Fire Ch. 06

It came as no shock that she took some inexplicable satisfaction from his bit. He had learned that pleasant fact about her years ago, but her response to him still continued to cause as much wonder and pleasure as it always had. He didn't question it of course, he was old enough to know that he should just accept good luck when it came. Healthy suspicion was a good thing, but boundless paranoia made life so much less enjoyable. That was not to say life was terribly pleasant to begin with. He smiled faintly. Well, excepting the past week perhaps. Then again, 'pleasant' might just be the world's largest understatement. It certainly wasn't the term he'd use, though he wasn't sure he could come up with single word to sum it up. He snorted scornfully at his own distraction and forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

It didn't take him long to find her house. He needed only ask one passerby, who'd pointed him in the right direction before congratulating him. The congratulations made him wonder, but he merely thanked the man and continued on his way. He heard the murmur of a woman's voice and shuffling before the door to the slightly dilapidated cottage opened to him. The woman was older and short, and clearly not of Huroth decent, and she wore a long cloak with the hood already pulled up against the evenings chill. Her arms were wrapped around a huge basket. Her head shot up, and she peered at him from under her hood with a sour look then stepped back as if startled, dropping the basket. He caught it deftly and held it back to her, waiting patiently for her to collect herself.

"Oh! You're not Berus!"

"No madam. I am not."

"I thought you were Berus. I'm expecting him"

He nodded, taking it for the warning it was as she eyed him askance taking her basket back gingerly.

"I won't need too much of your time, but I have questions for you. May I speak with you?"

She hesitated, but something in her face told him she might already know who he was and that his visit wasn't completely unexpected. Finally she nodded and beckoned for him to follow her inside. He removed his cloak first, shaking off the light dusting of snow that had accumulated on it and entered.

He stood in the center of the dwelling's main room as she disappeared to put her things away. She returned and dropped herself into a chair by a low fire and gave him another rather sour look before indicating that he take a seat as well.

"Well I don't suppose you're here to ask me for advice on birthing, are you?"

'Well,' he pondered, 'that explained the congratulations on the way over here.' She was a midwife. It also explained to him how it was she'd have known the details of Maria's pregnancy. He tipped his head diplomatically.

"Not precisely. I am looking for information on a birth you may have been party to."

She snorted and looked away into the fire. "I've been 'party' to any number of births. I doubt I can remember the details of many of them."

Again he read something in her eyes, in the tightness of her posture that gave him the distinct impression she'd been forewarned of his coming and knew exactly which birth he spoke of. He decided not to play games with her. Even if she wasn't Huroth herself, she was used to their gruff mannerisms and distinctive lack of tact, she might feel he was insulting her intelligence if he played coy.

"Perhaps, but I'm sure you can tell me about Maria's daughter. I imagine the birth of a potential heir would be memorable enough." He spoke clearly but lowly so that the sound would not escape the room to listening ears.

She stiffened, but made no other response except to glare into the fire. After a time she snorted again.

"I don't know who you've been talking to, but there was no birth. Not so far as I saw. She was still ripe with child when she fled."

"To save the child?"

She scoffed. "Hardly. To save herself. "

Her face distorted again into an even more pronounced mask of distaste and she shook her head. "No, when the captains of the old guard were deposed all their children, even the unborn ones, were sent with them, mother and all. So Maria left before the child was ever born. All I know is she went south, and she spoke of a village in a forest...but anyone who knew more than that was wiped out during the coup." She chuckled dryly. "Serves them right for not thinking ahead. Good luck finding the daughter or Maria now...even if either still lives. Maria was a soft one, a bit spoiled really. Making an escape, in that condition, couldn't have been easy on her. I wouldn't doubt if she never made it to safety." The woman didn't sound too upset by the idea.

"I take it you weren't fond of her?"

She shrugged and smoothed the skirt of her dress primly. "We weren't friends or anything. She was too pretty for her own good. It made her proud, and frankly she was intolerable after she caught the chief's eye, and even worse when she was carrying his daughter. She didn't have a lot of friends when she first started on as a camp follower, and less after she started weaseling her way into the good graces of the officers. She was shrewd, and cold, and used her pregnancy to try to gain political influence, despite the fact that the child could easily have belonged to any number of men. She wasn't overly concerned with fidelity. I sometimes think that was part of the reason for the coup, no one wanted that clever snake of a girl getting that sort of power by manipulating a dullard like Belok. Frankly I have no sympathy for her."

Jairus contained his frown. He wasn't sure that was information he wanted to relay back to Thea, if she had any illusions about her mother, they were probably best left unchallenged. Another thought occurred to him.

"I see. Tell me, if there was no witnessed birth, how can you know the child was even a girl?"

Here the woman's expression became more confident and she almost smiled. "Well, as I told the others, Maria carried high, had a cool temperature, and ate far too many sweets. It had to be a girl."

Jairus reached up casually covering his mouth with his hand in a contemplative gesture, managing to mask his smirk of disbelief before she saw it.

"This is the only evidence anyone has then?" He asked after giving himself a moment to reign in his sarcasm.

"It's all anyone would need, they know me here. I am a professional after all and my methods are very reliable."

"Of course." Naturally those lumbering superstitious idiots would never question it. How unfortunate that they had guessed correctly. It wasn't hard considering they had a fifty percent chance of being right. "I only mean to ask if anyone has actually seen or heard of the heir aside from what you've told them."

"Not that I know of."

"I see." He paused. "You mentioned others...I assume you meant Darius." Again, there was no need to play coy with this woman, it would surely only back fire.

She pursed her lips slightly. "Yes." She drawled after a moment.

He heard the 'but' and extricated a few coins from his cloak, letting them appear as if from air in his hand. He said nothing, and merely rolled them in one hand while gazing in a focused manner into the fireplace. He'd let her contemplate the gold for a while.

He enjoyed watching fire. There was something soothingly hypnotic about its movements. There was something else in the fire now too when he looked. It made him think of Thea, and her face hovering above the flames. The memory caused his mood darken as he also remembered the fear, pain, and desperation in her voice and in her eyes and the small, finger sized bruises that ran up her arms, and her wrists which had been torn and bloodied by her struggle. It had taken a great deal of control to remain calm and suppress his anger. He hadn't wanted to frighten her after all. Most people never saw him angry, but those who survived it usually avoided him afterward as if their lives depended on it.

It often did.

The midwife shifted in her chair, her eyes darting between his face and his hand. He continued to wait on her until she finally cleared her throat.

"Well, there was another man...though I think he was also from Darius...assuming you are."

He nodded in affirmation placing one coin very carefully on the arm of the chair he sat in. He wanted her to know that, so she could report it back to him when he inevitably came calling again.

"Do you recall when he was here?" He poised his fingers over the arm again as if about to pile another coin on the first, then paused his hand in the air. She flicked her eyes to his face again and nodded ever so slightly.

"Yesterday morning."

He nodded and placed the second coin, immediately revealing a third.

"It was just the one then?" He asked turning his head towards her. She watched his hand. He could see there had been another, but not one she was willing to talk about. He stacked three coins behind the first two, no longer toying with them, and folded his hands in front of him. She still didn't talk and he sensed her mood turn fearful. Whoever visited her didn't want anyone to know they had, and had likely threatened her. She eyed the gold with a pained expression then looked up at him.

He turned his eyes fully on her, catching her eyes with his. He felt the level of her anxiety rise as she tried to break the gaze and found herself unable to. One of her hands began to shake imperceptibly. Well, imperceptibly for anyone but him that is. He was too far from her to hear her heart rate, but he didn't need to hear it to know that it was beginning to race.

'That's right' he encouraged, 'I am much more terrifying, if you will fear someone, fear me.' He intensified his gaze and she pressed back into her chair as if pinned there, swallowing hard.

"Othwyn" she whispered, her voice rasping slightly. He led the other line of the great house of Robeth, which was both interesting, and unnerving. Now there were two major factions looking for Thea, and the two most influential at that.

"Do you know what they wanted?" He asked in a low soft voice, careful not to break his hold on her. She shivered at the sound and nodded once.

"To find her." She whispered again.

"Maria?"

She shook her head. "The child"

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Do they know about Darius?"

"Yes." She answered, her voice a tiny whisper. Her eyes were growing wide and she was beginning to clutch at the arms of her own chair. With a mild sigh he released her and turned away with a nod then rose, pulling himself to his full height and dragged his cloak back over his shoulders.

"Thank you for your cooperation." He said evenly. "I'll let myself out before your company arrives. I wouldn't want to keep you."

She blinked and started up at him as if he'd suddenly appeared out of thin air. He inclined his head politely and left before she composed herself.

He side-stepped a man who tore around a corner and turned watching him rush past to bang on the door he'd recently exited. Must be the expecting father. He squeezed between two cottages and disappeared into the maze of shambling shacks and houses towards the main keep.

He imagined the general layout hadn't much changed over the years, but he wanted a closer look before he left. It was one thing to have one group looking for her, but now it was at least two, and who could say how many free agents were already working for either group. It was best to be prepared for any eventuality, including dealing with this the old fashioned way and eliminating his problem at the source. He had even considered just getting it over with and putting Darius out of the running permanently. There would no doubt be more waiting to take his place however, and he had no desire to spend the next however many decades making political assassinations that earn him no more reward than the thinning of the Huroth population one idiot at a time.

He mentally shook his head at himself as he eyed the battlements and noted the distribution of guards. There were quite a few, but most of them seemed disinterested in their work. There were only two gates, but there were enough dark corners and crevices to provide cover to scale the wall. He was too tired to move at speed, but he could still move faster than anything mortal. His fingers found the grooves and weaknesses in the stone easily. The stones were old and pitted by time and weather which made them easy to scale. He slid over the top and crouched in the half crumbled embrasure listening to the two guards several feet away. They said nothing pertinent, excepting a comment about Darius not having come back, but Jairus already knew where the man was and why.

He slipped by them along the walk way, moving too fast to be much more than an eerie blurred shadow among other shadows. The layout of the Bailey told him the armoury, barracks and main hall were all arranged as he remembered them.

He tucked himself into a shadow against a turret wall wrapping his cloak tightly around his body and settled against the cool stone with a sigh. After all this time he still remembered this dark corner, the sounds, smells, and the sharp frigid air against his face as it pierced beneath his hood. He had still been human when he had left here to lose himself in the city, to join the empire, to join civilization and escape the bloodthirsty barbarism of his fathers people. He smirked at that. It hadn't taken him long to learn that the rest of the world was little better. They just dressed it better. Humanity was a bloodthirsty lot, regardless of whether they wore chainmail or silk, or as Thea had discovered, a farmer's homespun.

When Jairus left this place he had taken nothing but the clothes on his back and the knife his father had given him when he'd begun his training. It had been passed on for many generations before, a symbol of the people, of his duty. He'd never been very interested in that particular duty. He slid a hand to his hip and felt the smooth ridges of the pearl hilt under his fingers.

It made sense that it was to be his duty, he had been the eldest son, and even if he hadn't, he'd excelled in combat and unlike his brothers, had been blessed with his mother's intelligence. Hence why he'd been the only one who'd wanted to join the empire when the offer was made, and the reason he'd left when his father refused and sent the Huroth into five generations of war which ended with the survivors being driven north into the wastes and steppes. This fortress had once marked a central point in the Huroth lands, now it was the southern boundary.

He had left this short-sighted mess and swore never to embroil himself in their foolish politics again. He'd done a good job of it these last two centuries...but here he was, thrust back in whether he would or no, and once again the fate of the Huroth leadership was sitting in his lap, and once again he wished it would just leave him well enough alone.

He could certainly sympathize with Thea's predicament, he too had once been the unwilling heir to...well, 'all this.' It wasn't a thrilling prospect, he could hardly understand why Darius and Othwyn would be so eager to claim it. They should just let it die its natural death and move on. The empire was corrupt and ugly, but it was strong and had centuries yet before it finally crumbled as well. That was the way of things, they live, they die. Well, most things. There were things like him as well, who may or may not die, and whose mode of life may or may not be called living.

That could have been said of him, very easily, until of course these last months had thrust new vitality into his life. New blood, as it were. He winced into the dark at his continued distraction as he tossed himself over the wall, using a chain to slow his drop before falling the last twenty feet into a low crouch. Well if he had to get muddled in all this again, at least he had a worthwhile reason for it. Besides, as strange as it was, he thought with amusement, she was technically family, even if the legitimacy of the blood ties were dubious at best and was at least fourteen or so generations removed.

Either way she had a power over him that no other living creature had ever had before or after the change, the power to make him do things that were completely against his better judgement. He had always prided himself on being reasonable, logical, and efficient, but she'd had him doing the opposite since the first night he'd laid eyes on her. He wanted to deal with this situation efficiently as well, but he had a sinking feeling things were going to become muddled and chaotic before it was all over.

Somewhere the piercing wail of an infant broke the evening's stillness heralding the persistent triumph of life in the face of winter's cold oppression. It made a small part of him twinge with a sort of naively optimistic hope for the world. He smirked at that thought, because the rest of him just felt hungry, and the most insidiously disturbing part of that was the fact that he couldn't quite discern or remember which impulse was more innately human.

**

Almost two weeks had passed and Thea was starting to go a little stir crazy. She realized the feeling was absurd considering she'd already been here a few months and had never desired to go wandering far afield. Now that she couldn't, she was almost desperate to. It didn't help that Jairus left just when she was starting to get used to his now almost constant presence. Not that she'd minded, but it had spoiled her a little for those times he wouldn't be around. Like the last couple of weeks.

So here she was mucking about in ankle high snow just for something to do. A soft thump behind her broke the still silence of the evening and made her jump and turn. It was already midnight, but she couldn't sleep, having already adjusted to Jairus's habits.

She thinned her lips and nudged the clump of ice that had broken off a nearby branch before turning her face up towards the sky squinting against the thick flakes as they drifted around her, falling into the silence. She pushed back her hood and closed her eyes, letting the flakes catch in her loose hair and short dark lashes, tickling slightly as they melted. She swayed in the snow, her arms wrapping around her under her cloak. She felt her wrist brush the handle of the knife she wore belted over her hips. She was almost used to the feel of it there, but not to point where she was comfortable with it. She supposed it should make her feel a little safer, but in many ways it felt as menacing as those who threatened her. She smiled blindly up into the falling snow. That description might be used to describe the one who'd given it to her in the first place.

There was a soft sound, like a flag snapping lightly in the wind, and she open her eyes just as a hand came down over her mouth.

Her cry of alarm was muffled by worn leather and her impulse to struggle was quelled by the feel of something sharp and cold against the side of her neck. She stiffened and her fingers gripped the hilt of her own knife.

She held her breathe and quickly considered her options. If she pulled the knife slowly he might feel it, or she might be dead before she could. It would have to be fast, and she wouldn't be able to turn around.

She tensed and with all the speed she could muster whipped the knife from its sheath and slammed it backwards. She heard the material of her cloak tear, and felt the tip of the knife contact something firm just as she was pushed away and twisted around at the same time. She stumbled to keep her balance and slashed out at the air before her only to find it empty. She blinked, disoriented. A hand came down over right wrist from around her shoulder. She snapped her head towards it and gaped up at the face looking back down at her with a familiar ghost of a smile.