Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

Rion fought back a sigh, holding two fingers up to the serving girl as she passed to indicate that he wanted two more drinks. Probably, he should have ordered four considering the rate the bastard sitting at the table with him was going through them. “Wow,” he said, pretending amazement and nodding along, “so you called for a healer. What happened next?”

The former gate guard, Delner by name, though Rion thought “sniveling coward” would have served just as well, grunted, running a sleeve already soaked with ale across his mouth.

“Damned sergeant came back, figured out what I’d done, and you’d have thought I’d called his mother a whore.” His chest puffed up with righteous indignation. “Bumped me down to city patrol, if you can believe that shit.”

“Huh,” Rion said, lifting his mug of ale and pretending to take a drink—though he might well not have bothered, his audience far too drunk himself to have noticed. Still, it didn’t do a man any good to get sloppy. “Well, that doesn’t seem fair.” What would have been fair, at least to his reckoning, was if Sergeant Quinn would have strung the man up and beaten him within an inch of his life, but saying so wouldn’t get him any closer to his objective, so he held his tongue, continuing to act astonished, the perfect audience for the drunk coward’s self-pitying blather.

“Damn right it don’t,” Delner sulked. “Punish me just for tryin’ to save the man’s life. It’s ridiculous, that’s what it is.”

Rion had met plenty of assholes in his day—had been one on too many occasions and for far too many years to count—and he was certain that the bastard had never entertained any concern for anyone’s life but his own, but he nodded along easily enough.

“Though, I ought to thank the ornery son of a bitch,” the drunken guard went on. “Weren’t for him, I’d’ve died with those other poor fools when they were attacked at the gate.”

Rion remembered the attack the man mentioned all too well as it was when Sonya had been taken by Lord Aldrick’s treachery, but he did his best to feign surprise and to also try to cover up his want—growing quickly into a need—to strangle the wretch before him. For two days, he’d been searching for any sign or information on Marta and Fermin’s whereabouts, and for two days he’d come up empty until finally tracking down the former gate guard whose cowardice had almost single-handedly lost them the city. Since then, he’d spent his time ingratiating himself with the man—not that difficult, he found, just so long as he had enough coin to pay for the ales. He could have used Alesh’s name and demanded the man tell him everything he knew, but while such a use of authority might open doors, in Rion’s experience, it rarely opened tongues, so he grunted, continuing the act of an avid listener. “Damn. Well, that’s a bit of luck, at least.”

As if on cue, the coin in his pocket—Javen’s coin—began to grow noticeably cooler, an uncomfortable coldness against his trouser leg. Rion fought the urge to reach for it. Whatever the God of Chance wanted, it would have to wait. He hadn’t sat listening to the drunken coward for several hours only to bugger off when he finally came to the point. “So, what about the other thing? The girl and the manservant. Did you ask around about it?”

The guardsman squinted at him in what Rion was sure he thought was a clever way. “That again, is it? Yeah, I asked around like you asked me to, heard some damned interesting information, too, you want to know the truth.”

Rion had seen such a look as the man was giving him before and thought he knew well enough what was coming next. He fingered the handle of one of the knives sheathed at his waist, resisting the urge to draw it. “And?”

“Well,” the guardsman said, a smirk on his face. “Seems to me, a man wants to know such things, such information, it ought not be free, should it? It’s a question of supply and demand, see? Seems to me that—”

“How much?” Rion said, struggling not to lose his patience.

“What’s that?” the guardsman asked, his face a picture of surprise. “Oh, are you sayin’ you’d offer money for it?” He considered that as if it had been Rion’s idea all along. “Well. Don’t let no one say Delner is the type of man to take advantage of another, but if you really want to compensate me, for the trouble, I mean, I suppose any old amount will do. Though, I wouldn’t never ask it of you, of course,” he finished, leaning in conspiratorially as he said the last so that Rion was forced to endure the bitter ale-stench of his breath.

“Of course not,” Rion said dryly, reaching into his pocket for some coins and nearly shouting in surprise as one of his fingers brushed across the frigid, ice-cold surface of Javen’s coin. He clamped his jaw shut, keeping the scream back and hurriedly retrieved a handful of coins, placing them on the table between him and the guardsman.

“For me?” Delner asked, his eyes wide with feigned surprise. “Well, that’s damned kind of you, damned kind.”

“The least I can do to help one of Valeria’s brave protectors,” Rion answered, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his tone and immediately regretting it.

The man might have been a drunken fool, but he was neither drunk enough nor foolish enough to miss the judgment in Rion’s tone, and he frowned. “What would a guy like you know about it anyway, eh? It ain’t easy, protectin’ a whole city, everybody lookin’ to you to keep ‘em safe.”

If we’re counting on you, Rion thought, then we’re well and truly screwed. “No,” he said, baring his teeth in an approximation of a smile. “I imagine not.”

The man studied him for several seconds, and Rion could practically see the gears in his head spinning, weighing his offense against how many ales the coins would buy, probably. Finally, he sat back, making no move to reach for them. “Seems to me you want this information awful bad,” he said.

Rion said nothing, and the man grinned as if he’d just gained a point. Which, unfortunately, drunk or not, they both knew that he had. “So…” He glanced at the small handful of coins sitting on the table.

Javen’s coin was freezing now, a coldness radiating out from it that seemed to fill Rion’s entire body, one that made it difficult to think of a good reason not to kill the man sitting in front of him. Instead, he jerked the coin out of his pocket, slamming it down on the table between them, separate from the others.

The guardsman recoiled as if Rion had planned to strike him—not far from the mark, truth be told—then his eyes alighted on the coin sitting on the table, at the twisting lines of vapor coming off it the way they might from a chunk of ice. “What the—”

“Look at me, Delner,” Rion said in a frigid voice, one to match the cold filling him even though he was no longer touching the coin. The guardsman seemed unable to move, his eyes fixated on the smoking coin, his mouth hanging open with a small line of drool trailing from it.

Rion grabbed the front of the man’s tunic, jerking him halfway out of his seat. “Look at me,” he growled.

Delner let out a squeak of surprise, one that was, thankfully, inaudible to the others packing the tavern’s common room over the loud buzz of at least two dozen conversations. When the guardsman turned to look at Rion, his face went deathly pale. “Y-your eyes,” he gasped.

Rion had no time to worry about what the man meant by that. Fermin and Marta had been missing for several days now—not as long as Sonya, perhaps, but too long. There was nothing he could do about Sonya, though he wished there were, but there might be something he could do about Fermin and Marta, and the only thing standing in his way was this drunken buffoon. “You will tell me what you know,” Rion grated as the smoke from the coin trailed up between their two faces which, at this point, were less than a foot apart as Rion still held the front of the man’s tunic. “Perhaps, you won’t get as much coin as you’d like for your trouble, but I can promise you that any coin will be better than the alternative. Do you understand?”

“O-of course,” Delner wheezed. “I-I was only fooling with y-you, that’s all.”

“The only fool here is you,” Rion said, shoving the man back into his chair in disgust. “Now, talk.”

The guardsman shot a nervous glance at the coin again, and Rion followed his gaze to see that the area of the table around it was covered in a thin layer of frost that was spreading by the second.

“T-talked to a buddy of mine,” Delner stammered, “H-he usually works the eastern gate, see, but with the guards of the western gate bein’ killed a while back, he was called to help.”

He looked at Rion again, preferring him, it seemed, to the frigid coin and what it was doing to the table.

“Go on,” Rion said.

“W-well,” Delner said hurriedly, “this fella, he told me that a man matchin’ the description of the one you gave me came through a couple days ago with a young girl, bout the age as the one you’re lookin’ for.”

“Which way did they go?”

“That’s the strange thing,” Delner said. “This buddy of mine, normally, he said he wouldn’t have paid it much attention, but there ain’t been nobody tryin’ to leave the city, not in a while, only those damned refugees trying to get in. Acting as if it’s our job to protect the whole damn world—”

“Enough,” Rion growled, out of patience. “I swear by the gods, Delner, you do not want to waste my time.”

“All I was sayin’,” the guardsman blurted, “I mean, he said they went southwest. Said it seemed to him they was goin’ toward the enemy army, though why anyone’d want to do that’s beyond me.”

Shit. Rion had been afraid of this since hearing that the two were gone, thinking they had set out with plans of rescuing Sonya somehow, but he had hoped he’d been wrong. He should have known better, of course. In his experience, if a man went around expecting the worst, he was rarely disappointed. He was just about to respond, when a loud bell began to ring in the distance. Three chimes, seeming to come from somewhere inside his skull, shaking its confines and threatening to split it apart. Rion knew that the feeling wasn’t just from the bells—which while loud, certainly weren’t that loud—but from what news they brought. He didn’t know, not exactly, but people generally didn’t go around ringing bells every time someone won at cards. He resisted the urge to cover his ears with his hands, glancing at the guardsman with him. “Three chimes. What’s it mean?”

Delner swallowed hard, staring at the wall of the tavern as if he could see the great bell through streets full of shops. “Means the enemy army,” he said, licking his lips. “They’re here.” He glanced at Rion, running a hand across his sweaty brow. “I…that is, I gotta go. Now.” That said, Delner rose from the table, starting for the door.

“Let me guess, reporting to your sergeant?” Rion asked, knowing good and well that reporting for duty was the very last thing on Delner’s mind. He was pale, shaking, and he looked in immediate danger of passing out.

The guardsman sneered, or at least tried to. All in all, as scared as he was, it was a pretty poor effort. Without another word, Delner turned and hurried away. Rion could have stopped him, but he didn’t see the point. What little the man had known, he’d told. He watched the guardsman join the exodus of tavern patrons who, on hearing the bell, had decided they needed to be anywhere but here. Desperate, terrified fools they looked to Rion, disbelief and bewilderment on their faces that was inexplicable considering that everyone in the city had known that the army was approaching for some time now. And the most damning bit of all, Rion thought, rising and making his way toward the shoving, shouting mass of people all trying to cram through the tavern’s single door, was that he could feel the same sort of dumbstruck disbelief on his own face. The army’s coming, sure. The scouts had said as much in report after report. But they weren’t coming, anymore. Now, they were here.

Rion needed to speak to Alesh and the others, to tell them what he’d learned of Marta and Fermin. He could think of nothing they could do to save the two short of marching and attacking the entire enemy army—a fool’s errand, that, as they outnumbered them at least four to one—but perhaps one of them would have an idea where he did not. Besides, perhaps, together, he and the others Chosen might be able to do something to protect the city. And if not? Well, at least he wouldn’t die alone.