4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Rhys was in an exceedingly bad temper.

First, Marcos had been incredibly high-handed, demanding that they postpone their journey for at least a few days, in order to be "properly" outfitted with supplies.

Rhys had brought a handful of coins with him, enough for some periodic lodging and food along the journey, but based on the standards Marcos was insisting on, it wouldn't be nearly enough.

And now, they had come to this dirty, ugly tavern, with its watered-down mead and slop for food. As for the lodgings, they were hardly an improvement. The bed was small and narrow, the mattress filled with lumpy straw that Rhys did not want to question the origin of. And to make things worse, there was only one of these uncomfortable beds.

Marcos insisted that he take it. "I will be keeping watch," Marcos said, sliding a rough piece of wood across the door. "You can take the bed."

And now, the very worst part of this entire situation was that Rhys was required to be grateful that Marcos had been so generous.

Rhys did not want to be grateful.

He wanted to be angry—but it was difficult to be angry with someone who offered you the only bed in the room, no matter how poor it was.

Rhys shifted to the other side of the mattress, trying to find an area without lumps, but was unsuccessful. He sighed, not even bothering to temper his frustration.

"Trouble sleeping?" Marcos asked kindly.

Even in the dark gloom, Rhys could see where he had settled—opposite the doorway, back against the rugged plank walls of the room, booted feet drawn up to his chest. Rhys could even see the wry expression on his face.

He'd always enjoyed his ability to see in the dark, always considered it one of his favorite gifts, but now he wished he could do it a little less well.

"The bed is lumpy," he said, aware of how ungrateful he sounded. He could very easily be on the floor. Marcos was still, as far as Rhys knew, a full-fledged Guardian. He could have overpowered Rhys in an instant, with merely a crook of his fingers, never mind all those very impressive muscles.

But he hadn't.

Rhys still had not figured out what ulterior motive Marcos had for accompanying him, and that annoyed him most of all.

"You could always transform. The hay might suit you better if you were of an equine descent," Marcos teased.

Up until now, Rhys was unaware that Marcos teased. This was new. But then, even though they had served on the Conclave together for hundreds and hundreds of years, he had never really known Marcos. He'd kept to himself, more at home on a battlefield or in the armory than he was the Castle at the Top of the World.

"I certainly will not," Rhys said firmly. "I will . . . adjust."

He'd slept in far worse. Admittedly, not in some time. He'd gotten spoiled and lax. But at the very beginning, when he'd first been banished to the surface, there had been some lean, cruel years.

"Then I suggest you do," Marcos said. "We have a long journey ahead, and there will be little time for resting after we leave here."

Rhys turned over, plumping the straw underneath him, and attempted to banish the questions that kept swirling through him. Particularly all the questions he had about Marcos.

He'd just managed to lull himself into a relaxed state that at least approximated sleep when he heard a rustling outside the front door.

Not a rustling. A scratching.

"Is that . . . is that a mouse? A rat?" Rhys hated how wobbly his voice sounded. He'd been both a mouse and a rat. Of course, not very frequently, and only out of extreme necessity.

But that didn't mean he wanted to share his bed with either.

"No," Marcos said shortly. "Be quiet. Stay in the bed."

Rhys took that to mean that whatever happened, he was being told not to interfere.

The scratching intensified.

And then suddenly it was not just scratching, but a screeching sawing, the dissonance of the sound breaking through the silence of the inn, and in the dark, Rhys watched as Marcos sprang to his feet so quickly that one moment he was still seated, muscles poised to act, and then he was standing, and bracing himself as several men busted through the door.

They were all of the same big build and wore the same homespun, dirty attire as the men downstairs, except these men held various weapons clutched in their hands. There was a knife, long and definitely sharp, glinting in the dim light pooling from the hallway, and a pickaxe, a fist clenched around a rough wooden handle, and finally, the tool that Rhys recognized that had made that horrible screeching noise.

It was a saw blade, sharp as anything, and notched, each tooth dangerous, and Rhys realized the man must have stuck it through the gap between the door and the doorframe, and used it to partially cut through Marcos' makeshift lock, until they'd been able to break it entirely with their strength and bust through the door.

He had only a second to take this in, take in them, before Marcos was moving towards them in a whirlwind of action. He dodged the pickaxe's blow, with a quick duck of the head, and then jabbed a sharp elbow into the knife wielder's stomach, forcing him to lose grip on the weapon.

Rhys nearly yelled, because the other man, the third, with the saw blade, as sharp and deadly as anything Rhys had ever seen, was on Marcos an instant later.

But Marcos must have anticipated his attack, because instead of disengaging, he charged, pummeling the man's midsection with a series of hard blows, then smashing his jaw with his fist, sending him flying.

The third dismissed, Marcos began to turn back, but even a fighter as skilled and talented and gifted as Marcos could not handle three adept fighters at once without a single weapon, and Rhys saw, through the darkness, what was about to happen.

The pickaxe hovered, for a single spit second, behind Marcos' back, where the man was about to drive the pointed end into his back, incapacitating him.

The man didn't know that Marcos was immortal and therefore impossible to kill, but Rhys knew he could be hurt. And while they might have time to stop here to gather supplies, they did not have time to wait around for Marcos to recover from his injuries.

Rhys had but a split second to decide.

Even though it was never a question of which action he would take.

He rose from the bed, hand outstretched, and called the power, feeling it as it surged through him, from the ends of his toes, through his midsection in a thrilling rush, to the tips of his fingers, and then, finally, at the last possible second the flame shot out of his palm.

It was nothing compared to what he'd wielded as a Guardian. When he'd been at full strength, he'd shot fireballs from his pinky finger. But this shot of magical flame, while not quite intense enough to touch the man attacking Marcos, was still enough to make him duck with a sudden yelp of surprise. Marcos' head swiveled and he turned, bringing the weight of his full strength down on the crown of the man's head, sending him crumpling to the floor.

Rhys had been in battles before. He'd fought, though not frequently because he far preferred addressing an enemy by subterfuge and not direct confrontation. But the blood rush after a battle was not new to him.

Still, it felt new, when Marcos turned his dark, intense stare onto him.

"What," Marcos asked, his breath short and the tiniest bit labored, "happened to staying on the bed?"

Rhys looked down at his palm, still smoking, and fought a sudden, inexplicable urge to burst into hysterical laughter. "I did not leave the bed?"

Marcos grinned then, and he couldn't help himself any longer. He threw back his head and laughed. "I even stayed quiet," Rhys crowed.

"Yes, but you nearly roasted someone who came to hire me," Marcos said, still clearly amused by the turn of events.

"What?" Rhys exclaimed. "Those men . . . they were here to rob us!"

"No, they weren't," Marcos said, crossing to the bed, and kicking one of them, who rolled over, groaning in the process. "That was the only reason why the fight even lasted as long as it did. I did not want to kill them all outright. If that was the outcome I'd desired, they'd have been dead a minute ago, without any interference from you."

"They were testing you," Rhys said slowly. He might not be as powerful as he'd once been, and he'd never been a brilliant fighter, not like Marcos, but he still possessed considerable intelligence. "They broke in to see if you were skilled enough to hire."

"It was a test," Marcos agreed, inclining his head in Rhys' direction. "I did not realize you still possessed that much magic."

"It's not much, and it is not particularly useful, as it drains me for days after, but you said that we will be resting here at least that long . . ."

Marcos grinned again, bright as the sun in the dark. "You exerted that much power, because you believed you could save me?"

"I knew he could not kill you, because the chance of them taking your head was zero, I was just trying to avoid nursing you," Rhys muttered, trying to make the action sound far more logical than it had actually been. In truth, it had been rash and foolish. A child's move.

He'd believed himself long since cured of the notion of being a hero.

The man underneath Marcos' feet groaned again, and Marcos bent down. "You feeling good enough to take us to your boss?"

"Us?" the man questioned. "He didn't say anything about us, only you."

"Where my friend goes, I go," Marcos said, his tone brokering no arguments. Rhys nearly made an argument for him, that he had no intention of endangering himself more than he needed to. But he knew better than to question Marcos' authority in front of these brigands.

If they were smart and they realized he and Marcos were not truly aligned, they'd do whatever they could to drive a wedge between them, to create even more problems. Not that Rhys truly believed that they were smart enough, since that was a move he would've made. But still, it was smart to be cautious.

"We weren't supposed to bring the other one," one of the other men argued. "He won't like it."

"I am sure he refers to your superior," Rhys inserted smoothly. "Let me promise you, while my associate here might be the brawn of the operation, I am the brains. Your leader will not be disappointed."

Marcos shot him a glare, but the man underneath him nodded slowly. Reluctantly.

"Fine," he said, "we will take you both."

If Rhys had realized that accompanying Marcos would mean having a dirty bag made of rags thrown over his head, and then literally being tossed into the back of a rank-smelling wagon that had clearly not been cleaned in some time, then Rhys would not have been so eager to present a united front.

"You owe me," Rhys hissed under his breath at what he believed was the Marcos-sized lump next to him as the wagon jolted and jarred them, moving across what seemed to be a very poor road.

"I owe you?" the lump responded incredulously.

"You owe me," Rhys said firmly.

"The only reason I am going to all this trouble," the lump retorted, "is to keep you from being malnourished and your toes and fingers from freezing off. I certainly would not go to any of this trouble for me."

It was unbelievably annoying, how superior Marcos could be, when he was supposed to be—when Rhys had declared him to be—merely the muscle of the operation. Rhys had permitted his inclusion because he'd had no real choice in the matter, but also because surely having a Guardian of untold power and skill along could only assist whatever difficulties Rhys discovered while heading north.

Marcos was not here to take care of Rhys.

The very idea was insulting.

Rhys harrumphed, loudly, to ensure that Marcos heard his displeasure. Not that he had any reason to suspect otherwise.

Next to him, he felt the Marcos-shaped lump tense, and Rhys braced himself for another annoying lecture, when the wagon stopped abruptly, throwing them against the wood barrier separating the front from the back.

"Oomph," Rhys grumbled.

"Are you alright?" Marcos asked after a second had passed.

Apparently he could not help himself.

"I'm perfectly alright," Rhys said, grinding his teeth. "It was just a very sudden stop."

"No, it wasn't," Marcos said, and Rhys could nearly hear the amusement in his tone again. "I could tell it was coming. And you would have been able to tell too, if you'd been paying attention to the movement of the wagon, and not arguing with me."

Rhys decided that did not deserve a response, so he merely lay there and let the men with the questionable sanitary history unload him from the back of the wagon. First him, and then Marcos. He noticed it took only two men to dispatch him, but they used all four for Marcos.

They were cautious, then. Perhaps not brilliantly intelligent, but with some idea, at least, that Marcos was powerful and worth keeping an eye on.

They led them through what had to be a clearing—Rhys could feel the tall grass brush against his trousers—and then into the mouth of a cave. It was dank smelling, and cold, and he barely held himself back from shivering as they walked deeper and then deeper still into the cave.

Finally, they came to a stop, and their hoods were removed.

Rhys blinked slowly. There was a man sitting on a dais in front of them, made crudely out of what looked to be old broken-up shipping crates. His eyes were dark blue, and he would have been handsome, except for the dirt all over his face, and the even dirtier hair, hanging in lank waves across his features. The clothing he wore was just as rough as his men's. But the thing that most surprised Rhys was that he was big, perhaps even as big as Marcos, though it was hard to tell while he was still sitting.

The sitting was the most extraordinary part, because the chair was no ordinary chair, scavenged or even bought. It had clearly been made, or much more likely, stolen.

It was of dark, smooth carved wood, with engraved symbols and decorative flourishes picked out in gold leaf. The back was especially impressive—the spire of each side of the chair back was topped with a gold finial.

Rhys was fairly certain that what he was staring at was a throne, lifted from perhaps one of the old kingdoms to the north.

Or perhaps, he thought, wishing he could get a closer look at some of the engravings, one of the old chairs from Ardglass, that had once sat in the council chamber of the thirteen clans.

His memory was not as clear as it should have been, but if he could get nearer . . .

He found himself pulled abruptly back by his collar.

"What do you think you're doing?" one of the men snarled.

Sorry, Rhys nearly said, I just thought I might have remembered your leader's chair, from back three hundred years ago, when the clans of Ardglass used to meet.

But he couldn't, because this group was already suspicious enough.

"I was just looking at your leader's magnificent . . ." Rhys hesitated. He wanted to say throne, because that's what it was. Even if this man only ruled the local gang, he certainly aspired to more. But he settled for . . . "Chair. His chair."

"It's very fine, is it not?" The man rose from it, and yes, as Rhys had wondered, he was nearly as tall as Marcos.

Maybe once he'd been as muscular as Marcos, but he clearly spent too much time in the chair—the throne—now, and also too much time drinking terrible mead at the pub, because he'd started to grow fat.

There was still an imposing charisma to him, and Rhys mentally warned himself to be careful.

"Very fine," Rhys agreed. "Is it from Ardglass?"

The man's gaze narrowed. Marcos coughed under his breath next to him, clearly not pleased that Rhys had derailed the conversation.

"Are you from Ardglass?" the leader asked in a hard voice.

"Oh, no, no," Rhys said. Even though he could still hear some of the remnants of the accent he had picked up during all those years at Tullamore.

"I told you," one of the underlings argued, "he's not from anywhere 'round here, at all. He made fire with just his hand."

The leader's eyes widened.

Oh, damn.

Marcos muttered under his breath again.

"A . . . momentary lapse," Rhys said, shooting the leader his most charming smile.

"You can't do it again?"

"Not right away," Rhys answered honestly, hoping that would be the end of the conversation—but knowing that it wouldn't be.

The leader turned to Marcos. "You know he could do that?"

Marcos gave a short, succinct nod. And then added, "I can do far more than that."

All true, Rhys thought ruefully.

"What?" The leader was smiling belligerently now as he stalked back and forth in front of them. "You can shoot fire out of your cock?"

Rhys barely held in his chortle of laughter.

"No," Marcos said, in a tone that Rhys remembered all too well from before, when he was barely holding in his temper. "I can fight anyone you need. In any number."

The leader rested back on his heels. "Have a high and mighty opinion of yourself, don't you?"

"Yes," Marcos said unapologetically.

"Barely bested my three men," the leader said. "You needed your friend to shoot some fire at one of them."

"No, I didn't." Marcos hesitated. "He just likes to show off."

Rhys didn't know whether he should be pissed off at how obnoxious that accusation was, or how obnoxious it was that Marcos had figured him out so easily.

The leader was silent a moment, thinking to himself. Finally he said, "We need a man to attack a convoy traveling through the village in a day's time."

"I can do it," Marcos said confidently, even though he did not know any of the particulars.

Egotistical maniac, Rhys complained to himself. Even if it's likely true, he could at least pretend that it might be difficult.

"You are very sure."

"I am very good," Marcos retorted.

When the leader finished reciting the particulars, Rhys nearly laughed out loud again.

They were . . . robbing a merchant. On the road.

And only getting a miniscule percentage of the final take.

If they'd been alone, he'd have reminded Marcos that all the final take could have been theirs.

Instead they were giving most of it to this huge pompous ass, who felt like he needed to sit on a throne to bolster his ego.

Rhys was not impressed.

When they were finally alone, grabbed again and taken to a deeper cave fitted with a makeshift set of bars Rhys supposed were intended to stop them from escaping and warning the intended target, he said as much to Marcos.

"Quiet," Marcos said, "this is a cave, our voices carry."

"I know that," Rhys retorted. "What I am trying to say is that we could have performed this theft ourselves, with no help from the locals, and none of it would be going to these people."

"We don't need all of it," Marcos reasoned. "We only need some of it."

Rhys rolled his eyes. "You are painful, sometimes."

"I hardly think you are one to talk. I am not the one who was banished from the Conclave."

That was a sore point, Rhys could admit it. It had been sore for a long time, and it was sore still. It was not exactly fair that Marcos had brought up his lowest point, but he supposed he could not really blame him. After all, Rhys had been needling him.

Justifiably, but then most people did not respond particularly well to Rhys' needling.

"So you are going to perform this theft for these men," Rhys said instead, changing the subject.

"Yes. It should be easy enough."

"The merchant is traveling with fifteen armed men," Rhys pointed out. He knew Marcos could do it, because no human could fight the way Marcos could. He was faster and stronger, and impossibly skilled.

Rhys had seen him turn the tide in battles just by being on one army's side.

"And they will be traveling through a culvert, and vulnerable to an attack from the sky," Marcos said, sounding like it was perfectly reasonable that he fly down and attack from up above.

"And no," Marcos added, a twist to his mouth almost giving Rhys a smile, "I will not be flying. I will be falling towards them. Or I suppose you could say jumping."

"A much further distance than most men could manage," Rhys sniffed.

"We have established that I am no man." Marcos walked over to the grate that penned them in, and tested it, jiggling one side and then the other, proving that just as Rhys had suspected, they were staying locked in because Marcos did not want to be free, not because these iron bars could actually keep him incapacitated.

"And what will they say when you perform as admirably as I know you can?" Rhys questioned.

"You saw the throne," Marcos said, shooting him a knowing look. "The leader has a mystical streak. Or he wishes he had a mystical streak. That chair came from Ardglass, it was one of the original thirteen."

"You think so too? I could not get close enough to verify."

Marcos smiled. "I was one of the original thirteen. It was the chair across from mine, in the council chamber. I would have recognized it anywhere."

"Of course you were," Rhys said. He was not surprised. The line of sorcerers had moved between Ardglass and Fontaine frequently over the years, and he'd always been near at hand. And to hear Marcos tell it, so had he.

For what reason, Rhys had yet to discover.

But he would. There was no doubt in his mind that he would eventually uncover Marcos' secret, because he'd never failed to do so before.

"Like I said, this man is mystical, or fascinated by the mystical. He will not detain us, even after I display my abilities. Instead, he will let the legend of his gang grow, after we are gone." Marcos sounded very sure.

Rhys was less sure, but what he was confident about was this crew's complete inability to hold them if they wished to go.

"Get some sleep, if you can," Marcos continued, gesturing to the straw-covered floor. "It's much worse than the mattress at the tavern, I'm sure, but it's better than nothing."

Rhys settled down, annoyed that he'd been abducted without even his big heavy cloak, because the ground was wet and cold. But Marcos was right about one thing, it was better than nothing.

"I suppose you want me to say I'm grateful," Rhys said a few moments after Marcos' eyes closed.

One of them opened again. "I do?"

"If you were taking advantage of the poor conditions to remind me that it will be an improvement to be better outfitted in our journey north, you are right. It will be an improvement."

Marcos smiled, but did not say anything.

The morning might have dawned clear and cool, or cloudy and humid.

It was impossible to say, since they were still locked up underground.

Rhys could smell the day dawning though, and he paced in their cell, waiting for the leader to come release them so Marcos could lay waste to this merchant's traveling caravan.

They had already wasted enough time on this ridiculous attempt to earn enough money to buy supplies.

"Where are they?" he demanded testily.

"Give them time, they'll be here." Marcos was still lying on the cold, hard ground, seemingly unbothered by either.

"I don't know how you can be so calm about this," Rhys complained testily. "We are stuck in here." Except they weren't. Not really. They were only still here because they wanted to be here.

Not wanted necessarily, Rhys conceded, but needed to be here.

"They need us," Marcos reminded him. "Or rather, me, though I think the leader is allowing you to accompany us, if only because he's hoping to see your fiery party trick."

"It's not a party trick," Rhys objected.

Except that was essentially what it amounted to now.

Marcos shot him a look. "Promise me you won't use it," he said. "You don't need to waste the energy, not when I intend to create some distance between this village and us by tonight."

"You are concerned, then," Rhys said.

"Not because of this gang," Marcos countered. "But we could be slowed down due to complications or interference, and I am ready to get on the road after this. We'll steal a horse and then buy the rest at the next village."

"You seem to have it all planned out." Rhys hated how sulky he sounded. What happened to him being in charge of this journey?

"Promise me," Marcos insisted.

Rhys nearly didn't. It was none of Marcos' business if he wanted to use what little power remained to him. But Marcos had also made a very strong, very logical point. They would need to exit the scene of the upcoming crime quickly. It would be best to be out of here before any additional suspicion fell.

He could still feel the drain on his body, on his energy, after the last use, and after the mostly sleepless night he'd just passed.

"I promise," Rhys said, finally relenting.

He'd just finished saying the words when a man approached the gate. "It's time," he said in a gruff tone.

Marcos was on his feet in a moment. If the man was surprised at how quickly he moved, he did not show it.

This time they were not covered in dirty hoods, but they followed the man out of the tunnels, through the room with the throne, and then out of the mouth of the cave. Rhys realized he had missed the fresh air as he took a long gulp of it.

They were directed back to the wagon, and seeing it wasn't an improvement over merely smelling it. Sharing it did not help, but Rhys kept his thoughts on the gang's hygiene to himself. Marcos did not need to fight all of them, plus the merchant's men.

The wagon traveled for ten minutes and then twenty, then Rhys lost count. It climbed up a hill, on a steep, rocky path, and then finally pulled off. The men jumped out, and Rhys followed, watching as they came to a stop right in front of a precipitous drop-off.

"This is the culvert the merchant's caravan will pass through," Marcos said pointing below. "I will jump down, assaulting them from above, and the rest will swarm in when I have established control of the situation."

"After?" Rhys questioned. "You don't want them to help you? Against fifteen armed men?"

Marcos merely shrugged with one shoulder, as he checked the straps of his hard leather armor.

"They will only be in the way," Marcos explained.

The armor he wore now was nothing like the armor he'd worn as a Guardian—perfectly fitted plates of silver and gold, gleaming and covered with symbols of power, intertwining and interlocking. Rhys had seen him arrive on a battlefield and men shield their eyes from the shimmering, shining vision of Marcos, a literal beacon of hope.

He was wearing the Mecant armor now, and like his original armor, it was embossed, but the leather was dark and worn, and many of the embellishments that had once been gold and copper and bronze, had faded away.

He pulled out his knife and, after checking the edge of the blade, shoved it back into the holster in his boot. Only then did he remove his sword to check it, unsheathing it with a screech of metal on metal, and Rhys was shocked to see that it was not a Mecant sword—but his sword. The Guardian of War's sword.

Rhys had only seen Marcos pull his sword a handful of times. He usually relied on his fists, and on the few knives he had secreted away on his person. One of them that he'd carried had been three hand spans long, and wickedly curved.

But the sword was a sight to behold.

Rhys heard several men around them gasp and utter oaths under their breath as Marcos pulled it from its sheath. Nearly five feet long, with a curved guard, and a simple silver grip, crossed with dark leather, it was the golden etching on the blade that was so mesmerizing, and how it seemed to magically morph, swirling and rippling down the long expanse of sharp steel.

"That's some sword," one of the men said, coming up to stand next to Marcos.

"A family heirloom," Marcos said shortly.

If Marcos was smaller or slightly less capable, Rhys imagined that one or more of them might try to appropriate it, no matter how long it had been in Marcos' family. But one look at the fierce expression on Marcos' face, and Rhys guessed none of them would be stupid enough to try.

The man asked a handful of other questions, but the look on Marcos' face made it clear that he wasn't interested in answering any of them.

Finally, he seemingly gave up, and returned to the other group, gathering a hundred feet away.

"Why the sword, but not the armor?" Rhys asked as Marcos slid the sword back into its sheath, strapped across his back.

"Do you remember that armor? It was not only ridiculous, it was like a beacon, way too bright, way too shiny, and also completely unmistakable."

"And the sword isn't any of those things? Not shiny? Not unmistakable?"

"It was also uncomfortable and heavy," Marcos added. "I didn't like fighting in it. No range of movement. Besides . . ." He hesitated. "A sword is personal. I've fought with this sword for thousands of years."

"Yet you never draw it."

"But I can. It's right here," Marcos said, patting the sheath, "where I can use it if I need it."

"You just never need it?" Rhys already knew the answer to that question, though. He'd seen Marcos fight enough times. He likely didn't need it.

Marcos just grinned. "Your memory must be shorter than I anticipated, Evander."

"That's not my name," Rhys answered automatically.

Marcos' gaze grew somber. Contemplative. A descriptor that Rhys had never imagined that he would use while describing the Guardian of War. He gave a short nod, and turned away.

It's not my name, not anymore, Rhys yelled to himself—but really to the Guardian who wouldn't talk to him.

You don't know who or what you are anymore, another voice, buried much deeper, reminded him.