1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of ... (#6)

Saf, Salles

"I can't believe you stole my brother's horse," William murmurs as he rubs down the sweat-foamed hide. Hinder's still wide-eyed and huffing, shifting uncomfortably, but the mare trusts him enough to let him soothe her, to take water from the bucket his wife's holding.

Yale's shoulders tighten. "Those boys were terrorizing the poor thing."

Hinder's head blocks him from seeing his wife's face, but that tension isn't a good sign. "How did you get them to stop?"

"I...might have suggested I was one of Essere Caraway's women and he had plans for her."

William holds himself still, biting back the emotion that surges on his tongue. He woke up this morning to find Yale gone, and she returned clinging to the back of a terrified horse she didn't know how to ride.

"I wasn't followed," she says uncomfortably. "Not after I cut through gangside."

Hinder huffs, twitching, and William forces himself to continue soothing her. The mare doubtless picks up his uneasiness anyway, but she doesn't know him well enough to trust his read of situations.

Gangside both is and isn't as wild and dangerous as is commonly believed among the people who live gateside. The good gangs—and there are several—take care of the people who live in their boundaries, even when they have to be brutal to do it.

But inherent in that is that they take care of their own people, and Yale eagerly left that when she married him. Unless the boundaries have changed recently, she would've had to cut through territory belonging to the Green Stars and the True Knives, to get help.

But she got that help, William reminds himself. She's here, unhurt, so it turned out okay.

He still doesn't move from where he's frozen, midmotion.

Hinder flicks him with her tail, movements sharpening with increasing agitation. He's not her herd, but his brother is, and she knows how to read danger in Aldrik.

Knew. William forces a careful breath, remembering what Yale had kindly failed to point out: you can't steal from a corpse. "What do we owe your uncle?"

His wife sniffs at him. "I'll take care of my own debt."

He resumes tending Hinder. "Yale."

"I paid up already. He just wanted some art."

He eyes her sidelong.

"As in drawing, not dancing. I promised you I wouldn't dance again."

She did? He doesn't remember that, but maybe he'd thought her joking. He'd thought she stopped dancing out of respect of her own conscience, which had always been more bothered by encouraging men to waste money better spent on their families than it had been by borrowing someone else's handwriting. Perhaps because she wasn't above revising what she was forging, when she disagreed with her uncle's choice of target.

Her uncle hadn't liked her much, but forgers were rarer than mages, and Yale was an excellent one.

"Uncle said it's getting worse, not better. If we don't leave soon, we won't have a way out at all."

"Dockside seems..." But dockside would put them on a ship, and Salles, south of the city, has cliffs against the sea. There would be no port to let them get off in the south of the realm. "We'll have to take a gangway."

The gangways are actually city gates, held by gangs. Most of the city's gates are in gangside.

He sighs. "You went to the palace stables for my brother's horse."

Yale frowned. "Of course. It was only a matter of time before she was burned to death or something, and your brother wouldn't have wanted that."

Aldrik wouldn't have wanted to saddle anyone else with the current mess, either.

He wonders, suddenly, what killed his brother and how. Aldrik's survived far more violence than William's ever seen, for far longer than he's been alive.

Aldrik had been their mother's spring child, born when she was young. William had come years later, a winter child born just before their mother stopped being able to have bear children at all.

The two decades between the pair of them is similar the gap between Aidan and his coming sibling, now that William thinks of it, assuming that whatever killed Aldrik left his girlfriend alive...

Which, now that he thinks of it, not particularly likely. The woman was montai, so difficult to kill, but she also would've been able to heal Aldrik.

It's a pity. Dangerous people are difficult to stop unless you're dangerous, yourself, and William very much is not that.

Hinder rubs her head against William's, having settled enough that she's apparently now comforting him.

William's small laugh has tears in it, and he pats her in thanks.

"William, er, Jarvim?"

He turns. The girl-child is skinny, almost like an elf, but the bugged eyes and protruding bones say it's caused by hunger. There aren't circles under her eyes, though, so her situation is in the middle of improving.

Her ragged tunic, several sizes too big, doesn't help the impression that she's starving. Intentional, or is she actually that poor?

"Yes," Yale says. "He's William Jarvim."

The child holds out a letter. "For you, sir."

"Thank you." He accepts it, waits for the child to vacate these empty stables before he opens it.

On that thought, where is everyone else who should be in the stable? If they lack that many horses, then the stalls could be repurposed for those taking refuge from the violence.

His wife sighs, plucks the envelope from his hand, then stares at the writing on the envelope.

"Yale?"

Frowning, she shakes her head and swiftly opens it, her gaze dancing as she reads. She peers at the text, cautiously evaluating it, and sniffs the paper. "Aldrik isn't dead."

What?

"The handwriting's right. There's the drop of orange that he likes to put on his missives, to soothe or calm the recipient... If this is a forgery, it's unnaturally good. See those wobbles on the letters?"

"His handwriting doesn't do that."

"Not usually, but it fits perfectly with him saying he hurt his hand." She waves the letter. "Sylvair's dead, and when pulling that off, his magic got stripped without warning, which apparently detached the royal magic, too..."

They exchange a glance. If the magic ever picks him to rule, he'll do that himself in a heartbeat.