Errant, p.43
Errant, page 43
“He isn’t worth it,” Aspen said. She brought her sword up to block her opponent’s swing, but she spoke to Tenacity. She even glanced his way so he knew she was talking to him. “He’s a liar and a murderer.”
“As if your hands are clean,” Pike spat from the other side of the melee. Aspen couldn’t see him, which worried her.
“I only killed when I had to, when the options were killing or being killed. You killed for greed and power.”
“He killed Integrity,” Tenacity’s friend mumbled, still in shock.
“He did,” Charm said. “He killed Integrity, and he tried to blame it on Aspen. He can’t get into the vault without her. I think everyone upstairs would want to hear that, don’t you?”
Aspen spared a moment for relief that Charm was getting out of the dungeon and worry that she was going to be out of Aspen’s protective radius. Then she had to put her whole focus into defending herself. Grace was larger than her. Stronger, too. He swung his sword with heavy strikes that rattled her teeth when she blocked them.
The tight space worked against her natural advantages. This was a fight of strength, not speed or cleverness. And as Aspen strained to keep her guard up, she had a twinge of doubt that she’d be able to win.
Grace brought his sword down on hers and used his leverage to pin her weapon down and out of the way. It took both her hands to struggle against him, but he was able to free one of his and take a swing at her.
Before his fist could collide with her face, there was a sword between them. Grace pulled back at the last second, rather than punching steel. The sword belonged to Tenacity.
“Which side are you on?” Grace demanded gruffly.
“The right one.” Tenacity shifted to clearly align himself with Aspen.
It was four against four now. Pike and his three guards against Aspen, Strength, Joy, and Tenacity. Better numbers than before, and Aspen didn’t have to worry about Charm being used as a hostage again. Whatever was happening upstairs, there was enough chaos to provide cover if Charm needed to run.
One of Pike’s loyal defenders—Idealism, Aspen thought—had slashed through the rope hobbling Pike’s ankles and then gallantly offered Pike his sword, since Aspen was currently in possession of Pike’s usual weapon. It was heavier than her own sword, not as fast, made for swinging rather than jabbing, but Aspen could handle anything.
And wielding Pike’s own sword against him would piss him off.
He charged her with Idealism’s sword, a blade as heavy as his own, and she took a leisurely step to the side. Pike’s momentum took him past Aspen, and she hit him hard across the back with the flat of her blade. Pike stumbled and cursed, but he didn’t completely lose his footing. When he spun around, his eyes were wild, fear and anger blending together in a dangerous mix.
Aspen shifted her stance and found herself with a reassuring presence at her back as Strength moved to mirror her position. She’d made a miscalculation just now. This wouldn’t be a fight that ended in her opponents tied up to meet the magistrate’s justice or to be given the chance to repent.
This would be a fight that ended with bodies on the ground.
Pike and his guards were already fighting to kill. If Aspen didn’t adjust her approach, it would be her body on the ground when this was all over.
Strength seemed to come to the same conclusion, because she laughed as she said, “Just like old times, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t what I intended when I suggested this reunion,” Aspen said.
“This is why I said yes.” Strength laughed again and then threw herself into the melee.
Strength still fought with the abandon that required someone to guard her back. Aspen wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia or trust that made Strength identify Aspen as someone who would stop a sword from being run through her. It was a familiar dance for Aspen, keeping Strength safe while she drove back the attackers on their other side. The only thing she needed for this to feel like the old days was Ayzeh here as well.
There were two Scale on Strength’s side of the fight and two on Aspen’s. It meant Aspen’s forces were united and Pike’s were split. She saw the moment Pike realized the battle was no longer in his favor, because he shoved Idealism in front of him and then took off running for the stairs.
“Coward!” Aspen shouted. She took advantage of Idealism’s surprise and slipped beneath his guard. He grabbed her wrist to try and keep her sword at bay, and she swept his feet out from under him with her leg. Idealism hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Aspen kicked his sword out of his reach and then looked over at Tenacity. “Tie him up. Only kill him if you have to.”
Tenacity nodded and Aspen sheathed Pike’s sword before she ran after the man himself. She wasn’t going to let him escape. And she wouldn’t let him find Charm and use her as leverage again. Pike’s reign ended today. She would chase him all the way to Ainbridge if she had to.
Aspen’s thighs burned as she took the stairs by two. This was more fighting than she’d done in quite some time. She wasn’t sure if she was out of shape or if this was a sign that her life had changed too much for her to be a hired sword anymore.
When Aspen made it to the main room, she saw that the fighting had started up again here as well. There were Strength’s people intermixed with members of Harstead Players and she saw a few Scale members who had changed sides. The battle was in favor of Aspen’s people, but she knew that winning a battle didn’t mean there weren’t any losses for her side. She wanted to end this before anyone got too hurt.
“Enough!” Aspen bellowed. Her voice didn’t carry like Charm’s, a spell that slipped through a room, but she had an instructor’s shout. The entire room stilled, everyone either startled by her shout or trained to respond to that tone.
Aspen took advantage of the stillness to point the tip of Pike’s sword at where Pike was standing. He was almost to the front doors, only a few strides away from what he no doubt saw as his escape.
The room was full of pairs or groups that had been fighting, but they parted to give Aspen a clear path to where Pike was. A few people, Scale and Aspen’s allies alike, even shifted to block Pike’s exit to the outdoors.
“You wanted me here,” Aspen reminded Pike. She’d been content to live a quiet life. At first as a sword-for-hire and then in whatever future Charm wanted. She’d been done with the Scale. Pike had hauled her back in. “I’m here. We end this today.”
Pike looked around, desperate for a save. When none appeared, his expression hardened. He stepped away from the door and gripped his borrowed sword in two hands. He knew he was backed into a corner and like anyone trained by Integrity, he would fight his way out of it.
Aspen spotted Charm out of the corner of her eye. Charm held a familiar sword hilt and belt toward Aspen. As satisfying as it would be to kill Pike with his own blade, Aspen knew she was going to need every advantage she could get on her side. She tossed Pike’s blade down the steps leading toward the dungeon. She smiled, sharp and unkind at his glare as his weapon was treated so callously.
Aspen took her sword from Charm, buckled on the belt, and mouthed thank you before she gave her full focus to Pike. As if Aspen was now the actor, the room shifted again, this time to form a large circle, creating an arena for Aspen and Pike to fight in.
It was time to see who Integrity had trained best.
Pike rushed her, jumping on the offensive. Aspen met his first swing with her own blade, and the sound of steel clanging against steel echoed through the room. This wasn’t the first time Aspen had fought Pike, but there were higher stakes now than there had ever been before. He used to fight her as if he had something to prove, and he didn’t pull any of his strength back. If their sword tips hadn’t been blunted, he could have done serious damage to her.
Today, he fought her intending to kill her.
She matched his intensity. Integrity always told her the reason he gave the Scale a mission and was so careful in selecting members for the group was because motivation could be what tipped a fight one way or another. If two people were matched in strength, it was their will that would determine a winner.
Since Pike fought for a permanent end to the rivalry they had had for years, Aspen had to as well. She slid her blade free and then drove the tip of her sword at Pike. He wasn’t expecting the attack and had to jump back to avoid being hit. He was off-balance now, and Aspen pressed her advantage.
She drove him back further. He no doubt expected her to fall into a defensive position, the way she’d favored during their training. This wasn’t a fight of endurance. And this wasn’t training. She had been locked in a jail cell, deprived of food and a good sleep. She’d already had two fights today. If she didn’t end this quickly, she wouldn’t like the way it ended.
Pike twisted and suddenly he was in her space. Their swords were locked together, the sharp edges merely inches from both their faces. They were close enough to feel each other’s breath. Pike’s lips curled in a cruel smile, and Aspen was too busy guessing at his thoughts to realize what his body was doing.
He knee slammed into her gut, and it was her turn to stumble back. She kept her balance, but she drew short breaths as she recovered. She brought her sword up in time to block Pike’s next thrust, but it was a weak guard.
It took too much time and too much energy for her to fully recover. By the time she was prepared to launch her own offensive, Pike was warmed up and comfortable. She was forced back on defense because he didn’t give her an opening to turn the flow of the fight.
Sweat dripped down her back and stung at her eyes. Her arms were tired and if she stood still for too long, her legs shook. She needed to end this. She saw a sliver of an opening, and she drove her sword forward. At the last second, Pike spun away from the attack. He came back at her with speed, and she fumbled through a defense.
He had her on the back foot, and he knew it. But he was tiring too, because he didn’t waste his breath mocking her. He simply drove forward, a relentless assault. He brought the flat of his blade down on her hand, and Aspen dropped her sword as pain rang through her bones.
Before she could grab her weapon, Pike kicked it aside. His smile was frightening now, and his eyes were lit up with imminent victory. He settled into a picture-perfect stance, emphasizing the sword in his hand and the lack of one in Aspen’s.
“What would Integrity say if you dropped your weapon?” Pike asked.
He wouldn’t have said anything. He would have looked at Aspen’s empty hand and then looked at her sword, and she would know to pick it up and then go through her exercises until her arms were too tired to lift her weapon.
Aspen eyed the tip of Pike’s blade and the coil of his leg muscles. “Are you going to talk or attack?” Aspen asked. Her words weren’t as steady as she would have liked. She was winded and now that she’d stopped moving, she could feel the heat on her face.
Pike drove forward, and Aspen side-stepped. She grabbed his wrist and yanked. She pulled him off-balance and right onto the knife she’d pulled its sheath on her belt. Pike gasped as the blade punctured his stomach. With a grunt, Aspen ripped the blade up.
“Integrity taught me never to rely on one weapon,” Aspen said. Her voice was low, meant only for Pike. She had been Integrity’s favorite, his heir, and Pike killed him because he was selfish.
She yanked her knife out and watched as Pike dropped his sword to clutch at the wound. Aspen hadn’t split him in half the way she wanted to, but it was a mortal wound. His hands were big enough to staunch the flow of blood, and gut wounds were tricky.
They were slow, too.
Aspen watched the spasms of pain on Pike’s face. She thought she’d feel victorious or satisfied watching him die. She thought seeing him hurt for what he’d done would help fill the emptiness that had been in her life since Integrity died and she ran from the Scale.
It didn’t make her feel good or whole or like she was seeing justice done. She stepped up to Pike. He didn’t put up any fight as she grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head back. She drew her knife across his throat. It was a quicker death this way. When his legs buckled, she let him go and he fell to the ground.
Aspen, now splattered with Pike’s blood, looked around the room. If anyone challenged her, she would lose. On the far side of the room, Strength shifted her weight, preparing for another fight. But Pike’s people, the ones who had remained loyal to him, they bent down to set their weapons on the ground.
Pike had always believed power trumped everything, and Aspen had proved herself by defeating him. She didn’t want his Scale. She could have led Integrity’s, maybe, but she didn’t want Pike’s. And she didn’t want the loyalty of his mercenaries. She wanted them gone.
She searched the crowd for what she really wanted. When her gaze landed on Charm, she couldn’t help but smile. Because Charm was standing there, whole and healthy. The threat against Aspen was gone. It wouldn’t put Charm in danger if they traveled together now. They could let their feelings for each other grow into a life together.
So Aspen wasn’t sure what to do when Charm said into the stunned silence of the room, “Take Integrity’s seal. We were interrupted earlier. It’s time to open that vault and finish this.”
Charm knew what was in the vault. She was the only one who knew. She must want Aspen to see it.
“I’m not Pike,” Aspen said. A weak, unnecessary start to addressing the crowd, but she had to say something. “I won’t run the Scale the way he did. I don’t want to run it at all. If you were fighting for loyalty to Pike, you’re free to go. Don’t cause trouble for me and I won’t cause trouble for you.”
Some of the fighters in the room picked up their weapons and shuffled out, battered and defeated. One was angry enough to spit on the floor. Aspen was too practical to think she’d truly seen the last of them, but she’d killed their leader and run them out of their home, so she’d have a little time before they’d be organized enough to try anything. Without Pike and the Scale behind them, they were nothing to fear.
She’d expected that. What surprised her was the number of people who stayed.
“What if we weren’t loyal to Pike?” Tenacity stepped forward. He’d switched sides in the battle. Behind him, Aspen recognized others who’d been fighting against Pike.
Before Aspen could shrug and tell them to go make new lives, Charm said, “Aspen. The vault.”
Aspen bent down to work Integrity’s ring off Pike’s rapidly cooling fingers. She retraced the now familiar path to the dungeon and the forbidding vault door, feeling foolish with the ring heavy in her hand. Charm might like an audience, but Aspen would prefer privacy while she failed at opening that thrice-rotted magic lock. It had caused her enough headaches already.
Integrity had died—had been murdered suddenly. He probably hadn’t had time to choose a successor. Aspen bet the spell wouldn’t open for anyone, regardless of what ring they were wearing.
She slipped the ring onto her finger. In a legend or a fairy tale, it would have fit perfectly. It was loose.
Aspen knew from the murmurs and footsteps behind her that a crowd had followed her down the stairs, but she could only stare at the vault door. She missed Integrity fiercely. She’d rather have him than whatever he’d thought was worth keeping in this silly vault.
She lifted her hand to grasp the door handle. She pulled.
It opened.
The hinges should have creaked with disuse, but Aspen supposed one of the benefits of an enchanted door was perfectly oiled silence. She left the vault hanging open and stepped inside.
A wooden chest sat on the floor. Years’ worth of dust lay over the top, recently disturbed by Charm’s fingerprints around the latch. Unlike the vault door, the chest wasn’t locked. Inside, the first thing Aspen found was a sealed envelope with her name on it in Integrity’s handwriting.
Charm must have seen this. She’d left it sealed, though.
Aspen broke it open.
Aspen, Integrity had written.
You’ll think this business with the vault and naming an heir is silly, no doubt.
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
But I have come to worry about the future of what I’ve created, and to wonder whether I’ll live to see that future. Whatever small legacy I’ve managed to create, I want to safeguard a part of it in this vault. These are my papers, records of how I ran the Hanging Scale and notes on what I wish I’d done differently—and a few letters, things I never managed to say to you, like this one.
I want you to have it. The papers, the house, the Scale, everything. I don’t want to burden you, though. You can toss it all aside if you like.
I know you’d only do that if you had found some other, better way to continue this work.
I trust you, Aspen.
Yours,
Integrity
Aspen blinked back tears. Branch, leaf, and root, she was glad nobody had read this letter aloud in public.
She’d never grieved him, not really. It had been too hard in the chaotic aftermath, and then Pike had run her out of Harstead and she’d had to focus on her own survival. But Integrity, for all he’d become a symbol, had been a person, too. A person she missed.
A person who’d left her his legacy.
If only she’d known that years ago. She could have stopped Pike from tainting the name of the Scale.
Was it too late now?
When she remembered the crowd of people waiting outside the vault, her heart leapt into her throat. She wished there was a paper in Integrity’s vault that would tell her what to say to them.
I trust you, Aspen.
She straightened her spine and strode out of the vault.
“I opened the door,” she said simply. “You all saw it. Integrity bequeathed everything he had—his papers, his house, his mission to tip the scales of the world in favor of justice—to me.”
“You said you didn’t want to run the Scale,” Tenacity said.
“I don’t,” Aspen said. “I don’t want to run Pike’s version of the Hanging Scale, and I don’t think so highly of myself that I could run Integrity’s. But there’s always work to be done, and I plan to do it. Maybe not under that name, or in this house, or with the tools we’re accustomed to using, but it’ll be the same work.”
