The Kingless Crown

Chapter 5-2

Without turning, the man seated asked, “You lost, travelers?”

Him, Jesse couldn’t so easily assess. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a heavy cloak that he hadn’t bothered to remove. His deep voice could be that of a man, young or old, and his hands, the one thing Jesse might use to confirm the truth, were sitting on the bar, blocked from view.

“Not lost. Only looking for food and a night of reprieve, if both still exist. We’ll be on our way tomorrow.”

“If they exist,” the old barkeep said with a snort. “As if you’ve been here before. As if you’d know what once was.”

“I have been here, though it’s been some years,” Jesse said carefully. He hoped his effort to mask his accent and speech pattern, unique to the coastal Southerlands, wasn’t in vain, either. “We want nothing more than a hot meal and a bed for a few hours.”

Esmerelda was stiff at his side.

“She your wife? Your mistress?”

“Sister,” Jesse replied, sticking to the story they’d agreed to. “But one room is fine.”

The barkeep erupted into subdued laughter. “Aye, that kinda sister, aye.”

Jesse ground his jaw but didn’t rise to the bait. He hoped Esmerelda had the good sense to keep her trap shut, too. “So, do you? Have a room?”

“Aye, I’ve a room,” the barkeep replied. He uncorked an amber liquid and took a swig, wincing. “But it’ll cost you.” He leaned forward. “Mayhap your sister there don’t need a room at’all. Mayhap she can come with me, and I’ll keep her warm into sunrise.”

Esmerelda gasped. Jesse laid a hand at her back, steadying.

“Easy, Hogger,” the stranger sitting at the bar said, and the barkeep did an odd thing then. He seemed to shrink back, moving away and almost inward toward the wall of liquor. “If the girl is anyone’s, she’s mine.”

A shrill metallic shriek rang across the empty tavern as both Jesse and the wide-brimmed stranger drew their swords in sudden tandem. Esmerelda screamed and backed into a nearby table, toppling a chair.

“You lay a hand on my sister and you’re a dead man,” Jesse said, using the entirety of his focus to quell the trembling. His father, Hamish, once said, ye donnae draw a sword if ye donnae intend to spear a man to the wall wit’ it.

The stranger’s face remained obscured by a hat that was unlike any Jesse had seen. The brim was even broader than it had appeared from behind, almost like the ones some of the clergy wore. His cloak was nicer, too, than it had seemed in the shadows, and Jesse could see now that it was bespoke, as would befit a man of means.

Esmerelda’s soft cries behind him broke Jesse’s concentration. The steel wavered in his hands. “Who are you?”

Glass broke behind the bar as Hogger crab-walked away from the scene, pressing his weight into the lower half of the door and disappearing into the room behind the bar.

“You come into a land foreign to you, a bar foreign to you, and you ask me who I am?”

“Yes,” Jesse replied. Sweat beaded on his nose and he twitched, dying to wipe it away. “Yes, I do. I came only for succor. It is your intentions that need clarifying.”

“You’re scaring your sister,” the stranger said in oddly soothing tones.

“I’m not s-scared!” Esmerelda insisted, and Jesse didn’t blame the stranger for laughing at her unconvincing protestation.

Jesse put a hand behind him to caution her to stay, and then put it back on the hilt of his sword. He’d forgotten how heavy it was; the burden of holding it for longer than a few moments was one requiring more training than he’d had. The stranger never wavered. His arms strayed true. His mouth—the only part of his face visible to Jesse—showed a calm that scared Jesse all the more.

“Sister, go outside and ready the horses,” Jesse ordered. He didn’t take his eyes off the stranger. He didn’t dare.

“But J… Brother…”

“Just go.”

“She tries it and she’ll be dead before she reaches the door,” the stranger promised.

“What do I do?” she whispered at Jesse’s back.

“What do you want from us? Money?”

The stranger lowered his sword so the sharp end was inches from Jesse’s neck. “I want your names.”

“Elizabeth and John Dunn.”

“Your real names.”

“I told you our real—”

Jesse gasped as he felt the tip of the stranger’s sword pierce the hollow of his neck. “You’re not from Greystone. You’re not a Westerlander. I hear the lie in your voice. I know where you come from. When I have your names, I’ll know why.”

“We only wanted food and a bed!” Esmerelda cried out, and Jesse wanted to tell her to stop, that she wasn’t helping, but this was her way of helping, and she was determined to prove she could do just that. “We’re passing through, and this is how you treat kind strangers?”

Jesse only hoped the Guardian of the Warrior’s Aim was on his side of the bar this night.

“Father, that’s enough!” cried out a new voice. No, not new, but new to the escalating situation. “They’re here to see me.”

Kaslan James.

Father?

The elder James lowered his sword, but slowly. Easlan James, this was, the head of the Great Family who reigned as stewards over Greystone Abbey—or what remained of it. Easlan had been steward long enough to remember Greystone for what it was, and had the displeasure of seeing it fall into ruin. There were whispers that the Blackwoods were considering removing Greystone from its list of key cities, and the James family from the book of Great Families, but Lady Asherley Blackwood had a soft spot for Easlan James and valued loyalty above all else.

Jesse cleared his throat, pressing his hand to the b****y, burning spot left by Easlan’s steel and skilled hand. Another man might have taken away his voice. A less adept one.

“No one comes to Greystone Abbey anymore, Kaslan. No one stumbles upon us by accident. Most avoid us intentionally.”

“His raven came a week ago. I was expecting him sooner, but better late than never.” Kaslan leapt out from behind the bar and laid a hand against the shaft of his father’s sword. His hand slid down the steel as he approached Jesse, first with a serious look that gave Jesse pause, and then, face spreading into a beaming smile, arms wide.

“Old friend,” Kaslan said. He waited for Jesse to sheath his sword before swallowing him in an embrace. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I should hope thasnae true, seeing as I still had the voice of a soprano last we played together,” Jesse said, laughing through the bear hug.

“And Ryan?”

Jesse sighed. He cast a look behind him, at Esmerelda. Her green eyes peered back from the darkness of the hood still covering her face. “We have much to catch up on. First, let’s eat and prepare a bed for my traveling companion.”

“You’re safe here,” Jesse promised Esmerelda, standing at the door. She sat upon the hard mattress, looking straight out the window ahead of her. Now that their lives were no longer in mortal peril, she was back to being furious with him.

“You still have blood at your neck,” she hissed.

The wound would need a salve, but would be healed by the time they reached the Hinterlands. No use in telling the princess that, though. If there was reason in her, it was down for the long sleep. “Yes, thank you.”

“Curse you for not letting me stay and palaver. For thinking I’m not suited to sit at the table with the men,” she shot back, swallowing back a yawn. He almost smiled, but he quickly remembered that this, all of this, was for her, and her foolish decision. She was no better than a child.

“I need to determine the safest passage for us through the Westerlands. And you, as you pointed out hours ago through your whinging in the forest, need rest.”

“And you think these unfortunates have anything that will help us?”

“I think you’d do well, Princess, to remember that the ‘unfortunates’ make up most of our world. They keep it running, and they can stop it from running, should they choose.”

Jesse closed the door before she could find even more complaints to sling at him and made his way down the rickety stairs, to the main room of the tavern.

Hogger had lowered the closing bar over the door, and when he was done bringing the pitchers of ale to the large table in the corner of the room, Easlan dismissed him for the evening.

Easlan James removed his hat, and Jesse at once understood why he chose to wear it. Without it, he’d be forced to explain the mountains of scars dotting his face. Many looked as if they’d been earned in combat, but there’d been no war to speak of, though Jesse deduced that the James family had seen their own kind of war as they fought to protect their land and status from the progress and ambitions of another.

“It’s been a fair few years, Jesse Strong,” Easlan said, pouring a mug for each of them. “And Hamish, he faring?”

“Faring as well as you’d expect,” Jesse replied. He broke off a hunk of bread from the stale loaf, washing it down with a swig of ale. “Under the circumstances.”

“You said Ryan is in the Wastelands? In the crown camp?” Kaslan said, whistling through his teeth. “Where will the king’s punishment of the Warwick loyalists end?”

“This one wasnae the king, I’m afraid,” Jesse said. “Lord Warwick himself ordered this one.”

Easlan frowned. “Khallum is a tempestuous man, but a fair one. And no one has been more loyal to him than your father.”

Jesse’s attempt at a grin pained him. “Loyalty only goes so far when that same man’s son is presuming himself upon your only daughter.”

Kaslan’s face paled. “Ryan and Esmerelda?”

Jesse nodded. This, at least, wasn’t so much a secret. Perhaps a shock outside the Southerlands, but within, it was the main source of gossip leading up to the events that brought Jesse to their doorstep. “Donnae ask me to explain it. I cannot. She’s a petulant, spoiled… ah, it doesnae matter now. She’s not right for Ryan, but try pushing that truth through his stubbornness. He wouldnae let the matter go, and when Khallum found out… well, let’s say there was no crime to speak, so he framed it as a way for Ryan to serve the Southerlands. Lord Warwick believes there’s something more going on in the Wastelands. The real reason the crown willnae give the land back to the Warwicks. He wants Ryan to find out.”

“But… no one ever leaves the camps, Jesse,” Kaslan said, wearing a look of growing horror.

“Aye, so they say.”

“And Esmerelda, bless her, has gone to The Guardians,” Kaslan went on.

Jesse said nothing.

“You’re a long way from the Wastelands, if you’re intending to spring your brother from the clutches of the king’s men,” Easlan observed. He ran his fingers down the valley of scars on his cheek, tracing a familiar path. “And though my memory has suffered alongside my body, I don’t recall you having a sister. Not one who survived, anyway.”

Jesse emptied his mug and poured another. To say what he needed to say was to create great risk for his quest to deliver Esmerelda to safety. But he knew now, as he’d known when he made the promise, that what he needed to do couldn’t be done without allies.

“The woman I’m traveling with is Esmerelda Warwick.”

The revelation delivered the shock Jesse expected. Easlan’s hands ceased their voyage through his battles, and Kaslan fell back in his chair, gaping, eyes focused elsewhere as if needing to return to several moments before to ensure his ears hadn’t failed him.