Chains Carried on Wings

TWO-1

TWO

THEY’D WALKED FOR HOURS and hours through the unending countryside. A continuous line of woods extended along one side of the road, a set of rolling hills along the other. The only thing that changed was the amount of sweat coating Ande’s back, dampening his shirt. He shifted his shoulders in discomfort, but it didn’t help. He had to put up with it.

When the woods finally receded, Ande felt a ray of hope that this exhausting journey might finally be over. Looking around for signs that they’d reached their destination, his breath came out in a rush of relief when he found one. Wooden farmhouses in the distance, built in a strange Clydian design that made them perhaps four times longer than they were wide. There weren’t any other settlements left between here and Running Water, which meant this had to be it. They’d arrived.

Next came the hard part.

“Get ready,” he told his men, feeling foolish as soon as the words left his mouth—both of them were older and more experienced than he was. But a glance at Feln and Keo didn’t reveal any visible reaction from either of them at the unnecessary order.

He did note how both of them looked appropriately grimy, with tears and smears of dirt in their clothing. It made Ande self-conscious about his own appearance. Was it enough? He rubbed at the mud on his sleeve, hoping to smear it a little more. It didn’t do much, besides rubbing the abrasive woolen fabric across his skin.

He missed his linen robes more than anything. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea, to adopt Clydian clothes just because he was traveling in Clydia. It’d seemed like a respectful thing to do at the time, but that was before he’d actually had to wear it. It chafed, and it was hard to move in. He didn’t feel like himself in it. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

Before long, they reached the first of the fields. Ande puzzled over the strange crops, before recognizing them as rye and beets. An unusual choice, compared to crops more common in his part of Gerosa—Gerosa proper—like rice and beans.

A closer look at the longhouses made them seem rustic and bare—no rugs draped over the walls, no worked metal in intricate shapes hanging off the supports. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. Clydia was a backwater. Even Clydia’s most prominent communities were more like large towns than cities, no matter what the Clydians insisted on calling them.

But even if he shouldn’t have been surprised, Ande still felt disappointed. Gerosa was a great trade empire. He knew most of that wealth didn’t reach Clydian cities like Running Water, but he didn’t think it would be like this.

It gave these people a motive. Maybe they wanted to enrich themselves, or to gain political prominence. A part of Ande even sympathized with that. He wondered if this could’ve been avoided, had the rest of the kingdom spared some time and resources for Running Water. If they were guilty, it was too late for any of that. If they weren’t...then maybe Ande could do something.

On his left, Feln stepped closer to him, lightly bumping his shoulder. “Boy,” he said, with a nod towards the road in front of him. "Walk normally, like nothing’s wrong."

Blinking, Ande realized he’d been so lost in this thoughts, he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. He looked ahead to find two figures approaching, one marching vigorously while the other one strained to keep up. The swords at their hips drew his attention first. Then he raised his eyes to their faces...and became confused.

They were boys instead of men, probably a couple of years younger than Ande. Aside from that, the one trailing behind his companion looked commonplace enough—light-skinned for a Gerosian, but dark-skinned for a Clydian. The other, the boy approaching them with a tad too much zealousness, was different.

He was as pale as the palest of Clydians—like Ande expected the Clydians’ ancestors must have been, before they became part of the Gerosian Kingdom and intermarried with his people. But other than that, this boy didn’t look Clydian. Or Gerosian. There was a mild similarity between him and some merchants Ande had met back home, who’d come from a land far to the east, but even that wasn’t quite right. This boy didn’t look like anyone Ande had ever met before.

The strange boy halted a few paces away. “Hold,” he said, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. The aggressive gesture surprised Ande. It couldn’t have been normal to intimidate travelers. “Who are you? What’s your business?”

Ande stepped forward, trying not to seem concerned. “Greetings,” he said. “My name is Ande Na Erin, of Seaway. Are you...of Running Water?” He wasn’t quite able to keep the question out of his voice. Not quite able to keep his gaze from traveling between the two boys. The two guardsmen, because that was what they must have been, with those weapons.

The strange-looking guard clenched his jaw. If Ande had been hoping to diffuse the situation, he didn’t think he succeeded. “State your business, stranger,” the guard repeated, more forcefully.

Ande glanced at the darker-skinned guard, a step behind his companion. The guard met Ande’s eyes and gave an embarrassed shrug, but didn’t try to intervene. Alright, then. If that was how it was going to be. “We are merchants—”

“So where’s your cargo?” the aggressive guard interrupted.

Ande frowned, not sure what to make of the boy’s attitude. “We were robbed,” he said.

The guard shifted his eyes between Ande and his men, his stony expression unchanged. “Convenient.”

Convenient? Ande was so shocked at the accusation that he spent a few seconds wondering if he’d misheard. The open hostility threw him. Yes, he was lying, but he hadn’t said anywhere near enough for the other boy to suspect anything. The guard was being antagonistic for its own sake.

Even the second guard looked askance at his companion. “Er...Perhaps we should give these newcomers a fair chance? Trei, listen to me?”

Ande felt his surprise wearing off, leaving behind a dim anger. He wasn’t really a merchant who’d been robbed, but he could have been. A real merchant could have been standing in his place, receiving the same treatment from this guard. And that was unacceptable. “No,” he found himself saying, more emphatically than he’d wanted to. “It was assuredly not convenient. My goods and ship were stolen, and several of my men are missing or dead.”

The guard—Trei, if that was his name—paused. “I hear you, Shain,” he told his fellow guard, before turning back to Ande. “What did these bandits look like?”

Ande blinked, surprised at the question. Bandits looked like bandits, didn’t they? Ragged, unkempt. He wasn’t sure what to say. “Well,” he began, “like Clydians.”

He nearly winced, once he realized what had come out of his mouth. He glanced at Feln, waiting to see recrimination in his eyes. But Feln calmly surveyed their surroundings, almost like he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation at all.

Trei, for his part, didn’t look impressed. “How many?”

A gaping hole in Ande’s preparation had just presented itself to him. He’d thought mentioning bandits was enough. He didn’t expect to be questioned about their appearance or their numbers, not as a merchant without any experience with such things. That was a mistake. He knew he was bound to make mistakes on his first assignment, but this was still foolish. He didn’t know why Feln hadn’t caught the oversight—though maybe he had, and decided Ande needed to learn from experience.

Relax, Ande told himself. A merchant attacked by bandits wouldn’t remember too many details. He needed to say something, but it didn’t need to be that descriptive. “I don’t know, a dozen? A raiding party, however many they usually have.” There. Trei might think him a fool with a response like that, but so what if he did?

Then finally, the other guard—Shain—decided to interject. “The prince would probably like to hear this story himself.” He looked at Trei pointedly.

Trei hesitated a moment, and Ande waited to see if the volatile boy would listen to reason.

“Fine,” Trei said, inclining his head at Shain. “Follow my partner. Keep your hands off your weapons. Don’t dawdle. I’m watching you.” He fell in behind the rest of them.

Ande tried not to show his relief. But soon, he realized that relief was premature. Because he still felt the hostility radiating off of Trei, from behind him. For the entire walk to the city and through it, he felt it. He couldn’t help but wonder if this Trei’s behavior wasn’t suspicious. If he wasn’t acting like there was something to cover up.

There were so many pieces of this puzzle Ande didn’t know how to put together.

Watching the people they passed, he looked for signs of caginess, anything else besides the young guard’s attitude that seemed wrong. Were the glances that the adults gave his group just normal surprise at the appearance of bedraggled Gerosian merchants? Or were they imagining the sorts of things they’d need to hide from visitors?

This was starting to make him paranoid. He was looking for nuances in every glance, in every gesture, and he’d only just gotten here. But what else could he do? It wasn’t as if he could search for evidence hidden in official documents. Clydians were illiterate, as a matter of culture.

The longhouses loomed over them as guards led them through the town, closer to the center. Finally, they arrived at the largest structure of all. Shain pulled on a set of wooden boards to reveal a doorway—and it was only then that Ande realized those boards were a door at all, one that swung out instead of in.

That set him oddly off-balance. It wasn’t the first thing about Running Water that stood out as different, but this one small thing struck him. The strange crops, the longhouses, the clothes—somehow he’d been prepared for all of those. He’d braced himself for them. But he hadn’t been prepared for something as simple as opening a door to be different. Suddenly, it was like the foundation he’d braced himself against had turned to quicksand, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.