Brush Strokes
A ccording to Laren, the quickest way out of the palace was to backtrack through the throne room. Fortunately, it remained abandoned. King Farrad Vir, his courtiers, and guards had gone who-knew-where. Stevic’s crew paused to collect some of the merchandise they had brought to show the king.
“Leave it,” Stevic said. “You may need your hands free to fight.”
“I will take up the rear,” Sevano said.
Leaving behind all that merchandise, especially the angweld cloth, was a blow. He’d depleted a good portion of his inventory, and the goods he was leaving behind would greatly impact his clan’s fortune for the poorer, but he was willing to become a pauper if it meant getting Laren home safely.
In the hall outside, they encountered Kir-kranyans using whatever came to hand as weapons—polearms and swords taken from dead guards, wooden legs broken off tables and chairs, vases—to battle Varosians.
Some of the Varosians turned on Stevic and his crew, and he drew his sword.
They exchanged blows and the cling-clang of swords filled the expansive hall.
Stevic had been a decent swordsman in his younger days, and fortunately Sevano had seen to refreshing his skills on the voyage, even as he had trained Melry.
The Varosians were unwilling to engage Laren, who’d grabbed a sword from a corpse.
It must be inconceivable to them that a woman could handle a sword, and well beneath them to engage in a fight with her.
She attacked them from all sides, regardless, harassing them until they left off or were killed.
Stevic’s bosun, Ewan, cried out as a Varosian passed through his guard and stabbed him. Stevic whipped his blade around and cut into the Varosian’s neck, almost decapitating him.
When the Varosians were subdued, the remaining Kir-kranyans stood staring at the Sacoridians, poised to strike. They outnumbered Stevic and his crew.
“Ewan?” he asked.
“It’s not bad, Chief,” the younger man said.
Eloni had knelt beside him to tend the wound.
“Can you walk?” Stevic asked.
“Aye, Chief.”
“I will help him along,” Eloni said.
“Are they going to let us through?” Stevic asked Laren. His gaze had never left the Kir-kranyans. The tension between the two groups was palpable.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I—”
One of the women with them suddenly cried out and ran forward. “Riad-an! Riad!”
A tall Kir-kranyan stepped forward. “Deuon-a?”
“Riad!” the woman cried, and she threw herself into his arms.
“Deuon is Kir-kranyan,” Laren explained, “as are a few of the others.”
Deuon and Riad conversed in a rapid exchange. A couple of the other women chimed in.
“What are they saying?” Stevic asked. Laren, he had learned, had an ear for language and had apparently picked up the Varosian and Kir-kranyan tongues in the months since her capture.
“Their language is a little different from Varosian, and they’re speaking too fast, but I believe...I believe Deuon is trying to explain that we are helping the women.”
The tension began to ease among the Kir-kranyans.
“Laren-sa,” Deuon said, “Riad is my brother. He come to rescue the Kir-kranyans held in palace.”
Riad bowed to her.
“Your brother,” Laren said softly. “Will he let us pass?”
“Yes. He glad to.”
“He is glad to,” Laren gently corrected.
“He is glad to,” Deuon said with a smile. “They go with us. Help us go...” She made a gesture to fill in for the words she did not know.
“In safety?” Laren suggested.
“Yes, Laren-sa, in safety.”
“Well, then, let us—” Before she could complete her reply, she cried out and crumpled to her knees. She clutched at her neck, an expression of agony on her face.
“Laren!” He knelt beside her. “What is it?”
“Momma?” Melry asked.
“Tol Asmerand,” Laren gasped between tortured breaths.
A man short of stature and wide of girth stepped from the throne room into the outer hall. “You must not steal the truth-teller,” he said. “It is not yours. It belongs to the king.”
Stevic stood. “She belongs to no one but herself, and she’s coming with us as she wishes.”
Tol Asmerand played with a ring on his finger. Laren screamed.
“Laren, how do I make it stop?” he asked desperately.
Laren was too overcome to answer, but Deuon pointed at Tol Asmerand. “Ring on finger. Uses it to hurt.”
Stevic did not know how the ring caused Laren pain, except that it must be magic. He raised his sword and took a step toward the little man to stop him from hurting Laren, but she suddenly fell to her side and writhed in pain on the floor.
“Uh uh,” Tol Asmerand said. “If you approach, I will make it worse for it. You will back away. You will leave. You will not take the truth-teller or these other females. They belong to King Farrad Vir.”
“Stop the pain and we’ll back off,” Stevic said.
“It is done.”
Laren lay still on the floor, breathing hard, but she no longer seemed to be in pain. “I’m all right,” she whispered.
“We’ll figure this out,” Stevic told her, feeling a clenching of his heart. They would not leave her. They would find a way. He gestured for his crew to back away to where the Kir-kranyans stood.
“You will leave,” Tol Asmerand said, “or I will make it suffer worse than it has ever known and inflict permanent damage.”
Laren unsteadily began to climb to her feet. When Melry tried to go to her, Tol Asmerand twisted his ring and Laren cried out again. Melry backed away, tears in her eyes.
Deuon helped steady Laren. Laren turned to Stevic and said, “Don’t worry about me. I am going to be all right.”
“No talking,” Tol Asmerand said. “The slaves will all come with me and return to quarters.”
Laren gave Stevic a long look, then said to the other women, “Come, ladies.” They all fell in behind her as she made her slow way toward the Varosian.
“We can’t leave her,” Melry said. “We just can’t.”
“He’ll torture her if we try to take her now,” Stevic said. There had been something in Laren’s expression, something that made him wonder.
When she and the women reached Tol Asmerand, the Varosian told Stevic, “You leave now, Sacoridian. You and the Kir-kranyan dogs.”
When they didn’t move fast enough, Laren shrieked with pain. Stevic continued to back away.
The women clustered around Tol Asmerand, and at first Stevic thought they had given up and were just being compliant, but then they removed objects from beneath their robes.
He’d forgotten Amina and her broomstick.
The others carried ladles, a spindle, a rug beater, any tools females might have access to in Varos, and they used them to beat on Tol Asmerand.
He ducked and shrank away from their assault, but it was unrelenting and he fell, and they started to kick him, too. Now he cried out.
Laren, no longer in pain, backed away from the melee.
Stevic ran to her, grabbed her into his arms. All the while, the women beat Tol Asmerand without restraint, using their tools, feet, and fists.
They were silent but for grunts of effort and the sounds of impact.
They did not stop until they were satisfied.
When at last they finished and stepped away, Tol Asmerand lay limp, his body broken and bleeding.
Laren left Stevic and knelt by the corpse. She removed the ring from his finger.
Stevic looked uneasily from Laren to the women.
“Do not judge them,” Laren told him. “Tol Asmerand enjoyed ‘training’ slaves overmuch.”
“I do not doubt it,” he murmured.
After that, the Kir-kranyans helped usher them out of the palace, which had grown eerily quiet, and to the courtyard where two of their hired wagons still remained.
Sevano and Eloni supported Ewan between them and helped him into one of the wagons.
Eight of the women, including Deuon, who were Kir-kranyans, decided to stay behind and make their way inland to the realm of their people.
That left twelve who climbed into the wagons.
Laren sat up front on the driving bench of the first with Stevic, and Sevano drove the second.
The city was in chaos with much fighting.
Bonfires roiled in the streets and the windows of storefronts were smashed.
Troublemakers hurled rocks at the wagons and tried to grab harness, but the mules that pulled the wagons put up with no nonsense and kicked or bit anyone who tried to interfere with them.
Stevic urged them into a breakneck pace down the winding street to the harbor.
The women cried out as the wagons bumped and swayed.
Sevano’s nearly tipped over around a bend in the street.
People dove out of the way to avoid being trampled.
More of Stevic’s crew awaited them on the docks. They watched the chaos in the distance—it hadn’t yet come as far as the harbor—but they held their swords bared should anyone seek to confront them there. The Varosians, mostly simple fishermen, kept to themselves.
“We’ll have to fit everyone into two longboats.
” He eyed the Varosians on the docks to make sure none of them decided to hinder them, but it appeared they didn’t want any trouble and remained distant.
Trouble, however, could come to the harbor from the city, whether it was rioters, rebels, or the king’s men searching for the truth-teller.
“I don’t think it’ll be safe to make a second trip. ”
It was tight in both longboats, and they rode low in the water, but the harbor’s surface was calm. Stevic steered astern in his, Laren seated beside him. He glanced over his shoulder at the city. Many plumes of smoke rose above it, and shouting and screams could be heard across the water.
“Well,” was all Laren said in a quiet voice as she followed his gaze.
To Stevic, that one word felt quite loaded, as if she were an artist stepping back from her canvas to admire the effect of her brush strokes.