The siege of Starath had changed little when Crar, the Merchant of Orm River, arrived by war galley. Arn only knew of his presence by a report from one of Master Quenden’s other servants. In a word, he was told it would be time “soon.” Arn had only kept training—pretending to have not heard the report.
Arn kept himself busy—busier than he had been since his days as a mere hunter on Razaad. When he wasn’t pushing his muscles to their aching limits, he was spending time with Massema. They worked on his ability to speak, or she taught him of her scribe’s work, or she told him marvelous stories of bizarre places she had been. Quenden didn’t seem to mind, though the other slaves were not allowed the privilege of education. Arn had never spent this much time with any of the women in his past, but it seemed to keep Gamden at bay.
Until, that is, the day he went to deliver a letter to Crar the Merchant.
The news came an hour before noon. It was brought by Nevo—who had avoided Arn as religiously as Gamden himself. The man was wearing a green linen tunic today, startlingly different than his dark leather jerkin or metal chain shirt. “It’s time,” Nevo said. “Quenden will see you.”
Arn had been repairing one of the sparring swords—a task he had been assured was not his. He set the roll of twine on the half-empty weapon rack, glanced around at the other training guards and slaves, and then shrugged. “Grab a shirt.”
“Don’t bother,” Nevo said. “You’ll blend in with the crowds just fine. Sweaty, poor, branded.”
Arn simmered at him. Nevo liked to bite at his heel. Soon enough, it would be time to swat his nose and remind him of his place. Soon… not yet. Today, Arn had to show Quenden he would do as he had said. He was more than a madman. “Lead the way,” he said.
Quenden was standing in the shade behind his building. He smiled as he saw Arn approaching and said, “It’s a good day for spy-craft, isn’t it? Cloudy, but not dreary.”
Arn shrugged. “Is that why I’ve been training so hard? To spy?”
Quenden paused. He didn’t like being talked back to—but that trait seemed tied to his concern that Arn would be a bad investment. “No, so that you can kill.”
“Am I to kill today?” Arn asked.
“Depends,” Quenden said. He nodded to Nevo and the head guard showed Arn a small scrap of cloth with a design sewn into it. The yellow background supported red threads that formed a dripping red knife. “That is the mark of Crar’s men. Don’t kill any of them. But if anyone else tries to stop you, kill them.”
“And then run,” Nevo said, smirking.
Arn blinked. “I don’t understand.” He didn’t run from fights, he won them.
“Don’t worry about it,” Quenden said, to make matters worse. Arn suddenly felt an uncanny familiarity. This task was not unlike the task Stone Spear had given him to sail the first raft to Scoa and return. It was evidently necessary, but would be acceptable for him to die trying. Quenden did his best to brush past. “So, Nevo and his men will lead the way. Follow them by at least twenty paces. When Nevo switches that pack to his other shoulder, he will be standing in front of the barracks where Crar is staying.”
“That’s where I go,” Arn said.
His white-haired master nodded. “Enter. Try not to get into issues with the guards—they will have Crar’s mark on them.”
“And drop a letter?” Arn asked.
“It needs to be somewhere that Crar will find it,” Quenden said. “And that no one else will. So, either you drop it in the same room as him, or you find his private things and put it with them.”
“Fine. Give me the letter,” Arn said.
Quenden and Nevo shared a glance. Likely, Nevo had advised his master against going through with it. Nonetheless, Master Quenden reached into his grey-blue robe and withdrew a small scroll. It was sealed with string and a wax circle—though it was devoid of the mark that Arn had seen on other documents in Quenden’s office. He passed it to Arn. “Don’t let that seal break,” he said.
Arn nodded solemnly. “Wait by the gate.”
“Wait outside it,” Nevo ordered. “Doftath in the street. Mix.”
Arn sighed and marched away, though he made mental note of the word to get a clearer definition from Massema on his return. He encountered her on the way to the gate, going over some reports with one of the wagon masters. While Arn was waiting, a few paces away, Gamden walked up, nearly brushing past Arn. He had a sack of grain over one shoulder, from the looks of it. He tossed it onto the wagon. Was the grain imaginary too?
“What?” Gamden asked, looking Arn’s way. “I thought you didn’t care what I did.”
Arn closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. When he opened them again, Gamden had climbed into one of the wagon seats. Arn blurted, “They let you leave?” before he realized his mistake. Massema glanced up, as did the wagon master, but worst of all, Arn had caught himself believing in his delusions again—believing his delusions had freedom beyond the estate.
Massema told the wagon master to wait and strode directly to Arn. Gamden chuckled and lounged back into the wagon seat, muttering something about how much they trusted him. Arn stepped toward the gate, but Massema stopped him. “What’s going on? I haven’t heard you speak to him in a long time.”
“I just… I lost focus,” Arn said. He shivered to remember times where his lost focus had resulted in Gamden doing things. They had killed guards before being branded—Arn had killed two and Gamden had killed another. Arn shook his head. He had killed three himself, somehow.
Massema touched his shoulder and the tirade of disjointed memories subsided. She made his skin feel soft somehow, not like hardened stone with blood trapped inside. “You’re here, Arn. He’s not.”
Arn nodded. He inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I should go.”
“Where?” she asked.
“A task for Quenden,” he explained. He touched her hand, where it touched his shoulder. They had flitted around the boundaries of fraternization, but this was as intimate as they had been. “I’ll come back tonight, I think.”
“Are you sure this is what you should do?” she asked, quietly. One of the guards was coming over—slaves should not have been holding up work. Not even the “special one.”
Arn nodded. “Nothing ever goes right when I make my decisions.”
“Fine,” Massema said. She stepped back and smiled reassuringly. “Just remember to focus.”
He smiled again. “Thank you,” he said, and then walked through the gate of Quenden’s compound. The guards didn’t even stop him to question him.
Arn tried to mix with the people in the street, but it was hard. Most were soldiers who looked down on him for the circle burned in his back. Others had their own circles and had little interest in entertaining a disjointed conversation with someone who had recently learned their language—or any conversation at all. Nevo waited for what felt like an hour before leaving the compound with two other plainly-dressed guards. Arn, letter in hand, began to follow them from a distance.
They headed north, deeper into the siege camps than Arn had yet been. The makeshift settlement continued to narrow and widen as they passed between various camps and military towns. Some seemed to have specific purposes: one was entirely for metalworking, another for cooking, and another for the sale of slaves. As they neared a rocky slope, the siege line climbed it and widened into a larger settlement than any Arn had seen—Starath aside. The wooden buildings rose to two or three levels here, and some had been replaced by rough stone structures, not unlike the buildings of Starath itself.
Nevo and his men paused from time to time, here. Perhaps it was part of their own mission, or it was just further deceit for whomever Arn’s letter was meant to avoid. He absently considered trying to get the letter into those people’s hands. In Razaad, he would have done just that—a forward, but precise maneuver that would drastically change his position on the social ladder.
But when Nevo tired of speaking with a random stable hand, Arn trudged onward. He had meant what he had told Massema. It was time he tried following, instead of sailing across the Deep on his own.
Next, Nevo and his men stopped to speak with some shirtless women in front of a two-story building. One of the subordinates even put his hands on a woman’s hips, before Nevo ordered them to continue onward. Arn wondered what the strange place must have been and nearly stopped to speak with them before continuing his tail of Nevo. But Nevo wasn’t pausing now, so Arn continued ahead.
And then Nevo switched his pack to the other shoulder. He was standing in front of a two-storey wood-log building that was protected by palisade walls not unlike the siege walls themselves. There were a few gates leading into the compound, which Nevo peered at momentarily, before continuing to walk down the main thoroughfare. Arn walked ahead curiously.
Quenden had said no one else could be given the letter, and Arn was worried that if he presented the guards with a clear communication, they might snatch it away from him. The only way to get it back would be to attack—and these guards wore badges with a red knife mark on them. So Arn would need another way inside.
It was suddenly quite obvious. A man and a girl slave, both shirtless to show their brands, walked between the guards without being stopped. Slaves leaving may have raised questions, but not entering.
Arn crossed the crowded street, careful to stay out of the way of wagons and soldiers that passed him. A man followed by two of those strange dog creatures had to keep his animals from climbing up on Arn. If Arn had not been anxious before, he certainly was after that intimidating encounter.
He walked right between the sentries and onto the property of the log house. Now he had to find Crar, a man who had sold a town to these very armies. Would he be like Stone Spear—a fearsome barbarian and butcher? Or like Quenden, a frail little man with too many ideas spoiling his brain? Arn found slave quarters first, but soon realized he would need to enter the actual house. At least the grounds were not as crowded as Quenden’s compound. He found a first-storey window and clambered through into a deserted hallway.
The first room was a bed chamber. It was wide but not deep. The four-poster bed took up most of the space, while a trunk of clothes sat against another wall. The room was—fortunately—devoid of inhabitants. Arn checked the clothes in the trunk, but they were so big he wasn’t even sure they were made for a man. He had seen some old men with huge girths in the war camps, but he suspected it was an illness that caused it. No one on Razaad had looked that way.
Arn returned to the corridor and froze when he spotted another guard walking along the hall. The woman looked at him unassumingly and brushed past as Arn put on an air of belonging and headed deeper into the house. The second room was another bed chamber, but this time for four small cots. It was equally empty. This time, Arn heard voices nearby. Perhaps the next room.
The third room was a huge central space, a living and meeting area that likely centred itself inside the log-beam structure. It was not protected by doors, but instead by guards. By the time Arn had realized this, he was standing abreast with one of them—and he had seen nothing like them. The guard wore a metal chest piece that seemed composed of a dozen sword blades interlocked like wooden floor-boards. He had a dark metal sword hilt at his waist, a dozen knives strapped in various places, and a black patch over one eye. He looked at Arn with his good eye—he looked at the lumpy flesh where Arn’s nose had once been, and he looked at the letter in Arn’s hand.
If he had had any chance to deliver the letter secretly, Arn had now lost it. The guard cleared his throat and the two talking men that sat deeper into the room fell to silence.
“Well, what is it?” one of the men asked. They both wore robes, but the speaker was a man of enormous size. He had muscular arms, but his gut looked like he had eaten two lesser men already today. His hair was sweaty and hung in greasy rings around his ears. His eyes, startlingly shrewd for so strange a physique, leapt across the room to affix on the commotion at the door. His guest seemed a shadow, now—a quiet weasel of a man that could have been Quenden’s cousin for all Arn knew.
“Crar?” Arn gasped, and stepped past the guard. He held out the letter. He could at least complete the part of his orders that stipulated the letter was for the Merchant’s eyes only.
“Bring it here then,” the enormous man scowled, holding out one hand. Arn quietly crossed the wide chamber toward the cushions where the two men lounged. Then, fingers brushed his hand—someone snatched the letter away from him. It was a man walking past Arn, approaching Crar at a slightly faster pace. It was… Gamden.
Arn couldn’t breathe. Gamden was stepping right up to Crar, holding out the letter. In his other hand was a bare knife with a black iron handle—it was cool to the touch, like the armour of the guard he had snatched it from. How do I know that? Arn asked, his mind trying to catch up to itself. “Focus!” Massema’s voice shouted at him. Focus, please, it begged. Arn forced himself to inhale. The letter couldn’t be in Gamden’s hand because it was still in his.
Gamden swung the blade back, ready to swing it inward. The guards cried out—weapons rasped from scabbards.
The knife wasn’t in Gamden’s hand, Arn decided. It couldn’t be. It was in his. But there was already blood bubbling around it—pouring hot over Arn’s fingers. He had stabbed Crar in the chest. The man shoved Arn aside with one heavy arm; the knife skidded across the tiles of the floor as Arn landed on one thigh and rolled away.
Immediately, four hands were on his back, pressing him down. He felt the kiss of two blades and he readied himself for the world after. He found himself lacking closure and called out, “Why, Gamden? Why did you do it?” It was his delusion that he asked, he knew, but he could find no answers in his conscious mind.
“I told you, Arn,” Gamden called, from somewhere to his left. “I told you that you would regret doing what Quenden told you.”
“Get him out of here,” a woman’s voice barked authoritatively. Arn was dragged to his feet. He blinked, as he got a glimpse of the cushions. Crar lay there still, blood soaking his tunic, while a woman in a pale, off-white robe squatted against him, her hand pressed against his leaking life’s essence.
Then someone struck Arn over the head and his eyes utterly lost focus.