Ren woke up in between sticky sheets and sat up halfway. He looked around the small inn room, at his discarded shirt, at the drawers with the broken handle, at the wooden slats across the window. It had been a warm night, but Ren was used to sleeping in jungle harbours and the heat had not been the cause of his sudden arrival at lucid observation of the second-rate inn room. A distant thud. He had not imagined it.
Then a scream of pain echoed off the shutters and Ren sat up straight. The sounds of battle filled the air over Sheld. He tunneled his head into his shirt, buckled his sword to his belt, and left the room while he was still patting at his dishevelled hair. The street was emptier than usual, and Ren quickly determined the source of the shouts and hammering—the Family estate.
From the Roiled Barrel Tavern, it was only a five-minute walk to the siege lines. Ren couldn’t see the big wooden gate from here, but he could see the archers on the walls, pelting arrows down into the roaring group of soldiers that must be storming the front. A seven-foot pile of debris blocked Ren’s view until a ladder slammed against the spikey wooden rampart. It was promptly shoved down by a guard in green décor. An attacker’s arrow promptly found its mark and there was one fewer defender—blood splattered the wooden palisade points and the wounded man fell out of sight.
Ren forced himself to let go of the sword hilt at his waist. There were only proper battlements on the front face of the estate, while other towers around the wall provided vantage and defense of them. The towers were not manned now. If the attacking force was strategic, they might attack another side of the property, using the frontal assault as a diversion. If they were brash, they might simply overwhelm the Family defences and storm through the front gate itself.
Oddly, the Emerald Eye was guarded. It was a little higher on the slope, and Ren could see guards all around the front of it, ignoring the sounds of battle. Strange.
Ren was not brash, and knew his chances of being accidentally killed by either side were high. So he decided to be strategic instead. It took him a few minutes of jogging to navigate through the streets to the wall behind the mansion itself. The looming trees of the orchard rose over the wall to the north of him, and the manor house rose even higher.
It was too tall to climb in any straightforward sense. He removed his scabbard and wrapped the belt around his shoulder instead, then drew his dagger from his boot. The street was almost empty, thankfully. Ren stabbed his dagger in between the palisade logs and gave it a tug to ensure it would support his work. With a good leap and a hand grabbing the knife hilt, he launched his way up the wall. Jamming his hand between points hurt, and it wasn’t easy to dislodge his knife while hanging there. He tossed the blade over, then hauled himself up.
While he was busy making sure he didn’t hurt some important part of himself on the jagged wall-top, he heard a voice cry out. “T-There’s someone on the wall!” someone shouted. “Guards! — Gods! Ren, is that you?”
Ren spotted the speaker in an open window on the third storey. Tassina and he stared at each other blankly, Ren with one leg on either side of the fortification. “Tass!” he yelled.
“Stand down!” Tass shouted into the mansion. “It’s a friendly!”
Ren quickly dropped down onto the grass behind the mansion. “I’m so glad to see you!” he called.
“Tell him to go in the front door,” someone else said.
“Go in through the front door,” Tass told him, forcing a smile.
Ren cursed under his breath. What was going on? Picked up his knife and put it in his boot. “See you inside then,” he muttered, and began to walk around the estate. The sounds of battle picked up as he rounded the building, but the guards at the Emerald Eye were still standing there, watching. Slain guards littered the yard—those killed on the battlements. The gate still well, but the wood was cracked and even knocked away in some places. It would not hold for too much longer.
He walked along the deck and came to the front door of the estate. The double set of wooden doors swung open as he entered and a guard stepped up beside him, grabbing the sword around his shoulder. The foyer of the estate was full of guards, Ren realized, and they were all looking at him. Captain Maras stood beside the stairwell, protecting Gadra and Tass who stood a few steps up.
“Gadra!” Ren said. “Not quite the reunion I expected, with an army in our streets!”
“What are you doing here?” Captain Maras asked. “Here and now, in the midst of it all. Did the Brethren have you? Are they using you?”
“What?” Ren asked. “What are you talking about? I was on board the Vanci when the hurricane struck us at sea. We were near the Isle of Dusk, you see, and the next thing we knew we were here. What are the Brethren doing, attacking us? And where is Father?”
Gadra laughed. She wore a stiff leather uniform and was armed for battle. “Maybe it was Havard’s plan all along. Timing like this.”
“Havard?” Ren asked. “As in Havard’s Brothers? Isn’t he a faction leader in Kedar?”
“There’s no time for questions. It’s time to fight,” Gadra said. The battering ram hammered outside again, sending a tremble through the air. “Are you with us?”
Ren looked around. The guards were armed to the teeth. On Gadra’s words, their swords were drawn. The force was readying for combat; all save Tassina. There was no sign of Eseveer or Lerran or Antha. And certainly no sign of Gharo himself. “There’s no point to fighting right now,” Ren urged his sister. “There’s hundreds attacking, hundreds more besieging Worker’s Rise. We have no way of knowing how many are in Sheld altogether!”
“Worker’s Rise has not fallen yet,” Maras repeated.
“What of Yarua and Barazu?” Gadra asked. Her brown hair was ruffled from days of ill rest and sweaty defense of the estate.
Ren paused. “I haven’t seen Yarua,” he said. The youngest of the girls, and his closest friend. “And I don’t know who that is. Doesn’t Father have a secret way out of here?”
“Not that Lerran ever discovered,” Gadra replied.
Ren ground his teeth together. “Gods. Where is Father?!”
“Deposed. Disappeared. Dead for all we know, though no body has been recovered,” Gadra explained, smiling. Ren’s jaw dropped—they overthrew the old man! No one loved Gharo, and they spoke of it openly now. They knew Ren had plenty of reason to share those views and did not hold back. “Lerran has ruled the Family for the better part of the last year now.”
Silence followed her words. Ren was speechless.
“We must defend the walls. Do you have any other option for us?” Captain Maras asked. The bearded warrior’s frown seemed chiselled into his wrinkled jaw.
“Leave the way I came,” Ren urged them.
“And leave our men to die?” Gadra asked, moving down a step toward him. She shook her head sadly. “There will be no recovery for the Family after that. We must stand with them.”
Damned fools, Ren thought. He pulled his sword belt back onto his shoulder from the guard to his right, then looked back up at his older sister. With a sigh he said, “If you all want to fight and die, then go ahead with it. I did not just get back home to let myself like this.”
Gadra frowned, nodded, and drew her sword too. “Then you’d best get going,” she said.
She brushed past Renado and onto the outside deck of the house. Guards and soldiers followed her and the tense buzz of aggression, anticipation, and fear rose. Ren sighed and looked down. “Love you too, sister,” he called out, in her wake.
It was a reluctant walk back to the wall behind the mansion for Renado. The opposing forces were still blocked by the crumbling gate, but the battle proper would begin soon. He jabbed his dagger into an opening again and began to haul himself up. A voice bid him stop.
Tassina was standing behind him, her white and blue gown flailing in the wind. She looked around, as though surprised she didn’t have guards around her. “Can I come with you?” she asked.
“What? Of course,” Ren said, quietly.
Tass smiled in relief and quickly walked toward the wall. “I’m going to make no difference in the fight, and if there’s one thing I care more about than the Family, it’s my family.”
Ren nodded and promptly helped her up the wall. He scaled over after.
In fear of the battle outcome, they chose to forgo the Roiled Barrel and bought a night at the Seastar Tavern in the harbour. The same barmaid, Hethel, helped seat them, but Ren paused as they crossed the busy common room. There was Johanna, with her hair longer than he remembered in a braid and her small hands holding a cup of mead. She was sitting with a short haired young man, a scrawny little fellow. Johanna froze when she saw Ren and she rose to her feet, though still a table away. “I assumed you were dead…” she exclaimed.
“Apparently everyone did,” Ren replied. He took a single step closer to her, but she held up one hand.
Between teary eyes, she said, “I’m sorry,” and walked for the door. Her male companion accompanied her, and Ren followed Hethel to the table with Tass. He sank into the chair. He usually drank cider, but shared one of his family’s preferences when it came to hard liquor. He watched Johanna leave the tavern, and ordered a rum.
“No, thank you,” Tass said, when the barmaid asked her. She turned to Ren and lowered her voice. “I need to tell you something,” she said, quietly.
Renado was still reeling from his run-in with Johanna. He’d spent most of his time on the open sea, so he’d always had a strained relationship with his absent lover, but it still hurt to realize that she had moved on after the year Ren had lost. He looked toward Hethel as she swayed past the bar to complete his order.
Tass put her hand on his, forcing him to face her again. “I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.
“That’s—” Ren blinked. “That’s astounding! Congratulations.” He trailed off, awkwardly. In the midst of all this, the last word he had said echoed again and again, more sour each time. She looked down, and sighed. Ren leaned forward. “Where is Lerran? I didn’t see him at the estate.”
“I don’t know,” Tass said, resting her chin in her hands. “He was in the streets when they attacked. We didn’t even know what was going on then—Yarua and Barazu went out to help him from thieves! None of us realized what it was. They brought Lerran out in front of the wall a few days later and demanded we surrender.”
“Gods,” Ren said. He looked for Hethel, but she was serving someone else now. Where were Ren’s drinks.
“I said we should, but Gadra said no. No surrender. She said they’d probably kill him anyway, if we did surrender…”
“Probably true. What did they do?”
Tass paused. Her eyes were full of tears, but her lids held them in. “They hit him over the head with a club. Hard. And dragged him away. Haven’t seen him since.”
Ren nodded. Hethel interrupted his response, set a rum down in front of him in a dark brown horn. She winked at Ren and strutted away, but Ren just felt sick to his stomach. He lifted the drink and tried to make himself feel better. When he lowered it, he flicked his eyes back up at Tass. She was lost in thought, her head bowed, reliving recent horrors. “And Antha?”
“Gods, you missed a lot,” Tass said. “She left. Lerran found a letter in Father’s things—Antha was never Gharo’s daughter.”
Ren held up his hands on either side of his head. “What? So she just left? Because of a letter!”
The door slammed open, as it had many times since they arrived, but this time was different. The warm salty air that drifted in brought tidings with it; Ren could recognize them by the abruptness or hesitation to close the door. The man who entered was just another fisher. He sat down at the bar and told the story. The estate had fallen. The Family was dead. Though the siege of Worker’s Rise continued, the primal, crucial battle had been lost. They had lost.
Ren ordered another rum, and despite her child, Tass drank one too. Later that night, he heard her sobbing in the bunk above his. Thinking he was asleep, she let her besieged tears free.