James West: Lady Of Regret

Bald and stout, the innkeeper Master Rigo greeted her at the bar. His florid jowls quivered with joy. “A fine evening! Gods, I cannot thank you enough for coming to the Blue Piper. Wine, milady?”

“If you please.” Nesaea slid onto a high stool.

The innkeeper ducked his bulk behind the bar, popped up a moment later with a brimming cup of house wine. Nesaea sipped the sweet blend, dropped a pair of coppers on the bar.

Master Rigo pushed the coins back with a happy wink. “Your Maidens have earned their keep ten times over.” He swabbed a nonexistent spot with a clean rag, then tucked it into the apron tied about his ample belly.

There were two more inns and half a dozen taverns in the riverside village of Cliffbrook, all as rundown as the Blue Piper. Nesaea had chosen the place because Master Rigo seemed intent to make the best of what he had. Stains marred the rolling wooden floor, but he kept it swept clean. Rusted iron chandeliers hung from sagging rafters, but the serving girls kept the wicks trimmed on the candles, and did not allow the dripping wax to build up and hang like globs of melted cheese. The windows were scrubbed clean, no matter that they looked out on a street packed tight with parked merchant wagons.

The innkeeper looked from Krysala to Nesaea. “Don’t expect I can talk you into staying on a few days, mayhap a week?”

“We Maidens never stay in one place so long,” Nesaea demurred.

Master Rigo’s face fell. Just as quickly, he brightened. “If your travels ever bring you near to Cliffbrook again, you and your girls are more than welcome at the Blue Piper. Free food and wine, if you return.”

“My thanks,” Nesaea said.

Master Rigo bobbed his head, then bustled off to serve another customer.

Nesaea leaned on the bar, a finger tracing old scars in the bloodwood slab. She did not expect to ever venture so close to the Shadow Road again, or the Gyntor Mountains. Southern Qairennor, Trem, Unylle were all territories more to her liking. And the earnings were better. After what had happened at Fortress Hilan, all that with Lord Sanouk and the demon-god he had treated with, this part of the world had lost what little appeal it held for her.

She shivered, recalling the cramped tomb Sanouk had sealed her into, while deadly potions gnawed at her mind and rotted her insides. Dark sorcery had given Sanouk a resistance to all the poisons that afflicted her. Others had been trapped with her in those lightless catacombs, each condemned to suffer a different form of death in order to safeguard the outcast brother to the King of Cerrikoth. Most had escaped. A few had not. Had it not been for Rathe, Nesaea might still be there, forever held between life and death, slowly overcome by madness wrought by perpetual agony.

Thinking of him soured her mood. Rathe had saved her, then left her with that jumped-up chit, Erryn of Valdar. The self-styled Queen of the North had quickly found her power, and with it the boldness to pursue a man whose heart belonged to another. At least, that had been the way Nesaea saw it. With men like Rathe, you never could tell.

“Rathe, a king?” Nesaea scoffed under her breath, recalling Erryn’s clumsy attempt to get Rathe into her bed. Nesaea gulped the last of her wine, knowing she was being unfair. Rathe had, after all, denied the girl’s ridiculous offer. In the end, he had done what he thought best, drawing those who hunted him away from Valdar and Erryn, but also away from her. And I let him go .

“She’s come far,” Fira said, hopping onto a stool.

“Who?” Nesaea asked, glad for the distraction. She had promised herself not to think about Rathe. Fira always helped distract her, save those times when the fire-haired woman got too deep in her cups, and started lamenting Loro’s absence. Just what the woman saw in Rathe’s vulgar companion remained a mystery, but her strange affection oft brought a smile to Nesaea’s lips.

“Krysala, of course,” Fira said.

“I suppose.”

“You suppose ? Gods, when we found her, she was nothing but a grubby waif, scurrying about the sewers like a common rat. Look at her now, and tell me you can imagine her filching your apples.”

“She’s lucky I did not take off her fingers.” Nesaea remembered the heat of that day, the narrow street jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with hawkers and their custom, curtained palanquins borne by sweating servants, rumbling merchant wagons cutting swaths through the crowds. The port city of Vencio was a city too small by half for all the folk who lived and traded there. Breezes off the Sea of Grelar usually cleared out the stenches of salt, tar, and fish, but the air had been calm the day Krysala tried to snatch a sack of apples off Nesaea’s wagon seat. Instead of reaching for her knife, she had grabbed the girl’s wrist, hauled her up, and plopped her down. That had proven to be the easy part. “She fought like a rat, too,” Nesaea said fondly.

Fira grinned. “Still has that same feistiness.”

“Not so long ago,” Nesaea mused, “you were such a waif.”

“A lifetime ago, and someone’s else life, at that. You and the Maidens have been good to me.”

Nesaea put her back to the bar, dividing her attention between Krysala’s next song, and Fira’s excited chatter about the new dress she had commissioned from a local seamstress. To hear her, no one would suspect she had orchestrated and led the attack against Fortress Hilan. And, in so doing, had inadvertently given Rathe the opportunity needed to end Lord Sanouk and his wicked schemes.

“I tell you true,” a man said off to one side, voice overloud with indignation. “The man be a wizard. Best I ever seen.”

As a dabbler in such arts, those words caught Nesaea’s ear. Many claimed such powers, but most were charlatans, masters of trickery and illusion. She turned slightly to listen.

“Any man can juggle,” another fellow jeered.

“Aye, ‘tis true, but this man did so without his hands.”

“No hands? Then what’d he use, his tongue?” He snorted derisive laughter. “I’d rather a wench use her tongue to juggle my-”

“Not his tongue, you daft fool. Nor was there any wenches about. He used his mind for the balls, and naught else.”

“An’ you call me daft? You was tricked, I say.”

“Go see for yourself, then. Sazukford is not so far off. He’s serving as Lord Arthard’s court magician. Goes by the name Sytheus Vonterel. Ask round, an’ folk will know who you mean….”

At the mention of Sytheus Vonterel, the voices faded to the back of Nesaea’s mind. She knew the man, but had not seen him since she was a girl. She had given up hunting him after coming to believe he was dead.

“Nesaea?” Fira leaned close, worry wrinkling her brow. “Are you ill?”

Nesaea shook off her shock. “No … I’m fine.”

Fira looked doubtful, but let her concern pass. “Well, I was asking where are we headed next? Trem, Unylle, perhaps across the Sea of Grelar to Monseriq? You were born there, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Nesaea said absently, struggling not to let the long-buried memories of her homelands come. Recollections of blood, dust, and the death of all that she had loved. In a single moment, her life had taken a course far different than what she had ever imagined. A course no child in her right mind would want.

“Then it’s time you returned,” Fira said excitedly. “Taking the wagons by ship might be difficult, but we’ve gold enough to hire a small fleet. Besides, I’ve never known a sailor to turn down a pretty pair of eyes-”

“We go to Sazukford,” Nesaea cut in, caught between past and present. To hear forgotten screams mingling with Krysala’s sweet voice made her stomach clench.