06 - Rule of Thieves (22 page)

I had meant to affix a fireball to that arrow, much like the kind my grandmother had taught me to make. But in my haste and anger, I had fashioned something powerful and unfamiliar. When it struck home, there was a blinding flare of light. All around me, people cried out and threw up their arms to shield their eyes. A single tongue of white flame, taller than the treetops, shot up into the air. And then they were gone, the flame and the shaman. In their place was only a shallow crater and a mist of dirty ash sprinkling down like rain.

All was still. The remaining Skeltai still had us outnumbered, but they seemed frozen in uncertainty at the loss of their leader. A murmur passed through the horde. Then, one by one, they stepped aside, making way for someone to pass through the crowd.

He was a tall young warrior who walked with authority, as if commanding the respect of the others. He wore a bearskin, his face and bare chest patterned with swirls of red paint. It was that paint and the multitude of tiny braids in his silvery blue hair that helped me identify him. I had encountered this Skeltai in the Black Forest a year ago.

He was the grandson of an ancient shaman, the leader of all the Skeltai, who I had killed during my escape from enemy territory. But my history with this young warrior went back even further than that. The outlaws and I had once captured him as he scouted our territory and had tortured him for information. We never broke him, and in the end, he had killed two of our men and escaped.

It was strangely fitting that I should face him now, with the fate of us all in his hands. For what I had done to him, including the slaying of his grandfather last year, he would have his vengeance.

And yet his eyes were not on me as he approached, but on the bow in my hands.

“Again we meet, finder of the bow.” He acknowledged me tonelessly. His voice was empty of anger or accusation. If he meant to kill me in the next breath, he gave no hint of it.

I gripped the bow tightly and tried to decide whether I should defend myself. But it would be a useless gesture. Against the overwhelming odds and the other shaman back in the Black Forest who were doubtless standing by, ready to open more portals, there was no chance of victory.

So I risked all and stood unflinching as the Skeltai and I faced one another.

He eyed me consideringly. “You want this?” he asked, sweeping an arm to indicate the bloodshed around us.

“No,” I said honestly. “We defend ourselves because we’re under attack. It is you and your army that force war upon us.”

He glanced at the place where the shaman I destroyed had last stood before being transformed into ash. There was a hint of contempt in his eyes.

“I no longer want this,” he informed me. “Once I desired vengeance against you and your people. But after the death of my grandfather, my father was driven mad by the same desire. Now he has come to the same end, again at your hands.”

So the shaman I had just destroyed was this man’s father. That should not bode well for me. And yet I sensed somehow a vague satisfaction in the young warrior before me. Perhaps he was not entirely displeased at being suddenly made leader in his father’s stead.

He said, “I have seen how you are favored by the
barra-banac
. I would be a fool to risk its wrath.” He looked at the bow in my hands with greedy longing. “All I want now is the
barra-banac
.”

Despite the look in his eyes, I didn’t fear him snatching the weapon from me. Not while I lived. The
barra-banac
, as the Skeltai called my bow, was sacred to them. As such, its bearer received something like respect. But not enough to save my life if I stood between them and what they wanted.

I held the bow against me, realizing what the young Skeltai leader was offering. The weapon was no longer hot to my touch, but I still felt its echo in my mind.

“If you went away, you would be back,” I told the Skeltai. “We might bargain for peace now, but one day you would return. It is unavoidable while your people still hunger for the blood of mine.”

He glanced over my deathly pale skin, pointed ears, and winter-seed darkened hair, already showing silver at its roots. It puzzled him, I sensed, that I drew a line between his people and mine when I clearly descended from the same ancestors he did.

But all he said was, “I see no enemy before me. And with the
barra-banac
restored, the Skeltai people will see no enemy before
them
.”

His expression was sincere. And surprisingly, I believed him. I had a sudden premonition, almost a waking vision, of an era of peace between the Skeltai and the citizens of the province.

A curious numbness descended over me as I saw what must be done. I unclenched my grip on the bow and relinquished the weapon into his hands.

The instant the bow passed from my possession, all the colors of the world grew dull before my eyes. The afternoon breeze against my cheek. The heat of the sun beating down on my shoulders. All of it was suddenly less than it had ever been.

In the aftermath of the battle, we tended to our dead and wounded. Immediately after the last Skeltai warrior had disappeared through newly opened portals, taking the bow with them, I went to Hadrian. He was stunned and suffering a severe headache, either through Calder’s shielding him or through the shield having been broken so roughly at Calder’s death. But temple priests soon appeared to attend him. The rest of the injured were taken to the healing hall.

I spoke with the surviving Swiftsfell magickers, expressing our regret at the loss of their elder but our gratitude for their help. I reassured them the Praetor himself, before his death, had vowed they would face no persecution here in Selbius.

All the while I dealt with the Swiftsfell party and assisted with the transportation of the wounded, I was distracted. Searching. I had last seen Terrac just before killing the shaman. He had been in the thick of the fighting and struggling. I had had no glimpse of him since.

I surveyed the churned and body-littered ground around me. The once-beautiful garden that had been the pride of the city was now transformed into a bloodstained battlefield. And there was no sign of Terrac here. Fear gnawing at me, I remembered how his injured arm had been holding him back. How I had worried only a short while ago that he could not survive another fight.

Throughout the rest of that long day, I searched the face of every corpse in recognizable condition, dreading what I would find. I went also to the healing hall and looked for him there. But I never did find Terrac.

____________________

The inhabitants of Selbius showed themselves strong in this time of crises. From commoners in the street to nobles up at the keep, everyone worked over the next few days and nights. We put out fires, tended the injured, buried the dead, and cleaned up the city.

On our third night after the battle, we gathered solemnly in the great hall. Here we toasted our dead and celebrated the living, grateful for the soldiers who had fought for the city in its desperate hour.

Some even toasted the band of outlaws who had mysteriously appeared during the fighting and then disappeared back to their forest just as quickly when it was over. There was a rumor going around that these men were no longer outside the law but were now valued servants of the province.

There was another rumor some found more difficult to credit, despite the many witnesses who attested to it. It was whispered that a party of magickers from another province had appeared in the midst of battle to help us win the day. But if there had truly been such a party, they had slipped away immediately after the fight, perhaps returning to their place of origin.

Despite the questions surrounding this story, there was a general feeling that, whether magickers had fought on our side or not, magic itself was not as forbidden as it had once been. After all, wasn’t the now-deceased Praetor’s own servant, Ilan of Dimmingwood, said to have used some unnatural power against the enemy shaman? And she could not be criticized in this or in anything else after achieving peace for the province.

These were the conversations that swirled around me that night, as I sat among the low tables in the great hall, dining alongside the commoners and castle servants.

Atop the dais at the head of the room, the Praetor’s table was not as full as it should have been. Counselors Branek and Delecarte and a handful of nobles still held their places. But the seats of the Praetor, the Lady Morwena, and the dead Counselor Summerdale were conspicuously empty.

Lady Morwena’s lifeless body had finally been found in the garden the other day. Her death was taken for an accident, and no one seemed greatly interested in exploring the matter. So I kept silent and allowed the truth about her and Summerdale’s conspiracy to pass unknown. Likewise, I kept silent about the contents of Tarius’s locked tower room and honored my personal vow to lose the key and never enter those premises again.

But neither Morwena nor the wizard’s lair were what weighed on my mind tonight. Desperate to be alone with my thoughts, I slipped out of the crowded great hall and into the Praetor’s audience chamber. The vast room was still and dark, but for the dancing glow of a few torches. Slowly, reluctantly, I approached the dais with the Praetor’s tall, throne-like chair. I walked around the chair, running a hand over its ornate carvings, and found in myself no desire to fill it.

Intruding on my thoughts, came the unwanted memory of the Praetor’s letter and ring tucked away in their hiding place in my room, their existence still unknown to all but me, the discreet house steward, and Tarius’s personal healer. Even as the city rebuilt itself over the past few days, it had seemed to be holding its breath, leaderless, waiting to learn which hand would be the next to guide it. It was still waiting.

A slow creaking noise alerted me to someone slipping into the chamber. He must have followed me out of the great hall.

I no longer needed to access my powers through my dragon scale to sense the identity of the person hovering just inside the room. Ever since my magic had returned during the dual with the Skeltai shaman, the dragon scale had become an unnecessary piece of jewelry.

“Come in, Jarrod,” I invited, without turning. “There’s no need to lurk in the shadows.”

The boy approached carefully, as if reluctant to disturb me.

“You want something?” I asked.

He said, “Only to know why you’re so troubled when the war is over and all has come to a happy end.”

“A happy end,” I repeated. Somehow the words did not ring true.

“Is it that you’re worrying about your friend?” he asked. “The Fist captain you’ve been looking for?”

I admitted that was part of it.

The boy hesitated. “I’m not supposed to mention this yet, but I don’t think he meant for you to think him dead.”

I spun around. “What do you mean? Who didn’t mean me to think it?”

Jarrod fidgeted. “It’s only been three days since he left. When he paid me to deliver his message, he said I was to wait until he had been gone five.”

I gave him a stern look. It seemed to melt the last of his resolve.

“It was like this,” the boy hastened. “The captain thought you would try to dissuade him if you knew what he planned, so he didn’t want you to learn of it until he was already long gone. He’s given up his command and left Selbius for good. Says his arm has left him useless as a soldier, and with the end of his career and the death of his master, there’s nothing to hold him here. He wanted me to tell you he’s left to follow his destiny.”

As relieved as I was to learn Terrac was alive and well, I had trouble accepting the rest of the message. I knew he felt responsible for the sacrifice of the young Fist who had died defending him when their patrol was ambushed. But I hadn’t imagined he would resign his command over it.

“What did he mean about following his destiny?” I asked. “Where’s he going?”

Jarrod shrugged skinny shoulders. “He didn’t say.”

I paced the floor, frustration rising at this fresh abandonment. Had Terrac been here, he might have advised me on whether to accept the praetorship. But he had chosen to leave because there was, in his words, “nothing to hold him here.”

The echoing audience chamber wasn’t big enough to contain my emotions. I needed to get away. Stalking out into the corridor and then through the great doors, I escaped outside. There, underneath the open sky and evening stars, I breathed easier.

My feet took me, almost of their own volition, to the district that used to be named the Beautiful. It could no longer be called that after the battle that had taken place here. I avoided the area where the fighting had been thickest. Avoided also the nearby temple, where I knew Hadrian was making a swift and full recovery.

Instead, I sought the pure solitude of the water cemetery, with its walls of hedges and its crisscrossing walkways skimming the surface of the black waters that covered the dead. Yesterday, the Praetor had been laid to rest here. The rites were simple, lacking the usual ceremony to be expected at the funeral of a powerful man. But with the loss of so many in the recent battle, folk had little grief left to spend on a ruler who had not, after all, been known for any great benevolence.

I walked out over one of the walkways spanning the water. When I gazed into the depths, the reflection of a thousand stars obscured my view of the underwater monuments. I was reminded of a night many years ago, when I had stood in this same spot and risked everything for Terrac. Something I seemed fated to do on a regular basis.

Shoving the nagging thought aside, I looked for Praetor Tarius’s tomb. I located the spire of the newly raised monument, which broke the surface of the water to tower above every other marker.

Would my grave one day lie alongside his, as a praetor of the province?

As quickly as the thought flitted through my mind, I was seized by a premonition, as vivid as my waking vision on the day of the battle. And with it, I suddenly knew the answers to all my dilemmas, knew the purpose of so many seemingly futile events. Every path I followed had been leading me inevitably to this one destination. The end was finally clear to me.