Chapter 15

The older one gets,the less one cares about engaging in socially acceptable behavior.

~ Mendar the Crazy

A cold breeze swept off the snowy mountains and across the frosty cobblestones of the compound Vlerion entered, still carrying Kaylina. He’d done so the whole way, even climbing the ladder out of the root cellar while balancing her. In the castle, he’d stood patiently with her in his arms while she’d explained to Frayvar what had happened. Technically, she’d downplayed what had happened, not letting him get a good look at her leg and saying only that she’d hurt herself. Her brother had wanted to accompany them, but Vlerion had swept his hood over his head and reminded them that the fewer people who saw either of them with rangers, the better.

On the way to his headquarters, he’d avoided busy streets and had taken a roundabout route through alleys and sewer access tunnels. Only when they’d entered through the front gate of his walled compound had he pushed back his hood and walked openly through the courtyard.

A familiar ranger jogged up to Vlerion, falling in at his side. It was his handsome friend, Jankarr. He smiled at Kaylina, the gesture conveying reassurance and concern, before giving Vlerion a stern look.

“You went off to find trouble without me? And you got Targon’s innkeeper wounded? I’m your riding partner. I’m supposed to be at your side when there’s a fight.” Jankarr noticed the rips in Vlerion’s clothes, though Vlerion had pulled his cloak close, either because he was cold or to hide the damaged garments. Kaylina suspected the latter.

“I didn’t intend to find trouble when I left. I went in search of my wayward mount.” Vlerion looked toward a stable where numerous taybarri stood out front, noshing from buckets that were probably filled to the brim with protein pellets.

“That was three hours ago. He’s been back for two.” Jankarr thrust a finger toward the taybarri.

Until one swished his tail with a defiant cant while looking over at them, Kaylina couldn’t tell one from another. But when the animal’s brown eyes met hers, she knew that was Crenoch. He sashayed toward them while chewing his last bite.

“I decided to check the catacombs while I was at the castle. Go tell Targon I have an update on the Virts for him.”

Jankarr opened his mouth, a protest on his lips, but Vlerion looked coolly at him.

Jankarr threw up his arms and trotted off.

Were they partners, as Jankarr had said, or was Vlerion his superior? Vlerion seemed the younger of the two, but Kaylina didn’t know how quickly rangers could gain rank. Maybe it had more to do with deeds than years in service.

Vlerion veered toward a building with three herbs painted by the door, one of the kingdom’s signs to indicate a doctor or herbalist, often someone who was both. Crenoch caught up with them before they reached it. He sniffed Kaylina’s leg, fortunately from afar without bumping it, then looked at Vlerion.

“It’s not my fault.” Vlerion knocked on the door with the toe of his boot. “No, it is my fault.”

Crenoch snorted, hot breath whispering across their faces.

“No, it’s not,” Kaylina said, bemused that the taybarri might understand, even though Vlerion had suggested the possibility. “He told me to hide, and I, instead, tried to brain people with my sling.”

The door opened as she spoke, and a white-haired man with the scarred face and hands of a warrior raised his bushy eyebrows. “Sling’s not a real powerful weapon for braining. Try a mace next time. Something with heft.”

Kaylina thought of the heavy pots in the castle and wondered if the rangers had found whoever had killed that lord.

“Her rounds have decent heft,” Vlerion muttered. “Need you to tend her, Doc.”

“You and your posse?” The white eyebrows remained up as he looked past them.

Only then did Kaylina realize that not only had Crenoch followed them across the courtyard but three other taybarri had joined him. The large furred animals all gazed curiously at Kaylina. She didn’t know whether to wish she’d brought honey with her or not. Vlerion hadn’t approved of that, but she had a feeling Crenoch had conveyed to the rest of the herd that she was a honey dispensary.

“That’s her posse. You know the taybarri don’t flock to me.” Only briefly did Vlerion’s mouth flatten—was that bitterness?—before his usual mask returned.

“Well, you aren’t the most charming, are you?” The doctor pointed a thumb toward several empty cots in the outer room.

“No.” Vlerion carried Kaylina to the closest, laying her gently on it. When he stood, he didn’t shake out his arms or give any indication that toting her around the city had been a strain. He pulled a stool over and sat on it.

That surprised her. Didn’t he need to report to his captain?

“You’ve got wounds?” The doctor waved toward Vlerion’s torn tunic as he collected towels, water, bandages, and a suture kit.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Your clothes wrestled with a windmill by themselves?”

“Something like that.”

“You going to loiter around and watch?”

Vlerion opened his mouth to answer, but a thump against a window made him pause and look. Crenoch stood out there, his large nostrils steaming the glass.

“I guess we both are,” Vlerion said.

“Nothing like an audience when you’re mending wounds.” The doctor opened a pouch and pulled out a pill made from something green, pulverized, and plastered together. Too large to swallow without chewing, it reminded Kaylina of the taybarri protein pellets. He offered it to her with relish, as if it were a delightful treat. “For the pain.” Next, he pulled scissors out of a drawer in a table beside the cot. “I’ll have to cut away your trouser leg.”

“It was going to be hard to mend anyway,” Kaylina murmured, settling her head on the thin pillow and looking at the beam-and-board ceiling.

She made herself chew the awful-tasting pill and swallow it while avoiding looking down. She would prefer not to watch the doctor suturing the bite wounds nor see how deep they were.

“The north is rough on clothing.” The doctor glanced at Vlerion’s rips but didn’t comment further on windmills.

The door soon opened, with Captain Targon walking in, trailed by Jankarr.

“Some subordinates come to my office to report in when they arrive,” Targon told Vlerion after glancing at Kaylina.

“They sound obsequious,” Vlerion said.

“Proper and obedient, as rangers are supposed to be to their superiors.”

Vlerion grunted.

As the doctor cut off Kaylina’s trousers, leaving her bloody leg visible to all, Targon gave her—gave it—a longer look. Then he regarded Vlerion as if considering him and his seat beside her cot anew.

“How responsible are you for that?” he asked so quietly Kaylina almost didn’t hear.

The doctor, now intent on washing the deep punctures, didn’t glance at them.

“Responsible,” Vlerion answered before looking at his captain and considering him.

Targon’s expression had grown very serious, very grave.

“Not that kind of responsible,” Vlerion said, as if that was clarification.

“Ah,” Targon said.

Kaylina was missing something.

“She was in one of the pools in the catacombs,” Vlerion said, “and a fur shark got her.”

“How were you responsible for that?”

“She wouldn’t have been down there if not for me.”

“You were supposed to be on duty in the Warehouse District tonight,” Targon said.

“But you wouldn’t have learned about the new Virt movements if not for Vlerion going down there, right?” Jankarr, who’d stayed back and leaned near the door, raised his eyebrows. Before, he’d berated Vlerion for not taking him, but it seemed he would stand up for his partner to others.

Targon sighed, glanced at Kaylina, and walked to the far end of the room, gesturing for Vlerion to follow.

“Tell me,” Targon said.

Vlerion delivered a report in a voice too low for Kaylina to hear. Too bad. She would have preferred to concentrate on their conversation—on anything to keep her mind off the doctor’s probing, especially once he started suturing. Apparently, some of the punctures couldn’t be stitched and would have to be cleaned and checked frequently for infection since they would take a long time to heal fully. The wider wounds did receive sutures, and Kaylina grimaced with each stab, fighting not to gasp or show weakness in front of the men. Even with the pill, the fiery pain hadn’t dulled as much as she would have liked.

Jankarr came and sat on the stool Vlerion had vacated. He touched her shoulder. “Do you want a stick to bite on? Or something to squeeze? I’d offer Vlerion’s balls, but he barely reacts when you hurt him, so it’s not much fun.”

“Are you supposed to hurt your partner?”

“Only in the sparring ring. And occasionally if he idiotically goes into trouble by himself.” Though Jankarr hadn’t raised his voice, maybe not wanting their captain to hear about that, Vlerion glanced over.

Kaylina almost pointed out that Vlerion hadn’t been by himself, but it wasn’t as if she’d been any help. If anything, she’d been an impediment. She mighthave stopped those two men from planting explosives, but it was possible Vlerion would have caught up with them on his own before they’d done anything anyway.

“You cracked some Virt heads with your sling?” Jankarr”s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and he was even more handsome that way.

Kaylina caught herself smiling back, glad for the distraction from the doctor’s ministrations. Even if she didn’t appreciate that the rangers were all using her—at the least, Targon was, and the others were going along with it—it was nice of Jankarr to care enough to sit beside her.

“I worried they would hurt my brother,” she said.

“You get them square on, the same way you cracked Vlerion?” His smile widened.

She could feel Vlerion’s eyes upon them, even if he was reporting to his captain, so she downplayed that. “I usually hit what I aim at.”

“Nice.” Jankarr gave her an appreciative look. “That’s not a typical skill up here. Where’d you learn? What prompted you to master it?”

Kaylina hardly considered herself a master of the sling, but it was nice to have someone give her a compliment. It had been so long. And her family so rarely thought she did anything right that her heart almost ached with appreciation. She caught herself blinking to keep moisture from forming in her eyes. How silly to react so.

“We serve a lot of poultry and fish at the Spitting Gull,” Kaylina said. “All fresh. Grandpa’s brother is the fisherman and runs the nets and boats, but Grandpa loves his hounds and hunting. I took to it too. Anything to get out of the never-ending chores of running an eating house. He taught me the sling when I was little, and we went out for all kinds of partridge, quail, and hoatzin on the marshy islands of our chain. I practiced a lot with my sling when I was, uhm, frustrated with things.” How many hours had she spent, hiding out and targeting driftwood and buoys on the beach? An escape from older—and younger—siblings telling her what to do.

“You’d probably be good with a bow too. Once you’ve developed a marksman’s aim, it translates to other weapons fairly well.”

“I’ve never used one. I fired a crossbow at a pirate once.”

“In the head?” The amusement returned to Jankarr”s eyes.

“No. In the, uhm, lower area.”

Grinning, Jankarr looked at Vlerion and Targon as they returned to the cot. “You’d better watch your head and your cock around her.”

Heat flushed Kaylina’s cheeks. This wasn’t the distraction she’d wanted.

“Which head?” Targon smirked.

Vlerion sighed. “I should have taken her to one of the healers in town. She’s heard enough male ribaldry for today.”

When he met her eyes, Kaylina knew he was thinking of the comments they’d overheard from the alcove. It touched her that he’d been affronted on her behalf. Though it also chilled her that he’d killed the men. The memory of the head and the blunderbuss tumbling free of their owner flashed in her mind.

“Civilian healers aren’t as practiced as I am,” the doctor grumbled, “and my old lady smacks me if I get ribald around women.”

“She smack you if you call her an old lady when she can hear it?” Jankarr asked.

“Mostly throws things at me.”

“Your relationship is something to envy.”

“Got forty years together this summer.”

A thump at the door drew glances. Crenoch remained at the window, the panes so fogged Kaylina could barely make out his blue furry face. Targon went to the door and opened it, revealing another taybarri outside. Its eyes swung toward Kaylina.

“What is this about?” Targon looked to Vlerion.

“She gave Crenoch honey.”

“And thus he’s sworn his eternal devotion to her? And that of the herd?”

Warmth crept into Kaylina’s cheeks again, though she refused to admit she’d done anything wrong. She didn’t know why the animals were so interested in her.

“Apparently,” Vlerion said.

“That can’t be all that’s going on,” Targon said. “If honey was all it took to earn the loyalty of a taybarri, our enemies would have plied them with stolen beehives centuries ago and made off with the whole herd.”

“Hukk gives his taybarri sugar cubes and apples and doesn’t get such interest,” Jankarr said.

“My family’s honey is really good,” Kaylina offered. “The bees forage on islands with a lot of altered wildflowers. It’s why our mead is so good too. It’ll be a number of days before some is ready to try, but you’re welcome to come by for a tasting of the first batch.”

“I’d love to.” Jankarr smiled at her again.

Vlerion’s eyes narrowed slightly. “The rangers are to avoid the castle so the Virts don’t believe us associated with it.”

“Which is naturally why you were there all evening,” Jankarr said.

“I was in the catacombs, not the inn.”

“Enough.” Targon raised his hand, then gave Kaylina a long assessing look. It was reminiscent of the calculatinglook he’d had for her the night of the jailbreak, and it reminded her that he’d given orders forbidding ship captains from taking her and Frayvar onboard. “I’d like to see your sling work when your leg has healed enough for you to give us a demonstration.”

“All right,” Kaylina said, though she didn’t want to perform for him. She was positive he was thinking of another way he could use her.

“You planning to recruit her, Captain?” Jankarr sounded like he approved of the idea. “It’s been a while since we had any new female rangers.”

Kaylina shook her head. The idea wouldn’t have been appealing even if she hadn’t had her own dream she was pursuing. Besides, the rangers didn’t accept commoners, did they?

“We’ll see.” Targon waved at Vlerion. “Change clothes, take her back to her castle, and then I want you in the Warehouse District. I’ll send men down to grab the munitions in the catacombs and do a thorough search. I’m glad you stumbled on that, even if you didn’t have orders to check that area, but we have to assume there are more stashes around the city. They’re getting ready for something big.”

“They are,” Vlerion said.

“We don’t need any distractions.” Targon waved at Kaylina, as if he hadn’t just been plotting some way to use her, then at Vlerion’s ripped clothes. What was that supposed to imply?

“She is not a distraction,” Vlerion stated coolly.

Targon held his gaze for a long moment before saying, “She’d better not be,” and walking out.