a sky full of smoke, pt. 5

He still doesn't trust me after dinner, but he believes I can win for him. It didn't take much--I showed him some scars, told some stories. There's not a proper soldier among the rest of the village, Briac worships soldiers. He's impressed, but I need him to mistrust me. So I keep saying we should wait, and each time I do he's more insistent that it must be now. It's all I can do to keep from smiling when he takes his son aside and asks him to kill me after the battle.

He gathers up his men--a sorry rabble if ever there was one, but brimming with confidence--and we march. Yannig's rabble comes out to greet ours, trembling with fear of the coming confrontation. The legend grows.

"Which one of you is Yannig?" I call, in a voice still raspy from the smoke. Their leader steps forward. "I'm leaving Briac's service," I continue. "He plans to kill me after the battle." I toss the gold back at Briac, grin at Yannig, and step aside. The two mobs inch towards each other, each as frightened of striking the first blow as they are of shedding the first blood.

Then the alarm bell rings and the gatekeeper comes running, crying, "The major-general's on his way!"

Yannig and Briac lock eyes, sheath their swords, shake hands. "Truce," says one, "or it'll be both our heads." They send their men into the town, crying the truce. Even to my outsider's ears, there's an implied threat there: act like everything's normal or there will be blood.

Kanna has hot soup for me when I return to the inn. "They were an inch away from destroying each other," I said. "I was so close."

 "I wish you'd leave," she tells me.

a sky full of smoke, pt. 4

When I was young, my sister and I would win games by playing our friends against each other. She was better at people, but I was better at strategy, so which one of us would win varied depending on the game, but it was always one of us. Sometimes they'd try to team up against us, of course, but all it took was a smile from my sister or a word from me and the alliance was broken, and so invariably one of us would win, and the legend would continue.

I explained it to the princess once. What I told her was all true, and probably even good advice, but I didn't yet realize the most important piece of information: the reason we were able to win was not simply that we were smarter and more charming than our friends. We were able to win because we'd built up a reputation, and we knew how to use it.

Briac Ewen knows who I am. Everyone in town's whispering about the knight who just killed two of Yannig's men without breaking a sweat. He's smiling a smile he probably thinks is charming when I arrive. "I heard what you did," he says, knowingly. "You're making the right choice."

"I haven't made any choices yet," I tell him. He offers silver, and I laugh. He doubles his offer. I shake my head. "Make it gold," I say. He's not sure if I'm worth it, but he's almost there. "Gold, or I go back to Yannig."

He sags. "Five?"

"Five now, five when we win. And we will win. I promise you that."

He nods and tosses me a bag of gold. "I believe you," he tells me. "You've got an honest face." I'm not sure if he's joking, but I laugh anyway. He doesn't bat an eye before inviting me to dinner, so we can discuss plans.

a sky full of smoke, pt. 3

I sleep on the story. The innkeeper--Kanna is her name, she says--hopes I'll leave, hopes the town will stop tearing itself apart if I just keep walking. But perhaps the mobs and their masters are right. Perhaps someone can put a stop to the fighting, give the town a little peace. I already said I used to be a captain. That was back when I still had a name. Back then, I was the finest strategist in Elouan and one of the finest blades--I could make short work of a rabble like this, given a good plan. And you can't make a good plan without knowing what you're up against.

I wake early and head to the house the brewer's using as his headquarters. By the morning's light, the town looks desolate--a traveler would be forgiven for thinking it abandoned. The houses are boarded up and nothing is in good repair.

The brewer's headquarters is a large house that was probably once quite lovely--Kanna tells me it was the mayor's, back when the people still respected the mayor. Five men greet me at the door, hands on their swords, suspicion in their eyes. I ignore them until a leader steps forward and walks around me, looking me up and down like a prize horse. "That idiot at the gate sent you, did he?"

I shrug.

"Does he think we need a starving, penniless knight? We've more than our share of dead weight already." He's a short man, wiry, and moves with the exaggerated swagger of a man who thinks he's more important than he is. "Why shouldn't we just take your sword and that pretty little badge and send you packing? Look at you. You can't even feed yourself." He moves to prod me in the side and I seize him by the wrist.

"Touch me," I say, "and you lose your hand."

He laughs nervously and pokes me as a gesture of defiance the moment I release his hand. I draw my saber and neatly slice his hand off at the wrist. Two of his friends immediately leap forward to defend him, but they've clearly never fought anyone who could fight back before. I make it a point to make cutting them down look effortless; the rest run back inside.

I turn my back on the house and walk away. 

a sky full of smoke, pt. 2

Kerguelen used to be a little market town, the innkeeper tells me, where the canyon roads met the river, neither poor nor prosperous, and far from the political concerns of the Principality. But even humble bucolic towns have politics, and Yannig Bihan the brewer and Briac Ewen the farmer held an uneasy truce as the two most powerful men in the city--far more powerful than Marrec the mayor, whose orchards were eclipsed by Briac's, and whose appointment came from the magistrate.

Then the Protector killed the Prince and locked his daughter in the Spire, and the mobs came. Change came slowly, at first. Many of the magistrates were replaced with loyalists, and those who didn't were forced to withdraw--powerful enough to hold on to their positions, but not powerful enough to keep peace. So wealthy men, powerful men, men like Yannig and Briac, built up their power. They hired on men for their private militias--all in the name of keeping the peace, since the magistrates' militias were gone. And the Protector, of course, lent them his blessing--the magistrates, he said, were corrupt, and it was time for the people to rise up against their tyranny.

Militias don't feed themselves, so their masters would set up tolls on the main roads--not much, at first, just a few coins, enough that the militia could be sheltered and fed. But in time the tolls increased, slowly at first, then rapidly, as the masters and militias alike sought to line their pockets. And those who couldn't pay were robbed and beaten, or worse.

Yannig and Briac went from an uneasy alliance to open hostilities within a month. When the roads dried up they sent out raiding parties to catch the caravans that tried to avoid the area, ever eager to be the first to capture the goods they brought and add to the wealth of their faction. Every now and then they'd declare a truce, attempt to divide territories amicably, but the peace always failed, and more and more young men and women would die.

That's where that fawning coward at the gates comes in, she explains--Yannig and Briac both need more than just bodies. They need people with real talent. Someone who can change their fortunes and end their conflict decisively.

Someone like me.

a sky full of smoke, pt. 1

They're the Protector's men, but they aren't. Everyone knows he murdered his way to the throne, so there's no legitimacy there but the legitimacy of the mob--so his men are little more but a mob, angry men with no love, no legitimacy, and no concept of loyalty. Half the time they take a town, they turn on each other just as soon.
It's high summer and the wind from the north smells like woodsmoke, though there's not a forest round for miles. The sun turns a ghastly red in the evening, and I wonder whose home is burning, who lit the fire. Perhaps it doesn't matter. It's too hot to travel by day, so I start walking the canyons when the sky loses all color, like the Protector's leeched the life out of the very sky.
I shouldn't be surprised they're still watching the streets when I arrive past midnight, but I always am. Even in towns like this, boarded up and desolate,  A man scurries out of the shadows to greet me. "Swordswoman! Swordswoman! You hungry?"
I've been many things in my life. A sister, a friend, a knight, a captain, a refugee. Now the Protector holds the land and I'm little more than a wandering sword, waiting for a steady hand to wield me. "Swordswoman" may as be my name.
Still, I earned the nettle I wear at my breast. I turn to him so he can see the little silver badge shining in the moonlight, and stare at him until he flinches under my gaze. "Lady Knight," he corrects, no trace of apology in his tone. "There's folks in this town that would pay real silver for your blade."
"Silver?" I say, and it comes out a hoarse rasp--too long breathing the smoke, speaking to no one.
"Or gold, if you're any good," he says. "Just toss me a few coins when they hire you, eh?"
There's no fire at the inn when I arrive, only a tired old woman who greets me with a resigned sigh. "The food's cold and the beer's flat," she tells me.
I nod. "It'll do. Anyway, I can't--"
"It's on me. Just don't stay here. I've seen enough death these past months."
Our eyes meet. "Tell me," I say.