Six Heirs (20 page)

“I’m not planning on taking any risks. And we didn’t come all this way to just give up.”

“Good,” the warrior concluded cheerfully.

He started to put away his weapons, while explaining to the Kaulien boy what he wanted him to do.

“Berce is less than a half day’s ride to the east. You will take the trail...”

“Really? Yan is going to get himself killed!”

Léti couldn’t believe that they were taking this seriously.

“Not if he’s careful, and he will be; I trust him.”

Yan couldn’t be happier. Léti, his love, was worried about him, and Grigán the Unbending just complimented him. Where was that army of killers? Bring them on!

The warrior interrupted his daydream, “It’s not like he’s going off on a crusade, after all. All I want is for him to observe and report back to us. All in one Kaulien piece, if possible.”

Yan answered with a twisted smile.

“There is an inn on the sea road, almost at the end of town. I forget the name...”

“The Wine Merchant,” said Corenn, who had kept silent until then.

“That’s it, that’s where most of the heirs stay during the gatherings. Get a room there and watch.”

“Am I going to sleep there?” Yan blurted out.

“You don’t have much choice. Even if you left right now, you couldn’t get there and back tonight. What’s bothering you?”

“No, it’s just that...nothing,” Yan muttered.

But something still nagged at him. The Day of the Promise was tomorrow. He had to be with Léti on that day.

Grigán exchanged looks with Corenn, then continued.

“You will rejoin us tomorrow, or the next day, whenever you think it best. Just make sure you aren’t being followed.”

Yan nodded again. The day after tomorrow, not a chance! He already had made the firm decision to return at sunrise, if possible.

“Speak with as few people as you can. Say that you came for the Day of the Promise, that you are from a Kaulien village, anywhere but Eza, of course. That you’re hoping to find someone. That will explain, at least in part, why you’re nosing around everywhere.”

Yan cringed at the mention of the Promise and searched for Léti’s reaction. But the young woman was lost in her thoughts. Had she even heard?

“Dozens of isolated peasants from the area come to Berce for such occasions. As in your own village, I’m sure. You should pass through unnoticed. Lastly, don’t trust a soul. All right?”

“Not a soul,” Yan repeated in an unsteady voice.

Now all of this seemed a lot less fun.

“Good. Are you still sure?”

Yan stifled his conflicted feelings.

“Of course. It’s going to be as easy as falling off a log. And I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, looking at Léti.

She stepped a few feet away.

Yan could have sworn he heard her crying.

He came within sight of Berce shortly after the apogee. In a rush to complete his task and return to his loved one, he didn’t give his horse a rest and was going to arrive sooner than Grigán had estimated.

After a departure marked by Corenn’s encouraging words, Grigán’s last bit of advice, and more than anything, Léti’s painfully tearful, “See you tomorrow,” he’d led his horse to the trail they hit the night before, which he followed until he got to a wider road.

The apprehension he felt for the first couple of leagues had slowly subsided, mainly because he didn’t see anyone. But it was coming back even stronger now and taking hold of his body, tying knots in his stomach, stiffening his arms and legs, and shortening his breath. Yan knew the cause well enough: fear.

In spite of his slightly
niab
character and the occasional verbal floggings he endured, he was far from being an idiot. If even a fraction of what his companions told him were true, which had to be the case, Berce was going to be a genuine snake’s nest, a hunting trap the size of an entire village, set by a powerful organization of fanatical assassins.

Upon reflection, he didn’t really see how he could discover anything important, besides confirming it was best for his companions to avoid the place. He couldn’t recognize any of the other heirs if he saw them and couldn’t even trust anyone claiming to be one.

Oh well, he was just going to do the best he could, and return straight back to Léti the next day. Best to hold on to that thought.

Berce was a citadel, or more accurately, a town surrounded by a wall about nine feet tall. It was much larger than Eza. In fact, Berce was already a small city. The front gate was open, but Yan counted four men near the opening, lounging about carelessly, sitting against the wall or sprawled out on the grass, nevertheless vigilant enough to keep Yan from passing by unnoticed.

He studied them closely as he came near. They hardly seemed like standard city guards. In addition to their most unmilitary attitude, they weren’t wearing uniforms or anything close to them, and didn’t demonstrate the slightest care for hygiene.

All four of them were even dirtier than Old Vosder: unkempt beards, grimy faces, black hands, clothes that hadn’t been changed for several dékades...

One of them rose to his feet at Yan’s arrival. Yan preferred to bring his mount to a halt and wait patiently for the “soldier” to come over to him, thinking it better to keep a distance from the other three.

The filthy man spoke a few interrogative words to him, meanwhile grabbing hold of his horse’s reins. Yan took note of the gesture but didn’t understand a word of what he said. Was it a Lorelien slang?

“I don’t understand,” he said in Ithare.

One of the other soldiers came over to them. Yan fought the impulse to tear the reins away and gallop at full speed back to his friends. The new arrival addressed him in Ithare.

“Yer not Lorelien?”

“Nope,” he answered in a defiant tone. He continued, more calmly, “No. I’m from Assiora, a village in the center of the Matriarchy.”

The two hideous men stared at him in silence.

“Kaul!” Yan added. “The Kaul Matriarchy! It’s not even a dékade’s ride away!”

The second man’s face finally lit up with recognition. He smiled, then burst out laughing before translating for his counterpart, who caught on and laughed in turn.

“So ye come from wom’n country?”

“Women country?”

“Yeah! There’s jist women o’er there: women-men and men-women!” he laughed even harder.

Yan didn’t quite get the joke but was sure that he didn’t like it. He really wanted to respond in kind, attacking the
apparently liberal Lorelien standards of hygiene, but he was able to control himself and grit his teeth as he waited for the degenerates, who were now all gathered around him, to stop laughing idiotically.

It was a long wait, but they finally showed an interest in him again.

“So, wha’ cha here for?”

“For the Day of the Promise.”

The guard translated for his pals, and the brutes’ potbellies shook with another explosion of laughter. Yan suddenly realized the potential benefit of having clothes like Grigán’s. He would have been treated differently had he come dressed in leather armor, with a four-foot-long blade at his waist. Instead he wore a stupid beige tunic belonging to Léti, and a headband Corenn had tied around his forehead—“A finishing touch for your bachelor look.” Ridiculous!

“So can I enter or not?” he asked, annoyed.

“Yeah, yeah,” the soldier answered, wiping away tears of laughter. “Good luck, friend!”

Yan ignored the new tempest of hilarity that broke out behind him as he passed through the outer wall. Danger, heroism—yeah right! He was sure he was going to hear more of the same over the next couple days.

He swallowed his anger and shame, and observed his surroundings. That’s what he had come for, so the sooner it was done, the sooner he could return to Léti.

The little city was in quite a stir, surely due in large part to the preparations and excitement surrounding tomorrow’s festival.

Berce looked like a nice city. The houses, stables, artisan’s workshops, and other buildings appeared to be somewhat
old, but that gave them a certain charm. He noted that a lot of them were several stories tall, in contrast to the traditional Kaulien architecture.

He walked up what must have been the main street. He passed many busy people on his way, the majority of whom barely glanced at him. Good, at least he would pass through unnoticed. The only exceptions were those who stopped and stared at him in amusement. At first Yan tried to remain indifferent, but then he couldn’t stop himself from responding with dirty looks. He ended up ripping off his headband and undoing his tunic altogether.

Children of all ages scampered about in groups around the streets. Bitter, he promised himself he would keep a close eye on the purse Corenn gave him. He wasn’t about to be fooled twice; he had learned his lesson in Jerval.

He passed another horseman traveling in the opposite direction. Yan noticed he was leading his horse by the bridle. He figured he might draw fewer looks if he did the same. He dismounted and continued on foot.

He came upon what must have been the central square. As it was Lorelien custom to avoid work as much as possible on festival days, preparations for the following day were already well under way.

Citizens had set up various tables, collected from the community, and an equally dissimilar assortment of benches, chairs, and stools. An impressive pile of wood and a fireplace built specifically for the occasion sat a short distance from all the furniture.

But what struck and alarmed Yan the most was the platform. Were the promised couples expected to go up there together, in front of everyone? Or worse, was it that the men
had to stand up there alone and propose? It was possible, after all, that the procedure for the ceremony in Lorelia was very different than in Kaul.

Yan was standing there as if hypnotized by the whole scene, his imagination painting the most terrible scenarios, when a face sprung up right in front of his own.

He had neither seen nor heard the man approaching. The man had slithered his way in front of Yan like a snake, and now stared at him insistently.

Yan briefly returned his fierce stare. The man was shorter than him and wore a common priest’s cloak with the hood pulled up. He must have been in his thirties, but his clean-shaven face and bald head made him look younger. He kept his hands hidden, but that wasn’t what was most alarming.

A shark. His eyes reminded one of a shark. Yan had only seen one once, at the end of a long fishing expedition with a group of fellow villagers. But he would never forget those cold eyes, devoid of all feeling.

Of course, then it had only been a child’s simple interpretation, made at the sight of a dead animal. Now the shark was alive and seemed to be relishing its prey’s fear.

“Excuse me.”

Yan turned around as calmly as possible to avoid starting something he’d have to finish, even though he had only one desire: run away at top speed.

He met another shark behind him.

The second man was less than a yard behind him. He hadn’t made any more noise than the first, and was dressed the same, and had the same hungry look.

Yan froze in terror. For just an instant, he thought he saw a flash of metal in one of the man’s hands. Then the hand disappeared in the folds of the cloak.

Yan continued forward, calmly, without turning back around. He expected to take a dagger in the back at any moment. He led his horse in such a way as to situate it diagonally behind him. Even then, he could feel their eyes burning into the back of his neck.

He stopped at the other side of the square, where a pub offered patio seating, calmly tied up his horse next to another, and chose a seat from where he could observe the frightening men.

They were no longer there. Yan looked over the whole square, but in vain. He couldn’t stop himself from whipping around to make sure they weren’t sitting behind him. But the sharks had fled these waters.

A high-pitched nasal voice made him jump in his seat. He tried as best he could to slow the beating of his heart, and realized that a woman in her fifties had been questioning him since he sat down.

“Wine!” he answered shakily in Ithare.

For a moment he was afraid he’d mistaken the sense of the question, but the woman nodded her head and shortly after brought him a full goblet, which Yan paid for, letting out a sigh of relief. He hated wine and had answered impulsively. However, given the recent rush of emotions, he found the drink had a particularly cheering flavor and mildness.

He turned around again, falsely relaxed. He thought of Grigán. Did the warrior always live that way? Always watching his back?

Would his personal experience be enough to get them out of this mess?

He thought back to the fleeting flash of metal he saw. Beyond a doubt, it was the Züu. Had they planned to kill him?

No, he would already be dead if that were the case...

In his place, an heir wouldn’t have had the slightest chance.

Yan didn’t give a margolin’s ass how they were able to distinguish between heirs and nonheirs. The important thing now was to avoid making a blunder that would cause them to change their mind.

As his eyes scanned the crowd, he noticed that, on the whole, Loreliens weren’t any dirtier than Kauliens. So what were those four hairy apes doing guarding the gates to the city? Were they even from here?