The Lioness

“—and he will tell you how to get to Lightning Falls. You must go carefully, because you’re returning to the area where Knights have been searching for me and very likely now they are also searching for you. When you come near Lightning Falls, you will be challenged by folk who look like”—she laughed “—who look like us. They’re outlaws like us, but answer the challenge humbly and quickly, no arrogance with these folk. Tell them you are from Jeratt and me, be quick, and show my ring. Tell whoever challenges you that seek a woman named simply ‘Elder,’ and tell her all that has happened here.”

Ander took it all in silently, his eyes on her, lighting in excitement for the mission, shadowing in sadness for having to leave.

“After you tell her that, Ander, tell her Jeratt and I will be home before winter. Tell her things are changing in the kingdom now.”

“I’ll do it all, Kerian. I promise. Just the way you tell me.”

“And you won’t come back. The risk that you’d be followed isn’t great, but it’s a chance we can’t take.”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

“You’re a fool,” Jeratt growled when the boy was gone. “You’re reckless. It’s wrong to send the boy so far alone, with such a mission. He’ll be lucky no one kills him before he gets to the falls. By all the gone gods, you’re a fool, Kerian!”

She flared, hot and high and sudden. “Don’t ever call me that again!”

He didn’t step back; in the sudden silence of the forest, Jeratt held his ground, his face set and stubborn.

“You think you’re not bein’ foolish? Y’think the boy didn’t just turn to fire for you? Kerian, he’s in love with ya. He’ll do anything you tell him, and he won’t be thinkin’ about anyone else but you.” Jeratt shook his head, then spat. “That will get someone killed someday.”

“Getting prescient, like Elder, are you?”

“Wonder why I say you’re a fool, do you?”

She flared again, he laughed at that and tapped his chest.

“I have a year or two more on me than you, Kerian. I haven’t lived in gilded palaces; I’ve lived in the hard world, the place where people die of stupidity, their own or someone else’s. Happens all the time, and I ain’t no seer, I just pay attention to what I see.”

The falling fire lay between them, yet they might have been standing toe to toe.

Coldly, Kerian said, “You are welcome to your opinion, Jeratt. I don’t know if you’re right or wrong about Ander, and I can’t undo a boy’s heart, but I can use him where he can do the best work. He’ll let the others know what we’re doing, let them know to be ready for our return. And hell be away from me for a while.”

Jeratt’s stance relaxed, his expression softened. “Y’did what y’could, I’ll grant it.” He stood in grudging silence for a moment longer. “The plan isn’t all that foolish. I’ll grant it, too.”

“But—?”

He met her eyes. “But y’ should have sent him on a long time ago.”

By her silence, she agreed.

Between them embers breathed faintly. “I’ll not name you ‘fool’ again, but I might be sayin’ one day or another that y’could think something through a little harder. You have a good, keen mind, Kerian. Sharp as a dagger and bright You learn, and that quickly.”

“But girl,” he continued, and she heard the affection in the naming, “y’came out of your king’s palace and walked into the forest with no idea but to find a brother who didn’t have the good sense to be happy about it. Now you’re puttin’ together a plan your king doesn’t know he can dream of. Y’like to leap at the bright idea. Maybe that’s good, but a lot of the time, it isn’t.”

Kerian kicked at the dirt, sending a fine spray of it onto the embers. Jeratt did the same. Between them, they smothered the fire. The half-elf winked.

“Well, even when I think you’re bein’, uh, not too sensible, I’m with you, Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I like the flash of your steel.”

Jeratt liked the flash of Kerian’s steel, and Lord Eamutt Thagol learned to hate it. Through the end of summer and into the beginning of a late-coming autumn, he found himself having to increase the size of the escort of Knights who accompanied tribute wagons to Acris. What had seemed to be isolated incidents of brigandage began to look like more than that Lone wagons, no matter the number of Knights, were raided with increasing frequence and efficiency, and survivors reported that they were struck by growing bands of elves who fought by no rules any Knight or soldier knew, who seemed to reinvent their tactics daily. Soon he sent to Qualinost for more draconians with the trains that went on to the capital.