James Enge - This Crooked Way

The soldier came up and clapped Roble on the shoulder. "That Morlock!" he said. "Full of surprises! Did I tell you how I cut his head off, once?"

"Only about forty times," Roble replied. "But the day's young." He stepped over the dead lizard and bent down over me. "Fasra! Are you hurt?"

I croaked at him.

"She needs water," said Morlock, master of makers and of the obvious. "Let's get her out of this heat."

They dragged me to a cooler place in the wedge of land between the rivers, and the soldier handed me his water bottle to drink from. I recognized him then: he was Thrennick, the Keep we had met in the marketplace.

I drank, cleared my throat and spat, and drank again.

"How you find me?" I said when I could speak, in a manner of speaking.

"By accident," said Morlock wryly.

"We weren't looking for you, Fasra," Roble said. "Or rather, we thought you were with Naeli."

"I was. Only-"

"You don't have to explain a thing to me, you crazy little wench; you're just like your crazy mother. I'm just glad you're all right and I hope it did some good."

I drank in more water, and also the idea that I was, indeed, all right.

"Why soldiers our friends now?" I asked, after I caught a little more breath. "If are?"

Roble said, "Morlock showed Thrennick the map, as proof that GuardsCommander Vennon had been taking money from the Sandboys. Then Thrennick showed it to the second-in-command, and it was enough to get him to arrest his boss. Then he gave Thrennick a commission to take command of all the parties searching for Charis. He was furious at Vennon."

"Oh?" I said.

"Well, the poor guy hadn't been cut in," Thrennick explained. "Commander Vennon never was very bright that way. And when we searched his quarters we found letters proving he and another man had been acting as the Khroi's agents in the city."

"Who's the other man?"

"Well, the fellow didn't sign his name, and Vennon claims he doesn't know it, but Morlock said he recognized the handwriting."

"Who?"

"It was Charis," Morlock said.

I felt stupider than ever. Morlock had gone to Charis for information on the Khroi. Charis had tried to cheat him, and when that failed he had gotten the information. This had brought him under the hostile attention of the agent of the Khroi in Sarkunden …who was Charis, apparently.

"Charis is trying to kill himself?" I said stupidly.

Morlock shrugged and didn't otherwise answer.

"Not exactly, miss," Thrennick said patiently. "You have to understand, Vennon was a spy and a traitor, but an honest one. When Charis bribed him to get information about the Khroi, he sold Charis the information. But then he reported to the Khroi through their agent that Charis was collecting information about them for someone else. The agent told Vennon to pick Charis up and interrogate him and Vennon tried to do it, first with the Sandboys (who'd been in his pocket for years, or vice versa) and then with the imperial troops."

Something about this explanation didn't satisfy me, although Roble was nodding sagely as Thrennick spoke. Morlock wasn't nodding or making any other sign that he agreed, so I asked him, "What do you think?"

Reluctantly Morlock said, "Thrennick may be right, as far as he goes. But the writing in the agent's messages to Vennon is Charis's. I think Charis wrote the message which lured us into the city, also. And I read the life-scroll of the watch-golem in Charis's house, the one you stopped. It was instructed to kill any human who entered the house; there was no exception specified for Charis himself. He wrote that, too."

"Maybe it was just an accident?"

"Eh. Charis doesn't make mistakes with golems. If he made that golem, and presumably the other golems in the house, a danger to himself, it must have been deliberate in some way."

"Why?"

I thought he was just going to shrug again, and if he had I swear I would have gotten up on my feet and beaten the snot out of him. But what he said was, "Charis sold off little bits of himself until there was nothing left but the bargains he had made, and the fear of breaking them."

"So?"

"Death ends fear. Maybe you can't understand that."

I tried to tell him that I did understand, and that I wasn't sure he was right about Charis, and how Charis had understood how I felt about Naeli and being grateful, and that was why I had done what I'd done, but I wasn't sure it was enough-

"No," said Morlock interrupting me.

"No?" I asked, a little angry. Who was he to tell me how I felt?

"You owe Naeli nothing. She owes you nothing. That's not why you risked everything to save her. You are not debts on each other's balance sheets."

"What is it then?" Roble asked.

Morlock shrugged. "The bond of blood. Blood has no price! You don't buy it or sell it. When the need arises you shed your own to protect your own, and you don't count the cost."

I was appalled. Charis's balance sheets of debt and obligation I could understand. The fierce credo of blood-loyalty announced by this cold-eyed white-faced man was too irrational. I couldn't believe it any more than I could have reached the river of fire running behind us: it was completely impractical. Suppose you didn't like someone you were related to? What about people you weren't related to: what did you owe them?

Roble seemed to be thinking along these lines. He said to Morlock, "What about you and us? We're not your blood."

"Aren't you?" Morlock asked.

"Are we?"

Morlock looked away toward the burning river. After a moment he said, "My people-the people who raised me-said there were two kinds of blood: given and chosen. The blood you're born into is given. The kinship you choose is no less binding."

"Makes sense," said Roble casually, and turned to Thrennick, who was standing nearby with a few of his soldiers, all of whom wore rather blank looks. "You've caught up with Venison's troops and cancelled their orders," he said, "so what happens next?"

"Officially," Thrennick said, "I'm to take you all into custody and bring you back for questioning."

"And unofficially?" Roble asked.

"Unofficially, I'm supposed to slip a knife into Morlock here and bring his head back to the new commander as proof he's dead."

"And actually?"

"Oh, I suppose you all will have gotten away while I wasn't looking. I'd like to bring Charis back, though. It might mean a promotion for me; the new commander would like to know what kind of information he was selling to the Khroi, and for how long."

"He'll be with Naeli at our rendezvous point," Morlock said.

"Let me send my men with these trackers back to their barracks; me and one of my soldiers will tag along with you."

He must have gone to do that, because the next thing I remember was someone whining with a Sarkunden accent, "Why do I always get picked for these rotten jobs?"

"Because," Thrennick replied, "I like to know who's behind me and, whenever there's a fight, there you are behind me. You and my butt, Tervin."

I tried to get to my feet, but Roble just picked me up and started to carry me. I tried to tell him I was still bleeding and he'd get stuff all over him, but he just told me to shut my piehole. My piehole, like the rest of me, was pretty damn tired by then, so I did as he suggested and pretty soon fell asleep.

"I don't like the sound of it," Thrennick was saying when I woke up.

We were still underground, not too far from the fiery river; I could tell by the red gloom in the air. We were standing at the foot of a steep black cliff. The men were all staring upward with listening looks, so I tried to listen, too. What I thought I heard, from high above in the red gloom, was the clash of metal on metal.

"If your people are fighting someone," Thrennick was saying to Roble, "I don't think they're our soldiers."