Ari Marmell - The Warlord_s legacy

The intruder stepped carefully away from the sleeping forms to the wardrobe, slipping on a hanging overcoat he pulled from within and leaving his crimson tabard behind. Back to the kitchen, then, to acquire the necessary props to excuse his presence should anyone awaken and challenge him. Finally, now looking very much the household servant-if, perhaps, a somewhat disheveled one-he trod softly up the stairs and along the hall toward the baroness's chambers.

Decorum demanded that he knock and announce his presence before entering Irrial's boudoir, but prudence demanded with far more conviction that he not risk attracting attention. Working swiftly, Cerris lifted the latch and darted inside, allowing the door to click shut behind him.

It wasn't much of a sound, but the baroness, perhaps troubled at having enemy soldiers in her city and her house, proved a light sleeper. Snapping open a shuttered lantern at her bedside and grasping a long dirk from beneath her pillow, Irrial bolted upright-and stared. Cerris, a tray of steaming tea held aloft in one hand, gaped back at her. Her hair, tousled and tangled with fitful sleep, hung about her shoulders, and the flimsy nightshift she wore to bed was, put politely, neither as formal nor as modest as the gowns Cerris was accustomed to seeing on her.

In a single instant, a dozen apologies and excuses, any one of which might have salvaged the situation with everyone's dignity intact, flashed through Cerris's mind. So of course, what blurted unbidden from his mouth was, "Wow, that really is a lot of freckles."

"Cerris!" she protested, flushing hotly. She nearly cut a finger on her dagger as she dropped it, the better to clutch the heavy blankets to her bosom. "What the hell…?"

"Oh! Oh, gods, I… I'm sorry, I…" Stammering like a schoolboy, blushing as darkly as she, Cerris finally had the presence of mind to turn his back, allowing the baroness to haul the concealing blankets up to her chin. It said more for his good fortune, and less for his manual dexterity, that he didn't upend the tray in the process.

"You can turn around," she told him, her tone bewildered and more than a little cold. He did so, to see her sitting upright and utterly concealed, save for her face, beneath the quilts. "Cerris…"

"I'm so sorry, my lady," he told her. "I didn't intend to, ah…" He cast about desperately for a way to phrase this. "To startle you like that," he finished lamely.

"Startle. Right." She chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment. "You know, there was a time in Imphallion's history when you'd have had your eyes put out for something like this."

Cerris couldn't help himself. "It might've been worth it," he said, and he was almost certain, when she looked down and growled something, that it was to hide that familiar twitch of her lips.

Finally having regained his composure, Cerris approached the nearby wardrobe, selected the first blouse and skirt that looked manageable without the aid of servants, and looked away once more. He could all but hear her pursing her lips at his selection.

"Color-blind, are we?" she asked as she dressed. Once done, she put a gentle hand on his shoulder, guiding him to face her. "What are you doing here, Cerris?" she asked seriously. "If you escaped from your work gang, why in the name of all the gods aren't you miles away by now?"

He stepped aside, poured them each a cup from the teapot he'd brought from the kitchen. "I need your help," he told her softly. "And then we're both getting out of here." He seemed surprised even as he said it.

'Oh, please. Tell me you're just saying that to make sure she helps you,' his mind taunted in the demon's voice. 'Given the stellar accounting you've made of yourself with women so far, anything else is either delusional or masochistic, wouldn't you say?'

Cerris found himself grateful that he was already blushing from before, since it hid the shameful flush that newly rose to his cheeks. In any case, it was done, and he focused away from his inner dialogue to listen as Irrial spoke.

"… commoner might just disappear," she was saying, "but I think if one of the nobility vanishes, they might well come looking, wouldn't you say?"

"Are you afraid of that, my lady?"

"No," she said, and he found he believed her. "I could do a lot more good outside this damn house. But this sort of thing takes preparation, Cerris, and I'm just not-"

Cerris raised an interrupting hand, nearly spilling his tea. "You misunderstand," he said. "I'm not planning on making our escape tonight. Actually, in another hour or so, I need to sneak back into the barracks before I'm missed."

Irrial blinked twice, perhaps checking her vision since her hearing was obviously faulty. "What are you… I don't…"

"I need you to help me find something, Irrial," he said, unaware that he'd dropped the proper formal address. "Something that'll give us a vital edge. I can't leave without it."

"What?"

"A weapon. One that would certainly have been claimed by someone of rank. The Cephiran officers meet with the nobles and Guildmasters regularly, don't they? To make sure the city's running to their specifications?"

Irrial nodded. "Twice a week, so far."

"Then you've a better chance of spotting it than I do. It was taken from my home when they attacked, and I want it back."

" 'It'? You're being awfully cryptic. What sort of weapon?"

Cerris sighed. "I don't know."

"Cerris, what are you trying-"

"Have you ever heard," he asked slowly, as though deciding how much to trust her, "of the Kholben Shiar?"

"What? You're joking, right? They're a myth."

"They're not. I have one. Or I did, anyway."

Maybe it was his eyes, maybe his voice, or maybe the fact that he'd have to be insane to risk escaping-and then breaking back in-on a jest. Whatever the case, Irrial obviously chose to believe.

"My gods." She began pacing the length of the bedroom and back. "Rumor has it that Audriss the Serpent and Corvis Rebaine each had one, you know."

"Did they." His voice, flat as an undertaker's slab, made it a statement rather than a question.

"I saw an axe hanging at Rebaine's side, the day he took Rahariem." She was whispering, her expression unfocused. "I don't even know why I noticed it, there was so much else about him… Was that it, do you think? The Kholben Shiar?"

Cerris said nothing, and Irrial scarcely seemed to notice his silence. She shook her head as though dragging her thoughts more than twenty years forward, back to today. "If you don't know what form it's taken, how am I supposed to recognize it?"

"It keeps certain traits," he said, hoping now that her memory wasn't too precise. "It'll have runes and figures adorning the head, blatant no matter what it looks like. If you stare at them long enough, they'll even seem to move."

She nodded, though her expression remained doubtful. "All right. And if I find out who has it, what then?"

An hour and more they spent in discussion, making arrangements, suggesting adjustments to each other's plans. Night was pregnant with the dawn by the time they'd finished, and Corvis-with a lingering "Thank you" whispered in Irrial's ear-had just enough time to recover his stolen uniform, make his way back through the gates, and sneak into his bunk, where he waited to rise-exhausted but newly determined-with the guards' morning summons.

TWIN COLUMNS OF HORSEMEN, clad in burnished steel and draped in iron-hued cloths, wound along the highway, a single armored centipede scurrying across rolling coastal hills. Every tabard, every shield, sported the hammer-and-anvil emblem of the Blacksmiths' Guild-as though the sheer quantities of quality armor and mail weren't evidence enough of that particular loyalty. Although they moved at a stately, even staid, pace, the drumming of a hundred hooves shook the earth, melding with the distant waves into a single endless, rolling percussion. The ocean's tang filled every visor, and each soldier knew with a sinking certainty that, though his armor gleamed brilliantly now, he would spend many an hour this evening polishing and scraping, lest the coming rust dig too deep.