Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) (11 page)

She threw the door to his room open. It slammed against the wall with a bang.

He turned to face her. He’d stripped his shirt off. It lay on the bed covered in dried blood. His breastplate lay on the floor.

Something about him, his realness, his presence, seemed increased since he left. Though his face was lined and haggard and his beard made him look like a prophet from a wode, his body was still lean and compact. There was a relaxed, slackness gone. He seemed ready. Poised. Like a cat on the prowl.

She took all this in in an instant, and then ran across the room to him. Threw herself up and into him, wrapped her arms around his neck.

Though it felt like running into a brick wall, he caught her. Wrapped his arms around her and held her.

Something inside her, something she hadn’t realized had been clenched for…for years, forever? Relaxed, and she started crying. Though his skin was pale and he looked carved from cold stone, he radiated strength and warmth and he smelled like leather and oil and wet horse-hair.

He was security. He was safety. It was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before. She’d die before she gave it up again.

“You didn’t leave,” he said.

Vanora shook her head, still buried in the nape of his neck, not saying anything.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Heden said. She could tell he was smiling.

Eventually she pushed herself away, violently. Eyes still brimming with tears, she punched him. Hard.

“You said a day!” she hit him again. “You said a day and then you left me here alone!”

He took her abuse.

“I know,” Heden said, smile gone. “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to….” She looked at him, waiting. He didn’t know how to begin to explain to her the complex collection of obligations and burdens she had so recently slotted into. Near, but not at, the top.

He decided to deflect.

“I brought you a horse,” he said shyly.

Her anger evaporated. She smiled. Her smile grew.

“Really?” she asked, her voice small.

Heden nodded.

“He’s in a stable. You’ll like him. I’ll teach you how to ride him.”

She gasped. He pressed his advantage.

“He likes apples,” he said.

Her hands clenched with eagerness. Then she frowned.

“Are you going to leave again?” she asked. She had to ask it quick before fear of the answer made her run from it.

Heden took a deep breath. This was going to be difficult.

“Not like that. Not into the forest again. But there are things we need to talk about.”

She remembered the abbot. She wanted to tell him what he said, but she couldn’t. It was like he put a spell on her. She deflected, sighing and rolling her eyes as she sat down on his bed with a flop.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I opened the inn while you were gone and since then the girls have come and they…,” she waved her hand at the door behind him. “They enjoy…practice,” she said lamely. “But I needed the help.”

“Uh-huh,” Heden said.

“I did!” she objected. “I haven’t…had any customers. I thought you’d be…proud.”

Heden looked at her, head tilted to one side. “I am. I’m…I’m amazed. If you’d asked permission, I’d have said no. But coming back to this…for some reason made me feel…,” made him feel like a younger man. Like the Hammer & Tongs was his home again, like it was with the Sunbringers, instead of a prison.

“Feels like home,” he said, summing over all his thoughts neatly.

She smiled again.

“You’re not angry at me?”

“Well,” Heden said. “No. No I guess I’m not, though…the girls.”

Vanora shrugged. “Miss Elowen doesn’t mind.”

Heden frowned at her.

“I bet she does.”

“Well, she doesn’t mind
much
,” Vanora said.

“And you’ve talked to her about this,” Heden said skeptically.

“Well,” Vanora said. “Look she obviously knows, right? And she hasn’t told any of the girls no. I mean they’re only here a few hours a day,” she said and it sounded like she was sulking now. “It’s been a problem the whole time; our hours are all messed up.”

Heden looked at the girl, and marveled. He couldn’t say no to her.

“I mean,” she continued, “we can afford to hire help but I don’t want to hire anyone I don’t know,” she said. The words came quickly; she enjoyed sharing her problems with Heden. She was eager for his approval.

“Alright listen,” he said. “As long as they…,” he made a gesture with his hands like he was holding an invisible orb. “Constrain their activities to serving and cooking and cleaning?”

Vanora looked at him sadly and took a deep breath.

“Ok,” she said.

He scratched his head, and looked around the room. Then looked back at her.

“You just lied to me,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. She kicked her feet and looked at the floor. “I forgot about that.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Heden said.

“Well, I mean I can
tell
them, but I have no way to
make
them…,”

“Sure you do,” Heden said. “Tell them if they do it, they’re sacked.”

Vanora looked at him. “I can’t tell them that, they’re my friends!”

Heden shrugged. “Then I’ll tell them,” he said.

“Alright, alright,” she said. “I’ll tell them. I’ll blame you, they’ll believe that,” she said darkly.

“Good girl,” he said.

She looked at him again and smiled. Incredibly happy he was back.

“Well,” Heden said raising an eyebrow, “mostly good.”

She laughed. Heden enjoyed that. Then for some reason, unbidden, came the thought of Taethan.

He stopped smiling. He looked at the floor. The room grew cold. Vanora noticed something had changed.

Heden scratched his chest and realized he was still shirtless. He went to his dresser. Pulled a clean shirt from it, smelled it.

“You washed my clothes,” he said.

Vanora shrugged. She noticed something in his voice.

“What happened in the forest?” she asked.

Heden ignored her. For the moment. He put a clean shirt on.

“That’s what you meant when you said we had things to talk about,” she said. “You didn’t mean the inn.”

He tucked the shirt into his breeches. He looked around the room. There wasn’t anywhere to sit but the bed.

“You’re different,” Vanora said.

Heden nodded.

“There are things I have to do,” he said.

“What things?” she asked. And it hurt him, the ignorance he heard there. He didn’t know how to explain it.

“Before,” he started. “Before I met you, a long time ago, I took an oath.”

She nodded. “To serve the church,” she said.

“Well,” he said. “Not really. To serve…I thought I took an oath to serve Cavall,” he said. Vanora recognized the name. The patron god of Corwell. Religion was never high on her lists of interests. “But I met someone, an abbot at the church, and the more we talked the more I thought…that what Cavall wanted was for me to do the right thing.”

Vanora looked at him blankly.

“That I shouldn’t worry about what the gods wanted,” Heden explained, “I should just worry about what was right, and the gods would be happy.”

Vanora nodded. That made sense.

“That’s why I went into the forest,” Heden said with some relief. It felt like he’d found a way to explain things. “Not because the church asked me to, but because I thought it was the right thing to do.”

Vanora nodded.

“Well,” Heden said, “everything went wrong in the forest. I…I failed. I didn’t figure out what I was supposed to do until it was too late,” he said frowning.

He seemed in pain, he stopped talking. Vanora decided to say something.

“I think I met the abbot,” she ventured. How much could she tell him?

Heden’s head jerked up. “What?”

“A man came here,” she said, and explained everything except the conversation on the porch.

Heden listened. “That was him,” he said. “I’m glad someone was looking out for you.”

“He said something,” Vanora tried to remember exactly. “He said the list of your enemies was growing longer.”

Heden nodded. “That’s true. And I have to do something about it. These people, the count, the bishop,” he said, “someone has to be punished for what happened in the forest.”

“The bishop?” she asked. “The bishop of the church?”

Heden nodded.

“The man who lives in that great stone building with the tall pointy things?”

“Spires,” Heden said. “Yeah.”

“What about him?”

“He’s responsible for what happened. And someone has to confront him. Stop him.”

“Who?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Me,” he said.

Vanora stared at him. “How!?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You can’t…,” she started. “Can’t he just,” she wasn’t clear on the power of the bishop, “can’t he just point at you and turn you to stone, or hit you with lightning from the sky or something?!”

Heden cleared his throat, chose not to mention that she was describing things he himself had done, and the bishop was far more powerful.
Or is he?
Heden wondered. He held out hope that the bishop’s appointment might be purely political.

“Basically,” he said.

“You can’t!” Vanora cried out.

Heden’s chest tightened.

"I don't understand. Why do you have to do this? We have the inn. It's real, I made it work. It was dead when you were here, now it's alive. You can’t leave again! You can’t….” There were worse things than leaving.

“I have to,” he said. “Because of what happened in the forest.” Things Vanora would never understand. Things Heden wasn’t sure he understood. “Because I’m the only one who knows. Because…,”
because he manipulated me into doing his dirty work
. “Because someone I cared about died, and it’s the bishop’s fault.”

He looked at her. He was exhausted; he wished he could sit down. She was desperate and confused.

"So it's up to me to do something about it."

"What?"

"I don't know. I'm going to...have a talk with Gwiddon. He sent me there. He picked me to do the bishop’s dirty work. On purpose. Because he knew I’d fail."

She didn’t understand what he meant, but she recognized the look in his eyes. His voice was casual, but his whole posture framed rage barely contained.

"You're going to kill him, aren't you?"

Heden cast a dark look at her.

"The man who was down here, that first day.” When she first woke up in Heden’s inn. “Your friend. That’s him. You're going to kill him."

"I don't know," he said.

"And then you're going to kill the bishop?!"

Silence. Then, "I don’t know." But she heard it in his voice. He didn’t know if he could. But he knew he had to try.

She broke the silence between them. "The polder said…,”

“The who?” he snapped. She pulled back.

“The polder who came and….”

“Describe him,” Heden said. His voice had changed.

She described the polder he met at the inn in Ollghum Keep.

He took several deep breaths. He was returning to the state of readiness she’d seen him when she first came into the room.

“When was he here?”

Vanora described the incident with the ratmen and the assassins and the ghoul.

Heden’s fist were clenched when she was done.

“How many…,” he asked. “How many of the radenwights were killed?” he asked, though she sensed there was something more important on his mind. Something about the polder.

“A few,” she said. “Not many. They saved me,” she said.

Heden nodded. “That’s something else that worked. And now I owe them, too.”

“He’ll try again,” Vanora said, and though she didn’t want it to, a little fear crept into her voice.

“The count?” Heden asked.

Vanora nodded.

Heden rubbed his beard, thinking. He was getting a headache, thinking about everyone he suddenly needed to stop or kill.

“I’ll take care of him,” Heden said. That would be easy. Well, easier than the bishop at least.

Vanora deflated at that. She didn’t want to hear more about Heden going out to risk his life.

"What if this never stops?" she asked. She suddenly felt cold, she hugged herself. "What are you going to do? You can't kill every evil pigfucker in the city."

More silence, but it was shrinking. Heden crossed the room and stood before her. She looked away.

"Don't say pigfucker," Heden said quietly.

Vanora shrugged.

“Do you want me to stay?” Heden asked. He couldn’t leave without her permission.

She did. She absolutely did. She wanted it more than she’d wanted anything. But she was used to not getting everything she wanted. And she couldn’t ask this of him. She couldn’t explain why, she just couldn’t.

“No,” she said. “I just want you to come back.”

Heden took a deep breath. “What did the polder say?”

Vanora looked up at him. Her eyes were dark. Guessing at his reaction, she didn’t want to tell him.

“He said to tell you…the Ghoul was only the beginning.”

Heden pursed his lips.

“I see,” he said coldly. “Well,” he took a deep breath. “Listen to me…,”

Vanora nodded.

“These people,” Heden said, “all these people. They don’t know what I can do. I’m tougher than they think,” he was trying to reassure her and she knew it. But she also saw something, some truth there. Something that hadn’t been there before he went into the forest. Something new.

“It’s going to be hard, when I leave but…I’ve dealt with worse things than the count and the polder and the bishop.” That was mostly true. The bishop was the biggest unknown.

“I don’t suppose…,” Heden began. Vanora looked at him.

“I am
very
hungry,” he said, as though ashamed to admit it.