"And who are you?"The voice was cultured and calm. It was not at all the voice Defi would have attributed to a man who had just yesterday maimed a dozen people with the playful air of someone indulging a child.
"n.o.body important." Defi answered. "Sorry for disrupting your morning."
"I might believe that," the man said, "if not for this."
He reached into his coat and brought out a very familiar paper-wrapped ball. "I found it unexpectedly."
Defi"s blood ran cold. Did someone get captured? He heard Erlaen"s shocked inhale from beside him.
The man"s cold gaze immediately went to her. "You appear to dislike me."
Defi glanced at Erlaen, who was glaring. "Does she? I thought her eyes were always like that."
Erlaen"s glare turned slowly to him.
The smuggler leader tilted his head, studying Defi. "You are not afraid of me."
That was not true at all. But Defi soldiered on. "It"s truly difficult to be afraid of someone who cannot capture a small group of poor orphan children, even with a hundred unscrupulous criminals under his command."
The cold eyes flattened, what light in them draining away even as the man smiled wider. "Is that so?"
Defi looked up at the sky. The blue of the morning was evident now, the clouds tinted with the heralding rays of the rising dawn. The others were taking too long, weren"t they?
"Something to think about," he smiled at the man, causing the other"s brows to crumple thunderously.
"You are Kaska"s."
"I do not know who that is."
"You lie."
"Is that a challenge?" He shot back. "I accept. I"ve not seen you wield the sword at your belt. Do you even know its use?"
The man stood, stepped to them slowly. "Do you know who you"re talking to?"
Defi moved forward one step, Erlaen now behind him. "Did we not already establish the fact? I do hope you"re not senile in addition to incompetent. It would make for a very poor challenge, don"t you think?"
Sunlight burst across the central square, even though the dawn sun had not yet touched the tops of the buildings.
Defi knew well how the sun could be cruel, knew that the benevolent light killed as much as the dark of night. Was he not a child of Ontrea?
The man that stood before him now radiated the oppressive scorching of the sun"s harshest rage.
Defi felt like he had been dropped into the middle of the Sarkier wastes. No trees around him, no life on the surface of the world, only bare stone, steaming sand, the expanse of emptiness stretching in the four directions, and the punis.h.i.+ng sun above.
Even with the Current as his succor, he was wounded still. How long could he hold…
A voice rolled smoothly across the wasteland, startling.
"Well now, is there really a need to be so rough on the young ones. I heard you were looking for me?"
Kaska stepped into the square, his red coat bright and eye-catching in the shadows that the morning had yet to illuminate.
Finally.
The smuggler leader didn"t turn to face him. "Give me a moment. Puppies should learn not to yap so loudly."
"I have one thing to say to that," Defi forced out of a dry mouth. "Only learned it very recently. This seems an appropriate time."
The man curled his lip. Before he could say anything else, Defi took a breath, touched the Current within him. The card in his sleeve was comfortingly stiff, within easy reach. He spoke one word, echoed by the triumphant voice of the woman beside him.
The ball still in the smuggler"s hand burst into a cloud of smoke.
The man snarled and his power swelled into a s.h.i.+ne again. The cloud of modified sleeping oil dissipated. The man drew his sword and his face contorted from its usual smiling cast to an unpleasant scowl.
Defi smirked.
He swayed, his eyelids drooped, having been too close to the explosion. But it was no matter. From the edges of the square, a fog of sleeping gas burst into being, engulfing smuggler and townspeople alike.
Feeling accomplished, he crumpled to the ground to lie beside fallen comrades.
*
*
The story would be told, a popular tale still, generations in the future. How a smuggler came to the Lowpool, his force hundreds in the counting, to take the town and people as his own. How he spread the blood of the Lowpool on the cobbles without knowing what it meant. How the children of the Lowpool laughed from the shadows and devoured his forces one by one. How the blood of the Lowpool spilled to the sunlight gathered into the shape of a crocodile, brightly burning red, that ate the smuggler and drove what remained of his forces out.
Do you know the legend of how the Treachery came to be, children?
Of course you do.
You will not forget this else you perish: the Lowpool is the head of the Crocodile, and it is the head that carries the animal"s fangs.
*
*
Defi woke to an unfamiliar ceiling.
He blinked sleepily. The sound of water lapping against wood was incredibly soothing. The curtains fluttered in the breeze. He groaned at it. The mountain was so cold already. What need was there to keep the windows open? Unreasonable.
Some distance away there was someone telling a story, about how a monster was punished by the G.o.ds and became a river.
He shot up straight, wincing at the twinge of pain at his side. He scrambled out of bed as carefully as he could. He had left Turq and Jar in the river!
He was nearly out the door when he realized he was half-naked. He grunted in impatience, and nearly turned the room inside out searching for clothes. He found his belt in the wardrobe, but the clothes weren"t his. He wavered a moment, then pulled on the s.h.i.+rts and trousers, followed by the thick coat. The boots kept in the lower part of the wardrobe were thankfully familiar.
He splashed some water from the basin onto his face, and ran fingers through his hair. The mirror told him he was only barely presentable.
He wanted to sneak past the room where the voices came from, but could not bring himself to be so impolite. He coughed awkwardly in the doorway.
"Oh! Defi, wasn"t it?" A woman he didn"t know greeted him, surrounded by half the children of the orphanage. He relaxed a little.
"Yes, thank you for the use of the room."
Lergen blinked at him blearily from a chaise in the corner of the room. The man smiled wryly at him. "Don"t talk so stiffly, Defi. This is Merel, Aire"s sister. She"s helping house the kids while the old place gets fixed up."
Oh. He bowed. "Sorry to have put you through so much trouble."
"Oh no. It"s no problem. Now that the hero Lergen and his charges are staying here, I don"t have to put up with people wanting me to host their gatherings. It"s been great."
Hero? He looked at Lergen. The man grimaced. "The house is made from rare wood. The scent is said to be lucky."
"Grandfather didn"t think it was a rare tree until after it was built. Since he made it for grandmother, he didn"t want to dismantle it."
That wasn"t what he"d wanted to know, but he let it go. If Lergen was being hailed as a hero, then the town had prevailed. "The others?"
"They"ll be fine. Turq and Jar are clogging up the docks, so you better go see them."
Defi sent the man a grateful smile, bowed toward Merel and the children.
The house was not too far from the dockyard. The place was as busy as always, but there were a lot more people than normal. Between the sounds of the usual fishwives and carters, there was construction. He ducked between several tree trunks being carried toward the warehouses from a laden barge.
Scorched timber here and there still carried the faint smell of smoke. The town was rebuilding already. How long had he been asleep?
There was a disused pier half-broken in two, at western edge of the docks. Near it floated a large blue shape.
Defi nearly fell over from relief.
He steadily moved along the broken pier until he could reach to pat the slime. "Turq! You"re alright! Where"s…" A large green slime lifted itself above the water surface. "…Jar?"
Did Jar eat a seakrait too?
He laughed suddenly, reached out to pat Jar too. "Aren"t you growing too fast?"
It hasn"t been a month since Jar was born after all.
"What do you think you"re doing?" Someone called from the docks. "Don"t bother the slimes!"
"Oh? Don"t tell me, you"ve been getting others to feed you? You"re shameless, Turq, Jar." He waved at the speaker, called. "Thanks for taking care of them!"
He jumped onto Turq. The large slime moved into the lake. "Turq, you"re larger than before? How many kraits did you eat this time?"
He settled down on Turq"s back and finally relaxed. Despite just having woken up, he felt a little tired.
"I held a sword again, do you know?" he told the two slimes. "It felt strange."
He had not thought he ever would again. And here, after leaving behind everything that would"ve made him a warrior, he had killed with a sword.
The sword, the woman"s sword, he had dropped beside the bodies. He didn"t know what had happened to it. He hadn"t even honored it properly. Didn"t know the woman"s name or fate.
The sound of Turq moving was like rus.h.i.+ng water, smooth and unconstrained.
He closed his eyes and let Turq take them away from the town.