Errant volume three, p.1
Errant, Volume Three, page 1
ERRANT, VOLUME THREE
L. K. FLEET
Cover art illustrated and designed by Laya Rose (https://layaroseart.com/)
CONTENTS
Content Notes
Map
Birch Goldforest
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About the Author
CONTENT NOTES
These novellas contain mentions of intimate partner violence. There are also depictions of violence and mentions of blood and murder. There is an explicit scene of consensual sex.
BIRCH GOLDFOREST
1
The late spring rains weren’t enough to wash away the smell of piss in Ainbridge, and honestly if they had been, Charm would have hiked up her skirts and peed on the cobblestones herself. It was only right that this miserable city smell exactly as awful as it was.
Technically, Aspen had been breaking the law by wearing trousers since they’d crossed the border into Rispland, but until today, they’d been traveling through the woods. Here in the capital, people pointed or glared or averted their eyes, but the sword on her back kept anyone from trying to enforce the law where she was concerned.
Naturally, the sword was also illegal.
Holding Aspen’s hand would be illegal, too, and Charm was tempted to try it. It was only half contrariness—touching Aspen was what she wanted all the time, even now that she was permitted. Every night of their journey, they’d combined their bedrolls and slept tucked close to each other, and Charm still hadn’t had her fill.
Charm could admit to a contrary streak, though. She preferred dresses, and had changed into one as soon as they’d dismounted near Ainbridge’s southwestern gate, but knowing Rispland forbade women to wear trousers in public made her want to haul on a pair and parade through the streets.
Trousers would make it easier to keep up with Aspen’s pace. Charm grabbed handfuls of fabric to keep the hem of her skirt from dragging on the ground and picked her way through the crammed, uneven streets. She couldn’t blame Aspen for wanting to rush through. Charm hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place.
They were going to meet Aspen’s friend and former sister-in-arms Strength Dyer Lark. Aspen seemed to know where she was going—she’d mentioned working a few odd jobs in Rispland in years past, so the dark grey stone buildings and clogged street drains must be familiar—so Charm focused on not losing track of her among the hurried, oddly silent residents.
Not that it would have been possible. Aspen stood out, fierce and defiant. She didn’t even mean to make a statement. But even if she’d changed into a dull blue dress, as Charm had, and put away her sword and the myriad other weapons she carried, there was no disguising the power and threat in her stride.
Stooped, thin, elderly folks sweeping the steps paused to gape. Children wrestling in the streets stopped to whisper. Beggars shaking their dishes of coins went silent. There were a few louder comments, scoldings and insults, but the words were like badly aimed arrows. Aspen walked through them untouched.
As they passed into a different district, storehouses and alleys near the river docks, the remarks tapered off. The staring became less open and more furtive.
Charm couldn’t see the water of the Ain, only smell it, an earthier stink than the more crowded thoroughfares of Ainbridge. If they were on the roof of one of the city’s imposing stone structures, Charm would be able to see clear across to the wooded hills of Falland on the far side. Instead they were in this maze of looming, windowless buildings. There were no more cobblestones. The wet ground sucked at Charm’s slippers.
She gripped Ruby’s reins tighter and stuck close to Aspen. Charm was no stranger to thieves, being one herself, but she prided herself on the subtlety of picking pockets. Her victims never feared her because they never knew. Cornering someone in the shadows and taking their possessions at knifepoint was so vulgar.
They’d arrived in the afternoon and now evening was stretching the shadows longer. Among all these storehouses, there were quite a lot of dark little nooks to get attacked in. The few people that lingered here didn’t seem like they’d lend a hand.
Aspen wasn’t hurrying through this neighborhood. She’d relaxed.
“Here,” she said, pressing Mouse’s reins into Charm’s grip.
Both horses could hold their own in a fight, but being flanked by Mouse and Ruby set Charm further on edge. If Aspen wanted her hands free, she expected trouble.
Tempting the gods, Aspen turned them down an even more obscure path. Like all suspect alleyways, this one was damp and poorly lit, with empty crates and discarded produce scattered along the tall stone and timber walls. Some of the crates had been out here long enough for the wood to soften and rot through.
Charm wrinkled her nose and stepped over some shards of broken glass. “You take me to the nicest places,” she muttered.
Aspen laughed, light and easy, as if they weren’t in an unfriendly city in an unfriendly country, and in a dark alley to boot. “I didn’t choose the meeting spot.”
Charm tried to imagine what Strength might be like, based on her chosen dank alley.
Then a figure jumped out of the darkness and landed on Aspen’s back.
Charm didn’t understand until after it happened, so her scream came a beat too late to be useful. Aspen had already shaken off her attacker and drawn her sword. Charm backed against the stack of crates, heart in her throat, keeping the horses away from the fight. She hoped no one else was crouching up there ready to jump down.
Metal clanged as Aspen’s blade met the attacker’s. Charm could only see their back, but their build wasn’t too different from Aspen’s. Same height, a little thinner, wearing all black with a scarf wrapped around their head.
Unfortunately for Aspen, they seemed equally skilled with a sword.
Charm only knew theatrical swordplay, meant to make the audience gasp or cheer. This was faster and closer and involved a lot more stabbing motions. No dull, safe tips on the weapons, either.
It was hard to tell if anyone was winning.
Charm was reasonably certain Aspen hadn’t been stabbed yet. She would have made a noise, probably.
Last time Charm had found Aspen fighting someone in an alley and tried to help by throwing a rock, Aspen had been frustrated with her. Still, it was never a bad idea to have a rock in hand. From the smell of it, this alley was more likely to contain slimy old cabbage than anything that could crack a skull, but Charm examined the ground by her feet.
The scrape of metal on metal rang out. Aspen and her attacker were intertwined, the guards on their swords colliding.
The attacker tossed their sword to the ground.
Before Charm could blink, Aspen had done the same. Her precious sword, right down in the mud.
The attacker launched a kick at Aspen. Aspen dodged and returned an attack of her own, feet and fists flying. Her opponent whirled out of the way, then came back for more.
Aspen laughed.
Holy Esmuste. They weren’t really fighting. The attacker was Strength.
Or rather, they were really fighting, they just weren’t trying to hurt each other. The hand-to-hand combat went on for quite some time. With some study, Charm could see it: they didn’t pull their punches, but they never went for anything particularly painful or lethal, either. The Traveling Harstead Players didn’t choreograph fights this long. This one wasn’t telling any story except “these two very annoying women love to hit each other.”
“You could have told me it was for fun,” Charm called.
Neither of them answered her.
“Can you believe this?” Charm asked Mouse and Ruby. The horses kept their own counsel.
Aspen knocked Strength to the ground and pulled the scarf from her face, which renewed Charm’s interest in the fight. Were all Aspen’s former Hanging Scale compatriots unfairly fucking gorgeous?
No, all the bad ones had been normal-looking. Aspen just had really good taste in friends.
Strength’s complexion wasn’t quite as pale as Aspen’s, but it was lighter and more golden than Charm’s brown skin. Her straight black hair was cut short, angled toward her chin. If her mouth looked that good twisted in a snarl, she was probably knee-weakening when she smiled.
She was tall, too, and strong enough to hold her own against Aspen in a fight.
Charm hoped Strength was just a friend. Aspen’s “friend” Ayzeh had turned out to be a former bedmate. Charm was confident in her ability to compete with almost anyone, but if Aspen wanted a lover who’d duel her and throw punches and roll around in the dirt, Charm would have to step aside.
At least she’d gotten in a few kisses and caresses while she could. And to witness this fight—even through the haze of jealousy, it was hot. Aspen and Strength were both so clearly enjoying themselves. And they both had incredible thighs.
Aspen flipped Strength onto her back and straddled her, planting a palm on her sternum. “I know you’ll never yield, but at this point it’s rude not to introduce you to my… Charm.”
Strength lifted her head. “Hi.”
“Is this how you greet all your friends?” Charm asked.
“Only the ones who don’t write,” Strength said. She shoved at Aspen. “Get off me, I’ll show you my place.”
Brushing themselves off did nothing. They were both covered in mud. Strength hugged Aspen, inclin ed her head politely to Charm, and then led them out of the alley. Aspen was sweaty and filthy and grinning bright as noon.
2
Strength was clearly trying to confuse anyone who might be watching their progress through the neighborhood. Aspen kept the river in mind as a landmark, so even in the labyrinth of alleys and indistinct buildings, she could tell they were going in circles.
The dread and despair wasn’t quite as thick in the air here as it had been in the city center. Aspen didn’t mind the surveillance from smugglers and river pirates and other, worse types nearly as much as she minded the law. Criminals didn’t care how she dressed or wore her hair.
The people in charge in Ainbridge, the ones who collected taxes from the poor and gave nothing back, they ought to be considered criminals, too. That kind of theft was legal. Harstead had its share of poverty and corruption, but nothing to this degree.
If Pike gained more power with his version of the Hanging Scale, how many farmers and shopkeepers would be paying him protection?
Strength nodded at a kid leaning against a wall and then led them through a huge open door in one of the storehouses. “You can stable the horses inside.”
It was massive and dim in the building. Aspen couldn’t tell by scent or sight what was stored in the jumbled stacks of boxes or piles of burlap sacks. There was a makeshift pen inside the door with straw covering the floor and a feeder full of hay, so she removed Mouse and Ruby’s tack, gave them a quick brushing, and left them.
“What is this place?” Charm asked Strength.
“It doesn’t have a name,” Strength said. “I’m not much for names and symbols and all that anymore. It’s just a place people come if they need something. Clothes, dry goods, help.”
Deeper into the building, there was a clearing among the stacks with a round table and some battered crates for chairs. Two were occupied by young people—one of the Earth and one of the Wind, with a gorgeous pair of speckled brown wings—scowling at their playing cards. A third had been pushed back from a table. The person who’d been sitting in it, large and heavily armed, was quietly conferring with a raggedly thin youth carrying a fussy baby and trailing another very small child by the hand.
“That’s Joy,” Strength said, indicating the person who’d left the card game. “A local who joined me a few years back. He’s not as mean as he looks.”
Joy, bearded and muscular and bristling with knives, could be less mean than he looked and still be pretty mean, Aspen thought. There was a little grey in his black hair and a long scar slashing diagonally across the pale skin of his face, so she put him in his 30s, at least. He handed the youth a burlap sack of something and then crouched down to smile at the child, who smiled back. The youth thanked Joy and then the small family went on their way, nodding at Strength as they passed.
“Aspen, you might recognize these other two reprobates,” Strength continued, indicating the pair at the card table. “They came with me when I left the Scale, though they were barely out of swaddling back then.”
“We’re nineteen,” said Earth one, aggrieved.
Aspen tried to picture their face six years ago. “Mercy?”
“You remember!”
They’d been a tiny slip of a thing when Aspen had last seen them, one of the orphans Integrity had taken in. It was hard to tell while they were seated, but she suspected they might be almost the same height as her now. They’d adopted a piratical air with little gold hoops along the length of each ear and geometric black tattoos encircling both their wiry, dark brown arms.
“And you,” Aspen said to Strength’s young Wind companion. “Your wings were a different color last time we met, Soar.”
The One Who Soars to Great Heights hunched her wings. A little color came into her freckled, sun-browned cheeks. “I was still a fledgling then. I was a late bloomer.”
Aspen and Charm had rescued a Wind boy recently, much younger than Soar, who’d come into his brilliant red feathers early in life. The eye-catching shade had caused him no end of trouble, so perhaps Soar was lucky, but Aspen didn’t have a chance to say so.
“Remember when you molted so much that I collected all your grey fluff and stuffed it into a second pillow?” Mercy asked. “That was the best pillow I ever had, you should molt again.”
“Remember last week when you tried to ask out Tenacity and they ran away?” Soar asked, shoving Mercy in the shoulder.
“Shut up.”
“I’m glad to see both of you again,” Aspen said to interrupt their play fight. She opted not to say the word alive. Strength was, apparently, not terrible at raising adolescents—if you didn’t get too picky about manners. “This is my friend Charm. She’s an actor.”
After the cessation of hostilities, Mercy and Soar had both settled on staring at Charm. Even without her usual adornments and in an uncharacteristically modest dress, Charm attracted attention. She gave a delicate little curtsy like she’d just been presented to royalty, making both teens giggle.
“I assume Strength already introduced me,” Joy said, coming back to the table. “Welcome. Please sit.”
They all pulled up crates. Mercy and Soar gathered up the card game and then went to fetch refreshments.
“Anything you want to say to me, you can say to them, even the young ones. They’re better trained than you’d think,” Strength said.
Mercy and Soar came back with a pitcher of water, some clay cups, and a tray of bread and cheese.
Strength said, “So let’s talk about what kind of trouble you’re in. Why don’t you give my friends the short version?”
“The Scale is hunting her,” Charm said shortly. “And by extension, also me. We hid in Ozhleh Zna for the winter, but we couldn’t stay there forever. We need to put a stop to this.”
“While I would gladly put a blade in Honor Huntsman Pike’s lying, treacherous heart, or his eye, or anywhere else, I do have a question or two,” Strength said. “When you say ‘put a stop to this,’ what exactly is our goal? Are we busting down the door and killing everybody? I don’t object to that—in fact I’m great at it—I just want to know in advance.”
Charm glanced at Aspen, letting her take the lead.
“I’d prefer to avoid a bloodbath,” Aspen said and pressed her lips together as Strength shrugged. “First, we have no guarantee it wouldn’t be our blood. There are more of them than us. Second, the Hanging Scale still operates out of Rennell Manor, Integrity’s townhouse in Harstead, but even if we storm the building, we’ll never catch every member inside. Some of them will be out in the hills working protection schemes, or who knows what else, and if they come home to a slaughter, they’ll come after me. That doesn’t solve our central problem, which is that I would like to live my life without spending every other day fighting off assassins.”
“Me too,” Charm said. “I would also like her to live her life without that.”
“So what then?” Strength asked. “You’re going to ask Pike very nicely to stop? Why’s he so obsessed with you, anyway? I didn’t go along with his bullshit, either, and he hasn’t sent me so much as a poison pen letter. Honestly, it’s hurtful. Do you get special treatment because you were Integrity’s favorite? Harvest God’s sickle, I bet that’s it. Pike was always jealous.”
“Um,” Aspen said. “It’s… not quite that, exactly. After Integrity died—”
“Was murdered,” Strength interrupted.
“Pike tried to blame me,” Aspen said. “I think he still holds me responsible. He must want to make an example of me.”
“I always thought it was bizarre that he revered Integrity so much when they had such opposite values,” Strength said. “Frankly, I always assumed it was Pike who killed Integrity.”
“I don’t think he revered Integrity, not really,” Aspen said. “He coveted what Integrity had—what he thought Integrity had. Power. Control of the whole organization. Do you really think Pike would have killed for that?”
