Dagger Meets Wizard ~~
Here's the opening of a story that's currently intriguing me. Rabbit holes are problematic.
Foolish.
Or magicked.
He’d asked Faldo and his
cronies about the Keirne. That question
was going to get him killed.
Which was a shame, for he
was a fine specimen of a man.
He’d walked in like he
owned the tavern, never stopping on his way to the bar. He stopped beside Faldo and his cronies. The tapster waited for his order, but the fine
specimen ignored him. He leaned an elbow
on the scrubbed plank that had to be sticky from spilled liquor and broke into
Faldo’s conversation, a conversation that Dagger had listened to, hoping to get
information about which brothel the men were headed for their night’s
entertainment.
“Keirne?” Faldo
repeated. “I don’t know no Keirne.”
“The Keirne of
Kirchwald,” the fine specimen clarified.
“You’re Faldo, aren’t you? You
were there for the charge on the Red Tower.
You were there when Baron Gysthronnen tumbled the blocks of the tower
and took the Keirne.” He folded his
arms, and Dagger watched the leather jerkin stretch across his back.
Faldo wasn’t
impressed. He didn’t have Dagger’s
view. Turning away from the fine
specimen, he wiped his sleeve over his mouth.
“The baron’s dead.”
“Cursed,” his friend
said. “Horrible death. Even I heard about it.”
The fine specimen
straightened so he could look around Faldo at the crony. “You saw the baron die?” and in her corner
Dagger strained to hear the answer.
“Nyah. Heard about it. We all did.
Wastin’ disease. Death was a
mercy.”
“Why do you say he was
cursed?”
“Hale the day he took
Kirchwald, sick the day after, dead inside a fortnight. Cursed by some witch not killed when the Red
Tower fell. What else would you call it? Ain’t that right, Sergeant?” The crony clapped a hand on Faldo’s back.
He stiffened. The crony had overstepped, although he seemed
too sloshed to realize. Faldo drained
the last of his ale then tapped his stein on the bar. “Don’t know what yer talkin’ about,
friend. Don’t know why you’re askin’ me
about some Keirne. I weren’t never in
the Kirchwald.”
Faldo lied, as Dagger
knew very well. She might have started
her search a year after the assault on Red Tower, but she had tracked five men
from the fallen city. From Gysthronnen’s
ashy pyre beyond the tumbled red marble blocks, across the slowly greening vale
of the burned Kirch, north into Griestreigon, and finally into prosperous
Ornestreigon.
“What happened after the
baron died?”
Fool. Or magicked, she considered, for he didn’t fear the consequences of
letting everyone know he was tracking the Keirne, taken when Kirchwald fell.
She peeked at the fine
specimen again. Tall. Dark hair flowing down his back, ready to be
grabbed in a fight and used to trap him.
Broad shoulders. Straight
back. Gods, the leathers clung to his
arse and long legs. A long dagger hanging
from his belt, knife in his boot. No sword.
No bow and arrow. Not even a
crossbow. No weapons to defend himself
when Faldo and his cronies decided to haul him off to gaol. Or kill him in the closest allée. Maybe he was a witch. Or a wizard.
A fool wizard, tempting
death.
She swallowed and
fastened her gaze on the mug before her, turning and turning it while she
strained to hear the guard’s answer.
“You know to ask about
Kirchwald and the Keirne, but you don’t know what happened after?” The crony shook his head. His three friends had their mugs buried up to
their chins, staying out of the interrogation.
“When he died, his troops burned what was left of Kirchwald, scattered
the blocks of the Red Tower, then scattered themselves to the four winds. Wouldn’t you, after what happened to the
baron?”
“And Faldo came here.”
The big guard shook his
head. “You’ve got the name right, but
the man wrong. I ain’t that man. Never rode with Baron Gysthronnen.”
He lied. Dagger knew he’d served the baron.
And Faldo was no
sergeant. He’d led a troop for
Gysthronnen, and when his lord had died and the soldiers scattered, he and four
of his fellow commanders left Kirchwald.
They took the Keirne with them.
Even four seasons behind, Dagger had found their trail easy to follow. She knew one of those five commanders would
have the Keirne, and she had a contract to return it to the scattered blocks of
the Red Tower.
The five men left a trail
of broken lives from Kirchwald to Ornestreigon.
They surprised her by staying together.
She would have ridden off on her own.
And that would have given her the dilemma of whom to follow. Yet they rode together, even into the capital
Verdeneth. Their evil deeds made them
memorable to freeholders and villagers, even jaded townsmen. When they could not hire what they wanted,
they took it, and they delighted in taking what they wanted. Dagger had heard tales of screams and
pain. She’d seen scars from knife and
flame. She’d counted graves. If she hadn’t had a contract, she would have
taken a personal one, to kill each one of the commanders.
But she had a contract
that offered her opportunity.
Faldo would be the first
to die, after he identified his fellow commanders. She would work her way through them to the
Keirne and then return it to the razed city of Kirchwald.
“The Faldo I’m looking
for was a commander,” said the fine specimen, still persisting, giving them a
reason to fetch shovels to dig his grave.
“He had five friends.” He counted
five.
“Not us,” the crony
said. “I ain’t never been across the
border.”
“Not us,” another man
said. “We’ve been guards here in
Verdeneth for three years and more.”
“Not me,” Faldo said. “I ain’t never commanded an army. I’m a sergeant, appointed a couple of months
back. I came here a few months back with
my commander, but he never served in Kirchwald.”
Clever lies. He commanded troops, not the whole army. The commanders hadn’t served in Kirchwald;
they served in the army that attacked Kirchwald.
All so the dead Baron
Gysthronnen could take the Keirne from the Wizard of the Red Tower.
Dagger kept her head
down. Faldo may have fallen from high
rank, but he was one of those five commanders.
She knew it. For months she had wormed her way closer and
closer to the Keirne of Kirchwald. She
had covered her tracks. She had asked
her questions in corners and shadows.
She had slipped coins across scrubbed tables or wrangled information out
of men who hadn’t wanted to remember the assault on the Kirchwald. And she found Faldo, here in Verdeneth. She had only to get him alone.
She was certain of only
one more of them, Britellt, still a commander, harder to reach than Faldo was.
This fool walked up to
the former commander and asked him who had led the charge on the Red
Tower. He came poorly armed. And he acted like his questions were nothing.
“What do you want with
this Faldo?” one of the other men asked, wiser than the crony who had talked
first and longest, obeying some hidden cue from his sergeant.
“I want the Keirne.”
“Keirne? What is this Keirne?”
“A magical stone. One that only a wizard can wield.”
“A magical stone,” Faldo
repeated. “What kind of magic has it
got?”
“Now that I don’t know.”
“You got magic?”
“Do I look like a hill
witch?”
“You don’t look like
much.”
Dagger disagreed. His profile was cleanly lined. The half of his face that she could see
lacked the puffiness of heavy drink. He
had broad shoulders and narrow hips.
He’d had moved with panther stillness, his strides smooth and long, a
man at home in his body.
Gods, she didn’t want him
dead even though he kept digging his grave deeper.
“What you want this
Keirne for?”
“I have a witch
friend. A bane witch. He’s looking for the Keirne.”
“You have a witch
friend,” Faldo repeated slowly. “He here
in Verdeneth?”
“No. He’s at Castle Hardraste. Or what’s left of Castle Hardraste, after the
ground troll pulled it apart.”
The men had heard of the
event, and they pursued the fall of Hardraste and the attack of a ground troll
on the castle as Dagger got up. Keeping
her cloak close, she tossed the coin for her drink to the tavern girl then made
her way to the door and into the cold night air.
She couldn’t get
distracted from her goal. Faldo would know
which one of the men had possession of the Keirne. She had to get that information from him. She had daggers and a sword that she wouldn’t
hesitate to wield. She had a magicked
medallion that the old hill witch had sworn would blur her appearance for a
hundred and one hours. Once she had the
Keirne, she would stuff the magicked stone into its lead-lined box and return
it to the Red Tower. And collect her
reward.
No fool wizard would take
it from her, no matter how good-looking a specimen was.
![Death in High Heels (The Inspector Charlesworth Mysteries Book 1) by [Brand, Christianna]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41moLChygjL.jpg)
