R. Salvatore - The Dame

There was only one answer. Jhesta Tu.

Bransen knelt over Jameston for a long while, cradling the man’s head, trying to come to terms with his loss. The minutes continued to slide past and still Bransen sat, recalling his first meeting with Jameston in the wilds of southern Alpinador, when the scout had joined in a fight against a company of Ancient Badden’s trolls. He remembered the look on the face of Crazy Vaughna when she realized that it was Jameston Sequin, the Jameston Sequin, who had joined in their cause.

Walking with Jameston these last weeks, Bransen had come to appreciate that awestruck expression of Vaughna’s all the more, for truly this man more than matched his impressive reputation.

Now Jameston was gone.

How alone Bransen felt at that terrible, terrible moment. Not just alone but confused, consumed by the unsettling notion that he had played a role in this, that he had allowed Affwin Wi to dismiss Jameston and send him away. All those thoughts swirled and coalesced, first reducing Bransen into a battered and defeated shell, weak in the knees and unable to hold back his tears.

But the stretch of pity and self-pity and hopelessness lasted only a few heartbeats, replaced by a bubbling rage that turned Bransen’s churning gut into a pit of pure acid. He gently laid Jameston’s head back and jumped up to his feet, seeking focus, seeking an outlet.

He considered the hole in the wooden wall, punched through with tremendous force. He turned Jameston’s body over a bit and noted that the same blunt force had hit him with enough power to skewer him. An image of Merwal Yahna and his exotic weapon flashed in Bransen’s mind.

Jameston had been near the wall, his back to it when slain. Bransen turned to see what his friend might have witnessed at that moment and noted blood on the floor by the door. He went to it, following the clear trail of blood droplets to the back of the cottage, a short distance into the forest, where he found the remains of a makeshift pyre and the charred and shrunken remains of a person. He saw a black silk slipper and knew beyond any doubt. No simple soldier had taken down Jameston Sequin.

“Jhesta Tu,” Bransen mouthed as he regarded that slipper, and knew from its size that it had been worn by the woman who had battled Jameston while Bransen had fought Merwal Yahna in their first meeting with Laird Ethelbert’s assassins. At least those two Jhesta Tu had hunted Jameston Sequin. They could not have done so without the permission, indeed the command, of Affwin Wi.

Bransen felt his jaw go tight, the muscles in his arms and legs twitching in anticipation. It took him a long time to slow and steady his breathing, to find his center and his mind-body connection. He couldn’t hold that connection for long.

Too overwhelmed was he, too betrayed and confused. And too angry. Only once in his young life had Bransen Garibond felt such rage: on that terrible day when Laird Prydae had abducted Cadayle for his sexual pleasure and given Callen to Bernivvigar to be murdered. That same terrible time when he had learned of the murder of his father, Garibond Womak. That rage had allowed him to sit within the branches of a bonfire and feel no heat. That moment had incensed him to kill.

Bransen turned to the east, toward Ethelbert dos Entel. Toward Affwin Wi. Sprinting nearly the entire way, Bransen reached the wall of Ethelbert dos Entel before dawn. The sky over the Mirianic glowed in predawn light, but stars remained clear in the west. The city was only beginning to awaken. The Highwayman used that slumber to his advantage. He could have walked in through the gate; Affwin Wi had introduced him to the guards there, and she carried great weight in the city, but something deep within, his Highwayman instincts, told him that stealth was his ally here.

He moved along the wall, listening carefully, until he came to an out-of-the-way corner where he could climb and keep the still-dark western sky at his back. There, he fell into the powers of the malachite and used his strength and training to easily scale the twelve-foot barrier. He peered over the wall, the cat’s-eye allowing him to see as clearly as if the sun was up in the east, with complete confidence that the guard he then viewed a dozen strides away could not see him.

The Highwayman went over silently, the dark sky behind him presenting no silhouette for the half-aware sentry to observe. He could have killed that sentry-it would have been an easier course than slipping across the wall top and down the other side-but he dismissed that notion out of hand. Still utilizing the powers of the malachite to lighten his step, Bransen crossed over quickly, allowing himself to drop to the ground in near silence because of heightened balance.

Though he could see Castle Ethelbert, it took him a few moments to get his bearings and determine the best way to navigate the crowded city, time he didn’t have to spare as more sounds of the city awakening filled his ears and the sky brightened a bit more. He started at a trot, quickly a run, letting that low but imposing castle guide him. Affwin Wi and her group were in a wing of the castle. In short order he could see the balcony from which his spirit had answered Jameston’s dying call.

He could just go back in the room. It was unlikely the others knew he had left or had learned their terrible secret. Prudence called him to that plan, but anger prevented it.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. This was no time for secrecy and plotting, for deception and caution. Or perhaps it was just such a time. Bransen, so consumed, didn’t care. “No.” He walked in the front door of the castle’s far western wing, the complex afforded Affwin Wi’s group.

“When did you go out?” Pactset Va greeted him immediately. “How did you get out?” Va shook his head, his topknot dancing with the movement as he called across the way to his companion Moh Li, noting Bransen’s dark expression.

Moh Li responded quickly to the call, stepping through a hanging curtain to look curiously from Pactset Va to Bransen.

“You did not tell me that this one left,” Pactset Va reprimanded.

“He did not,” Moh Li replied. “Not while I guarded.” Both men turned suspicious stares upon Bransen.

“I left from my balcony.”

Pactset Va waved a finger at him immediately, the man’s face screwing up into a stern look. “You cannot do this!”

The Highwayman smiled slyly and walked right up to that poking finger.

“You leave only on the command of-”

“Shut up,” the Highwayman cut him off.

Pactset Va’s eyes popped wide.

“Shut. Up.” the Highwayman said again, biting off each word through his gritted smile.

Pactset Va slapped him hard across the face.

“Shut up now,” the Highwayman clarified, smiling wider and staring at him, oblivious to the sting of the slap or his red face.

The man moved to slap him again, but this time the Highwayman used Pactset Va’s incredulity to get inside the man’s defenses. He opened up a sudden and furious barrage of punches, left and right, into the face of the man. Five short punches sent Pactset Va back hard into the wall. Va brought both his arms up high to block, but the Highwayman leaped and spun a complete circuit, kicking expertly right below the man’s blocking elbows, scoring a hard kick into Pactset Va’s belly.

The Highwayman landed softly and leaped and spun again immediately, bringing his foot around to connect solidly on the side of his lurching opponent’s face, launching Pactset Va into a sidelong somersault. He landed hard on the floor, semiconscious and groaning.

“You will pay the price!” Moh Li cried.

Without even a glance at him, the Highwayman strode up to tower over Pactset Va. Still not looking at Li, the Highwayman drove his foot down hard on Pactset Va’s throat.