Gurdinn began to object but the baron cut him off, “It’s no rebuke, captain. You have often times remarked I ought to go more heavily guarded, and you’ve never been fond of my visits here. The lapse in security is as much my doing as yours, rest easy. But it’s a fact that I was vulnerable, and if these Syldoon had meant harm, they had their opportunity.”
He continued pacing. “I’m not in the habit of immediately trusting strangers in my own barony, let alone those from an Empire counted enemy not long ago.” Finally, he turned and regarded Gurdinn again. “But I don’t see the harm in playing this out as the Syldoon captain suggests. We leave here tonight in a rush, you and your men ushering me to the castle with all speed. I’m not convinced there are spies in my circle, but having already made one mistake in coming here so lightly guarded, I’m not prepared to possibly make another. So I’ll stay closed in my chamber, and only my lady wife and the men in this room shall know the reason.”
Gurdinn persisted, “My lord, even if there’s a parcel of truth to what the Black Noose says, if you do this, you’ll create undue rumors, panic even, as you said yourself. You threaten your own Great Fair with what you consider.”
“The Fair is always profitable, but grown dull of late. This will remedy that. Say no more—I no longer consider, Captain Gurdinn, I’ve decided. Rumors will fester, true, but I can’t risk undue deliberation. If the Syldoon are correct, we have a means here of trapping the conspirators and learning the identity of traitors in our midst. If the allegations prove substantial as air, I can dispel any rumors shortly enough. The Great Fair would continue unabated, even if I burst into flames for all the world to see, I have no doubt.
“So, while I sit on my deathbed, you’ll accompany the captain to the meeting in two day’s time. Seeing how peaceable you two are, I’m loath to send you, Captain, but I’m even more troubled by the thought of sending another in your stead to guard my interests there.”
The baron faced Braylar. “You’ll be in command of this venture, Captain Killcoin. But only this venture.”
Gurdinn began to object again, but the baron raised a hand. “I’ve heard your mind, and I don’t need to hear it again. You’re to obey the Syldoon explicitly in this enterprise, Captain Gurdinn, so long as the events play out as predicted. If you suspect subterfuge, or this man betrays us in any way, you may act accordingly, but otherwise you’ll hold your biases to your heart as a closeted secret that will ruin you if revealed. Do you understand me?”
Gurdinn’s face was obscured, but I imagined it attaining several new shades of red as he nodded his assent with a great deal of stiffness.
Braylar stood and made a small bow. “You act wisely in this matter, lord baron.”
The baron smiled. “That remains to be seen. If nothing else, I’ve benefited from your lesson in scouting out my path for the day, particularly in leisure. There’s simply no telling who you might encounter and where.” He turned to leave and stopped. “As my men carry my ambushed body from the premises, what will you do? If eyes do indeed look out for me, they must look out for you as well.”
“I believe we’ll leave the way we came in, like rats through the alley.”
“Very good. And how shall Captain Gurdinn call on you? I assume you don’t want him sharing a drink with you in the common room of the, Grieving Dog, was it?”
Braylar nodded. “It was, and you assume correctly.” To Gurdinn, “Meet us three miles from the North Gate. Two days hence, when we are to meet with the priest, just after dawn, on the side of the road to Redvale. A small group of your men, only, and if you require armor, make sure it’s blackened or covered. We will lead you to the priests and their promised payment for illicit deeds, but only if you don’t give our position away by clunking about or flashing in the sun.”
Gurdinn didn’t respond and Braylar said, “I’ll take your hateful stare as agreeable acquiescence, Captain Honeycock, but I do hope you’re less reticent once on the road. I would hate to jeopardize your lord’s safety because of failed communication.”
Gurdinn glared long and hard, and the baron led his men towards the stairwell they came down. The stairs squeaked with their weight as Braylar and Hewspear rejoined me.
Braylar looked immensely pleased with himself. “We go. Curfew is but a short time off, and I’ve no wish to tussle with the city watch. I don’t imagine they’d readily accept this tale as an excuse.”
⊕
The pair in front of me was silent as we walked back to the Grieving Dog, and the rain had subsided to a drizzle barely more substantial than mist. Looking around and seeing no one nearby, I started asking a question, but Braylar stopped me with, “I might need a scribe, but no one said I needed one with a tongue.”
When we arrived, Mulldoos was in one corner, dicing with what looked like city guards, although they didn’t appear to be guarding anything except their ale just now. Hewspear walked over to their table and got his attention while Braylar led me to our suite.
As we entered, I asked him if he was willing to discuss what happened now that we were in a secure location.
He replied, “There’s no such thing. And I’ll tell you more when it becomes necessary. You would do well to leave it to me to determine when that is.”
Hewspear and Mulldoos joined us just after and Braylar locked the door. Then Braylar turned to me. “Retire for the night. Don’t fear—all will be divulged soon enough. And when it is, you can ask as many questions as you like. Well, at least as many as I like.”
He led his lieutenants into his room, no doubt to discuss all those things I wanted desperately to be privy to.
I laid in bed for a long time, listening to the revelers in the courtyard below descend into deeper drunkenness, wondering if anyone had been killed in the inn (it seemed likely, given the name), and considering whether these Syldoon were all that they appeared.
The next day, I was essentially held captive, not allowed to even go down the stairs to the common room or ale garden. Two Syldoon I hadn’t seen before alternated shifts guarding the antechamber. Each time I tried to pass, they informed me that the captain’s orders were explicit. I wasn’t to leave. I considered climbing out the window and down a tree, but I suspected disaster for me if I did, so I contented myself with waiting in my room.
I was asleep on my bed in the afternoon when my door opened. Braylar sat down opposite me, and when I didn’t respond, he said, “Your breathing has changed—you fool no one.”
I sat up and asked why he wouldn’t allow me to even leave our suite and he replied, “We have come too far to risk our plan being undermined by a loose tongue or disloyal scribe. Tomorrow, you travel with us, but for the remainder of today, you’ll stay here. Don’t fear—you shall have your opportunity to explore the fair in due time, but not just yet. I have no need for your trust, only your obedience. So. Tomorrow we move.”
⊕
The next morning, one of the new Syldoon—Tomner, he said his name was—woke me before dawn. I dressed and entered the antechamber, finding Braylar, Mulldoos, Hewspear, Lloi, and Tomner waiting. I’d seen a few other Syldoon come and go while sequestered, but it appeared they were remaining behind in Alespell. I assumed Vendurro and Glesswik were already ahead. Mulldoos was pulling a tunic on over his head, swearing as it caught on the lamellar plates of his armor. The others had covered their armor already.
We headed to the stables and the grooms had everyone’s mount prepared. Braylar had chosen a brown mare with a wild splash of white down its middle for me. I wondered if it would bite, or kick, or buck, sure he would’ve chosen an ill-tempered beast, but it seemed disinterested enough. I would’ve preferred a wagon, even one with a massive bloodstain inside.
We rode through Alespell in the predawn dark, encountering no one, the clopping of our horse’s hooves obscenely loud with no other noise for competition. When we reached the North Gate, I expected the guards to detain us, but Gurdinn must have already alerted them to our departure, as the portcullis was up and the drawbridge down, despite the fact that curfew hadn’t been called. After exchanging some words with Braylar, the guards let us through.
We put some miles behind us, still seeing no one, before coming across Gurdinn and four soldiers on the side of the road. True to Braylar’s instructions, they had long tunics over their hauberks, but nothing that marked them as Brunesmen. They could easily have been caravan guards, bandits, or itinerant mercenaries.
When we reined up, Braylar said, “So very good of you to join us, Captain Honeycock.”
Gurdinn looked us over, and if he thought it strange that a Grass Dog and an unarmed, unpenned scribe were in the company, he hid it well enough. “Lead on, Black Noose.”
Braylar ordered Tomner to ride ahead of the party. Whatever else might be said about the man, he didn’t take scouting lightly.
We traveled on the road throughout the morning, seeing only the odd small clumps of travelers at first, and then thickening traffic heading to Alespell, though we were the only group going in the opposite direction at that hour.
Unaccustomed as I was to riding, it wasn’t long before my legs and lower back ached abominably. Few words were exchanged by anyone, even when we stopped briefly to allow the horses to rest and eat. Late morning, we left the road for good, and I experienced the usual misgivings—even a bandit-plagued road still offered the illusion of safety. But I doubted anyone was interested in my opinion, so withheld it.
Lloi fell back and rode alongside me. There was some distance between us and the nearest Syldoon, but I was still surprised when she leaned over a bit, and quietly said, “Always seem to make them right uneasy. Guessing I set even old Hewspear’s nerves to jangling, and he’s the most tolerant of the bunch. What’s your excuse for being stuck at the back?” She gave her customary gap-toothed smile.
“I imagine they aren’t keen on either of our kind us in their company. Scribes and… what is it you do, again?”
She shook her head and laughed quietly. “Besides slink around in Captain Noose’s skull, you mean? You do make a body smile, bookmaster. That you do.”
I’d been waiting for an opportunity to bring a topic up again, and this seemed as good a time as any. “Lloi, back in the grass,” I kept my voice at nearly whisper level, “you mentioned Memoridons. But I sensed you didn’t want to say anything with Captain Killcoin nearby. Why was that?”
She glanced at the captain at the front of our column. “Like I said, never met one. But I heard the Syldoon talk about them from time to time, mostly when they thought I wasn’t nearby or listening none. Syldoon as hard as they come, afraid of little and less. But the way they talk about them memory witches, they got a real healthy respect for them, about two paces shy of fear.”
“But from the stories, I always got the impression the Syldoon controlled the Memoridon.”
She shrugged. “You can put a collar on a ripper and drop it in a cage, but unless you chop off the beak and rip out the claws, you still best step lightly, unless you like the idea of being real dead real fast.”
“Dead?” I said, loud enough that one of Baron Brune’s soldiers heard and glanced over his shoulder. I carefully lowered my voice again. “Don’t they do what you do, or something like it? I don’t understand—why they are so dangerous?”
She waited until she was sure no one was listening. “They can creep through a man’s memories, same as me, sure enough. Said they can track a man by his memories, too. Though I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how. So the Syldoon use them as spies, doing recon and the like. But it’s also said they can strike a man down, just by looking at him. Cripple, maim, kill, drop him to the dirt like a stone.”
“Why… why can’t you do that?” I asked, suddenly very glad she couldn’t.
“No clue how. I barely know how to do what I do now. Mostly taught myself, stumbling in the dark. The Memoridon, they recruit their own, same as the Syldoon, real young. They find someone who got the gift of it, they snatch them right up, train them the same way you train a man to swing a sword or scribble on that parchment like you. Talent with no teachers barely talents at all, and rough ones as that.”
I looked at Lloi, never considering before that she might have had other latent abilities that could have been harnessed if she’d come under Syldoon care earlier in her life. Either way, she would have had few enough choices, and been a tool regardless. Albeit a more deadly one, had she become a Memoridon. But she wouldn’t have been mutilated, or whored out, and she would be powerful, if what she said was accurate and not merely unfounded rumor. I wondered what that version of Lloi would have been like. It was difficult to imagine.
“When the captain discovered what you could do, why didn’t he bring you back to the empire, or wherever it is Memoridon are trained? Wouldn’t you have been more, uh, useful to him if you had some tutelage or mentorship?”
Lloi looked up the line again to be sure none of Braylar’s retinue were in earshot, which would have been difficult, since I could barely hear her over the clomping of hooves. Satisfied, she said, “Got the real solid impression the Syldoon give the memory witches as wide a berth as they’re able. Seems to be most times, you attracted their attention, you attracted nothing of any kind you wanted. Things go sour right quick when the witches and the soldiers mix it up.
“That, and Captain Noose got a sister who’s one.”
That was exceptionally unexpected. “A Memoridon? His sister?”
“Yup. And from what I gather, the only blood they got betwixt them is poison bad.”
I was about to ask more when a Syldoon soldier rejoined the group and spoke briefly with Braylar. I expected that meant we were nearing our destination. We rode up a steep wooded hill, winding our way through bent and bowed trees that must have been ancient. Braylar told us all to dismount before we reached the top, and we walked our horses the rest of the way.
At the top of the hill, I saw the temple ruins laid out below us, nestled in the crook of a sludgy brown river. While the temple had probably been quite a sight a thousand years ago, it was now mostly a shell. The roof and whatever domes or tiles or spires it had once possessed were completely gone, dragged off to serve other buildings when the temple had been abandoned. There were sections of the wall still intact, though few enough, and arches here and there, some even freestanding, but much of that had been picked clean as well. I wondered why it had been abandoned, but the answer was clear when I looked at the meadows and river behind the ruins.