Page 21 of Brought to Light
“The mother of the one called the child of sunlight will pay the price. And all who share her roof. Tomorrow at sunset, Oskar of Varnu.”
Oskar cursed, and he lunged, swinging his sword in an arc that would’ve sliced the crow’s head off. But the bird hopped backward, taking flight as it did, and all of its cohorts went with it.
Within seconds they’d shrunk to specks against the gray, gloomy sky, and moments later they were gone.
I lowered my gun and relaxed my grip; Oskar lowered his sword, sliding it back into its scabbard. For a minute or two we stood side by side, staring after the crows and thinking about the shitshow our day had suddenly become. I was, at least. Oskar probably had less processing to do regarding the talking bird.
“So I’m guessing Linden’s the ‘child of sunlight,’ yeah?” Oskar nodded. I wondered if Linden had the name for any reason beyond how fucking sunny he was, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask Oskar why Linden was so pretty, like some high-school idiot with a crush. “Does Evalt already have his mother hostage, or is he bluffing to get Linden out in the open? And if he knows where we are, why isn’t he already here? Why the crow bullshit?”
“This forest is under the protection of an ancient name, which is why Kaspar brought us here. Lord Evalt isn’t welcome here, though he can send his messengers, as you’ve seen.”
Well, that was as clear as fucking mud, but I guessed I got the overall idea. “Okay. So he needs to lure us out of here, and Linden’s mom is the obvious play.”
“If I understand your odd phrasing correctly, yes, Linden’s mother is his most vulnerable point. If Evalt has her—and I think he probably does, because he rarely bluffs—then Linden will think nothing of sacrificing himself for her sake.” Oskar paused, sighed, and added, “Although even if Evalt doesn’t have her hostage, Linden will go. He won’t take the risk. And once Evalt knows where Linden will be, he’ll be easy pickings. There may be an ambush on the road from here to there.”
“That’s what I’d do.” I thought it over for a moment. “Is there any reason for Linden to go at all? Someone needs to go. This asshole needs killing. But Linden’s not going to be the one to do it, is he?”
Oskar turned his head and fixed me with a penetrating stare, the kind you’d get from a drill sergeant who knew you were up to some kind of shady bullshit but wasn’t quite sure of the details yet.
“You don’t know, do you.” It wasn’t a question any more than mine had been; asking if Linden would be the one to pull the trigger had been completely rhetorical. Of course he wouldn’t. But it seemed like I’d hit a nerve. “You have no idea why Evalt’s so intent on killing Linden, even though you were meant to be the instrument of it,” he said, with a not-so-pleasant emphasis.
I hid a wince. Yes, I was a mundane tool, thank you, he’d already made his opinion fucking clear.
But admit how little I really understood about what was going on, or not? Not much point in trying to pretend I knew more than I did, not now. I’d done that the night before, and nothing had come of it but more mistrust. And this morning—looking at Linden, standing there miserable and with all his natural light put out like someone had hit his dimmer switch, I couldn’t lie. Not when he was so intent on trying to fudge the truth to his friends on my behalf as much as he could, trying to protect me from how much they’d naturally hate me for the way I’d come to meet Linden in the first place.
It was too much strain. He didn’t owe me trying to make me more likeable. Iwasn’tfucking likeable. He needed to depend on his friends, not put himself at odds with them because of me.
So now they knew I’d been hired to kill Linden, and they might as well know I’d been full of shit about understanding the situation, too.
Maybe the only way to get information out of these people was to tell the truth myself. I didn’t like to operate that way, opening myself up, so it surprised me what a fucking weight it lifted off my shoulders to just be—me. With all my faults.
“I have no fucking clue what’s going on, Oskar. Someone in my world hired me to kill a guy who didn’t look like someone anyone would want to kill. I dragged my feet, because no one in his right mind would want to murder Linden. Someone else tried to kill him, I reacted and iced the fucker. And then I ended up in a different fucking realm, with talking crows and bone-eating jelly monsters.” Oskar was still looking at me, still with that hard, take-no-prisoners expression on his face. “You don’t trust me, and you don’t like me. But killing is something I’m really, really good at. So tell me what we’re up against, give me the backstory so I don’t fuck up because I don’t know something, and I’ll point my gun wherever you point your sword.”
At last Oskar nodded. And then he held out his hand.
I took it. We both squeezed a little harder than strictly necessary before letting go.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and I nodded, one soldier to another. He sighed. “Lord Evalt has a seer, someone who can catch glimpses of the future. She’s not a very good seer, mind you, but Evalt hangs on her every word. Evalt can’t be killed by any weapon forged under the sun, but his power only makes him more paranoid. She predicted that someone she called the Light-Bearer would be the one to kill Evalt. Linden appears to fulfill her prophecy, because of the way the sun shone at his birth.”
Maybe Oskar would’ve gone on, but that was more than fucking enough for me. “The sun. The fucking sun shone when he was born, I’m assuming during the day when the sun’s supposed to goddamn shine, and this Evalt’s been wanting to kill him ever since?” I wasn’t shouting, but I wanted to. “The sun. Fuck, this place. And everyone thinks this makessense? I can put up with the bone-eating things, okay, those I can shoot. The talking crows might be kind of cool if they weren’t messengers of some evil asshole who wants to kill us all. But setting uphowmany fucking people to die? Hiring me to kill someone because the sun was out when he was born, like on a couple hundred other fucking days that year?Fuckthat, Oskar!”
I broke off, breathing hard, and realized I’d been shouting after all. The echo of my words rang from the trees around the lodge and hung in the air.
Oskar’s lips twitched, and then he started to laugh. It grew from a belly chuckle to a full-on guffaw, and it broke my anger. Laughter bubbled up in me, too, until we were both cackling like idiots, the sound rolling around the clearing and lightening the air, somehow.
“What iswrongwith you?”
We both spun, red-faced and gasping, to see Kaspar standing in the doorway of the lodge, his fists on his hips.
“Sorry,” Oskar mumbled. “We were—” He glanced at me, and we exchanged a look of accord. There were times when the situation went so FUBAR there wasn’t any choice but to just laugh your ass off. And anyone who’d ever fought in a war knew it.
“You were being idiots,” Kaspar sniffed. “The crows are gone, I see. I should have had magic prepared in case, but I was too slow. I assume they’ve returned to their master.”
Linden appeared behind Kaspar, peeking over his shoulder. “There’s no reason I can’t come out now,” he complained. “Get out of my way.”
“No,” Oskar said. “There may be other spies. Stay inside, out of sight.”
“What difference does it make? He knows where I am! And I want to know what message the crows brought!” He tried to shove his way past Kaspar, who shoved him back, and it devolved into the sort of squabbling match you’d see between siblings.
