Chapter Thirty-Five

Rage was nothing new to Speranzi Jadara. Rage at the unfairness of it all. Her back was healed as near as she could tell, but it did nothing to still the burning wrath that grew by the second in her heart. ‘Skana doesn’t think it will do any good to report this, but she’s wrong, she has to be. If she’s right though?’ Speranzi glanced behind her toward the walls that were still towering despite putting distance between she and they.

‘I will not forgive you. Not for your corruption, not for your perversion of justice… I am a paladin still, no matter what else I am. I will have justice done even if I have to take it. But not now, not today.’ She told herself just before her thoughts were interrupted on the outskirts of her camp by a familiar peasant man and a young woman who was, by Speranzi’s reckoning, both quite young, and once quite lovely. Her looks had been marred however by a string of different injuries, mostly burn marks most likely caused by lye or something else rubbed into her face. Once lustrous hair was now gone from half her scalp and what was left hung down from the other side and was wrapped around her neck as if to act as crude protection.

“My Lady.” He said and holding his wife by the arm when she froze when they came close to Speranzi, he pulled her down with him to one knee. Both peasants bowed their heads at the same moment. “I wanted to tell you before we left, I’m truly grateful for all you’ve done… because of you, my wife lives…” He held his free hand in front of himself to gesture toward the woman he still held as if afraid she might vanish. “I’m only a poor man of no place, but if ever I can help you, then Robel will give his blood to do it!”

It wasn’t lost on Speranzi that despite their words, neither he nor his seemingly mute wife could look at her face for long. “I did what the gods wanted. That’s all but-” She paused as the young woman with only half her ink dark hair intact struggled to hold her eyes up, her body trembling in fear before the armored mercenary, “thank you.” Speranzi answered at last.

“Go back to your lives, to your homes, and do yourself a favor, don’t mention it to anybody.” Speranzi said to the hearty male specimen, he cocked his head.

“My Lady?” He asked.

“Just trust me. I pricked his pride, you don’t think he’ll forget that you incited all that, do you?” Speranzi asked, “At least wait until the proper authorities can address things and have him removed.” She suggested, and the pair only bowed their heads.

“Why are you still here anyway?” Speranzi asked and scratched her head, “You should have been seen to before now.”

“We waited for you to come back, to thank you properly!” He hastened out, and his mute companion nodded her head. “And it was only a low ranked spell, she needed time to rest anyway… your soldiers let us stay the night on guest rights… another thing we’re grateful for…” His words faded away into nothing.

“Praise to the hero of Prioche.” He said, and his wife mouthed the words in turn, though if she actually said them, it was far too quiet for even Speranzi to hear.

“It’s just good that you’re safe, you’d best get going, Robel of Laylan, keep yourself safe, you and your wife.” Speranzi tried to say it gently, but with the recent anger still burning in her breast, it was difficult to keep her voice anything but forceful.

“Th-Thank you.” The life-wrecked woman finally managed to whisper in the instant she managed to raise her eyes to the pulsing blue that made up Speranzi’s vicious gaze.

“You’re welcome, now go, I’ve got things to do.” Speranzi made her voice imperious and strode past them into the encampment, there was little doubt in her mind that Corwin wouldn’t be lingering in the city for too long given what he now knew about recent events.

There was a twinge of guilt in Speranzi’s breast over that, normally his time in large cities was harder to estimate, and she knew he wasn’t looking forward to Wenmark, and there were usually some unexpected opportunities in cities that could yield an easy profit.

But now that he knew she’d gotten herself into some unpleasantness? ‘There’s no way he’ll be extending his stay.’ It was a warm sort of feeling that went with her twinge of guilt and her burning rage, he actually cared enough about her not to want to risk her life or comfort. ‘He’s too soft, honestly it’s amazing he’s amassed the fortune that he has.’ Thinking of Corwin was enough to make the mercenary smile a little bit, and even lighten her mood to a degree before she could see to the order of the camp.

‘I guess it’s nice to be appreciated a little, even if they can’t give me a straight look… who can?’ She snorted, even the people watching her take the whip of judgment hadn’t been able to meet her eyes when she turned her eyes on them one by one.

She was about to call her soldiers to gather on her, to give an order to break camp, but before she could part her lips and speak, she caught sight of Skana seated on a log while Micah stood over her, what they said, Speranzi didn’t know. But she could see that his arm stretched past Skana’s shoulder and his pointed finger was making the small whirling patterns of written letters.

Seeing that? Speranzi went to seat herself quietly on a wagon, then stretched out her legs, crossing her arms behind her head and resting against a bag of beans. ‘What’s a little rest before we get busy?’ She asked herself.

‘Nothing. Nothing really at all.’ Was her answer to herself.

‘They didn’t even make it to Wenmark.’ Corwin thought as Brotos went about the little tasks of the aftermath of what, to the aging merchant’s mind, was a massacre of will.

His own courage caused his heart to ache when he witnessed the cowardice of his young former apprentices. ‘Good boys, but weak hearts… I should have expected no better.’

It was with that self recrimination in his mind when he emerged to find the street nearly empty of people. With not much to buy and only the shopkeepers themselves living in the places they worked, there was no reason to be on the street unless you were somebody’s servant waiting for that somebody to return.

Such was the case with Ahmarantha, who sat unmoving at the front of the carriage, explaining himself from above and pointing toward where Corwin was only just emerging. The ones demanding explanation were a pair of guards in heavy plate armor holding long halberds with a touch of pale green to the steel, indicating that they’d been forged with a touch of orichalcum.

As Corwin approached it became more obvious that little elf boy was ill at ease with being questioned. In spite of, or perhaps because of the long elven lifespans, though they grew in learning like any human child did, their personalities and temperaments remained fundamentally childish.

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Ahmarantha, like all those of his race, had the sharp, fine features accounted as belonging to the nobility among humans, a legacy of their race’s former dominion over humanity. Such features could be profoundly expressive, accentuating every emotion, even were the boy not obviously shaking in fear of the armed humans, his wide eyes and trembling lips were plenty.

“...You know you’re not s’posed to be idling around here, there’s no good cause to be on the street, an if you don’t have permission-”

The guard had the sort of slovenly, easy stance of someone who knew he could not be contradicted by someone he was talking down to. His halberd leaning against one shoulder and held easy in one hand, had he but a place to lean, he would have been doing so, and had he not needed to look up to address the elf boy, he would have been sneering down.

It set Corwin’s nerves on edge to the point where the fine hairs on his arms stood up. His heart began to pound in his chest, a mix of the natural reticence of the unarmed to rebuke the armed, and his own general disgust warred in his mind.

But that inner war did not stop him from approaching the guards with steady steps and saying, “He doesn’t need permission, he has orders.” Corwin said it with what iron he could muster, but even to his own ears it sounded frankly feeble. ‘If Speranzi said it, they’d have shat themselves.’ It was a rueful thing to acknowledge, that a young girl in her twenties was far more fearsome and forceful than he had ever been or ever would be… but at that moment all he could think of was how useful it would have been to have her handy.

“This is yours-” The guard jerked his armor covered thumb up toward the boy, and then looked Corwin up and down as if to appraise whom he was addressing, “sir?” He asked after making a snap judgment of Corwin’s expensive clothing.

“He is. He is my coachman. I remained late dealing with my apprentices and told him to wait for me. An idle servant is serving, if he was told to remain idle.” Sounding arrogant while he said it, he looked the pair of armored men up and down as if appraising their own station, and finding it wanting. “Now, unless you have further business with me, resume your patrol of the city, and may your service continue to please the gods.” It was a dismissal, he knew it, they knew it, and the little elf boy knew it. His face flooded with relief.

“Ah, yes well… he’s still out, left untended, he’s still a slave and even if he didn’t do anything-” The senior of the two guards seemed to have decided to speak up where his more tongue tied companion fell silent.

“The laws of the cities are the will of the gods.” Corwin said with a pious look to the heavens coupled with clasping his hands together in prayer. “Of course I will cover the fee. Collect it from my apprentice, five silver ought to cover it, he’ll be along momentarily.”

With that, Corwin walked past the now muted pair and entered the carriage in one seamless motion of opening the door and clambering up. Typically waiting for the slave or servant to descend to open the door would have been proper, but he could see how Ahmarantha had inched as far away from the human men as he could. ‘Making him draw closer would be quite cruel.’

He nigh slammed the carriage door behind himself while he waited for Brotos to follow, still carrying the profits in coin, letters of credit, and options for purchase at the next destination on their journey south. For the largest and last of the apprentices this was a trivial matter, the heavy chest of coins clinked with all the bright and shiny metals, the noise of rustling papers in his pockets matched his step. In one single day the canny Corwin Amber has made more money than a minor noble with nothing but land to his name did in a season.

“Brotos,” Corwin instructed as the guards stepped well out of the young man’s way, “Stow the profits and from them, give these men five silver for their trouble. Then secure yourself, as a reward for staying with me when the others left, you may have one night in the inn where I am staying.”

“Yessir!” Brotos’s big, broad face beamed with bliss, and there was a loud rattled from the box of coins as his steps became double quick and he began to lash it into place in the back of the carriage.

The guards, true to their own avarice, followed him and made their courteous bows as they pocketed the little bit of grift they managed to engage in from the well-to-do merchant.

Corwin sat back in his cushioned seat as the carriage began to move, and as it rolled on, a thought occurred to him that he could not shake away, not with all the rocking of the carriage. Not with all his attempts at distraction with other thoughts or the counting of coins atop more coins.

It nagged at him in a way that was identical to that first tingling feeling when he traded an object for a coin, a sense… ‘Like that was right. That was how it felt… like destiny.’ He thought.

But as he was in his boyhood, so he was as a man, and Corwin was not so easily persuaded by emotion as to give in even to the nagging in the back of his mind.

Instead he held on to the thought as the wagon rocked and the smells of burning torchlights began in the waning hours of the twilight, their faint hiss and crackle were the music to which the shadows of the carriage danced as the daylight continued to die.

They reached his temporary residence, one he previously had a mind to quit early, but traveling under heartache had no real appeal for him. The open road and wide world, despite all its danger, was something Corwin loved like fish loved the water. ‘You can’t enjoy the road when you’re using it to run away from something.’ He told himself again the wisdom of the old merchant that mentored him as a young man.

This time he waited the appropriate amount of time for Ahmarantha to descend and open the door for him. After he exited, he didn’t step away to allow the door to shut, instead Corwin waited for Brotos to heft the collected revenue into his arms and come around to the side.

“Take that to the counting house inside, have it held overnight in the insured section, then make use of my room for the evening.” Corwin instructed, and Brotos, with a massive smile spread across his face answered…

“Yessir!” He then jogged away from the pair as fast as his feet, and the weight of the chest, could carry him.

Corwin watched his apprentice withdraw until he was all the way out of sight and off into the building, the wondering eyes were out of sight, given that his back was to his master, but Corwin could see the way the young man’s head moved. The way he looked left and right, up and down, awe struck and still before taking a tentative step forward into what was to him, paradise.

Now alone with Ahmarantha, Corwin asked the boy, “Do you like working at the inn?”

The boy’s face immediately took on the blank, guarded look that was a familiar sight to Corwin’s eyes, the face that hid secret fears and hatreds from anyone who might use them as a cause for punishment.

“It’s fine, master. I’mwelltreated.” The boy’s answer was rushed, as if he’d practiced it often but had little occasion to actually say it, since nobody ever asked.

“Are you?” Corwin pressed. The boy’s nod was insistent, too much so.

The middle-aged merchant’s gut roiled. ‘He’d never believe a good deed.’ That much Corwin was sure of. “What did you eat while waiting for me?” He asked.

The elf boy’s stomach rumbled in response to the question, and Ahmarantha’s face flushed red.

“Boy, lift up your shirt.” Corwin gave the order as a sickening feeling came over him.

The boy’s slender fingers curled beneath the fabric, and with an almost pleading look, though whether to keep the skin beneath concealed or to reveal it, Corwin could not say.

It was however, what Corwin feared. While not ‘starving’ even for an elf, the boy was considerably underfed.

“They say hunger motivates us and I don’t have to do a lot of hard work so they don’t feed me much master please don’t tell them I complained, I didn’t complain…” Ahmarantha showed the first real signs of emotion then, his eyes welled up and the recent fear of the guards and the renewed fear of some unidentified punishment pushed him over the edge.

That nagging pity broke through the crack in Corwin’s will. “Ahmarantha,” he crouched down as much as his girth would allow and said, “they’re not going to hurt you. I promise.”

The young elf could not have been more confused when Corwin said, “Store the carriage, and wait for me here.”

The elf boy could only give tiny nods of understanding before scrambling up to the front of the carriage to take it away, and as it moved out of sight, Corwin walked toward the seat of wealthy and comfortable visitors with three anxious thoughts in his mind.

The first… ‘Can I keep my word?’

The second… ‘How will I explain this to Speranzi?’

And the final… ’I’ve never bought a slave before, I’m probably about to get robbed blind.’