Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Read online

  It was not a straightforward response, but Whym interpreted it as validation of Kutan’s claim. “And I’ll be expected to kill?” He knew he was being inconsistent. He’d planned to join the army. As an officer—or common soldier, if he flushed out of the officer training—he’d have killed as well. But this felt different. It felt wrong to profit from another’s death.

  “You must learn how to take a life, but the decision of when, or if, to use that skill will always be your own,” Stern promised.

  “Why did you claim me?” Whym posed the other question weighing heavily on his mind.

  “You’re strong and healthy. You had excellent marks,” the seeker began.

  Whym sensed he was avoiding the full truth. “And I’m the great-grandson of ArWhym Ellenrond?”

  “Yes,” Stern said flatly.

  The succinct admission, with no explanation, left Whym dumbstruck. His future was again being defined by his family’s past. The son of the man who’d betrayed his great-grandfather planned to groom him as a murderer. He feared if he ventured farther down this path, there’d be no turning back. Seekers are assassins? Assassins! He turned away and rested his hands, fingers intertwined, above his head. Five turns with the twins is preferable to this.

  He closed his eyes to shut out everything except his thoughts, but the empty darkness gave way to a vision. It was Spring Clean. The fevered calls of children on the Hunt carried through the streets of the Maze. There was a girl—young enough that the Hunt could have been her first—who’d been separated from the pack and walked alone. With tear-stained cheeks, she chased the voices, dragging a broom longer than her body.

  “Father?” she gasped, and backed away as a hunched figure hobbled from the shadows.

  Whym recognized the outfit of the Rat Man as he looked through the girl’s petrified eyes. Then he glimpsed the man’s face. Though mostly concealed by the hood, he recognized it as his own.

  My choice is clear. This apprenticeship will allow me to avoid the twins—and my father’s fate. When the apprenticeship’s finished, I’ll have the skills I need to escape Riverbend and never return. I won’t be the Council’s Rat Man.

  Whym turned back to Stern and Kutan. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The Wildes, Chapter 7

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  You brand my words heresy. Yet you, the lords of the Council of Truth, are the heretics. The Truth wasn’t meant as a tool to govern. The Council wasn’t created to rule. We were entrusted to guide the faith of our people—to enrich and advance. The revisions you make only benefit yourselves. You’re a council of thieves.

  .

  I cannot in good conscience remain First Lord. I resign from the Council of Truth and will lead our people to force the reform you refuse to undertake yourselves.

  .

  —First Lord ArWhym Ellenrond’s

  final address to the Council of Truth

  .

  The Wildes

  One Turn Later

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  Stern stood to the side. “All right, last one. Make it count.”

  Whym drew the bow, careful not to choke the nock. Blow on your target. He repeated Kutan’s advice in his mind as he aimed. Then he exhaled a disciplined breath and released. The string thrummed. The air hissed. The arrow shot far left and high of the target, landing in dense brush.

  Stern pressed his lips together. A now familiar crease on his forehead conveyed his frustration. From several steps behind Whym, another string thrummed, immediately followed by a whoosh as the arrow sped past his ear. He didn’t need to look. Kutan’s foxlike grin meant the shot had landed true.

  “Almost gave you a haircut,” Kutan crowed. “You collect again.” He unstrung his bow. “You know, they’re a lot easier to find when you hit the target.”

  Whym knew the teasing was probably meant to be playful, but he found Stern’s senior apprentice’s smirk increasingly difficult to tolerate. It wasn’t just archery. Kutan excelled in every skill and wasn’t shy about rubbing his superiority in Whym’s face.

  Having seen enough for the morning, Stern began repacking his satchel. Whym slung on his quiver and trudged off to find the errant shots, straining to hear the discussion between Stern and Kutan as he left. They often held conversations that stopped when he approached, leaving Whym to wonder what secrets they withheld. Despite living under the same roof, he still felt like an outsider. Today, though, the only word he caught was “hopeless.” He found it hard to disagree.

  The first couple days of Whym’s apprenticeship had gone smoothly. By the time they’d arrived in the Wildes, Whym had digested what Kutan had revealed about being a seeker and, with the aid of Stern’s promise, was feeling better about his decision to sign the apprenticeship agreement. He found the modest cottage, with its dirt floor and thatched roof, cozy, if a bit crowded with all three living in close quarters.

  Stern had prepared a warm spot near the hearth, and as Whym waited for sleep the first night, the unfamiliar song of the Wildes’ forest had mesmerized him. The gurgles and rustles and chirps and croaks were far different from the rumbles and mumbles and scrapes and thumps of the city.

  An enthusiastic worker, Whym had easily learned the chores he was expected to perform. But when the skill training began on the morning of the third day, he’d struggled both to keep up with Kutan’s skill and to meet Stern’s expectations. In the many moons since, he’d grappled with failure every day.

  Hopeless. The word left him unsettled. Though his strength and stamina had improved markedly, the skill gap between the two apprentices remained depressingly wide. Since Kutan had more training, it was not just the comparison that troubled Whym. His improvement had plateaued—regressed, even. He routinely made stupid mistakes in even the simplest of tasks. Hopeless. He feared Stern had given up on him.

  It didn’t take Whym long to recover most of the arrows, but one eluded him. He spent the morning frustrated, clomping from place to place. “Could’ve made a new one by now!” he grumbled when he finally spied a feather fletching in a patch of tall grass.

  By the time he returned to the cottage, Kutan and Stern had finished their midday meal. Stern was seated near the hearth puffing on his prized Horu pipe, a long, thin tube with a bulb at the end for the dried karstleaf. Unlike the Lowlands pipes, where men sucked short, successive drags, the Horu pipe was made for deep drags where smoke leaked from the nostrils before the breath was complete. Whym thought it made Stern look like a dragon, the inside of his mouth on fire.

  “There’s food on the table.” Kutan pointed to a wooden platter of dried meat and vegetables. “I’ve got something to do.” He gave Whym an uneasy look, then left.

  Though the look had ruined his appetite, Whym stepped toward the table to fill his bowl.

  “It’s time we have a talk,” Stern called with the door closed.

  Not yet! I’ll get better. After overcoming his initial reservations, and despite his constant failure, Whym had come to view the apprenticeship as the best thing to ever happen to him. His world was no longer confined by the walls of Riverbend, and his dream of escaping the Council’s reach seemed within his grasp. To be dismissed now, after he’d allowed himself to believe in a future where he was not forced to be the Rat Man, would be far worse than to have never been claimed.

  He approached Stern like a dog expecting punishment. “Master Sandoval.” He prepared to beg.

  Stern held up his hand. “Learn when to talk and when to listen. If you’re unsure, listen.”

  “It’s just—” Whym started to continue, but the meaning of his master’s words sank in. He held his tongue.

  Stern drew from his pipe and exhaled, letting the smoke ease from his mouth and nose and hover above him. “You’ve been my apprentice for nearly a turn.�
�� He paused, waiting for Whym to speak, and seemed pleased when he didn’t. “What have you learned in these moons?”

  Whym’s palms were sticky with sweat. He was certain this was another of Stern’s tests and, as usual, had no idea what his master sought. “I…I’ve learned many skills.” He watched the old man’s face for clues. “I’ve learned how to find food in the Wildes. I can hunt, fish, trap, and forage. I’ve learned how to make shelter and fire, how to track and prevent being tracked. I’ve learned how to use many weapons—knives, swords, a bow, a staff—and how to fight with my hands.” He paused, out of breath. Stern rarely sought a simple answer. He could tell by the return of the crease in his master’s forehead that reciting a list of skills was the wrong approach.

  Another test sprang to Whym’s mind. He and Kutan had been tracking Stern when they’d stumbled upon a tree laden with juicy apples. They’d stopped to fill their packs when an arrow had whistled past them and buried its head into the tree’s trunk. “What have you found?” Stern had asked as he’d emerged from a nearby thicket.

  “Apples,” Whym had stammered. “We thought to bring some back to the cottage.”

  Stern’s retort had been sharp. “You think I can’t see the apples? What have you found?”

  Kutan had stepped forward at that point, eyes downcast. “We’ve found your trap.”

  “Exactly!” Stern had yanked the arrow free and held the point below Kutan’s chin. “If this were a post or whisper, this might’ve found your neck.” Stern had then picked an apple and crunched into the mottled red skin, saying nothing more about their misstep until they’d reached the cottage. “You boys must learn to see more than what’s before your eyes,” he’d said as he opened the door. “Look beyond the obvious. Someday, it could mean your lives.”

  There’d been many similar lessons. There was the lesson with the finely decorated but obscenely heavy sword, where Stern had imparted the wisdom that value is measured by utility, not appearance. That and many other hard-won bits of wisdom came rushing to Whym’s mind—a fight avoided is sometimes better than a fight won; make others see you as you wish them to see you, but never believe the disguise yourself; the Truth is a book, but real truth depends on your perspective. Then it came to him. Stern wasn’t asking for a list of skills or lessons learned. “I’ve learned—” he inhaled, hoping his answer would be well-received—“that I truly want to be a seeker.”

  Smile lines replaced the creases on Stern’s forehead. He set the pipe on the table beside him and stood eye-to-eye with his young apprentice, gripping Whym’s shoulder. “That is the most important lesson.” Stern handed Whym the half-filled bowl of food. “Kutan and I will leave tomorrow for a post. Take care of things here and train on your own.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Whym’s relief at not being dismissed allowed him to hide his disappointment at again being excluded.

  “Don’t know.” Stern dropped back into the chair and sucked another draw. “Train hard while we’re gone.” When the smoke dissipated from around his head, he added, “It’s not skill you lack, but confidence. That’s not something I can teach. It must be earned through practice.”

  The Wildes, Chapter 8

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  When cracks form beneath your feet, it’s too late to stay off the ice. This is the position in which we find ourselves. We must charge forward to outpace the fracturing support.

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  You know the prophecy. The threat to the Truth lies not within our borders. The Fringe must be cleansed of heresy, lest it spread like a plague.

  .

  —First Lord Artifis Fen

  Address to the Council of Truth

  .

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  The Wildes

  Two Moons Later

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  Whym shook the chilly water from his hair and settled alone with his thoughts against the flat, sun-baked rocks of Nips Creek. Chin propped against the heel of his hand, he watched as a family of meadow nips plundered the dam of their beaver cousins. Nip. Nip. Nip. Trip after trip, the furry busybodies dragged branches into the swaying golden grass. The giant mounds they constructed with their loot jutted from the land like monuments to a demanding god. Nip. Nip. Nip. With each branch, the dam disappeared further. Already, the babbling voice of the creek had returned as water danced through newly formed gaps. It was just a matter of time before the swimming hole receded to a shallow stream.

  Whym looked skyward toward the handful of mighty shade elms spared by the nips’ intervention, then rested his gaze on their brethren, a graveyard of whittled stumps. The nips had ousted the industrious beavers just in time to maintain a modicum of shade over the creek and prevent the field that housed the nip burrows from flooding. It would be generations before new growth would entice the beavers to return. Then the cycle would begin anew, another example of the balance in nature and the rightness of both sides in any conflict. It was a point on which Stern showed particular fervor, and often wove into his lessons.

  In fact, the day before leaving on this latest post, the seeker had lost patience with Whym’s reluctance to embrace the concept. To Whym, history was an absolute—true and false, right and wrong, good and bad. “You see only winners and losers,” his frustrated master had criticized, “but it’s the struggle that matters. Only in conflict, can balance be maintained. An absolute victory is a loss for everyone.”

  Whym found such ambiguity confusing, but enjoyed Stern’s nuanced stories much more than the dry facts he’d memorized in school. As he’d learned more about the context of past events, he’d begun to question what he’d once taken for fact. He’d replaced turns of ingrained dogma with a mishmash of conflicting opinions and contradictory truths.

  In this particular conflict over the dam, though, he’d picked a side. The nips were destroying, branch by branch, his favorite swimming hole. Miserable pests. He snatched a stone from the creek bed and skipped it toward the bank where a single nip stood lookout. The stone splashed close enough to send the lookout, and the rest of its family, scurrying back to the grass with high-pitched squeals. Moments later, though, a head poked out. The lookout had returned—watching, waiting for Whym to leave. Nip. Nip. Nip.

  At the current pace, the dam would vanish in days. Whym had considered trapping the nips to save his swimming hole, but intervening felt wrong, as if he were an interloper in a long-standing feud. He’d become resigned to the eventual loss of the dam, but couldn’t stand to be present during its dismantlement. He tossed another stone toward the grass.

  When the head vanished, he turned over and watched the clouds drifting past until his eyelids drooped. The cool breeze, warm rock, and siren song of the water had captured him. With Stern and Kutan frequently away on posts, Whym often came to this serene location to think, dream, and be alone. Though he was equally alone in the cottage, the solitude by the stream was different.

  “Just what you need, a place to be by yourself,” he said aloud, splashing some of the chilly water on his face. This latest post had taken Stern and Kutan away for longer than any before. Isolated, he’d resorted to speaking to himself for company. At first, it was the occasional comment to hear the sound of a voice. But over time, the comments had stretched into whole conversations.

  “Your sarcasm’s unwelcome. It makes for poor company,” he replied.

  It was too late in the day to nap, so he pushed to his knees and stretched his fingers toward the sky with the groan of an old man. As promised, he’d trained and practiced diligently. His endurance already exceeded what he’d believed possible when the apprenticeship began, and his muscles were tightening on his frame. But the incessant pushing of his body’s limits had left a deep-rooted soreness that followed him as surely as his shadow on a sunny day.

  “Best get back,” he g
rumbled, and waded toward the clothes he’d tossed on a nearby stump. “Before you’re missed,” he added sarcastically. It was not just the amount of time spent by himself that made the absence of his master and fellow apprentice so frustrating. He never knew when they’d return. The loneliness, he found more difficult than the training itself.

  Still, the apprenticeship had far exceeded his expectations. In addition to strengthening his body and sharpening his mind, he’d learned a myriad of skills—more than he imagined he’d ever use. Unlike other craftsmen, where the skill set was defined, what might prove useful in his trade was limited only by the seeker’s creativity.

  The best seekers relied more on wit than combat or tracking skills, and the diversity of the backgrounds of the top seekers after Stern highlighted this point. Samael “Shady” Stray was an orphan who’d grown up with a gang of pickpockets in the streets of the Maze. Alana Bicksher was the disavowed daughter of a prominent Vinlands landowner. And Marvil was a magician, who’d used his talent for sleight of hand as part of a troupe of traveling performers.

  Yet as diverse as they appeared, the three were connected by a common thread—each had apprenticed under Fink before he’d left the business for his present role of intermediary. Since Fink determined the allocation of whispers, and the seekers’ pay was dependent exclusively on performance, those not in Fink’s good favor were left to fight over the scraps—the official posts open to every seeker. Several seekers, unable to compete, had renounced their master’s seals to find other work.

  If Whym had hoped to make a living as a seeker after his apprenticeship, this dependence on Fink would have concerned him. But he’d remained steadfast in his plan. He’d learn what he could. Then, after five turns, he’d leave Riverbend forever, putting as much distance between him and the Council of Truth as possible.

  He tromped through the woods thinking of what that future life might offer. As he entered the clearing around the cottage, though, his reverie was disrupted by a thin trickle of smoke seeping from the chimney. They’re back! His spirits and pace picked up as he hurried to welcome them. He was walking briskly—almost jogging—when he came to a sudden stop.