We had gotten lucky. It doesn’t usually work like this, as we well knew, but for the moment, everything was on our side. We spent a few anxious days watching Greycoast’s western border but the Empire never came back. I guess there were too many troops still intact for them to risk achieving by force what they had hoped to win by guile. We sat at the head table of a banquet of roast beef loins and exotic game birds and laughed with relief. We were cheered in the streets and people bought us drinks wherever we went. Women hung about me with glazed eyes. Gorgeous women. I was the conquering hero (one of them, anyway), and everyone wanted to know me. Funnily enough, I didn’t want the attention so much, now that I had it. I spent a lot of time with the other party members and Renthrette smiled knowingly at both my offenses and my triumphs.
“I knew she’d appreciate me in the end,” I lied.
“I don’t know why I believe a word you say,” Orgos laughed.
Verneytha and Greycoast divided Shale between them. The Adsine keep and the Razor’s fortified home became infantry forts that kept a watchful eye on the roads and borders. It took several weeks to divide up the goods and treasure from Caspian Joseph’s warehouse, and the roads were continually dotted with heavy wagons of silks, silver, iron, and so on, all under cavalry escort en route to Ironwall. Mithos and Lisha used the gratitude of the governor of Verneytha and duke of Greycoast to force their hands a little, and much of the revenue from the stolen goods was kept in a fund for retraining and housing the survivors from Shale and the villages hit hardest by the attacks. Shale’s debts would be forgiven and its people would learn new skills, fitting comfortably into Greycoast’s and Verneytha’s economic success stories. That was the plan, at least. We had played our part and now we could only hope.
We never found out exactly who knew what within the government of Shale. There had been no vampire lord, no intrinsically evil force behind them, and I found myself in some sympathy with the land that had resorted to such desperate and unconscionable methods to get back on comparable economic footing with its rich and self-interested neighbors. That was, of course, the wrong way to think about it. Arlest and his Empire-supported raiders were the bad guys and had needed to be destroyed. It would have been easier if they had merely wanted to enslave the world, or if the victors had been a little more appealing. But Shale had lost and, in any future discussion of the matter, its people would turn into demons whether they had been so before or not. Alas, the victors write more than history books.
Dathel, chancellor of Shale, was taken off to be a guest of the glass tower in Harvest, where he would feel the eyes of the governor on him for the rest of his life. Greycoast took on the surviving raiders and the officers of the Shale regular army. Some were “educated” (tortured) and released. Others never came out or were executed, their heads displayed on the walls. As if there hadn’t been enough blood spilled. We went to protest, but it was weeks since we had been instrumental in their capture, and our influence no longer extended into such “domestic affairs.” It was time for us to leave.
We were paid double the original offer, a little reluctantly, by Governor Treylen of Verneytha, who thanked us for the revenue we had saved and the commerce which could begin again. We remained politely silent. Greycoast loaded a pair of wagons with our share of the bounty, which must have come close to four thousand silvers. I would have got into this business a lot sooner if I’d known this kind of money could be made legally. Or, do I mean “honestly,” or something equally dubious?
I think both of the surviving local leaders were quietly glad to see us go so they could get back to their own squabbling and financial one-upmanship. Their farewell speeches had all the right words in them, but their eyes said that they were delighted to be back in control. We saddled up and headed west through colorful banners and cheering crowds of happy subjects, who no longer remembered searching through the corpse wagons for missing relatives or weeping from the battlements as the flowers of three lands were speared and hewn to pieces. That was the past and they had come through victorious, for which they thanked us and sang our praises.
From time to time I found myself inexplicably close to tears in the midst of the rejoicing and cheering faces, my mind full of blood and the dreadful, bellowing chaos of battle. Then it would pass and I would laugh and sing and play the hero again. We took our bows and smiled upon them as they fought to get close to the stage and shake our hands, but we avoided each other’s eyes when we did so. I knew that this pageantry and carnival would not have been altered one iota by the death of Orgos, and that thought stayed with me like the cold steel of a blade against my skin.
We rode out of the city, across the Downs, and into the forest, then farther west into what had been Shale. We avoided Adsine and went west into Targev, working our way back towards Stavis at our own pace. We rested for a few days when we came upon a nice inn that served decent food. When I asked Renthrette if we might go riding together one day, Garnet smiled.
Mithos and Lisha relaxed visibly, like a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders. I don’t mean that they suddenly started doing stand-up comedy in the taverns; they just lost some of their sternness and distance. They smiled more at my attempts at humor, and didn’t lecture me for telling some rustics that I was the king of Bangladeia, out with my vampiric warrior escort. It was all a far cry from my first meeting with them in a Cresdon pub, when they had shut me in a box and thrown insults at me. I thought of that time less and less these days.
The Eagle was distanced from me by more than miles, and I doubted I would go back, even if I could. Where exactly I
As we came close to Stavis one evening and the sun was setting low above the white buildings of the city, I knew I had to decide. Like most decisions, this one would be made on impulse and then stuck to until it had become the only conceivable course. We had stopped on a hillock with a view of the town sprawling down to the ocean. I looked at my companions one at a time, regarding them slowly and with care as they took in their destination. Orgos caught my eye and beamed. I smiled despite myself and looked from him to Renthrette, who rode pale and beautiful by my side, to the scarlet and bronze of the clouds that hung heavy over Stavis. Memories spiraled through my head, thoughts of the triumph, terror, and despair of the last months, and I found myself looking down the dark, featureless corridor of the life I had lived-or half lived-before I met them.
In a quiet voice touched with uncertainty, I said, “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay with you for a while.”
A quiet smile spread through the group. Silently the wagon creaked into motion. I touched my heels to Tarsha’s silky flanks and we moved off, through the dusk and into the city.
Special thanks to Liz Gorinsky and everyone at Tor, for pursuing this project so diligently, and-as ever-to my agent, Stacey Glick, without whom this would be just another stack of yellowing pages.
