The Keeper's Reluctance

Briar's hand was empty and the cup was already on the floor of the healer's tent, clay on packed dirt, water going sideways and soaking in. She did not remember opening her fingers. The cup stayed where it fell. Her right hand had been shaking for four days. Or five. She had stopped counting on the third day and after that the numbers stopped meaning anything.

The healer sat across from her on a stool with three legs. One leg was shorter than the others. The stool rocked when the healer shifted her weight. The healer had gray hair tied back with a strip of cloth — might have been white once. Was not white now. The smell of mint and valerian hung between them. She breathed through her mouth.

"This isn't something that will heal," the healer said. "Not with herbs. Not with — not with time, either."

Briar looked at the puddle on the floor. Her boot was near it. The water soaked into the dirt, going dark at the edges. Her eyes stayed on the puddle.

"The magic severed connections. Between your mind and the muscle." The healer stopped. "I don't — I don't know a gentler way to say it, Commander."

"Get out," Briar said.

"Commander—"

"I said get out."

The tent flap moved. She was alone. Rain hit the canvas above her head. She sat still. Counted heartbeats. Three. Seven. Twelve. She had counted heartbeats before battles — standing in the line, waiting for the charge. The charge always came. She counted anyway.

Twenty-seven. Forty-three.

Her right hand shook on her knee. She watched it. It did not stop. She put her left hand over it and pressed down. The shaking went on under her palm, small and steady, and she took her hand away.

Three days later she paid an elven healer. The amount was too much. She knew it was too much and she paid it. He took it. Neither of them said anything about that.

He placed a wooden practice sword in her palm. Pine. Light. The grain curved near the pommel and she noticed that and did not know why she noticed it. She had held practice swords before. Hundreds. This one sat in her hand and her fingers did not close.

The sword hit the stone floor. A flat sound. Hollow. It stayed on the stone.

"The Crimson Hawk will never lead troops into battle again." The elf's face did not change. His eyes — she could not read them. Did not try. "The magic was designed to target what you value most."

She left the sword on the floor. She went out through the stone archway. The elf stayed where he was.

That night was sleepless. She lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and the ceiling held. At some point the ceiling was gone.

Ashen Reach. The ground was mud. She could smell Lieutenant Fallow's pipe — applewood, sweet, cutting through the rest. Blood and iron and dirt turned to clay under boots. She found his pipe later, half-buried. Still warm. Twenty paces from where he'd fallen. She picked it up and put it in her pocket. Her hands moved on their own. She didn't think about it then. She didn't think about it after.

Lord Marketh's banners going over the ridge. Yellow and gray. They were supposed to advance on the left flank. The enemy hadn't crossed the field yet. Marketh's column turned and went the other direction. She stood and watched them go. She watched until they were small and the yellow was just a stain on the ridgeline. Her mouth was open. Fallow's pipe was in her pocket. Eleven people were already dead behind her.

The mages came from the mist. Silver light between their fingers, crackling. Not fire. Not lightning. Something. The spell hit her right arm and things came apart — connections, threads, whatever they were. She felt them go, one and then another and then more. Her sword fell first. She did not fall. She stood there with her arm hanging dead at her side and the battle still going and she stayed on her feet.

She woke. Her face was wet. The room was dark and the fire had gone to embers. Her left hand was gripping the scar along her ribs — she found it there, already gripping. The blanket was twisted around her legs. She sat up and pulled it off. Her legs were shaking too. They stopped after a while. Her right arm kept going. The embers shifted in the grate and a piece of ash fell and the room was quiet after that.

Sleep was gone after that. She lit a candle. Pulled the parchment and ink over. Started writing. Left-handed.

The letters came out wrong — too big, slanting off the line, ink spotting where her hand pressed at the wrong angle. She left the spots. She kept writing.

"Your son Adric died with honor."

She put the pen down. Looked at the sentence. Picked the pen up. Put it down again.

Honor. The word was on the page. She had said it before — at ceremonies, to officers, to families standing in doorways with their hands held together. They had nodded. She had nodded. Then she walked away. One woman in Greyford had held a bundled coat against her chest the whole time. A boy's coat. Briar had looked at it instead of the woman's face.

Eighty-nine letters. Eighty-nine names. One was for a boy named Wren. Seventeen. She had promoted him two days before Ashen Reach. She wrote them one at a time, left-handed, through two candles and into a third. Some took her an hour. Some took longer. Her handwriting stayed crooked. She wrote through the hunger. The chair held her.

The last letter was for Corporal Denna's family. Denna had been left-handed too. The same hand. She wrote Denna's name and stopped. Her left hand cramped. She shook it out. Her right hand sat in her lap, shaking on its own. Steady. Her eyes stayed on the parchment.

"Find new companies. Build new lives."

Eleven of them stood in front of her. That was what was left. The original number was in a different ledger. She had done that count before, other nights, and the answer had not changed.

She had pressed the seal of the Crimson Hawk into red wax that morning. A bird with spread wings. She had designed it seven years ago, in a tavern, on a napkin, with a piece of charcoal. She had been drunk. The charcoal smeared and she'd gone over the lines twice. The bird came out clean anyway. The wax seal was the last official thing. She pressed the stamp down and lifted it and the bird was there in the red and she turned the paper over.

Karn stepped forward. The scar on his face — she had stitched that herself, after Oakenfall. The thread was too thick. The needle was borrowed from the field surgeon. The stitching was uneven and she had told him so at the time. He had said he didn't care. The scar healed crooked anyway.

"Commander," he said. His voice was steady. "We can still hold to the — the Seventh Oath. A company doesn't abandon its own." His hand went to the iron hawk on his belt. All of them carried one. He looked at the ground. "I still have your map case. The one with the broken clasp. I keep meaning to fix the clasp." He looked up. "Your mind hasn't changed. Only your — only your sword arm."

She did not let him finish. She was not sure what he would have said next.

"The battlefield has no place for broken things," she said.

The words came out steady. Her voice held. She listened to it hold.

She turned away. Their boots on gravel behind her. One by one. Leaving. She did not watch them go. She listened until the last footsteps stopped. Wind came through the gatehouse and knocked a shutter loose somewhere. It banged once against the stone and did not bang again.

She packed the saddlebag the next morning. The wool cloak went in first. The spare — the one with the crooked hem she had never fixed. She left the other folded on the bed. Bedroll next. Her right hand knocked the flint kit off the table and she picked it up with her left and put it in. Eighty-nine letters. She tried the cord with both hands. Her right hand pulled the knot loose twice before it held. She set the bundle on the table by the door. Stood there. Then she picked up the bag and went out.

The innkeeper took four silvers and counted them into her palm. One of them she held up to the window. Turned it. Put it back with the others. She gave Briar a bread roll and a half-round of hard cheese. There was a stain on the woman's apron, near the hip, still wet. Briar put the food in the bag. The street outside was dark with overnight rain and the cobbles gave under her boots where the mortar had washed out.

The guard at the gate said nothing. He watched her pass. His hand moved on his spear and then stopped. The road went south out of the city and she took it.

In Thornwall she sold the greaves to a farrier whose forearms were thick with burn scars. He turned them over once. "Eight coppers," he said. She took it.

The gauntlets and pauldrons went in other towns. A woman at a market stall tried the left gauntlet on her own hand and worked the fingers. A guard held a pauldron up against his shoulder and nodded at it. She took what they offered. The road between was dry for two days and then rain came through the cloak and stayed.

The breastplate went last, in Millhaven. The man in the shop turned it over and looked at the hawk stamped into the steel. "What's the bird?" he said. She told him. He offered two silvers. She took it.

Five coins left. She counted them in her palm outside the shop. She looked at the road. She went east.

The tavern smelled of old ale and something that had been cooking too long. Briar sat down and put her purse on the table. She knew what was in it without looking.

"That's her," someone said. Two tables over. Not quietly enough. "The Crimson Hawk. I heard she took gold to retreat at Ashen Reach."

Her back was to the room. Her left hand went tight on the cup. She could hit him. Left-handed — she had hit people left-handed before and it worked well enough. Her knuckles were white on the cup. She drank.

Behind her, a man was talking. She caught pieces — something about a road that washed out, and then his voice dropped and she lost the rest. The woman with him said something back.

Her hand went still on the cup.

"—that old place," the man said. "Where the roads used to cross. Stone building, roof's still—" A chair scraped somewhere and Briar missed the next part.

The woman's voice, lower: "—middle of nowhere. Nobody's going to—"

"Last owner just vanished," the man said. "Left everything. Magistrate wants it off his — he'd practically give it away."

Briar turned in her seat. "This place," she said. She had not talked to anyone in days. It came out wrong — too loud, then not loud enough. "Where is it?"

They looked at her. The man had a piece of bread in his hand. He put it down. The woman's eyes went to Briar's right arm and moved away. "Three days east," the woman said. "Give or take. Forest has grown up around it."

"Not much traffic," the man said. He picked the bread back up.

Briar looked at her purse on the table.

"How much," she said.

The map was bad. The magistrate had drawn it on a piece of brown paper with a pencil that was too dull and the lines went in directions she could not follow and two of the road markings crossed where they should not have crossed. She went the wrong way twice. Maybe three times — she wasn't sure about the second. The trees kept looking different. Or they were different trees. Or they were the same trees and she was coming at them from different sides. She didn't know.

Spring rain came down through the canopy and through her cloak and down the back of her neck. Her shoulder ached — the arrow wound from the Northern Campaign. She had been shot standing still. Her boots were wet. Her feet were cold. The cold went up into her knees.

Her provisions were gone. Half a loaf that morning, hard, and nothing after. She kept walking.

Late on the third day she came through a stand of trees and stopped.

A sign. Wooden. Hung from an oak on two chains, one of them rusted through halfway. "The Crossroads Inn, A Rest for Weary Travelers." The paint had faded. Some of the letters were legible. Some were not. Vines covered the bottom half.

Behind the sign the road split in three directions. At the center — a building. She smelled the chimney before she saw it. Woodsmoke, birch or something close, cutting through the rain. The roof was whole. She had been sleeping under bad roofs for weeks and she noticed the roof first.

She stood in the rain and looked at it.

The back of her neck prickled. Something in her teeth. She clenched her jaw and it did not go away.

"Getting fanciful," she said. To the rain. To nothing.

She went up the steps. They creaked. She raised her left hand to knock. Her right hand hung at her side, shaking.

The door opened. She had not touched it. She had not knocked.

A man stood in the doorway. She looked at his eyes and looked away. Her gaze went to his hands after that. Steady hands. Old knuckles.

"You took the wrong fork at the river," he said. "I watched you from the upper window, going back and forth." He looked at her right arm.

Her left hand went to her dagger. "Who are you?"

"Oldevar." His accent — she couldn't place it. Not eastern. Not northern. The vowels stretched in places where they should not have stretched. "I look after this place between Keepers. Have done for — I don't remember how long, exactly."

"Keepers." She said the word back to him. It sat in her mouth. Empty.

He stepped aside. She could see through the doorway — dark shapes, the edge of a table, warmth. "There's a room upstairs," he said. "Second door on the left. The mattress is — well, it's been aired. Roof doesn't leak."

She stood there. Rain going down the back of her neck into her collar. The road was behind her.

"There's stew," Oldevar said. "And the fire's just been lit."

She could smell rosemary from the doorway, and warmth she had not felt in weeks.

She stepped across the threshold.

The hearth was burning. She had not seen anyone light it. The logs were old. The fire was already going. Someone had prepared them. Or nobody had.

Oldevar led her to a small table against the wall. A bowl of stew sat on it. The bowl had something dark floating in it. She sat down.

The spoon was wooden. Worn smooth at the lip from years of use — how many years, she didn't know. A groove ran down the handle where the wood had started to split and someone had sanded it flat again. She picked it up with her left hand.

She ate. The stew was hot and good and she ate all of it and did not speak. The warmth went into her chest and down into her arms and she held the empty bowl with both hands after. Her right hand shook against the clay. She let it.

At the top of the stairs — a black cat. Gold eyes. She noticed it when she looked up from the bowl. The cat sat still. She sat still. Neither of them moved for a while. The cat blinked first.

Oldevar brought her to a room on the second floor. The bed was made. The coverlet was blue — had been blue. The color had gone pale at the folds and the edges where hands had gripped it. She put her hand on the fabric. It was warm. Nobody had been in this room.

She sat on the bed. Took her boots off. The left one had a hole near the sole — water had been coming in for days. She set them by the door. Her pack against the wall. Her dagger under the pillow, left side, where her hand could reach it.

She lay down. The mattress gave in places she did not expect and held firm in places she did not expect. She didn't care. She pulled the coverlet up and looked at the ceiling. Dark beams. A crack in one of them, running diagonal, end to end. She followed it with her eyes.

What she was doing here. What a Keeper was. Oldevar. The fire. The stew. The warm bed. She wasn't going to start now.

She closed her eyes.

She slept. She did not dream of the dead.