Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (16 page)

Battle Lines Drawn

“Tell me what you know,” Elias said as he idly examined
the edge of his sword. “Leave nothing out.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Macallister cried and
hung his head. “Just the same as I told Lady Denar.”

Elias eyed the rancher from beneath the brim of his hat. Macallister
had stewed in the county jail for several days and it showed. The beginnings of
a beard accompanied his copious mustache and the roots of his hair showed
white. A diet of stale bread left his tanned skin sallow and slightly
diminished his prodigious girth. “Tell me again,” said Elias.

“I want to see Cormik.”

“In time. He is charged with the assault of a Marshal and
conspiracy against the crown, but due to his injuries he is under house arrest.”

“My son had nothing to do with any of this! And you’re no
Marshal. You just can’t declare yourself the law.”

Elias held out his sword and cocked his head. “You know I
wonder if any of the flame this blade absorbed remains stored?” He leveled the
steel at Macallister. “What was it you said to activate the spell? Fera? No, no—Fiera?
Forda? Wait, wait, I remember. FEOR—”

“I was at the Arcane Summit!” Macallister all but screamed.

Elias sat back, put his feet up, and smiled. He motioned
with his hand, urging Macallister on.

“And that’s where I met Slade.”

“He approached you at the Summit?”

“No. I told you, I approached him.”

“Why him if, as you claim, he was previously unknown to you?
Why not someone else?”

Macallister opened his arms and sighed. “I noticed him is all.
He’s the kind of man that stands out. He had presence. As chance had it, he
attended many of the same panels as I. It seemed we both shared an interest in
the magic of the ancients and artifacts of old. He always seemed to be there
before I came in the morning and when I left at night he lingered, like he was searching
for something.”

Elias noticed that Macallister calmed as he talked. As ever,
the arrogant rancher loved the sound of his own voice.

“He never mingled or approached anyone,” Macallister continued.
“He was very quiet. However, there was just something about him.”

“Enlighten me,” Elias said, keeping his tone nonchalant and
civil though a dark inner voice urged him to beat the life from the insolent
viscount.

“Something in the way he moved...” Macallister paused
searching for the right words. “He reminded me of your father in that way. He moved
at his own pace, completely at ease. He was like a wolf making his way amongst
prey. One could tell this was a dangerous man—a man not to be trifled with.

So, I sat next to him at a panel on enchanted armaments and
introduced myself. I made small talk and he mostly ignored me until I mentioned
your father and then he was all ears.”

“How did that come up in conversation if he wasn’t talking
back?” Elias asked.

“The panel was discussing Eurinthian forging techniques, and
I say that I know someone who has a sword like that.”

Elias leaned forward. This was it, he thought. “Then what? Tell
me exactly what he said.”

Macallister licked his chapped lips. “He says, a sword like
that could cause a lot of trouble in the right hands, and gives me a look.” Macallister
swallowed. “So I say, the guy who has it gives me plenty of trouble indeed.”

“A trouble named Padraic Duana,” Elias supplied with a dark
glint in his eye, “and you wanted him dead, because he was the only thing
standing between you and complete domination of this Duchy and the Knoll trade.”

“No! I wanted him out of the picture, but not dead!”

“This is what you told this man, this stranger?”

“Not exactly.”

“Exact is just what I need you to be, Macallister.”

“It’s kind of fuzzy.”

Elias stood and pressed close to Macallister’s cell, one
white-knuckled hand gripping the bars, while the other squeezed the hilt of his
sword. “Do try.”

Macallister withdrew further into the wall of his cell. “He
starts asking me questions. He’s all ears, all of a sudden. He asks me about
your father, where he served. He asks about his sword, what it looks like. So I
tell him.”

Elias drew his sword. “This sword?” Macallister nodded
weakly. “How did you know about it? You and my father were never as chummy as
you liked to pretend.”

“After the war there was a great banquet to celebrate in
Lucerne Palace. All of the gentry were invited to Peidra. The revelry went on
for the better part of a week. I saw your father there in his dress uniform,
and he’s wearing that sword strapped against his back.”

“You remember it so well after all that time?”

“It’s a singular weapon. It demands notice.”

Elias felt his badge grow warm. His voice went low. “What
aren’t you telling me?”

Macallister swallowed, for he saw his death, barely
restrained in Elias’s coal-black eyes. “I did see it once at your homestead,
years and years ago, in your father’s study, on display with his coat and
badge. I picked up the sword. He was quick to snatch it back, but I could tell
it was enchanted. It was the only time I’ve seen your father ruffled. After
that I never saw the sword again. Your father hid it away, but I always
wondered about it.”

“What happened next?”

“So he says to me, maybe we can help each other out. He’s
always wanted an Eurinthian sword, and I’ve always wanted this guy off his
land. He tells me he can be very persuasive, for the right price.”

“So you hire him to kill my father.”

“No! I just wanted you off your land. This stranger is a
wizard, that much is clear. I figure he can find a way.”

“He found a way.” Elias thrust his sword between the bars
and into Macallister’s cell and with the flat of his blade lifted the rancher’s
chin and forced him to look him in the eye. “What did you think he’d do? Charm
us into packing up and shipping out overnight? Kill our livestock? Burn our
rickhouse? Where would you draw the line!”

“I don’t know,” Macallister whispered, as tears tracked down
his grimy face. “I tried to call Slade off, I did, but I couldn’t find him. The
man is a ghost.”

“You lie!” Elias screamed, but his badge had gone cool. He withdrew
his blade and reached into the cell and grasped Macallister by his
sweat-stained shirt. He pulled Macallister against the bars and pressed his
forehead to his own. “I’ll see you twist yet. But not until I take everything
from you, as you have from me. I will go to the queen herself and see you
stripped of title, lands, house, and name.”

He threw Macallister back. The rancher stumbled backward on
weakened legs and crumpled to the floor. Elias strode out of the jailhouse,
leaving a broken Roderick Macallister behind him.

Elias’s mind raced and his pulse thundered as he stepped
from the dim twilight of the jailhouse and out into the midday sun. He slammed
the door behind him, silencing Macallister who screamed after him.

“Well?” said Bryn, who waited for him in the sliver of shade
afforded by the diminutive structure.

“He’s telling the truth.” Somehow, this fact made Elias all
the more angry, and he trembled with the tide of black emotion that tore
through him.

“What do you mean he’s telling the truth?” Bryn asked.

Elias took a steadying breath. “Macallister didn’t hire
Slade to murder us, as such, but to drive us off our land, force us to give up
the distillery. Still, he knew it would go poorly for us.”

“As if that isn’t enough. But how can you be sure he’s not
lying?”

“My father’s shield.”

“What? His badge?”

“Yes.” Elias, placed a hand on the upside-down, tear shaped
Marshal’s shield. “I first noticed it when we confronted Macallister at his
ranch. When he lied to me about his involvement in the ambush the shield grew
warm. When someone tells me a lie, the shield responds. It tingles.”

“Useful, that,” Bryn said with a smirk. “The ability to
detect untruths is a powerful boon indeed, particularly for a lawman. Between
that and the sword you’ve inherited a tidy little armament from your father.”

Elias grunted, but his attention was still inside the
jailhouse with Macallister, though the change of subject did much to calm him. “The
duster as well,” Elias said, absently. “Macallister’s enchanted dagger bounced
right off it.”

Bryn inspected the duster. She ran her hands along the side,
probing the material. She felt Elias stiffen, but pretended not to notice. “It
looks like there are interconnected plates of some kind on the inside of the
coat. It’s serviceable as light armor. These three items alone would fetch a
small fortune on the open market.”

Bryn looked up at Elias. His attention appeared to be fixed
on some distant point far over her shoulder. “Elias? Are you listening to me?”

Elias offered her a thin smile. “I’m sorry Bryn. I just have
a lot on my mind.”

“Penny for your thoughts?” Elias cocked his head and transfixed
her with his black eyes. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Only that you reminded me of my mother just now. She
used to say that. I guess it’s a popular saying but...” Elias looked down at
his feet. The rage that had sustained him for days suddenly blew out of him,
and he felt at once alone and afraid.

“Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind or just stand
there?” she said, in what Elias had begun to realize was typical Bryn fashion,
placing a hand on her hip and arching an eyebrow at him.

Elias found himself warming to Bryn’s particular kind of
concern. Looking at her crinkled, mock-serious expression, he found it a little
harder to feel sorry for himself. He forced another smile, but this time it
came a little easier. “I just don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve stormed
the estate of the most powerful man in fifty leagues and taken him down without
much of a leg to stand on. I don’t know what repercussions this will bring down
on me. Macallister has powerful friends.”

“And so, Elias, do you. Besides, we’ll get a signed
confession out of Macallister before the day’s out.”

Elias shrugged. “Then there’s this business with the Scarlet
Hand. You heard what Phinneas said, they never leave loose ends.” Elias paused,
and came to the heart of the matter. “I’m worried for Danica. She’s all I have
left. I’m in a bit over my head here. I’m just a distiller, who is very lucky
he didn’t get killed bringing in his father’s murderers.”

“You are about as much a distiller as I am a handmaiden.”

“I’m an excellent distiller.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” Bryn looked him
dead in the eye. “What would your father do?”

Elias returned her gaze, his eyes at once hard and
smoldering. “He would protect his family and his land. He would see justice
done, at any cost.”

Bryn looked hard at him, and in the ardor of that
calculating stare, Elias realized that for all her glib remarks and
affectations, Bryn Denar was a cunning woman. “There you have it. Only you’re
not official—yet. As a daughter of House Denar I can usually see that my will
is done, but a Marshal doesn’t serve under the purview of the Constabulary, a
Magistrate, or even a Duchy. A Marshal enforces crown law and has jurisdiction throughout
all Galacia. Only the crown can appoint a Marshal. The queen’s cousin has the
queen’s ear, but, as you say, you are but a distiller.”

Elias saw what Bryn was doing, but a fire rose in him
nevertheless. While mere moments before he wished for nothing so much as a
return to a simpler time when his biggest worry was what to make for dinner, he
realized that he could never return to his life as it once was.

Elias adjusted his baldric, so that his sword rested on his
back for riding. “Perhaps,” Elias said as he untied Comet’s reigns from the
tether post, “but I would think at the least the queen would care to meet the
man who uncovered the sect behind the greatest threat to the crown since the
war. After all, I am the only man in recorded history to have killed a ghost.”

Bryn arched an eyebrow. “You’re coming to Peidra with me?”

Elias mounted Comet and looked down at the bemused tax
bursar. “Yes ma’am, I reckon I am. Now, let’s get moving. We have a lot to do,
and not a lot of time in which to do it.”

†

“I’m going with you,” Danica said and crossed her arms.

“Out of the question,” Elias replied. “You are still recovering
from your injuries and—”

“And what? It might be dangerous. I am just a girl after
all.”

“I was going to say that you will be missed at the Academy.”
Elias sat back and took a breath. Danica glared at him as if she could bend his
will with her eyes alone.

The party once again found themselves at the doctor’s table.
Neither Elias nor Danica could bear to stay in the house they had shared with
their father for so long. Moreover, both he and Danica still required the doctor’s
ministrations for their myriad injuries. Phinneas for one had given up hope
that Elias’s wound would ever close, but truth be told, Elias thought the doctor
happy to have the company, as he extended an invitation to Bryn and her
retainers as well. He had also taken on Lar, who refused to leave his friends
alone to their grief.

“You said you can’t go back to distilling whiskey after all
that has happened,” Danica said. “So how do you expect me to return to the
Academy as if my world hasn’t just been upturned? I’ll have nothing to come
home to if you’re off playing lawman.” Her words cut into Elias. The others at
the table busied themselves with studying their mugs of coffee. “I can’t ignore
what’s happened anymore than you, and I’m just as hungry for vengeance.”

“I’ve already lost you once, I couldn’t bear it to happen a
second time.”

“And you think I feel any different? Tarnation, Elias, we’re
safest together. Dad taught me to handle myself, and I’m not without my uses. I
am a healer after all.”