“Fair winds and following seas,” Dawson replied with a wide grin and a look of sincere love for his dearest friend.
C
allen Duwornay moved tentatively toward her bedroom door, surprised by the knock. She expected it to be Cadayle, of course, and feared that something might be troubling her daughter at this late hour, for indeed, the night was past its midpoint.
She flinched, her rich brown eyes going wide to see Dawson McKeege, his floppy cap in hand.
“What trouble?” she started to ask, but Dawson hushed her gently.
“No trouble, pretty lass,” he said. “Or might be for me, but nothing to get yerself upset about.”
“It is very late,” Callen said, and she reflexively grasped the front of her loose nightshirt and slipped a bit farther behind the cracked door.
“Begging your pardon.”
“Given, but what is the matter?”
“It’s about you and yours going to Pryd to live,” Dawson explained, his voice shakier than Callen had ever heard it. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
“That is the plan if Bransen can manage it.”
“No water near Pryd.”
“No water?”
“No sailing water—river or ocean, I mean.”
Callen looked at him as if she did not understand.
Dawson, clearly uncomfortable, rubbed his stubbly, weathered face. “I’m sailing in the morning. Not knowing when I’ll be back.”
“Going home?” Callen asked.
Dawson shook his head and rubbed his face again. “I’ll be on Lady Dreamer for all the season, until winter puts me in dock, either here or back in Port Vanguard. It’s not what I’m wanting, but Gwydre needs me, and that’s a call I’ve never let pass.”
Callen smiled and nodded, though her expression drooped just a bit as she asked, “So you have come to me to say farewell?”
Dawson seemed to Callen as if he might cry. He shook his head. “I’m not wanting to, pretty lady. Not since the first time I saw you.”
“Dawson!” Callen said.
“I know I’m not proper here, and I’m not knowing how to tell you otherwise, but I had to tell—”
He stopped then. He had to, for Callen Duwornay came through her doorway and wrapped him in a great hug and a passionate kiss.
She hadn’t even realized how much she had longed to hear words like that from this man, hadn’t realized the depth of her feelings for Dawson, so busy had she been in the teasing and lighthearted banter with him.
So she kissed him with passion she hadn’t shown since the long-ago night when a wicked Samhaist and the people of Pryd Town had mutilated the one man she had ever dared to love and had thrown her in a sack with a snake for her crime of loving him.
Clearly nervous, and clearly not knowing what he was supposed to do next when Callen broke off the kiss, Dawson stammered and glanced around.
Callen tugged him into her room.
M
a?” Cadayle asked, gently knocking on Callen’s door. It was long past breakfast, and it was typically Callen who awakened Cadayle for their morning meal. Cadayle knew Callen to be a prompt and responsible woman, and her unusual tardiness this morning brought real fears to her daughter.
“Ma?” she asked again and pushed open the door.
To come face-to-face with Dawson McKeege.
“What?” she started to ask, when she noticed Callen, standing off to the side of the shade-darkened room, wrapped in a blanket and apparently nothing else.
“Ma?” Cadayle stammered, and then, “Oh, oh, oh!”
Callen started to call to her, but Cadayle didn’t wait and reflexively slapped Dawson across the face. Then, in horror, Cadayle sucked in her breath and threw her hand over her mouth, her eyes darting from Callen to Dawson to Callen to Dawson.
“Why’d you do that?” a surprised Dawson asked.
“I don’t know!” Cadayle cried, and with a final look at her mother, she gave a sharp yelp and ran off down the hall.
But by then she was laughing, giggling like a young girl.
“Ye’ve got yerself a strange girl there, Callen,” Dawson muttered.
“Have you met her husband, then?”
“Can’t wait to see their kids,” Dawson said with a helpless chuckle. “Ye think the girl’s sensibilities scarred?”
“I think her surprised,” Callen admitted, walking over and reaching with her blanket-gown to wrap Dawson next to her naked form. “And I think her happy, because she’s always happy when I’m happy.”
“And ye are?” Dawson asked.
“Fool,” Callen teased, kissing him, sealing his lateness for his meeting with Dame Gwydre.
B
ransen stood with Jameston in the forest to the east of Pryd Town. Jameston leaned on his bow, watching the young man, who seemed confused about his next steps.
“You’ll not find an easy path to clearing your name,” Jameston remarked. “Back to the north and Chapel Abelle, then? Be good to see your family. Let Dame Gwydre take the lead in arguing your case with the idiotic Yeslnik. That’s my advice.”
“You go and do that, with my gratitude,” said Bransen.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My road is southeast. To find the other half of a broken sword.”
“You’re thinking to kill the murderer and bring his head in to toss at Yeslnik’s feet? Much like you did with Badden?”
Bransen shook his head through every word.
“Bring him in alive, then, so he can speak the truth that you weren’t involved.”
Still Bransen shook his head.
“Say it, boy,” Jameston prompted.
“I’m not going to fight with the one who killed Delaval.”
“Then how’re you to clear your name?”
Bransen turned and looked at the scout directly. “I’m not sure I care any longer,” he admitted. “So please tell Cadayle and Callen that they may have to remain at Chapel Abelle a bit longer.”
“Bannagran said—”
“I would not trust their safety outside of Chapel Abelle, particularly if Yeslnik or his lackeys come to understand that I go to find he who killed Delaval not out of anger or for vengeance or for their perceived justice.”
“Then why?” Jameston smiled as Bransen took a deep breath. “Because they’re like you—like your ma, at least.”
“Jhesta Tu,” Bransen confirmed. “Long have I wanted to embrace the mystics of that which has guided me from Stork to Highwayman.”
Jameston considered the words for a few heartbeats, then nodded and shrugged. “Your road to choose.”
“And you will go north?”
“Only following your own steps. This is your journey.”
“Because that is what Dame Gwydre asked of you, but now I travel for myself and not for Dame Gwydre.”
Again Jameston shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I travel for myself and have been enjoying the road beside you. And that’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?”
“Enjoyment?”
“Aye.”
“There is more than that,” said Bransen.
“Never!” Jameston said with a grin.
Bransen knew better than to argue with the stubborn scout. Besides, though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, he was glad for the company—particularly the company of this man, this friend. He took a deep breath and took a bold step to the southeast, toward Ethelbert dos Entel, toward this unknown Jhesta Tu who had slain Delaval the king, toward the realization of his greatest hopes or his greatest fears.
But he didn’t slow.
Not this time.
PART THREE
THE MEANING OF HIS GIFT
I
met Jameston Sequin on a road east of Pryd Town. I had first been introduced to him on a winding trail in Alpinador, far, far away, when he had intervened to help me and my companions in a fight with trolls. His reputation preceded him by only a few sentences, mostly revealed in the wide-eyed
admiration from that most unlikely source of such animation, Crazy Vaughna.
I had known Jameston Sequin for months and had spent many hours with him and many alone with him before I ever truly met him. There was always something about him and his unusual appearance and demeanor that had drawn me to him and had made me glad indeed (though I wouldn’t openly admit it) when he had unexpectedly joined me on my perilous road out of Chapel Abelle. So many extraordinary visual clues had revealed to me long before that this was no ordinary scout, with his huge mustache and amazingly long-legged strides and that distinctive hat he wore, named after him because its triangular design served him as a sight for his deadly bow. Truly Jameston seemed larger than life, a man, perhaps the first I had ever met, whose reputation was not diminished, indeed was enhanced, by familiarity.
So I had known him, had traveled with him, had battled beside him, but it wasn’t until one morning a week out of Pryd Town, the smell of recent battles heavy in the air, when I actually met Jameston Sequin, and all because the enigma that was this formidable scout finally forced me to ask him a simple question.
”Why?”
He looked at me, and I knew at once that he understood the context and the depth of my inquiry. Maybe it was my stance, or the tone I had used in asking, or the simple lack of context for such a question, uttered suddenly on a faraway road. Whatever the reason, Jameston knew. I could see it in his eyes and in that grin he often wore, a look that made anyone around him know for certain that he, Jameston, knew more than they knew or at least understood better.
“Where?” he flippantly replied. “When? Who?”
I wasn’t letting him get away. Not then. I needed to know. He had surprised me by deciding to stay with me even after I had learned of the presence of Jhesta Tu and had proclaimed that my journey was my own and not for Dame Gwydre. To understand his decision, I needed to know the truth of Jameston Sequin. “Why?” I responded.
“Any answer I gave would work, I suppose, since your word works for any question.” He grinned wider because he knew that I knew that he knew, if that makes any sense, and he was determined to play it out fully.
“Why are you who you are?” I clarified, though it certainly wasn’t necessary. “Why a scout? Why do you spend your days in solitude?”
“I’m here with you.”
My sigh made him grin all the wider.
“You are becoming predictable,” I told him.
“When people think that, it makes me more dangerous.”
“Or are you afraid to tell me? To tell anyone?”
Finally, I could see that I had hit his sensibilities, and hard. His expression changed, as if a cloud had passed overhead to darken the day. He moved off the road to a small grouping of rocks large enough to serve as seats, bidding me to follow. I saw weariness in his step that I had never before detected.
“You want to know why I went into the emptiness of Alpinador?” he asked me as he took a seat, still looking older than before.
“I want to know why you’re here with me.”
“That’s what I said,” he replied. Was he always one layer ahead of me in my thinking?
“Pride and money,” he said then, and his smile became self-deprecating. “I went to Vanguard as a young man, younger than yourself. I was a confident one, almost as much as you are, and I was good enough to back it up. Things that seemed so simple to me, like how to hide and how to find someone else who’s trying to hide, befuddled others. I understood animals—I don’t know why or how, but everything about them and the way they were likely to behave just seemed obvious to me.”
“And goblins and trolls and powries,” I remarked, and Jameston nodded.
“With all that behind me, with all the folk of Vanguard looking north for furs and timber and exotic items, the road seemed obvious. I wanted to make a name for myself, boy, and make a fair amount of coin at the same time.”
It all made sense to me, of course, but I knew, too, that the young man who had first gone out from civilization for those reasons was not the same person now sitting before me. As Jameston continued his tale of exploration and building his reputation and fame as a guide and hunter, one question became apparent: What had changed his mind?
“I had the coin. It came from the caribou moss, from leading teams to it, from protecting caravans, and from this hat!” He tipped his “sequin,” that triangular cap favored by archers across Vanguard and even in northern Honce proper. “All the coin in the world, and nothing I wanted to spend it on,” he answered, plainly and again with that self-deprecating chuckle, as if it had all been a bad joke he had inadvertently played upon himself. “The fame led to a line of the same questions being asked over and over again. To some I was a hero, but I wasn’t any such thing. To most I was a curiosity, something to gawk at.
“Aye, that’s what I was,” he said, sadness in his tone. “And there was no point to any of it, so I went on without any sense of purpose.”
“Even mocking those who claimed such purpose driving their own lives,” I dared remark. Jameston’s corresponding nod was more enthusiastic then, as if I had grasped exactly his point in telling me all this.
“My purpose was all for me when I was a young adventurer, looking to conquer the world,” he said. “Then I had no purpose at all, and for a long time.”
“And now?”
“Now? Dame Gwydre’s father cut a new trail in front of my wandering feet. I didn’t walk it, not far anyway, until I had to, many years later.” As he finished, he looked up at me, locked gazes with me, and I knew then, in that moment, that I had truly come to know Jameston Sequin.
“When you met my group in a fight on the trail,” I reasoned.
“That was part of it.”
“You walk with me to find purpose in the life of Jameston Sequin.”
My proclamation was met with a somewhat accepting and somewhat incredulous look. Finally, he shook his head. “You’re just on the trail Gwydre’s da cut for me.”
Part of the bigger whole, he meant. Part of the purpose that was not self-centered, as was the one that had driven Jameston Sequin to the wilds of northern Vanguard and Alpinador, the one that had brought him fame and false fortune. It wasn’t until he realized that his journey through this life wasn’t about him alone, but about a greater sense of brotherhood and community, that Jameston Sequin had found a trail worth walking.
As I pondered that unexpected conversation throughout that day, I knew, too, why Jameston had shared it with me.
Dame Gwydre, like her father before her, had cut a trail, but it was one I was reluctant to walk.
And so it was that even as I directed our journey, to the east and the Jhesta Tu and my greatest question and challenge, even as I led, so I was being led.
It was . . . comforting.
—BRANSEN GARIBOND
TWENTY-ONE
Let the Word Go Forth
A
calm spread over St. Mere Abelle. Panlamaris’s army remained entrenched across the field, but they would not come on. No monks were out to guide the many prisoners, who, suddenly, did not seem to be prisoners any longer. Their work was not diligent this day as they milled about, whispering about the grand changes that had come to the world and to their corner of it. Ethelbert man and woman and Delaval man and woman mingled effortlessly and without thought, their old boundaries and battles now, finally, fully left behind.
In every prayer room of the great chapel, the brothers did their work, those lesser monks assisting the more powerful as they used a soul stone to soar out from their bodies, to travel spiritually to every corner of Honce, to their brethren with the word of Father Artolivan.
Come gather in Chapel Abelle, the blessed St. Mere Abelle, their spirits implored their brethren. Or to Ethelbert dos Entel if you must, and pray for the mercy of Laird Ethelbert. Hide, brethren, from the fires and follies of King Yeslnik.
The finality of the decision, a frank admission that the Abellican Church had severed ties, had
declared a complete and likely irrevocable break with King Yeslnik and thus the bulk of Honce itself, had weighed heavily on Father Artolivan and the others, but when Father Dennigan of Chapel Delaval had arrived, carrying the head of Brother Piastafan, what choice had been left?
“Let the word go forth,” Father Artolivan had told his brethren, his voice thick with regret and sad resignation. And so the brothers went to their work this calm morning, their spirits soaring from their corporeal bodies and from St. Mere Abelle, flying to the distant chapels to the limits of their power, then entreating the brothers of the outward chapels to spread the word to the wider corners of Honce.
“This ability of the monks to spread the word wide and far is an advantage for us,” Dame Gwydre said to Dawson, Cormack, and Milkeila at the windswept docks of St. Mere Abelle. “Should it come to war, our armies can remain in coordination. Our enemies might wait a week to hear word from a distant battlefield, but we can know . . .”
“You overestimate the power of spirit-walking,” Cormack dared to intervene. “This is a highly unusual event—we did not dare try it even in those hours when our situation in Alpinador grew desperate. This is most extraordinary for Father Artolivan to command it, or even allow it.”
“He did as much to relate to us the happenings in the southland when we were in Vanguard,” Dame Gwydre protested.
“And paid a dear price. One of the brothers who came spiritually to Vanguard—”
“One of? There was only the one.”
“Only the one who made it,” Cormack corrected. “Out of a dozen who made the attempt. Most fell short, weary before they ever managed to float their spirits across the Gulf of Corona. Another never even made the gulf, having fallen to possess a poor girl he saw along the road. He has recovered from the shock of that ill-fated meeting, but she remains a stuttering fool. And another brother did cross the gulf, only to be drawn into the corporeal form of a dockman on the wharves of Port Vanguard. He did not manage a possession and was driven mad in the attempt.”