The Malicarn #3
“Yes, well, they will all be fine. I am sorry, but that is all I can say.” He smiled, and Hannah had the eerie feeling that, somehow, they were being watched.
“Come now,” said Gregorian. “How is your leg?”
“It is feeling better.”
“Terrific. Now you should get some rest. It is late, and we both have travels tomorrow.”
“You are going somewhere?”
“On an errand, yes. One of many I am obligated to, unfortunately. And I must leave quite early. Come, let’s to bed.”
A feather mattress was prepared in the library. Hannah slept soundly but not long, as the noise of a nest of birds feeding their hatchlings outside a window awoke her just before dawn.
Gregorian was seated at a table in the room upstairs, eating a bowl of oats by the fire, when Hannah entered.
“Good morning, Hannah.” Gregorian was the only person who did not ever address her with some royal styling. “I trust you slept well?”
“Well enough,” Hannah said. She sat across from the wizard, and the old woman emerged from a side door with another bowl. The oats were runny and creamy—not a particularly fancy breakfast.
“I know you are well fed at the castle,” Gregorian said, “but honestly this dish will fill you up and give you more energy than the grease slabs you usually start your day with.”
Hannah ate slowly, as the bowl was hot. But she did indeed find it hearty.
“How long will you be at the Mountain Keep?” Gregorian asked.
“I do not know,” said Hannah. “Until Kingstown is safe again, I should think.”
Gregorian nodded. “Good. When I return I shall check in upon you there.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I cannot say. It is not a dangerous matter, but it does need attending to. It will be but a few days. Keep yourself safe while I am gone. No misadventures?”
The servant woman shuffled back into the room. She leaned over and whispered something into Gregorian’s ear. Hannah had not heard her speak once.
Gregorian stood up. “Thank you. Hannah, eat quickly. It seems your guardsmen are quite upset.”
Hannah slurped down another large mouthful of oats and followed Gregorian out of the room and down the stairs. Kellington was standing inside the tower’s front door, pacing furiously.
“Good morning, Sir Kellington,” Gregorian said. “Were you well looked after at the inn?”
“I did not want to come this way,” Kellington said, speaking directly to Hannah and ignoring the wizard, “and my fears are confirmed.”
“What happened?” Hannah asked.
“Someone was seen trying to climb the tower last night,” Kellington said. He looked at Gregorian. “You have no guard here, no protection of any kind. How safe was the queen?”
“I promise you she was safe.”
“Nonsense. Only because one of the villagers saw this intruder and cried out did he run off. I sent the other guards in search of him, but no one has reported back yet. I think we ought to be on the road quickly, Your Majesty, in case there is more danger afoot.”
“You must not overreact,” Gregorian said. “The queen is in no danger here. She is less safe on the road with your men, I daresay.”
Kellington bit his lip and stared angrily at Gregorian. “Do you mean to say—”
“I mean to say nothing, good sir knight. I must be off early, as well. Your men can attend to the queen’s items in the tower. Hannah, be well. Remember what we spoke of. And I will come to the Mountain Keep on my return.”
Gregorian bowed slightly, and Hannah exited the tower after Kellington, who muttered under his breath as he stumbled toward the carriage and ranted to the stablemaster waiting atop it.
“Old, fat idiot. Does not know one thing, just sits in his tower and twiddles his thumbs. No sense, no understanding of what is going on…” He continued to babble as the other guards filed back in from their search around the village.
“And this road is too dangerous, too close to the Citadel. More problems before we reach the keep, I assure you…”
Nothing else unusual had been spotted, so Kellington mounted his horse.
“Let us move on then,” he said. “If we have no more delays we should make it to the keep before supper.”
They loaded Hannah’s luggage, then drove quickly out of the village up a steep hill and onto the road that led to the mountain.
As the Old Village fell behind, Hannah looked out the carriage’s back window.
She spied a man walking north, holding a staff and wearing a billowing red cloak.
It was Gregorian, and before he disappeared over a ridge he stopped, turned, and lifted his staff in Hannah’s direction.
A few bolts of lightning shot out from the top, barely anything at all, and then Gregorian lowered it and waved toward her.
Hannah thought that was odd. How did Gregorian know Hannah was even looking toward him?
Some old magic, Hannah thought, that Gregorian must still use in secret. She would have to ask him about that, the next time they spoke.
2.
This was what failure felt like. Loading stone from the quarry into a wagon, pulling the wagon up a hill, down the road.
No horses. Just Buck, pulling a wagon of stone five miles up a slow incline, then dumping the rocks in a pile next to the mill where the more experienced masons would cut them into shaped stones and set them.
Buck was told not to touch them again, just mix mortar.
The master working the mill was not a guildmember, but Buck had once seen him speaking with Kreek on a job in Kingstown, so Buck assumed this humiliation was intentional.
Buck was a journeyman, technically, not even an apprentice anymore, but work had suddenly become scarce.
Kingstown was full of the starving and homeless, shutting down all work.
The Crown had canceled or delayed a number of planned projects in other towns and castles throughout the realm, leaving the few available jobs open to only the most experienced masons.
Buck got this job only because he begged the miller, crying and sobbing, a pathetic spectacle.
The miller had known Buck’s father—the old family farm was not so far away, though goblins lived there now—and had pity on him.
At night, Buck chose to forgo the drinking and revelry the other masons took part in and retired quietly to a tent, where he drank a bottle of whiskey alone and rubbed his sore shoulders and thought about his future.
There wasn’t much of one, and so he fell asleep quickly.
Buck had liked to imagine his life as an upward trajectory, rising from the humble beginnings on a farm, surviving the death of his mother and sister, the failures of his own father, to become a masons’ apprentice, then a journeyman, maybe one day a master himself, crafting great halls for kings and queens and bestowing onto his own children a great inheritance born of sweat and perseverance.
In his time he imagined the whole realm returning to glory, with magic revived under the banner of a just ruler, the Malicarn preserved for the true people of the Malicarn, and the majestic days of his father’s youth revived.
He would die rich and happy, surrounded by loved ones, in a secure land he helped to build.
But Buck had always known that it was much more likely he’d die young and poor, drunk outside a brothel, after repairing some old stone barn to house a lord’s horses.
His father wasn’t a failure so much as a visionary.
His only mistake was bringing Buck into the world.
Or maybe that was part of his grand design.
How else to share his hard-won knowledge that the world was shit unless you had someone to pass that wisdom along to?
On the job’s second day, Buck was allowed to mix mortar.
A strange retinue stopped at the pub that the miller’s wife operated.
They had a large carriage but dressed as poor travelers.
The miller’s wife could be heard shouting orders to her scullery maids at a pitch usually reserved for knights and highborn men.
Buck was working with the other masons behind the pub, and could not countenance what the shouting was about, until the woman riding in the carriage left her seat and approached him directly.
Buck recognized the queen immediately. He had seen her, once or twice, when he worked on the castle’s nave expansion in Kingstown.
She was tall, of dark complexion, and walked awkwardly, one leg always dragging a bit.
She did not seem to be the cruel goblin Kreek had described.
He could not believe that the queen would be out of the castle with all of the unrest about, or that she would walk right up and speak to him.
“Have you and your fellow masons been faring well?”
“Quite well, yes,” Buck said. “I believe so, at any rate. Your Majestyness.”
“What is your name?”
“Douglas, sir, ma’am, Your Majesty Queen. Buck Douglas.” He couldn’t make the words in his mind quick enough, they were falling out so fast.
“Well, Buck Douglas, have the masons worked on the northern road, the one just up here that heads to the Dollories?”
“You mean the one that got washed out?”
She asked him some more questions, but he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t hear himself as he spit the answers out.
“You are well provisioned?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am highness.” What was he saying? He was offering her ale, she was refusing, why was he still offering, being so persistent?
“For your men, then?”
And then she let slip an interesting fact. “They have already been served. If they find themselves thirsty later the Inn at the Old Village will surely provide more drink for them.”
He insisted on her taking barrels of ale. But he wasn’t thinking about that at all now.
The Inn? In the Old Village? Of course! The wizard lived there. Yes, Buck, you really are a smart one. No, this was not a failure at all. It was, what would they call it in battle? A strategic retreat. And now was the time for a counterattack.