Juliet McKenna - The Swordsman's Oath

The mage tried again. “There are things you just can’t ignore, auguries—”

“Festival fakery, Shiv,” Livak went on, eyes hard. “I don’t want to know. And you’ve got nothing on me this time to make me. I’d sooner take my chances walking naked through a wild wood.”

Shiv pursed his lips. “You don’t fancy the chance of getting a little revenge for Geris?”

“I shared his bed, Shiv. That lays no obligation on me to share his fate.” Her tone was scornful. “Forget it, you can eat with us and then you get on your way.”

With that declaration ringing in the air, she went out, slamming the door. Halice threw off a sudden abstraction and busied herself at the hearth. Raising a hand to still Shiv when he made to rise from his seat, I was glad to see he was looking faintly ashamed of himself. Trying to use Livak’s guilt over Geris’ death was a real horse-coper’s trick. I frowned at the memory of Geris’ lonely, agonized murder at Elietimm hands. I couldn’t blame Livak for her refusal, but I reminded myself sternly that the auguries suggested we needed Livak to somehow help avert disaster for the Empire, so I had to do everything in my power to convince her to join us, didn’t I? I only hoped I wasn’t borrowing against an empty purse as I followed her.

The sound of a hayfork drew me into the byre. “I wondered if you needed any help?”

Livak’s face showed she thought that excuse was thinner than a beggar’s blanket. “Buckets,” she said crisply, pointing to a stack in the corner.

I followed her out to the well. “It’s good to see you,” I commented as I wound up the pail.

Livak gave a smile to lift my heart but I reminded myself that persuading this woman to share her life with me would probably be harder than convincing her to come and work for Shiv again.

“I did wonder if your duties might bring you this way some time,” she said lightly, but with an unmistakable edge to her tone.

“You should hear Shiv out. These auguries of his bear consideration.” I poured clear, cold water into the waiting buckets. “Planir is warning that the Empire is in grave danger from the Elietimm.”

Livak’s snort told me her opinion of that. “All those gleaming cohorts and the Empire won’t be able to fight off a few boatloads trying to steal sheep from Dalasor?”

“Gleaming cohorts won’t be much use against those cursed enchantments of theirs, will they?” I replied honestly. “And the Elietimm are hardly going to hack a settlement out of the wilds of Gidesta or take over a couple of Dalasorian fishing villages when they can find rich towns, decent anchorage and better weather merely by sailing south for a few weeks. Come on, Livak, you saw the place they live in, bare rock and barren grassland; they’re not going to stay there, not now they have a way to reach the mainland.”

Livak grabbed a bucket, slopping water over the hard-packed earth of the yard. “Well, it’s not my problem,” she stated firmly over her shoulder.

“It’s certainly mine.” I picked up the second bucket and followed. “A lot of the older Princes don’t want to admit it, but the days when Formalin cohorts kept six provinces under their heel are long gone. When you add in the threat of this peculiar Elietimm magic, we’d be stupid not to look for help if the Archmage is offering it.”

“And your Emperor has the stones to admit that?” challenged Livak.

“Tadriol may be young but he knows when to take advice, Dastennin’s blessings on him.” I moved closer to whisper dramatically into Livak’s ear, savoring the lavender scent of her linen as I did so. “The word is he’ll get his acclamation at Summer Solstice. Messire favors ‘Tadriol the Provident’ but he’s keeping it to himself.”

Livak’s eyes glinted. “Place the right wagers on that title before the Convocation makes it official and Shiv’ll be able to buy that Viltred all the trinkets he wants, forget recovering the ones he’s had stolen.”

“Well, he has no chance of getting anything back if you won’t help him.” I thought about putting an arm around her shoulders but Livak moved away, muttering something in an Ensaimin dialect that I don’t know.

“The Archmage pays sound coin and in good measure,” I pointed out, trying a different weight to tilt the scales.

“Why does everyone think they can buy me?” scowled Livak. “Anyway, Planir only offers the rates he does because he only has to pay out one time in ten. Everyone else ends up seeing the inside glaze on a funeral urn.”

“Have you got some of last year’s coin put by?” I busied myself spreading straw.

“What, like the good little field mouse who hid every other grain for the winter? Your mother told you that tale as well did she?” The mockery in Livak’s tone stung me. “No, we used it to buy a Winter Solstice to remember, all four of us, new clothes all round, wine and good dining, ten days of the best that the Cavalcade at Col can offer.” Livak’s expression challenged me. “The Archmage’s coin may be sound metal but it comes with too much blood on it to keep it in my purse. Still, you’re right, I should have found a better use for it; I should have spent it all on incense to burn to Trimon, to get Shiv dropped head first into a river gully if he ever tried to find me again!”

Making an offering to the god of travelers myself was starting to look like my best hope for getting this ill-matched handful on the road.

“The mercenary camps will soon break up,” I reminded her. “What will you do for coin then? Halice won’t be able to enlist with any decent corps with that leg of hers.”

“We’ll manage and I’m certainly not about to go chasing crickets with a hayfork for Shiv when Halice needs me with her.” Stabbing the hayfork into a bale, Livak went out into the yard, where she started slinging scraps of wood into a kindling basket with unnecessary force. I swallowed my irritation and began to help.

“I don’t know how you can do it,” she burst out after a few moments. “How can you get yourself mixed up with wizards again?”

“I’m doing my patron’s bidding,” I replied in as neutral a tone as I could.

“He sends you off like a fowling hound, does he?” Livak shook her head, her tone perilously close to a sneer. “Coming and going at his whistle or risking the whip? Tell me, has he got some other poor bastard leashed in to replace Aiten yet? Doing his master’s bidding didn’t do him much good, did it?”

I closed my eyes on sudden flash of memory: Aiten’s body in my arms in the midst of the pitiless chill of the ocean, his life blood warm on my skin where Livak had sliced open the great vessel in his leg and killed my friend to save the rest of us when Elietimm enchantments had stolen away his mind and turned him to attack us.

“I had to do it, you do know that, don’t you?” she demanded abruptly, her face white. “He’d have killed us all if I hadn’t.”

“I know.” My eyes met hers as I fought to keep my voice level. “I know and I don’t blame you. Neither would he. The only shame to bear is my own, for leaving you to do what I couldn’t.”

“I’ll be answering to Saedrin for it, that much I know.” Livak’s emerald eyes suddenly brimmed with tears that she dashed away with an angry hand. “It’s been that one killing the old mercenaries warn you about, the one that stays in your dreams, where you wake with the smell of blood in your nostrils.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I’m doing this for Aiten’s sake as much as for anything,” I told her with a venom that startled even me. “We swore the same oaths and we lived by them. I’m loyal to that trust.”

“I’m loyal to my friends, not some canting words and a tarnished kennel-tag,” snapped Livak, stabbing a finger at my medallion. “I value my freedom too highly.”