It took two weeks for word to reach the East Redding about the raid on the WayStation . When Crevan returned to Palderton from a trip along the merchant roads through the edges of the Quaj-held forest, Tivaris, the news was already waiting for him.
Claude came to meet him outside the public house in the center of town, offering an already lit hand-rolled cigarette as Crevan dismounted from his horse. Crevan took it without comment, sniffed the smoke, and then raised one eyebrow in question. “First crop,” the older man told him. “Good yield.” He waited while Crevan smelled it again, and then watched, unsurprised, as he dropped the cigarette into the mud and ground it under his heel. “We can go out to look at it tomorrow if you’d like. But you ought to know first…” He trailed off.
Crevan threw his pack over one shoulder, and handed the reins to the stable-boy who came to take his horse. “You know I hate the ‘finish my sentence’ game, Claude. Spit it out.”
“Tallon and Seril went for the WayStation.” Claude stopped, surprised when Crevan simply kept moving past him, into the pub – he had expected some sort of reaction, some question about the outcome. When the younger man shot him another impatient look, though, Claude knew he was supposed to just continue, rather than waiting to be prompted. “They … uh … well, most of ’em got killed.”
“I warned them they shouldn’t under-estimate the priest,” Crevan muttered. He stopped by the bar to toss a few coins to the inn-keeper, and then headed up the steps to his usual rooms. “Hilaire might look the bookish sort, but he’s not a light-weight.” He threw open the door to the main room, tossed his pack on a couch, and then noticed how Claude stood just inside the door, looking at the carpet. “What?”
“It wasn’t the priest, Crevan. They waited ‘til he was gone, and it wasn’t like they hung around ‘til he got back. It was some group comin’ up from Tarrish. They took out Cloten in Obber’s Mill , too,” he added hastily, figuring that maybe he should just hit the high points quick. He didn’t like the way Crevan’s left hand seemed ready to pull a dagger if he dawdled too much in the telling. “Raz survived. And the heroes got to take Cloten’s stuff for payment. But that ain’t the worst of it.”
Crevan’s eyes narrowed. “Claude, I can’t imagine what might be worse than losing half my personal crew while I was away, even if Tallon and Seril were stupid enough to go for the WayStation after I told them not to. Except maybe the painfully slow way you go about telling me whatever it is you’re trying to tell me.”
Claude tried not to look at the dagger at Crevan’s waist, nor to think of the blades he knew the other man had hidden his sleeves. “News from Obber’s Mill is that one of the hero-types from Tarrish was named Cassick.” He tried very hard not to look at Crevan’s hands in the long moments before the younger man spoke again.
When Crevan finally moved, to the windows where he threw open the curtains, Claude let out a pent-up breath. “So,” Crevan continued, as he looked out onto the town square, “has my grandmother asked for me?”
It was not an idle question, despite the casual way Crevan asked it. Crevan didn’t believe in coincidence – if it were his cousin, Cassick (and what other Cassick might it be coming from Tarrish?) who had so carefully taken out all of Tallon’s crew, and then finished off Cloten, then it could mean only one of two things, neither of them good.
The first possibility, and the better one, was that Cassick had simply decided to make his move – perhaps trying to cut Crevan off at the knees and take control before Grandmere Marguerite shrugged off her mortal form and joined her long-dead husbands in whatever after-life awaited her. That Crevan could probably handle, even if Cassick had moved sooner than expected. If it came down to a fight just between the two of them, then Crevan could probably count on at least half the family to back him.
The other possibility, though – that was bad. Did Cassick know? After Crevan dismissed Claude, he sat in an armchair holding a tumbler of whiskey that he barely sipped, pondering the possibility. Had Tallon or Seril let something slip? It was possible. Stupid enough to try to steal from Kalle’s WayStation, they were stupid enough to let their tongues wag. If Cassick had somehow caught wind of Crevan’s hand skimming from the family till – well, then there would be real trouble. And if he told Marguerite in one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity, then he couldn’t count on anyone in the family to support him. He might already have a target on his back, and not even know it.
The whiskey bottle was empty when he left, with only a skim of liquor left in the glass. He left a message for Claude before taking a fresh horse and heading south. Raz had survived. The sorcerer wouldn’t know Crevan’s face – he had been careful to meet only with Tallon and Seril – and shouldn’t know his name, either. But Crevan needed to get out of East Tarrish, while he had others’ ears working for him. Heading south to find out what Raz might know was a way to keep himself occupied.
It took him a week to reach Obber’s Mill, riding fast but not so fast he stood out among the merchants and farmers traveling the north/south road. The rooms at the Sylvan Glade Inn were nice enough (at least better than his bedroll) and the bartender, Dormain, the talkative sort, quick to share his story. A former caravan guard, fired by his employer two years before when goods came up missing one morning outside the village – Crevan simply nodded over his drink, not bothering to mention that Cloten the miller had likely been behind the theft and the sudden end to Dormain’s former employment.
He didn’t need to – with the recent unmasking of Cloten as thief and murderer, Dormain was ready enough to put two-and-two together and for once come up with the proper sum. (Crevan suspected that the man would routinely come up with an odd number, otherwise.) From there, it took little prompting to have Dormain and others in the bar – farmers and laborers – regale Crevan and the other passing travelers with the sordid tale of the town’s maleficent miller.
“Killed the sheriff, he did!” one bent-back old man said, slamming his mug on the table. “Cyrus Fletcher – a good ‘un, he was,” another added, leading to some rumblings about how unfortunate it was such a good man had come to such a foul end.
Too good, Crevan thought to himself. Fletcher’s sniffing around the spate of thefts near Obber’s Mill had been his undoing. When Cloten had suggested killing the man, Crevan had agreed. The true misfortune was that Cloten had been unable to keep his head down afterwards.
“Bastard almost took our Ghini, too ’e did,” one of the men continued. And from that, Crevan heard how Ghini Eglund, one of Fletcher’s deputies and now the town’s sheriff, had almost fallen to the miller and his pack of vicious dogs. “But the fellers from Tarrish saved ’er…” But the end of the evening, he knew all their names but one, from Boeden Narwin the tall Jotunn to Duran, the Middle Redding horseman. Vermillion, described as a sometimes foul-mouthed man, was the exception – a man with a reason to keep his real name close. Cassick’s second, perhaps?
Some of the men laughed when they recounted how the barbarian Broc offered a jeweled ring to Ghini, and gave her a kiss that rattled her to the tips of her boots. “She gave as good as she got,” one of her fans chimed in. “He weren’t walkin’ too steady when it was done.”
“A ring and a kiss?” Crevan murmured. “Has your sheriff set a wedding date yet, then?” That drew some surprised questions about the ways of North Redding tribesmen, and some consternation that the oversized swordsman might be planning to come back and take their new sheriff off to the frozen north. There were protests about how she weren’t betrothed “lest she said it herself,” and how they would gladly take up arms – pitchforks, for those who lacked blades – to keep the unruly warrior in line when he returned from whatever adventure had drawn him and his eastward into the forests.
In the midst of it, Crevan slipped away, leaving enough coin to cover his tab and one set of drinks for everyone else, and taking two plates of food with him. The sun was setting as he made his way to the jail. Ghini Eglund wasn’t in, he had made sure to confirm that before volunteering to deliver the evening meal to the guard on duty and the prisoner. The teenaged boy at the front desk thanked him profusely for the meal, and even more for the flagon of ale (“just make sure you rinse it with water before your boss shows up,” Crevan advised him), and waved Crevan back to the cells.
Raz and one loudly snoring drunk (the latter in an unlocked cell, left to sleep it off and free to go when he awoke) were the only prisoners. The badly burned bandit who had survived the WayStation had already been turned over to League authorities. Crevan passed the plate through the slot, and then moved to lean against the wall to the side of the cell – close enough for Raz to see his shoulder, but leaving his face in shadows.
Again, it didn’t take much to get the other man talking, just some expressions of sympathy for his plight. Speaking fast around mouthfuls of food, Raz insisted he had never wanted anyone to get hurt – why, he didn’t even want anyone to rob the WayStation. Father Hilaire had been good to him, given him a chance to be something other than a road bandit. But Tallon and Seril and the others – they wanted to ransack the place, even though others higher on the food chain had said not to (that caught Crevan’s attention) and had been too much for Raz to keep out.
They were supposed to be in, and out, before anyone knew any better, trees pulled down over the road on both sides to keep travelers from reaching the WayStation before night. It was just sheer bad luck that some group of strong-armed sorts had come along. Now, he could only hope Father Hilaire would speak for him, bond him out, and give him a second chance to prove himself trustworthy.
Outside the cell, Crevan rolled his eyes, and resisted the urge to reach through the cell bars and throttle the younger man. Another idiot looking for redemption. “Aren’t you worried those ones higher up the chain might try again?” Crevan prompted, when Raz fell silent and spent too much time savoring his roast beef.
“Nothing I can do about it,” Raz answered morosely, “’cept tell Father Hilaire to be on the lookout. I keep telling Sheriff Eglund, I don’t know who else it is, somebody in the East Redding is all I know. Cloten maybe knew – he kept a little book. Probably has my name in it, wherever it is. Insurance, he called it. Me,” Crevan could hear the shrug, “I got no insurance.”
You get to live anyway, Crevan thought. He bid the young guardsman good night, and spent the next few hours searching Cloten’s house (after making sure the new miller, a volunteer from the community, was indeed one of those seated around the tables at the Sylvan Glade). Nothing – whatever there might have been was already claimed by someone else.
It was almost enough to make him torch the house, just to watch it burn. Or the jail, so he could enjoy the thought of Raz roasting in the cell.
He refused to believe it was “just bad luck” the way Raz had said. But why had Cassick and his crew turned east into the forested mountains, rather than continuing on to their home Redding, to confront Crevan, or at the very least to poison Grandmere Marguerite against him? “What sort of game are you playing with me, cousin?” Crevan asked, looking up at the night-sky.
Whatever the game was, he would not play it by Cassick’s rules. By morning Crevan would be on his way back to the East Redding, to make preparations, to whisper his own stories into Marguerite’s ear and incline her favor to him, and against his cousin.
DM’s Note: Illustration adapted under Creative Commons license from this photograph
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