Aethersmith (Book 2) (68 page)

“Very well,” Jinzan relented. It was such nights that made
him grateful he did not dream, as others did. It kept nightmares away as well.

Chapter 38 - Introductions

“I swear I told you all about it,” Brannis protested. He
held his hands up as if to ward off thrown cutlery. Soria still sat across from
him at the same table they had occupied since first settling there to deal with
Faolen’s emergency summons.

“No. No, you missed mentioning that there was a shielding
spell for the entire deck of the ship. I spent hours in the rain, soaked
through to my …” Soria began, but she must have noticed that her voice was
rising. She caught herself, and continued as a harsh whisper: “… soaked through
to my nether-garments.”

“You forgot,” Brannis insisted. “I am sure I told you.”

“You know, Erund, a sensible man learns to lose this
argument, admit he was wrong, and move on.”

Somewhere above Veydrus, the two of them were sleeping in
shared quarters on board the
Daggerstrike
. As captain, Juliana had her
own, and as commander of all Kadrin military forces, no one objected when Kyrus
joined her. Still shaken from her close encounter with the Megrenn military,
and being dragged bodily from her own ship, Juliana had been rather more
forgiving of her earlier discomforts than Soria seemed to be.

“I suppose sensible men are liars, then. I would admit it if
I did not remember telling you about the shield,” Brannis said, smiling to
diffuse the rising anger Soria was showing.

Soria muttered something under her breath in Kheshi as she
turned her head to look anywhere but at Brannis.

“What was that?” he asked. Brannis had some guesses but none
were flattering. It was his curse that he felt compelled to ask anyway.

“Nothing. Just a little mantra they made us recite at the
temple. It’s supposed to be calming, but I don’t know if it’s working.”

“Maybe when we are done in Acardia, we can visit Khesh. You
can show me where you grew up.”

“Maybe.” Soria did not sound enthusiastic, so Brannis did
not press the issue.

Soria looked down, and began fishing about in her coin
purse, the metallic clattering drawing the attention of the proprietor. Brannis
felt a pang of guilt, since they had been occupying a corner table of his
establishment for hours. Soria assuaged that guilt easily enough with a pile of
eckle coins whose value was difficult to count, spilled haphazardly across the
table, but there was at least ten times what they owed for their meal.

“Let’s go,” Soria said, standing up. “We had a day planned.”

Greuder’s Pastries was closed for the day when they arrived.
Their interworld distraction had delayed them into mid afternoon, while Greuder
closed up shop shortly after noontime. The handle of the door jiggled a little
when Brannis gave it a pull, but it held fast.

“We can try again tomorrow,” Soria suggested. “I cannot
imagine that such a problem will come up twice in two days.”

“No. I think he is still in there. Follow me,” Brannis said.

He walked around the building, down a narrow space between
the bakery and the silversmith who owned the shop next door, and around to the
back of the building. There was another door there in the alleyway. Brannis
knocked.

“We are closed on this side as well, sir,” Greuder’s
familiar voice called out from inside. “Come back in the morn.”

Brannis knocked again.

“Still closed.”

Brannis knocked a third time. He heard footsteps from inside
the bakery. There was a noise of some bar being drawn. The door swung open.

“Now listen here—” Greuder began, but stopped, mouth agape.

“Can we come in?” Brannis asked.

Greuder nodded, stepping aside to allow Brannis and Soria to
get by him.

“Kyrus, what are you
doing
here?” Greuder asked, once
he had herded them inside, and secured the door once more.

The back of the bakery was packed with shelves full of
ingredients and tables for mixing, rolling, and kneading. Dominating the whole
of it, though, was the large stone oven from whence came spiced crescents.
Alas, the oven was cold, and Greuder had been cleaning up after the day’s work
when Brannis’s knocking had interrupted him.

“Well, first off, do not call me Kyrus. I am going by the
name Sir Erund Hinterdale, and I came from Marker’s Point. I figured I could
not ignore the resemblance to a certain fugitive, but I can explain it as a
distant relation. As for why I am here, I wanted to see how you had been faring
in my absence.

“Well, spiced crescents do not sell like they once did, but
otherwise I have fared well enough. You seem unusually hale and hearty, though
I imagine a suit of armor can hide a lot,” Greuder said with a wink. “Are you
going to introduce me?”

“Soria Hinterdale,” Soria stepped in and introduced herself.
Brannis cringed, remembering the talks that Kyrus had with Greuder about
Abbiley. He also noticed that she was playing up her Kheshi accent.

“Another distant relation?” Greuder ventured a guess.

Brannis relaxed a bit as Greuder did not attempt to make the
more obvious—

“Wife,” Soria replied, tossing Brannis’s hopes of avoiding
an awkward conversation right overboard.

“Congratulations!” Greuder cried out, beaming. “Kyrus,
you’ve done well for yourself, picked a real beauty.”

“Well, this is all sort of unofficial—”

“Yes, as fugitives, Kyrus and I have not had the chance to
have a proper ceremony,” Soria clarified.

“Well, of course. I can understand that, certainly. My
congratulations to the both of you, though, in the hope that you can settle
down somewhere nice, where you can leave your troubles here behind you.”

“I think once I have seen to some business here in Acardia,
we will take ourselves off to Khesh. Soria is Acardian, but she traveled down
there with her family as a young girl, and was raised there,” Brannis said. It
seemed better to tell Greuder their actual plans, and let the information be
known, rather than spend a few seconds coming up with a lie, and having Soria
beat him to the storytelling.

Brannis itched to ask about Abbiley, but Soria seemed intent
on thwarting his efforts, making sure Greuder knew that he was hers. Greuder
also seemed complicit, even though it was out of politeness in his case, not
mentioning Kyrus’s sweetheart in front of Soria.

They talked a long while, snacking on tarts that were left
over from the day’s sales. Kyrus heard bits and pieces of the aftermath of his
escape, and the reemergence of Denrik Zayne as the Scourge of the Katamic once
more. Brannis filled Greuder in on the missing portion of Kyrus’s story,
leaving out the more fantastical ones, like the explosion on Marker’s Point.
They left the bakery by early evening, taking the back way again. Soria left
Greuder with a trade bar, for use in any emergency that might come up due to
their meeting. It was a cryptic warning, but Brannis knew that if his
suspicions about a conspiracy were right, there might be bystanders who got
pulled into it as well.

“It ought to be time to find ourselves dinner, but I stuffed
myself with enough blackberry tarts to last me the night,” Soria commented as
she strolled down the wide cobblestone avenues of Scar Harbor alongside
Brannis.

“I could have done with a spiced crescent, to see if they
were all that Kyrus made them out to be. We ought to go back before we leave
the city.”

“Bra—Erund, you have to know that isn’t a good idea. I know
this all feels like a homecoming lark, but you are the one who thinks that
something nefarious is going on here. Anyone you talk to is endangered, if only
a little, just by speaking to you,” Soria told him.

“Yes, I know why you gave Greuder a whole trade bar, just
for interrupting his daily cleaning of the bakery. He might need to flee Scar
Harbor if people start coming after him to get leverage over me.”

Soria wrapped herself around Brannis’s arm as they walked,
squeezing it in lieu of a full hug.

“At least you understand that much. I was getting worried
that I would have to do all the underhanded thinking for both of us.”

“Well, I am still not comfortable with calling myself ‘Sir’
Erund. Impersonating a knight is an actual crime in Acardia.”

“You are
not
impersonating a knight. There is no
Erund Hinterdale to take offense. We made him up,” Soria said cheerfully,
smiling up at Brannis. She seemed to be enjoying playing at being the knight’s
lady. Soria was such a warrior all the time, from what he had gathered from
Varnus and Tanner.

How much does she envy Juliana her life of parties,
fashions, and idleness? Juliana certainly seemed hungry for a taste of the
warrior life.

“Yes, but I am not a knight at all. Whether I take the name
of a real knight or just make one up, it is still just as criminal.”

“I am sorry, Sir Brannis Solaran, but I seem to rather
strongly recollect that you
are
a knight. The ones around here are
hereditary knights and bootlicks who get the title handed to them for
‘meritorious distinction’ and such nonsense. If anything, they’re the ones
impersonating knights, not you.”

* * * * * * * *

In the small hours of the morning, shortly before dawn, a
small crowd still occupied one of the innumerable portside taverns along
Kadris’s waterfront. Work in the port continued round the clock, though it
ebbed and flowed, slowest in the wee hours, but never quite stopping. The
taverns mirrored the pattern, with one or more always open, come sun or moon.

Tanner awoke to the sound of monohorns thundering across the
table in front of him. The huge, savage beasts had already trampled his head
flat, and were proceeding to run in loops just to vex him. Three empty bottles
lay on the table in front of him but, with effort, they turned into just a
single bottle, lying on its side, a leftover splash of whiskey pooled shallow
within.

He started trying to trace back his evening. He had been
kidnapped by a worried Varnus, forced at drink-point to listen to a convoluted
tale about messages being ferried every which way from Veydrus to Tellurak and
back. The burly old guard captain had matched him drink for drink, but Tanner
had never had the head for it that Zellisan did, and that went for Varnus as
well.

“I was beginning to think I would have to find you another
time,” a voice called in his direction. It sounded familiar but he could not
place it. He raised his head from where it had laid, pressed flat against the
wood grain of the table, for how long he could not tell. The side of his face
was sore, and a line of drool clung to the corner of his mouth. He wiped it
away with his sleeve as he looked for the one who had addressed him.

Tanner blinked in confusion when he saw Captain Stalyart
walking over from a nearby table to join him. It was the same man, there was no
mistaking him. The bronzed skin, dark hair, the amused expression permanently
carved into the features of his face—there could never be two such as him,
except as twinborn.

“Just to be on the safe side here … where are we?” Tanner
asked, wincing and putting a hand to his eyes to shield them from the lantern
light.

“Kadris,” Stalyart’s twin replied. “You are not imagining.
Like you, I try to keep myselves easy to remember. I do not play at games of
disguises and layer upon layer of selves.”

“So what’s your name here, then?” Tanner asked.

“Hmm, perhaps some other time I will tell you, once I know
you can be trusted with it. For now, I will answer to Stalyart if you call me
such,” Stalyart’s twin said, pulling up a chair with a shrieking noise of wood
scraping against wood that made Tanner’s head resonate like a struck chime.
Stalyart sighed, plunking down a bottle on the table that looked like a more
reputable version of his own. Stalyart’s had a cork in it, appeared to be full,
and had not lain for the better part of the night in a pool of spilt liquor and
drool. “The cure that sickens.” Stalyart pulled the cork, and offered it to
Tanner, then took a seat, straddling the chair with his arms propped up on the
back.

Tanner gave the bottle a skeptical look for just long enough
to realize that looking hard at anything hurt. He sat up, slouched back in his
chair, eyes half closed to ward away the worst of the light. He took a long
pull at the bottle, tasting nothing but the welcome burning sensation as he
swallowed.

“So you’re here,” Tanner observed, once he had a few
swallows to stop the worst of his pains.

“So I am.”

“Why?”

“Ahh, so now you are awake. Excellent. Yes, ‘why’ is a very
good question,” Stalyart’s twin said. “You see, I am a cautious man. One may
not think it from the occupations I choose, but given that each man must work,
I am cautious when you consider all things.”

“That clears that up,” Tanner replied. “Clear as … as …”

“Yes, yes, something not very clear at all. Your wits are,
regrettably, a lost cause this morning. Please listen, though, because I come
on behalf of a friend. There may come a time when we two might stop a war.”

“Oh, you some hot-as-hobnails sorcerer around here? You got
the ear of those Megrenn bastards and their High Council?” Tanner asked,
overplaying his sarcasm to the point of self-mockery.

“No, but consider this. Brannis and Councilor Jinzan Fehr
are both relying on you to relay messages,” Stalyart said, talking as if to a
young child, slowly and clearly.

“Yep, that’s me, message boy to the twinborn and the
powerful.”

“Ahh, but consider that they have only your memory to rely
on, not wax seals and warded parchments. You not only carry each message, held
open in your hands, but you must read it, remember it, and recite it.”

“Oh yeah. I’m a talented guy. A regular talking parrot.”

“Have you considered that perhaps, with a bit of help, those
messages could be … rewritten—perhaps a few words here and there,” Stalyart’s
twin suggested.