Chapter Twenty A Show of Strength
CHAPTER TWENTY
A SHOW OF STRENGTH
The next morning the wind was bitter, the rain harsh, and folk of the Peaks called it fine weather.
I stood beneath a canvas tent at the lip of the basin.
With me were Tory, Samuel, Avice Fischer, and the king.
Benji held an enormous bowl filled with the tournament proceeds—hundreds of gold coins—like he had in the other hamlets.
This one was crude, hewn of granite and clearly heavier than he preferred. He was stooping to hold it up.
Behind him, drawing more awe than even the heaps of gold in his hands, stood the tournament champions. Maude and the knave.
Around the basin, come to watch the revelry, were hundreds of fisherfolk in oiled leather. They’d made the treacherous journey up the mountain—if they could not be fed by fish, perhaps a good show would satiate them.
It was not like Coulson Faire, where music and coin resounded, nor was it like the Seacht, the crowd stomping and chanting. Here, folk were stoic, stern, but even that was its own kind of verve—the air was taut with anticipation.
Avice Fischer stepped from beneath the King’s tent.
“Folk of the Peaks,” she called. “These are trying times. An earthquake has rattled our hamlet, our homes, our beloved Tenor River. Fish are scarce, and a craftsman without a craft is a forsaken creature.” She knotted her fingers in a net.
“But we of the Peaks, full of vigor, know that the rain falls, the wind blows. What is harrowing is hallowed.”
Folk around the basin nodded.
“We will prevail. We always do—and we will do it through strength.” She waved at the water. “There will be three feats—”
Benji cleared his throat behind her.
Avice stopped midsentence, looking over her shoulder at the king.
Her thin face grew thinner. She was biting the insides of her cheeks.
“But of course, I would be remiss not to thank King Benedict Castor and his Diviner for this opportunity to celebrate their union and demonstrate just how vigorous folk of the Peaks truly are.”
Benji set down his gold and waved to the crowd, but none waved back, their enthusiasm for their king the same as their mien—cold, stoic.
Fingers rubbing over the surface of the Artful Brigand’s coin, Benji came to stand before Avice. “Thank you, Avice. Your support is greatly appreciated.”
He put a hand to her shoulder and waited.
Avice’s face was gaunt now, her jaw set.
The king was waiting for her to lower herself to her knees before him, and for a moment I didn’t think she would.
No matter what he had gifted her, wealth, the castle at our backs, Avice Fischer was a noble of Traum; she saw Benji just as Regius Ormsby and Otto Lange did.
Temporal. A king who would come, then go.
Slowly, stiffly, Avice lowered herself to her knees.
“Vigor, strength,” Benji said as he peered down at her, “is greatly needed in the Stonewater Kingdom. But never forget, it is not you who brings greatness to the hamlets, but me, the Omens, and my Diviner who speaks for them.”
Avice nodded curtly. She hauled herself to her feet, then moved to stand several paces away.
Benji turned. He did not throw his coin—did not appear or disappear in a flurry.
The boy liked his applause, but he was clever enough to know that here there would be none.
“You have given me your strongest, and I thank you,” he called over the crowd, the wind adding a forcefulness to his voice.
“There will be three feats of strength. The first demonstrates mastery of water, as any oarsman and fisherman must.” He threw his hand out, gesturing to the opposite side of the basin. “A race.”
We all turned to the water.
And watched as the tournament participants spilled out of the castle.
There were twelve of them, Hamelin at the lead.
It was the first time I’d seen him out of armor; he wore waxen leathers like the other craftsmen of his hamlet.
So did the eleven other men and women behind him, each of them fitted with a net over their shoulders and a belt across their waist, where they each carried a hammer. So, too, did Hamelin.
He also had the Ardent Oarsman’s oar fastened to his belt.
I stood on my toes, searching the line of participants, heart in my throat. They were all by the water now, stretching and wetting their hands. Samuel handed Benji a purple banner, and the king stepped out from beneath the tent. “Ready.”
The participants stepped into the water. I could see Hamelin’s smile as he looked down the line.
Benji raised the flag—
“Wait,” I shouted, pointing across the basin. “There’s one more participant.”
A bright spot of color against the endless mountainous gray, the gargoyle stepped out of the castle and joined the others at the lip of the basin.
The wind picked up, carrying the sound of his voice as he hummed.
The rest of the participants went still, and so did Benji and Avice and the other knights next to me.
Samuel guffawed. “The gargoyle?”
“Who the hell paid his fee?” Tory asked.
“I did.” Maude crossed her arms. “You’ve an issue with that?”
The two knights looked at Maude’s axe and held their tongues.
“It’s absurd,” Benji spat. “He’s—he’s—”
Avice approached. “Surely you won’t permit this mockery of vigor, King Castor.”
Benji wasn’t the only one choking on the sight before him.
The crowd began to murmur, words like gargoyle and sprite and Aisling blowing in the wind.
And those words each held so much weight—and counterweight—that folk did not seem to know if the spectacle laid out before them was sacred or sacrilege.
What a destabilizing contradiction. In pink.
“Hamelin said it himself once,” I told the king.
“Anyone might compete in the tournament. It’s not for everyone—knights are better trained, better fed, better educated.
Common nobodies could never win these events, but it gives them hope, dreaming that they might.
And hope is exactly the kind of thing Avice Fischer wants to keep captive in her hamlet.
” I turned to Avice. “Isn’t that right?”
The noblewoman’s flesh sat tightly against the bones of her face. She turned from me to Benji as if to ask: Does he know what I offered you at his own feast table?
I tilted my head to the side. Not yet.
Avice cleared her throat. “Then again, folk of the Peaks have paid for a show—give them the one they know by heart. Man always prevails over the sprite. By all means, sire. Let the gargoyle compete.”
Across the basin, the gargoyle was meticulously taking off his robe, then folding it neatly over stones.
He’d been given a net the same as the other participants, and he draped it like a scarf around his neck.
Then he took his hammer, the one Rory had given him, came up to the lip of the basin beside the other participants, and waited.
The audience turned to Benji, and he, by instinct, glanced over his shoulder at Maude and Rory, waiting on them to weigh in.
His champions stood still as statues.
Benji flushed, realizing his mistake, and looked away. With no complaint from Avice, from his knights or even folk of the Peaks, the king raised his purple flag. Exhaled. And waved it.
The swimmers dove into the water.
There was a rush—the crowd moving with haste toward their side of the basin for a better look.
Water churned, low waves coming up as the swimmers beat their arms and legs.
I could see Hamelin; he was already ahead of the others, his arms moving in perfect arcs, parsing the water, putting distance between himself and the other swimmers.
The gargoyle was still on the shore, eyeing the water warily. He crept forward. Dipped a toe in. Shrieked.
“Swim, Bartholomew,” Maude called. “Swim!”
He threw his head back. “It’s cold!”
“Who bloody cares? Get in!”
“Don’t shout at him.” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Move your stone ass, Bartholomew! You look like a water fowl out there!”
He shrieked again, said something profane against birds, stomped into the water, and disappeared beneath it.
The waves doubled, heartened by the swimmers.
Hamelin, now in the center of the basin, was still in the lead, though he was not outdistancing the others as he’d been.
An oarswoman on his left was gaining on him, her narrow body moving through the water like an arrow, her kicks barely making a splash.
Steam blew from Hamelin’s mouth when he came up for air. When he saw how close some of the other swimmers had drawn, he lost a stroke, his pace stalling. I clenched my fist and shook it with glee. Imagined if the git drowned.
But then the swell, the choppy waves, shifted, no longer slapping against the shore of the basin, as if recalled. Hamelin’s strokes slowed even more, one, two, then three swimmers passing him.
Suddenly, he began to move.
A new wave formed behind Hamelin, and when he set his arms back into the water and began to swim, that wave propelled him forward. He passed the other swimmers, leaving them to fight against the swell, moving faster, faster across the basin to the other side.
“He’s using the oar,” Rory hissed.
Hamelin was nearing the edge of the basin now, the wave at his back as swift as a running horse. I was on my toes again, hands locked in knots as I searched the water for the gargoyle.
Thirty yards. Twenty. Ten. Hamelin was almost to the shore.
But then—just there. The tip of a stone wing, like the dorsal fin of a whale, peeked through the water just ahead of him.
I let out a triumphant laugh, the sound echoing through the Peaks, disrupting its silent stoicism. Avice glared at me and so did Benji, but then the knave began to cheer, too, and so did Maude, and it was not just one voice against an entire hamlet’s silence, but three.
“Come on, Bartholomew,” Maude cried. “You’re almost there!”
He was. He was ahead of Hamelin, not just his wing, but now his ears and forehead peeking out of the water.