3. Renard #5
I turn away from Arden, looking out through the open doors toward the river that marks my boundary.
Beyond it lies Valehar, thinning by the day.
In the other direction lies the Verge—wild nursery of monsters, and then stands Hollowmire, where the ravenous bog waits patiently and the earth thirsts for more than rain.
If I refuse, if I remain here at my farm tending the soil and offering meager handouts that do precious little to staunch the flow of misery, there’s no telling how long this curse will continue.
If I go, I’m breaking my vow, picking up a sword I’ve never been able to let rust, damning myself with the possibility that I may unleash something worse.
I am two wretched halves of a whole—hopeful farmer and battle-hardened knight.
I am exile, and I am still bound by blood oaths.
I am a man who feeds children, and a man who has soaked soil with blood and bile.
“You would kill her,” I say slowly. “A thing called by gods.”
“I would end this,” he replies.
“But how do you know it will work? You would gamble with the lives of all of Valehar. You would gamble with my life. You would gamble with the life of this fae woman and their gods. And what if doing this your way breaks something else?”
He lifts a shoulder, but I can’t tell if the move is to indicate indifference or desperation.
“Then we will deal with that when it comes.”
We. I almost laugh.
“There is another matter,” Arden says slowly—his timing impeccable. “If you undertake this errand, your exile will be dissolved.”
The word errand sits wrong, but for him, I suppose that’s all this is. An errand for someone else to undertake, no more different than sending someone to fetch a cup of tea or carry a message to a neighboring household.
“You were stripped under extraordinary circumstances,” he continues smoothly. “Circumstances that no longer require enforcement. Your old family lands would be restored. Your seat on the council would be reinstated. Your name would be… rehabilitated.”
“I do not want your council,” I say, nausea rising at the prospect of having to return to Valehar and to its court of spineless sycophants—of having to leave behind a small life I’ve grown into and found pleasure in.
“You would regain influence. Allies. Resources.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that he does not use the word friends.
“I have what I need.”
He glances toward the fields, not yet flush with winter wheat and soon, barley.
“No,” he insists. “You do not have enough.”
The words are like a slap, and the truth of it stings.
I have enough to see the next two seasons through, but with the spreading famine and the legion of hungry people that will double—triple—in the next year, some twisting, awful thing inside me knows he is right.
Whether it’s land to farm, seed to plant, livestock to replenish, or hands to perform the work, he is right. Eventually, it will not be enough.
“I’ll grant you this, Renard—you have built something admirable here,” he says, voice warming into persuasion.
“Efficient. Compassionate. But it cannot scale. You cannot feed a kingdom from a few dozen acres—you know this as well as I. You are biding time mitigating loss while you avoid trying to solve the problem.”
Gods, I hate that he is right. I can’t breathe with how much I hate that he’s right. Arden being right is the worst kind of torment for me, but more than that—it means breaking the one promise I made to myself when I set down these roots in exile. No more violence, no more bloodshed.
“You have saved dozens already, Renard. Perhaps hundreds. But you could save thousands.”
The steadily increasing rain is as loud as a corps of drums.
“If I refuse?” I ask, expecting to hear any range of vile torments or trumped-up legal ramifications. Prison. Execution for treason. Blackmail, bribery, torture… all things I can withstand.
Arden shrugs again, but it’s far from the nonchalant maneuver he’s hoping for. “Then you will continue as you are,” he says evenly. “Until your stores empty. Until you turn someone away. Until the suffering you sought to escape reaches your gate in numbers you cannot absorb.”
Thunder rolls low across the fields, and I’m ashamed that the sound makes me flinch.
“You frame this as debt,” I say, the words coming out hoarse and strangled.
“I frame it as responsibility,” he replies with an airy wave of his hand.
My hackles immediately rise. “To you?” I’d sooner die.
“To Valehar.”
Well, shit. We both know he believes the two are inseparable, but I know they couldn’t be farther apart.
I scratch at my beard and roll out the aches building in my neck and shoulders. “Exile or no, I will not return to court,” I say. That life only holds misery and strife—moreso than a thousand hungry mouths to feed.
His expression shifts, calculating. “I did not ask you to. The council seat would be yours, but they only convene once a month.”
“I will not kneel.”
He inclines his head. “Then stand.”
I close my eyes briefly. Gods, I am afraid—not of death—that is simple.
I’m afraid of what waits in Hollowmire. Afraid of the Blight Mother, of what she is, of what she might see when she looks at me and sees what I have done in her lands before.
Afraid that the curse strangling Valehar is not accident but consequence.
Mostly, I’m afraid that Arden is not telling me everything.
When I open my eyes, he is watching me with that same quiet, coiled intensity.
“If I go,” I say slowly, “I go because I cannot watch this kingdom starve. Not because you command it.”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “And I wouldn’t look at it as a command, Renard. Think of it as more of… an entreaty.”
My fingers flex with every drop of political venom that leaves his lips. “And if I find that this… solution… is worse than the disease—”
His smile is thin as a blade. “You will find a way through. You always do.”
Lightning cracks through the pewter sky, illuminating the barn in a flash of eerie white light. Thunder rolls through behind it, kicking up my pulse with a frenzy of clashing emotion.
My head seems to move without command, nodding as though this whole conversation would only ever end one way. My fingers tremble and I force myself to grip a shovel to keep Arden from noticing.
Beneath my fear of Hollowmire—beneath the body-swallowing bogs and all those screams dissipating into the fog—there is a dangerous certainty that I have survived worse, that I have always survived, that men like me are built for this.
We are built to give and to serve because we have been given so much to begin with—that I am a servant to my kingdom, to my long-dead king, to my people.
That I will survive this because I have survived so much before.
That thought might be the most dangerous thing in this barn. Then again, as I look over at Arden’s smug face, I think mayhap not.
“I will ride at first light,” I say.
Arden exhales—too quickly. Is that relief? Or anticipation? I don’t suppose it matters in the end. He gets what he wanted, and I get to once more test my metal against things I still see in my nightmares. Mayhap this time I’ll have the chance to banish them for good.
Outside, the river begins to swell against its banks, and for the first time since the curse began, I feel something colder than hunger moving toward us from beyond the Verge.