For Everything There is a Season (Blade, Lavinet, Ayla's Story)

[Content warning: discussions of pregnancy and complications with pregnancy, including possible miscarriage, discussions of infidelity and cheating, some fantasy violence and death, mild horror elements, adult language and cursing.]

[Spoiler alert: a minor plot point from the upcoming {not yet written} Chapter 7 is briefly mentioned in this short story. I am not actually sure if I will be using this plot point in the game, making the spoiler potentially non-canonical, but you've been warned!]

Part I: The Song Remains the Same 

Part II: The Rest is Silence

Blade had never been particularly fond of healers, of any stripe.

Even the Healers in the Shepherd infirmary tended to irritate him—not least because they were about the only officers with the gumption and authority to yell at him (when he was dodging his monthly physical exams). A stupid rule, though he understood its logic when it came to his other officers and subordinates. They had to be looked after, evaluated—seemingly miniscule injuries or neglected pains could manifest as troublesome or even career-ending afflictions down the road, and their line of work was already strenuous and physically-taxing. He was grateful that the Healers were around to keep the Shepherds in fighting shape. He just didn’t need them to do it for him.

Plus, there was something unnerving about being in the infirmary—especially during bedrest after a bad wound. The whiteness and sterility and quiet of the place tended to nag at him; all the things he could be doing, all the impatience at being confined to a bed, were like a growing itch in his skull. He couldn’t stand it. The infirmary, in his mind, was associated with coercion and imprisonment—there, he was not in control of his fate, forced to leave off important work at the orders of someone else. Nothing good ever came of visiting the hospital wing: you only did it when you were sick or in pain, and it only ever resulted in more unhappiness when you were taken off-duty for however long the Healers said. That was why he avoided it like the plague. And there was something about being poked and prodded by the medical staff and orderlies that made him feel even more vexed.

This physicker he’d gone to fetch for Heloise was no different. There were no other doctors within a hundred miles of their location, a depressing little town called Saltshear. Blade had had to ride back several hours in the direction they came, practically dragging the physicker out of his bed in the middle of the night and tearing back with the spindly man clinging onto him for dear life, squeaking indignant protests all along the way.

By the time they returned to Saltshear, it was a few hours before dawn, and the midnight ink of night pressed down on the dark, silent inn. Blade feared the worst—he didn’t know much about pregnancy, did not know how unusual or life-threatening such bleeding could be—and, perversely, he dreaded the idea that he had brought the physicker for nothing. If he had to ride back listening to that man’s yammering for nothing, endure his disgust at touching a Diminished because he couldn’t ride his own pony fast enough, he would probably just strangle the healer himself and save himself the journey.

The trip up the dusty, creaky inn stairs was unsettling, but soon enough he could hear the familiar sounds of Ayla’s raspy voice arguing with Lavinet’s quieter, sharper tones. Before he realized it, the tension in Blade’s chest eased. He did not like leaving his team in a crisis, especially in the dark. The chances of anything happening to them were low, but he still hadn’t liked being away. Too many opportunities for unpleasant surprises.

In the room, Heloise was still alive, calmer now, though flushed and tight-lipped with pain. Lavinet had swaddled her in a clean nightrobe to protect her modesty, though Blade didn’t have the faintest idea why anyone would care about that right now. Besides, she was unwed and pregnant. Did she really care if Blade or the physicker saw her in a state of undress?

Apparently Heloise did, however, because at the sight of the physicker, she sat straight up in her bed and murmured something tremulous to Lavinet, clutching her blankets to her chin. Lavinet answered in soothing tones, while Ayla said more loudly, “Don’t be stupid. He’s got to take a look at you, and he’s the only medical person around for a hundred miles. D’you want to die?”

“There is… no need,” Heloise whispered. “Only womanly troubles—”

“Womanly troubles? I’ll say—you’ve got a babyinside of you—”

Blade met Lavinet’s gaze, then turned to Ayla and jerked his head. “Out.”

She scowled, but decided to comply for once; Lavinet followed as well, saying to the physicker, “Please take good care of her, doctor. She’s feeling very fragile at the moment, so gentle handling is key.”

“Yes, yes,” the physicker huffed, adjusting his spectacles on his nose. He was very rat-faced, with a hooked nose and very small, beady eyes. Even the way he rubbed his spindly hands together, over and over, seemed rodent-like. He shrugged off his medical kit and began to pull out vials of this and that. To Lavinet—because he clearly sensed that she was the wealthy one in this scenario, whereas Blade had driven him through fear—he said, “There is the matter of my fee…”

She laid a hand on his arm and smiled what Briony called her “saintly” smile: the kind that tended to have an effect on most people and made them want to impress her. “All will be taken care of in due time, doctor,” she said sweetly. “After you give the proper care to our friend.”

After a moment, he nodded, and Lavinet shut the door behind them.

Downstairs, they made liberal use of the empty barroom, all of them too anxious to contemplate going back to sleep. Ayla poured high-shelf brandy into three dusty glasses, and while Blade would have normally disapproved of drinking on the job, he knocked his back, anyway. As the numbing fire moved down his throat, he said, “What’s the situation?”

It sounded clinical, militaristic, as his speech often did, but he didn’t know how to go about speaking of such personal and intimate matters in any other way.

Lavinet shook her head, sighing. “It’s trouble,” she said softly. “I think she’s four, perhaps five months along. She won’t breathe a word about who the father is, and indeed, won’t acknowledge the pregnancy at all. No surprise: the father is very likely not her intended, as he’s been stationed in Blackridge for many months. If he found out about the child, her prospects would be ruined, the marriage would be called off, and her family’s reputation would be destroyed. They’re such a small, minor house, no other children in this line, so there’s nothing they can do to buffer or distract from the scandal—”

“That explains the urgency,” Blade said. “They couldn’t wait long enough for the demon and bandit attacks in the area to subside—hence why they hired us to escort her, with all haste. The secrecy makes more sense, too.” Lord Harthwaite had ordered them to give a false name for Heloise, and to cover her face in public areas. Less chance of her being discovered by someone who might recognize her—and her “situation”—en route.

Lavinet shook her head. “I thought the secrecy was to reduce the chances of her being kidnapped and held for ransom,” she said. “In areas like this, her name would carry a lot of weight as one of the few people whose family could afford a ‘bride price,’ as the locals call it. But to be concealing something like this…”

“What was even her plan?” Ayla asked incredulously, leaning her side against the high bar counter and folding her arms. “Lord Fiance’s got to know that babies aren’t born after four months, right? No matter how fast she married him at this point, he’d have to know that the baby wasn’t his by the time it came out.”

Lavinet shook her head and sighed again. “That, I don’t know,” she said, closing her eyes. She didn’t carry her fan on missions, so it was hard for Blade to know exactly what she was thinking. “Perhaps she hoped to convince him that the baby was extraordinarily early and premature. Or perhaps she simply hoped that the bonds of marriage would be enough for him to tolerate the transgression. Divorce is rare among nobles, especially the lesser or country nobles—it is its own scandal. Other aristocrats are rarely willing to marry divorcees. Perhaps she hoped that he would agree to overlook the affair and adopt the child as his own, to avoid looking a cuckold to others.”

“A very risky plan,” Blade said.

Lavinet shrugged. “I don’t think she had much of a choice. Remember how her father was so insistent that she ride in a carriage, not on a horse? He certainly knew of the pregnancy; it was probably why they didn’t speak to each other when we left.”

“But the carriage protected her—at least a little. Wouldn’t he have wanted her to lose the baby?” Even as he said it, Blade was aware how cold and callous it sounded—but it was true. It would have solved all of the Harthwaites’ problems.

Lavinet pursed her lips. “It was probably more complicated than that,” she said finally. “She is still his daughter, and that is still his grandchild. However odious Lord Harthwaite acted towards us, his feelings towards his kin are likely more nuanced than we think. He wouldn’t have been cruel enough to force his daughter to ride, knowing she was pregnant. And perhaps she was more insistent behind the scenes.”

The conversation dwindled there, and for a while they sat there in the half-dark, picking at a cold platter of cheeses and nuts that Lavinet found in the tiny kitchen behind the bar. The innkeeper had never come to investigate all the noise, though Blade wondered if this was a matter of pragmatism rather than of ignorance: he probably did not want to be involved in whatever trouble the three Diminished fighters and their charge were up to. Plausible deniability, in case anyone ever came asking.

An hour or so later, the physicker finally came down the stairs, polishing his tiny spectacles on his shirttail. Lavinet stood immediately, though Blade and Ayla remained sitting.

The physicker said, “The lady will recover after a few days of bedrest. I have administered a solution of radish, bishopwort, garlic, wormwood, helenium, cropleek, and hollowleek. She will continue to take this every day for the next fortnight. In a day, you will have to strain gooseberries in a silk handkerchief and press it to her lips: this will restore the balance of her humors. She must eat and drink regularly to maintain her health: six small meals a day, even if she has no appetite. Salted foods should be avoided, especially pork. Fish is acceptable if grilled. Oatmeal or gruel are tolerable, but only for a maximum of two meals per day, and only with a large amount of butter. She must also drink plenty of milk, to strengthen her constitution.”

“And the baby?” Lavinet pressed.

“It is healthy, as far as I can tell,” he answered.

“Will further travel jeopardize her or the infant’s health?” Blade asked.

The physicker frowned. “It depends on how leisurely the travel is. At all costs, you must avoid stresses and strenuous rides: I’d prefer for her to remain in bed for a week, but she could manage after three days.” He looked to Lavinet. “I saw that you had a matchbox”—this was regional slang for a two-wheeled carriage—“outside. If the lady is traveling in that, I would like it outfitted that she can lay down, as best she can. Make her comfortable with sheets and pillows. Avoid bumps, falls, fast pacing, and surprises.”

So, essentially, everything, Blade thought. A hard knot of dread was beginning to settle in his stomach. This was going to complicate the mission immensely.

Then, to make matters worse, the physicker said lightly, “She is Heloise Harthwaite, is she not?”

Everyone in the room went still. Then Lavinet said, very smoothly, “I don’t know what you mean. She is my sister, Phodre Allensdale—”

The physicker silenced her by raising her hand. “As you know, I am the only physicker in this area,” he said, his voice mild but his eyes cunning and shrewd. “And I have been practicing for many years. The Lord Harthwaite called on me to deliver his only daughter. I have not seen her in many years, but I recognized the birthmark on her wrist. Still quite clear, even to this day.”

He looked around at all of them. Ayla was bridling like a wildcat, looking at the pitcher of water on the counter as if contemplating braining him with it. Lavinet was very still. The physicker said smugly, “There is the matter of my fee.”

So. He wanted a bribe for his silence. Blade shouldn’t have been that surprised, but he didn’t think the man had the sheer stones for it. He ran over their options in his head. Lord Harthwaite had given them money for “incidentals”—mostly to pay for Heloise’s food and lodging—but it wouldn’t be enough to cover an extensive fee like this one. The stingy bastard: he’d probably thought they would make off with it, so he’d only given them a pittance. Lavinet could write a personal cheque, to be cashed from the Naveen estate—but that would reveal that she and the Shepherds were involved in this entire affair, something Harthwaite was adamantly against. Blade, too, could write a cheque from the Order of the Shepherds—but that presented the same problem. They could pool their travel stipends together, depending on how much gold he asked for: but that would leave them in slightly more dire straits, the journey home seeming longer and longer with each passing day.

He stood, then, straightening to his full height. The physicker looked at him with some apprehension, but his eyes still darted to Lavinet, assured by her presence that some violence wasn’t about to unfold. Good. He’d been developing a little routine with Briony, of late: although she was a spitfire, her stature was also quite small and friendly, which paired well with his intimidating height and calm, deadly demeanor. They had found that many Norms—especially Norm men—felt threatened by Ket like him. Could have been the size, could have been the stoic, unreadable nature of his eyes. Whatever it was, it was an advantage readily used by all of the Ket Shepherd officers, often in teams where a warmer presence could lull the victim into a false, carefully-balanced sense of security. Blade wasn’t above using this tactic, as well, and he could only imagine it would work even better with someone like Lavinet.

“We will pay you handsomely for your medical services, of course,” Lavinet said in a kind, gentle tone. The physicker looked from her to Blade again, swallowing. “And, I think, patient confidentiality is a part of the Autarch’s strictures. No?”

The physicker opened his mouth to say something; Blade shifted casually and placed his hand in his pocket, deliberately making his boots creak. The man swallowed again, then croaked, “Ah… perhaps that was an old version of the Golden Accords… I am fairly sure the new versions have no such claim…”

Blade cracked the knuckles on his one free hand, and the man shuddered. “Perhaps I shall need to check,” he muttered.

“Of course,” Lavinet said brightly. “Though I should tell you, we know many people who are familiar with the law. My friend here, in fact, has quite a strict adherence to the rules. He is duty-bound to punish any person he finds breaking them. It’s some sort of Ket oath, perhaps religious in nature. I have seen him slaughtering entire villages for their wrongdoing. What do they call you again?” She glanced at Blade.

“Aescar,” Ayla said, smirking like she was having great fun. “It means avenging angel.”

Ridiculous, but Blade didn’t allow his expression to break as he rolled his shoulders slowly and cracked his neck. That was enough for the physicker to blurt, “Ah—I remember that stricture now. It has been a long night—my brains are fogged with exhaustion—” His knees were practically knocking together.

“Of course,” Lavinet said, with great sympathy. “We understand.” And then, to drive the point home: “If that will be all, we will pay you for your treatment and then our friend here can escort you home.” She smiled at Blade, whose face remained still and hood-eyed. “He can protect you from all the dangers of the road. So many hazards out there—it’s a miracle you made it here in one piece at all!”

“Ah,” the physicker said, fumbling with his glasses. “There is no need. I will stay the night here—and then I will borrow a horse in the morning. I am perfectly capable of making my way home alone.”

Lavinet frowned, the picture of earnest consideration. “Are you sure? But he already knows exactly where to go.”

“It’s fine, lady. I insist.” He mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. “I will simply take my fee and withdraw for the night.”

He named quite a low number, which Lavinet happily doled out from her purse, before disappearing up the stairs, presumably to rouse the innkeeper and find a room. Ayla glanced at Blade and said softly, “Think he’ll keep his word?”

Blade nodded, allowing just a ghost of a smile. “Cowards always do.”

#

When they looked in on Heloise, they found her asleep, so the three of them retired to try and get their own rest: gray, cottony dawn was just beginning to touch the horizon. Blade slept for exactly three hours before snapping awake, listening for any sounds to indicate trouble or Heloise’s awakening. When he heard none, he ran icy water from his washroom’s black-flecked little sink, filling the meager tub the inn had provided, which was hardly large enough for him to dunk his upper body into. Afterwards, he came downstairs to find Ayla sitting alone, grazing on some stale toast with both feet up on the opposite chair.

Blade sat beside her and nodded to the innkeeper, who brought him a pot of strong black khav. After a moment, Ayla said, “Lavi’s gone to talk to Heloise. She’ll want us up there in a few minutes.”

Blade nodded, sipping at his khav. Normally he was the one giving orders; but on a mission such as this, he was glad Lavinet was there to take the reins. Where emotions and relationships were involved, he only ever seemed to make things worse.

After another minute or so—Ayla could not stay quiet for very long—the Wind-Mage said quietly, “Hey.”

Blade’s eyes flicked to her from over his cup.

She shifted slightly in her chair, amber eyes on her toast, before she said, “You think she’s going to be okay?”

Blade lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug. “You heard the physicker. Their techniques are primitive, but most of the time, they’re generally correct in their assessments. She’ll recover.”

Ayla shook her head; Blade noticed for the first time that her hair had gotten longer since she first joined the Order, and now it was only loosely braided, the end of the braid brushing against the table like a paintbrush, leaving a streak in the dust. Heedless, she said, “No, I mean… if we get her to her husband. Fiancé. Whatever. Lavinet knows nobles, but… I’ve seen some bad shit. Jalis warlords didn’t like it when their women slept with other men.”

Blade knew what she meant. In his assassin work over the years, he had seen what happened during crimes of passion; the terrible things spurned lovers and jilted spouses could do. He had never worked for any of them directly—he never took work on that didn’t benefit the Rebellion’s cause in any way—but he had manipulated one or two in his time, exploiting their impulses for his own ends. The results had always been ugly.

Ayla said, “Can’t imagine the Ket have a lot of affairs.”

Blade considered it. His kin were a disciplined, regimented people, not overly given to letting their passions run wild. However, there were always exceptions. Entire wars had been waged over love—or affairs. He remembered reading poems about such wars when he was younger, shaking his head at their foolishness and lack of logic or clarity. On the other hand…

“It’s a mixed bag,” he said eventually. “I’ve personally found it to be rare, but things like that may have just never become public—the Ket are very good at keeping their secrets. There are arranged marriages among our people, too: not nearly as commonly as in Lavinet’s circles, but you will find a clan or two wanting to curate their own bloodlines or form valuable alliances. I imagine those lead to… outside passions, though perhaps not; we also take duty very seriously.” He shrugged lightly. “It’s complicated. My people have a concept—it’s hard to explain. There is an idea that there is only one person you are destined to truly love in this life. Passionate, world-burning, soul-rending love—though that’s not to say that flirtations and more casual relationships aren’t indulged in until that love is found.” He paused. “Most Ket won’t marry until they think they’ve found that one—and many others respect the concept so highly that they won’t interfere in others’ relationships, not enough to facilitate an affair. But it’s a complex, changing thing.” He stopped again, thinking on it. “And we also have ways to discourage others from… meddling.”

“What do you mean?” Ayla asked, her brow furrowing.

Blade huffed lightly; he was no expert on any of this, so he feared miscommunicating, saying something that would give her the wrong impression of his culture. “In certain regions,” he said, “if you perceive another to be making an inappropriate advance on your partner, it is acceptable and even encouraged to assert your claim. Violently, most of the time. I’m aware it sounds barbaric, possessive, to most outsiders. But in those cultures, it is our way of showing love. We feel so strongly for the other person that we cannot tolerate the idea of them being stolen by someone else; so we fight for them. To indicate such strong passions, especially in a public setting, is considered romantic. A lack of reaction is considered insulting or upsetting.”

Ayla whistled lowly, and he shook his head. “In still other regions, this behavior is not accepted, and bloodfeud over lovers is prohibited; it is left to the person being advanced upon to make their feelings known and rebuff the party they don’t want. And there are even more complex protocols: in remote places, there are even implicit rules that forbid you from reacting to another’s flirtations with your partner if the transgressor is at least five years older than you. But it is appropriate to physically fight off a peer.”

Ayla shook her head. “Damn. So if you ever found someone, you’d start brawling with whoever looked at her the wrong way?”

“I don’t even remember which is the right way among my people,” Blade answered, dry but inwardly uncomfortable now. “I left Ygrath for my training when I was quite young, and I was never around enough to witness such behaviors. I’m told sometimes it simply kicks in, like an instinct…” He shrugged again, taking another sip of his khav. “But I have never been in a situation that would trigger it.”

Ayla watched him for a moment, and he felt his stomach turn uneasily, so he gestured to the innkeeper to bring more toast. After the man had set down the plate and disappeared, Ayla said, with sudden confidence: “If you ever do find somebody, you wouldn’t cheat.”

“No,” Blade said.

She nodded to herself, as if he had answered a question she had been toying with all along. “No,” she declared. “You’re one of the good ones.”

Blade only sat there, staring at her. He couldn’t make head or tails of what she meant by that, or how it related to their overall conversation, but it registered that Ayla rarely praised anybody, so he wouldn’t question it too much. Before the discussion could continue any further, however, Lavinet suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Come quick,” she hissed. “She’s trying to get out of bed, and I can’t hold her down!”

They turned and hurried up the stairs, leaving their paltry breakfast behind. When they got to the room, they saw Heloise struggling to sit up and swing her feet off the bed; she was sweating and shaking, but much of her color was back, and a tray with the remains of oatmeal and milk lay on the side table. Ayla hurried forward and grasped Heloise’s shoulders, more gently than she normally handled others; she spat, “What are you doing? The physicker said you’ve got to lie down for at least a sennight!”

“That man,” Heloise panted, strands of sweaty orange hair falling into her face, “is a fraudster. I am—fine. We must—resume our journey—with all haste.”

“My dear, don’t be ridiculous!” Lavinet crossed her arms, fixing Heloise with her patented wine-colored glare. Surprisingly, their frail charge wasn’t that fazed; she looked away and continued to struggle against Ayla’s firm grip. “If you are concerned about delaying our trip—you needn’t be, for your health and safety are paramount—”

“No,” Heloise groaned, her pale hands fluttering weakly around Ayla’s. “I must see my beloved… my fiancé… as soon as possible. Everything rests on it. I must.”

Blade stood near the closed door, refraining from interfering at the moment: he didn’t want to hurt Heloise with his Ket strength, or scare her so badly with his proximity that her health took a turn for the worse. But he watched her. He often had trouble reading people like her. Contrary to popular opinion, the Ket were sometimes an expressive people—they were just expressive in a way that most outsiders didn’t recognize. A people of few words, they had developed countless nonverbal and subvocal ways of conveying their feelings instead. Normally it was based around fighting—a man who touched the front of his belt indicated his desire to duel, a fighter whose arma had turned turbulent was suppressing their anger and letting you know it—but there were other ways of “talking,” too. A certain way of touching the wrist or the palm, with two fingers, was reserved for people that you pined for but could not confess to. A way of showing the teeth was a demand for the truth. There were even warning pulses, flares, and noises that were out of non-Ket hearing range or visual spectrums.

But with other Children of Light, it was a different story. Typically, they only had their outward body language and facial expressions, and Heloise had always given him so little to go on. She ducked and scurried, conveyed meekness and deference, but never anything else.

Now, however, she seemed different. She was telling the truth, that much he could tell: she was determined to leave this place and resume their journey as soon as possible. Now, even. But why, he wasn’t sure. Was she simply so concerned about their discovery of her secret that she wanted to rush to her fiancé as soon as possible? Get the whole thing over with while she still could? Or was something else at play here?

He decided to ask her directly. “Why are you suddenly in such a hurry to leave?”

Heloise’s face tightened, and she looked away, still held in place by Ayla’s hands. After a moment she only said, “I must. And I will do it whether you accompany me or not.”

So she had a backbone, after all. Blade forced his face into a frown. “And what happens if you fall ill again? You bled when you were resting in a comfortable inn. After all that, how could you possibly think you’d survive on the road?”

It was brutal and harsh, as he was known to be, but Blade knew too that it was necessary. Sometimes truth and justice were not handed out in flower baskets. They were hard-earned. And being an asshole—as Trouble put it—was sometimes necessary in his line of work. He had to be sure.

True to form, Heloise flinched at his tone, but she didn’t back down. Her sea-colored eyes stared back at his, and her hand fell down to curve protectively around her belly.

Finally she said, “We can do it.” Whether that ‘we’ included their group or just her and her unborn child, he couldn’t say.

But he believed her.

Blade glanced at the others, then back at Heloise. “Fine. When do you want to go?”

#

Predictably, Ayla and Lavinet were not happy about his decision. The Wind-Mage actually planted herself in the doorway when he made to leave, already thinking on how to prepare the matchbox the way the physicker had instructed. She gripped the edges of the doorjamb to block his exit and snarled, “Are you fucking out of your mind?” Behind him, Lavinet was talking to Heloise in concerned tones, obviously hoping to dissuade her. Blade already knew it wouldn’t work.

He prodded the center of Ayla’s back, and when she didn’t move, only growling at him, he casually tapped the nerve center at the joining of her shoulder and her neck. She went limp instantly, folding forward so that the exit was clear; he stepped around her without another word, and after a second or two, she recovered from her sudden paralysis and slammed after him.

“Hey!” She grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around; Blade shook her off and made to keep walking. “Why the fuck are we even considering moving her? Are you insane?”

“No,” Blade said, “and those are her wishes. She is our client, and we are her escort. It’s not up to us to decide what she can and can’t do.”

“It damn well is when it comes to her safety!” Ayla put out another arm in a vain attempt to block him.

“She knows herself better than we do.”

That gave Ayla pause, but only for an instant. She said, “Why are you suddenly so eager to listen to her, huh? Is it because the baby complicates your precious mission—so you just want to dump her as fast as you can so you don’t have to think about it anymore?”

“No,” Blade said, his voice very flat and calm. Then he looked back at Ayla, and something in his face must have shocked her, because she drew back suddenly, her amber eyes wide. Blade stared at her, unyielding.

“That woman has never had a taste of freedom in all her life,” he said. “She’s always been ordered around, confined to that manor, the course of her life decided for her from the moment she took a breath. You can see it all in her eyes.” He shrugged. “I’m not going to be another person who tells her what to do. It’s her life. Let her do what she wants with it.”

Ayla pulled a face. “Since when did you get so damn sentimental?”

He turned away. “It’s been an affliction from time to time.”

#

He prepared the matchbox, heaping it with bedding purchased from the inn and installing a level crate that could extend the uncomfortable seat into a makeshift lounge, turning the carriage into more of a wheeled litter or palanquin. Then he stocked up on the supplies that had been prescribed by the physicker—oats, milk, honey, chilled packages of butter. He could catch the fish or whatever else she needed on the road. If the physicker was still around to observe these preparations from the inn’s windows, Blade never saw him.

By noon they were underway again, Heloise loaded into her carriage in silence—though she threw Blade a wordless look of gratitude as he carefully handed her in. Lavinet and Ayla circled the convoy, looking strained and unhappy, but the sleepless night and the blow-out argument they’d tried to have with him before their departure had drained them. For his part, he still felt quite alert.

The dull gray sun slid across the sky as they made their way into marshy territory. The good news was that the rocky, bumpy terrain of the road gave way to softer, more yielding black soil. The bad news was that they had to detour frequently to avoid deep puddles and thick mud, taking care to avoid jostling Heloise and getting the carriage stuck at the same time. Craggy, gnarled black branches reached up towards the sky like fingers as they descended into the growing gloom, the air turning thick and humid as they passed by gray, tepid swamps and mosquito-ridden mangroves.

Ayla and Lavinet maintained their frosty silence towards him for the majority of the afternoon, conversing only between themselves, and this suited Blade just fine. He liked his coworkers, as he liked most of the other Captains—some more than others—but sometimes they talked entirely too much. And he understood their ire. They could not have liked being unilaterally overridden, their concerns bypassed to cater to Heloise’s whims. He was their Commander, much as he had tried to downplay his presence on this mission; the sudden reminder could not have been comfortable for either of them. He only hoped whatever resentments they were nursing wouldn’t prevent them from carrying out their duties with efficiency and professionalism. But maybe that was too much to ask.

He was proven wrong by the time the sun indicated that it was around four o’clock in the afternoon. Abruptly, Blade felt a familiar kick of unease, of alertness, as if something inside of him had pricked up its ears. He glanced out of the corner of his eye, and saw something white flash from between the cover of two tangled trees. All at once, his vision narrowed, the arma flooding his eyes as his vesathat flared to life. Everything sharpened, clarified, magnified. His heartbeat slowed. Bugs whirred and whined past him, their sound amplified so that they sounded like bats. Heloise hadn’t spoken once from inside her carriage. His hands were cool and steady on the reins.

Blade didn’t turn his head, but he watched for the movement of white again. In another moment, he clocked it, a bit west of its original position. It was only the sliver of an image, but his arma-enhanced eyes assembled the image almost as quickly as he registered it. Man-shaped, he thought. But with the face of a white beast. There was a snout, streaks of red near the eyes. And it was not alone.

Blade ran through any information he had on the Bleakmoor, and could not find anything he had ever tucked away about beast-men. As he whirred through the thoughts, he counted the other shapes he could see creeping slowly through the trees. Ten, twelve. Sixteen. The leader was a fox-faced thing, a smear of orange fur and bright black eyes on the body of a man built like a hostler. None of them had noticed that he had spotted them. Yet.

He watched the fox-faced thing gesture to another figure with two fingers, and then he abruptly realized what was going on: these were bandits. Probably the very same bandits that had been terrorizing the area around Harthwaite and attacking anyone who traveled on its surrounding roads. They were wearing animal masks to conceal their identities—an unusual touch of the dramatic for common robbers and highwaymen, but not the strangest thing he’d seen.

And they were clearly targeting the matchbox, despite seeing how protected it was. Interesting. It seemed he may have overestimated the physicker’s cowardice.

Blade turned his head, just slightly, and he caught Ayla’s eye. She frowned, but he could see that she had noticed their interlopers, too. Her hand slipped down to her side and touched the end of her wind-staff, which was slung across her shoulder. She would draw attention if she were to suddenly unholster it, but she could still work her magic just by touching it, like a rod conducting a current of energy. Lavinet, so far, had not noticed the trouble, but when Ayla tightened up their formation and drew her ahfuri closer to the carriage, she followed suit.

Blade looked to Ayla again, and she nodded. He tensed his body lightly, reached up, and caught hold of a dangling branch. He had timed it so that the carriage was mostly obscured by the surrounding trees. The horses would keep plodding in a straight line, and Ayla could put a stop to them if they panicked or bolted. The bandits wouldn’t see him vanish, or notice that the box-seat was now empty. And by the time they did, it would be far too late.

#

Dispatching the first half of the bandit group was almost child’s play. All Blade had to do was drop down silently from the thick canopy, or materialize from the shadow of tree, eliminate a bandit, and then melt away again. It was shockingly easy: he did not even have to draw his sword. He also didn’t kill them, however—he tended to want to know the full situation before he started massacring people. He only broke a man’s neck once, because the ox-faced thief had caught on and was training an arrow on him, and was opening his mouth to shout.

Then the second half of the group finally realized that he was among their ranks, picking them off like flies, and chaos broke out. Now Blade drew his sword, and Anguriel sang and crackled beneath his grasp, the wire-wrapped hilt warm to the touch. He sliced, slashed, whirled, and sidestepped: four more bandits fell. That left six for Ayla and Lavinet. Easy.

But then Blade heard a thin, reedy cry, and he stopped, looking back to the carriage. Lavinet’s horse was rearing, striking out with its hooves—it was a war-stallion, war-trained—while she ran a man through with her lance, piercing his shoulder. Ayla’s wind-staff was a whirl of brown, a shield made of wind and air deflecting a flurry of arrows that would have peppered the side of the matchbox like a pincushion.

All seemed well in hand, except for one thing: the carriage had stopped. The door was open. Someone had flung it open, and Heloise was—

The fox-man was holding her, and he had a knife to her throat.

“Stop!” The bandit leader’s voice was muffled by the plaster of the grinning fox face, but he sounded young, perhaps around Blade’s age. He had the sound of a man who was desperate as well as cunning and ruthless—the voice of a man who was willing to do anything. Heloise’s neck was craned back, the hand holding the knife pressed against her tanned and unshaking. Blade cursed inwardly. Stupid, amateur mistake. How had the man broken past his defense so quickly? He had to have been single-minded enough to aim straight for Heloise’s carriage even as his own fighters died around him, cut down like falling leaves.

“Throw down your weapons!” the bandit leader barked. “Throw them down, or I kill her where she stands!”

Ayla and Lavinet hesitated; they could not see him from this distance, obscured as he was by the trees. He wondered if the bandit leader knew where he was, too. He could move fast, even faster if he lent a burst of arma to his steps—but would it be fast enough to prevent the man from slitting Heloise’s throat?

Blade’s hand tightened on his sword. He’d have to take the risk. Hopefully the bandits were so keen on using her as a hostage—or, more likely, for her father’s ransom—that the leader would hesitate before actually slaying her. That gave Blade a window to work with.

Ayla and Lavinet were laying down their weapons, their faces tight and drawn but otherwise unworried. Ayla flung her wind-staff down, almost petulant, while Lavinet laid her lance on the ground with her arms raised in the air in the sign of surrender. The bandit leader watched them, his shoulders tense, and in that moment that he looked away, Blade moved—he sped through the undergrowth, taking three huge, silent bounds—and then he was behind the man himself, only the whisper of the breeze indicating his sudden presence.

He grabbed the man’s reddish hair and yanked it back as hard as he could, cranking his head back so far that the skin of his throat just barely parted under the dagger that Blade had placed there. He felt the man’s hold on Heloise slacken in surprise; that was all he needed to fling himself backwards, taking the bandit with him until Blade’s back touched the wall of the carriage. Thus protected, he said, “Drop the knife. Now.”

Instantly, the bandit dropped his knife.

“Please,” he gurgled, struggling to speak under the press of the dagger. “We’ve got children in camp. Little ones to feed.”

Blade didn’t care; he’d heard it all before. He was more concerned about Heloise, who was staring back at them, her eyes as huge as saucers, trembling as violently as a leaf in high wind. She had probably never come so close to death before; she looked horrified. On the edges of his periphery, Ayla and Lavinet reclaimed their weapons; now that the tables had turned, the remaining bandits were laying down their own in an ironic reversal of fortunes.

The bandit leader was still talking. “Have mercy,” he said in a strained voice. “As I said, we have children. Some of us are fathers.”

“Would you have had mercy on us?” Blade asked flatly.

“None of you are dead, are you?” He swallowed. “The same can’t be said for some of mine.”

“Your fault. We were only passing through; you were the ones who crept up on us.”

“Point,” the bandit leader said lightly, a term used for a good hit in a duel. Although he was shaken, he was maintaining remarkable composure. Ayla and Lavinet drifted over, then, the other bandits having been bound by Ayla’s impenetrable wind-shackles. She looked distinctly unimpressed with his captive, though Lavinet watched his masked face with interest.

“What is your name?” she asked the man, whose throat bobbed. “And are you the one who’s been leading the attacks on the caravans coming in and out of Harthwaite?”

The bandit didn’t speak for a moment. Finally he said, “They call me Rikash the Terrible. And yes, that was me.”

“Why did you do it?”

He gave a hollow little laugh. “No one wakes up one day and thinks, You know what would be wonderful? If I turned to a life of crime and began stealing from people. But desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“I know at least one person who woke up like that,” Ayla muttered, probably thinking of Chase. Blade was briefly preoccupied by the awfulness of Rikash the Terrible’s moniker—and this was coming from the man who had been dubbed Kingslayer—before sternly reminding himself they had more important things to worry about. Heloise looked like she was going to be sick. “Is your spell going to hold the others?” he asked Ayla. “He keeps—quivering—and I find it tiresome. My hand may slip.”

“You’d never be so clumsy,” the Wind-Mage returned with a wolfish grin, but she gestured in concession. He pushed the bandit leader to the ground with the ease of uprooting a thin sapling, then planted a boot on his chest to keep him still. The fox mask had slipped, revealing a shard of tanned, rueful face and wry brown eyes now filled with muted fear and forced calm. Blade could smell the terror and sweat emanating from him in damp waves.

Lavinet said, continuing her interrogation, “I’d hold still if I were you, for I’ve seen this man break a neck with one stamp of his foot.” She had a habit of exaggerating Blade’s bloody deeds, he noticed. Then she glanced at Heloise. “I assume you targeted us because of this lady, here? How did you know she’d be with us? Do you know who she is?”

For a moment, there was a flicker of something in Rikash’s eyes. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t know the lady myself. We saw the matchbox, so we figured she would be a valuable target. That’s all.”

He was lying; he was surprisingly good at it, but Blade could tell. He increased the pressure on his boot, and the man’s words were cut off with a slight wheeze. Ayla was sitting on her heels now and watching the exchange with idle interest, her chin in hand.

She said, to Blade, “What do you think? Ought we kill him?”

On an average day, Blade’s inclination was to say yes: eliminate threats before they could come back to haunt you, that was the Khehi way. And this motley group of bandits had already proven themselves a threat. But before he could answer—or simply crush the life out of the man—Heloise made a strange sound, something between a cry and a groan of pain.

They all looked to her, and she was clutching her stomach and heaving, her legs shaking as she doubled over. Ayla cursed and hurried to their charge’s side; Lavinet shot Blade a look, as if this were his fault. Which, he realized, it might be. The physicker had said to avoid stresses—what could be more stressful than having one’s life threatened during a bandit raid? Damn. Perhaps they should have stayed in Saltshear, after all.

Ayla had gathered Heloise up in her arms, and the noblewoman could not stop sobbing into her mouth, her eyes twisted shut with pain as she whispered, “Oh—I feel spasms—”

Lavinet speared Blade with a look. “We need to get her away from here,” she said. “Boil water, lay her down, anything.”

Blade uttered a curse, so low that most people wouldn’t hear it. He looked down at Rikash, who had gone still, watching Heloise with wide, concerned eyes. Blade told himself that it wasn’t because the man regretted attacking a pregnant woman. He was just in fear for his own life. But no time to take care of that now—the charge’s safety was the priority.

He leaned down and drew his sword, holding the razor-sharp blade tip just over Rikash’s bare eyeball. The bandit leader went very still. Blade said softly, “If you follow us—if I see a hair of any of your men—I will find your camp and kill everyone inside it. Even the little ones. You understand?”

Rikash said nothing, but Blade could see in his face that he believed him. He removed his boot from the man’s chest, waited a moment to see if he would do anything profoundly stupid—like move—before he turned back to Heloise, who was being bundled into the carriage again by Ayla and Lavinet. Already, his thoughts were blurring through their next steps. He had never been in this area before, and the maps were undetailed and vague: he didn’t think there were any towns nearby. He would have to find them a glade, or some concealed cave, or something. Heloise let loose another cry of pain. Blade grit his teeth. He’d already killed four people today: he prayed his decisions hadn’t just taken the life of another.

#

They left the bandits behind and rode away at a controlled sprint, searching for some place to take Heloise. A dreary sheet of rain began to fall, good luck for them—it meant the obvious tracks they’d be leaving would be smudged and washed away, further deterring any attempts at pursuit.

Eventually Blade found a dry little cavern that was deep enough to get everyone out of the rain. Lavinet swept away branches and debris, Ayla laid down bedding from the matchbox, and Blade focused on lighting a fire and boiling some water so they could mix the solution the physicker had prescribed. Heloise quickly calmed down and drifted off to sleep, curling on her side as Lavinet drew a blanket over her. Clearly, their charge was exhausted by the day’s events—but something was nagging at Blade, the little knifepoint of paranoia that others were always chastising him for.

Lavinet noticed his darkening mood as the rain increased outside, lashing against the roof of their shelter like a series of horsewhips. She tilted her head towards the cave entrance, so the two of them ventured out into the storm to gather more firewood, which Ayla could dry even despite the damp.

“What is it?” she said, drawing her hood up so that her face was in total shadow. Blade could see the peek of her lavender-colored hair, though: he still hadn’t gotten used to it, the same way he hadn’t gotten used to Briony’s drastic haircut or Chase’s sudden affinity for rings. He never liked change—it made him too uneasy, too off-balance. He liked to plan things far ahead of time, and to execute them step by rigid step with perfection. Unpredictability drove him insane. But Lavinet hadn’t talked to him for three days after he told her he’d liked her old hair better—a compliment, in his mind—so he wasn’t about to bring it up again now.

Blade said, “How is her health?”

No question who ‘her’ meant. Lavinet sighed. “I think she’ll be all right,” she said uncertainly. She had witnessed in or assisted her fair share of pregnancies and childbirths—apparently it was a very involved thing in her culture, like standing as a maid of honor at weddings—but she was no Healer or midwife: she could only guess. “There was no bleeding. I’d guess they were lingering cramps, perhaps brought on by the trauma of what was going on.”

“Ah,” was all Blade said, because he could discuss gore and injuries without batting an eye all day, but for some reason the word “cramps” in this context unnerved him.

Lavinet, sensing that something else was on his mind, said: “Why do you ask?”

Blade shook his head, frowning to himself. The entire encounter with the bandits had bothered him, and he had to pick at the reasons why. How had Rikash the Terrible gotten to the matchbox so quickly, and why was Heloise at least six feet away from it by the time he took her hostage? He could have hauled her across that distance, but that didn’t make sense: if his intention was to cease the fighting by threatening her, he would have done it right away, by the carriage, which also provided better cover and shelter. Perhaps she had opened the door and ran out? But why would she have run straight into the mayhem? Sheer, blind panic?

And something about the way Rikash had hesitated when he saw the noblewoman in pain seemed… odd. Maybe Blade was lacking in empathy, but he didn’t think he would react like that over a stranger, even a pregnant one. Not when his own life was being threatened.

And then there was the matter of Heloise herself. She hadn’t spoken a word to them all day, no matter how much they tried to coax her or ask after her pain. And her pangs or cramps or whichever had subsided quickly after leaving the area where the bandits had attacked them, and had disappeared completely by the time they settled for the evening. Was that normal? He didn’t know enough about this—any of this—to know. But the timing was suspect.

Before he could voice his thoughts—and he was half-sure that Lavinet would smack him for viewing a lady’s troubles so unsympathetically—they heard a weak, feminine voice calling out in the rain.

Lavinet stiffened, while Blade put up a hand to signal a halt. They both stood there for a moment, straining their ears through the pattering of the rain and the rumble of thunder off in the distance. Blade activated his arma, channeled it up to his eyes—but he saw nothing through the dense fog and wet. But there it was again: the unmistakable wail, coming from the north. Opposite of where they’d come.

Lavinet hissed, “What on earth is Heloise doing so far from camp?”

She began to start after the voice, but Blade caught her elbow, his other hand dropping down to his sword. He stayed there, tense, his body drawn as taut as a bowstring. An owl cooed somewhere, too early for the time of day, and from the west, they heard Ayla cursing, fumbling around in the brush as she seemed to chase after Heloise.

Lavinet opened her mouth to call out, but Blade silenced her with a shake of his head. When she made to speak again, he made the gesture for silence.

Lavinet frowned: she was still learning the Shepherd hand signs, which they sometimes used to communicate in dangerous situations where they didn’t want to be overheard. He would have thought it came naturally to her, being like her fan language in concept, but Riel had told him to give her more time to adapt. Not everyone had arma-enhanced eyes to memorize signals and gestures.

What’s going on? The hand signs looked uncharacteristically clumsy in Lavinet’s hands.

There were no nonverbal codes to convey what he needed to say next, so he kept his voice to a harsh, fricative whisper. “Asag,” he murmured, letting the rain shroud his words. “A kind of Tainted, demon-spawn with Changeling blood. They steal voices and use them to lure you out into the fog, where they surround you and kill you.”

Lavinet went pale, and Blade turned back to scanning their surroundings. He couldn’t see anything, but asag worked like that, he had learned. And gods damn it, he could not believe they were here. He’d thought they were on the southern swathe of the Bleakmoor, deep in the heart of the swampland, where he had encountered them on his mission to Wallmire with the others. He’d never dreamed they would make it this far north, and without the cover of the murk that the Bleakmoor was known for. Were these the “demons” that had been terrorizing the area, then? The ones that had been hemming Heloise into her estate, and which the locals had claimed were a new breed of Endarkened never seen before?

He cursed silently. Heloise. And Ayla—with their luck, the asag would be impersonating Blade and Lavinet right now, luring them out from the safety of the cave and into a deadly trap. They needed to get back—but by now, the asag might have surrounded them, cutting off their retreat.

A whimpering sound caught his ears: “Please… someone help me…”

Beside him, Lavinet shuddered, clenching her teeth as she drew the saber at her side. “Are we absolutely sure?” she asked softly. “What if it’s really them, calling for us to help?”

Blade shook his head. He had fallen for the asag’s tricks one time. He never let anyone get the jump on him twice.

“Hold onto my belt,” he told Lavinet.

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Pardon me?”

He gestured to the back of his belt. “We’re going to run, back to the cave. They may try to jump us on the way. If we get separated, it’s over for us. We’ll never find each other again in the fog.”

Pale-faced but determined, Lavinet nodded and reached out, grabbing the back of his belt with her left hand while her other readied her saber. Blade put a little arma into Anguriel, which flared and crackled to life like a bolt of black lightning in his hands. He said, “And don’t let them hear you speak. The more you do, the more they steal.”

Lavinet nodded, and then they began to run.

#

It was funny, how the path they had taken to find the kindling had seemed so innocuous at the time. He had taken note of each stump, each marked tree trunk, each puddle in order to ensure that they wouldn’t get lost on the way back. But now everything seemed dim and smeared, hulking shapes and ominous black silhouettes looming up out of the rain as they sprinted past.

They only saw one asag, an amorphous, writhing shape that flew at them from the underbrush—Lavinet gasped, unable to hide her surprise—but Blade cut it in half with ease, slashing through its form like he was slicing a cloud in two. It vanished into oily, acrid smoke in an instant—asag were weak individually and only dangerous in hiding and in groups—and they ran through the smoke as they hurried back to the cave, trying not to breathe it in.

It wasn’t long before they found the pinprick of firelight that led them back to their campsite—and a terrible chill descended on Blade’s heart when he saw that the matchbox parked outside was no longer there. Lavinet gave a muffled exclamation beside him.

And then they were breaking through the curtain of rain, into the firelight and warmth—

And Heloise’s bedroll was empty.

And Ayla was lying on the ground, slumped and broken-looking as a doll, dark blood surrounding her skull like a halo around a fallen angel.

Somewhere in the distance behind them, a thing with her voice laughed.