Again came the rumbling from the major’s chest. His jaw moved as he thought for a moment, the moonlight painting soft pink lines along the clean-shaven angles of his face.
“All right, Spadebreaker, here’s what you’re going to do. You and your men stay in Cedar Wood and protect the people down there. I’ll send word to Twee and get more men up here straight away.”
“Twee, sar? Hast is a full day sooner at least.”
“We’re in a hurry, Sergeant. We’ll have the teleporters send them out. And by the gods, man, on my word, if you question another order from me, I will whip you myself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sar. I hear ya clear, sar. I forgot myself what with ya in all them fluffs and frills.”
“I have a job to do, just like you, Sergeant, and you’ll do well to remember that you aren’t privy to everything that goes on.”
“That I do appreciate, sar.”
“Then get down the damned mountain, and wait until you have orders to move. Do you understand?”
“I do, sar.”
“Then, off with you.”
“Yes, sar.”
When Ilbei didn’t turn around immediately and walk away, the major had to ask, “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“I’m not sure whether or not I ought to salute now, sar. Are ya undercover or havin a night off?”
“You know what you need to know. Just go.”
Chapter 18
I
lbei could not remember having been run off so readily by a commander in all his ninety-odd years in the military, at least never as repeatedly as Cavendis did it, and never in ways and situations that made so little sense. They’d been given a mission to ferret out the whereabouts of the bandits, and yet, after finding out nearly nothing in barely two days’ looking, the major had sent him and his men away. They hadn’t even been at it long enough to run out of the fish Hams had caught on the trip down the Desertborn before they’d been told to cut bait and go home. And now, after discovering that the purpose of their mission, Ergo the Skewer,
was
in fact still lurking around the mining camps—and confirming that he was both bandit and coldhearted murderer—the major, upon learning of it, could not get Ilbei away from him fast enough yet again.
The oddity of it left Ilbei muttering beneath his bristly mustache as Mags untied the horse and the two of them set off down the trail. They made a show of walking casually, but Ilbei’s mind was churning furiously. What kind of a man sends two people down the mountain an hour after dark? He fiddled with his beard as he walked, his lips twisted sideways and his jaw clenched. He wanted desperately to ask Mags what the major had said that had affected her so, but he knew he needed to wait until they were out of earshot.
Mags, still silent beside him, reached up with her free hand and began working loose the braid she’d made in her hair. He saw the motion, and having been thinking about her just then, realized what she was trying to do. “Here,” he said, reaching for the rope, “I’ll take that.” She’d already unraveled the braid, but that’s when a realization struck him. “The horse!” he said. “I forgot to tell him about the damn horse and the coin-stampin plates.”
Mags nodded. “Yes, you did.”
“I ought to go back and tell him.”
“Gad Pander is in there,” she said, her voice strangely flat.
“He is?” Ilbei looked startled that he’d not noticed the man. He resisted the urge to ask her why she hadn’t said anything. “Where was he?”
“Standing at the bar, staring right at you from under his hood.”
“I never seen him, though I confess, like as not, I could have looked right at him and never known it was him. Never got a good look at the man.”
“He was trying not to be seen. But I saw him, mainly because I was trying not to look at … someone else.”
“Someone else?”
Anger narrowed her eyes for a moment, and her lips tightened in a line, but then she looked down, as if ashamed.
Ilbei bent down enough that he could tilt his head and twist his face to where he could see hers. “Mags?”
“It’s nothing. I should be past it by now.”
“Past what?”
“Him. I saw
him
. The man I told you about before. The magician. He was in there.”
“The one what done ya so … the one what treated ya poor?”
She nodded.
Ilbei growled, deep and menacing, a temblor welling up from the very soul within. “Well, that’s somethin I’ll go on back fer. We’ll see how well he takes to a measure of his own makin. Which one is he?” He was already marching back toward the building when Mags caught up to him and pulled him back.
“No, Sergeant. Please. It’s in the past. Let it go. He just startled me being there. I thought he was gone.”
“Well he ain’t gone, so time’s right fer a man like that to get what he’s got comin.”
“No, Sergeant, really. It was a lesson learned, and I’ve moved on. Literally. In fact, that’s how I ended up at Camp Chaparral, where I met you and your men. Where I met Candalin and so many others before … well, before that too went wrong. I don’t want to drag it all back up. Let the dead rest. Please.” She tried to smile, but the memories hung like deadweight at the corners of her mouth.
Ilbei studied her closely, their gazes locked. His anger slowly gave way to reason, and with it, to her request. “Ya can’t be more than a pair of decades at most,” Ilbei said after a time. “Was he yer first love?”
“I’m not. And yes, he was. Great way to start, eh? I was so enamored of him. Imagine, a magician showing that much attention to silly, blank me. I was a fool.”
“First love is like that, I suppose. Sorta like yer first time playin ruffs. Ya go all in on the first good hand ya think ya got, don’t even know who you’re playin or what you’re playin fer. Then it all goes bust. Goes like that fer us all, near as I’ve seen.”
She actually laughed at that, a sweet note that flew from a real smile, one that even glimmered in her eyes. “It’s true. Entirely true.” She touched him on the arm again, giving him a fleeting, sober look that spoke a silent “thank you” before she was smiling again. “I wish I’d met a man more like you.”
“Oh sweet Mercy, no ya don’t,” he said, serious as a stroke. “The last thing a pretty young thing like you needs is a bloat-bellied old soldier stinkin of alehouses and four days’ sweat.”
She laughed aloud. “Well, I did say
more
like you, not precisely like you.”
It was his turn to laugh, and he patted the back of her hand where it still rested on his arm. “You go on down there where Jasper is, and I’ll be right back. I’ll see if’n I can’t get the major to come out and speak to me again without that counterfeiter gettin wind of what we know.” He turned to go back, but stopped.
Someone had slipped out of the tavern behind them and was in the process of mounting one of the horses tethered to the goat pen. With the darkness and the distance, Ilbei couldn’t make out who it was, but the conspicuous timing of the man’s exit coincided with the intake of breath that came from Mags. That had to be Gad Pander. This time, Ilbei recognized the horse and the shape of the man’s hood.
Ilbei quickened his strides, hoping to catch the man before he got away, but he couldn’t get there in time, not even at a run. He would have called out, but he didn’t want to draw the attention of anyone inside. Soon the man was gone, galloping into the darkness beneath the trees, headed somewhere along the steppe to the northeast.
The curious timing of the man’s getaway made Ilbei rub his beard, wondering once again and slowing his pace. He debated now whether he wanted to go back in at all. Surely the major would have noticed the man leaving too, wouldn’t he? It might have struck him odd. But then again, the major was at his hand in gambling, so no telling what he was paying attention to beyond the game. Although, a man couldn’t shark an old sport like Ilbei as fast as the major had without seeing everything—or without cheating, of course.
Ilbei waited several minutes to see if the major, or anyone else for that matter, came out, but no one did. When the thumps of the retreating hoofbeats were gone, there was once more only the dull roar of the waterfall and the muted notes of a lute and fiddle squeezing through the shutters.
Ilbei made his decision. He turned back and walked briskly down the trail, gathering up Mags as he went. He took the lead rope from her, gripping it where it was affixed to the halter just below the horse’s jaw, and he tugged both Mags and the mare along. “Come on,” he said. “Quick now.”
He hissed for Jasper to join him, signing for Kaige and Meggins to shadow them for a time in the trees, keeping an eye out for anyone following. He and Mags waited for Jasper to join them, and then the three of them moved down at a steady clip for several hundred yards. When he was satisfied he and Mags were beyond hearing of Fall Pools, he stopped and waited for Kaige and Meggins to catch up and emerge from the darkness.
“Kaige, you and Jasper take Mags back to Cedar Wood. Meggins, you’re with me. We’re goin to follow that Gad Pander feller best we can and see where he’s run off to hide. If’n me and Meggins ain’t back at Cedar Wood before breakfast after next, you three get on back to Hast as quick as ya can. Tell the lieutenant what we seen with the Skewer, and make sure to tell him to get word to the general that the major is actin strange, gamblin up folks’ money, and that there’s a counterfeit operation afoot. If’n ya can, ya tell that to the general direct. Just make sure they understand this here neck of the woods needs a whole company to sort it out, and I don’t expect that green lordlin of a major up there has anythin in hand but cheatin at cards. Out here, and with these sorts of folks, well, when they get wind of that, there’s nothin to keep Cavendis from disappearin fer good. They’ll find him a year from now floatin dead in some backwoods waterway like that old harpy was, and they’ll have had that horse of his in the stew.”
Jasper looked to Kaige, then back to Ilbei, a horrified expression tugging outward at his face.
“Oh, now I was just sayin so about the horse,” Ilbei said in response to Jasper’s apparent shock. “My gods, but you young folks is so particular about yer critters anymore. Try to take my meanin, son.”
“It’s not the horse that concerns me, Sergeant. It’s just that … well, I don’t think we should separate.” He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was terrified. “What if Ergo the Skewer comes along?”
Mags slid her quarterstaff out from where she’d tucked it behind the pannier and said, “I can hold my own if I have to, Sergeant. I lived with the Sisters of Mercy until I was sixteen.”
Ilbei grinned. “That’s the spirit, Mags.” He looked back to Jasper. “See there, Jasper? Now if’n you’re that worried fer it, ya can dig through yer satchel there and get one of them paper spells ready just in case. Bein as Kaige can whip most any three men if’n he’s got half a chance, and between the lot of ya, well, you’ll be all right so long as ya stay to the trail. You’ll be at Cedar Wood before daylight.”
“I wasn’t volunteering to go down to Cedar Wood, Sergeant,” Mags said. “I was agreeing with Jasper that we shouldn’t split up. And if we’re being honest, I’m in no mood to run away from the fight, either.” She glanced up the mountain, squinting a little, as if she were looking at something, or someone. “Frankly, my dander is up, if you want the truth. And it is my home these people are ruining, you know.”
Ilbei blinked a few times, jerking back at that response in the way people do when large flying insects have just bounced off their foreheads. Jasper’s obvious glee proved he was happy to have an ally on that front. Ilbei glanced at him, then at Mags with her quarterstaff planted firmly on the ground. His left eye nearly closed under the weight of that scrutiny.
“Well I didn’t put it up fer a vote,” he said. “This here is my outfit, and I say you’re goin back, and that’s the end of it.”
“Well, I’m not in your outfit, and I don’t want to go back. And for that matter, what am I going to do in Hast? Start over? Again? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of feeling afraid, I’m tired of being walked on, and I’m tired of feeling weak. The whole way down here just now, I kept thinking about that man up there, that idiot Ivan Gangue. I felt so stupid and pathetic, shaking there like some frightened child. And I didn’t like how it felt to have my hands tied up the other day, either. Waiting to be saved. I’m sick of waiting to be saved, sick of having my hands tied. And while I mean you no disrespect, Sergeant—you are the kindest, sweetest, bravest man I know—I’ll not be ordered around or pushed around again.”
“Well, I …,” Ilbei began, but his voice died when he realized he didn’t have any idea what to say. His mustache and beard twitched around on his face for a time, as if together they were a ratty old blanket and something was crawling around underneath. He tried again. “Thing is, Mags, it ain’t a question of whether ya are brave enough, mad enough or even good enough with that there staff. It’s a matter of speed. Me and Meggins can move along pretty quick after that feller, even with him on a horse. And we need to get to it, not pick our way cautious like. If we can find out where they’s hid, and maybe how big the outfit is, we can figure what next to do.”
“He’s going to the old ettin cave east of the scissor switchback.”
“The what?” Ilbei had heard what she said, but he needed a moment to process the surprise.