The room, while not nearly as nice as the Maiden’s Mist had been, was pretty decent. It had a large bed that they both eyed with promise, some rustic furniture all made with the same honey-colored wood, and even a few stuffed heads and tapestries on the wall. They didn’t stay long however. There was work to do.

“Off to the blacksmith with me?” Mitchell asked.

“Sure. You need me to haggle for you, anyway. And I likely won’t start snooping until after dark.”

Allora had given them a list of things to pick up and chief among them was some proper armor for him. Given the time constraints – he didn’t want to be away for long – he wouldn’t be able to get the best, but anything was better than the simple traveling clothes he had at the moment.

“It will likely just be leather gear that he can alter quickly,” Allora had told him. “A gambeson at the very least, but if we are lucky he can fit you with a brigandine.”

Once she actually explained what those were, it made sense. A gambeson was padded leather armor, usually worn underneath heavier armor, but it could be worn on its own. And a brigandine was leather or heavy cloth armor with metal plates riveted into the material for added protection. Allora had said she would have liked him to wear both but expected that would take too much time as getting the fit right would be more important.

There were also a list of odds and ends that she wanted them to have before they made their way to Lorivin. Mitchell thought it would have been good to sell off all their winter gear but that would have required saddling up Tammi and Marvin and they would have lost a lot of speed. But between what coin Allora had left behind, what they’d taken from the bandits, and what they’d brought with them over the mountain, they should have plenty to get the necessities. Clayfaire was small enough that it didn’t take long to find the blacksmith. Lethelin had been hoping for a man to increase her chances of flirting and haggling, but instead found an elvish woman, about sixty years old who seemed completely immune to the thief’s charms.

The smith, Rathain, did indeed have a gently used brigandine that she had accepted in trade awhile back. It was close enough to Mitchell’s size that she could probably adjust the fit to where it would be passable until he got something better, but she wasn’t as skilled with leather working and stitching so it would take longer. She recommended he visit the actual leatherworker who could get the job done much faster but would charge more.

In the end, that was what they decided to do. As a compromise, Rathain gave the armor a thorough inspection and fixed the rivets on several of the plates that had either come off or loosened, at no extra charge, then gave them a referral to the leatherworker a few streets over.

As they went about their business, Mitchell tried to soak in the little town. He did his best to tune into different conversations of the people around him and to familiarize himself with various accents. He listened for phrases and new words, and then would quietly ask Lethelin what they meant.

Around lunch they stopped at a food cart that smelled delicious. A human couple were selling meat skewers with a few different options including vegetables, and sauces. They had athi paired with a fruit that tasted similar to pear and which was covered with some sort of glaze, and then some spiced takir with a root vegetable called a bahk. It had the same color as roasted sweet potato and tasted nearly the same, too. Mitchell wondered if this had been brought over by ancient Earth people when they’d been abducted.

“Are you sure you want to eat the takir? It’s pretty spicy,” Lethelin asked him as she looked at the man who was preparing her athi skewers. “Smells like drake’s teeth. Is it?”

The man, a slightly plump fellow maybe thirty years old, smiled.

“It is. The greens, though. The reds won’t be ready until the first or second week of fall, be it Stollar’s will. Then have to dry them.”

“Greens are still a little spicy. At least the ones they grow on the coast.”

The woman who was chopping up some vegetables chuckled.

“I knew I heard the coast on your tongue. Varset? Northwatch?”

“Varset,” Lethelin said with uncharacteristic honesty.

“My dad was from there.” the woman smiled. “You sound like ‘im. Makes me miss the old jivi’s ass.”

Lethelin grinned.

“How’d he get all the way out here? And do you remember which part of the city he was from?”

The woman pursed her lips in thought.

“Moved east when he was a young man. Said he had no taste for the sea and wanted to try farming. Met my mum and they bonded a few years later, had me and settled in the high valley region.”

She tapped her lip.

“I don’t suppose ‘Lippa’ means anything? ‘Lasta’? It’s on the tip of my lips.” She turned to her husband then. “Onrick, do you remember him talking about it ever?”

“I did my best to avoid talking to him, you know that. Man never liked me.”

Onrick finished applying the pepper sauce to Mitchell’s takir skewer and handed it over while Mitchell fished out the few coppers they owed him.The smell immediately started to sear his nose and he wondered what counted for “a little” spicy in Awenor.

The woman turned back to Lethelin with a look of consternation.

“Do any of those tickle your ears?” .

“Liastra?”

“Oh!” the woman exclaimed. “Stollar’s nipples, that’s just it! Liastra. Said he was born there but some family troubles made up his mind for him to leave. ‘Sea air makes my ass itch, anyway!’ he used say.”

She chuckled at the memory but it cut off when she noticed Lethelin’s gaping mouth.

“What’s wrong, miss?”

“Pardon,” Lethelin stuttered as she closed her mouth. “But are you sure he said he was from Liastra?”

“Aye. Said he was born and raised in the Liastra district. Not that that means anything to me. I’ve never been further west than the Saffen River. But my dad started working on a fishing crew when he was barely ten high suns old. By the time his twenty-fifth rolled around, he’d had enough and left it all behind.”

“Pardon again, but may I know your father’s name?”

The woman looked at her husband, Onrick and he looked just as puzzled as his wife.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. His name?”

“Welish. Family name was Welish, and dad’s name was Ruther. Ruther De Welish. My name’s Drista, by the way. It’s a pleasure to meet…”

Drista’s voice trailed off as she stared at Lethelin.

What little color Lethelin had in her pale skin had drained out.

“I say, miss. Are you ill?” Onrick made to fetch her a cup of water from the small barrel he kept by his cart.

Lethelin took in a deep breath and looked as if she was about to speak but instead, she grabbed Mitchell’s arm in an iron grip.

“Excuse us, we’ll be right back.”

“Wha–?” but that was all Mitchell had time to say as she yanked him across the street so hard he almost dropped his food.

Once they were out of earshot, she pulled him close and whispered so harshly it was almost a screech.

“That woman is a Welish! Balls and fucking taint! The only daughter of Ruther De Welish!

“Yeah,” Mitchell said, sardonically. “Can’t believe it. A Welish just sold me some spicy meat.”

“There are only a dozen families that live in Liastra. Their ostentatious estates take up an entire district. If you’re from there, you’re from one of the families.

“So dad was rich, I guess. Sounds like he left it behind.”

“Do you remember when I told you about the first man I killed? Sorvo De Halib?”

“Sure. But her name is Welish. Well, her dad’s name.”

She waved that away.

“The Halibs were run out of town, remember? Sorvo had raped several girls, big scandal. Tickle your ears?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Yeah, but–”

“Sorvo’s father, the head of the family, a right sack of jivi shit named Alastan, sold his share of the gretch shark trade to his partner and fled the city.”

“Uh-huh.”

When Mitchell didn’t say anything further Lethelin looked at him like he was a halfwit again.

“Do you want to guess what the partner’s name was?”

Then it finally clicked for Mitchell.

“Welish?”

“Yes!” she almost screamed. “The Welish family is controlled by the elder Welish. An ancient old man named Amos. The man is older than dirt, but he’s still running things with one foot in the crypt because he has no heirs. His son, Ruther De Welish vanished decades back and Amos never sired another child. Everyone thought Ruther was dead. Sailed out to sea on his private yacht one fine spring day, big storm blew in, and all they ever found were some bits of wood along the coast north of the city. That woman,” Lethelin said and jabbed a finger at Drista who was staring at them like she didn’t know if she wanted to call some authority figure or blow them off as crazy people, “is the heir to House Welish. One of the wealthiest families in all of bloody Awenor!”

“Oh,” Mitchell said. “Well.”

It was interesting but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that information.

“Do you think she knows?”

“If you were nearly as wealthy as the crown, would you be selling bloody fucking meat sticks in a two-copper village in the ass-end of nowhere?”

Mitchell had to agree that that was unlikely.

“Balls and fucking taint!” Lethelin swore and looked up at the sky. “This is Vish’s doing. I know this is. To the nine hells with holy quests!”

She nearly shouted at that last bit which drew some stares their way from a few passers by.

“Lethelin, what are you talking about?”

“You think it’s coincidence that we just happen to run into the heir to the Welish fortune while we’re out buying armor? A family I am partly responsible for making one of the wealthiest on the continent? Like it was just a coincidence that you found Vras? A–”she lowered her voice back to a whisper, “shadow cat that can apparently be trained? That we just happened to pick a path through the mountains that took us close to Luvari right before Allora was about to die?”

“I honestly have no idea. As far as I know, my world has no gods. I don’t know how they work beyond what Allora has told me.”

“Well, this is how they work!” she spat, though her frustration was not directed at him. “They drop little things in your path and see what you do with them.”

“That’s kind of what Allora said, yeah.”

Mitchell could clearly she was upset but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He found the whole thing highly amusing.

“And Vish is especially bad about it,” Lethelin continued. “Always bothering people going about their business.”

“I think we have to tell her,” Mitchell said.

The now very agitated assassin groaned.

“Of course you do.”

She slumped and rested her head on his chest.

“It will be fun,” he told her, keeping his voice chipper. “It’s like telling someone they won the lottery.”

Lethelin gave him a sharp look and then, before he could pull away, thumped him right in his forehead.

“I don’t know what that is, but no Engish.”

Mitchell rubbed the spot where she’d nailed him and laughed.

“After you, chosen one.”

“Am not!” she shot back. “Fucking holy quests.”

By the time they made it back across the street, Drista and Onrick were whispering to themselves and looked as if they’d rather Mitchell and Lethelin would move on, lest the two crazy out-of-towners scare away other customers.

“Uh, yes,” Lethelin began slowly, as if trying to figure out how to begin. “I apologize for startling you, Mistress Drista and good Master Onrick. It’s just that, well, I know of the Welish family in the Liastra district. Many people do, actually.”

“Oh, really?” Drista said, a little less wary, but still not sure where Lethelin was going. “My dad said fishing was the family business, but the way he talked about it, it didn’t sound like much.”

“Hmm. Did he bring his naming day declaration when he came east? And was your name registered with the local temple when you were born?”

“I think I still have his in a trunk back at the house. And of course I was registered. But look, if you’ve got something to day, spit it out.”

Drista was obviously at the end of her patience for whatever this was.

“I do beg your pardon, truly I do. I was just shocked to hear that name because… Well, Mistress Drista, if you are telling the truth and you can verify who your father was and who you are… You are the sole surviving heir of a very wealthy family.”

“What?” Drista said and laughed as if it was all some sort of big joke. “No, I’m sorry but you are mistaken. My dad was just a fisherman. He came out to the High Valley with barely any coin. He told the story often enough. Worked as a farm hand for a few years, saving up as much as he could to buy his own plot and give my mum a good home, and worked hard every day after. Why would he do that if he was from some wealthy family?”

“Listen, miss, ah…?” Onrick began.

“Lethelin,” Lethelin said, surprising Mitchell yet again by giving her real name. “And saying your father was just a fisherman is like saying Stollar’s light is a mere candle flame.”

Onrick gaped and then remembered what he was trying to do.

“Listen, Miss Lethelin. You’re upsetting my wife. I think it would be best if you moved on now.”

“No, I–” Lethelin said, then she reached for Drista’s hand fast as a viper strike. “I Lethelin Ne Forlia, swear under Stollar’s holy light and on the soul of my departed mother that I speak the truth. Take your father’s name day declaration and yours and travel as fast as you can to Stollar’s temple in Varset. Declare who you are.Let them test you. They will have to send for a priest from the temple where you were declared and it will take time, but please do as I say. I speak no lie. On my soul, I do not.”

Drista and Onrick looked stunned at Lethelin’s vehemence. And, as before, vows as she had given carried real weight here. No one made them lightly.

A whole series of emotions passed over Drista’s face as her husband pulled his wife’s hands free of Lethelin’s. Then he started packing up their cart.

“Onrick, do you think…? Is it possible?”

The troubled man looked to his wife and then to the two of them and Mitchell could tell he didn’t know what to believe.

“I… I don’t know, sun of my heart. Let’s pack up and talk about it at home. That’s enough for today.”

Onrick looked at Mitchell and Lethelin like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to curse them or hug them.

She nodded mutely, somewhere between hysterical laughter and hysterical crying. Her hands were trembling badly and she fumbled the utensils so much that her husband told her to go sit and he would take care of everything.

As Drista stepped away from the cart, she looked with a kind of horrid fascination at Lethelin. Lethelin gave her a nod, then touched her heart and her head.

“Safe travels.”

Mitchell watched as they finished loading up their cart and began to push it down the street and smiled. Then he took a bite of his neglected skewer and it felt like he’d swallowed a hot coal.

“Horry fucking shiii…!” he cried out as his tongue began to melt off. The only thing that kept the English from being detected by the few people on the street around them were that his mouth was trying to scream around the food.

Lethelin looked up from watching the couple walk away and she stared at him confused.

“They’re not that spicy,” she said. “The red drake’s teeth are the worst.”

Mitchell managed to swallow it down and then his throat began to burn.

“Was this seasoned with molten lava? Stollar’s taint!”

Lethelin laughed and grabbed his hand.

“Come on, there’s a well at the end of the street.”

***

“That was a nice thing you did,” Mitchell told Lethelin when they were back in their room a little while later.

Orders had been placed, what could be purchased was bought and now sat in a few small bundles secreted away in a spot up in the rafters that Lethelin had made it to with ease. Now, they were waiting for evening when they would sit down in the inn’s common room to learn what they could about the broader world outside of the Shadow Glen.

“You’d think so, but I have likely just flipped the boat and punched a hole in the hull besides. This is going to shake up the entire city.”

“Why, though? So the family gets an heir. Isn’t that good?”

Lethelin sighed, although whether it was from exasperation at his ignorance of Varset politics or simple tiredness, he couldn’t be sure. He opted to believe it was the last.

“People have been circling around old Amos Welish for decades now, just waiting for him to announce what he would do with his money after he died. Who would take over the business? Would he declare an heir through legal channels, would he start trying to bed women left and right to produce another one? But the old man has remained silent on the topic, as far as I know. If he’s made any plans, he has kept them to himself. And the flesh drakes have grown thicker with each passing year.”

Mitchell grabbed one of the chairs from the small writing desk in the room and set it down in front of where Lethelin sat at the end of the bed and listened without interrupting.

“And not just people from Awenor. There are agents from each of the seven kingdoms in the city just waiting for a chance to be involved in whatever decision the old bastard makes. Gretch shark hunting is worth a lot of crowns. Sorvo told Amos the secret to pacifying them during the hunt and, despite many lives lost trying to figure it out, those two are still the only ones who know. All their men are watched and no man is allowed on a crew without a wife and kids. Every man gives blood and the blood of his family. If one of them betrays the secret, death won’t just come for him, but to everyone he loves.”

“They aren’t fucking around, I guess,” Mitchell commented somberly.

“No. So what do you think all those vultures are going to do when an heir comes rising out of the ocean depths like water elemental from the gods? It might very well kick off a small war. I may have just sentenced that woman to a quick and brutal death.”

That upset Mitchell a little bit. Drista and Onrick seemed like good people.

“But, you said Vish put them in our path.”

“I mean, I can’t say for sure, but I can’t believe it’s a mere coincidence. Not something like this.”

“Would Vish do that just to see her killed?”

Lethelin wobbled her head.

“It’s not like that,” Lethelin began. “If she did do it, watching the city implode might be what she wants. They do things for their own purposes and just because they’re gods doesn’t make them benevolent.”

“She’s been helpful so far, though.”

“Yes, but why? Do you know?”

Mitchell confessed that he didn’t. He could only say that the results have been favorable.

“This is why I don’t like being involved with gods. With people, you can usually guess pretty accurately at their motivations. Coin, sex, love, revenge, desire, sadness, simple things like that. They aren’t hard to figure out. And once you know what’s driving them, you can make predictions with a decent amount of certainty. But the gods don’t work like that. Sometimes chaos is the point. Sometimes suffering is the point just because they’re curious.

“Maybe Ithstasy sends a storm just to see if the boat crews make it back or not. Maybe a child finds a buried treasure just so Vish can see if the family is killed by greedy neighbors who are then killed by the broker they seek to sell it to? Seems good on the surface, but what are the consequences? We just don’t know.”

Mitchell sat back a little stunned. So far the things that had been attributed to the gods had appeared beneficial so he had assumed they were beneficent beings. But if Lethelin was right, it meant that there could be serious repercussions down the road that only existed because of their interference. As he pondered the implications, he remembered all the old stories from ancient Earth mythologies where the gods were both kind and evil in equal measure. Even the Christian god was no better. Mitchell had always assumed the stories were that way because they were invented by people and reflected the desires of those doing the writings. But it seemed there were kernels of truth in there after all.

“Well,” Mitchell said into the silence. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Then he paused, remembering something.

“Can I ask you something, though?”

Lethelin looked up from where she’d been staring at her fingers as she worked them into knots.

“If you were so worried about repercussions and all that, why did you give them your real name? Why didn’t you call yourself Sitha?”

“What are you talking about? I did use the fake name.”

“No,” Mitchell said slowly. “You gave them your full name. Lethelin Ne Forlia.”

“I–” Lethelin began, but then a look of horror came over her face. “Oh, balls and bloody fucking taint, I did!”

His attempts to assure her it would be fine fell on deaf ears.