Errant volume three, p.9
Errant, Volume Three, page 9
Maybe she could be that person for others, too.
“I’ll enjoy killing you,” Amity said, leaning menacingly close to the iron grate planted on the stage.
From behind the bars, Pine spit in his face.
“No,” Charm shouted from her seat in the pit. “She would never do that. She’s more… subtle. She’s in prison, biding her time, waiting for the right moment to strike.”
“More subtle is more boring,” Pine complained. “I’m supposed to be tough and intimidating and I never get to act like it.”
“Birch doesn’t need to act like it,” Charm said. “She just is.”
Seated next to Charm, Aspen resisted the urge to cover her face with her hands. It had been a mistake to give Charm permission to write and direct Birch Goldforest, a play in which a stoic wandering swordswoman was hunted by and then sought revenge on a nefarious organization called the Swinging Balance. In the course of the story, Birch slowly and reluctantly fell in love with a dashing and flirtatious pickpocket named Dream, played, naturally, by Charm herself.
The terrible irony of Charm directing anyone in the world to be more subtle was not lost on Aspen.
“Run it again,” Charm said to Pine and Amity.
Pine resumed her tense stance inside the stage’s prison, and then broke character to cast an apologetic glance at Aspen. “Sorry for calling you boring.”
Aspen smiled and shrugged. “As long as you get the swordplay right, I don’t care.”
Pine was a fairly adept student, which was why Charm had chosen her for the role. Like most of the actors, she had an exasperating tendency to want to add flourishes to her swordfights where none were necessary, but Aspen had stopped trying to correct this after Charm had explained that a good fight on the stage wasn’t the same as a good fight in real life. Despite the differences, Aspen had enjoyed sheathing her steel and exchanging it for a practice sword. The Harstead Players were much less sloppy than they had been before she’d started teaching them, and a few of them might even survive a real fight.
Not that Aspen wanted that. Life had been mercifully free of violence these past few weeks. None of Pike’s former lackeys had caused her or anyone else any trouble, as far as Aspen could tell. Tenacity and the few others who’d wanted her to lead them had hung around hoping for instructions, but Aspen didn’t know what to tell them, other than to help build sets for the theater troupe, which they’d done with puzzlement but without complaint.
When Aspen had privately expressed her own befuddlement to Charm about why so many people seemed to be awaiting her next pronouncement, Charm had kissed her temple and said, “So you need a little time. It’s not a crime to take a break.”
Aspen wasn’t sure what she was taking a break from. It was nice, living with Charm and helping the troupe with swordplay and a few other tasks, but it was also a little bit… quiet. She’d written to her far-flung friends and even to her remaining family and neighbors in the distant Silverglade, and it had been wonderful to receive responses, but it didn’t solve the problem. Aspen had been taking longer and longer morning rides with Mouse, restless and searching for something. She didn’t know what.
It wasn’t until after Birch Goldforest had debuted and run for several weeks that she found it.
Flick always knocked on the wagon door in the same pattern. Charm wasn’t expecting the rhythm to interrupt the morning rain. She swung the door open to find Flick, as disgruntled as a cat to have water drizzling over his blue scales, accompanied by an even more drenched and bedraggled young person.
“This is… well, she hasn’t given me her name,” Flick said. “But she’s looking for Aspen.”
The young woman’s black hair was plastered to her milk-white skin like she’d been out in the rain all night.
Beside Charm, Aspen tensed at the sight.
Charm silently let go of all the work she’d done to get Aspen to stay inside—in bed—this wet morning. These days, it was hard to get Aspen to sit still for anything, even a cuddle under a wool blanket. She was always pacing, moving, looking for something.
Charm had a feeling they wouldn’t be going back to bed any time soon.
“Well, if you’re looking for Aspen, you’ve found her. Come in,” Charm said, going to sort through her trunk for something dry to give them. Flick and the tiny stranger would both swim in Charm’s clothing, and judging from Flick’s scales, it wasn’t a day for dresses, anyway. Aspen still barely owned any clothes. Charm passed the guests some blankets. It would have to do.
Aspen introduced herself and waited while the stranger mopped her face with the blanket.
“It’s real, then?” the stranger asked. “The story in the play?”
“Not exactly,” Aspen said.
“Close enough,” Charm countered. She took a guess. “You’re here because you need help.”
The young woman nodded. “I’m a seamstress, or I was. I worked in a shop with some others, but there’s a woman who’s bought up all the shops. She takes our wages and doesn’t pay us unless we do what she says. Sometimes she locks us in the workshop and puts an armed guard outside. Last night I crawled out a window—I’m the smallest of us.”
“That’s terrible,” Aspen said. “You have my sympathies. But it’s a problem for the city guard.”
“That’s the thing. The woman, she’s married to the captain of the guard. He won’t stop her. But you could.”
Charm nodded, knowing deep down that this was it. She’d written that play for a reason other than making Aspen squirm uncomfortably. People needed help. They needed to know there was someone who could help them.
Aspen hesitated. “I’m just a woman with a sword.”
And a bow. And a lot of knives. And two feet and two fists besides. But Charm didn’t need to say any of that. The stranger already knew.
“This doesn’t sound like the kind of problem that gets solved by a sword,” Aspen continued.
Flick surprised Charm by saying exactly what she herself had been thinking. “It might be the kind of problem that gets solved by a bit of theater.”
“A little trickery, a little theft. I bet we could get her to leave you in peace. Maybe get you some of your stolen wages, too.” Charm shared a smile with Flick. Aspen might still be working through her feelings, but the two of them were on the same page. “And in my experience, it helps to have a woman with a sword around. Even if she’s not using it to draw blood.”
“You want to do this?” Aspen asked, searching Flick and Charm’s faces with an earnest doubt that made Charm’s heart squeeze in her chest.
“You think you dragged me all over Falland rescuing kids and I didn’t develop a taste for good deeds?” Charm asked. “Yes. I want to.”
“Rescuing Sky was your idea,” Aspen murmured. “Right. Yes. Let’s think about what we could do to get their seamstresses their wages and their shop and make sure this woman never bothers them again.”
The seamstress’s face broke into a smile. “Thank you so much.”
Flick took her to find somewhere warm and dry to rest, leaving Charm and Aspen alone in the wagon.
“I didn’t expect you to hesitate,” Charm said. “You love a damsel in distress.”
“I wanted to help her from the beginning,” Aspen said. “Like I said, I’m not the right person for the job. But once you and Flick wanted in—well, I think together, we might be the right people for the job.”
Charm reached for her hand. “That sounds exactly right to me. You know everyone else will want to help, too. Mercy and Soar. Tenacity and the others who deserted Pike. They’ve been waiting for something like this.”
“I have, too. It’s just one woman—or one shop, but still, it’s important.”
“Well,” Charm said. She stood from the bed and went to search her vanity, then returned with a packet of letters. “We were distracted last night after the play, but these were delivered to me.”
Aspen’s eyes widened as she flipped through the pages, each one a plea for help from someone caught in circumstances just like the seamstress, with some problem the city guard couldn’t or wouldn’t solve.
“It will take a lot of work to help all these people,” Aspen said.
“Then it’s a good thing you won’t be doing it alone.”
Aspen smiled, lifted Charm’s hand, and kissed the tips of her fingers and then her palm. “And it will take a long time.”
“There will be more letters,” Charm agreed, a little breathless. “It might take the rest of our lives.”
“I hope so,” Aspen said, kissing the inside of Charm’s wrist. “Spending time with you, helping people—that’s exactly how I want to live.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. K. Fleet is the pen name for the trio of authors K. R. Collins, Felicia Davin, and Valentine Wheeler. They are longtime friends who share a love of fantasy settings and romance tropes. Errant, a series of sapphic fantasy novellas, is the first thing they have written together.
Their website is LKFleet.com.
L. K. Fleet, Errant, Volume Three
