A. Hartley - Will Power

“What was the ambassador doing in Stavis for so short a time?” I asked.

Orgos shrugged. “Why so suspicious?” he said.

I shaded my eyes from the sun to see if this was a serious question. Apparently, it was.

“He just seems to have been exactly what we needed exactly when we needed it. Plus,” I added, as a slightly embarrassed afterthought, “he bothers me.”

“Bothers?”

“You know,” I hissed, glancing around as if he might be behind me, listening with that oddly watchful mirth of his. “He seems so. . I don’t know, calculating. Deceptive? No, that’s too strong. He looks at me like someone looking at a kind of ape, you know? Something that is intriguing and kind of funny because it is almost-but not quite-human?”

“Renthrette looks at you like that, too,” he grinned.

“She’s better looking,” I returned. “But it’s different. She’s obviously revolted by what she sees. He’s just fascinated . It’s like he’s joining in a child’s game, you know? He’s involved, and yet he isn’t.”

“I think you’re overanalyzing.” Orgos laughed.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I admitted. “I just have to come up with a reason for why he makes me feel so strange.”

“What is this, intuition? A hunch?”

“I suppose.”

“A bit metaphysical for you, isn’t it?” Orgos smiled.

“That’s why I’m trying to rationalize it,” I agreed. He took my hand and pulled me up beside him, and I found myself smiling. If we had to ride off into the unknown, I would at least have a companion who would exchange the time of day with me.

Renthrette appeared. She was mounted on a dapple-gray filly and still looked sullen. “Let’s go, if we’re going,” she said. She had tied her hair back with string and wore a long mantle of creamish wool. A sword hung beside her, but she had no other weapons or armor, and I couldn’t help thinking that we were ill-prepared to be anyone’s escort in unfamiliar territory. Her face, almost white with sleeplessness and anxiety save for lips tightened to pinkish lines and eyes rimmed with shadow, was hard, stoic, under my gaze. Then, without waiting for a response, she turned the horse and began walking it out of the inn yard. Orgos watched her quietly, his face showing that curious emotional elasticity it had. He could slip from violent rage to easy and expansive laughter in the blink of an eye without ever seeming remotely insincere. Now his brow was clouded with concern and fears he dare not speak.

“Garnet and Lisha are on their way,” I breezed. “Be sure of it.”

Orgos looked down for a second and then grinned at me, knowing I was trying to encourage him, and grateful for it.

“Where’s your crossbow?” said Mithos to me as he strode out of the inn with a basket of bread and cheese.

“I didn’t have it with me, exactly,” I faltered. “I. .”

“If you are unarmed,” he said, cutting me off briskly, “you’re no use up there. Get in the back with the ambassador. I’ll ride with Orgos.”

So that was it. I climbed down and loitered for a while, but it was clear that we were ready to go. I kicked at the gravel of the yard and then looked up to find the carriage door swinging open. The ambassador met my gaze from inside and he smiled slightly, knowingly. Even in daylight with the windows open, the interior seemed somehow dark and uninviting. It was like he exhaled shadow, or the sunbeams which came shafting through the windows like golden smiles took one look at him and thought better of it. I glanced round as if he might have been waiting for someone else but then, when no one came to my rescue, climbed in.

“It’s nice to have fellow travelers for company,” said the ambassador evenly.

“Yes,” I said, barely disguising the extent of the lie.

“And such a nice day.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, perhaps we ought to be getting on.”

“Yes,” I said.

He rapped on the roof with his knuckles once, and we set off. I tried not to look him in the face, though this was difficult to avoid since we were sitting directly opposite each other. As we turned out of the inn, I stared out of the window as if there was something extremely interesting about the countryside outside.

In fact, there wasn’t. We were only a dozen miles north of Stavis and about the same distance east of the river Yarseth, so although the ground was sandy and hard, the area was irrigated well and the near continual sun made the land fruitful for miles. How far it went, I really couldn’t say. I supposed there were isolated villages and little market towns, but if there were settlements on the scale of Stavis or Cresdon, or, for that matter, of Adsine or Ironwall, I had never heard of them. So we were heading aimlessly into the back of beyond, and I got to make the journey with the world’s funniest undertaker. Another smart career choice by all-knowing Will, clear-sighted clairvoyant extraordinaire.

After a few minutes studying the fields of green stuff we were passing as if my life depended on it, I sneaked a peek at the ambassador in the hope that he might have nodded off. He was sitting with his head tipped forward and his fingertips pressed together. His eyes, rolled slightly upward, were fixed unwaveringly on me.

“Oh, er. . Lovely countryside,” I blurted out. “So, you know. . green.”

“Yes,” he said, throwing my taciturnity back at me.

I flushed, awkward and embarrassed. He, predictably, smiled to himself as at a secret joke. I returned to the window, though I could feel his eyes on me continually as the miles passed.

We stopped for lunch three hours later and I was out of that coach before you could say Mobile Tomb. After a morning two feet from the prince of darkness, even Renthrette’s steely gaze seemed welcoming. Another misreading. She met my smile with a look that could turn milk to cheese at fifty paces and returned her attention to her horse, who she probably deemed a more worthy companion.

I had wandered cheerlessly off into the underbrush to relieve myself and was returning to the road up a shallow embankment when, glancing up, I saw that the sky, which had been bright and clear only moments before, was now darkening with huge purple storm clouds. They were moving at great speed, steadily obliterating the blue beyond, though I could feel no wind to speak of. There was a rumble of thunder and, almost immediately, there came a pattering of rain.

I scrambled up the slope to the road just as a distant lightning flash set Renthrette’s filly snorting and stamping. She dismounted hurriedly and whispered to it. As she did so, I glanced at the coach horses which, by contrast, were curiously still and unaffected, even as the thunder bellowed loud overhead. Orgos and Mithos slid down from the driver’s plate, hunching over to keep the rain from their faces, and, for a moment, the four of us were together in the road, caught quite off guard by the sudden storm. We exchanged bewildered and irritable glances and then I heard, from inside the carriage, the faintest laughter.

The ambassador, who was watching us through the coach window, clearly found the idea of great adventurers caught out by a cloudburst extremely amusing. His eyes fell on mine. “The pragmatist gets drenched!” he exclaimed with strange rapture. “How easily the unlikely takes you off guard, Mr. Hawthorne!”

There was something oddly knowing about his manner and, recalling my dream, I felt a shiver course through my spine. He continued to laugh, staring at me, and then, with a great sigh as if he’d finally got what he wanted, he turned his face up to the sky. “See, William,” he said. “Reality dawns.”