(Previous Chapter)

Damek refused to say anything more on the subject of bastardry, and I was left feeling cheated. I was tantalizingly close, I believed, to finally getting some answers from the old blind bastard, but he remained as tight-fisted with his information as ever.

“Come along, Rio,” he said, his voice hard with determination. His blind gaze drifted further up the road, as though he could sense how close we were to our first stop along the road to Gandras. “Come,” he said again. “We must press on. It is still early in the day, but I want us to find some place suitable to camp for the evening. We’ll enter Balunkrants in the morning.”

“But there is still more than a watch left before dusk,” I protested. “Why can’t we go to Balunkrants now, find a room at the tavern to sleep and some hot food to go with that bread I stole this morning but which you’ve yet to give me a damned nibble of?”

Damek fixed his empty stare on me. “You think I’m made of money? You think I crap warrins? That I’m so damned well-to-do that we can stroll into this little town like we own the place?”

“I didn’t say any of that,” I protested.

“No, but you implied it. If I had that kind of money, do you think I’d be dragging your worthless arse around the countryside? Not bloody likely, I assure you. No, until we start making money off the people of Samye Canton, we’ll sleep in the arms of the earth.”

“You mean on the forest floor?” I asked.

Damek grunted and muttered something under his breath. I caught none of it, but the old man did not offer up any more audible answer. Instead, he turned his attention back to the road to Balunkrants and said, “Let’s go. No more talk. There will be time for questions later.”

“Time for questions, yes,” I muttered. “But will there be any gods damned answers to them?”

“What was that?” Damek asked.

“You heard me,” I said.

The old bastard grinned. “Well, well. It seems the mouthy little prick has learnt one lesson after all.”

He set off at his leisurely pace, chuckling to himself, and I was forced to trot after him. I confess that I was quite confused by the easy way he had brushed off that last transgression of mine. I quickly came to realize that Damek was far more unpredictable than I had anticipated. The bastard could be sweet as honey one moment then fiery as a half-warrin whore in want of her pay the next.

I tried to occupy myself as we walked by counting old Damek’s footsteps. He’d been very specific about the number of steps to a mile, and I wanted to test him. I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t just making those numbers up to impress me.

He must have sensed what I was doing, for every hundred steps or so he’d shuffle slightly, throwing in a quick half step and a drag of the foot. At first, I counted those as three normal steps, but the more he did it, the more I became so mesmerized with anticipating the shuffle that I forgot to keep count.

Damek began to chuckle to himself, pausing in his stride and bending over to speak a word in my ear. “A blind man’s boy also needs to be able to keep his concentration up.”

“You knew I was counting?”

“Of course. You were muttering under your breath, and I noticed that you stopped doing so about three hundred steps back. Honestly, boy, at this rate, I might as well brain you with my stick and leave you on the side of the road to whatever wild animals come by—be they man or beast.”

Such was the flatness of his tone that I could not suppress a shudder. “No, please,” I begged. “I don’t want to be a lonely bastard.”

“Hmm,” he said, not convinced. “Well, you’ve won us bread for a day at least, so you can stay for now.”

I thanked him sincerely and he cackled again. “Our campsite is not too far up ahead. Tell me how many of my paces lie between here and there, and I may even reward you with a crust from that bread.”

He set off again without further comment, and I quickly fell into step beside him and resumed counting, sensing some deeper lesson was about to be imparted to me. Damek did everything in his power to throw off my count of his steps, but I held my concentration and when we finally came to a stop, he asked, “Well? How many then?”

“One thousand and seventy-five,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound more confident than I actually felt.

“How do you figure that?”

“I counted those weird shuffle-drags of yours as three steps,” I said, “because you always came out of them on the same foot you entered.”

He stared blindly at my face for several long moments, just long enough for me to begin feeling completely stupid. I was about to apologize for screwing up so badly when he said, “Damned clever of you to notice that. Maybe there is a brain inside that empty head of yours after all. Actual count of steps was one thousand and seventy-eight, but only if I weren’t buggering around myself trying to throw you off.” He pointed with his stick away to our left, into the forest north of Balunkrants. “There’s a clearing in there close to the river. About another thousand steps. Here, take my hand and lead me safely. Let this be your first act as my servant. You’ll be doing a lot of handholding in the future.”

I gripped his hand, feeling its ancient leathery skin against the tenderness of my youthful palm. “How old are you?” I asked on reflex.

“What sort of damned impolite question is that? I’m sixty, or thereabouts, you little piss-ant. You’ll wish you’d look so damned good when you reach my age.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“You should always mean what you say, Rio. World’s full enough of insincere swindlers for it to need another one. Trust me on this, the more honest and sincere you are, the more you’ll get out of life as people will trust you and like you.”

“Is that true?” I asked hopefully.

“No, turd-for-brains! Gods, but you’re bloody gullible. We’re going to have to break that streak in you, and soon!”

I grumbled, careful to keep my mutterings indistinct, and began to lead him into the forest in the direction he’d indicated. Along the way, I paused to direct him around roots or over depressions in the earth. He never once touched his walking stick to the ground but seemed to cast total trust and reliance on me to guide him correctly.

The sound of the Balundan’s waters grew louder and louder, and the clearing to which I’d been directed opened out to look over the river. There was an ash pit in the center of the clearing, an old hole that had been dug into the ground and used for countless fires over the years. The pit was mostly empty, the wind having swept it free of ash in the weeks or months since its last use.

Damek sat himself down close to the pit, eliciting a loud groan that was an invitation for me to help him.

“Tell me one thing,” he said when seated. “Why the hell didn’t you lead me into a hole or tree branch or something?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You said to be sure I guided you well. Why would I do that? You’d only beat me with your stick if I did make you fall.”

“Fear of punishment is no reason to not do something,” he answered. “By the seven, if all men went around with those thoughts the world would come to a complete standstill.”

“So you want me to lead you into holes and trees?” I asked skeptically.

He turned his head up to stare forlornly at the heavens. “Ruzhena, I sure as hell hope the gods make you pay for this,” he muttered. With a shake of his head, he looked in my direction again. “You are clearly too dense to note the subtleties of what I’m speaking,” he said, “but do try to keep up. I am trying to teach you how to be my servant. Understand one thing and understand it well, Rio, or you will remain utterly and completely useless to me: people think blind folk are easy to scam. And I want people to think that as it makes them so much easier to scam in return.”

“Why would you want to scam people? That doesn’t seem right?”

“Listen, Rio, the Sausawans are wrong when they say there are only two types of people in this world. In reality, there are three: bastards, bigger bastards, and the poor bastards the other two rip off. It’s either scam or be scammed in this world, and I need you to play your part. The more vulnerable I appear, the more power I ultimately have. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“This has something to do with being the bigger bastard, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Damn right it does!” Damek exclaimed. “Now, sit your arse down and listen.”

“I thought I was going to get to ask questions,” I said.

“You just did and I’m about to answer.”

I furrowed my brow for a moment before realizing I’d done little but ask him questions since we’d arrived in the clearing. It was still some time until dusk began to settle upon the earth, and Damek seemed intent to sit beside the empty fire pit and chat away until then.

“I wasn’t always blind,” he said after a lengthy pause. “And I didn’t become blind because of old age either. It was not the result of a wound or an accident. Listen to me, Rio: I chose to become blind.”

“Why would you choose to become blind?” I asked, slipping back into the questioning mode that seemed my natural disposition towards Damek—as it had been towards Batur before.

“That is an answer I’m not sure you are prepared for,” the blind man replied, “but an answer you probably should hear at any rate. You are likely curious as to how I know your mother. She and I go back a long, long way. We are connected more intimately than ever husband and wife were—and, no, I am not saying she is my daughter. She and I passed through the rites together.”

“The rites?” I asked.

“The rites, boy. The druidic rites.”

“You’re a druid?”

“Are you deaf or is this forest clearing causing an echo in my ears? How the hell do you think I walk through the forest so ably? I can’t possibly just know where all the roots and low-hanging branches are, can I?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“No, I suppose not either. My being a druid has little to do with a lot in my life but it had a hell of a lot to do with me choosing blindness. Do you know what the commune is?”

I shook my head, mesmerized and not a little afraid.

“You are shaking your head, aren’t you?” Damek asked.

I nodded.

He sighed. “Speak to me, boy. I cannot hear movements, not unless they touch upon the rest of the world.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what the commune is.”

“As expected. The commune is the goal of all druidic arts. We seek oneness with nature, with the world around us. That is why the Concord clerics hate us so much. They want transcendence over nature whereas we seek union. The world has a hum, a voice, a subtle sounding that calls to every man. The druid communes with that hum and so makes himself one with the world.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “What if I tell an Inquisitor?”

“You won’t, and let me tell you why: An Inquisitor is trying to kill your mother. One sentenced your father to the march wars, where he died. You hate the Inquisition with more fervor and passion than your childish mind can currently understand. Remember what I said about trust earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is one thing you can always trust and that is a man’s hate. Love fails. Friendship fades with time. And honesty always proves dishonest. But hatred endures. It feeds the heart, sustains it when all else fails. That is why you will never betray me to the Inquisition. As for why I am telling you this, well, you have spent a day and a half wondering who the hell I am and how I can move about so freely. I just answered your question.”

“So, why did you choose to become blind?” I asked.

“You already know the answer to that question now,” Damek replied. “I have given you all the information you need, so let it be another test of that puny brain of yours to come up with the answer. And while you think about it, go find us some wood for a fire. And take this.” He opened the canvas bag he’d been carrying possessively all day and handed me an empty water skin. “Get us some water too.”

I scurried off to do as ordered and returned some time later with the wood and water.

After I had the wood stacked, Damek produced a small fire using nothing—so far as I could see—but a few whispered words. The wood was dry and crackled nicely in the flames. It was summer, as I’ve said, but the day had been chill and as dusk descended, it grew cooler still, so the fire was a welcome addition to our camp.

“Did you figure it out?” the blind man asked. I looked at him blankly, having long since forgotten the puzzle he’d left me with. He sighed impatiently when I was not forthcoming with an answer. “Did you figure out why I chose blindness?” he said testily.

“I…ah…” I fell silent. Searching my memory very quickly, I came up with an answer that seemed to make sense. “Because our eyes lie to us?”

Damek sat silently for a few drawn out moments before he tossed me a quarter of the bread I’d got that morning. “Good guess,” he said.

“Where’s the rest?” I asked.

“Of the bread? It’s my share.”

“But I stole it!”

“You didn’t steal piss. I know the baker’s wife gave it to you out of pity. There’s no way in hell you were capable of stealing that bread.”

I was confused again. “But why send me then?”

“Because I’m not a complete moron—unlike others in our present company—and made the acquaintance of several townsfolk before heading out to your mother’s home. I knew the woman had reason to show you some pity. Her husband, now, had you run into him, you’d have had a problem, but he was likely going to be out gawking at the flames of your mother’s home, bigoted fool that he is. As for the bread, I’m older and handsomer than you, so I deserve a bigger share. I’m also your gods damned master, so you’ll take whatever the hell I give you. If you want to eat, you’ll produce some evidence that you’re at least listening to what I try to teach you. I won’t have dead weight dragging me back.”

“But I’ll starve,” I protested.

“Then you’d better pray that the gods fill your empty skull with something more substantial than cabbage, hadn’t you.”

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

I returned to Damek some time later, my britches washed and the stench of my humiliation removed. Despite being late summer, it was a chill day, and my wet pants were making my scrawny arse cold.

“Took your time, boy,” the blind man said as I returned. He was seated beneath a gnarled oak, twirling a twig between his fingers.

“I cleaned up as best I could so you wouldn’t complain about the way I smell,” I replied.

“Ha! Take you a damned sight longer than that to remove the stench that hangs about you.” He rose awkwardly to his feet, groaning as he gathered himself into an upright position. I stood there watching him, not thinking once that as his servant it would be my place to help him up. When he had righted himself on his feet, Damek turned his empty gaze in my direction. “Rio, come here, boy.”

I obeyed and received a sharp whack to the side of my head.

“Your mother gave you into my care so that you could work as my servant, not to gods-damned sit there and gawk at an old bastard trying to get up. Next time, show some bloody initiative and help me.”

“Sorry, ban—er—Damek.”

“Hmm,” he said. He sniffed at the air, and I imagined him to be some sort of human hound looking for a trail, though I had no idea what the hell he was aiming to find. “We’ll have to see you washed again soon. You reek of rotting fish now that the smell of piss is out.”

“I was huddled next to the fishmonger for little while,” I explained. I took a tentative sniff of my own. “It’s not that bad, old man. Hell, I can’t smell a thing.”

“What did I tell you about my senses, boy? You interpret everything in the world around you through your eyes. I have to rely on smell and touch, taste and hearing. I can smell you as though you were a damned rotten herring right under my nose, and I’d dare say the herring would smell a hell of a lot rosier!”

I began to protest but was rewarded with another whack from the walking stick. I rubbed at my throbbing noggin. “Ow! You crazy old bastard! I’m going to be brain dead if you keep clubbing me like that!”

“Correction: your aptitude for utter brainlessness will be greatly reduced. Now, as much as I’d love to hang around all day and chat about the birds and that foul breeze wafting from you to me, we’d better get on the road. Gandras is a long way, and we ain’t going to make it by standing around here in the middle of the forest swapping insults.”

Damek ambled off towards the southern road, angling straight for it as though he knew exactly where its stone path lay. By this stage, his oddities were beginning to surprise me less and less, but I was still more than curious as to how he moved about so freely. He certainly didn’t seem to be relying on that stick of his, and besides, there was no way in hell it was telling him to duck whenever we came across a low-hanging branch.

But I’d seen his eyes on more than one occasion now. They were not the eyes of a man with sight. I’d never seen a blind man before meeting Damek, but I had seen a few blind animals in the forest, and their milky eyes were a match for Damek’s. Of course, those same animals didn’t last very long before being made a meal of, but I had still been surprised to find animals capable of surviving with blindness. Maybe Damek was telling the truth after all, and his senses were compensating. Still, that hardly explained some of what I’d already seen from him, and it went no way towards explaining why he needed me. If he were so damned comfortable with his senses, he had no reason to torture the hell out of some miserable little sod who missed his mother.

I tried to engage him in conversation more than once, but I was rebuffed time and again. We moved slowly, and once we were on the road, with its paved, manmade features beneath our feet, I got the distinct impression that we slowed down our pace. I tried to broach this topic with Damek as well, but he told me to shut the hell up and stop holding him back, despite the fact I had to physically exert effort not to run away from him.

We walked past the noonday sun, but our progression was so slow that my feet felt none the worse for wear, as though I’d done little more than take a leisurely stroll through the forest in search of my mother’s herbs.

It was about mid-afternoon when Damek finally pulled up. He held open his left arm and drew me near to his side. “Come, little Rio, and listen to old Damek for a moment.” His voice sounded almost conspiratorial. “How far do you think we’ve traveled since leaving Maluns?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve never been this far from home, I don’t think, but we are farther from town than my mother’s home was.”

“A bit further, yes,” he said. “We’ve come about three miles, almost to the very step.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Why the hell do you think I wanted you to keep quiet and stop bothering me with your questions?” he responded.

“You…” I paused, my face screwing up with surprise. “You counted?”

“Damned straight,” he said. “I told you, boy, that a blind man has to use everything that’s left to him. There are three thousand one hundred and twelve of my steps to a mile. We’ve taken nine thousand two hundred since leaving town. And that means we are only one hundred and thirty-six steps shy of three miles—and a little surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” I asked, forgetting for a moment the strangeness of talking about miles and distances I had no real way of gauging.

“Yes. You’ll see. It is something you should know about, a bit about your past and mine, something your mother would have wanted me to show you.”

“How much farther is it to Gandras?” I asked quickly before I was ordered to silence as we moved on again and Damek began counting steps.

“Gandras is fifty miles down this road from Maluns. We’ve a damned long way to go yet, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get there by standing around and wasting time on stupid questions. Honestly, didn’t your mother teach you anything about the world beyond Maluns?”

“No, she didn’t,” I said, somewhat resentfully. “My mother taught me nothing but the names and appearance of a few useless herbs.”

“Now, now, I’ll not have you speaking ill of your mother, or have you forgotten that lesson already? Knowing about herbs is far from useless, only it’s far from useful in our current situation as well. Trust me, Rio, that you will thank the gods many times from now until you die for a mother who could teach you even that little bit.”

He resumed walking and any further attempt at conversation was rebuffed, as the old man had clearly taken up counting off steps in his mind again.

I did not need to be told that we’d reached the one hundred and thirty-sixth step, for my eyes told me what Damek’s memory was clearly telling him. As we rounded a slight curve in the road, the forest cleared back from the path and opened up my view to an ancient, patina-marred bronze statue of a bull.

The beast stood with its right foreleg raised and its head lowered for a charge. It was mounted atop a block of stone that was about five tall—just shorter than Damek’s hunched form. The bull itself must have been six or eight feet high at its shoulder.

“Feast your eyes on history, Rio,” Damek said. His voice was full of reverence, carrying with it a tone I had not expected from the man: he was almost in tears.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You never seen a bull before?”

“I’ve seen bulls,” I said. “I know it’s a bull. I’m not a complete moron, you know? But what the hell is a bull doing in the middle of nowhere. Is there a town around here?”

“No town. Maluns is three miles behind us. Balunkrants is two miles ahead. No, what your young eyes behold is your past, our past. That is the history of Samye, and it’s a damned curiosity that the Concord’s Inquisitors haven’t torn the thing down yet.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he replied. “Why would the Inquisitors tear down the statue of a bull? Let’s see if your mother taught you that much at least.”

I racked my brains trying to think of a suitable reason. I’d picked up on the fact that the statue had to have some sort of religious connection, otherwise the Concord would not have been so concerned with tearing such things down. Damek had also connected the statue to the history of Samye.

“The gods,” I said.

“Good. Which one?”

I’d hardly been a good religious student, and this may have been the source of some of my mother’s frustration with me. Everything I knew about the old gods and the Concord’s interpretation of those gods as seven faces of one nameless supreme deity was all the sort of incidental knowledge that one picks up after years of repeated hearing. I knew bugger all that could be classed as proper learning.

So I stumbled through the names of the seven. “Not Dangus, not Panno,” I muttered, screwing my eyes shut. “Not Wundan or Mijlan either. Could be Golis, Ari, or Mealde.”

Damek tapped his stick on the ground, its repetitive tock offering a sort of menacing reminder that its hard wooden length would come crashing down on my skull if I got this wrong. “Think, boy,” the blind man said. “You can’t be this gods damned ignorant!”

“Golis is death,” I muttered faster. “Ari…farming…so…no…yes…no! It’s Mealde!” I opened my eyes to find Damek nodding at me. “Mealde,” I repeated, “god of life and fertility.”

“Fertility, indeed,” Damek said. “You see the size of the cock on that thing?”

I could not possibly have missed it. “Is that accurate?” I asked.

“Of course it isn’t! You ever seen any animal with a piece of equipment that large? Thing’s as long as my arm if it’s an inch! That is all the evidence you need to know that this statue stands in honor of the god of life.”

“So why haven’t the Concord torn it down?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know? Do I look like a bloody Inquisitor to you? Now, stop asking asinine questions and come over here.” He walked to the side of the statue’s base, the bull now towering high overhead, and placed his hand against the stone. “This is history, as I said, but it is a secret sort of history. It goes back into time before the Concord and its books. This statue is probably older than Maluns and certainly older than much of Gandras.”

“But there’s no town here,” I said.

“Towns come and go. Cities are born and collapse into dust. Empires rise and fall. The world of men is hardly a stable thing. But this!” He patted the cold stone and then rubbed his hand across its surface as though he were caressing a woman. “This is real. The gods outlast all our petty squabbles. This bull has been here for hundreds of years, and it will be here for hundreds more. That is why the Inquisition hasn’t torn it down.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“The Inquisitors are religious men and women, and so they fear the shadows of the past, as much as they don’t like to admit it. This statue, now, this one is special. The Inquisition must know this, given they study local myths and superstitions as they seek to convert the world to their cause.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“Many statues are just statues, lad. But a very small number are more. They are doorways between this world and the realm of the gods. This statue is probably one of them. The Inquisitors probably think they can keep this statue here and commune with their god. The druids know that they can contact Mealde, god of life and fertility, by coming here.”

“Speak with the gods?” I said, my voice dripping with awe. “How does it work?”

I realize now, looking back on that day, that I should have been more aware of whom I was talking to. I really was a moron, and I deserved everything that was coming to me. Chief of all, I should have asked Damek how the hell he knew all of this, then I might have figured out his game before the way it all ended.

“How does it work?” he echoed. “Well, there are legends.” His voice took on that conspiratorial air again. “The stories that I’ve heard in my travels say that the bull’s ears reach the ears of Mealde, and the bull’s mouth becomes the mouth of the god.”

“So if I whisper a request to the god in the bull’s ears and Mealde hears me, the bull will speak?”

“They’re just stories, Rio. But that is what they say, yes.”

I raised my eyes up to the bronze bull, a plan forming in my head. Taking a few steps back from the stone base, I said, “I’m going to try.” Damek grinned, but I was hardly paying much attention to him anymore.

I dashed towards the base of the statue and used my momentum to jump and climb the stone. As I scrambled up, Damek prodded at my backside with his walking stick in a bid to help me.

I wasted no time in approaching the bull when I was up, and I whispered a prayer in its ear: “Mealde, keep my mother and sister safe, please.”

Slowly, careful not to fall off the stone base, I edged around so I could place my ear next to the bull’s mouth. As I leant in, Damek’s cane came hurtling in to crack against the side of my head. I banged against the bull’s brazen mouth and then toppled off the stone base. I hit the earth with my back, and all the air was driven out of my lungs.

As I began to regain control of my senses, I heard Damek cackling like a madman.

“Gods, you really are a moron,” he said to me. “A dog could outsmart you with the brains that fall out of his arse when he craps!”

“What the hell did you do that for?” I asked. “You could have killed me!”

“Then I’d have been rid of a total and irredeemable fool,” Damek said. “Get your arse off the ground and learn a lesson for a change.”

With a great deal of awkwardness I managed to pick myself up. Every inch of my body hurt, and I was still sucking in breaths like a live fish lying on the side of the road, but at least I hadn’t broken anything. I remembered all too well the feeling of broken bones from my beating a few years back.

Damek was still snickering to himself when I approached him suspiciously. “You need to learn something very important about being a blind man’s aid,” he said. “You need to learn to have your wits about you at all times. Don’t be fooled by fairy stories of gods speaking through statues. The gods don’t give a damn about you or me or the wellbeing of your mother. If they did, do you think the Concord could have come in with their damned heresies about the seven-faced god? Not bloody likely. No, the true gods are out there somewhere, far away from the affairs of men, drinking themselves pissed until the great party that ends the world.”

“But why did you have to hit me like that?” I asked, rubbing at the side of my head that had struck the bull’s mouth.

“Because a child whose hand is placed in the fire learns better than the child who is simply told it will burn that fire is not to be toyed with. Use your head from now on. I don’t want to be dragging some gullible jackass around the countryside with me. You are supposed to be my guide, remember? People will try to cheat a blind man because they think he can’t see to help himself. You know me better than that, but I didn’t get this gods damned crafty by sitting around on my arse all day dreaming of pixies in the bushes. I went out into the world and got the crap beaten out of me and then got some proper sense beaten in to replace it. You listening to me, piss pot?”

“Yes,” I said. “Be the bigger bastard.”

Damek paused, his face giving me the curious impression that he was studying me narrowly for a moment. “That’s Sausawan wisdom, isn’t it?”  he asked.

“Batur taught me that lesson,” I said.

“I don’t know who the hell this Batur is,” Damek replied, “but it seems you’ve been fortunate enough to encounter the wisdom of the ancients, preserved for us through the years of Arzemene occupation by those damned savages of Sausawa.”

“Hasn’t helped me any,” I grumbled.

“That’s just because your Sausawan friend forgot to tell you how to go about being the bigger bastard. But you’re with me now, and there are few bigger bastards than I.”

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

As I walked alone towards Maluns, I grew simultaneously more cocksure and more terrified.

“Who the hell does the blind bastard think he is?” I muttered to myself. “Sod just strolls in here, says my mother put me in his service, and then starts ordering me about? Who the hell does he think he is, anyway? Thinks I’m so useless I can’t steal a loaf bread?”

My steps faltered at that point. “Steal a loaf of bread. How the hell does the bastard think I’m going to do that? And with the whole of bloody Maluns looking for me? Gods damn my mother for this!”

I have said it many times before, but Maluns was hardly a large town, though it was large enough to possess its own mill. About a thousand people lived in and around the place, but the town center itself was composed of two streets that crossed each other. One was the north-south road that led upriver from Gandras and away north to gods-know-where, and the other began at the mill on the river’s edge and ran eastward, through the grain fields and orchards that Samye is famous for and into the forests beyond.

At the intersection of these two streets lay the heart of Maluns, and there one could find the baker, the butcher, the fishmonger, the fruit and vegetable merchant, and the homes of a few more prominent members of our small society—persons such as Ban Hadeon, the Inquisitor, and the Concord-approved physician, a man who was so useless he couldn’t even tell which end of a leech was up.

The baker was a big man—as most bakers seem to be, at least those that I’ve met, and the reason why I’ve never attempted to pose as one down the years. He went by the name of Gleb. His wife Lara was even more rotund than he, and together the pair would shake the very earth beneath us when they waddled down the street to collect their grains from the mill. My father used to say that the waterwheel driving the mill would become dislodged from the approach of those two long before it ever fell off due to its age and length of service on the water.

But, gods, if the pair of them didn’t possess the beadiest of beady eyes.  Old Gleb’s two blinkers were tiny by comparison to the rest of his head, and they sat so close together that they looked almost to be touching, but the bastard seemed to have a sixth sense about anyone coming into his bakery for reasons other than a purchase. How the hell he spotted so much with so little periphery vision, I don’t know, but he was legendary for it among the youth of Maluns, who tried more often than was healthy to swipe the bastard’s sweet breads while he wasn’t looking.

I reached the edge of the forest with my fears long since outweighing my cocksurety. How the hell was I going to steal a loaf of bread from Gleb the all-seeing? And what about the rest of the townsfolk? Had Koldan returned the night before and told everyone to be on the lookout for the witch’s brat, or was it only the two men left behind to burn my mother’s hovel that would be watching out for me?

I did not think that enough time had passed for the hut to have been safely razed to the ground, and I did not think that the two fools left to do the job would risk leaving the burning home untended, incase it led to a greater forest fire.

It was then that I began to suspect the whole town would be waiting anxiously to gauge the outcome, whether or not they knew what had transpired in the forest the previous afternoon. If the burning of my mother’s house was news to them, they’d all be congregating in town to watch the smoke rising, wondering what was happening. If they knew what Koldan was doing, they’d likely still be gathered in town watching, though they’d be fearing that the two morons left to burn the home would be careless and set the whole damned forest alight.

Armed with the hope of these two probabilities, I retreated back some way into the forest and made a circuit of the town until I could come at it from the north east, at least partly away from the direction where my mother’s burning home would be attracting attention.

There was indeed a crowd of people gathered in the central area of Maluns, some forty or fifty folk, who stood and pointed away above the treetops. I crept out of the shadows of the trees and dashed madly for the shadows of the town buildings. There weren’t much in the way of alleys in Maluns, at least not like there are in the big cities like Gandras, but there were appreciable gaps between homes and shops, and I spent some time lurking between the physician’s home and the fishmonger—a pair of houses that should never have gone side-by-side, let me tell you.

How the hell either of them ever got any custom, I don’t know, but despite the presence of the river right down the road, our fishmonger never had anything in stock that wasn’t already halfway to rotten and stinking out the whole gods-damned town. Perhaps the stench acted as a sort of anesthetic, which was helpful for those poor sops who placed their trust in the doctor.

Anyhow, none of those gathered in the streets seemed intent on returning to their places of business soon, as they all watched the forest with a great deal of apprehension.

“After all this time,” one of them was saying, “with a witch living among us, we will finally be free. Praise God, the Concord, and Saint Zoran’s light for it!”

“Just more evidence that Arzemes has their damned fingers everywhere and in everyone’s business,” said another. He added moments later, his voice suddenly more nervous, “Not that I sympathize with the witch, to be sure.”

“Where’s Gleb?” asked a third voice. “He should see this. He’s been a loud voice for the burning of the witch and her brats ever since old Kostya got sent to the marches for stealing grains.”

“Just one of her brats,” said another. “We’ve still got to keep an eye out for the boy. Inquisitor wants him, and we are all good citizens of the Empire, right?”

“Right,” came a chorus of answers, several more or less enthused than the others.

At any rate, listening to the villagers prattle on answered some of my questions, and I watched as a man detached himself from the group and crossed to Gleb’s bakery, which stood opposite the fishmonger’s, on the southeast corner of the main intersection.

“Gleb!” he called. “Gleb, you cross-eyed bastard! Come take a look at this. The witch’s house is burning!”

I watched anxiously from the shadows for the baker to materialize. Knowing the fat man’s nature, I suspected it would be a hard thing to draw him away from his shop, but my fears were relieved by the distinctive tremors of the ground that preceded Gleb’s appearance.

“What are you on about?” he asked from the doorway. “I’ve got some loaves that need shaping.”

“Let Lara do it,” the townsman said. “Come feast your eyes on the purging!”

Gleb wavered for a moment before exiting his bakery. “Let’s see what’s got you bastards all in a tizzy,” he said. “Some of us have to work. We can’t all be idle.”

I waited for the baker to join up with the rest of the townsfolk before I began a mad dash from the gap between the fishmonger’s and the physician’s. As I burst through the open door of the bakery, my nostrils were grateful for the assault of a new smell that went partway to covering over the stench of rotting fish.

Several fresh loaves rested on a display counter, and I grabbed the one closest to me, a weighty rye bread that was decorated with some sort of braided pattern and smelled absolutely delicious.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I met the eyes of Lara the baker’s wife just as she had come out from one of the rear rooms, where the furnace was no doubt located. She began to waddle awkwardly in my direction, but although she moved about as slowly as a slug through a puddle of glue, and I could have escaped her at a leisurely walking pace, I found my feet transfixed to the floor of the bakery as I stared wide-eyed with terror at her.

She towered over me moments later, glaring down into my terror-stricken eyes. To my great surprise she did not lay a hand on me. “You’re Ruzhena’s boy, aren’t you?” she asked.

I nodded even as I set the rye bread back on the display table, gingerly and with as much reverence as I could muster. Lara hesitated a moment, glanced past me and out the door to where her husband stood gawking at the forest, and then settled her gaze on me again.

“Your mother may have been a whore, but she helped me through an ague once when the damned Concord physician could do nothing about it.” She reached out, plucked up the rye loaf, and shoved it into my hands. “Take it, and get the hell out of town, you little moron. You should’ve been long gone by now. No one will show you any mercy if they catch you.”

I swallowed nervously, nodded thankfully—still not trusting my voice, though at least my bladder had not failed me this time—and turned about to dash out the store again.

My heart was threatening to burst out of my chest, and so rather than head back to the north forest and the direction I’d come from, I ran south and away from the crowd of townsfolk studying the smoke of my mother’s burning home.

“Gods damn me,” I muttered when I paused for breath at the edge of the tree line. “Gods damn me but I’m alive!”

“That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

I screamed and dropped the loaf.

“Rio, Rio, Rio!” Damek muttered with a chuckle. “You can’t go pissing your britches every time someone gives you a fright.”

I groaned, feeling the familiar warmth of urine against my legs as it soaked my pants.

Damek sighed as he stooped to pick up the loaf of bread. “Come, back to the river. We’ve got to wash those pants. I am not walking all the way to Gandras with you smelling like piss, let me tell you!”

“How did you find me so quickly?” I asked.

“Give us some credit, will you?” Damek replied. He was busy shoving the rye bread into the canvas sack he’d taken from my mother’s home that morning. “I may be blind but I’m not an idiot. You think I’m just going to let you walk into town to steal us some bread and not follow you to keep an eye on your proceedings—figure of speech?”

“But you’re blind!” I exclaimed, exasperated now by the many mysteries surrounding this old man. “You haven’t told me how you can move around so easily if you are blind. How did you know where that loaf of bread had landed when I dropped it? You didn’t have to feel around for it.”

“Rio, Rio, Rio,” he said again. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I’m missing all my other senses. Folks think anyone with a handicap must be a complete invalid, and I use that to my advantage, but I could hear that loaf drop and pick out it’s location as easily as any man with a pair of eyes could.”

“Very well,” I said, crossing my arms and refusing to move in the direction of the river to wash before I had more satisfactory answers. “That make’s sense, I suppose, but how do you miss trees and roots?”

“What am I carrying in my hand, boy?”

“A stick. So?”

“You think I fill my hand with this piece of wood just for the hell of it? My sense of touch is so acute due to practice that I can sense the slightest crack in the ground through this stick as it slides over the earth.”

“Not at a run, you can’t,” I said.

“Listen, you little prick: I am not going to argue this now. When you are blind and reliant on a stick and your own sense of touch, then we can have this discussion. For now, my sense of smell is telling me that you stink like a gods damned latrine, and as I said, I am not walking from here to Gandras with you smelling like piss.”

“And when do we eat the bread?” I asked.

“When I say so! Now, get your arse down to the river and wash your legs and your pants. I’ll meet you back here and we can get a move on down the road to Gandras. I’d like to put at least two watches’ worth of walking between us and Maluns by sunset.”

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

“We can stay here for the night,” Damek said. “The Inquisitor won’t be back until the morning, and we will be out of his way by then. Besides, the bastard will be more concerned with hunting down your mother than with the prospect we might be spending the night inside her abandoned forest hovel.”

“I’ll have to chop more wood,” I said. “My mother wanted us to save as much as we could, but we still ran out of wood last night.”

Damek put his hand on my shoulder. “No wood. Too much light. Whatever we have to eat, we’ll have to eat cold as well. We’re staying here for the comfort of a roof over our head and pallets to sleep on, not to flash a beacon to every moron in Maluns who’s out looking for us.”

“But there ain’t no food,” I replied. “That’s why I was sent to town.” This statement was punctuated by a loud rumble from my gut.

“No food, eh?” Damek asked. “Well, get your arse indoors then. I’ll scrounge us something else to eat. And besides, I’ve got to cover over our tracks a little. Old Koldan the Fool might’ve missed the fact we were here, but he had bad light. Morning’ll be different.”

“But it’s too dark to see our tracks,” I said stupidly.

“Are you trying to be a moron, Rio, or are you always this gods damned dense? World’s always dark to me. But that just makes the rest of my senses all the sharper.”

“But how can you find—”

“Enough talk. Get indoors. Lie down or tidy up, or otherwise occupy yourself until I return. Just don’t touch whatever your mother left behind. I know she was a druid, and there’s like to be some pretty nasty stuff sitting on her shelves.”

“Yes, ban,” I replied, shoulders sagging somewhat.

“Come here, Rio.”

I approached apprehensively and was rewarded with a sharp slap to the back of my head as soon as I was within Damek’s reach. “What the hell did I tell you about calling me ban?”

“Don’t,” I repeated.

“Get inside.”

The forest was dense, and the foliage met high up overhead to the point that even in the midst of the clearing in which my mother had built her hut one could look up and not see the stars at night. The walls of the home, however, shut out what little light managed to penetrate to the forest floor through the leaves and branches. It was like finding oneself in a cave deep beneath the earth without so much as a smoldering twig. I’ve been there before, and believe me that even the dungeons of the Piliakilnis in Gandras are sunlit gardens by comparison.

At any rate, I sat in total darkness for a long, long time. Every sound of the night was amplified despite the walls closing me off from the outside world. There are few times when I have ever felt so alone as I did then. I was without my mother and my dear sister, Senka, who at least would have afforded me a modicum of comfort. Damek was hardly any sort of companion to give me much confidence, though the bastard had a curious ability to navigate the world despite his lack of sight. It was almost as though he knew the location of every bush, tree, and protruding root in the forest, though I was certain I had never seen the man before in my life.

I tired of waiting for him to return and eventually laid myself down on my usual sleeping pallet and tried to break the tedium of the night with slumber. It was to no avail. I began to realize how important my mother’s presence had been, for her druidic commune with nature had lent her a limited power over the forest, such that we slept peacefully knowing there was no danger. That was all denied me now.

Eventually, Damek did return, the hut’s door opening and shutting with a terrifying creak. “You awake, Rio?” he asked softly. He knew it had been a damned long time since he’d left me.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked harshly.

“Finding you dinner, you ungrateful piss pot,” he replied. “Browning your pants with fear of the dark?” he asked a moment later, his smile evident on his voice.

“No!” I said. “I’m just hungry is all.”

“Well, my little companion, I found you a few pieces of edible fruit. Eat up and get some sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”

“It took you so long to find this miserable fair?” I moaned after biting into something that felt like an apple in my hand but tasted like rotting beef with the texture of week-old bread.

“You think you can do any better, you mouthy little bastard?” Damek asked. “Gods, we’re going to make a fine pair if all you do is complain at charity. You’re supposed to be helping me, remember? Now, eat your damned supper and get some sleep. No more lip from you, and if I hear you so much as grumble beneath your breath, I’ll send you out there alone. And you know what happens to little boys without guardians?”

“They become catamites,” I said forlornly.

“Indeed.” I could hear him smiling again. “Ruzhena has taught you some things, at least.”

I finished my supper, forcing every bite down and stifling the urge to moan about the cramps the sour fruit were giving me. “Damek,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I’m not complaining but—”

“But what?” His voice was edgy, and I knew I was only a single misplaced word away from becoming Ban Hadeon’s bitch—a thought that motivated me to a great deal more care in what I said than any threat of a beating from my mother ever had.

“My stomach hurts,” I said. “I won’t be able to sleep.”

Damek groaned and began to move about the hut without giving me a reply. Again, he showed a remarkable ability to maneuver past obstacles that I, even having lived there for four years, would have stumbled over in the deep darkness of the night. I heard the sound of clinking bottles followed by the sound of Damek’s nose sniffing.

“Ain’t got no fire or water to make tea,” the blind man said eventually, “but your mother did leave us a few maigarrin leaves. Chew on this.”

He handed me a single large leaf that was still surprisingly moist, as though it had been collected only two or three days before at the most.

“It won’t help the pain,” Damek explained, “but it’ll damned sure put you to sleep so I don’t have to listen to you complain.”

The leaf was chewy without being twiggy, but—gods!—was it bitter. I nearly choked on the stuff. It was one of the herbs that my mother had not entrusted me with picking and probably with good reason. She knew I stuck a bit of everything I picked into my mouth. I called it experimenting. My mother called it damned foolish and likely to get me killed.

Still, I got another glimpse into my mother that night. Had she sent me off to pick maigarrin leaves, I’d probably have been eaten by something in the forest while lying unconscious at the foot of the tree.

The next thing I knew, Damek was shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, Rio,” he hissed in my ear. “Time to get going before the bastards from town show up.”

I peeled open my eyelids—which seemed to be sealed shut with some sort of glue—and blinked up at the dimly visible face of Damek.

“I hope there’s nothing you wanted to keep in here,” the blind man said as he moved away from me, satisfied that I was awake. “We can’t take anything aside from what can fit in this little canvas bag I found, and the Inquisitor is likely to order this shack torched to clear the world of your mother’s stench.”

“Nothing I want,” I replied sleepily.

“Good, because there ain’t no space for any of your crap anyway. Filled the bag with the last bits of your mother’s herbs and roots—too valuable to leave behind. Now, move your arse, boy, and let’s get out before Inquisitor Koldan and his band of merry idiots catches us time wasting!”

We left the hut without further words passing between us, although my bladder was going to need relieving soon if I didn’t want to wet my britches.

“You can piss when it’s convenient,” Damek told me when I paused to relive myself against the wall of the hut.

Exerting all of my willpower on my bladder, I followed him into the undergrowth around the clearing. Damek made me wait for him as he went back to cover our tracks away from the home again. He returned moments later, whispering, “Now we must trust in the gods. Inquisitor comes, and we can’t move in this curst forest without making a great deal of noise. Sit still and shut up!”

Koldan did indeed appear moments later, trailed by twelve townsman from Maluns: the same half-dozen morons who’d failed to keep my mother in, and another half-dozen morons who would join the chase for my mother—a chase Damek had already promised me would prove fruitless.

The Inquisitor made a quick inspection of the clearing, confirming for himself that I had not returned in the night. “Right,” he said once that inspection was completed. “You two, torch this hut and then get back to town and keep looking for the boy. Doesn’t seem as though he returned in the night. The rest of you will head north with me to hunt the witch. Her tracks lead clearly away.”

“If she’s a druid,” asked Darko the blacksmith, “won’t she be able to cover her tracks so’s we can’t find them?”

“You doubt the Inquisition’s ability to spot the signs of a druid’s passage?” Koldan asked menacingly.

I cast a glance at Damek beside me. He was grinning widely as if to say, You fools couldn’t find your arse to crap from!

“No, ban,” Darko replied.

“Good. Then let’s get a move on. She has half a day and a night on us, but she’s carrying a young girl with her and is likely accompanied by the blind man you saw yesterday. She can’t be moving very quickly and will likely be relying on her witch’s tricks to turn pursuit aside.”

Koldan and ten of the townsmen moved away in the direction that my mother had left the previous afternoon, leaving a pair of men from Maluns to burn our hovel to the ground.

“Think the witch’s brat’ll turn up?” one of the men asked the other as they set about lighting a torch with flint.

“He’s a kid. Bastard’s as dumb as stone and can’t hide forever. Inquisitor will be gone for a few days, maybe a week or even a ten-day, so we’ve got plenty of time to search every hidey-hole for him.” The speaker touched the torch to the hut’s thatching and they moved on around the far side of the house so that their speech was too distant for us to hear.

“Let’s go,” Damek said to me as they disappeared. “They’re making so much damned noise that we should be able to get sufficiently far away that we can plan our next move.”

I followed without comment, and Damek led the way deeper into the woods, sidestepping trees, shrubs, and roots so dexterously that I was seriously beginning to doubt his blindness.

Maybe, I thought, maybe he’s a right big bastard. Everyone thinks he’s blind, but he can see clear as day.

The possibility became increasingly certain the more I stumbled despite my own clear and documented ability to see.

When we finally paused, it was just in sight of the River Balundan. “The river will cover any sound we might make while speaking,” Damek said. “Empty your bladder and have a drink, then we can talk.”

Without waiting for me to move off and with little care for privacy or propriety, Damek dropped his britches and began to relieve himself. I moved off, blushing, and turned my back to him, pissing against a random tree.

“You know I can’t see your cock, eh, boy?” Damek asked with a chuckle at my modesty.

“I don’t know that,” I replied. “I don’t know anything. How the hell can a blind man walk through a forest without stumbling when I trip over every damned root the gods see fit to place in my path?”

“Because you’re a gods damned clumsy dumbass,” he said. “Besides, I don’t need my eyes to see. The eyes lie. Remember that, Rio. Let it be the first lesson I impart. If your eyes tell you that you’re seeing something, shut them and let your other senses confirm before you choose how to respond. You’ll save yourself a damned heap of trouble that way.”

“I’ll just trip and land in a ditch,” I replied.

“If you do, it’ll prove to all the world that you’re a moron,” he said. “Now, enough of this banter. We have to decide what to do. Or, rather, I’m going to tell you what we will do, since I’m the master here and you’re my helper. Savvy?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said.

“How did—”

“How did I know you nodded?” he asked. “Because you’re not idiot enough to try screwing with me just yet, boy. Now, shut up and listen: We can’t hang around Maluns. Bastards will be looking for us. But we can’t head downriver without supplies, and you had bugger all to eat in that hut of yours, so we’re going to have to get food someplace else.”

“We can get fruit from the forest,” I said.

“What, and listen to you bitch like a little girl? Not bloody likely. No, you’re going to steal us something from town. A farewell parting to this midden heap, if you like.”

“But I can’t do that!” I protested.

“Why not? You come from a long line of bastards. Your father was a thief. Your sister’s father was a thief. Your mother was a thieving whore druid. It’s in your blood.” He grinned, and the sight of that expression sent a shiver down my spine. “Besides, if you can’t swipe one simple loaf of bread from that fat sod you call a baker, then you have no business serving me.”

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Then what?”

“Then we head south, away from Inquisitor Koldan, and towards Gandras.”

“But my mother went the other way.”

“Forget about your mother, Rio. You won’t be seeing her again. I am your mother now, and your father. I am all the family you have, and you’d better get used to the idea. I can teach you things, but I won’t have a student who isn’t willing to learn.”

Despite everything she’d done to me while she was very much a part of my life, I found the prospect of losing my mother forever to be more saddening than expected. Without warning, I found myself weeping for her.

Damek was kind enough to count out a hundred heartbeats before thwacking me on the head with his walking stick. “Enough of that for now. Get us some food or we’ll both be dead of hunger before we can properly miss your mother.”

As I moved off towards Maluns and my first attempt at theft, I swear I heard the old bastard mutter a prayer.

“Dear gods,” he whispered, “keep our sweet Ruzhena safe.”

(Next Chapter)

(Previous Chapter)

Inquisitor Varyna set down her quill, leaned back in her seat, and met Ilarion with a hard stare.

“What’s the matter, Inquisitor?” Ilarion asked, a sardonic grin creasing his lips. “Hand cramping already? God’s faces, but we’ve only just got going. My throat isn’t even feeling the effects of that piss you call cider I was forced to drink a while ago.”

Varyna ignored him. “Tell me, Ilarion, do you really expect me to believe all of this sentimental crap you’re telling me?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Every word of that is God’s honest truth. Well, most of it. You know what childhood memories are like. They’re more a mix of impressions and images than of actual facts. But damned if I’m not telling you things exactly as I recall them. With a few minor embellishments, of course, but nothing a clever dear such as yourself couldn’t swiftly edit out.”

The Inquisitor rose from her seat and walked around her desk. She leaned back against its solid frame, crossed her arms, and chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip as she fixed Ilarion with another searching stare.

“Why do I get the feeling you are trying to screw with me?”

“You’ve only got a feeling? Well, I’ll be damned…”

“We both know you are already damned, regardless of what you say or think, so your oaths mean nothing to me. This is a serious matter—”

“Yes, I know. Posterity and all that,” Ilarion said tiredly. “Posterity can kiss my posteriority, if you catch my meaning.”

“I do not,” Varyna replied mirthlessly. “Not in the slightest. Your father and then your mother’s lover both caught for the exact same crime? That oh-so-cute story about your sister and her fear of her Sausawan father? An old blind man capable of giving an Inquisitor the slip? These are fairy stories, Ilarion, not the stuff that makes a worthless bastard such as yourself into the worthless bastard you are.”

“You think too much of your fellow Inquisitors if you think a crafty old bastard like Damek couldn’t outwit a whole college of you lot. Hell, woman, I’ve posed as an Inquisitor on many occasions and done so in the presence of other Inquisitors, who were all none the wiser I might add. I’ve had your ilk falling over themselves to kiss my arse in the hopes of a promotion. You people are hardly the pinnacle of human intellectualism, let alone capable of so much perception as a stewed tomato.”

Varyna sucked in a sharp breath through pursed lips. “I can see that I am wasting my time,” she said. “Clearly the absolution I can offer your soul means little to you. When you have grown up enough to stop offering me tales about men named Damek of the Crap-house, then perhaps we can talk intelligently.”

“God’s faces, Inquisitor, but you really don’t get out much, do you? You’re so damned sanctimonious that you can’t even fathom a man to be capable of that sort of self-deprecating humor.” Ilarion chuckled. “Maybe if you sat there and copied down this story in full instead of breaking in before you’ve heard all there is to hear, you’d actually begin to understand why a man in his position might take on such a name.”

“Humor me, Ilarion, and let me hear some of this now before I waste any more of my ink. Why would any sane man name himself of the Crap-house?”

“A man who wanted your pity would,” Ilarion said. “A man who wanted you to see him as so poor of spirit, so ruined in this life, that his parents couldn’t even bless him with a decent name. Listen to me, Inquisitor: you want to know what goes on in a criminal’s mind, what makes a man stoop to the lows that I have? Then sit back and listen to the tale of the blind man’s game. It’s one hell of a yarn, I promise you.”

Varyna leaned her head back and stared blankly at the ceiling for a few drawn-out moments. Finally, she pinched the bridge of her nose as she brought her head back down. “Waste of time,” she muttered to herself. She followed this declaration up with a sigh of resignation.

“Very well, Ilarion.” She unfolded herself from her perch on the edge of the desk and returned to her seat. “I’ve already invested a great deal of resources into listening to this drivel. We can continue for another half watch—but I am warning you that I will end this charade the moment I get the feeling you are buggering around with me. My time is precious, and there are others I could be interrogating instead of sitting here and listening to you prattle on about all your perceived problems with the Concord. Let us keep this to the facts.”

“And the facts don’t include the very real fact that the Inquisitors are a bunch of half-brained, arse-for-mouths, ignorant bastards?” Ilarion snapped his fingers dramatically. “Oh, right! Sorry, I forgot. This is all for posterity, and we certainly wouldn’t want the generations to come to know the truth about you warthog-faced, piss-for-blood, arrogant pricks.”

Varyna made a sharp motion with her left hand, far faster than Ilarion’s eyes could track. Before his brain had even registered her movements, his ears recorded the thudding sound and his balls fell the tingling vibrations of a small knife imbedding itself in the wood of his chair, not two hairs’ breadth from those same balls.

“Impressive,” Ilarion said around a momentarily nervous swallow. He reached down to work the knife free. “But it’ll take a little more than that to truly frighten me. I know you can aim, Inquisitor.”

“Even the most skilled miss their mark occasionally. I cannot vouch for the next one—should there be a next one.”

Ilarion tapped the side of his nose. “Now you’re talking my language.” He rose to set the knife back on the Inquisitor’s desk, a motion that earned him the raising of Varyna’s good eyebrow. “What?” he asked. “You can’t possibly think I can use that, do you? Barely good enough for picking my teeth! How the hell am I going to walk out of the Augandwars armed with a little toy like that? Come now, Inquisitor. You know me. I know you. We’re old friends already. No more threats, eh? We’re beyond that, I think. Now, take up your little quill there and let me tell my story. I know you’re just going to edit out whatever you don’t like before passing this on to your superiors at any rate, so let’s not pretend like I can’t say whatever I wish.”

“Sit down, Ilarion,” she commanded, taking up her quill and dipping it to draw fresh ink. “Impress me in the next half-watch, and you can have food, drink, and a little bit of rest.”

“Top drawer, Inquisitor. Top drawer.”

(Next Chapter)