For a few hours after the sun rose, Lerran kept training in their yard. Antha had been using the field less, but Lerran picked up the slack. He had seen the carnage wrought by Okarnan in Worker’s Rise, even if he had not solved the mystery of that attack’s savagery and strength. The man had no extra-human abilities, as far as he could tell—not like Paksis. He had just surprised all the Lord Employers and had set to work on them with his blade. Between that, and the shadow that a still-living Gharo cast, Lerran needed every edge he could get. The fever he had fought a few weeks earlier, left over from the poison in his father’s lockbox, had finally passed and he needed to rebuild what muscle it had wasted.
He finished a bout with one of their guards, and wiped his brow with a linen cloth. The sun was far enough overhead now that the mansion did not block its rays. He stretched his arm and sighed.
“Master Lerran,” said one of his men, stepped past Captain Isar. It was a man named Jorin, who oversaw a number of contacts for the Family. “When you have a moment, I’ve business to discuss.”
“How important?” Lerran asked.
Jorin bowed. “Just word on a new job for you to consider.”
“Go wait near my office, then. I’ll be up shortly.” Lerran swung his sparring blade around and paced back toward the ring. Another guard stepped in, and he won another duel. It was a quick ordeal, full of wide slashes and positions. Only a few times did their swords actually meet; when Lerran finally stepped in close, he struck the guard three times and sent him reeling across the dirt.
He cleaned up with assistance from a nearby pitcher of water, and then headed back inside. Tass was on her wait out the front door of the manor, with her gardening equipment in hand. She smiled and said, “Nice fight. I watched from the window.”
He kissed her, and they passed the threshold in opposite directions. They had sent a letter to the Grey Brethren already, a few days earlier. In it, they had simply said no, they would not be leaving Sheld.
Jorin was waiting with Eseveer, as well as some dozen pages for Lerran to review. He saw Jorin first, since the man was waiting. In the big, rectangular office, Lerran poured a glass of rum for himself and offered Jorin a choice from the glass necks and jars on the side cabinet near the windows. Then, Lerran rounded his desk and sat down. “How can I help?”
“The smith in Starath, Marth, has contacted me again. He has another shipment of weapons ready. If we take them, we will avoid tax, and get a discounted rate with him,” Jorin said. They had bought from this man before, and smuggled his goods into a number of different cities—under Gharo’s leadership. Lerran recalled that this was the same smith who had sold the weapons to the Family that Vanci had taken to sell in Kedar.
“Have you checked with Yarua about buyers?” Lerran asked. He had placed his other sister in charge of dealings—figured out where the Family could sell what.
“The Saltwater Army, in Kedar,” Jorin said, smiling. It was common knowledge that Lerran had made a trip there.
Lerran sighed. It was not common knowledge what had transpired there, and what deals had been made. He wondered, momentarily, if his letter to Havard had reached the island yet. Then he took a drink of his rum and sighed again. “Can we sell it somewhere else?” he asked. That was the last task that Ren and Vanci had been assigned to, before they vanished.
“I’ll check with Yarua, then,” Jorin said, bowing. As he left, Lerran refilled his rum and closed one of the curtains to block the rising sun. It had not rained in a few days, so the sky did not have many clouds.
After he was gone, Lerran picked up a quill and started a letter to the Grey Brethren. He was interrupted immediately after he started by a knock on his door. It was Antha, surprisingly, in her city watch chainmail. She had her hair bound in a small knot behind her head, though a few strands hung at the sides of her face too.
“Brother,” she said, as she stepped inside.
All that Lerran could think was ‘half-sister’, but he did not say it. “What are you doing here?” he asked, instead.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m certainly not here for a social visit, Prince of Sheld,” she said, smirking. “A strange thing happened. I received a visitor, a rather nervous man who said he only ever spoke to Captain Vagond, my predecessor. Gave me this letter, and said Captain Vagond made sure his communications were delivered to someone in the Gharo estate.”
“Did he say who his contact is?” Lerran asked. Maybe this is Havard’s insider? he wondered. That man had to be getting his information from somewhere close to Lerran.
“He did,” Antha said. “But it’s no one I’ve ever heard of. The name was Traz. Do you know of this person?”
“No, never heard of a Traz,” Lerran said. “You said Captain Vagond delivered letters from this visitor of yours to someone named Traz….”
Antha nodded. She looked as confused as he felt. “I haven’t read his letter yet. Maybe it will shed some light.” She passed him a plain, rolled piece of parchment, wrapped in a red band. There was no seal or sigil, just a cloth binding.
Lerran unrolled the scroll and read it out loud. “Traz. You were not at our meeting two weeks past. I worry you were also killed in the Sheld Massacre, as they are calling it. Perhaps it was the documents you and I obtained about the Lord Employers that has caused this travesty! Has the changing of leadership in the Family affected your position? Should I consider our interests compromised? If you need assistance, you need only ask. I will await you at the Rogue River again on the 1st. If you are not there, I will leave. I must leave. Erril.”
Antha and he looked at each other blankly.
“Who are these people?” Lerran asked. “I haven’t heard of either of them.”
Antha shrugged. “I spoke to this ‘Erril’ rather briefly, but I could have the guards find him again? We know he’s going to be at the Rogue River inn on the 1st.”
The only part of this whole ordeal that made sense to Lerran was the documents about the Lord Employers mentioned in the stranger’s letter. That sounded suspiciously like the documents he had found in his father’s safe. “I will meet this man as well,” he decided. “We’ll meet at the inn on the 1st.”
Antha nodded. “Anything else, now?” she asked.
“No, but we do need to talk soon,” Lerran said. He was thinking of her parentage and the secrets he now knew. She bowed and left, and Lerran looked at Erril’s mysterious letter again.
Frustrated by the continuing lack of answers in his life, he looked through the contents of Gharo’s safe once more. There was his mother’s letter to Gharo about Antha’s birth. And then, the documents about the Lord Employers. He read it again—all he could conclude, still, was that the deceased Lords had been losing wealth, and should have been replaced by other aristocrats instead of forging their numbers and clinging to power. And then, the severed finger, and the brass arm band.
Rolling his eyes, Lerran grabbed the arm band. It was the most out of place—he had assumed the trinket had belonged to his mother, but it seemed an odd thing to keep in a safe nonetheless. He put it on his wrist, and then blinked. His arm was thicker, now, and his skin a little more tanned. “What by the gods…?”
He looked down at the chair he sat in, to see he had a much larger gut now, and thick legs. He snatched the brace off and sighed in relief when his shape shifted back to the way it should be.
Then, he stood up, and paced to the door to latch it. He didn’t want anyone walking in on him. Lerran donned the bronze clasp once again, and his form again altered to that other appearance. Gharo’s old quarters joined to the office by a side door near the desk; Lerran found a mirror in the abandoned bedroom.
A short, heavyset man stared back at him. Lerran’s heart pounded away, as he stared at the stranger. The man had sideburns, but no beard; his skin was a little darker than Lerran’s, but his hair was the same dark brown. A small vine pattern was tattooed up the man’s right cheek, and more tattoos were visible on his upper arms and shoulders.
“Who am I?” Lerran asked. He could appear like a second person, he realized. No one would know that he was Lerran, just this fellow.
Gharo could have too. This brace was in his safe for a reason. Lerran shook his head. Sneaky bastard, he thought. How many times could he have passed his father on the street without realizing it.
Maybe he would wear this brace to meet their stranger at the inn… perhaps Erril knew this man.