speak nonsense to your orphaned boys? You come from the Luxpadre of the West. Say ‘aye’ to it and bring forward your payment. We will guide you truer than Renard.”
Neb looked up. Isaak did, too, and their eyes met. Neb’s hands moved quickly.
The First Captain turned his horse, looking above in the direction of the voice. “Who is Renard? Where can we find him?”
“No one and nowhere. You deal with Geoffrus now. Renard is mad. Geoffrus will see you to your digging holes.”
Aedric’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you come down so we can discuss this properly?”
This time the laughter continued on for a bit. There was an eerie quality to it that unsettled Neb’s stomach. He heard danger in it. “Rainbow Men with bows and knives. Do you offer kin-clave to me and mine?”
“Aye,” Aedric said. “For now. If you’ve stopped throwing stones.”
There was the scrabble of dirt and rock cascading above and behind, and Neb looked up to it. A slight form slipped into view, a slender man in patchwork cloth and scraps of rough leather. He moved lightly on his feet as he slid down the side of the hill to land with a flourish before Aedric.
“I am Geoffrus at your
The man seemed off balance to Neb, but at first he could not tell why. Then he realized that his eyes never quite landed. They moved over everything. His left hand twitched at his side, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth and gums were black from some foul-looking substance he chewed and sucked at while he waited for Aedric to speak.
Finally, Aedric cleared his voice. “You wish me to pay you. What service will you render?”
“I will guide you true. Take you where you want to go.” Then, as an afterthought: “Safely.”
“And what payment for this service?”
Geoffrus smiled and danced a jig. “Knives and meat. Meat and knives. And rainbow scarves for me and mine.”
Aedric looked to Neb with raised eyebrows. His hands moved.
Neb looked at the patchwork man, then back to Aedric. He could read what Aedric thought clearly in the way the First Captain sat in his saddle.
He glanced at Isaak. The metal man was watching the direction their quarry had fled to, eye shutters opening and closing as if calculating distance.
Aedric saw the same and made a decision. “We will consider your kind and generous offer for a later time,” he said. “But for now, we must ride.”
Geoffrus howled. He leaped and spun in the air, beating his chest with his fists. Above him, in the hills, other voices hooted and howled as well. “Rainbow Man, why do you spurn me and mine with the kin-clave so lovely between us?”
A new voice rose above the din. This one was deep and gravelly, and the laughter that it rode upon was bemused. “The Rainbow Man is wiser than you credit him for, Geoffrus,” the voice said. A figure stepped onto the highway. “Perhaps he knows that the only digging holes you’ll lead him to are shallow graves to hide their meat- picked bones. Perhaps the Luxpadre told him about the Ash Men you killed and ate.”
Geoffrus’s cavorting stopped. He fixed his eyes onto the figure, and Neb followed his gaze, surprised at the fear and rage that replaced the mirth so quickly. The newcomer was slender as a willow and tall, wrapped in the charcoal cloak of a Gray Guard. Beneath the guard’s cloak, he wore the rough fabric robes of an Androfrancine archaeologist. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were both close-cropped, and his crooked smile betrayed a relaxed confidence. His eyes were hard points of bright blue. He held a long lacquered wooden stick loosely; a large bulb of some kind at the base of it rested easy in the palm of one hand. The man stepped forward, and the wind rustled his cloak and robes as he came.
“We have kin-clave with these men,” Geoffrus started, taking a step back. “We have nearly reached agreement.”
“It sounds to me,” the man said, “as if they seek a more polite way of extricating themselves from your company.” He took another step forward. “I will not be so kind. I hold the contract with the Ash Men. I hold the letters of introduction and credit from the Luxpadre that say so.”
He raised the lacquered stick and pointed one end at Geoffrus. Neb noted the dark mouth at the end of it and wondered what the strange object did. He did not wonder for long. With the slightest squeeze of the bulb, a small cloud of what looked like pollen spat from it, and something small and hard shot out, hitting the paving stone near Geoffrus’s feet with surprising force and clattering off to clack against the canyon wall. Geoffrus jumped back, the anger fading as the fear took front and center in his eyes. “No call for such, no call for such,” he cried, raising his hands in supplication. “Geoffrus knows an unwelcoming lot.”
“If you keep following these men,” the robed man said with a smile, “then you and yours will be the eaten and I will sell your skin to the Waste Witch for carrots and pepper.”
Geoffrus looked around at the silent Gypsy Scouts, looked up to the heads that watched quietly from above, and his shoulders slumped. “No kin-clave here,” he said, his mouth hard and straight. His eyes met Neb’s for a moment, and Neb saw the hatred and hunger in them. Bowing with a flourish, he spun on his heels and clambered back up the rocky slope.
When Geoffrus vanished, the newcomer looked to Aedric. “You pursue the metal man,” he said simply. “I doubt you’ll catch up to it unless it wishes you to.” He looked to Isaak. “They’re crafty, these, and dangerous.”
Isaak said nothing. His bellows whispered quietly, and the massive stallion he rode shifted beneath his weight.
Next, the guide studied their uniforms. “And you’re not from the Luxpadre’s Gray Guard, yet you play with his toys. You have the look of Forest Gypsies about you.”
Aedric nodded. “The world beyond the Keeper’s Wall has changed. Windwir is fallen. The Order is no more.”
Neb thought the news would carry more impact. But instead, the man patted a courier pouch that hung from a worn leather strap around his neck. “Then these letters will be worthless now. I’d wondered when the caravans stopped coming and going so suddenly last year.”
“Lord Rudolfo has inherited the Order’s holdings, including the Eastern Watch,” Aedric said. “I am empowered to honor or execute any contracts on his behalf. Are you Androfrancine, then?”
The man shook his head. “I’m not. But I’ve served them long enough, and my father before that.” Stepping forward, he extended his hand. “I am Renard,” he said. “I will gladly escort you to Fargoer’s Town, where you may secure other arrangements to go after your wayward metal toy.”
Aedric nudged his horse forward, leaned over and shook the man’s hand once, releasing it quickly. “I am Aedric, First Captain of Rudolfo’s Gypsy Scouts.”
“Well met,” Renard said with a nod. He turned, lifting his stick with one hand and pointing northeast. “Fargoer’s Town is yonder. We could reach it by nightfall.” His eyes shifted from Aedric to Neb and then last to Isaak. “We
Aedric’s eyes narrowed. “And how do we know we can trust you to guide us true?”
The crooked grin was back. “You are a dozen. I’m alone. But more than that. ” He opened the flap on the pouch, rummaged about inside, and withdrew a tattered letter. He passed it to Aedric.
The First Captain read it quickly, then ran a finger over the seal at the bottom before passing it to Neb. It was a letter of introduction signed and dated by Pope Introspect some twenty years earlier, declaring that Renard son of Remus bore the grace of His Holiness the Pope and could negotiate freely such terms and conditions on behalf of the Order as necessary for its work in the Old World. Neb couldn’t resist; he also touched the imprint of the papal signet before handing it back to his First Captain. He’d seen the signature many times before, and he’d carried that signet in his pocket for days before passing it to Petronus there near the craters that marked the Great Library’s grave.
Renard looked up to him and winked, digging a black bit of root from his pocket and sucking it into his mouth. “You’re Hebda’s boy,” he said as he chewed it. “You’re early, but your father told me to expect you.” Then, he
