Luthien sat back in his comfortable chair, bare feet nestled in the thick fur of an expensive rug. He squirmed his shoul-ders, crinkled his toes in the soft fur and yawned pro-foundly. He and Oliver had come in just before dawn from their third excursion into the merchant section this week, and the young man hadn't slept very well, awakened soon after the dawn by the thunderous snoring of his diminutive companion. Luthien had gotten even, though, by putting Oliver's bare foot into a bucket of cold water. His next yawn turned into a smile as he remembered Oliver's profane shouts.
Now Luthien was alone in the apartment; Oliver had gone out this day to find a buyer for a vase they had appropriated three days before. The vase was beautiful, dark blue in color with flecks of gold, and Oliver had wanted to keep it. But Luthien had talked him out of it, reminding him that winter was fast approaching and they would need many supplies to get through comfortably.
Comfortably. The word rang strangely in Luthien's thoughts. He had been in Montfort for just over three weeks, arriving with little besides Riverdancer to call his own. He had come into a burned-out hole in the street that Oliver called an apartment, and truly, after the first day or two of smelling the soot, Luthien had seriously considered leaving the place, and Montfort, altogether. Now looking around at the tapestries on the walls, the thick rugs scattered about the floor, and the oaken desk and other fine furnishings, Luthien could hardly believe that this was the same apartment.
They had done well and had hit at the wealthy merchants in a frenzy of activity. Here were the spoils of their con-quests, taken directly or appropriated in trades with the many fences who frequented Tiny Alcove.
Luthien's smile sank into a frown. As long as he looked at things in the immediate present, or in the recent past, he could maintain that smile, but inevitably, the young and noble Bedwyr had to look farther behind, or farther ahead. He could be happy in the comforts he and Oliver had found, but could not be proud of the way he had come into them. He was Luthien Bedwyr, son of the eorl of Bedwydrin and champion arena warrior.
No, he decided. He was just Luthien, now, the thief in the crimson cape.
Luthien sighed and thought back to the days of his inno-cence. He longed now for the blindness of sheltered youth, for those days when his biggest worry was a rip in his fishing net. His future had seemed certain then.
Luthien couldn't even bear to look into his future now. Would he be killed in the house of a merchant? Would the thieves guild across the lane grow tired of the antics, or jeal-ous of the reputations, of the two independent rogues? Would he and Oliver be chased out of Montfort, suffering the perils of the road in harsh winter? Oliver had only agreed to sell the vase because it seemed prudent to stock up on winter supplies--and Luthien knew that many of the sup-plies the halfling would stockpile would be in preparation for the open road. Just in case.
A burst of energy brought the troubled young man from his seat. He moved across the small room to a chair in front of the oaken desk and smoothed the parchment on its top.
"To Gahris, Eorl of Bedwydrin," Luthien read, his own writing. Gingerly, the young man sat down and took quill and inkwell from the desk's top drawer.
Dear Father, he wrote. He smirked sarcastically to think that, in the span of a few seconds, he had nearly doubled all the writing on the parchment. He had begun this letter ten days ago, if a scribbled heading could be called a beginning. And now, as then, Luthien sat back in the chair, staring ahead blankly.
What might he tell Gahris? he wondered. That he was a thief? Luthien blew a loud sigh and dipped the quill in the inkwell determinedly.
I am in Montfort. Have taken up with an extraordinary fel-low, a Gascon named Oliver deBurrows.
Luthien paused and chuckled again, thinking that he could write four pages just describing Oliver. He looked at the small vial on the desk beside the parchment and realized he didn't have that much ink.
I do not know why I am writing this, actually. It would seem that you and I have very little to say to each other. I wanted you to know that I was all right, and doing quite well.
That last line was true, Luthien realized as he gently blew upon the letter to dry the ink. He did want Gahris to know that he was well.
Again came the smile that dissipated into a frown.
Or perhaps I am not so well, Luthien wrote. I am troubled, Father, by what I have seen and what I have learned. What is this lie we live? What fealty do we owe to a conquering king and his army of cyclopian dogs?
Luthien had to pause again. He didn't want to dwell on politics that he hardly understood, despite Brind'Amour's emphatic lessons. When the quill ran again over the rough parchment, Luthien guided it in a direction that he was be-ginning to know all too well.
You should see the children of Montfort. They scramble about the gutters, seeking scraps or rats, while the wealthy merchants grow wealthier still off the labors of their broken parents.
I am a thief, Father. I AM A THIEF!
Luthien dropped the quill to the desk and stared incredu-lously at the parchment. He hadn't meant to reveal his pro-fession to Gahris. Certainly not! It had just come out of its own accord, the result of his mounting anger. Luthien grabbed the edge of the parchment and started to move to crumble it. He stopped at once, though, and smoothed it out again, staring at those last words.
I AM A THIEF!
To the young Bedwyr, it was like looking into a clear mir-ror, an honest mirror of his soul and his troubles. The image did not break him, though, and stubbornly, against his weak-ness, he picked up the quill, smoothed the parchment again, and continued.
I know there is a terrible wrong in the land. My friend, Brind'Amour, called it a canker, and that description seems fitting, for the rose that was once Eriador is dying before our very eyes. I do not know if King Greensparrow and his dukes are the cause, but I do know, in my heart, that any who would ally himself with cyclopians would favor the canker over the rose.
This infestation, this plague, lies thick behind Montfort's inner wall, and there I go in the shadows of night, to take what little vengeance my pockets will hold!
I have wetted my blade in the blood of cyclopians, but I fear that the plague is deep. I fear for Eriador. I fear for the children.
Luthien sat back again and spent a long while staring at his words. He felt an emptiness in his breast, a general de-spair. "What little
vengeance my pockets will hold," he read aloud, and to Luthien Bedwyr, who thought the world should be different, it seemed a pittance indeed.
He dropped the quill on the desk and started to rise. Then, almost as an afterthought, amply wetted the quill's tip with ink and scratched a thick line across the letter's heading.
"Damn you, Gahris," he whispered, and the words stung him profoundly, bringing moisture into his cinnamon-colored eyes.
Luthien was fast asleep on the comfortable chair when Oliver entered the little apartment. The halfling skipped in gaily, a bag of golden coins tinkling at his belt. He had done well with the vase and was busy now thinking of the many enjoyable ways he might spend the booty.
He moved toward Luthien, thinking to wake the young man that they might get to market before all the best items were bought or stolen, but he noticed the parchment lying flat on the desk and slipped quietly that way instead.
Oliver's smile disappeared as he read the grim words, and the gaze he leveled Luthien's way was sincerely sympa-thetic.
The halfling sauntered over to stand before the troubled young man, forced a smile once more and woke Luthien by jingling the coins in his face.
"Do open your sleepy eyes," the halfling bade cheerily. "The sun is high and the market awaits!"
Luthien groaned and started to turn over, but Oliver grabbed him by the shoulder and, with surprising strength for one so little, turned him back around. "Do come, my less-than-sprightly friend," Oliver bade. "Already this northern wind carries the bite of winter and we have so many things to buy! I will need at least a dozen more warm coats to be properly attired!"
Luthien peeked out from under one droopy eyelid. A dozen more coats? his mind echoed. What was Oliver talking about?
"A dozen, I say!" the halfling reiterated. "So I might prop-erly choose which among them is most fitting for one of my reputation. The others, ptooey," he said with a derisive spit. "The others, I discard to the street."
Luthien's face screwed up with confusion. Why would Oliver throw perfectly fine coats out into the street?
"Come, come," the halfling chattered, moving impatiently toward the door.
"We must get to market before all the rotten little children steal away the goods!"
The children. Discard the coats to the street indeed! Oliver would throw them out, where those same children Oliver had just complained about, most of them approximately the halfling's size, might pick them up.
Luthien had his answer, and the understanding of Oliver's secret generosity gave him the strength to leap out of his chair.
A new spring in his step, a new and valuable purpose, showed clearly to Oliver as they made their way to Montfort's lower central area, a wide and open plaza, lined by kiosks and some closed tents. Corner performers were abun-dant, some singing, others playing on exotic instruments, others juggling or performing acrobatics. Luthien kept his hand against his purse whenever he and Oliver passed any-where near these people--the first lesson Oliver had given him about the market plaza was that almost all of the per-formers used their acts to cover their true profession.
The market was bustling this bright day. A large trading caravan, the last major one of the year, had come in the pre-vious night, traveling
from Avon through Malpuissant's Wall and all the way around the northern spurs of the Iron Cross. Most goods came in through Port Charley, to the west, but with the Baranduine pirates running the straits, the largest and wealthiest of the southern merchant caravans sometimes opted for the longer, but safer, overland route.
The two friends milled about for some time. Oliver stopped to buy a huge bag of hard candies, then stopped again at a clothier's kiosk, admiring the many fur coats. The halfling made an offer on one, half the asking price, but the merchant just scowled at him and reiterated the full price.
The impasse continued for a few minutes, then Oliver threw up his hands, called the merchant a "barbarian," and walked away briskly.
"The price was fair," Luthien remarked, running to catch up with his brightly dressed companion.
"He would not bargain," Oliver replied sourly.
"But the price was already fair," Luthien insisted.
"I know," Oliver said impatiently, looking back at the kiosk.
"Barbarian."
Luthien was about to reply, but changed his mind. He had limited experience at the market, but had come to know that most of the goods could be bought at between fifty and seventy-five percent of the obviously inflated asking price. It was a game merchants and buyers played, a bargaining ses-sion that, as far as Luthien could tell, was designed to make both parties feel as though they had cheated each other.
At the next stop, another clothier, Oliver and the merchant haggled vigorously over a garment similar to the one the halfling had just passed up. They came to terms and Oliver handed over the money--fully five silver coins more than the other coat had been priced. Luthien thought of pointing this out to Oliver as they walked away with their latest pur-chase, but considering the halfling's smug smile, he didn't see the point.
And so their morning went: buying, bartering, watching the performers, tossing handfuls of hard candy to the many children running about the crowd. It was truly an unremark-able morning, but one that heightened Luthien's sagging spirits considerably and made him feel that he was doing a bit of good at least.
By the time they were ready to leave, Luthien carried a tremendous sack over his shoulder. Oliver flanked him de-fensively as they pushed back through the mob, fearing sharp-knived cutpurses. The halfling was turning his head slowly, regarding one such shady-looking character, when he walked headfirst into Luthien's sack. Oliver bounced back and shook his head, then stooped to retrieve his fallen hat. The rogue he had been watching openly laughed, and Oliver thought he might have to go over and inscribe his name on the man's dirty tunic.
"You silly boy," the embarrassed halfling snarled at Luthien. "You must tell me when you mean to stop!" Oliver batted his hat against his hip and continued his scolding until he finally realized that Luthien wasn't even listening to him.
The young Bedwyr's eyes were locked straight ahead in an unblinking stare. Oliver started to ask what he found so enthralling, but following Luthien's line of vision, it wasn't really very hard for the halfling to figure it out.
The lithe woman was beautiful--Oliver could see that de-spite the threadbare and plain clothes she wore. Her head was bowed as she walked,
her long and thick wheat-colored hair cascading down her cheeks and shoulders--was that the tip of a pointed ear that Oliver saw peeking from within its lustrous strands? Huge eyes, bright and compelling green, peeked out from under those tresses and showed an inner strength that belied her obviously low station in life. She was at the head of a merchant's procession, her sharp-featured master a few paces behind her.
Oliver thought the man looked remarkably like a buzzard.
Oliver walked up beside his companion and nudged Luthien hard in the side.
Luthien didn't blink, and Oliver sighed, understanding that his friend was fully stricken.
"She is a slave girl," Oliver remarked, trying to draw Luthien's attention. "Probably half-elven. And that mer-chant-type would not sell her to you for all the gold in Eri-ador."
"Slave?" Luthien remarked, turning his confused stare upon Oliver as if the concept was foreign to him.
Oliver nodded. "Forget her now," the halfling explained.
Luthien looked back to find that the woman and her pro-cession had disappeared from sight into the crowd.
"Forget her," Oliver said again, but Luthien doubted that to be an option.
The companions went back to their little apartment and dropped off their goods, then, at Oliver's insistence, went to the Dwelf. Luthien's thoughts lingered on the woman, and the implications of his strong feelings, as they sat by the bar in the familiar place.
He thought of Katerin, as well, the love of his youth. "Of my youth," he mumbled under his breath, considering how curious that thought sounded.
He had been with Katerin O'Hale just weeks before, but that life, that innocent exis-tence on Bedwydrin, seemed so far removed to him now, seemed another life in another world, a sweet dream lost in the face of harsh reality.
And what of Katerin? he wondered. Surely he had cared for her, perhaps had even loved her. But that love had not fired him, had not set his heart to pounding, as had the mere glimpse of the beautiful slave girl.
He couldn't know, of course, whether that fact should be attributed to honest feel-ings for the slave, or to the general changes that had occurred in Luthien's life, or to the simple fact that he was now living on the edge of catastrophe. Had all of his emotions been so amplified?
And if Katerin walked into the Dwelf at that mo-ment, how would Luthien have felt?
He did not know and could no longer follow his own rea-soning. All that Luthien understood was the lifting of his heart at the sight of the fair slave, and that was all he truly wanted to understand. He focused his thoughts on that look again, on the bright and huge green eyes peeking out at him from under those luxurious wheat-colored tresses.
Gradually the image faded, and Luthien again considered his present surroundings.
"Many of the Fairborn are held as slaves," Oliver was say-ing to him.
"Especially the half-breeds."
Luthien turned a fierce look upon the halfling, as though Oliver had just insulted his love.
"Half-breeds," the halfling said firmly. "Half elf and half human. They are not so rare."
"And they are held as slaves?" Luthien spat.
Oliver shrugged. "The pure Fairborn do not think highly of them, nor do the humans. But if you wish to cry tears for any race, my naive young friend, then cry for the dwarves. They, not the elves or the half-elves, are the lowest of Avon's hierarchy."
"And where do halflings fit in?" Luthien asked, somewhat nastily.
Oliver ran his hands behind his head, through his long and curly brown hair. "Wherever we choose to fit in, of course," he said, and he snapped his fingers in Luthien's face, then called for Tasman to refill his empty flagon.
Luthien let the discussion go at that and turned his private thoughts back to the woman and to the issue of slavery in general. There were no slaves on Bedwydrin--at least, none that Luthien knew of. All the faces were welcomed there, in peace and fairness, except for the cyclopians.
And now, with the edicts coming from Carlisle, even the one-eyes could not be turned away from the island's borders. Cyclopians on Bedwydrin would not find themselves welcomed at every door--even keepers of public inns had been known to tell them lies about no open rooms.
But slavery? Luthien found the whole issue thoroughly distasteful, and the thought that the woman he had spied, the beautiful and innocent creature who had so stolen his heart with just a glance, was a slave to a merchant filled his throat with a bitterness that no amount of ale could wash down.
Several drinks later, Luthien was still sitting at the bar, grumbling openly to himself about injustice and, to Oliver's disdain, vengeance.
Oliver elbowed Luthien hard, spilling the meager remain-ing contents of the young man's flagon down the front of Luthien's tunic. Fuming, Luthien turned a sharp gaze on his friend, but before he could speak out, Oliver was motioning for him to remain silent, and nodding for him to train his eyes and ears to a discussion going on between two roguish-looking men a few stools down.
"It's the Crimson Shadow, I tell ye!" one of them pro-claimed. " 'E's back, and Duke Morkney and his thievin' merchants'll get it good, don't ye doubt!"
"How can ye make the claim?" the other rogue asked, waving the notion away. "How long do Crimson Shadows live? What say you, Tasman? Me friend 'ere thinks the Crimson Shadow's come back from the dead to haunt Montfort."
"They seen the shadows, I tell ye," the first rogue insisted. "A slave friend telled me so! And no wash'll take 'em off, and no paint'll cover 'em!"
"There are whispers," Tasman interjected, wiping down the bar in front of the two slovenly rogues. "And if they are true," he asked the first rogue, "would you think it a good thing?"
"A good thing?" the man slurred incredulously. "Why I'd be glad indeed to see those fattened piggy merchants get theirs, I would!"
"But wouldn't your own take be less if this Crimson Shadow hits hard at the merchants?" Tasman reasoned. "And won't Duke Morkney place many more guards on the streets of the upper section?"
The rogue sat silent for a moment, considering the impli-cations. "A good thing!" he declared at last. "It's worth the price, I say, if them fatted swine get what's coming to them!" He swung about on his stool, nearly tumbling to the floor, and lifted his spilling flagon high in the air.
"To the Crimson Shadow!" he called out loudly, and to Luthien's surprise, at least a dozen flagons came up in the toast.
"A thief of some renown, indeed," Oliver mumbled, re-membering Brind'Amour's description when he had given Luthien the cape and bow.
"What are they talking about?" Luthien asked, his senses too dulled to figure it out.
"They are talking of you, silly thief," Oliver said casually, and he drained his flagon and hopped down from his stool. "Come, I must get you back to your bed."
Luthien sat quite still, staring dumbfoundedly at the two rogues, still not quite comprehending what they, or Oliver, were talking about.
He was thinking of the slave girl, then, all the way home, and long after Oliver dropped him onto his cot.
The second rogue, the doubtful one in the discussion of the Crimson Shadow, watched Oliver and Luthien leave the Dwelf with more than a passing interest. He left the tavern soon after, running a circuitous route along the streets to a secret gate in the wall to the upper section.
The cyclopian guards, recognizing the man but obviously not fond of him, watched him suspiciously as he crawled out the other side. He flashed them his merchant seal and ran on.
He had much to report.