Heartless knew the man the moment the first-year showed him into the grandmaster’s study. He’d never met the man, but the hardness in the eyes was unmistakable. One had only to get onto Risk’s bad side to witness the same thing.
An executioner, an assassin, a cutthroat. Call it what one would, this was a man whose work was to end lives.
Of course, he called himself none of those things.
“Chancellor Lindro, Grandmaster,” he introduced himself. “I’ve been sent by His Majesty. The king again has need of the former Thorn who served him in a matter of discretion two years ago[].”
“You’re looking for Saint Daven,” Heartless clarified. “Thornfield’s weapons master.”
Lindro nodded. “The same. Did this Saint Daven inform you of the nature of his service to the crown?”
“He did not.” Heartless met the chancellor’s dead stare. Unlike his old friend Risk, Lindro didn’t seem the type who could put this gaze on and take it off. No, Lindro was a career killer, the sort who had climbed to where he was out of ambition rather than had the occupation of slaughterer foisted upon him like Risk had. “When Saint Daven was summoned, I was under the impression that the secrecy of his mission was of singular importance to the crown, not to be bandied about like court gossip.”
“And when he returned?”
“Saint Daven divulged no details of his service either before or after, Chancellor. As Lord Clarencio of House Mattius and I argued many times in the Hall of Law, Saint Daven was no traitor to the crown before he was grafted. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t become one since.”
Lindro grunted a soft acquiescence and smoothed the breast of his handsome riding leathers. “One can never be too careful these days, Grandmaster. The threats come from all around His Majesty’s realm and even from within.”
“Indeed.”
The Chancellor smiled icily. “Well, this is a matter of some urgency. I’d like to be back on the road before dawn, so if you would send someone for him…”
“He isn’t here.”
A twitch in the corner of those dead eyes. “The former traitor’s Thorn, remanded into your custody, over whom you swore to keep watch and regularly report to the crown?”
“Yes, we’re still speaking of the same man. Saint Daven went missing two weeks ago, shortly after the king’s yearly grafting ceremonies. I sent a bird to Castle Sangmere immediately following the discovery. Were you not informed?”
“Sangmere?” the Chancellor spat. “Why didn’t you send word to Siu Carinal? Or if you were determined to send it ahead of the king’s train, why not to the royal residence at Siu Patanal? A rider could have been dispatched immediately and overtaken the king with all haste. To send a bird all the way to Siu Rial, Grandmaster? It’s suspect behavior, wouldn’t you agree?”
Of course it was. Heartless had been giving Saint Daven a chance to return before branding him an outlaw for something that might be as simple as needing a few weeks away from Thornfield to think clearly again. Duty to the crown had always weighed heavy on Heartless’s shoulders, but in his old age, duty to his brothers weighed heavier.
“To the suspicious, everything seems suspect,” Heartless said. “I did as I believed best at the time and have no power to change it now. While we’re on the subject of suspect behavior, however, a man in my position should ask himself is why the king sent a chancellor and his retinue to summon Saint Daven when two years ago[] a bird was deemed suitable for the same task.”
“The rain, Grandmaster,” Lindro said. “These conditions could delay or throw off-course the best of messenger birds. As I said, this is a matter of some urgency.”
So urgent that it required an executioner and a dozen men whom Heartless imagined he would find equally hard-eyed when he greeted them.
A part of him wished Saint Daven were there. The former Thorn had done for more than a score of his own brothers in the Cinterlands Rebellion; even if they managed to take Saint Daven by surprise and without a weapon, Lindro and his executioner’s squad would find themselves severely diminished before the deed was done.
One never entirely aged out of that petty desire to see bureaucrats get what they asked for, it seemed.
“No other man will do?”
“This mission requires the knowledge gained in the previous one, Grandmaster.”
After all, Heartless mused, it would be pointless to execute someone who didn’t know whatever His Majesty wanted kept secret.
“Well, we’ve established that I cannot help you. Saint Daven cleared out his quarters and left no indication of where he was going. You and your men are welcome to question students and masters, as long as your questioning doesn’t interfere with training or lectures, but I imagine they have no more idea where he went than I do. Shall I have the kitchens lay plates for you and your men? We only have the royal suite to house Thornfield’s guests, but barracks rooms can be prepared for your men for the day.”
Lindro’s lip curled. “I’m afraid we haven’t the time to waste, Grandmaster. Thanks to your negligence, we’ve got a kingdom to search.”
For a madman who knows the wilds like the back of his hand and can disappear at will.
“I wish you luck, Chancellor. You’re going to need it.”
***
When the twin weapons masters left Thornfield, it had been raining. For the next two weeks, as they traveled north, it rained.
“I guess we’re not weapons masters anymore,” Saint Galen said as they hunkered down in the lee of a cluster of river birch. “Funny how fast you can get used to thinking of yourself as something.”
“Four years isn’t very fast.” Saint Daven pulled his hood farther over his face, sending a rivulet of water pouring into his lap. Grimacing, he sheeted off what he could. He preferred sleeping out to going into a town and dealing with people, but rain could make a camp pretty miserable pretty fast. “Especially not four years teaching.”
“Think Grandmaster will find a replacement?” Gale wondered.
“Hard to say.” Lords didn’t like to retire their Thorns during a war, and the kingdom was fighting two wars now—the endless ancient battle with the Helat up north, and the war at sea with the pirates. The latter was supposed to have been over with shortly after it started, and the ocean under the rule of the Kingdom of Night. Three years later, it dragged on. But if all pirates handled a cutlass like the one the king had sent to Thornfield, then it was no wonder.
“You regret running out on Grandmaster?”
“No.”
He and Gale owed Heartless a lot. Without the Grandmaster doggedly petitioning the Hall of Law, the twins would still be rotting in the traitor’s cells beneath Castle Sangmere, lost in the space between wielding a sword in treason and the khoti vorino khalif, the law that declared a Thorn property rather than man and all his actions the legal responsibility of his master. Heartless had even given them a place to go when they were released and work they knew to keep them busy and fed.
But that wild kid Lathe’s death had been the end. No, before that. Heartless agreeing to let the king—or any man—graft a girl. That had finally shaken Saint Daven out of the dull haze of acceptance and back to reality. Lord Paius had been right; the Kingdom of Night ate her children and picked her teeth with their bones.
Saint Daven was as much to blame as anybody. He’d trained the little berserker when Heartless wanted to kick her out of Thornfield for being blind in one eye, back when they still thought she was a boy. With her speed and viciousness and the ability to turn invisible that he’d taught her, the stupid little brat had ended up becoming one of the best in her year.
None of it ever should’ve happened.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“If Mitchi’s baby had lived, how old would she be now?”
“Why don’t you shut up and go to sleep?” Saint Galen’s mouthiness was getting on his nerves.
Funny how a brother could do that when he wasn’t there anymore.
***
Saint Daven hadn’t taken anything from Thornfield when he left, just the clothes on his back and the pay he’d stashed over the years. When he had carried Lord Clarencio’s communication to the Helat, he’d taken a sword from Master Smith because he expected to bring it back. This time, he wasn’t going back, so he was going to have to dig up a sword somewhere else.
Seven years and still some days he woke up reaching for Wild. Even knowing she’d been melted down for scrap, his hatchet sword’s absence weighed on him. The same way some days he woke up wishing for Mitchi, even knowing she was gone. The same way the shattered grafting still pulled at him, insisting Lord Paius needed him. Except with his lord dead, the grafting had no idea how to get to Lord Paius, and with Saint Daven’s soul in a million tiny pieces, it tried to send him all over the place.
Siu Patanal was the opposite direction from Blazing Prairie, where he expected to find Lord Clarencio—northwest instead of northeast—but Saint Daven figured it was his best bet for arming.
He found the tavern halfway between the city’s upscale pleasure district and its merchant streets, right on the edge of each. Watching the door for a while gave Saint Daven the idea that had been an intentional choice. The place served drunken lordlings, artisans, and merchants as often as laborers and apprentices. From midnight on, they ducked in and reeled back out. No shingle hung over the door, but Vorino had said the tavern was called Storm Front.
A couple hours before sundown, Saint Daven went invisible and slipped inside behind a soot-covered man stinking of a long night at the foundry.
The common room sweltered from the hearth and all the bodies. The scents of sweat and ale and some oniony stew mingled in the air. A fair-haired musician plucked out a tragic song on the lyre, singing along in a high haunting tone. Discordant laughter and cheerful outbursts came from a few tables. Card games ran near the hearth, but for the most part the inhabitants were occupied spreading gossip and drinking and groping the serving girls.
Just the sort of place Saint Daven usually avoided.
Accustomed to in the early spring chill as he was, sweat beaded along Saint Daven’s brow and stuck his shirt to him. He took off his damp, mud-splattered cloak and stuffed it and himself in a seat in a shadowy corner across a sticky table from a pair of drunks. Neither noticed the chair move by itself. The older nodded over his spilt cup, and the younger, maybe the older’s apprentice, couldn’t take his eyes off the henna-haired serving girl’s low-cut bodice. He slurred for his drink to be refilled three times before she noticed him, and when she finally did she sent the other tavern girl to deal with him.
The tavern’s owner was a lanky man of middle years, exuding the same air of catlike boredom Saint Daven remembered from Thornfield. Nimbus leaned on the bar for most of the night, reluctantly slinking off now and then to pull a drink or spoon up a bowl of stew. Once, he manhandled a customer unwilling to settle up, but Nimbus rolled his eyes when called on to deal with it, like he doubted the effort was worth the money.
As the day wound down, the patrons trickled out and were replaced less and less. The drunk apprentice dragged the stumbling, half-asleep older man with him when he left. Finally alone at the table, Saint Daven stretched out his long legs and rested one boot on the emptied seat across from him.
After throwing out the last drunk, Nimbus started washing down the most heavily soiled tables. The serving girls counted their take from non-serving work and gave him a cut. The musician kissed both ladies goodday and held the door for them as they stepped out into the quietly hissing rain. With a stretch and jaw-popping yawn, the musician retired upstairs.
Once he was gone, Saint Daven let the invisibility drop.
Nimbus went on wiping down tables. “Vorino told me little Six was all grown up, but I didn’t believe him. Get your muddy boots off that seat.”
Saint Daven returned his foot to the floor. “He’s the one who told me you moved out here when Hazerial retired you.”
It was an unspoken but accepted truth that any Royal Thorn might eventually be called on to kill a privately grafted Thorn—lords were accused of treason and treachery all the time—but it was an order most lived in dread of hearing. Khalit-alash, Old Khinesian for “brother killer.” That was how they recorded it in the Thornfield Archives.
Saint Daven was responsible for twenty-nine entries of khalit-alash.
Nimbus was responsible for two entries from the same night—Wraith and Cutter. The older man had led the Royal Thorns sent to arrest Lord Paius. And before that, he and Vorino had been Wraith and Saint Daven’s older roommates at Thornfield.
Seeing Nimbus again—knowing Nimbus could see him—made Saint Daven uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite explain. How were you supposed to act around the guy who had defended you to the older kids at Thornfield and who had also executed three better men than you?
“Vorino said I should stop by if I was ever around.”
“That’s strange, I told him to tell you to stop by if you ever needed anything.” Nimbus pulled out the seat and knocked the mud clods off before sitting down. “So what do you need, kid? Besides some table manners, a shave, and a good day’s sleep.”
“Think you could find me a decent sword?” As the disgraced former Thorn of a traitor, he wasn’t technically allowed to own a blade anymore—part of the conditions Heartless had gotten him released on—but Nimbus didn’t look shocked at the request, so he piled on a little more unreasonable to go with it. “I know it’s a lot to ask on short notice, but I’d like to be back on the road pretty quick. A night. Less, if possible.”
“Depends. How much are you willing to pay?”
Saint Daven dug out a purse and dropped it on the table. About half of what he and Gale had earned over the last seven years. He was keeping back the rest in case he had to pay for room and board after he found Lord Paius’s son. Clarencio spent most of his time in cities, and Saint Daven didn’t have a lot of interest in sleeping on the street surrounded by people, even if he could do it unseen.
“I’ll see what I can find.” Nimbus picked up the purse, frowning when its leather peeled stickily away from the table. “There’s a spare room upstairs, second door, if you want to nap while you wait. Leave your boots in the hallway, and I won’t have to stab you when I get back.”
Saint Daven was about to ask whether the musician he’d seen head up earlier was using that room, but something in the way Nimbus turned away made him keep his mouth shut.
When he got up there, the room was empty. He left his mud-encrusted boots outside, shut himself in, and shoved a small side table in front of the door. It wouldn’t do much to keep somebody out, but its scraping across the floor would at least wake him up.
The fire hadn’t been lit in the grate and the room smelled musty with disuse, but Saint Daven didn’t mind the cooler air after the heat of the common room, and he never minded being where other people weren’t.
He stretched out on the bed and fell into his first dreamless sleep in a long time.
***
Saint Daven wasn’t the first former Thorn to darken the door of Nimbus’s establishment. Nimbus had always maintained a reputation of careless indifference bordering on lethargy—to his family before Thornfield, to the family he’d gained at Thornfield, in the king’s guard, and after his retirement. But when push came to shove, Thorns who had known Nimbus would suddenly remember to tell their struggling brothers that they would find a helping hand at Storm Front. Just one of the ways Nimbus liked to squander the gifts of manipulation Eketra had blessed him with.
There weren’t any swordmakers in the city who could match Thornfield steel for quality, but Nimbus knew all the best smiths and artisans in Siu Patanal, and despite their grumbling when it came time to pay the tab, stayed on good terms with them. After an evening of searching, Nimbus found one who came close.
He’d only seen the ugly hatchet sword Saint Daven favored once, on the night Nimbus had led the attack on Blazing Prairie. Immediately afterward, it, Wraith’s rapier, Cutter’s falchion, and Lord Paius’s old longsword had been sifted out of the carnage, taken to a smith, and turned to slag. Standard procedure for blades wielded against the crown.
Nimbus tested a variety of what the swordmaker had on hand and finally settled on one well outside his former roommate’s price range. He’d expected as much—most Thorns had no idea what the monetary value of a decent blade was. They were warriors, not merchants. Thornfield might accept four years of blood and sweat as payment, but the real world wanted gold and lots of it.
Handing over Saint Daven’s purse and a receipt for the rest to be paid the next time the swordmaker visited Storm Front, Nimbus left the shop one sword heavier.
Those muddy boots and travel-stained cloak were another point to consider. The fool was on foot and obviously planning to stay that way. Nimbus made a stop off at a livery stable, left another receipt with a stablemaster who would never have accepted scrip from anyone else, and rode back to the tavern on a high-stepping black gelding.
Just before midnight, while he prepared to open for the night, Nimbus heard furniture shuffling upstairs. Saint Daven came down a few minutes later, tracking dirt and ineffectively raking a stand of rumpled hair with his fingers.
“I should’ve made you leave those boots out in the street, but they’d have been stolen in an hour.” At least the kid looked rested. That subtle shove toward sleep Nimbus had given him the night before hadn’t been wasted. “Sword’s under the bar.”
A low whistle of appreciation followed the scrape of the sword being removed from its scabbard. The hatchet sword had a wide, wicked blade like Saint Daven’s Wild, though Nimbus hadn’t been able to find one with a game hook or sawback. All the same, what she couldn’t saw in half she ought to be heavy enough to hack through.
“Like her?”
Saint Daven gave her an admiring swing. “Not bad.”
“She’ll get the job done, anyway.” Nimbus leaned a hip on the closest table. “There’s also a noxious old gelding in the stable I’ve been trying to get rid of. If you can get close enough to ride him, take him. Save your boots for muddying up the next tavernkeeper’s rushes.”
“How much for the horse?”
“Let me keep the change from the sword, and it’s yours.”
That dredged up a glimmer of suspicion in the younger man’s eerie gold eyes.
Nimbus sighed wearily. “Or don’t and walk wherever you’re bound. I’ll unload the horse on the next fool for half what I can fleece a brother for.”
It took another careful push of influence, but Saint Daven finally agreed.
When it was all settled, he said, “Thanks,” with the same awkward caginess Nimbus remembered from mad little Six.
Nimbus snorted. “Don’t be a stranger. Any stranger than you already are, I mean.”
Shooting him a flicker of a smile, Saint Daven shrugged on his cloak and turned to go.
“Six?” Nimbus called after him. “Sorry about Paius. I heard he was a good man.”
Saint Daven stopped with his hand on the door. “Sorry about your men. And Wraith and Cutter.”
“Better you and me than someone who didn’t know them,” Nimbus said.
A pause. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
Nimbus chuckled. “Of course it’s not. But how else are we supposed to pretend like the old wounds aren’t still bleeding?”
on my patreon that tells the story of the Cinterlands Massacre. (Or Cinterlands Rebellion, depending on which side you supported.) About 50 chapters long. If you're interested in getting the lowdown behind Nimbus, Clarencio, the Saints and their doomed friends and lovers, check it out.
e
