“Stand still or I swear that I am going to intentionally stab you.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize this was going to take so long.”

  “Good clothes require accurate measurements. And accurate measurements take time,” Alyson said scribbling down another couple of numbers. Besides the longer I hold you here, the longer you have to talk to me.”

  “About what?” Rori asked with more than a hint of concern in his voice.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not quite as brash as Charity. I promise not to make you blush,” Alyson said as she knelt down beside Rori and started taking measurements of his legs.

  “Charity’s nice but she is a little forward,” said Rori.

  “It’s not her fault. It’s just the life she’s lead. Personally, I think it makes her more interesting.”

  “So did all three of you grow up together or something?”

  “No, just Karyn and I. I met Charity years later when Karyn was already married to Gerard.” Then looking up at Rori she said, “Does it bother you when Gerard gets mentioned?”

  “Why should it?” asked Rori. “He was a part of Karyn’s life, and he was gone before I even met her. Honestly, though it would be weird, I wish I could have known him. So, what was Karyn like as girl?”

  “You wouldn’t recognize her. Her family has always been well off, but nothing like this,” Alyson said gesturing around to the expensive trappings of the sitting room. “We’ve lost the accents, but we are both just a couple of country girls at heart.”

  “And Charity?”

  “Charity is a city girl through and through. She likes coming out here every once in a while, but she would never survive living out here. It’s too far from everything that is happening. Or at least that’s what she would say if you asked her.”

  “So, she lives in Willowsbrook?”

  “Actually, we live a bit west of Lycea.”

  “Where did she learn to fight? She’s amazing with the spiked chain.”

  “You’d have to ask her for specifics on the spiked chain. She grew up on the streets and learned some of it there. She worked as a bodyguard for a while. She did some travelling. She’s led a much more interesting and exotic life than me. It’s so varied I can’t keep up with it. Feel free to ask her about it, she’s an open book for the most part. What about you?”

  “Well, I’m assuming Karyn told you I was Cunāe?”

  “Was or am?” asked Alyson without looking up from the tablet she was writing on.

  “That’s a good question. I guess it’s ‘am’.”

  “Yes, she told us. I guess you’ve already figured it out, but Karyn and I are still the best of friends. We may not see each other as much as we used to, but we still keep up to date on each other’s lives, and there isn’t much she doesn’t tell me.”

  Rori tried to avoid thinking about what that might mean and instead said, “I’ve moved around a lot my entire life. I guess it would be pretty comparable to country life in most ways. Lots of chores and such. But there was also a military, fighting aspect to it. Learning to fight was just as important as learning life skills like cooking or sewing.”

  “Karyn said you don’t actually use a weapon, and I don’t remember seeing you carrying one. Or did I miss something?”

  “No, I work unarmed. But I get by. Haven’t you already measured my arm?” Rori asked.

  Alyson smiled, put down her tablet and said, “Yes, but I’m stalling for time. I feel like I need to say something and I’m avoiding it. I’m not much for confrontation.”

  “Just say it. I promise not to be offended.”

  “Okay,” Alyson said dropping into one of the stuffed chairs behind her. “Though she may not show it or talk about it, Karyn was crazy in love with Gerard. When he started coming around for her, we all told her it would never work, the age difference was too great and all that. But she didn’t care.

  “And she was right because as much as she was in love with him, he doted on her twice as much. I’ve never seen two people that much in love, even after they’d been married for a while. And when he died, I’ve never seen one person in so much misery. I think it nearly killed her. And I’m sure she would have been content to wither away and die if she hadn’t fallen into being a senator.

  “But once she did, she’s never looked back. And to be honest, I figured she would spend the rest of her life perfectly content to focus on that. Then you came along.”

  “You may not realize it, but she’s been agonizing over you for a while. Her brain telling her to stop being foolish and focus on important work. All the while her heart telling her to just go on ahead and be as foolish as she’d like. I’d be lying if I said that my heart wasn’t hoping she’d take the chance. But even though that’s true, it isn’t going to stop me from saying this. If you break her heart, there will be little I can do about it. But I swear to Meredith, Lutrell or any god you’d like, that I’ll get Charity to beat the crap out of you if at all possible and make you regret it.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Alyson had stood up halfway through the end of her rant and now she self-consciously sat back down and then said, “Sorry, that got a little more vicious than I’d intended, and I’m not saying you have to get married or anything like that. Just don’t be a jerk.”

  “It’s okay,” said Rori with a smile. “She deserves it.”

  Charity and Alyson had left two days ago. They’d stayed for four days before Alyson practically demanded they leave. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stay, but she needed to get back to her shop. She had work backing up and clients who were expecting their clothes.

  For his part Rori was not that sad to see them go. It wasn’t because he wasn’t enjoying their company. Instead, it was because he needed a break from Charity.

  Since the first day of sparring had gone so well, they both decided to continue the next day. And then that afternoon as well. In fact, they had had a long session of full out attacks twice and even three times a day since then. And as intense as the first session had been, the later ones were even more so.

  Charity had kept using the spiked chain the next morning. After Rori had disarmed her a couple of times and she had made several good hits on him, they had declared it a draw. When Charity made the excuse that the spiked chain was not her primary weapon, Rori invited her to use anything else that she would like. Fortunately, the armory at Karyn’s house had a decent supply of weaponry and Charity was proficient with all of it.

  There were times that Charity landed solid blows on Rori and, even though Meredith’s amulet immediately healed him of any wounds, there were often still aches and pains at the end of the day. Some in the places where his wounds had healed, but more often just the natural ache of having spent the bulk of the day engaged in non-stop fighting.

  Every day by the time evening rolled around Rori had to struggle to keep his eyes open. He would barely manage to stay awake long enough to reach the bed. Rori would wake up in the morning with muscles stiff and tight and with Karyn snuggled up against him.

  The day after Charity and Alyson had left, Rori had started to go out for a run and Karyn had stopped him at the door with, “I haven’t had you to myself for a whole day since you got here.” He’d gone to bed that night nearly as tired as the other days.

  Today Karyn had a meeting she couldn’t miss. She’d been gone when he’d awoken, and she wouldn’t be back until evening. So, he decided to use the opportunity to see more of the grounds of the estate. Karyn had said the property was large but still surrounded by a stone wall. If he didn’t cross that wall, he would still be on her land.

  This morning, he had eaten a big breakfast, with the help of the cook packed up a light but filling lunch and set out to see what there was to see. His initial plan had been to circle the estate, trying to run as much of it as he could. He’d imagined he’d be back to the house by dinner time, but he’d been forced to dismiss that idea. He’d headed out in the morning from the front of the house and up the drive that Charity and Alyson’s wagon had left on. It hadn’t taken that long to reach the front gates. But after turning right and following the wall, it wasn’t until nearly midday that he’d reached the corner of the estate where the wall turned again.

  After travelling for a while longer, he’d eaten his lunch sitting on a fallen tree and decided to reevaluate his plan. There was a stream that fed into the pond near the house, and it should come in on this side of the property. His new plan was to reach the stream and follow it down to the pond. He also decided to angle away from the wall and drift more to the center as he went.

  He’d come upon the forest by early afternoon and shortly thereafter he’d found the stream. By that point he was already only running some of the time and when he reached the stream, he gave up on running altogether.

  Now he was strolling along the stream’s edge enjoying the pleasant forest, musing about the full meaning of the last couple of days, and wishing he and Karyn were both home. And so it was with some surprise that he came around a particularly thick oak that grew in an oxbow of the stream and found another man leaning against the tall embankment on the other side.

  When Rori pulled up short, his foot slipped on the muddy stream bank and to prevent himself from falling onto his butt, he was forced to grab ahold of the oak.

  “So, this is the vaunted Rori,” the man said standing up. “Not so impressive looking from where I stand.”

  He was dressed in a dark red shirt with puffy sleeves and black pants. His hair was jet black. He wore shoes of the same red and looked more like he was about to go eat at a fine restaurant than someone who’d just walked through the woods. In fact, looking at his shoes it was clear the one thing he hadn’t done was walk through these woods.

  “I was wondering when the next of you would show up. Come to have a look and see if I’m worth trying to steal away? So, which one are you?” Rori asked now realizing what, if not who, he was talking to.

  “Quick on the uptake. I guess that’s something, but I must say that so far, I’m not impressed.”

  “An asshole then.”

  “Ha! Are we that quick to judge?”

  “Isn’t that what you were just doing?” asked Rori.

  “Good point,” the man said his animosity now gone, instantly replaced with joviality and friendliness. “Say no more, I can see that I’m wasting my time here. You just seem to be oozing with justice and right and all that. But I must say that I am still curious. Are you as capable as they say?”

  “How would I know? They haven’t said it to me,” Rori said in a voice that revealed, despite the change in his demeanor, how much Rori had already come to dislike the man.

  “I’m tired of this spot. A bit too pastoral for my tastes. Shall I whisk us away to someplace else, or shall we do the more prosaic ‘walk through the woods’ thing?”

  “You can do what you want. In fact, if you went someplace else that would be just fine with me,” said Rori turning and continuing to head down the stream.

  “Fair enough, do you mind answering one question before I leave you alone?”

  Rori stopped and turned to look back at the man and said, “Are you actually going to leave me alone? If you are who I assume you are, I would have thought that made us instantly enemies.”

  “We don’t have to be enemies,” the man said with a bit of a whine and wheedling in his voice. “Sure, Meri and her lot don’t like a lot of what I do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Besides, if you are actually going to revive the order, I’d be excited to help.”

  “I’m sure you would be,” said Rori. “Help everything fail before it begins is more like it.”

  “No, no. You’ve misjudged. The last time that lot got going there was a spectacular explosion of violence and backstabbing. It was particularly amazing, as far as I’m concerned, because I actually had nothing to do with it. So, if you’re going to bring the monks back together again, I’m all for it. I could use the respite from everyone blaming me for everything. And perhaps with their attentions diverted, maybe they won’t spend every moment of every day countering my every move.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “It’s something to think about anyway,” the man said. “Also, don’t be so quick to count me out. I’ve had plenty of great associates who started out much more antagonistic to me than you. Who knows, maybe you’ll eventually join my side after all.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” said Rori turning and walking away into the woods without looking back.

  “I’m a god!” the man yelled after Rori. “I could hold my breath forever if I wanted.”