Deepwoods (Book 1) (12 page)

“It is,” Fei acknowledged ruefully, “but I for one am glad
you asked. Formality should not exist among friends.”

Some underlying tension that had hovered in Markl’s
shoulders eased upon hearing this. “Thank you. I’m glad.”

Fei inclined his head in understanding. “The last honorific
is ‘jae’ which is used for younger sisters or close female friends. I call
Sylvie this, despite the fact she’s my age.”

“He called me ‘ajie’ only once,” Sylvie explained with a
dark pout.

“She threw something at me,” Fei explained in a stage
whisper. “I never dared to do it again.”

Markl’s mouth formed in a silent ‘ahhh’ of understanding,
eyes crinkling up in a silent smile.

The culture lesson ended there temporarily as they focused
on finishing lunch and getting ready to move. They’d eaten, cleaned everything,
and packed it all back in without hearing a single sound. In fact, they were
debating on rooting through the bags and finding their ever trusty deck of
cards when faintly the sound of a horn carried through the air. Siobhan sat up
abruptly, ears straining. “I counted five blasts.”

“As did I.” Out of the bunch, Grae had the sharpest ears. He
turned so that he was half-standing in the cart. After a long moment, the horn
sounded again. “Five blasts,” he confirmed with a bemused look. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“Something unexpected happened?” Markl offered. “Something
that the previous signals don’t cover.”

Siobhan grimaced. It looked like sending Tran ahead had not
been the easy solution she hoped for, for whatever reason. “Beirly, hook Kit
back up. Let’s go to Vakkiod.”

ӜӜӜ

Tran met them at the village entrance, as impassive as a
stone statue carved out of black rock. Siobhan couldn’t quite figure out why he
looked that way.

Her eyes took in the village in a quick sweep. From what she
knew of Wynngaard, this village seemed to be rather normal. Houses built
haphazardly with no real clear-cut roads, corrals and stone fences branching
off to encircle the village as a whole, most of which was filled with different
types of sheep, pigs, and cows. The place looked sturdy with its brick and wood
buildings, although where they had gotten enough wood to build this place was
anyone’s guess. She hadn’t seen a stretch of woods for quite some time. But the
place looked quiet, not at all rife with trouble or tension.

She hopped off the front seat of the cart as it moved and
jogged ahead, meeting Tran half-way as he loped toward them. “What by the great
stars does five blasts mean?” she demanded of him.

He gave her a quick, impish grin. “It means come to me,
Shi-maee. And look, without even knowing what I meant, you came! It’s like
magic.”

She growled and grumbled but couldn’t refute his logic.
Curse it. “Alright, what’s the problem? They wouldn’t talk to you?”

“Nearly got stabbed just coming near the entrance,” Tran
admitted, casting a dark look over his shoulder.

For a moment, Siobhan looked at him from a different
perspective instead of as someone that knew him well. With him so tall, so
covered in scars, with that dark skin of his and long braids, he probably
screamed
danger
to someone from a backwater village like this. Of course
no one from Wynngaard would automatically trust him enough to answer his
questions.

Fool. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

Siobhan raised a hand while giving a long sigh. “Sorry,
Tran. Didn’t think this through. If the villagers here are really that
cautious, then of course they’re not going to speak readily to a Teheranian.
Let’s try this again.” Turning, she looked over the people behind her. Really,
when it came to approaching the villagers, she only had two options. Either
Wolf, who looked so obviously native, or Denney, who was half-Wynngaardian
herself. Well, no, probably not Denney. She was also half-Teheranian, so they
might not know how to react to her either. “Wolf?”

“I’ll try.” Wolf strode forward and to the thick wooden
gates ahead, careful to keep his hands away from any weapon.

Blowing out a breath, she rocked back on her heels and
watched him go. Hopefully this worked better, although really, even though he
was Wynngaardian, Wolf was intimidating in his own right, too. Perhaps Markl
would be the better choice, with that quiet, unassuming air of his. Besides, he
had the strangest talent for charming people into talking to him. He might
succeed where no one else could.

“Are they normally this paranoid?” Tran muttered under his
breath, dark eyes scanning the area keenly. “I know Wolf said that they were
unusually cautious when it came to foreigners, but I couldn’t even get a word
out before they were coming at me with swords bared.”

That bad? Oh dear. “His description didn’t lead me to
believe they were so wary. No, wary isn’t even a strong enough word.”

Wolf stopped at the gate, speaking to the group of men that
had gathered there. He shook his head several times, hand raising in gestures,
his right hand carefully kept behind his back the entire time. She couldn’t
hear from here what they were saying, and probably couldn’t have understood
anyway with her limited knowledge of the language. In a few minutes, he came
back at a half-trot, a dark scowl furrowing his face.

“So?” she asked him.

“They were hit by a sneak attack a few weeks ago and so are
not very forthcoming with information,” Wolf explained, irritated. “They
wouldn’t even tell me they were attacked, I had to figure that out from what
they carefully weren’t saying. They want to know who we are, and why we’re
asking, which makes me think that they’re hiding
something
.”

Siobhan rubbed at the bridge of her nose in a pained way.
“We can’t move on from here simply because they don’t want to talk to us. One
way or another, we need to confirm it. Alright, Plan C. Markl?”

Markl hopped lightly out of the cart and came to her side,
head cocked in question.

“You go,” she ordered.

“Me?” he objected. “My understanding of Wynngaardal is
limited at best.”

“They speak some Robargean,” Tran offered. “It’s how I was
able to talk to them, or at least, understand the curses they were hurtling at
me.”

Robargean? Well, that had become a semi-universal trade
language over the past few generations. She hadn’t expected them to speak any
of it here, though, so far away from the trade routes.

“Oh. In that case…” Markl trailed off, looking at her
askance.

“You’re the least assuming of us that doesn’t look
completely foreign,” she explained to him. “Sending in Tran and Wolf might have
given them the impression that we’re mercenaries, but your mild manner and way
of speaking will dispel the notion. You’ve got a better chance of getting
answers.”

“Ahhh,” he intoned. “In that case, I’ll do my best.”

She waved him on and watched as he strode confidently
forward, his weapon still in the cart. Brave thing, wasn’t he, to go in unarmed
against hostile natives. Markl got stopped at the gate, no surprise, but he
lingered far longer there. Siobhan perked up, straining her eyes to see
clearly. “Is it my imagination, or are they sheathing their weapons?”

“They are,” Sylvie said in amazement. “One of them even
smiled for a moment!”

Siobhan made a mental note right there. From then on, she
would send Markl in first.

Markl gave the men a short bow and made a staying motion
with one hand before he turned on his heels and came back to the group. The
expression on his face made her think he had not only succeeded in getting an
answer, as he looked strangely triumphant.

“You found them, didn’t you?” she demanded as soon as she
was within earshot without needing to yell.

“I did,” Markl assured her. “They’re all here.”

“Your tone says there’s a problem, though.”

Markl let out a breath. “Miss Lirah apparently didn’t tell
the villagers here that they were guildmembers.”

“It was us showing up that revealed who she was?”

Markl gave an unhappy nod. “They’re threatening to throw her
out.”

Siobhan rubbed at her face. Her relief at finding the
missing party faded quickly under this new problem. “How badly injured is
everyone?”

“Bad, from their descriptions. I’m amazed she could move
them at all, even to here.” Markl looked disturbed by his own words.

Tran and Wolf didn’t look happy to hear this either. They
might get into regular scuffles with everyone in Goldschmidt, but they were
also friends with a good majority of them. She knew for a fact that at least
three friends of Tran’s were in Lirah’s party.

“Then they can’t be moved, Shi-maee,” Tran inserted. “Not
yet.”

Which meant that before anything else, Siobhan and Lirah had
to work out some means of letting them stay here. Right. “Markl, did they tell
you where they were? And they’ll let us in? Good. Show me to Lirah first.”

Conli seemed to realize something serious was going on, as
he also jumped out of the wagon and quickly caught up to them. As Markl led the
way past the first cluster of houses, she explained in an undertone the
situation, eyes darting about. At this time of the day, people should be busy
getting the usual daily chores done. Should be. Siobhan saw people at every
house staring suspiciously at them. My, my, word had indeed spread fast on who
their injured guests were.

“Wolf, how bad is this?” she muttered from the side of her
mouth.

“It will take some fast talking and a gesture of goodwill to
smooth this over,” he responded, mouth in a flat line.

Marvelous. She was afraid that would be the answer.

Markl took a right, weaved his way in and around several
small yards and their stone fences, then stopped in front of a house clearly
meant for storage. Stacks of bound bales, barrels and boxes stood on the porch,
no doubt to give room to put people inside. Sitting on the steps was Lirah
Darrens, although she stood as soon as Siobhan stepped into the yard.

“Siobhan!” she greeted with abject relief. “I’ve never been
so glad to see a familiar face.”

Siobhan stepped forward and gave the woman a long hug, as she
looked like she needed one desperately. Then she stepped back a foot and
scrutinized her for a moment. Lirah’s usual perfect blonde hair had been tied
off into a messy braid, dark circles prominent under her blue eyes, and she had
aged at least five years since Siobhan had seen her three months ago. Her clothes
looked wrinkled and slept-in, which they might well have been.

“Lirah. What happened?”

“We were attacked just within sight of Sateren’s walls, by
professional assassins or mercenaries, I can’t tell you which. It all happened
so fast, without any warning, that we were barely able to defend ourselves.”
Lirah’s voice shook. “We were able to fight them off, somehow, and they
eventually retreated. I think it’s because they assumed we were mostly down.
Some…” her voice choked and she had to take a deep breath before she could
clear it, “…some of my men looked dead and for a moment I thought they were.
It’s a miracle I didn’t lose anyone.”

More so than she could imagine. Although…something about
this story felt wrong to Siobhan. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what,
though. Shaking it off to think about later, she encouraged her to continue.
“And then?”

“I was floundering, not sure what to do aside from putting
some emergency treatment on people’s wounds, when a group from this village
stumbled across us. They were on their way back home from Sateren, and when
they saw the situation and heard my story, they agreed to shelter us while
everyone healed. That was nearly two weeks ago, now, I think.” She raised a
hand to her forehead, slightly shaking. “I lost track of time at one point.”

“It’s actually closer to a week and a half,” Wolf corrected
her. “At least, from what we understand of your plans. You told no one you are
from Blackstone Guild?”

“They don’t like guilds here. I picked up on that quickly.
And I wasn’t sure why we were attacked, or by who, and I didn’t want word
getting out that everyone had survived. I thought it best to just lay low, wait
for people to heal, and then travel back to Quigg before trying to send word
home.”

All in all, not a bad decision. Siobhan would have made the
same in her shoes. “Tran tells me that you can’t move yet, that people are
badly wounded. I’ll send Conli over, see how much he can help. But we need to
deal with—”

“Lirah Darrens!” an aged, deep voice called out.

Siobhan turned around sharply. Standing at the gate was an
old man that seemed to be in his late seventies or eighties, stooped over
slightly with age, white hair long and tied up into a high ponytail, skin
bronzed from the sun. He wore the long white robe of a village leader, so
Siobhan pegged him as the local Ahbiren.

His eyes narrowed on Wolf, then switched to Siobhan with the
same suspicions. “Who might you be?”

Siobhan took in a breath before she faced him squarely.
“Siobhan Maley, Guildmaster of Deepwoods. This is Erik Wolfinsky.”

“Deepwoods?” he repeated without any recognition.

“We are a guild from Goldschmidt,” she explained bluntly and
without apology. “We have been looking for Lirah and her people for the past
week.”

His lip curled slightly in distaste at the word ‘guild.’
“Then take them away.”

“We cannot at this time. They are too injured to move yet.”

He slammed the staff in his hands on the ground—which was
not for support, but a bo staff—and repeated, “They are to leave! They are not
welcome here. They misled us, abused our hospitality, and brought a threat upon
this village. I do not want them here!”

“Ahbiren, respectfully, this is not a matter of wanting to
move or not wanting to. We
cannot
move them. We risk killing these men
if we do so. Would you have innocent blood on your hands because you feel
misused and taken advantage of?”