Notes: Wowza, plot actually starting to coalesce! That doesn't mean we're close to the end, but we're not far from it either, if you get my drift.
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Interlude: Ticking Clocks Pt. One
***
Interlude: Ticking Clocks Pt. One
Twelve Days Out
It was odd to feel young again.
Avery wasn’t naïve; he knew in the span of years many races lived, even humans with no magic at all, he was still relatively young. At thirty-five, he was entering what would have been the prime of his career as a rogue: youthful enough to carry all the athleticism of his earlier self, but with the experience to more than carry his weight on any job. If he’d stuck with his last crew, the way he’d once dreamed of doing, he might have been leading those jobs by now. Lissette had been disinclined toward planning, chaos-worshipper that she was, and Brok wasn’t a thinker by nature. He’d made an excellent battering ram, but he preferred to be pointed in a direction and let loose. Whaley had only stayed a few years after Narion’s forced retirement, and Marlon…
Well, Avery in his current incarnation was the result of Marlon’s planning skills.
That’s not fair. He didn’t push you into that trap, you threw yourself into it.
And look what had come of that.
There had been a time when just thinking about Marlon would send Avery into a mixture of loathing and longing that made him nauseous, not to mention disappointed with himself. When he’d come back to Lollop, drawn in by Narion because Narion was the only one left who could tolerate his curse, Avery had expected to fade into a shell of himself until the elf was eventually forced to give him a merciful death. Instead, he’d been drawn out of his self-imposed exile and slowly, painfully learned to reintegrate himself into the rhythms of village life. Becoming a teacher had been a surprise, but it was the great joy of his life these days. Being around the children reminded him what it was to be young and full of hope.
Then he met Hiram, and hope took on a more specific form—along with flutterings of his heart and tremblings of his fingers and the affection of his beast shape, which seemed impossible. And yet Hiram, for all he was just a man, seemed to embody the impossible. He made Avery feel safe just by being with him, even when he was unconscious. There was something steadying about him, a depth of presence that calmed his curse even when it was most rapacious.
It didn’t hurt that he was so handsome. He probably had a decade on Avery, judging from the gray streaks in his long black hair and the speckles in his short, tidy beard. There were deep lines around his mouth and the corners of his eyes that spoke of many years of laughter, and a liveliness and energy that had him carrying himself like a man in his twenties. He was knowledgeable, clearly gifted at his profession, and did well enough for himself to rent the Widow Shore’s house all on his own.
And a unicorn considered him honorable enough to serve, which…perhaps he’d been a soldier once, seen action of some kind or run off poachers or something. It was a mark in his favor that the unicorn used its inherent ability to disguise its species for the sake of staying with Hiram, and yet it would be so much easier to court the man if Avery could go to Hiram’s house.
Court him? No, he wasn’t—what? Visit with him. Spend a bit of time with him. Enjoy his company in private, instead of vying for his time during the brief break Hiram took in the middle of Market Day.
Avery stood back and waited to see if Hiram noticed him as he wrapped of his latest purchase. He’d put himself forward if he had to, but there was a part of him that wanted to be noticed, that wanted to be just as interesting to the other man as he was to Avery.
He wasn’t disappointed. Instead of having to step up, Avery had the pleasure of hearing, “Thank you kindly for the offer, Mistress Dallagh, but my companion for the midday meal has just arrived.” He looked over her shoulder at Avery and smiled, and it took all Avery’s control to keep from blushing.
“Oh.” The woman, a middle-aged widow of substantial property and numerous children, looked sharply disappointed for a moment before her expression brightened again. “I’d be happy to welcome both of you at my home in town for lunch, actually. We could—”
“Forgive me, Mistress,” Hiram interrupted her as he got to his feet, “but I’ve already booked a table nearby for the two of us. Perhaps another day.” He closed up his cabinet of supplies, locked it, then came over and held his arm out to Avery. “Shall we, darling?” he asked, the twinkle of mischief in his eyes so intense that Avery nearly broke out in laughter.
“Of course, dearest,” he managed, and let Hiram lead him through the still-bustling crowd without a single person bumping into them. The earring he wore glittered brightly in the early autumn sunlight, the magpie shine of it the focus for a lot of passersby, but all of Avery’s attention was on the feel of Hiram’s hand on his, warm and calloused and comforting. He felt giddy over it, and even though he knew full well that Hiram hadn’t booked them a table anywhere because he hadn’t known Avery was going to be there, he was—
“Wait,” Avery said as Jonn’s little son Roddie waved them over from the side of the Yew Brew. There was a small staircase on the outside of the tavern that led up under a portico at the apex of the roof, a place that Avery had always assumed belonged to pigeons for the most part. “Did you actually plan something for us?”
“I did,” Hiram confirmed, easy and confident.
Avery was confused. “But you didn’t know I’d come to see you.”
“True, but luck favors the prepared.” Avery blinked at hearing the old rogue’s maxim fall so easily out of Hiram’s mouth. “I wanted to be ready, and when Jonn mentioned to me that he had a private room at the top of the tavern, I thought it would make a novel place for us to pass some time together.”
Avery gaped for a moment. “You…” They got to the top of the building before he had a chance to figure out what he wanted to say. Far from a pigeon-infested mess, he found an open-walled cupola with clean wood floors, a tiny table in the center of the space with two tankards on it, and two tables tucked in at the sides. It was a gnome-sized space, which meant they had to stay hunched over until they sat down, but once they were seated Avery could still stretch his legs out.
Roddie beamed at him. “Da’s got the food all ready! I’ll go get it!” He vanished down the stairs almost faster than Avery could track, leaving him alone with Hiram and a glass of what he detected was fresh-pressed cider. The view was spectacular, a vantage he’d never had on Lollop before, and the company…
“You can be quite astonishing at times,” Avery said quietly.
There were layer’s to Hiram’s smile that Avery knew he didn’t understand. “You’ve no idea,” he said.
Not yet, he didn’t. But Avery intended to.
One week out
The crystal remained clouded. Despite how strongly Keleyn tapped into it, no matter how deeply connected it was to the essence of his prey—and as a crystal used by the former royal wizard for years, the connection was truly deep—there was no way to pinpoint it. He had a general direction, and despite the bell-like clamor that had arisen a week ago from Xerome’s magic, the intensity of it had subsided just as fast.
The hunt for Xerome, Wizard of the First Order and former Shield of the Vordurian Empure, hadn’t fallen to those who knew him best. His two students had fled the city in opposite directions, one of them leaving a trail of ice, the other of fire. Pursuing them had led to nothing but pain, and after careful scrying it had been shown to be fruitless anyway. He wasn’t with them. No one could ask the vanished princess either, who had been like a daughter to him. Her energy on the ethosphere was so well-obscured that she left no trail at all.
No, the hunt for the traitorous bastard was given to Keleyn Zar instead. A shadow walker by heritage and a wizard by schooling, there were stronger magic users in the service of the emperor, but none of them were better suited to tracking wisps of energy across the ethosphere than him. He was the leader of the emperor’s private police, a man who’d spent the last decade hunting down every charismatic leader who looked to be putting their talents to ill use and ending the threat. He’d handled some of the most powerful people the world had ever seen, and he’d done it through guile, secrets, and the occasional blade emerging from the darkness.
And there was a great deal of darkness ahead of him.
The Tower of Gemmel, hmm?
This place might defy his visions, but it wouldn’t defy his ability to step into it through the shadows. A few more weeks of steady travel and Keleyn would arrive there himself, and see what it was about the place that had brought a man like Xerome out of hiding.
And once he’d satisfied his own curiosity, Keleyn would drag Xerome from the Tower into darkness. The shadow realm held one of the few magics that the wizard had little experience in, and Keleyn knew it like the back of his own eyelids.
He would trap Xerome there and hold him in stasis until Andurion decreed his death. Then there would be a new First Wizard for the empire.
And his name would be Keleyn Zar.
No comments:
Post a Comment