
In response, the youth rolled up the sleeve of his tunic, revealing an identical tattoo along his own right forearm.
“A new recruit, then,” the second of the thugs said appreciatively. “The crew’s been expanding a lot recently, since we started working for the Master full time. Welcome aboard. What do you have to report?”
The youth smiled, revealing two rows of rotting teeth. “I saw them. The twins that the Master is looking for.”
“The twins?” the third thug said incredulously. “I thought they’d disappeared.”
“I just saw them, hanging out with some armored fellow, thinks he’s a knight or something,” the youth informed them.
The three thugs exchanged a glance at that. “If they’ve got somebody protecting them now, Geth isn’t going to like that,” the first thug said nervously.
The second thug laughed at that, slapping his companion on the back so hard that he nearly stumbled and fell over. “Don’t worry about it. He’s one man, and they’re a pair of weak-muscled kids. A suit of armor isn’t going to save them. What can the three of them possibly do against all of us?”