Brine
didn’t need to reach for his monocle to recognize the taller of the newcomers.
He saw right away the additional plume of feathers on either shoulder
plate—a military designation worn by only one member of the Jashian
military—and he heard right away the familiar jangle of pendants and
medals bouncing off his chest.
Admittedly, there were several military
officers who wore these honors beneath their mail, but only one wore
enough to cover half his undershirt; silver disks of bravery, gold triangles of
excellence, the former dangling from turquoise bands, the latter supported by
lime ribbons.
And that mustache, Brine thought,
smiling at the distorted gray crescent drooping below his nose. No one has a mustache like Serit.
The man accompanying Serit, however—the
one with the coppery-red beard and dark brown attire—Brine had no idea who this
was. If he had to hazard a guess, he would have said scout, but that was
purely conjecture.
He could see a trail of mud and leaves
littering the floor behind the man, so scout seemed as good a guess as
any. Scout or runner, he amended, but definitely not a common field
hand. With such delicate business at hand, Serit would not have held audience
with the man unless he was some form of messenger. And even then, considering
what was about to happen in the room behind them, it would have to be a fairly
significant message.
But hadn’t something fairly
significant taken place?
Thinking back to what Stonyface had said
after rescuing him from the Shungate cretins, he believed there had. The
officer had apologized for the guards attempted assault on his wauk and
explained that the castle was a bit shorthanded after the Westpost incident.
What incident this was, Brine could only imagine, but it would certainly
explain this filthy harbinger’s presence in the chamber.
Watching the two men enter, Brine wondered
if the incident were related to the Mela. That particular river did flow
through the Western Sway—just north of Westpost, if memory served—and it had
looked rather unhealthy as he crossed over at the East Bridge .
But
unhealthy or not, he argued, why
would they empty the whole of the castle because of an impurity in the Mela?
He was still struggling with that part.
Granted, the river looked like a flowing black nightmare and the banks looked
stricken with plague, but did that justify a reduction in castle security? And
even if it did, wouldn’t king and council have sent their troops east rather than
west? Upstream to the cause rather than downstream to the effects?
Brine thought that they
would. In fact, the longer he thought about an incident capable of depleting
the defenses of the castle, the more he thought the incident would be related
to whatever had frightened the shepherd boy, the thing in the sky that
Brine had watched for as the young field hand caught up on his sleep.
…there are less of us now… the boy
had said…less than once were…
Brine shivered at this, the back of his
neck beset by a hoard of ice-spiders. It was not lost on him that his divine
purpose might require him to stay in
the city of his past and, if this were the case, he did not wish to bump into
whatever it was the shepherd boy had seen.
If he were lucky, the boy was simply a
half-whit and no one had bothered to make him a sign. That’s all it would take
to clear up such misunderstandings, a simple wooden sign like the one that hung
around Stymie Croagmuck’s neck. Stymie had been the stable hand for the castle when
Brine was young and the sign around his neck had proclaimed to all—as if the
boy’s bizarre questions and incessant nose picking wouldn’t tip them off—that
Stymie was a simpleton.
But even Stymie the feeb knew a doggy
when one crossed his path. The doggy might have a long wormy tail and thick
prominent teeth and it might live in the holes beneath the royal stables and
eat grain from
horse
pails, but when Stymie was telling you about his doggy,
he hadn’t fabricated the creature.
Brine rubbed at the imaginary ice-spiders on
his neck and tried not to think about what the shepherd boy had spied in the
southern skies, focusing instead on General Branmore and the grungy man who,
Brine could now see, was not a runner.
At this proximity, the disciple could make
out the pack, bow, and quiver slung over the man’s leaf-strewn shirt. Runners
kept their supplies strapped to their horses and—for the sake of speed and the
fact they didn’t spend much time in the wild—there was very little to keep.
On the surface, Brine wasn’t sure what
difference this made, or if it made any difference, but he was sure
about the conclusion: The man was a scout, pure and simple. He lived in the
woods, traveled on foot, and apparently communed with nature. If Brine needed further
proof, he needn’t look any farther than the furry creature cradled in the man’s
dirty arms.
Was it some breed of black-pelted ferret? Or
maybe a cat? With the creature lying half-concealed in the scout’s arms and its
head nestled against its rear flank, it was difficult to tell. Brine could see
parts of its hindquarters and most of its back—where it was missing quite a lot
of hair—but other than that, it was just fur and scars.
Well, there you have it, Brine
thought. You can’t be any more of a scout than that.
Then, as if to heap even more evidence on
the scouting side of the scales, Brine looked to the hall and spied the rest of
the party, as in scouting party. And
maybe not all scouts traveled in groups—surely, there were some that worked the
woods alone—but he did know that there was no such a thing as a party of runners.
He’d known a few runners at the Rock and,
from what he’d gathered during their brief exchanges, they rode in solitude
between checkpoints and handed their message to the next member in the chain.
Thus, there was little need for them to travel in groups or pairs.
Unless, he conceded, the message
in question was extremely urgent and there was reason to believe one of them
might be intercepted…
But issues of urgency aside, he still did
not believe the men in the hall were runners. One of them was much too large
and the other one—the one with the long black hair and fashionable
boots—appeared to be waving at him. With regard to former, for the same
reason runners kept as little gear as possible on their steeds, they also
tended to be slight of build. With regard to the latter…Well, to be honest,
Brine didn’t know what to think of the latter. He was still trying to decide if
the man was a member of the king’s royal army, let alone a runner. With such a
jocular exhibition—especially at a time like this!—it seemed
unlikely that the man was an emissary.
Brine shot the long-haired scout a dirty
look and the man waved harder.
The nerve of him, Brine grumbled,
turning his attention to the general. Surely, Serit had told the scouts in the hall
what was about to happen, because he’d certainly told the scruffy-looking scout
beside him. Brine could tell by this scout’s shambling gait and reluctant pace,
evidence that the man held an appreciation of the situation. In fact, it almost
appeared as though the man was trying to break free of the general and return
to the hall.
Serit, of course, was having nothing to do
with that behavior, prodding the nervous fellow in the shoulder each time he tried
to turn around. For this reason, it took the two men quite some time to travel from
the hallway door to where Mums and Reets stood waiting.
And speaking of the advisers, Brine
wondered, what was Reets doing with his mouth? Was he sneering at the
fellow? Or was he—
Brine nearly gasped. Reetsle Baggershaft—the
halfling who used to greet him in the castle by grunting biological obscenities
and asking if the boy had any chores—was grinning at the man. He was Honest
to God grinning at him. Brine didn’t think the twisted adviser knew how.
In
fact, accepting for the moment that titans couldn’t move the thick features of
their face, Mums appeared rather pleased with this scout as well. Or perhaps
pleased was the wrong word, but she definitely appeared more relaxed. Rather
than her usual stiff and proper stance—the stance naturally assumed by members
of the ruling class in the presence of the groveling masses—she appeared to be
at ease.
Did everyone know him? Brine
wondered, glancing beside him and finding that at least one of the advisers had
no idea who the man was or, in any case, didn’t recognize him. Godfry was
squinting at the fellow as if the scout and Serit were a couple of juggling
harlequins who’d capered in with fresh fruit and flaming batons. He was also releasing
an inquisitive—yet rather loud—hum each time the general prodded the
scout in the arm and the scout flinched away from him.
Brine leaned over to whisper in the old
man’s ear and distract him from his unconscious throat sound—before the
skittish scout heard one and took offense—but Godfry had already released his
loudest hum so far and was tottering over for a closer look.
No, no, no, no, no, Brine thought,
starting swiftly after the local representative. He did not, however,
grab hold of him. Despite the booming dismay reverberating in his head—and the
image of what might unfold once the dizzy-headed adviser made his
introduction—he did very little to impede his forward progress.
Later, he would tell himself it was
because he hadn’t wished to be rude by manhandling his former teacher, but he
would be lying. The truth was that he wanted to know what was going on just as
much as Godfry and, in all fairness, if his divine purpose was somehow related
to this urgent matter, then he needed to know what was going.
And it’s not like they’ll see me, he
mused, ducking behind the old man’s billowing robes.
In the same instant that
he’d decided not to stop his nosey teacher, he had also decided not to be seen.
Despite his burning curiosity and his indignant right to know, he had
not been invited to this impromptu meeting and, thus, he made it a point to
stay out of sight. He didn’t believe for one moment that Mums or Reets would
ask him to leave, but he wouldn’t put it past them to alter the content of
their speech, especially if they thought they were protecting him from
the ails of the kingdom during this sensitive period in his life. In either
case, it was best not to draw their attention.
It was also best, Brine realized—peering
out from behind the protective curtain of beard and cloth—not to draw the
attention of the scout’s pet. The insane creature was either spooked by the
advisers or was sensing its owner’s discomfort and reacting in kind.
As Brine gawked around the side of
Godfry’s ample robes, the little animal bucked and squirmed and acted as though
it wished to kill them all. The scout was bobbing up and down and shushing the
little fiend, but the writhing beast—which was neither cat, nor ferret, nor any
member of the known animal kingdom—continued its furious tantrum.
The disciple sank behind his teacher.
Reets, on the other hand, rushed right in,
completely ignoring the spitting beast and pausing only after realizing that both
of the scout’s hands were occupied. With one hand stretched beneath the leaping
cat-creature—holding it by the chest—and the other wrapped over the top of the
thing, and fisted around a mug of thick dark syrupy, the scout was not able to
shake hands.
Not to be outdone, Reets grabbed the man’s
elbow and shook it fiercely. “Look at yeh, now,” he said. “Finally got yeh out
of the brush, huh.”
Again, Brine was struck by the obvious
familiarity expressed by the halfling’s body language and tone. Reets either
knew this scout or, quite possibly, this was how heathens greeted one another.
Reets, who’d been born and—for want of a better word—raised in the
Hinterlands was a heathen himself, so perhaps this was nothing more than the
usual backwoods kinship their kind expressed to one another. For all
Brine knew, they were about to spit in each other’s hands and perform some
secret handshake, or possibly slit each other’s tongues and make a blood pact.
But as shocking as either of these acts might have been, what actually happened
shocked the disciple even more.
Despite the warmth and kindness displayed
by the usually-gruff halfling, the scout reacted with nothing but wintry
defiance, reeling from the twisted adviser and recoiling from his grip,
wrestling free of those disjointed fingers and stumbling back into the
general’s ever-waiting hand.
This, however, only served to send the
scout forward again, this time sidestepping the halfling and colliding with
Godfry. Seeing this, Brine raised his hands to chest height and prepared to
catch the old man. But somehow Godfry managed to catch himself.
There was a moment where the adviser
appeared to be teetering at an angle—an impossible angle, really—and
then he just righted himself. His arms never wheeled, his head never moved, his
slipper-clad feet remained fixed on the slippery wooden floor, but none of this
seemed to get in the way of his torso as it lifted into place.
Ten ages of estrangement or not, Brine was
ready to ask about that peculiar
recovery. If it offended the old man, then the old man was going to be
offended. However, as he opened his mouth to phrase the question, his teacher
chose that moment to lean towards the halfling and say, “Who’s this, now?”
And that was all it took.
At the sound of the old man’s voice, the
cat-thing—already irritated by the jostling it had suffered as Jaysh struck the
adviser—went nuts. It took one look at Godfry’s offensive attire and decided
its earlier instincts about this wretched place had been correct.
Like a thing possessed, it began leaping
for the floor, clawing at the air, spitting at the world. Brine stepped back
and prepared to run. There was no chance the scout could contain the creature,
not when it was behaving like a furry piston.
Thankfully, though, as all eyes settled on
the apoplectic creature—including those of its frantic-looking owner—no one saw
the titan as she stepped in to help.