Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

This may well have been the only combination of words that could have gotten Odile to sit up just then. “A whole new set! Are you mad? I thought you wanted—that we were going to catch up with your friends,” she corrected with a glance at Lively.

How grateful I was for that kind woman! She made Odile helpless to stop me when I said, “Yes, which is why I’ve got to get him started on my commission now…but if you ladies are going to learn horseback riding, well, the soonest we’ll be able to leave here is a couple of days from now. I won’t have you breaking your backs because we were in a rush to leave…”

A fine thing coming from me just then! I may not have been in a rush to leave Soot, but I was certainly in a rush to leave that inn. The outdoors called to me. After my time in the Nightlands, to go without a roof or any cover at all over my head seemed like a blessing beyond compare. I stepped outside, Strife once more on my hip, and took a breath of the heavenly mountain air that I had not truly appreciated before my near-death experiences and my long journey through the dark.

All around me, Soot teemed with life, the village square through which I passed populating with artisans eager to sell their fruits and vegetables. I stopped off for a handful of blueberries and, after even my short period of slavery, the use of money was its own delight. It made me remember what it was like to be a young boy getting his first experiences of the world—that was how fresh I felt beneath that cloudy sky.

Strange to think this town had, only a few days before, played unknowing host to Hildolfr and Grimalkin! It was bold of them to take the Scepter through Skythorn to bring it to Rhineland, if Erdwud’s information was accurate. The city traffic was tightly monitored and guards had been known to search through the bags of untrustworthy looking individuals. Would boldness protect them from scrutiny? I somehow doubted it…but then again, as bold as Hildolfr was, I should have known better. That boldness had lost him his eye in the fashion of my god. Appropriately, like Weltyr himself, Hildolfr’s decisions were often surprising to me.

As Erdwud had promised, the rhythmic clatter of Rigan’s anvil reached my ears before I ever saw his home and the outdoor forge where he worked beneath little more than a roof to protect him from rainfall. A raven croaked throatily, laughing at my discovery. My mind filled with visions of Nibel, the berich dwarf whose form Al-listux had adopted to assassinate Valeria. Here, however, as I rounded the corner and saw over the waist-high fence to the man working within, I found myself faced with a human almost Hildolfr’s age.

“Hail, Rigan, Smith of Soot.” The hammering ceased. Rigan turned to see who addressed him, a pair of hard eyes the blue of clear water fixing me to the spot. “Erdwurd and his wife, Lively, sent me out your way today.”

“Don’t recognize you. What’s it you want?”

“I was wondering if it would be possible to talk to you about a suit of plate mail. It may seem out of my price range to look on me now”—I laughed down at myself, dirty yet from the journey to the surface—“but I can negotiate, and at any rate we have a few things yet to sell from the Nightlands.”

“Nightlands?” Muttering in an old man sort of way that reminded me of a certain Temple bookkeeper, Rigan turned upon his seat once he had set his hammer down completely. Peering at me through those somehow surprisingly bright eyes, he asked, “You wouldn’t be Rorke Burningsoul, would you?”

Shocked, I looked about as though in anticipation of an ambush. The town’s only discernible noise was clearly little more than the bubbling daily mirth from the market.

“I am,” I told him cautiously, regarding him straight on and trying to discern if he were perhaps some disguised monster along the lines of the spirit-thieves. “Were you told to expect me?”

“Sure I was. You don’t need t’worry about paying me nothing more, your friend covered the cost up-front…but it’s not quite half done yet. You’ll need to wait another week if you want the full suit.”

I looked at him a moment, trying to discern his meaning. Annoyed, the old man snapped, “What’s that stare for, boy?”

“Oh, uh—it’s nothing, nothing at all. Only…I’m a bit confused.”

“You look it.” With a wave of his hand, the old man hobbled back around on his stool and picked up the hammer again. Without another word on the matter, he went back to work and left me standing there.

I found I could not move. My mind reeled with strange thoughts. I knew already which friend had paid for a bespoke suit of armor tailored to my needs, yet all the same I still felt the need to confirm.

“When you say—”

The beleaguered old craftsman slammed his hammer down and looked at me, nearly cross-eyed with annoyance to have his morning so interrupted. I smiled meekly, wishing all people would succumb to my charms as easily as Lively.

“When you say ‘friend,’” I continued, nonplussed, keeping my tone as simple and pleasant as I could, “I don’t suppose he gave you his name, did he?”

“Tall fellow,” Rigan said. “One eye. I’m no good with names. I only remember yours because he told me to swear I’d remember it.”

I nodded, thanked him, and left in an uncanny daze.

DEEPENING BONDS

SOMEHOW, IT WAS unsurprising that Hildolfr had done such a thing for me. He had a strong sense of honor and might have felt obligated to restore the armor lost in the spirit-thief den. Moreover, he might have felt it unfair for us to stand at odds when I had nothing more to my name than Strife, however