B6 Chapter 652: A Warning Most Dire

Dismissing Leaf on the Wind, Kenva dropped out of the sky, strands of her hair whipping like solstice streamers. She touched down lightly into an alley between two warehouses, and merged into the morning bustle that filled Baanswell’s streets.

Deep in the industrial district, the roads were full of clattering wagon wheels and the breathy grunts of green-scaled draughtsbeasts. A moderate annoyance, since it meant she couldn’t simply tear her way to the mustering yards at top speed. If she blitzed past one of the hulking, tusked creatures, they might well baulk — and she’d gotten more than one smack upside the head for that as a child.

If only Leaf on the Wind were a little cheaper, then she could have just flown the whole way there. There was nothing quite like it: not just feeling the rush of cold air over her skin, but being it.

She turned a corner and caught sight of the massive, ring fenced empty plots that sat in the shadow of the wyrdwall. The mustering grounds, set just to the left of Baanswell’s the eastern gate. Most of the simple cobble sections were loosely packed with canvas covered carts, simple reinforced coaches, and a few larger merchant trains. The three largest, and closest to the wall, were almost entirely empty — except for one.

In the plot closest to the gate, twenty carriages the size of small buildings sat in neat rows. Each was a delightfully warm splash of colour, like sprouting blooms clawing their way up through the cracks of grey stone and beige wagons that surrounded them. It looked like Home. Or, at least, the closest thing to it she would find in Greenseed.

For a moment, her lips quirked upwards as she forgot the hot coal of anxiety and rage that was chewing its way through her belly. That lasted for all of two seconds before the threat to the Bloodstones came screaming back into the forefront of her mind.

Clenching her jaw, she picked up the pace — dipping off the curb to claim the no man’s land between the footpath and the closest wagons. The caravan should have arrived in the last half hour or so, but routes were rarely so precise. If the carriages were already secured, the caravan master could be finishing his entry paperwork right that very second — she had to catch them before they left.

She watched the carriages like a hawk. Until the head made the arrangements with the local authorities, everyone else would stick around camp — so anyone leaving would be the one she needed to catch. A human woman with bright green ribbons braided through their hair clambered up the sides of a blue and white striped carriage to tug at the knots securing the rooftop trunks. She tugged one free, dropping the dangling steel-banded trunk to an aen man below. He caught it easily, having packed on nearly as much muscle as Kaius onto his lithe frame — an absurdity for one of her people. She’d only met one man that dedicated, a distant cousin who ate like a wyvern and spent half his free time throwing around anything heavy he could get his brutish mitts on.

Kenva stopped dead. A distant cousin with blue-black hair he kept cropped as short as possible, and thin sideburns — just like the man she was staring at from half a league away. She whipped to the man’s left forearm as he reached up to catch another trunk. Attos had gashed himself on a rock as a child, too young to have unlocked his Health.

A pale blue scar curled around the man’s wrist, stretching halfway to his elbow.

More started jumping out to her. Jorry a small, mouse-like densuan man who’d helped to comb out her hair after she’d fallen into a bramble. The man dived through the bustling crowd, vanishing behind the towering, three-story scouting carriage at the rear of the yard. Kenva grinned at the sight of its berry-red walls and yellow railings that she’d hung over in boredom only a short year or so ago. Bloody Ostovir was up there, lying flat on his back with his hands behind his head — hiding from the busywork below, no doubt.

She broke into a jog.

So many of them were new faces, but that wasn’t all that strange — people flitted between routes all the time, and it had been enough time for the caravan to have completed at least one full route back through the Steppe.

There was one person missing — where was he?

Scouring the bustling yard, Kenva spotted a tall man in a pressed brown overcoat step out of one of the closest carriage. His stern brow and focused expression was oh, so familiar.

Laughing in shocked delight, Kenva vanished into a gust of wind. She barely noticed the shocked gasp of the people around her, taking to the skies.

….

“Uncle Bestot!” Kenva screamed, flying towards the man as she rematerialised mid-air.

Bestot jumped a stride in the air, and flung his folder of paperwork into the wall of the deep blue caravan next to him. Moments later, Kenva slammed into his chest, laughing wildly as she wrapped her arms around him. Still shaken by her surprise appearance, Bestot had no time to brace. They slammed to the ground, and the man let out a loud grunt.

“What in the bloody fuck!” Bestot yelled, trying to shove her back.

He was about as successful as if she’d been a solid steel statue. Kenva was struck by the sudden realisation that her uncle felt weak — it was like restraining a child.

Shouts of alarm rang out from the people close enough to spot Kenva’s sudden appearance. Caravan guards ran over, their heavy chainmail clanking.

“It’s me, uncle,” she said, pulling back so he could get a look at her face.

“Kenva?!” Bestot said, his eyes going wide. “What in the hells! What are you doing here? How did you do that?”

He paused for a moment, before his eyes somehow went wider — his brow rocketing towards his hairline. “Are you bloody Silver?”

Kenva just laughed. The gods had smiled at her today. Of all people it could have been, she was beyond glad that it was her uncle. It had been far too long since she’d seen him — but more importantly, she could think of few others she would trust more with the mission she was about to lay at his feet.

Pushing herself to her feet, Kenva held out an arm for Bestot. The man gripped it firmly, still looking at her in disbelief.

NovelPhoenix publishes the author's chapter, but the version here was copied without their permission.

A trio of guards slowed as they reached the edge of the carriage. “You okay, Bestot?” one of them asked, his hand on the hilt of his blade.

“I…yeah,” Bestot replied. He didn’t look away from Kenva. “This is my niece — she’s walking her Way. I think.”

The trio snapped back to Kenva, the one in the lead blinking in surprise. “She’s walking her Way? I aint ever heard of someone sticking to their Way for that long. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head, Bestot?”

Bestot scowled, bending down to scoop up the folder he’d tossed to the side. “She’s twenty-two!”

The guard looked at him skeptically, like he’d just earnestly suggested they take their caravan straight through the middle of a lake.

Scowling at the guard, Bestot looked back to her before his expression softened. “Into my carriage? I assume by your surprise when you hurled yourself at me like some sort of raging bull that you came on business.”

Kenva’s smile grew a little strained. Not even the rush of joy at seeing family was enough to completely wash away the stain of her news. She nodded.

Taking a long and level look, Bestot eventually returned the gesture. Waving off the guards, he pulled open the narrow door to his abode. He gave the underside of the carriage a swift kick, pushing a lever with a loud clack. A trio of steps sprung out.

Warm air rolled out of the carriage in a wave. Even the little slice she could see was familiar, dark-stained oak shelving embraced the cozy entry way, each shelf lined with hundreds of small little nicknacks from all over Vaastivar. Kenva honed in on a scrimshaw deer with a needle-sized wrack of antlers. Bestot had picked that one up in a small village just before she’d left the caravan to strike out on her own.

It smelled of wool blankets, tea, and home.

“After you,” he said, holding out an arm to welcome her in.

….

Bestot sat a mug of steaming red tea in front of her with a soft clack. They sat in a recessed tablebooth at the very rear of the carriage, with small portholes giving Kenva a clear view of the rest of the mustering yard. It was through the kitchen — her aunt’s domain. Bestot had already told her the woman had fled for the markets the minute they’d cleared the gates. Benefits of being the caravan master's wife.

Kenva’s eyes drifted close as she inhaled deeply, leaving her to nothing but the soft glow of her uncle’s soul and the notes of berries and tannins that wafted from her drink. A highland blend. She’d never been fond of the stuff, but right now she felt like she could have drunk a gallon of it.

For a moment, they sat in easy silence — as she had many evenings in the early days of walking her Way.

“How are you Silver, girl? That's…scary,” Bestot said softly.

Kenva looked up at her uncle in surprise. “You didn’t hear about Deadacre?”

He must have! Half of the way stories spread around the damn continent was by Hiwiann caravans swapping stories.

Bestot stilled. “That was you?! What in the hells, girl! The city was damn near flattened! You fought a Tyrant?!”

Grinning wildly, Kenva took a slow sip of her tea. The tannins sat heavy on her tongue, somehow leaving her mouth feeling more dry.

“I did.”

Bestot gave her a flat look.

Revelling in the moment, Kenva eventually decided to cut her uncle some slack. As they worked their way through the pot of tea, and the workers scrambled through the yard to unpack the goods for sale, she told Bestot of all of her travels. Well, most of them. She might have glossed over the worst bits of the whole ‘imprisonment and torture’ thing. It was nothing but a bad memory to her now, and she didn’t want the man to fret.

Bestot cycled through pale-faced worry, beaming smiles of pride, and raucous laughter with alarming frequency. By the time she finished telling him of her and her team’s experience in the Pit, he was shaking his head.

“Liuriel’s going to think I'm having her on when I tell her this,” he muttered.

Kenva laughed — she could already see the disbelieving frown on Mother’s face.

“That reminds me,” she said. Pulling her clan’s Farstrider Longbow from her storage ring, she laid it flat on the table. “Can you bring this home for me? I don’t need it any more, and it should be with the Clan.”

Bestots slapped his hand down on it in an instant. The bow vanished. “Kenva! You can’t just flash Heroic artefacts around!”

She raised her brow and gestured broadly to her gear.

“Some of us aren’t impossibly strong Silvers! You could have at least drawn the curtains!”

Kenva sighed — she’d checked to make sure there were no soul-signatures nearby. Somehow, it was comforting that Bestot was still as high-strung as ever.

“Sorry, Uncle Bestot.”

He sighed, running a hand over his face. “You shouldn’t have had it anyway, I really don’t know what your mother was thinking. Though, it sounds like it saved your life, so maybe she is as annoyingly prescient as ever.”

They drained their final cups, and Bestot refilled the pot. While he boiled the water and prepared their tea, he regaled her with tales of his most recent route. It sounded…interesting, to say the least. Despite the chaos of the initial phase change, he’d continued on his route through the Millios, then Franlen, Greenseed, and finally Grandbrook in the frontier — investing in delver guards for each leg between settlements. It had made him a pretty penny. Everywhere had been in dire need of trade and news in those early days. This was his second run through since she’d left.

Once their tea had finished steeping, Bestot slid back into the booth and warmed his hands on a steaming mug. For a moment, they said nothing — but they both knew what came next. They’d swapped their stories, now it was time for business.

“So,” Bestot said cautiously.

Kenva grimaced. Running into family had thrown her off — she really had no idea how to bring it up. Perhaps she best just get it out there.

“While we were dealing with that Onyx operative in Vainblood, we found some correspondence with a suspected Talon. They’re planning something in Anaerith during next year's summer solstice. I think they’re after the Bloodstones.”

Bestot’s jaw fell open. It snapped shut, a vein pulsing in his forehead as red rage crept up his neck. A moment later, it faded and he slumped.

“Ah, hells.” he cursed. “This is going to cost me so much godsdamned money. We’re going to have to leave tonight, and most of my goods will take a week to clear. I’ll have to abandon them.”

“Contracted sales?” Kenva asked. Priorly agreed shipments had been the bulk of her uncle's trade the last time she’d travelled with him, and she doubted he would have picked up a taste for risk considering the tumultuous year.

“That, and I picked up a collection of aged whisky from the islands of Wesmar that I hoped would find their home in the duke’s cellars.”

Kenva blinked. Those countries were on the coast — east of the Plateau. He would have had to skirt around Quesro to make it to Franlen.

“You didn’t mention you took the long route.”

“It seemed like a good bet at the time. I’d picked up some Mystral household-artifice in Grandbrook, and it always sells like hotcakes in Suthmar.”

She tapped her fingers on the table. Selling a shipment of whisky to Julian would take about as much effort as selling water in a desert, and contracted goods just meant walking up to the right warehouse with the signed receipt.

“How much were you hoping to get for it? All of it — whisky included.”

Bestot frowned.

“Humour me.”

“Forty-five thousand platinum? Maybe forty-six? Twenty of that is the whisky, the rest is all regional materials from Franlen.”

That made things easy — that wasn’t even half of her share! Plus, she could definitely squeeze Julian for more than twenty mythril pieces.