CHAPTER 12
Reynald hadn’t lied. It didn’t take Gort long to show up.
Reynald had found a small table and a chair in one of the storage rooms and carried them out to the wine tree. Apparently, this was my Magnar family–meeting chair. I sat in it now, with a small box of money in front of me.
Clover was to my left, standing, her hands folded before her, and Reynald was to my right. It was early afternoon and Kaiden had run to the door to let Gort and his sons in.
Gort’s name meant shield in the Old Tongue.
The man looked exactly as you would imagine a human shield would look.
He was tall and broad and built like a football defensive end who’d given up cardio to be the strength-training coach: six foot three inches tall, just under three hundred pounds, burly shoulders, huge biceps, thick neck, and a scowl on his face.
Naturally pale, he’d acquired a permanent tan over the years.
His hair was gray and cut short. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties.
Two younger versions of him followed. Gort 2.0 was twenty-one years old, while Gort 2.1 was nineteen. They were a couple of inches taller than their father and looked similar enough that people mistook them for twins at first glance.
All three men wore brown pants tucked into sturdy boots, dark short-sleeved tunics over thinner shirts, and thick belts. All three were armed. Gort and Gort 2.0, on his father’s right, carried battle-axes on their belts. Gort 2.1, on the left, bucked the trend and went with a sword.
“A human wall is walking toward us,” I murmured.
“That’s why we’re hiring them,” Reynald said next to me.
Gort stopped in front of me. “Right then. I’m Gort. This is Willem.” He pointed to the son on the right. “That’s Lutren.” He pointed to the son on his left.
Will and Lute. Up close, telling the brothers apart wasn’t that difficult. Will, the oldest, was a little taller and had slightly paler, ash-blond hair. Lute had more gold in his hair, and while Will was calmly menacing, Lute seemed like the type to start some shit just to see what would happen.
According to the books, Gort started in the King’s Army at nineteen, did eighteen years, and then he worked for another ten years as a mercenary.
Nineteen plus eighteen, plus ten . . . forty . . . forty-seven.
Gort made sense. He looked around fifty. According to the books, he’d served with Reynald for nine years, before the blademaster was transferred to a different post.
Gort was exactly as described but Reynald wasn’t.
Their lives weren’t dissimilar. Even if I took into account the author’s possible biases and assumed Reynald had great genes, he still looked younger and less worn out than he should’ve been.
And when he spoke to me, and the way he smiled that one time in the boat and this morning, he acted younger than a harshly lived thirty-eight.
It bugged me. If this was wrong, then I could be wrong about the salt as well.
“This is Lady Maggie,” Clover told Gort.
Gort glanced at me but then looked at Reynald. It was exactly as I’d expected. We weren’t hiring the Magnar family. Reynald was hiring them, and they would listen only to him.
I opened the small box in front of me and placed a stack of silver nomas on the table. “We offer a sign-on bonus of one noma each, room and board, and daily pay of seven dens for you, five dens for each of your sons, and five dens for your wife, if she chooses to work as our cook.”
Gort’s eyebrows crept up. He glanced at Reynald. “Those are war rates. Generous war rates.”
“There is a reason for that,” Reynald said.
“If you’re injured on the job, we will cover the cost of healing your injuries,” I said.
“If you are permanently maimed and lose a limb on the job, you will get a one-time payout of two gold grests to compensate you. If you die on the job, your heirs will receive a one-time payout of three gold grests.”
And he better not die, because we couldn’t really afford it.
Gort’s eyebrows rose again. “Death bonus?”
“That’s the way she does things,” Reynald said.
He and I had bickered over the work-compensation clause for over an hour.
Reynald maintained that this was foolish, and no army ever paid soldiers money for dying.
According to him, the surviving spouse was entitled to the full pay a soldier would’ve received by the end of the campaign and that was that.
I finally asked him if he thought Gort might kill himself for three grests or if he was worried the kids would do their father in to get their inheritance, at which point he gave up.
“That’s the first time someone’s offered me money for dying,” Gort said.
I looked at Reynald. “Did you talk to him?”
“No,” he said. “It’s common sense.”
“Taking care of the people who work for you is common sense.” I looked Gort in the eye and gave him my best serious stare. “Did Reynald explain the nature of the job?”
“He said we will be going after Hreban.”
Gort’s face said everything that needed to be said. The hatred in his eyes was burning hot.
“We are,” I told him. “But it’s more complicated than that.
We are going to shift the currents of power in the kingdom.
We will do dangerous things that will piss off a lot of people.
The Eight Families, the three knight orders, the Justice Chamber .
. . There may come a time when all of them will be looking for our heads. ”
“I want to see Hreban fall,” Gort said.
Same. “Hreban sees himself on the throne in Eagle Roost. Before we are done, all of Rellas will see him for what he is. I promise you, he will never sit on the throne.”
Making promises like that would get me into all sorts of hot water with fate.
“Then I’m in,” Gort said.
I looked at his sons.
“We’re in,” the two of them said in one voice.
“What about Shana?”
“She is in,” Gort said.
“Then it’s settled. You start now.” I looked at Will and Lute. “We have three small children who were kidnapped. I need them taken back to their parents. One is from Stilla Britin, and two are from Lagie.”
“Less than a day’s trip,” Will said. “We’ll be back before morning.”
Of the twenty-two hundred combined pages of the two books, Will and Lute had exactly seventeen and a half devoted to them. I only knew one secret about their past and one secret about their future. I had to make it count.
“Treat this as a mission into enemy territory,” I told them. “Drop the children off and come right back. No milk runs.”
Will froze. Lute went bright red.
Gort narrowed his eyes. “What does she mean by that?”
“They know what I mean. Clover will show you where the kids are.”
“This way,” Clover said and walked off.
Lute followed her, clearly grateful to escape.
Will lingered. “How . . . ?”
“She does that,” Reynald told him. “You’ll get used to it.”
Will gave me a long look, then followed his brother. We watched the three of them enter the house.
“Milk runs?” Reynald asked.
“That’s what they call their little detours. It’s less about the milk and more about the milk maids,” I told him. “They are handsome, and pretty farm girls like them.”
Gort squinted at me.
His mouth said, “So, you’re the real deal.” His face said Prove it.
“You should’ve listened to Eges,” I told him.
Nothing changed in Gort’s expression. “Fair enough.”
Eges had served with Gort in the Hreban campaign. The morning before the charge that left Gort with an injured leg, he’d had a bad feeling and tried to convince Gort to hang back. Gort hadn’t.
“Now I have a question for you. How old were your sons when Reynald was transferred to the west?”
Gort looked at Reynald.
“Don’t look at him,” I said. “It’s a simple question.”
“Will was ten and Lute was eight.”
Will was twenty-one, which meant Reynald was transferred eleven years ago. That lined up with the books.
A lot of the details matched exactly, like the way Derog and Gort looked.
And then there was Hreban, who was described as having a powerful presence, but who had looked very ordinary aside from his daring fashion sense, and Reynald, who seemed younger and more forceful than he should’ve been.
The age and looks were a minor discrepancy, but we couldn’t afford too many of those.
Every inconsistency was a potential pit with sharpened stakes at the bottom.
I had no idea how or why these minor deviations had occurred, but they bothered me.
Gort was looking at me.
“We are all settled,” I said.
Gort offered me his shovel hand. “Shake on it.”
Some things were universal. I stood up, took his hand, and shook it.
“Do you need help settling Shana in?” Reynald said.
“She is waiting with our cart around the block. Just point us to the rooms, and we are good to go.”
I waved at the west wing. “Take anything you like in there.”
“Will do.”
Gort turned and headed for the outside door.
Reynald circled the table and leaned on it with both hands, so our eyes were level.
His eyes were very green today, like spring grass in sunlight.
They seemed to change color depending on lighting, on what he wore, on if a bird flew overhead .
. . And I was thinking entirely too much about his eyes.
“Is there something you would like to ask me?”
Why not? “How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“What year were you born?”
“3006. Became a squire at twelve, in 3018, knighted at seventeen in 3023, served for twenty years, received the Green Purse last year in winter.”
“You don’t look thirty-eight.”
His dark eyebrows came together. “How is thirty-eight supposed to look?”
Put like that, it did sound ridiculous, but I had marched into this conversation, and I had to keep going until I got myself out of it.
“Like Gort.”
“Gort is forty-seven. Nine years older than me.”
“I meant that Gort is forty-seven and he looks fifty. You are thirty-eight and you look thirty.” In-great-shape thirty. Not the-war-life-ground-me-into-dust thirty.