Bloodshed, Not Wisdom

ith mediocre stew and fresh bread in their bellies, the brother and sister went out into the night to make a circuit of the Silver Stag.

The rain had weakened to a fine drizzle, though water still ran from the eaves and gathered black in the wagon ruts. They kept to the darker edge of the yard, beyond the warm squares of windowlight and the hitching posts where the horses shifted beneath dripping blankets. Past the last barrel, the forest stood close and black beneath the weather. Neither sibling spoke. There was enough to listen for without adding their own voices to the night.

At the north wall Lindsey moved first, light and sure, gathering her cloak close before springing up to the low roof without drawing so much as a glance from those within. She rose into a crouch and began along the shingles while Gregory continued below her, one hand upon his staff. They had gone only as far as the shuttered corner when he stopped beneath the eaves.

“Unfortunate business, what happened to Tony.”

Lindsey remained still above him. Her bow rested across her knees, and for a while she watched the trees instead of answering.

“What happened back there,” she said at last, “was a sound I never wish to hear again.”

Gregory lowered his eyes.

Water gathered at the edge of a shingle and fell between them.

“I can still hear it whenever things get quiet.”

“So can I.”

The young archer turned the arrow once more between her fingers. For several seconds she said nothing, watching the feathers travel beneath her thumb as though it had become unexpectedly interesting.

Then she looked down at the staff in her brother's hand.

“You’ve become quite the spell-slinger over the years."

Gregory glanced at it. “A distinction of somewhat questionable worth when my talents have thus far demonstrated a considerably greater aptitude for preserving my own person than those surrounding it.”

“You kept yourself alive.”

“Yes.”

“And us.”

His thumb stopped against one of the grooves carved into the wood.

“Not all of us.”

Lindsey looked down at him then, but whatever answer she might have given remained unsaid.

Gregory moved on. She followed from above, stepping carefully along the wet shingles while he picked his way around a broad puddle below. The tavern wall muffled the voices inside to a low human murmur. Somewhere beyond it a chair scraped across the floor. It was such an ordinary sound that Lindsey found herself listening until it stopped.

“My bow hasn’t exactly been saving the world either,” she said. “When Neil called us, I figured maybe all those years practicing would finally be useful for something.”

The wizard glanced up.

She gave him a humorless little smile. “Probably should’ve been more careful what I wished for.”

“We were not entirely ignorant of the dangers implicit in the undertaking.”

“I knew it’d be dangerous.” Lindsey looked toward the forest. “I didn’t know I’d be watching people get ripped apart.”

Gregory had no answer to that.

A gust lifted damp strands of hair across her face, and for a moment she looked younger than she had on the road, less hardened by the last two days.

She tucked them behind one ear. “Remember when goblins were the worst thing we had to worry about?”

“The green variety, predominantly.”

“And the rusty ones.”

“Crimson ones were appreciably worse.”

“Ugh. I hated those.”

“Their odor was remarkable," the brother exclaimed. "Even allowing Kenneth as a point of comparison.”

Lindsey looked down. “Oh, come on. Nothing smells worse than Kenneth.”

The corner of Gregory’s mouth moved.

She caught it immediately. “There he is.”

A small smile passed between them and faded.

“Now,” Gregory said, “we have hounds.”

“And trolls.”

“And whatever offense of God we killed yesterday.”

Lindsey’s boot stopped upon the shingles.

“Half the world is gone, Greg.”

The faint amusement left his face.

“I don’t know what things are like in Irvine anymore, but there was another slaughter in La Habra only a week before Neil’s raven got to me.”

Gregory turned fully toward her.

“Sixty people.”

This time he offered no reply.

“It always used to happen somewhere else,” Lindsey continued. “Across the plains in the Gardenhills. One of the Whittier villages.” She rubbed her thumb along the feathers of the arrow.

“How many?”

“Enough.”

He waited.

“There was this catfolk trader near the south roads. Purtala. She had the most beautiful tuft on her ears. She sold kiwi.” Lindsey looked away. “When I was little, she used to give me the bruised ones because I never had coin.”

Gregory watched her.

“Her name was on the board outside the chapel.”

The arrow turned once between her fingers.

“That one...”

Her brother's expression softened. “Is there anyone home to whom you are particularly... attached?”

Lindsey gave him a look. “You can just ask if I’m married.”

“I was attempting to grant you a slightly broader range of possibilities.”

“Of course you were.”

“A husband, then. Or children. Someone with whom you have constructed a life.”

A breath escaped her that might once have become a laugh.

“No.”

She stared down at the bow across her knees.

“Have you considered it?”

Lindsey was quiet long enough that Gregory nearly looked away.

“Every time I do, I start thinking about which one of us ends up burying the other.”

He said nothing.

“I know. Cheerful.”

Her brother lifted his eyebrows in quiet agreement and watched the dark woods ahead.

The young archer joined in looking back toward the trees. “I’m tired of recognizing names on graves, Greg.”

The brother nodded once and sighed.

Inside the tavern came a mighty dwarven belch from Kenneth, rolling across the room like a war horn. A few patrons cheered. Joshua seemed unimpressed.

Gregory regarded the shutter in silence.

“Well,” he said, “it appears civilization intends to perish before the rest of us.”

She rose and continued along the roof. “Neil thinks we can stop all this, apparently. Just the three of us.”

“Five, at present.”

“Ah, right. The ranger and the walking brewery.” Lindsey glanced down at him. “You actually believe Neil?”

Gregory sighed but did not answer immediately.

Through a narrow gap beside the shutter he could see part of the common room: firelight, the corner of a table, Neil’s white cloak where he sat among the others. Their elder brother was leaning forward over his mug while Joshua spoke.

“Neil has always possessed an extraordinary—if frequently irrational—faith in the solvability of impossible problems.”

“That sounds like him.”

“He appears to regard impossibility less as an obstacle than as a discourteous suggestion.”

Lindsey smiled faintly.

“And once he becomes aware that some catastrophe exists,” the wizard continued, “he tends to assume a personal obligation to correct it, irrespective of whether anyone has had the good sense to appoint him.”

“Also him.”

“But I believe he means to try until the problem yields. It has been both one of his finest qualities and the source of a truly exhausting number of family difficulties.”

Gregory flipped his staff to his other hand with deceptive grace for a wizard. “And so we came because he asked.”

Lindsey shrugged. “Or is it just because he is our big brother?”

The question lingered between them.

“Don't get me wrong, Greg. I'm glad to see you both again. I really am. But bloodshed is what got me out here. Not wisdom.”

Gregory’s eyes drifted through the window, toward the table where Neil still was, the weight of his thoughts plain even at a distance. He pulled at his staff, straightening himself up from the wall and continued to walk, drawing a slow breath.

“Always the first,” he said, mostly to himself. “First to stand. First to speak. Damn sure first to locate trouble.”

With a tap of her toe and a huff, the young archer dropped from the roof with the quiet grace of a cat, her boots touching the wet ground almost without sound.

“You never actually told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Why you answered Neil.”

Gregory looked down and shook mud off his boots. “Mm. I nearly did not.”

One of the archer's eyebrows raised. “You ignored him?”

“I did. For most of a morning, at least.” His expression tightened with faint embarrassment. “I read the raven, set the message aside, picked it up again, then became irritated with myself for picking it up again.”

“Irritated?”

“At all of us, I think.” Gregory shifted his grip on the staff. “We disappear into our own lives for years, scarcely speak, and then he sends a bird across half the realm saying he needs us, apparently confident that we shall simply abandon our lives and come.”

Lindsey bumped his shoulder with hers. “Seems fair.”

“He did not inquire whether I had obligations.”

“Or whether leaving Irvine was a stupid idea,” she added.

“Objectively, it remains an exceedingly stupid idea.”

She looked sideways at him. “So why’d you do it?”

Gregory drew breath to answer.

Nothing came.

His thumb found the familiar groove in his staff, and for several steps he worked at the wood as though the correct arrangement of words might be concealed somewhere inside it.

“Remaining in Irvine was the rational decision,” he said at last. “It was familiar. Comparatively secure. My family is there. My work is there. I possessed every defensible reason to remain precisely where I was.”

Lindsey waited.

“Yet each time I resolved that I would stay, I found myself imagining the two of you going without me.”

The foot of his staff clicked softly against a stone.

The wizard shrugged.

“So... yeah.”

Lindsey stared at him.

He frowned. “What?”

His sister blinked at the surprising lack of eloquence. “That... is your grand explanation?”

“I believe the relevant substance has been communicated.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “You could’ve just said you love us, you know.”

Gregory chuckled at the forgotten simplicity of being her brother. For several paces they walked without speaking, close enough now that all the years apart seemed harder to ignore.

They walked on.

The rain finally gave itself up. What remained slid from the roof in scattered drops while the clouds began to break apart above the tavern. Cold followed behind them, clean and sharp, finding every damp fold of Lindsey’s cloak and every soaked seam of Gregory’s robes. Then the moon appeared between the clouds, pale and immense, turning the yard silver and leaving the violet crystal atop his staff looking rather theatrical by comparison.

For several moments neither spoke.

The silence of the woods had changed.

No bird called beneath the dripping branches. Nothing stirred in the grass beyond the yard. The forest did not sound asleep.

It sounded empty.

After a time, the quiet itself began to trouble her more than conversation would have.

“It’s quiet.”

“The rain has ceased.”

“Not that kind of quiet.”

The wizard listened.

Lindsey did too, and after a while she found herself wishing one of them would say something stupid.

“So how safe is Irvine, really?”

Gregory looked at her. He considered the dark trees before answering. “Safer than most places. There remain enough competently trained practitioners of the arcane that an assault upon the city would constitute quite the ambitious act of self-destruction.”

“How many’s ‘enough’?”

“That is a secret and no one's business."

She smiled. “How many other grand secrets are up there in the towers of Irvine?”

“Hundreds.”

“Knew it.”

“Most concern tea.”

“Scandalous.”

“And a regrettable incident involving... a raccoon.”

Lindsey turned toward him.

Gregory immediately raised a finger. “No.”

“Did you kill it?!”

“The creature and its tail and both its ears are still very much intact.”

“Greg, that was... suspiciously specific."

He smiled despite himself, and for a few moments they walked with some of the old ease between them.

The wizard glanced toward the bow at her shoulder. “And what of yourself? Are Neil and I getting one of the finer marksmen La Habra has to offer? I should hate to think we’d been shortchanged.”

Lindsey smiled. “Plenty of people can shoot. Pretty much everybody learns to if they want to eat.”

“If there is one thing magic has taught me,” Gregory said, looking up at the crystal atop his staff, “it is that common does not mean easily mastered.”

She shrugged. “Most people don’t have years to spend getting really good at it anymore. They’re too busy dying.”

Gregory regarded her for a moment. “Then I am pleased you were afforded those years.”

Lindsey’s expression softened.

"And gladder still," the brother continued. "After so much time apart, that the three of us have found one another again.”

She looked at him.

Gregory appeared faintly uncomfortable now that the sentence existed.

“Circumstances notwithstanding,” he added.

For a moment, neither spoke. They passed another window and Gregory’s attention shifted toward movement inside.

“Ah. It appears our two newest acquaintances have discovered someone with whom to disagree.”

She stepped beside him.

Through the wavering glass, Joshua and the stranger stood nearly face to face beside the hearth, close enough that whatever passed between them had plainly gone beyond conversation. Neil stood just off to one side, half between them without quite committing himself to it, while Kenneth lingered behind the ranger. Even through the window, the tension between Joshua and the woman was impossible to mistake.

The stranger’s hood shifted slightly toward Gregory and Lindsey, as though she had quietly marked their presence beyond the glass.

Black leather. Dark hair. A pair of long elven ears.

Lindsey leaned closer. “Who’s that?”

“A rogue, unless fashion has undergone an unexpectedly violent transformation in my absence.”

Gregory watched the dwarf throw both hands into the air.

The rogue did not move.

Lindsey considered the scene. “She looks friendly.”

Gregory smiled. “There are fewer promising foundations for friendship.”

That earned the beginning of a smile from her. Then Lindsey’s eyes moved beyond them to Neil at the table. The humor faded.

“Hey.”

Gregory backed away from the window and looked at her.

“Greg.”

Something in her voice made his expression change.

“I’m... sorry. For what happened at the marketplace.”

He did not look at his sister. He simply raised a hand, stopping her before she could say more. “I do not want to talk about it.”

Lindsey opened her mouth, then thought better of whatever she had intended to say. Gregory resumed walking, and she fell into step beside him without trying to close the small space he had placed between them.

For a while, there was only the soft tread of their boots and the slow drip of water from the eaves. Then the wind briefly shifted, carrying a scatter of droplets onto them.

“I find myself missing home,” he finally said, changing the subject.

"I find myself missing drinking hot tea instead of blindly running from beasts in the dark and into taverns lined with wet horse shit."

Gregory allowed himself the faintest trace of a smile. “I spent decades studying the arcane arts so that such taverns of horse shit - and their people - might be spared Orath's designs and creatures."

"A noble calling."

"Thank you."

“Well,” she said, her hand patting the bow at her side, “An arrow to the head is an arrow to the head, regardless of size of goblin."

They reached the side of the tavern where the roof dropped low again. Lindsey caught the edge in both hands and swung herself up, settling into a crouch above him.

Gregory looked up. “Entirely unnecessary.”

“You’re just mad you can’t do it.”

Gregory smiled. “Did you know our brother once tried his hand at archery?”

Lindsey raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“It’s true,” he smirked. “He was only just a teen. Not yet a man. He found one of Father's bows."

The young archer sat down at the edge of the roof, "Oh, gods."

"He armed himself with a headless practice shaft and selected a tree in the yard. Broad trunk. Modest distance. Under ordinary circumstances, not a particularly demanding target. Took aim at a tree with the solemn conviction of a man preparing to slay a dragon. The flat end of the shaft struck the trunk squarely and rebounded perfectly along the path it had come, straight back toward him.”

He tapped a finger lightly between his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Caught him right there.”

Lindsey came to a halt without taking her eyes from her brother.

Gregory tilted his staff towards a window at Neil inside. “And thus concluded our brother's distinguished career in archery. Decided to become a paladin soon after.”

Lindsey chuckled, then added, “That explains why he's so fond of shields.”

“It explains almost nothing.”

They laughed.

The years between them had not disappeared. Neither had Tony’s scream, nor the marketplace Gregory could not yet speak of. But for a little while they were simply brother and sister remembering another brother, when all three had been young enough for a bruised forehead to seem like tragedy.

Gregory had opened his mouth to offer some further injury to Neil’s reputation.

A branch loudly cracked somewhere beyond the lanternlight.

Their laughter ceased at once.

Lindsey turned toward the forest, her hand already finding the bow as Gregory straightened beside her. For several seconds they heard nothing more than water whispering through the leaves, and she might have dismissed the noise as a branch surrendering beneath the weather had another not snapped farther along the treeline. This one was followed by the tearing of brush, then by a heavier disturbance deeper among the trunks, something forcing its way through vegetation rather than moving with it.

“Greg,” Lindsey said quietly.

He had heard it too. The violet crystal atop his staff awakened with a low pulse, throwing faint light across the wet earth as both siblings watched the darkness beyond the yard. Another branch broke, and then several more in quick succession. What had first seemed a single movement spread along the trees until the undergrowth shook in several places at once, the sounds converging upon the Silver Stag from different directions.

Lindsey drew an arrow from her quiver and set it to the string. Beside her, Gregory lifted his staff higher, the violet glow strengthening until the nearest trunks emerged from the dark in brief, unnatural color. Something passed between the trunks. Then another shape followed behind it, low and fast, while farther to the left the brush bowed beneath the passage of several more bodies.

The first figures broke through the treeline at a run.

More followed close behind, spreading across the rain-darkened yard as still others tore through the woods beyond them. Lindsey drew the bowstring to her cheek and began backing toward the tavern door while Gregory stood transfixed for one terrible moment, taking in the number of shapes pouring from the forest and the crude weapons catching moonlight above them.

The wizard thrust the staff high. Indigo light erupted from the crystal, flooding the clearing and washing the Silver Stag in violet.

“Gods,” he breathed. “It’s…”
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