The room was warm and well lit. Most of the light came from lanterns and candles around a large desk in one corner and the farthest corners were darkly shadowed. Firelight cast dancing shadows on the walls and made the room feel comfortable and welcoming. A couple of over-stuffed armchairs flanked the fireplace with a brightly coloured rag rug between them. A door opposite the fireplace led into a darkened bedroom but it was obvious that the room's owner spent most nights on the couch next to his desk.
The only sound in the room was the steady scratch of a pen on paper and the occasional noise of shuffling papers. Denil had been working steadily since before dawn, barely aware of the changing light and long hours. He had ignored the boys who came in and lit the candles and had no idea that there was a long-standing rota of students who came in to feed his fire and add oil to his lanterns. The delicate, crackling pages that he was translating demanded his complete attention and he would not stop until he fell asleep at his desk or something interrupted him.
He jumped and almost knocked over his inkpot when someone roughly shook his shoulder.
"Denil of Errith?" a voice asked.
Denil reassured himself that the precious papers had escaped harm and put the lid on his ink before turning in the chair to look up at the interloper. An irritated retort died on his tongue and he was reduced to stuttering twice and giving up. The man in front of him was a stranger. Denil might not spend much time in the university common rooms but he was sure that he had never seen this man before. Amused brown eyes stared down at him and Denil cursed inwardly as he realised that he must look like a stammering fool. The man had greying hair and lines around his eyes but they implied a slightly battered vitality rather than approaching senility.
"Denil of Errith?" the man asked again.
"Uh, yes."
A crooked smile crossed the man's face. "So you can talk! For a moment I was afraid I'd been sent to seek out a mute."
"No, I'm not a mute. I'm just surprised." Denil cleared his throat and wished the man would sit down. "I don't get many people simply walking into my rooms."
"I knocked. Three times. I called your name. I wasn't going to walk away just because you don't answer your door."
"Oh." Denil winced. "I was in the middle of something. I can get a little engrossed."
"I noticed."
There was silence for a long moment. Denil could not stop staring up at the man and hoped he did not look as much like a gaping fish as he felt. All his usual verbosity had deserted him the moment this man shook his shoulder.
"So . . ."
"So . . ."
They broke off and eyed each other warily. Eventually, the man held out his hand and Denil shook it.
"Jak Kern," the stranger introduced himself. "I've been looking for you."
"So I gathered."
"I need your help on something."
"I can try."
Jak shook his head. "It's not a simple matter. Could I sit down?"
Denil nodded and gestured to one of the chairs by the hearth. "Would you like something to drink?"
Jak sank into the chair gratefully and stretched out his legs. "That would be great. I could eat if you've got anything."
Denil had barely pulled the bell chord to summon someone when his door opened and a tousled blonde head peeked around it. The head belonged to a ten year-old boy called Jame that Denil had been tutoring in Old Elvish.
"Can I get you anything?" Jame asked, staring at Jak with wide eyes.
"Tea?" Denil said uncertainly, watching Jak's expression for clues. "Or maybe wine. We could probably eat whatever the kitchen is serving tonight."
Jame nodded and scampered out. Denil sat down opposite Jak and rotated his neck to work out the kinks and cramps from spending hours bent over his studies. Jak had his eyes closed but his body radiated tension. His plain linen shirt, grey jerkin and loose breeches were labourer's clothing but the sword belted at his waist and the knife handles poking out of the tops of his boots told Denil that he was not that easily categorised. The cut of the jerkin looked to be from Entorn, but the nearest border of that country was at least two weeks journey from the university.
"What are you looking for?" Jak asked without opening his eyes. "I'm not going to eat you or turn into a demon, don't you worry."
"I wasn't worried," Denil said quickly, flushing. "I was just wondering where you came from."
"Here and there. I've been living in Genta for the past few years."
Genta was a town to the east and slightly north of the university, just over the border in Entorn. It was also the town that held the main academy of wizards. Jak did not look to be a tradesman or a servant and his eyes were brown so he couldn't be a wizard. The only trades that left were guard, constable or mercenary.
"I'm with the Genta Watch," Jak elaborated. "They've given me a long sabbatical from duty for this."
The scholar was saved from trying to make a reply by a knock at the door. Jame entered with a tray and hovered in the middle of the room, looking for a safe place to put it. Denil found a low table hidden under several maps in a dark corner and dragged it over to the armchairs. The boy put his tray on the table along with two flasks of wine and left the room with a shy smile for Denil.
"You've got an admirer," Jak observed.
Denil was busy taking the covers off the plates and finding a safe place for them, finally just deciding to put them on the floor.
"I'm teaching him," he said when it became obvious that some response was required. "He has a talent for languages."
"So do you, I've been told. Twenty, is it?"
"Twenty-three," Denil corrected absently, his nose twitching at the aroma rising from the plates.
"Who's counting? That smells good."
Denil handed Jak a plate and cutlery before taking his own and sitting down again. The kitchen had sent slices of beef covered with gravy, roasted potatoes and parsnips, and a dish of green beans and carrots. He helped himself to a good portion of the vegetables and handed the dish to Jak. Both men ate in silence, devouring the food as though they had been starved for a week. There was a basket of bread to mop up the gravy and Denil was eating his second piece before he felt ready to ask questions.
"What do you need me to do?" he asked.
Jak poured them each a cup of wine and raised his in a silent toast.
"I can't tell you until I know you're going to help me," he said.
Denil shook his head. "How can I agree to help if I don't know what you need? I could be committing myself to anything."
"I'm not asking you to kill anyone or do anything you might have some ethical thing about. I just need a translation," Jak said.
"A translation of what? And why come to me?"
Jak shrugged. "They said you're the best."
"What is the translation?"
"Ah, now there's where we hit that pesky 'can't tell you until you agree to help' thing. It's not my condition. The folks who sent me wouldn't want me telling everyone I meet about this."
Denil raised an eyebrow. "I'm not everyone. I'm just one linguist."
"There's a principle involved here. Don't ask me what it is, but I'm told there's a principle. It's something about ignorance and knowledge that went way over my head when they explained. They seemed pretty adamant about it and I find that letting wizards have their way over something they're adamant about is much less painful in the long term."
"Wizards?" Denil shook his head. "In that case you can forget it and find another linguist. Wizards always have their own schedule and usually consider the people they employ to be expendable."
"I can make it worth your while," Jak said, patting a pouch on his belt significantly. "Wizards pay well."
"I'd have a better return on my investment if I sold my soul to a demon," Denil noted.
"Some things are worth more than a soul," Jak muttered quietly.
"Such as?"
Jak studied the man sitting opposite him and weighed up his choices. Denil had a determined set to his chin and probably had a stubborn streak a mile wide. The books and artefacts that filled the room were worth a small fortune and yet the man was clad in threadbare old clothes that should have been cut up for rags years ago. He had shown no interest in the heavy pouch of money and everything about him suggested that money would not motivate him. On the other hand, his blue eyes were expressive and filled with honesty. Maybe the truth was the only thing Jak had that could tempt the linguist.
Denil was staring at him with open curiosity, his eyes flickering over his face and taking in everything. Jak knew that he had to make a choice or risk losing his only chance at saving his son.
"Can I trust you?" he asked.
Denil did not hesitate. "Yes. I give you my word that I won't betray anything you say in this room."
Oddly, Jak found that he believed the man. Ordinarily trust did not come easily to him but he found himself fighting against an instinctive faith in the linguist. He needed Denil's help so Jak allowed himself to stop fighting and just trust in his own instincts.
"I need your help to find my son," he said quietly.
Denil's eyes widened and instantly filled with compassion.
"What can I do?" he asked.
"There's a book that might hold clues about where my son was taken. The problem is that nobody recognises the language so the wizards have no idea what the book says. We need you to do the translation."
"Do you have it with you?"
"No. The wizards wouldn't let me take it out of their library. I have to take you to it."
Denil stared into his cup of wine and seemed surprised to find that it was empty. He re-filled it and offered the flask to Jak.
"What happened to your son?" Denil asked.
Jak took a large gulp of wine before answering. "I'm not entirely sure. I was putting him to bed two months ago when a blue...vortex, they called it...appeared. Four men came through. I tried to hold them off but it was my son's bedroom and I don't allow weapons in there. When I came round the vortex was gone and so was Charry. I haven't seen him since. The wizards have never heard of anything like it before. I found a book in the restricted section of their library with a picture on the front that looks just like the vortex. It's the only hint I've found but nobody can even tell me whether it's relevant. I'm told that you're the leading authority on dead languages so here I am."
Denil was silent for a while, sipping his wine and staring into the fireplace. He refilled the cup and had almost drained it again before he spoke.
"Let me think on it tonight and I'll give you my answer tomorrow," he said. "You can't go anywhere tonight anyway. There's a storm coming in and you'll be hip deep in snow before you find an inn."
Jak could not see out of the windows, shutters covered them all, but he had been out there less than two hours ago and the sky had been clear.
"How can you be so certain?"
A faint smile played at the edge of Denil's lips. "I have weather-sense. A useless gift for a scholar, but at least I never get caught out in the rain."
"I can think of a few uses," Jak mused.
"I'm sure you can, but my studies take precedence over everything else for me."
"Everything?"
Denil nodded. "Everything."
Jak could not imagine a book or an idea that was important enough to sacrifice everything for. He knew that he would be willing to give up everything for Charry but his son was not an abstract concept. The boy was a flesh and blood human, his son in every way that mattered, and he would challenge any father to feel differently. Ideas, even books, paled into significance compared to the feelings a person could have for another person.
"Are your studies more important than my son?" Jak asked.
"I don't know." Denil refused to meet his eyes. "There are a lot of issues to consider. It would take at least a month to get to Genta, and then there's no knowing how long the translation would take. You don't even know what the language is. If it's one I know then I could have your answers in a few days but if I have to start from scratch with a new language...it could take me months."
Jak focused on the only part of the speech that he could challenge. "Two weeks. It only took me two weeks to get here so it will take us two weeks to return."
Denil shook his head. "There are storm systems piling up around us. You only just got here before winter began. If we want to get to Genta alive, we'll have to travel slowly and find shelter during each storm otherwise we could die out there in a few hours."
"You know this for certain?"
"I do. I can feel the storms out there."
"How long will tonight's storm last?"
"A day, maybe two."
Two days. Maybe a month or more travelling and then the time to translate. Jak could feel Charry getting further and further away.
"I'll have an answer for you by the time you leave," Denil said quietly. "My word on it."
Jak took a deep breath and scrubbed a hand over his face. The wine and the exhaustion from two weeks of hard travel must be affecting his emotions. It was taking all his restraint not to break down and beg for Denil's help. Maybe by the time the storm ended that restraint would be gone. He reached for the second flask of wine and was surprised to find only a drop sloshing in the bottom. They had consumed it all between them. Denil did not seem affected but when he looked closer he could see that the linguist's eyes were slightly glassy and he was using exaggerated caution as he put his cup on the table.
"You look like you could use some sleep," Denil suggested.
"I look drunk," Jak corrected. "But I could use some sleep. Do you have any guest rooms here?"
Denil began collecting up the plates and cups and putting them on the tray.
"You can take mine," he offered as he carried the tray to the door.
Jak was not naïve enough to put his sudden flush of heat down to the wine. Denil was an attractive man and it had been a long time since he'd had the time to look at anyone. Jak was also not stupid enough to mix sex with business and if he handled Denil wrong then he would lose any chance at finding his son.
"Where will you sleep?" he asked carefully.
Denil did not reply for a moment. He opened the door and handed the tray to the student waiting outside, whispering something to him before he closed the door.
"I usually sleep on the couch," Denil said. "You won't be putting me out."
"Thank you," Jak said.
He stood and followed Denil's gesture into the bedroom. A moment later he swore and moved back to the doorway.
"Denil, it's freezing in here," he complained. "A man could die of frostbite by morning."
The linguist was already pulling blankets and a pallet out of a cupboard.
"I know. The man who owned these rooms before me was paranoid and had all the hearths blocked. I've never got around to getting that one fixed."
Jak stalked across the room and helped Denil to make up a pallet on the floor near the fire.
"How long have you had these rooms?" he asked.
Denil shrugged. "Five years or so. Something else always seems to be more important."
Jak flicked a meaningful glance at the cluttered desk. "I can guess what. You need to get something else in your life."
"I'm fine, Jak," Denil said as he straightened up. "I guess this is something you'll never understand."
"No, it probably isn't."
Jak pulled off his boots and unbuckled his sword to prop it up by one of the armchairs. After a slight hesitation he put his pouch of money on the table so it would not jab him in the back while he slept and tucked one of his knives under his pillow. Denil said nothing about the knife although his expression spoke volumes. Jak returned the look, challenging him to say something, but the linguist just shrugged and pulled off his own boots. It was only when Jak was trying to find a comfortable position on the pallet that he realised they had left all the candles and lanterns blazing. Denil, a lumpy shape under his blankets on the couch, did not seem worried about it but Jak had never been able to sleep in a lit room. The candles needed to be snuffed and the fire banked so that nothing could accidentally catch fire during the night.
He had just made up his mind to get up and put out the candles when sleep stole over him and tugged him abruptly into darkness.
The study was cold and silent when Jak woke up. His pallet provided little comfort on the hard floor and the fire that had burned so warmly last night was now just ash. He rolled over and grunted quietly as stiff, cold joints protested painfully.
Maybe the bed in the cold bedroom might not have been such a bad idea, he thought.
It certainly did not feel like the floor was the better option in the freezing light of day. There was a cold draft blowing across him from somewhere.
Jak propped himself up on his elbows and squinted around the dim room. The shutters on the window had been thrown open but little light came though. Apparently, Denil had been right about the storm.
The couch in the corner was empty, although the blankets were rumpled and the pillow still held a faint impression of Denil's head. Jak could tell with one glance that the scholar was no longer in the rooms. There was nowhere to hide and it looked like the papers on the desk had been tidied slightly. There also did not seem to be any notes or clues as to Denil's current whereabouts.
The room was getting colder by the minute and Jak shivered as the draft viciously blew into a gap between his back and the blankets. He threw them back and stood up to stretch the stiffness and kinks out of his joints before rolling up the pallet and putting it back in its cupboard. He would probably need it again. A quick glance out of the window had shown a blizzard outside and Jak suspected that it would be nightfall before the snow stopped.
His pack and sword leaned against the wall next to the door and Jak could easily see that neither had been touched while he slept. Denil was either highly incurious, a trait Jak could not believe of the scholar, or he was surprisingly honest. From his observations last night, Jak was inclined towards the second option.
The chilly room was starting to make him shiver. Jak dug clean, warmer clothes out of his pack and looked around the room again, wondering where he could relieve himself and wash up. A quiet giggle from beyond the study's outer door made him frown until he remembered the students who had been 'guarding' Denil's door last night. They would certainly know their way around the university and would probably be able to give him some clues as to Denil's location. Jak rolled his shaving kit up with his clothes and opened the door, shivering harder at the blast of cold air that met him.
Two girls were sitting on the bench next to the door. At least, Jak assumed they were girls from the long blonde braids they each wore. They were both bundled in blue breeches and thick woollen sweaters with brightly coloured, striped scarves wrapped around their necks. Their fingerless gloves had stripes to match the scarves and they were concentrating intently on the string cats-cradle on one girl's fingers. The other girl made some complicated finger movements and the string was transferred to her in an even more complex pattern.
Jak cleared his throat and the girls jumped, the cats-cradle holder losing her grip on the string so that it ended up in a tangled snarl. She tugged at it and frowned as the knots tightened around her fingers. The faces that turned to him with identical pouts were so alike that Jak concluded they were twins.
"Hi," he said, giving them a small wave and trying to look friendly.
The blonde twins stared at him with matching looks of suspicion.
"I'm Jak," he continued. "A friend of Denil's."
"Master Denil said you were here," one of the girls said.
"He's gone out," her twin added.
"I noticed," Jak said. "Do you know where he's gone?"
The girls exchanged glances and then the one with the cats-cradle held up her tangled hands.
"That depends..." she said pointedly.
Jak grinned at her before putting his rolled clothes on the bench and kneeling down in front of her to tackle the knots.
"What are your names?" he asked.
The girl with the cats-cradle, who Jak was quickly realising was the leader of the pair, offered him a sweet smile and said, "I'm Anna. This is Sanna. We're twins."
Jak winced. Some parents had a dreadful sense of humour when it came to naming their children.
"Nice to meet you," was all he said as he raised Anna's hands to look at the knots more closely. "Come here often?"
The twins giggled.
"We have the morning watch for Master Denil on Secondays," Anna said. "He normally invites us to breakfast but he said that he didn't want to wake you up so he went to Master Sai'em's and told us to wait for you." She took a hasty gulp of air. "So we waited."
Jak tugged at a piece of string and watched the tangled mess unravel and land on the floor.
"So where is Master Sai'em?" he asked, standing and brushing dust off his breeches.
"She lives in the North Tower," Anna said.
"They make her live there," Sanna added.
"Because she makes loud bangs."
"And they don't want her to make the university go bang."
"Sometimes it's pretty loud."
Jak chuckled at their unconscious double act. "Could you take me there?"
They exchanged glances and Anna nodded.
He held up his roll of clothes. "Is there anywhere I can clean up and change first? I've been on the road so long it feels like the dirt is embedded in my skin."
Sanna silently pointed at a door on the opposite side of the corridor and then both girls giggled again.
Jak followed their directions, allowing himself a slight grin at their antics, and closed the door behind him. The room he stepped into was nothing like any bathroom he had ever seen before. The flagstone flooring was familiar enough but the plumbing was completely alien. A basin was set into a counter to his left but there were no jugs of water to fill it. He was not intending to take a bath but he could not quite see how the sunken bath set into the floor could be emptied. There were levers set into the walls above it and Jak noticed similar ones above the basin. Even the toilet looked odd, with a tank suspended from the ceiling above it connected by a wide pipe.
"Okay, scholars are stranger than wizards," he muttered.
He eventually found instructions under a towel on the counter and managed to work out most of it. The toilet was mostly normal apart from the rush of water that appeared when he pulled a chain. The levers controlled the flow of water into the basin and another raised a plug in a hole in the bottom that allowed the water to escape. It took a couple of attempts before he managed to get the right combination of hot and cold water. He dunked his head in the warm water and then stripped to wash. There was a clean towel warming on a rack of metal tubes and Jak was finally starting to feel warmer by the time he was dressed.
When he left Genta, he had only thought about getting to Eto as fast as possible and not about the encroaching seasons. He had one pair of thick breeches and a couple of winter shirts. The rest of his gear was more suited to early autumn rather than winter. It seemed hard to believe that Charry had disappeared at the end of summer. Even though winter had come early, it still meant that Charry had been gone for over two months.
Jak pushed away the doubts that kept rising in his mind.
He pulled on both shirts and his grey jacket. He had no comb so he ran his hands through his damp hair to tidy it. Then he rolled up his dirty clothes and stepped out of the bathroom. The twins giggled at him as he went across the corridor to Denil's study. The dirty clothes went into his pack and he dug out a second pair of socks before pulling on his boots. Both knives were still in their sheaths stitched into the boots. Jak could also feel the reassuring weight of a knife strapped to each forearm hidden beneath his shirtsleeves. He wrapped his jacket close around himself and belted it securely. Then he secured his sword belt and automatically settled his sword against his left hip. Another knife hung from the belt at his right. Maybe it was a little excessive in a university filled with peaceful scholars but twenty years as a fighter had made him feel naked with weaponry. Jak dug into his pack again and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves before stepping out of the study.
The blonde twins gaped at him.
"You've got a sword," Anna breathed.
"Can we play with it?" Sanna asked.
"No!" Jak said quickly and then softened his voice when he saw fear appear in their wide blue eyes. "No, kids. It's dangerous and I don't want you to get hurt."
"Sorry," they chorused.
Jak gave them a reassuring smile. "It's okay. You're just a little young for that stuff. Now, where is Master Sai'em?"
The two girls led him down what felt like miles of corridors. Some were wide echoing halls lined with portraits and sculptures while others were narrow and drafty. The girls pointed out things as they went, favourite paintings and statues and the doors to the studies of their teachers. From their chatter, Jak gathered that Denil was a favourite with both of them and had endless patience for their questions.
The corridors he passed through were filled with a king's ransom in precious objects. Jak managed to read a few of the cards carefully propped against them as he passed and whistled under his breath at a three thousand year old figurine from the old kingdom of Gilder. That state had collapsed more than twenty-five centuries ago, leaving an untamed wilderness that was periodically fought over by neighbouring countries when they were trying to expand. Gilder had not been successfully claimed since Eville of Eshan conquered most of the western states five centuries ago. The Eshan Empire collapsed fifty years later.
The Gilderaan figurine alone was probably worth a small country's treasury. It was no wonder that so many men had tried to annex the city state of Eto. The university was probably as wealthy as the wizards' academy in Genta. That probably also explained why Eto had stayed independent for so long; nobody was willing to let a rival control that kind of wealth. The frustrating thing for all those would-be conquerors was that the scholars of Eto were more concerned with preserving history through their collection than they were with the wealth or power they possessed.
On one of the narrower, plainer corridors Jak passed an open doorway and paused to listen. Ten students in their late teens were sitting in a semi-circle listening to a man in his forties. The lecturer had a quiet, dry tone but the rapt attention of his audience indicated that he was more interesting than he appeared to be.
A small hand tugged at the hem of Jak's jacket and he looked down to see one of the twins frowning at him.
"Come on," she said imperiously.
The other twin joined her. "That's a philosophy class."
"You don't want to listen to that."
"The older kids say that it makes you go crazy."
Jak allowed himself to be pulled away as he tried to work out which twin was which. He had one hanging on to each hand and at first glance they appeared to be completely identical. After a while, though, he found that there were tiny differences between them. One was slightly taller, maybe half an inch, and the other had a narrower face. The taller girl's braid was tied with a red ribbon while the other had a short piece of black leather. It was the taller girl who seemed to take the lead more so Jak concluded that she must be Anna.
Eventually they came to a winding staircase and the twins released Jak's hands so that they could run ahead while he followed slightly more slowly. The staircase ended in a short landing with on open door leading off. The girls were standing impatiently next to it, Anna tapping her foot in a gesture twenty years too old for her. Jak motioned them to be quiet and spent a minute standing at the door watching the room's occupants.
Denil was standing beside a blond woman next to a table covered with papers. They were bent intently over one page, their heads close together as they spoke quietly, and Jak felt a moment's jealousy at their easy companionship. He banished it quickly.
Denil looked as threadbare and mismatched as he had yesterday, although he did seem to be wearing warmer clothes now. His russet jacket reached his knees, his brown breeches looked thicker and his linen shirt was mostly hidden by a long green scarf. There were liberal ink stains on his fingers and sleeves in direct contrast to his companion.
She was only an inch shorter than Denil, with long, slender limbs and an unconscious grace even just standing next to a table. Even her fingers were unusually slender and elegant. Slightly pointed ears peeping out of her short blonde hair gave Jak the final clue to her heritage. Her breeches and long coat were in varying shades of blue, with complex patterns of embroidery in shimmering white on the hems. The room was cool despite a fire roaring in the hearth to Jak's right but the woman did not appear to notice.
Anna poked Jak in the leg, glaring at him, and he realised that he had been staring for several minutes. He shooed the twins in and hung back in the doorway to watch as they burst into the study. Denil and the woman looked up with matching expressions of surprise in their blue eyes.
"Master Sai'em! Master Denil!" Anna and Sanna chorused.
Anna stepped forward. "We brought your Jak for you, Master Denil. Do you have any breakfast for us?"
The woman, Master Sai'em, raised an eyebrow at Denil before turning back to the girls. "Why would you think that I have any breakfast for you?"
"Because you always do," Anna said with the confidence of a child who knows certain universal truths.
"I do?"
The twins nodded vigorously.
Master Sai'em grinned at them. "Then I guess you'd better come with me. Denil, maybe you could invite your Jak to breakfast?"
There was just the slightest hint of a lilting accent in her amused voice.
Jak turned to Denil in time to catch a faint flush in his cheeks but the man held up his chin and his eyes dared Jak to comment.
"Would you like some breakfast?" Denil asked calmly.
"If you're offering, I'd love some," Jak replied with a grin.
Denil gestured toward the door that Master Sai'em and the twins had disappeared through.
Jak joined him and whispered, "Elf?"
Denil paused in the doorway. "Half. On her father's side."
"That's what I thought."
It was the first time that Jak had ever heard of an elf leaving one of their cities to live among humans.
"If you want to know anything else you should ask her," Denil said quietly and went through the door.
The room that Jak was led into was smaller than the workroom and the large fireplace actually seemed to be doing its job of warming the room. Clear globes of white light hanging near the ceiling lit the room. Jak recognised the mage-lights, a steadier form of light than candles or lanterns, and found that they also lit the workroom. The wizards would have a fit if they knew that someone outside their order was using that magic, although he had a feeling that there was little that wizards would dare to do to elves.
The twins were busily carrying plates of sausages, eggs and bacon from the fireplace to a table that dominated the room, under Master Sai'em's watchful eyes. She handed a teapot to Denil and carried a rack of toast to the table. The twins sat down on a bench on one side and Master Sai'em took her seat at the head of the table. Jak quickly took his seat next to Denil on the bench on the other side. Anna smiled happily across at him before tucking into her food. There was silence for a while as they all ate hungrily and then Master Sai'em cleared her throat.
"Aren't you going to introduce us?" she asked.
Denil swallowed hastily and said, "Sai'em, this is Jak Kern. Jak, meet Sai'emanthadrellan á Jacrodellané of the ice elves."
"Nice to meet you..." Jak trailed off has his mind balked at the woman's full name.
She gave him an understanding grin. "Just Sai'em will do. The full version is a bit of a mouthful for humans."
"I noticed."
"Sai'em's our master of the physical world." Denil added. "She's trying to find out how everything works."
"I'm told that involves a lot of bangs," Jak said blandly.
Sanna squeaked and focused intently on a sausage.
"Sometimes my experiments don't go as planned," Sai'em said, "but I learn just as much from experiments that go wrong as I do from experiments with perfect results. With Denil's help, I've been able to translate texts that have added enormously to my own understanding. It's amazing how much you've already learned but just allowed to moulder away in libraries without really using it. There's information there that could have been incredibly useful years ago but nobody bothered to continue the research after the author died."
"Master Sai'em made the bathrooms have hot water," Anna added helpfully through a mouthful of egg. "The Dean says it's the only useful thing to have come out of the North Tower since - ow! Why did you kick me?"
Sanna continued to innocently eat her breakfast.
There was an uncomfortable silence around the table as the adults tried to avoid looking at each other. After a minute, Anna made a quiet 'oh' sound and bent her head to stare intently at her breakfast.
Sai'em reached out and rested a hand on the girl's arm. "It's alright, Anna. I know what the Dean thinks about my research. It's really no secret."
The blonde girl gave her a small smile that widened when she saw only affection and honesty in Sai'em's eyes. The elf squeezed her arm reassuringly before turning her clear blue eyes on Jak.
"So, Mesire Kern, what brings you to our university?" she asked.
"I'm on wizards' business," he replied smoothly. "Confidential wizards' business."
"You work for them?"
"No, I just happened to be around when they needed me. I'm commander of the Genta Watch, currently on sabbatical until the wizards are finished with me."
Denil snorted quietly. "There are some people who would say that wizards are never finished once they get their claws into you."
"What does that mean?" Anna asked curiously, her confidence already restored.
Sai'em gave the scholar a hard stare before turning to Anna. "Nothing you need to understand yet. You'll know when you're older."
"We're always too young," Anna muttered grumpily. "We're ten years old."
"Almost," Sanna added.
"Take advantage of it while you can," Jak advised. "When you get older, everyone will expect you to understand so much 'stuff' that you'll think you're head might explode."
Sai'em pushed aside her empty plate and picked up her mug of tea. "Would you like to play with the magic dust?"
The twins exchanged glances before breaking into grins and chorusing, "Yeah!"
"Magic dust?" Jak mouthed to Denil.
He just smiled mysteriously and beckoned Jak to followed the elf and the twins back into the workroom.
Denil was surprised to see that dusk had fallen and the storm has eased off to a gentle snowfall by the time he and Jak began walking back to his rooms. Sai'em had spent a long time explaining 'magic dust' to Jak and its use to show fingerprints on surfaces. The commander's eyes had glazed slightly when Sai'em began explaining how the dust stuck to the fingerprints but he had quickly grasped the relevance to his own work and now had a bottle of the dust to experiment with. From there Sai'em had gone on to explain other ideas she was working on, some of which even went over Denil's head, until she noticed the twins curled up asleep in an armchair and realised how long she had kept them. Sometimes the elf's time-perception ran differently to a human's. Jak, though, had shown a surprising intelligence beneath the cynical, disinterested face he showed the world. He was also a firm hit with the twins and Denil could easily imagine that he would be a great father.
A father.
It was hard to believe that the man striding along next to him, taking in the university's collection of artefacts with apparent interest, was a father desperate enough to travel all this way with winter threatening just to follow up an incredibly slender lead in his son's disappearance. But Denil had seen the look in his eyes when he spoke about Charry and he had decided then that he would help in any way he could. It had never been in doubt. The only thing that had held him back was his responsibility to his own students. That had been sorted out with a few early morning visits to other masters, though, so all he had to do was tell Jak.
"So, Jak, the snow should stop by midnight," Denil began quietly. "When do you want to leave?"
There was no explosion, no outpouring of gratitude, just a small smile.
"First light."
First light found them standing in one of the courtyards waiting for sleepy, shivering grooms to saddle their horses. The sky was just turning the steel-grey of pre-dawn and the air was frigid. Their breath made puffs of white in the air. Denil was surprised that Jak could stand so still, apparently ignoring the cold, when he was more than half-frozen already.
It had been almost midnight by the time they settled to sleep and Denil felt as though he had barely closed his eyes when Jak shook him awake. Finding provisions, clothes and other supplies for the journey had taken most of the afternoon and evening. It had been so long since Denil last travelled beyond Eto that even his first aid kit had needed replacing. His packs and saddle had long since disappeared from their storage room and mice had chewed a hole through his blanket roll. Everything had to be replaced from the university stores, which was why Denil was now wearing an oiled cloak a size too large. The fur coat he wore beneath the cloak cut out some of the chill but standing around a snowy courtyard was allowing the cold to seep through his boots to freeze his feet.
Jak finally moved to clap his gloved hands together. "You're sure the weather is going to stay stable?"
There was a faint itch at the back of Denil's mind that said a storm was a few days away but that was all. "Yes, we're fine for now."
"Mithra, it's cold," Jak grumbled.
"It's a northern wind bringing the weather," Denil said.
Jak shot him a quick look before returning to watching the stable. "So you keep saying."
Denil began stamping his feet, trying to get some feeling back in his toes.
"Are you sure you're up to this?" Jak asked without looking at him.
"Yes, I'm sure."
"He's tougher than he looks."
They both spun to face the newcomer, Denil taking a small gasp of surprise as he moved.
It was as though he was seeing Sai'em for the first time all over again. His comfortable, familiar old friend had disappeared and been replaced with a stranger who bore only a faint resemblance to her. The elf sat confidently astride a tall white horse. She was dressed all in white, with only a little silver and blue embroidery, and the horse's tack matched her clothing. A quiver of arrows was strapped to her back over a long white cloak, which was thrust back so that Denil could glimpse the hilt of a sword at her waist. Sai'em's boots were made of soft white leather with silver buckles at the knee and silver knife-hilts peaking out of the boot-tops. Her coat and breeches were cut in the elfish fashion, also pure white, and for the first time Denil felt slightly grubby and faded in her presence. A fierce light shone in Sai'em's eyes.
"I'm going with you," she stated.
Jak moved forward a step. "No, you're not."
"I can go with you or I can follow you, but I am going," Sai'em replied firmly.
"No, you're not," Jak repeated.
"Do you think that you can out-run an ice elf on snow?" Sai'em asked.
"She has a point," Denil said quietly.
"I don't even need to follow you to Genta," Sai'em said. "I can get there faster. You'd be holding me back."
"Did you tell her where we're going?" Jak asked.
"He didn't have to," Sai'em said. "When Denil of Errith starts requisitioning winter-travel gear, people talk. I just put you and that together and came up with wizards."
"I'll bring him back," Jak promised.
"It's not that I don't trust you to try, Commander, but I don't trust the wizards to let you."
"I can take care of myself," Denil protested. "I've been doing it for a long time and I'm quite good at it."
He was ignored.
"I give you my word that I won't let the wizards harm him," Jak said.
"I trust your word," Sai'em replied, "but I don't trust wizards. I'm going with you whether you like it not."
"I choose not," Jak said grumpily.
The two combatants glared at each other, neither willing to give an inch. Denil wanted to intervene, to offer a compromise so that his two friends would stop arguing, but there was no compromise to offer. Eventually, the standoff was broken by the arrival of the grooms with Jak and Denil's horses.
"I want it understood that I'm in charge," Jak said as he turned away to fasten his bags to the packhorse. "I say when we go and where we go. You're just along for the ride."
"Yes, sir," Sai'em said with a faint smile.
Jak eyed her suspiciously. Denil bent his head to check the saddle of his horse so Jak could not see his smile. He mounted smoothly, the movement coming easily despite the years since he last rode a horse, and patted the chestnut mare's neck. Jak had already attached the packhorse's leading rein to his own saddle before mounting fluidly.
"We'll take Green Lane to the North Road," Jak said. "I want to reach the cross-roads by dark."
The town of Eto was just beginning to stir as the small group rode through, their horses' hooves muffled in a thick layer of snow. There were a few tracks from early risers but most of the townspeople were using the snow as an excuse to stay home until ploughs had been along to the clear the main throughways. Green Lane was an ancient road connecting the North Road to the Sunhelm Road and the town had been built around it. The histories did not show whether the university or the town came first, but Denil had done some digging in the archives a few years ago and he suspected that the town had begun as an inn and a couple of crafter's cottages not long after the first buildings of the university had been constructed.
Jak led them with Denil behind and Sai'em bringing up the rear. In the shelter of the town, the wind was low and gusty but as soon as they passed the last building it blew straight over the snowy fields unrelentingly. Denil huddled in his saddle and tried to think warm thoughts.
At around noon the road curved around some low hills. The small change in direction meant that Jak provided a slight windbreak for Denil, but his face and feet were already so numb that it didn't make much difference overall. The steadily blowing wind meant that the layer of snow on the road was thinner than it had been in the town but the horses were tiring and Jak made them dismount so they could be rested and fed. Denil almost fell out of his saddle and it took several minutes of slowly walking around to restore some feeling to his feet and reduce the stiffness in his legs. Jak also walked stiffly for a couple of minutes so Denil comforted himself with the thought that he wasn't doing too badly after all. The only one not affected by the cold was Sai'em; she dismounted smoothly and took care of the horses while her more cold-susceptible companions tried to warm up. Even her horse seemed happier in the cold than the others. The only effect of the cold that Sai'em was showing was a slight hint of pink in her normally pale cheeks.
After a few minutes, Jak rummaged in one of the packs and produced some meat rolls and a flask of water. Denil took a couple of the rolls and consumed them hungrily without even bothering to remove his gloves. The cold lunch was not as satisfying as a hot meal would have been, but a fire was impossible in the windswept land.
"Are you going to be alright to go on?" Jak asked when he finished his lunch.
Denil looked around the deserted landscape. "Where would I go if I wasn't?"
"Good point," Jak said with a small grin.
The look in his eyes warmed Denil more than anything else had so far that day. It was a gentle look full of quiet admiration. Denil guessed that Jak had not been expecting a scholar to cope with the journey without complaining. That thought gave him enough energy to climb into the saddle and nudge the mare into a walk. Denil decided not to examine the reasons why he wanted this man to see him in a good light.
The afternoon was little different to the morning. They rode in silence and when the road came around the low hills the icy wind blew straight at Denil again without a break. He wrapped his cloak tightly around himself and pulled the hood low. Nothing really stopped the wind gusting down his neck and across his ears but he could at least try to be less uncomfortable.
Dusk was falling by the time they reached the crossroads with the North Road. Denil straightened slightly when he saw lights twinkling in the distance and silently willed Jak to call a halt there. He was willing to do almost anything for a few minutes by a warm fire.
The lights turned out to be a small village at the crossroads. It wasn't much more than a couple of inns and a few cottages but all that Denil really cared about at that point was the warm firelight shining through the windows. For a moment Jak looked as though he was going to ride straight past. Then he raised his head and focused on the garishly painted sign that proclaimed one of the inns as 'The Wandering Woman'.
"We won't make it to the next town before dark," he announced.
"I don't think the horses will go much further tonight," Sai'em agreed politely.
Denil simply tugged on his reins and directed his mare into the inn's courtyard.
A blast of warm air hit Jak's face as soon as he opened the inn's door. A pair of grooms had taken charge of their horses so all they had to do was take their packs inside and try to secure some rooms.
'Try' would be the important word, Jak reflected as he took in the busy common room. He felt his companions crowd through the door behind him and turned in time to catch the look of blissful relief on Denil's face as the warmth surrounded him. For a moment, Jak's breath caught in his throat before he forced himself to turn back to the common room.
There did not seem to be a free table in the place. A large group of Ventaxian merchants sat around a table in one corner, their bright golden hair standing out against the darker heads around them. Jak spotted at least five nationalities in his quick inspection of the room, including two Bedaani tribesmen from the far south. The unusually cold weather seemed to have caught everyone by surprise. The Bedaani were sitting so close to the roaring fire at one end of the room that they were in danger of singeing their boots.
His rapid scan of the room convinced Jak that this would be a quiet inn with no trouble. A group of local farmers were playing dice with some foreign traders in the corner, which was always a good sign. Assessing a room in a quick glance was a useful habit from his soldiering days and he could usually judge the mood of a room within half a minute of stepping inside. Nodding his satisfaction with the place, Jak wove his way through the tables to the counter with Denil and Sai'em following.
The innkeeper looked up from wiping down the bar as Jak approached. He was a tall man with a pronounced paunch and a friendly smile. His jacket was cut in the local style with a large, clean white apron tied over it.
"What can I get you?" the innkeeper asked, leaning on his bar.
"Rooms for the night and hot food," Jak said.
The innkeeper frowned uncertainly. "There isn't much left. This weather caught a lot of folk unawares. 'The Bushel' had to send over a party on account of having nowhere to put anyone."
"We'll take whatever you've got as long as it's got a roof and walls," Jak said with what he hoped looked like a friendly smile.
"I can put the lady in with the other lady traveller," the innkeeper said with an anxious glance at Sai'em. "You lads can share the last room. It's not much, but it's that or the stable."
Jak didn't even have to look at Denil to know that the man would take anything warm and dry. "We'll take them."
The innkeeper sighed his relief. "That'll be two silvers for the rooms. Stabling is three coppers for each horse. Food's a penny a plate. Got plenty of food, at least."
Jak shrugged and counted out the money. There was no sense in haggling when the innkeeper could easily throw them out and fill their rooms with other stranded travellers. The innkeeper tucked the coins away and shouted for one of the serving girls to take 'the Lady Sai'em' to her room while he accompanied the men. He wheezed as he led them up several staircases and down a long corridor and didn't offer to carry any of the packs. Denil followed with no complaints and Jak was struck again by the quietly determined strength that the scholar was showing. He had expected him to be complaining bitterly about the cold, the long day and the cramped accommodation. Any of the wizards would have been by now. In fact, most of the wizards would have treated Jak as little more than a glorified bag-boy, never mind the fact that he headed the Watch that guarded their city and allowed them to walk the streets at night without fear.
"This is it," the innkeeper announced at the end of the corridor, pushing a door open.
Jak squeezed past, followed by Denil. It really was as small as the innkeeper had promised. There was enough space for a bed and a washstand, with barely enough left over to move in. The only light came from a small window and a couple of oil lamps suspended from the ceiling. Jak heard the door click behind him and guessed that the innkeeper was going back to his common room as fast as he could scurry, before either he or Denil confronted him about the lodgings. He shrugged and edged around the bed to dump his packs on the floor next to the narrow washstand. The water in the basin was ice-cold but he felt cleaner when he had splashed some on his face and dried off on the small towel hanging from a hook on the side of the stand. He turned back to the bed and watched Denil rummage in his packs for a couple of minutes, checking that his books had survived the day's journey.
"Are you alright?" Jak asked.
Denil paused and looked up. "Yes, thank you. It's just been a while since I did any travelling. I usually travelled during the summer then."
"You did fine today," Jak said, suddenly needing to let Denil know how impressed he was but unable to put it into words properly.
It must have been the right thing to say because Denil's eyes lit up and a hint of a smile crossed his face. "Thank you. I was afraid that I was slowing you down."
"No, no, you did better than I'd expected."
Denil started to go back to his pack but he paused and a small frown appeared. "What did you plan to do if I had said no?"
For a moment Jak gaped at him. The thought had crossed his mind a couple of times during the journey to Eto but he had always dismissed it before it could take hold. "I honestly don't know. I'd probably have hung around until you said yes. You're my last hope of finding my son."
"Why are you so sure that this book holds the key?" Denil asked curiously. "The picture on the front could mean anything."
Jak shrugged. "I don't know. I can't explain it. I just can't believe that there isn't a connection between that book and the things that took Charry."
The explanation, imperfect as it was, seemed to satisfy Denil and he made a last check of his books before refastening the packs, putting them on the floor and carefully sliding them under the bed. Jak nudged his packs under with the toe of his boot, ran a hand through his hair to straighten it and moved to the door.
"Hungry?" he asked.
Denil nodded with a slightly surprised expression. "Actually, I am."
"Then I propose that we get some food out of the profiteering publican downstairs before we get some sleep."
Denil nodded. "That sounds like a plan."
Denil had announced that he couldn't sleep without a hot bath so he had gone in search of the inn's bath-house, which gave Jak some time alone to change and work out what he was going to do. Jak quickly exchanged his leather breeches for softer woollen ones and left his shirt on. Denil was an attractive man, getting more attractive as Jak got to know him better, and despite his fear for his son, Jak couldn't help noticing that. Mixing sex and work was a dangerous combination, something that Jak had seen too often in his career. When affairs end, someone always gets hurt and Jak was not going to risk his son's future for a roll in the sack. The safest option would be to ignore any attraction and keep away from temptation. Sharing a bed wouldn't make that easy, but Jak hoped that if he stayed dressed and Denil went to sleep as soon as they turned out the lanterns, it should be possible.
A faint scuffing noise alerted Jak to Denil's approach and a moment later the door opened to admit him, still flushed from his bath with his shirt half unlaced and the ends of his hair curling damply on his forehead. Jak's mouth went dry and it took a lot of effort to tear his eyes away and casually slide into the bed. He rolled onto his side, facing the wall, and closed his eyes.
"Can you put out the lamps when you're done?" he asked, pulling the blankets up to his shoulders.
He heard Denil moving around the room for a few minutes before it went dark. Then the bed dipped and Jak felt Denil climb in. A minute later he felt Denil turn over, and a couple of minutes after that Denil shifted again. Jak endured a few more minutes of Denil's restless shifting before giving in and rolling over to face him.
"Can't sleep?" he asked.
Denil rolled over to face Jak, punching his pillow a couple of times before tucking it under his head. "Am I keeping you awake?"
"No," Jak lied. "What's wrong?"
In the faint moonlight shining through the room's only window Jak could just make out Denil's rueful smile. "I don't know. I almost fell asleep in the bath but now I'm wide awake."
"Sometimes it's like that on the first day of a journey. What do you normally do when you can't sleep?"
"Usually I work until I fall asleep so it isn't a big problem."
Jak raised an eyebrow. "Really? I would never have guessed."
He allowed a small grin to escape to let Denil know that he was joking and a matching grin appeared on Denil's face. It made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
"What do you usually do?" Denil asked.
"I'm normally so exhausted at the end of a day that it's hard work to stay awake long enough to put Charry to bed."
"Really?"
"Paperwork is a lot more tiring than I ever appreciated when I was out in the field and ninety percent of my job now is sitting behind a desk reading and writing reports. I have dreams about putting the whole lot in the Watch house courtyard and lighting a bonfire."
Denil stifled a chuckle. "I can't imagine your superiors being too happy about that."
"No, I don't suppose they would be." Jak grinned wickedly. "But it would be fun."
"Yeah."
Jak knew that carrying on this conversation in a bed was dangerous, but something inside made him ignore that and say, "Tell me about yourself. I'm sharing a bed with you so I should know something."
"There's not much to tell," Denil said with a small shrug. "I'm sure you know more about me than I know about you."
"Indulge me."
"What do you want to know?"
Jak caught himself just as he was about to reply "everything". Keeping this safe wouldn't be easy if his mouth ran away and started flirting with the man. Instead he said, "I'll start with something simple. Why did you stop travelling?"
"Huh?"
"Earlier you mentioned that you weren't used to travelling anymore, implying that you once travelled a lot. Why did you stop?"
Denil's eyes clouded and Jak cursed inwardly as he realised that his question had put that sad expression on his face.
"My wife died," Denil said quietly.
"Denil, I'm so sorry," Jak said, almost reaching out to touch Denil's face but stopping himself just in time. "If I'd known-"
"It's alright, there was no way you could have known," Denil cut in. "It was nearly five years ago."
"If you'd rather not talk about it, I understand."
"No, it's fine," Denil said thoughtfully. "It doesn't hurt as much as it used to."
"It never stops hurting, though, does it?"
"But it does get easier." Denil smiled slightly. "Sai'em told me that time heals all wounds and I guess she's right."
A sudden thought occurred to Jak. "Are you and Sai'em...uh...involved?"
Denil's eyebrows shot up and he laughed, the sad expression replaced by surprised amusement. "Me and Sai'em? We're good friends but that's all we'll ever be. Elves and humans are too different."
"Sai'em is half-human," Jak pointed out.
Denil shrugged. "Sometimes a male elf has an affair with a human female, but never the other way around and it never lasts long."
"I don't usually spend time thinking about the mating habits of elves," Jak said defensively.
"I suppose it doesn't often come up in Genta."
"No, it doesn't." Jak paused while he tried to work out how to steer the conversation somewhere safer.
"I think Sharra would have liked you," Denil said. "She was always trying to get me to laugh at myself. Apparently I can sometimes be too serious."
"She sounds like a wise woman."
"Oh, she was. We met when we were fifteen but she insisted that we wait until we finished our apprenticeships before we got married. That's how I met Sai'em."
"Oh?" Jak asked, trying to see the connection and failing.
"Sharra was Sai'em's student. They'd hole themselves up in her workshop for days until I dragged them downstairs to spend time in the real world."
"You weren't such a workaholic back then?"
"No, they were just worse than me. Sai'em still is."
"Did Sharra travel with you?"
Denil shook his head. "She liked having some peace and quiet while I was away. I'd go and work on excavations or visit other libraries and she'd spend the summer working on Sai'em's experiments. At the end of the summer I'd come home and drag her out of the workshop. Sometimes it was difficult to keep in contact because of our work, even when we were both in Eto, but somehow we managed it."
"If something's worth working for, you find a way," Jak said, enjoying the gentle expression in Denil's eyes far too much for his continued sanity.
"I came home one summer and Sharra had this cough. We'd been married for ten years but she never really seemed to get sick until then. She'd always been so strong," Denil said with a faraway look, as though this was something he had often puzzled over. "The cough got worse and she got quite sick over the winter. Sai'em and the healers did what they could but they said there was something wrong with her lungs that they couldn't fix. Sharra seemed to get better when spring came but the cough never really went away so I stayed home that summer. When winter came, Sharra got sick again but that time she was weaker and she died just after Midwinter. I couldn't go travelling that summer and after that it just became habit to stay at the university."
"Until now."
Denil's eyes focused on Jak's face intently. "Yes, until now."
"Why are you here?"
"Because you need me and I've never been able to turn down a challenge."
The way that Denil's eyes shifted told Jak that the other man wasn't telling the whole truth but he decided to let it rest for now. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me until I've translated that book," Denil said.
"If you translate that book, I'll be thanking you for the rest of my life."
"There might not be anything useful in it."
"I'm sure there is." Jak smiled and changed the subject. "Tell me about your work."
"My work?"
He shrugged. "I figure one of us has to get some sleep tonight. Tell me what you do and why you do it."
"Alright, you asked for it. I work on languages, translating what I can and working out languages I haven't seen before."
"Why?"
"The only way to know why the world is the way it is, is to look at how it got that way. That means studying what happened in the past as far back as we can. A lot of that information is in books and inscriptions written in languages nobody can read anymore." Denil paused to yawn. "If I can translate that and gather the information then we can find out why the world is shaped and operated the way it is today. We have customs and ideas that date back thousands of years - hasn't that ever intrigued you?"
"Not really. Go on - I'm getting sleepy now."
Denil kicked Jak lightly with his bare foot. "Gilder is a prefect example. Over twenty-five centuries ago it was the heartland of an empire that ruled half the ancient lands. Then it suddenly went through a massive collapse and nobody has been able to successfully claim the land since. If I could find out more information about its rise and collapse, maybe I could work out why it happened and future civilisations won't make the same mistake."
Denil broke off to yawn again and Jak copied him. Despite his enthusiasm, Denil was growing visibly sleepy and his soft voice was encouraging Jak to do the same. He carried on talking about ancient civilisations and lands for a while but Jak had trouble following it. The breaks to yawn came more frequently until eventually he trailed off completely. Jak was at the edge of sleep then and Denil's sleepy goodnight was all it took to push him over into exhausted slumber.
Once again felt as though he had barely closed his eyes when Denil was shaken awake. He batted groggily at the hand on his shoulder and was rewarded with a pained exclamation and then Jak's voice saying, "Would you quit hitting me?"
Denil shot up and immediately hit his head on something hard, making him fall back to the bed with a bounce. He rubbed at the bruised spot and opened his eyes to see Jak standing over him, rubbing his jaw and wincing.
"Do you always attack anyone who wakes you up?" Jak asked.
"Uh, no?" Denil said uncertainly, struggling to process the question through his sleep-fogged mind.
"You could have fooled me," Jak muttered. "We're leaving in half an hour."
"Fine," Denil said as he eyes drifted shut again.
A pillow landed on his face and he threw it off to glare up at Jak. The other man looked at him critically.
"I'll get you some breakfast," he said before walking out and leaving Denil in peace.
Denil almost fell asleep again but he forced himself to sit up and rub his gritty eyes. The small window showed a patch of sky with a few stars still twinkling but he had no doubt that dawn was close. Denil shivered in the chill of the early morning. The lack of a fireplace had made little difference last night, but now he could feel the clammy cold of the winter's morning and it took all the will power he possessed to throw back the blankets and get out of bed instead of burrowing in and going back to sleep. By the time Jak returned with the promised breakfast Denil had washed in icy water, pulled on a clean shirt and changed into leather breeches. He was tugging on his boots when Jak entered, muttering under his breath about skinflint innkeepers.
"Here," Jak said, holding out a thick sandwich and balancing a tray on his other hand.
Denil raised an eyebrow. "Breakfast?"
"We're lucky to get this much," Jak said irritably. "Damn innkeeper doesn't do food before dawn. He kicked the groom out of bed so our horses should be ready by the time we finish."
Denil accepted the sandwich without further argument and took a large bite, tasting tangy cheese and something else that he couldn't quite place.
"It's some kind of flavoured butter he makes," Jak said through a mouthful of his own sandwich. "Tea?"
Denil accepted a mug of steaming tea and they ate and drank in silence. He winced when he saw that a bruise was already starting to show on Jak's jaw.
"I'm sorry about the...uh," he gestured to his chin, "you know."
Jak drained the last of his tea. "Don't worry about it - I can barely feel it. You're not a morning person, are you?"
Denil put his mug on the tray that Jak had carried breakfast in on. "No, I'm not."
"There's a surprise."
Through the window, Denil could see the sky start to turn grey as the last star winked out and he stifled a sigh at the thought of another day in the cold. Jak was checking his packs so Denil did the same before fastening them and picking up his coat. He was beginning to pull it on when Jak's hands over his stopped him. He looked up, startled at the sudden warmth and tingle that began to run down his arms. Jak snatched his hands away and stepped back.
"Sorry," he said, avoiding Denil's eyes.
"What was that for?"
"You're doing it wrong."
"I've been putting coats on for a long time - how exactly am I doing it wrong?"
"If you turn it the other way out, it will keep more warmth in. The fur needs to be on the inside."
"Oh." Denil shrugged out of the coat, turned it out and pulled it on again. "Like this?"
"Yeah." Jak pulled his own coat on and fastened his oil cloak at his neck before holding up a belt. "If you put a belt over your cloak, you'll stay drier and warmer too."
Denil tried to work out how Jak managed to belt the cloak while leaving his arms free but each time he tried it, either the cloak or the belt escaped from his grip.
"Let me," Jak said, taking the belt from him.
Denil closed his eyes and held his breath as Jak's arms briefly encircled him. When he opened his eyes, he could see the top of Jak's silver hair as the man stooped slightly to fasten the belt. Unexpected warmth crept up Denil's cheeks and his fingers suddenly itched to test the softness of Jak's hair.
Jak straightened and stepped away, an odd look in his eyes that was quickly masked. "All done."
Denil had to clear his throat before he could speak. "Thank you."
"Ready to go?" Jak asked as he put on his sword belt and made sure that the weapon was balanced properly on his hip.
"I'm ready," Denil confirmed.
He picked up his packs and followed Jak downstairs and through the empty common room. As promised, the horses were saddled and ready in the courtyard with a sullen-eyed groom who glared at them before stalking off. It was just as cold as it had been yesterday and Denil hoped that Jak was right about the coat and cloak providing more warmth. His hands and feet would probably still be numb by the end of the day but maybe the bone-deep chill wouldn't be as bad. The packhorse waited patiently while Denil fastened his pack of books on and Jak added his packs. Denil took pity on the beast and carried his pack of clothes himself, adjusting the straps until it felt comfortable on his shoulders.
Sai'em came out of the inn as he was checking the tightness of the saddle's girth. Her tall white horse had stood unmoving to one side, not even shuffling her feet. Sai'em quickly and efficiently checked over the tack and secured her saddlebags before gathering the reins in one hand. When she looked over towards Jak, a puzzled frown appeared on her face and she released the horse with a quiet command and walked over to Denil.
"Is everything alright?" she asked in a low voice.
Denil paused with a hand on his saddle pommel and a foot in the stirrup. "Yes. Why?"
"He didn't do anything inappropriate, did he?" Sai'em asked, concern shining in her blue eyes as she gestured to Jak.
"Of course not," Denil said indignantly. "Why would you - oh, that." The bruise on Jak's jaw was now an impressive shade of purple. "Just a small accident."
"Uh-huh." She did not sound convinced. "You'd tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I would." Denil quickly changed the subject. "Did you sleep well?"
Sai'em grimaced. "My roommate snored like a pig. You?"
"Jak doesn't snore or hog the covers. He's very considerate."
"Hmm."
Sai'em still looked doubtful but she said no more and Denil was distracted because his horse chose that moment to sidestep, forcing him to hop after it or fall in the snow. He regained his balance and pulled himself into the saddle before the mare could move again.
"Denil," Sai'em called and he looked down at her. "I have something for you. I was going to give it to you yesterday but your Jak argued with me and I forgot."
She held out what looked like a foot long wooden pole and Denil took it from her. The wood was so dark it was almost black and elf-runes had been carved into it.
Jak, also mounted, moved closer to watch curiously. "What is it?"
Denil recognised it and he pressed a slight indentation in the centre. The pole immediately expanded into a staff and he grinned as he tested the balance. "It's nimoriel wood."
"What?"
He looked up and met Jak's curious eyes. "Nimoriel wood. The wood elves grow it. It's stronger than steel but not much heavier that oak. They use it to make fighting-staves and special carvings. It's very rare - Sai'em, are you sure you want me to have this?"
The elf shrugged. "I designed it for you just before...but then you stopped travelling so there was no reason to give it to you."
Jak held out a hand and Denil passed the staff to him. "Thank you, Sai'em."
"You're welcome."
Jak was carefully examining the staff, tracing his finger over the runes and the barely visible ridges where it expanded and contracted. "How does it work?"
"I combined mechanics and magic," Sai'em said, her eyes sparkling. "The hollow sections of wood fit tightly inside each other but some of their mass is temporarily shifted somewhere else - I'm not completely sure where - until the trigger is pressed and-"
"Ah!" Jak said, holding up a hand. "Mechanics and magic, that's all I need to know. Thank you."
Sai'em shrugged and moved back to her horse, talking to her softly in Elvish. Denil couldn't hide a smile at her muttered comments about Jak's attention span. He caught Jak's suspicious glance out of the corner of his eye and tried without success to force the smile off his face. Jak handed the staff back and Denil pressed the trigger to collapse it so that he could tuck it into his pack.
"Can you use that thing?" Jak asked.
"I can defend myself," Denil replied.
"Good." Jak turned his horse towards the courtyard gates. "Let's move out."
The junction of Green Lane with the North Road was at the centre of the village. Jak wasted no time in turning them west along the North Road and the difference between the two roads was immediately obvious. The surface of the North Road was an odd, opalescent pale blue that looked as though it should be slippery but actually had a better grip that the icy stone of Green Lane. The strange surface was completely free of snow and ice and Denil knew from his travels years ago that new snow would melt from it as soon as it fell. The Sunhelm Road in the south was made of the same substance. Both roads dated back to ancient times and nobody had the skill anymore to duplicate them. The roads never chipped or crumbled and they were wide enough for five men to ride abreast. They were marked on the oldest maps that Denil owned and they had already been old when those were drawn.
Sai'em had once remarked that the material the ancient roads were made from was similar to the substance her people used to build their cities in the ice-bound north but she had refused to elaborate further. In fact, despite the years he had known her, Denil knew almost nothing about elves. There were plenty of tales circulating about them, most of them blatantly false or vastly expanded scraps of truth, but Sai'em refused to tell him anything about her people. He didn't even know how old she was. She hadn't changed at all in the years he had known her and she had been at the university for almost twenty years before that. Beyond her name and the fact of her mixed heritage, almost nothing of her history before she appeared at the university was known.
There were more villages and small towns along the North Road than there had been on Green Lane and the countryside did not look as deserted. The snow-covered fields had footprints criss-crossing them, human and animal, and sometimes in the distance Denil could see dark dots moving against the whiteness in numbers large enough to suggest herds of cattle or sheep. They met few travellers on the road apart from the occasional merchant either brave or desperate enough to risk travelling during winter. By midmorning Denil had regained enough of his riding confidence to pull a book out of his pack and read it as he rode, controlling the horse with gestures so familiar they were ingrained. The time passed more swiftly when his mind was occupied and even the cold seem to bite less harshly. When they stopped to eat lunch and rest the horses, Jak just looked at the book in Denil's hand and grinned sardonically.
As the afternoon wore on it became harder to ignore the cold but Denil concentrated hard on his book and tried to shut out his surroundings. The book was written in Sirri, a language that had been dead for nearly five centuries, and required a lot of concentration in order to untangle the complex system of verbs and determinatives and make any sense of the words. The sun gradually sank towards the horizon and the light became dimmer, until Denil was holding the book almost at his nose to see the words.
"You'll ruin your eyes doing that."
He slowly lowered his book and glanced sideways. Jak was riding alongside him instead of ahead as he had all day.
"That's a myth, you know," Denil said.
"What, there's been a massive survey?" Jak asked.
"No, but bad eyesight is rarely connected to reading in poor light."
"So why are most scholars short-sighted?"
"Has it occurred to you that poor sight makes it difficult to go out fighting for a living so we tend to choose more sedentary pursuits?"
"It's occurred to me that you argue a lot."
Denil opened his mouth to protest and quickly closed it.
"See? You were going to argue right there," Jak gloated.
"You are obnoxious. Did you have a real question or are you just being annoying?"
"No question, I just wanted to talk to someone and I was concerned that you'd actually bruise your nose on that book."
Denil closed the book and tucked it into a coat pocket. It really was getting too dark to read. He flexed his gloved hands slowly, taking care not to drop the reins, and winced as his cold joints protested. He couldn't feel his nose and ears but now that his concentration had been broken, he could feel how cold his feet were. Jak's trick with the coat seemed to have worked, though, because he wasn't as bone-deep frozen as he had been yesterday, although he ached fiercely from the long day in the saddle.
"We'll stop in the next village if their inn has room," Jak said as though he sensed Denil's thoughts.
"And if they don't have room?"
"They'll have room," Jak said grimly. "We aren't kitted out for camping in this weather."
"Try not to hurt anyone," Denil said, wondering how hard he would really protest if Jak started threatening the innkeeper with bodily harm if he didn't provide a room.
Jak grinned wolfishly. "I'll try. How's the weather coming along?"
Denil closed his eyes for a moment to concentrate. "There's something moving down from the north but it won't hit for a couple of days."
"Good. You're a useful guy to have around."
Jak's words warmed Denil better than his fur coat and he didn't bother to work out why.
The next village was only a couple of miles down the road and it had a large inn with a common room as busy as the 'Wandering Woman' had been. Denil hung back while Jak negotiated with the innkeeper for rooms. This innkeeper was a blonde version of yesterday's and he kept glancing at Sai'em nervously, his gaze lingering on her slightly pointed ears. When he eventually 'found' a couple of empty rooms, Denil was sure that it was Sai'em's presence that had closed the deal rather than Jak's rather pointed fingering of his sword hilt.
This time the room that Denil and Jak were given was larger, with a small fireplace and a writing desk in addition to a washstand and blanket box. The straw mattress promised to be uncomfortable but it was a surface to sleep on and that was all Denil cared about. After supper he went in search of the innkeeper and the man reluctantly assigned a serving girl to heat water for a bath. A small room off the kitchen served as a bathing room and, although the tub wasn't large, the hot water soaked away some of the aches. Denil began to appreciate Sai'em's work to give the university running hot and cold water when it took several trips with buckets to get the bath filled. He helped the maid empty the tub when he was dried and dressed and left her heating water for a second tub.
Jak was sitting on the bed propped against the headboard, darning a sock when Denil returned to their room, a sight that made him stop and blink for a moment before he could continue to his pack and put away his soap and dirty socks.
"Good bath?" Jak asked, not looking up from his darning.
"Yes, thank you," Denil said. "The girl is drawing up one for you."
"Is that a hint?"
Denil looked up uncertainly. "Ah, no. Just-"
"Relax, I was joking. A bath sounds good right now." Jak tied off his wool and stood up. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Denil decided to leave his feet bare rather than hunt for clean socks and concentrated on slowly finding a clean shirt. He relaxed when the click of the bedroom door announced Jak's departure. For some reason he felt uncomfortable about changing in front of the man, but he decided to put it down to only having known Jak for a few days. He changed into a clean shirt and hesitated for a moment before switching his leather pants for woollen ones. Then, with one ear listening for Jak's return, he pulled out his journal and pen, sat down at the writing desk and began trying to record the last two days. Denil was reading over what he had written when he heard footsteps in the corridor and quickly closed the journal and put his pen and ink back into their box. He hurriedly put them back into his pack and straightened up as Jak entered the room and shut the door with his shirt over his arm. Denil didn't consider himself to be prudish so he couldn't understand why the sight of Jak's bare chest sent heat rushing to his face.
"I thought you'd be asleep already," Jak said as he carefully folded his shirt.
Denil sat down one the edge of the bed, trying not to stare at Jak and failing. "I wasn't tired."
"You're a night owl." Jak pulled out a clean shirt and pulled it on over his head. "It's what makes you so bad-tempered in the morning."
Denil was surprised to feel disappointed as the shirt covered Jak's torso. It was a nice chest, lean and lightly muscled without a hint of flab, despite Jak's claims to be desk-bound. He wondered what the light covering of hair would feel like against his fingers and his eyes were drawn to where the hair narrowed and disappeared into the waistband of Jak's breeches before it, too, was covered. Then he had to wonder where the sudden interest in another man's chest hair came from. Sharra had found his own smooth chest amusing but he had never felt the need to explore another man's before. Maybe delayed inadequacy was kicking in? That thought was immediately dismissed because this interest in Jak's body had nothing to do with comparisons in that way.
"Denil?"
He jumped as Jak called his name sharply and he realised that Jak had been trying to get his attention for a while.
"Denil? Are you alright?" Jak asked, concern in his eyes.
The collar of Jak's shirt hadn't been laced completely so a tuft of greying hair was visible poking out of the top. Denil jerked his eyes away and prayed that the heat in his face was not a blush.
"Denil?"
"I'm fine," Denil lied. "We should probably h-...uh, get some sleep."
Jak frowned at him but didn't purse it and Denil breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He stood and pulled back the blankets with more force than was really necessary so he had to shake them to restore some material to Jak's side of the bed. Without looking at Jak, he climbed in and lay down facing the wall. Denil closed his eyes and a minute later the room darkened and he felt Jak get into the bed beside him.
After a few minutes Jak's voice floated out of the darkness. "I know you're not asleep."
Denil opened his eyes. He had been hoping that Jak would take the hint and at least pretend to sleep if he wasn't tired, but apparently Jak didn't take hints well. The bed was as uncomfortable as it had promised to be and Denil had straw prickling his skin and a lumpy pillow. It would take a lot to be able to sleep through that.
He reluctantly rolled over and spent a while trying to find a comfortable position with no straw digging into his skin. Eventually he conceded defeat and lay still. He was surprised to meet Jak's eyes only a few inches away and resisted the immediate instinct to scoot back. Low flames still danced in the hearth, providing just enough flickering light to see Jak's eyes but leaving enough shadow to make Denil unsure of his expression.
"Can't sleep?" Jak asked.
"It would be easier if this bed was more comfortable," Denil admitted.
Jak lifted his head, punched his pillow and lay down again. "I know what you mean. I swear this pillow has rocks in it."
"Straw was never designed to be a mattress filling."
"It has a certain rustic charm," Jak said, a shadow at the corner of his mouth deepening in what Denil now recognised was a habitual half-smile to imply gentle sarcasm. "You're sure we aren't going to get trapped here by the weather?"
"I'm sure."
"Good. I don't suppose there's a way to schedule any storms so that we're at decent inns when they hit?"
"Sorry. Sai'em says that it takes a lot of energy to change weather patterns and it's nearly impossible to make specific changes."
"'Nearly?' Implying that it's not completely impossible?"
"I think it would probably kill a person before they actually achieved their intended goal."
"Ouch."
Denil couldn't think of anything else to say about weather-magic from his limited understanding of it but he didn't want the conversation to end yet. "I barely know anything about you. Tell me something interesting."
"Like?"
"I don't know - pick something."
"Put me on the spot, why don't you?" Jak grumbled.
"Alright, if it's easier - tell me about your son."
Jak's eyes immediately lit up and Denil's breath caught in his throat for a moment.
"Charry's a great kid," Jak said, his voice filled with pride. "He's only nine but he's already so smart. I got him enrolled in one of the guild schools a couple of years ago and his teachers say that he could easily get into one of the universities when he's older. Right now he's more worried about playing ball with his friends but he doesn't argue when he's told to do his homework first." Jak's voice lowered and became confiding. "He doesn't know that I know, but he sneaks books into his bed and reads after lights-out. Not just adventure stuff, either. He reads history and travel stories by some guy who's been all over and published his journals."
"Peris Goy?"
"Yeah, that's him. Charry thinks he's being so sneaky, fooling his old dad into letting him go to bed early so he can read."
"If you make something illicit, that only makes someone want it more," Denil said thoughtfully.
Jak nodded. "That's right. Charry's allowed to read for a few minutes after supper, just long enough to get into it but not long enough to get bored, and then he's meant to go to bed so he hides his book under his shirt and sneaks it up."
Denil listened to Jak's stories of a happy boy growing up with a loving parent, going on fishing trips and smashing windows with over-enthusiastic ball games, and smiled wistfully. Jak sounded like a wonderful father and Charry sounded like a great kid. Denil wished that he could meet the boy and then sternly reminded himself that he would if he did his job properly.
Eventually, the long day caught up with him despite the uncomfortable bed and Denil's eyes drifted shut. He tried to concentrate on Jak's voice but sleep was too seductive and he was carried away into dreams of playing catch with a sunny-faced boy and his handsome father.
Denil was woken by a pillow landing on his face. He shoved it aside and reluctantly forced his eyes open to stare blearily up at Jak, who was picking up two steaming mugs from the desk.
"Morning," Jak said, grinning. "Tea?"
The scent of the bitter herbs made Denil's nose twitch so he sat up and held out a hand. Jak gave him a mug and pulled out the spindly chair from the writing desk to sit on while he drank his own tea. Denil took several careful sips of the scalding liquid and wished he had some honey to take the edge off the bitter brew.
"We're leaving in a few minutes," Jak said, draining his mug with a grimace. "If you hurry, the innkeeper is making breakfast."
Denil waited until Jak left the room with his packs before throwing back the blankets and leaving the bed. The fire had burnt out during the night so the room was chilly and Denil hurriedly dressed for the day's travel. He made a quick check of his packs to be sure that his books were stowed safely and that nothing had been left behind before making his way to the inn's common room. Breakfast turned out to be a plate of hot sausages, thick slabs of bread and more bitter tea. Sai'em and Jak were nowhere to be seen so he put some sausages between a couple of slices of bread and ate as he walked to the stables.
The sky was beginning to lighten on the horizon, signalling dawn's fast approach. Denil's breath was a white stream in the icy air but the itch at the back of his mind said that the storms were still at least a couple of days away. His companions led the horses out of the stables as Denil finished the last bite of his sandwich and he glared at his mare's saddle with distaste. Something stopped him from commenting, though, and he was embarrassed to realise that it was the memory of Jak's admiration for how well he was coping with the journey. That was enough to make him determined to prove Jak right so he climbed into the saddle without a word and followed him out to the road.
The next three days passed much as the first two had. The cold never relented but Denil gradually got used to feeling cold all day and reading in the saddle took his mind off it for a while. Sometimes Jak or Sai'em rode alongside him and they chatted, which made the time pass faster.
The evenings were the time that Denil found himself looking forward to, though. Not because he finally got to thaw out after a day in the biting cold, although that was good, but because after they blew out the lanterns or candles and lay down to sleep, he and Jak talked. The inns that they found always gave Denil and Jak a room to share, one night in two single beds but usually in one bed, and Denil discovered that he enjoyed the company. Even more surprising was the realisation that it was Jak's company in particular that he was enjoying rather than the loneliness of five years alone catching up with him. Jak gave off the impression that he was an uneducated, uncultured fighting man but Denil rapidly discovered that it was just a front. He might not have Sai'em's grasp of science but he knew as much about politics and recent history as any scholar could. He had travelled and respected the lands he had been to, although his views on their mythologies were wildly different from Denil's. Jak claimed not to follow any religion, but Denil had noticed that he wore a medallion with an image of Mithra, the Tenthorian god of soldiers, thieves and luck. It led to an interesting discussion of religion and superstition that only ended when Denil fell asleep mid-sentence.
Their views on many issues differed but for Denil that was better than if they had agreed on everything because they could discuss their ideas and Denil had always enjoyed a heated debate. Even the evening that had descended into childish exchanges of 'do' and 'do not' before they collapsed into controllable laughter had been fun. Jak's friendship was something warm, exciting and new in Denil's life, a connection that was quickly becoming important to him. Denil couldn't help feeling surprised by the rapidity with which Jak had crept into his soul. He didn't consider himself to be a person who made friends easily. Even Sharra had made the first move, sitting down at his table one lunchtime and introducing herself to a tongue-tied Denil. So it was a shock to realise how close he had become to Jak in only a week.
On the afternoon of their sixth day out of Eto, the itch at the back of Denil's mind intensified and he nudged his horse to catch up with Jak's.
"There's a storm coming," he said without preamble.
Jak glanced up at the clear sky. "Are you sure?"
Denil nodded. "We've got maybe two hours."
Sai'em trotted up to them and asked, "Storm?"
"I don't see anything," Jak protested.
"He's never been wrong yet," Sai'em said. "We should turn back. The last village had a small tavern and it's only a mile down the road."
Jak shook his head. "I'm not turning back. There's a town about five miles further on."
"Are you sure?" Sai'em asked.
"Of course I'm sure - I've got a map and I've been reading the damn things right for a long time. I can measure the distance between towns pretty well now."
"I don't think we should take the chance," Sai'em said.
"Who's the leader of this little trip? I could have sworn I heard you promising to obey my instructions when we left Eto."
"Not when they're commands that could get Denil stranded in a blizzard!"
"Denil, what do you say?"
Denil suddenly found himself the focus of two pairs of eyes and he swallowed hard. "Me?"
"You're the weather expert," Jak said. "Is there time to get to the next town or should we go back?"
Jak's expression clearly said which option he preferred but Denil was not going to let their new friendship influence his judgement. Sai'em could probably survive a blizzard with no trouble, but he and Jak were only human with human susceptibilities to the elements. He squinted towards the northern horizon and could just make out a darkening of the sky there. The wind had already picked up in the last few minutes and his weather-sense said clearly that the storm was on its way. On the other hand, he thought that they might be able to cover the distance to the town in time and the tavern in the last village had looked to be little more than a local watering hole with no room for guests. They would be lucky to get blankets on the floor there. A town held the prospect of a decent inn with rooms and beds that would be much more pleasant for the couple of days that Denil suspected the storm would last.
"We should go on," Denil said eventually. "If we push hard we should make it."
"Sweet," Jak said with a grin. "It's settled. Sai'em, stay with us or go back - it's your choice."
Sai'em didn't look happy but she spoke a word of Elvish and her horse began to trot along with the others. The storm came up rapidly and Denil began to worry that he had made the wrong choice. A mile from the town they kicked the horses into a canter and ran down the road and through the town gates, only stopping when they spotted a large building with an elegantly drawn white deer on the sign swinging outside. They rode into the courtyard as the first flakes of snow drifted out of the sky and gratefully handed the horses over to a pair of shivering grooms.
Jak was strangely quiet over supper and when they went to bed he rolled into his side facing away from Denil and pretended to sleep. Denil lay watching the shadows from the fire dance on the ceiling for a long time before concluding that Jak didn't want to talk tonight. Denil tried not to feel hurt at the sudden coldness but it was the first time Jak had made no attempt to start a conversation and for some reason it cut deeply. There was clearly something on Jak's mind but he was obviously going to deal with it on his own. Denil tried softly calling his name but there was no reply. Eventually he rolled onto his side and fell into a fitful sleep.
Denil woke a few hours later feeling groggy from his restless sleep. He knew before he opened his eyes that he was alone in the bed. That in itself was not unusual - Jak always woke before him - but usually Jak woke him up soon after and waited for him with a cup of tea. The sheets on the other side of the bed were cold and Denil couldn't smell any tea.
He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. The fire had burned down but it was still dark outside. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark and he began to wake up fully, he could just make out Jak standing at the room's only window staring out at the storm. The wind was just audible, whistling around the inn, and Denil judged that it would be at least a couple of days before the weather cleared enough for them to move on
He sat up in the bed and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Jak?"
For a long time there was no reply. He was about to try again when Jak said, "Go back to sleep, Denil."
"What's wrong?"
"Didn't I just tell you to go to sleep?"
Although the room was chilly, Denil threw back the blankets and padded over to Jak. He hesitated for a moment before resting a hand lightly on Jak's shoulder. Jak's skin was cold through his shirt and Denil realised that he must have been standing there for a long time.
"Don't you know how to take a hint?" Jak asked without turning around.
Denil shrugged. "I've never been good at taking orders."
There was a quiet snort from Jak that was almost a laugh, but not quite.
"You also don't know when to give up, do you?" Jak asked.
It was obviously a rhetorical question so Denil stayed quiet and waited for Jak to talk when he was ready.
"Aren't you getting cold?" Jak asked after a while.
"A little. You?"
Jak shrugged and Denil felt the muscles flex beneath his fingers.
"How long is this going to last?" Jak asked, nodding towards the snow whirling past the window.
"A day, maybe two."
"Every day that we're stuck here, my son gets further away," Jak said softly. "I don't even know whether he's still alive. I just feel - it's frustrating, you know? We should be riding to Genta as fast as we can, but instead we're stuck here watching snow. If he's still alive, Charry probably thinks that his father's abandoned him."
"You know that's not true," Denil said firmly. "You told me that he's a smart kid - he'll know that you're doing everything you can and the only reason you're not with him now is because you can't find him."
"I should have fought harder."
"How would that have helped? You were unarmed - would you be any use to Charry dead?"
Jak finally turned his head and Denil could see the fear in his eyes that he usually kept hidden so well. "What if we're already too late?"
"You'd know if you were."
"How?"
"You just would."
"What if my certainty that he's still alive is just because I can't accept that he's dead?"
"I knew that my parents had died before their assistant told me. Sai'em knew her mother was dead two days before her father told her."
"I didn't know that my parents had died until I got the letter three weeks after the funeral. I hadn't seen them for years - hell, I didn't even know that my father was sick."
"You loved Charry and you saw him every day, right?" Denil asked.
"Yes."
"Then you'd know if we were already too late."
"I want to believe."
"So believe." Denil lightly squeezed his shoulder and almost jumped when Jak raised a hand to cover his fingers. "Why would anyone go to the trouble of kidnapping your son the way they did if they didn't intend to keep him alive?"
The fear in Jak's eyes receded a little. "That's a very good point."
"I sometimes have them."
Denil couldn't help shivering when a cold gust of air slipped through the cracks in the window frame and the motion caught Jak's attention. He turned around and rested his hands on Denil's upper arms, rubbing gently.
"You're frozen," Jak said, the fear leaving eyes completely to be replaced with something that Denil couldn't quite identify. "Come on, you should be in bed. I'll get the fire started."
Another shiver shook Denil so he didn't argue and climbed into bed with the blankets tugged up to his shoulders while Jak tended to the fire. A few minutes later Jak got into the bed and they wordlessly shifted closer until their shoulders brushed. Denil turned his head on the pillow so that he could meet Jak's eyes.
"We will find him," he promised.
"I think he'll like you," Jak said.
Denil allowed a small smile to curve his lips. "Thank you."
When Jak woke hours later it took him a while to work out why it was past dawn and he was still in bed. He opened his eyes and glanced out of the window where he could still see the snow falling heavily. Although his body was telling him that it was mid-morning, the light coming into the room was still grey and faint. Denil was probably going to be right about the storm lasting for another day or so, he decided.
Jak turned his head to look at Denil and was reminded of why he usually got up as soon as he woke up. The other man was lying on his stomach with his face turned away from Jak. His hair was too long and always seemed to be flopping into his face, which Jak had tried to tell himself looked ridiculous but it really didn't. Throughout his journey to Eto, Jak had envisioned an old, shortsighted scholar with bad clothes and a bathing problem. This handsome man was nothing like that, although Jak admitted that most of Denil's clothes were patched, threadbare and mismatched and he had caught him squinting at signs a couple of times. Nothing, though, had prepared him for meeting someone like Denil. Probably nothing could. Getting to know the man better was only reinforcing that impression. Denil wasn't just attractive and intelligent, he was also caring, funny and the kind of man who valued friendships. Jak suspected that it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge into falling hard for the scholar.
He was still watching Denil a while later when he grunted softly and rolled over to stretch. Jak's mouth was suddenly bone-dry as he watched Denil's shirt tighten across his chest, showing the unscholarly physique that haunted his dreams. He tried to tell himself that he should look away, but his eyes refused to obey. This was exactly the reason why he was usually a couple of feet away with a mug of tea when Denil woke up. It was so tempting to reach out and touch things that he definitely shouldn't be touching if he wanted to keep their relationship strictly platonic.
Denil finished stretching and relaxed back onto the bed. He opened his eyes and for a moment Jak forgot to breathe as a smile of pure happiness lit up his face and was echoed in his beautiful blue eyes.
"Morning," Denil said, his voice husky from sleep.
Heat was rushing through Jak's body and he carefully shifted to hide the evidence of his arousal from the man lying next to him. He began silently cursing the gods that had made Denil a beautiful, caring man instead of the elderly, smelly scholar he had been expecting when he set out.
"Morning," Jak managed to rasp.
Denil rolled onto his side and pillowed his head on one arm, coincidentally putting his face only a few inches from Jak's. "Are you feeling better this morning?"
It took Jak a moment to work out that Denil was referring to his moment of despair last night. In the light of day, Jak felt slightly embarrassed that Denil had seen him at such a low point, but there was nothing in his eyes to indicate that Denil respected him any less for it. Denil's eyes reflected his every mood; he didn't seem to know how to hide his emotions so they shone clearly through even though he tried to control his expressions. At the moment, Denil was completely unguarded and his eyes showed only affection and quiet contentment.
"I'm feeling better," Jak said, hoping his pause hadn't been noticeable. "Thanks. You?"
A smile flashed across Denil's face. "Me? I've had some sleep, I'm warm and I might get to stay that way for a day. I'm feeling good."
A moment later Denil's eyes filled with distress. "Not that I'm...Jak, I don't resent you or anything for asking me to come along. Far from it. I didn't intend to...that didn't...I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
Jak couldn't resist laying a hand on Denil's free arm where it lay on the blankets between them. "I know what you meant."
"You do?"
"These conditions wouldn't be easy for a seasoned veteran and you're far from that. You're a scholar, a linguist, and you've travelled through weather that has anyone with any sense running for a place to wait out the winter." Jak began absently rubbing a thumb over the soft material of Denil's worn shirt. "This is the first time I've heard you say anything even remotely like a complaint and to be honest, I admire that."
"Oh."
"And it is nice not feeling cold for a while."
A small smile reappeared on Denil's face. "Thanks."
Jak returned the smile and tried to find something else to say. It was hard to think, though, with Denil so close, allowing him to touch, smiling in a way that seemed to make the rest of the world go away. He could feel himself getting caught in the blue-eyed gaze and couldn't dray his eyes away. Jak slowly slid his hand up Denil's arm to rest on his shoulder. He was so caught up in the moment that he didn't notice that movement - didn't notice that he was moving closer to Denil until the soft look in his eyes was replaced with confusion.
That was enough to shock Jak out of his sensual haze. It worked better than a bucket of ice water. He rolled over and sat up so swiftly his head swam for a moment.
"Hungry?" Jak asked, his voice slightly muffled as he rubbed his hands over his face.
"Jak? What's wrong?"
He plastered a grin on his face and looked down at Denil lying on his back with a surprised expression. "Nothing's wrong. I just realised that it's late and we need to hustle if we're going to get any breakfast."
Denil's eyes searched his face intently for a moment and Jak fought to keep his expression neutral. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when Denil nodded even as he cursed himself for putting the confusion in his eyes.
"Alright, breakfast sounds good," Denil said.
Breakfast turned out to be much better than at any inn they'd yet stayed in. The innkeeper produced dishes of sausages, bacon, eggs and mushrooms and a large pot of tea. Sai'em entered the common room as Jak and Denil were sitting down, a liberal sprinkling of melting snowflakes in her hair and on her coat indicating that she had already been out to check the storm's progress. She grabbed a plate from the pile that the innkeeper had left and began loading it with food from the dishes. There was a troubled expression in her pale blue eyes but she said nothing at first. Jak poured her a mug of tea that she sampled, grimaced and added a large dose of honey to. He noticed that Denil drank his with a blissful expression and mentally slapped himself for finding the expression so appealing.
Jak busied himself with eating while the food was still hot so that he didn't do anything to embarrass himself or make Sai'em any more suspicious of him than she already was. The bruise on his jaw was now at the ugly green-yellow stage but she still gave him occasional questioning looks as though she hadn't believed Denil's explanation about it. Jak found that he couldn't blame her - he was attracted to the man, after all. He had promised himself that it would go no further, but how could the elf know that?
She was suspicious of anything connected to wizards and, ordinarily, Jak would have applauded that. The problem was that the wizards might hold the key to his son's disappearance and so he needed them. That brought him right back to the reasons why he needed Denil, which in turn took him to the reasons why he need to allay Sai'em's suspicions. It was a circular problem.
Jak was pulled out of his musings when Sai'em cleared her throat.
"Has anyone noticed that these storms aren't natural?" she asked.
"Aren't natural?" Jak echoed.
Denil gave her a puzzled look. "I know they're bad, but it's not unusual for winter to come this early-"
"But it came too suddenly," Sai'em said, cutting him off. "I've been asking around while you were asleep."
For some reason, Jak suddenly felt his face warm even though it had been a perfectly innocent sleep-in. The look in Sai'em's eyes implied that she wasn't so sure about his innocence but she was too polite to comment on it in public.
"Everyone agrees that we went from late autumn to mid-winter without a transition phase," Sai'em continued. "The storms don't usually start with this kind of intensity. The weather isn't natural."
"If it isn't natural, then what is it?" Jak asked.
Sai'em fixed him with an intent gaze. "Is there any chance that your wizards are involved in something?"
"'My' wizards?"
"You work for them."
"I'm Commander of the Genta Watch - I don't work for the wizards."
Sai'em raised her eyebrows. "Really? Then why are you taking Denil to them?"
Jak sighed. "They have information that I need and he might be able to translate it. I'm not working for them and I definitely don't know what they'd be doing."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
"He's telling the truth," Denil said softly. "Jak came to me because I might be the only person who can help. If the wizards could translate the document we need, they'd never have sent for me."
"They couldn't even recognise the alphabet it was written in," Jak confirmed. "What makes you so certain the wizards are mixed up in it anyway?"
"Do you know anything about human magic?" Sai'em asked.
Jak shook his head. Knowing about magic had never been important to his career. Wizards stayed in their compound and elves stayed out of human affairs completely.
"Human magic is wasteful and destructive." Sai'em's expression showed her distaste. "It requires blood sacrifices to do any powerful spells and large workings mess up energy fields for miles around. Careless magic can change weather patterns for weeks. These storms aren't natural and that leaves only one explanation - the wizards have been playing with something they should have left alone."
"Whatever they've been up to, it's got nothing to do with me," Jak said firmly.
Sai'em's eyes held his for a long moment before she finally nodded. "I believe you."
"Thanks."
"Is this going to cause a problem?" Denil asked.
Sai'em shrugged. "I have no idea. Your weather-sense still seems to be working so we at least have a warning if a storm is about to fall on us."
"But we're going to get bogged down in storms," Jak said heavily, feeling the frustration from last night boiling up again. "There's nothing you can do?"
"No. My magic doesn't affect weather - elves don't tamper with things that they don't understand."
There was a muffled snort from Denil's direction and Jak turned to him in time to watch his face redden and his shoulders shake. For a moment, he thought Denil was choking until he realised that he was trying vainly to suppress incredulous laughter.
"I'm sorry, Sai'em," Denil managed after a couple of minutes of desperate struggling. "It's just - you've always meddled with things that you don't understand. Remember the boiling tank? It took out three sheds when it blew."
A faint hint of pink appeared on Sai'em's normally pale face. "That wasn't-"
"And there was that powder you were experimenting with that exploded if you got a lit lantern within ten feet of it."
"It-"
"What about that device I found in Ventaxia that you just had to fiddle with?"
Sai'em took a deep breath. "It's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?" Denil sobered. "The quest for knowledge involves risks - you've always told me that. The consequences of some of those risks can be more dangerous than others, but does that justify condemning the people who take them?"
"Why are you defending wizards?" Sai'em asked.
Denil offered her a faint smile. "I don't like them any more than you do, but that doesn't mean that I'm blind. Wizards have to research as much as we do. I could wish that they'd be more careful and considerate with their experiments, but I can't condemn them for trying to satisfy their curiosity because I'm just as guilty of that as they are."
"I just wish that they'd stick to magic they can do without sacrifices and needless waste," Sai'em said.
Jak had a feeling that this was a minor skirmish in a long-standing argument between them. He didn't like wizards any more than they did and he resented their experiments slowing his search for his son, but he needed them. There was something deeper there for Sai'em and Denil, something that he couldn't put his finger on yet but that he'd work out one day.
The tense atmosphere suddenly disappeared as Sai'em flashed a bright smile and gestured to the last slice of bacon. "Do you mind?"
Jak shook his head and gestured for her to take it. Sai'em did, consuming it in two quick bites before standing.
"If you gentlemen would excuse me?"
Without waiting for a reply, she picked up her mug of tea and left the common room.
"That was sudden," Jak said after a moment.
"You get used to it," Denil said with a quick smile. "Sai'em isn't good at small talk."
"I noticed." Jak drained the last drop of tea from his mug, wondering how he could occupy himself for two days in an inn without going insane. "Got any plans?"
Denil shrugged. "I have some books."
Jak winced. "Sounds thrilling."
"It will be."
Inspiration suddenly struck Jak and he grinned as he realised that his idea would be a perfect way to work out all his various frustrations. "You said that you can defend yourself."
"Yes," Denil said warily.
"Prove it."
"What?"
"I said, prove it."
"You want to fight with me?"
"Yeah. It'll be fun."
Denil gave him an odd look. "Fun?"
"Fun. It's a concept you might not have come across in book-land, but us mere mortals frequently do it. We'll spar and it'll be fun."
Denil did not look convinced.
The case was hidden deep inside Denil's pack, wrapped in a spare pair of socks for additional security. He drew it out and opened it, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that the contents were nestling undamaged in their specially designed compartment. It didn't look like much, just a couple of pieces of glass held together on a wire frame, but it was unique and difficult to replace, if not impossible. Sai'em had made the spectacles a few years ago when she was investigating the properties of light and glass. She had spent weeks getting the lenses curved just right, even resorting to magic when her grinding tools were too coarse for the work, and Denil treasured them almost as much as his books. He could still remember the amazement he'd felt when he first put on the finished version and the world had suddenly come into sharp focus. Everything lost the usual slight blur at the edges and for the first time he had been able to read the spines of books in the library from a couple of feet away.
He put them on now and a faint echo of that long ago magic shivered through him. The bedroom was now sharply focused and he could make out every knot in the wood of the door. The frames that held the glass lenses to his eyes had been made to hook securely behind his ears. They felt firm and they had never fallen off, but he was always nervous about wearing them in case they were damaged. Sai'em had asked, countless times, what the purpose was in owning the spectacles if he never used them. Denil felt guilty about admitting that he wasn't sure she could reproduce this work if anything happened to them. He had used them when he was in strange libraries or working on excavations during his summer expeditions but he had barely worn them since Sharra's death - he had seen no need.
Sparring with Jak, though, could be dangerous without his vision at full-strength so he wore them despite his misgivings. On the one hand, the spectacles could get damaged, but on the other hand they would both be aiming not to hurt each other and that took more skill and accuracy than simply trying to kill each other.
Denil picked up the fighting staff, thought about changing before deciding that his leather riding breeches and plain shirt would be fine, and went back to the common room.
The innkeeper had moved the tables and benches to one side, leaving a clear area for them to work in. Jak was already warming up so Denil took a spot in one corner and went through the stretching exercises that Sai'em had taught him years ago. When he was sure that his muscles were sufficiently loosened, Denil expanded the staff to its full length and stepped into the centre of the room.
Jak held up his sword uncertainly. "I can use this or the innkeeper can find me a broom handle."
Denil shrugged. "I trust you. Sai'em taught me to defend against a sword as well as a staff."
Jak drew the sword and tossed the sheath onto one of the tables before standing opposite Denil. "Alright then. Show me what you've got."
Denil gripped the staff in both hands, remembering Sai'em's long ago instructions. At first they circled each other warily and then Jak struck out lightning fast. The instincts flowed back and Denil countered quickly. Jak tested him again and but each counter-move came to Denil with the smoothness of long practice. It might have been years since he had really needed to use these skills but apparently some things were instinctive. The blocks and parries to meet Jak's swift attacks were moves that his muscles could remember without consulting his conscious mind.
Denil grinned.
Jak noticed Denil's feral grin and returned it. The scholar might look peaceful and gentle, but there seemed to be fire in him as well that made Jak's blood heat. He attacked again, grunting as his sword was driven off with a strong swipe of Denil's staff. Denil was fast and accurate, keeping up his guard while he warded off Jak's thrusts. Jak harried him relentlessly, never giving Denil time to recover, and Denil's staff countered each move just as quickly.
The battle took them around their small arena and Jak was distantly aware of kitchen helpers coming out to watch the spectacle. His entire attention was centred on the man in front of him wielding a staff with what he knew could be deadly skill.
It was just as fun as he had predicted.
Jak backed off for a moment to catch his breath. Denil was sweating liberally, his shirt clinging to his skin and moving with him as he panted. The odd wire frames on his face looked like a part of him and added to the strange contradiction of scholar and fighter. His choice of weapon showed that he was more inclined to peaceful resolutions than fights but he had enough skill to make anyone regret challenging him. Jak wondered who had taught him. The staff was an elf-weapon so he suspected that it had been Sai'em.
Denil saluted him with the staff. "Ready?"
"Unless you want to yield," Jak said, returning the salute.
Denil shrugged and launched into an attack. His staff whirled and Jak was hard-pressed to fend off the blows. Jak's sword-arm ached from the jarring vibrations and he was forced to back away. Denil followed an over-arm blow with a rapid swipe at Jak's ankles, forcing him to leap over the staff. A moment later Jak had to duck and roll across the floor to avoid a swing aimed at his head. Surprisingly, he never once doubted that Denil could pull his blows if he needed to.
Jak quickly leapt to his feet and faced Denil. They exchanged a few soft, testing taps before launching into an exchange that was half race and half fight, unorthodox as hell and so much fun that Jak realised he was laughing even as he evaded a particularly sneaky pattern of blows.
A moment later he realised that Denil had somehow manoeuvred him exactly where he wanted him. Denil shifted his grip on his staff and tangled it with Jak's sword. Jak's hand stung as his sword was whipped out of it and sent sliding across the floor under a table. Denil leaned on his staff and grinned.
"Yield?" he asked.
Jak caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eyes and held out his hand in time to catch a broom handle thrown to him by one of the kitchen lads.
"Never," he said as he stepped forward and attacked.
Denil stumbled hack, quickly raising his staff to defend himself. This time the fight was more evenly matched. The room was filled with the loud clacks of wood on wood as each man fought for the upper hand. Jak managed to get past Denil's guard once to slap him on the ass with his makeshift staff and a minute later Denil retaliated with a gentle tap to his stomach. Denil had rapid reflexes but Jak's experience and stamina eventually took their toll. He managed to distract the scholar for a vital moment with a feint and swept his legs out from under him while his balance was off. Denil landed on his back and grunted as the air was knocked out of his lungs.
Jak put a foot on the hand that held Denil's staff and rested the end of his broom handle against Denil's throat. "Yield?"
Denil swallowed. "Yes."
Jak took his foot off Denil's wrist and offered him a hand up. "You're not bad."
"You're pretty good yourself."
As Denil came to his feet there was quiet applause from the small group of inn staff that had been watching from a corner. Denil's flush from the exertion deepened with embarrassment. Jak couldn't help the heat rushing through his body at the sight.
"I'm going to wash up," Denil said before fleeing the room.
Jak glared at the snickering kitchen helpers. One lad sent him a saucy wink that he ignored with dignity.
By mid-afternoon Jak was bored. He had finished all his darning and repairing and one of the inn's maids had taken all their dirty clothes to wash. The horses were comfortable and clean and the tack had been washed and checked for damage. Sai'em was doing something in one of the cellars and had banned Jak and Denil from interrupting her. The rest of the inn's guests were either in their rooms or drinking in the common room. Denil had retired to a private sitting room off the common room with his books. Jak had briefly considered seeking out a game of dice or cards in the common room but somehow that wasn't as appealing as sitting with Denil. He had looked at Denil's books but only one was in Common and it had almost sent him to sleep by the second page.
Jak shifted in his chair and watched Denil turn another page in his book. The expression of deep concentration on Denil's face only made Jak want to disturb him and get that intense gaze focused on him. He managed to resist for a while but when a bell struck the hour somewhere outside the inn, Jak's resistance grew weaker.
"Good book?" he asked eventually.
Denil turned another page. "Yes, thank you."
"What's it about?" Not that Jak wanted to know, but it seemed a good way to start a conversation.
"A romance."
Jak tried to guess whether Denil was joking but after a minute's observation he had to conclude that he wasn't. "Really?"
The book slowly lowered until Jak could see Denil's eyes. "Are you bored?"
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
"The fidgeting, the sudden interest in what I'm reading - do I need to go on?"
"Sorry, go back to your, uh, romance."
Denil's eyes narrowed. "Are you mocking my choice of literature?"
"Well-"
"This is an old story retold many times over the past thousand years."
"Uh-"
"There are really only three themes in fiction - love, hate and the quest for power. Throughout the ages these themes have recurred again and again in some form or combination."
Jak help up a hand to cut off the flow of words. "I said I was sorry."
"You did."
"And now I mean it. I won't make fun of your book again."
"Thank you."
There was a brief pause and then Jack asked, "So, what's it about?"
Denil sighed and lowered the book to his lap. "Ianith and Deblen."
"Never heard of them."
"Have you heard of Teblith and Corat?"
"Maybe."
A smile appeared on Denil's face but it was gone a moment later. Jak was quickly learning that those lightning smiles were the usual way with Denil and it took something really special to get a full smile out of him.
"They're two men who are childhood best friends," Denil said. "They go through many adventures and false directions before realising that their soul mate isn't out there in some distant land, but right next to them. Eventually they live out their lives together and die on the same day. I've found five versions of the story in different cultures. One version is over a thousand years old. The names and places change but the core of the story remains the same. Don't you think that's amazing?"
"Fascinating," Jak said dryly.
Another lightning smile flashed across Denil's face. "Want me to read to you?"
"I know how it ends now."
"You don't deal well with not doing anything."
Jak shrugged. "I like to keep active. Do you think the innkeeper has a stones board?"
A brief search produced a board and pieces from a chest in the corner. It also contained several dice and cups, cards from three countries and two versions of Hound and Hare. A low table with spindly legs was pulled out from the corner it had been hidden in and they set up the board. Jak took blue, Denil took red and they decided on ten neutral green stones. Denil's patently false expression of innocence when Jak asked whether he knew how to play was enough of a clue for Jak not to let him start with two king stones.
After a couple of moves, Denil looked up. "So, who did you fight with?"
Jak studied the board carefully before moving his house stone into a safe slot. "What do you mean?"
"I don't think that someone who fights like you do has spent his life with the Watch."
"Yeah?"
"Uh-huh." Denil quickly took two of Jak's stones and landed in a neutral slot. "I've met plenty of career Watchmen - most of them couldn't handle a sword without hurting themselves."
"Well, that's not fair." Jak grinned. "True, but unfair."
"So?"
"I was a mercenary."
Denil didn't look disgusted or appalled, only interested, which made a nice change from the usual reactions Jak got.
"Which company?" Denil asked.
"Wolf."
The scholar raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed. "You must be good."
"I'm still alive."
"You've also got both hands so you're not a thief."
"Got my balls, too - not a rapist."
"I'd never have believed that you were."
"But you'd believe that I was a thief?"
Jak played his move while he waited for Denil to answer.
"I don't think you'd take anything that someone couldn't afford," Denil said carefully, "but I know how mercenaries make their money."
"You also seem to know Wolf Company's reputation."
"Yes, but I'd be stupid to always believe a reputation. Stories can get exaggerated and changed with repeated retellings - it happens often enough in the works that I translate."
"Good point. In this case I'd say Wolf Company's reputation is pretty accurate. No rape, no looting from our employers or civilians who can't afford it and no butchery. Instead, we charge extortionate fees because we're the best out there."
"You talk as though you're still a part of them."
Jack considered it for a minute. "I guess it was a big part of my life for a long time and it's hard to forget something like that."
"Do you miss it?"
"Fighting in the rain? Foot rot? Damp tents? Blistering heat in the summer and em