Three – 05

Phelan walked quietly out into the anemic light of dawn, out into the silence broken only by the sound of the wind whispering through the trees and the sound of his boots on the snow.  Marin and Thom waited for him back at the edge of camp, bundled against the chill of the wind and the snowflakes that drifted down from the ash-gray clouds above.

The vote had been a near thing, but they were taking Cariocecus’s offer of peace, though Phelan half wondered if the godling would balk at the terms set by his friends.

We’ll just have to see.

He leaned against his staff as he stopped in the place where Cariocecus had met him the day before and waited, staring at the trees, letting the snowflakes catch on his eyelashes and in his hair.  Cold or no, there was something revitalizing about the snow coming down on a winter morning—to him, at least.

“I’m almost surprised you came,” Cariocecus said a few moments later as he emerged from the trees ahead of Phelan, moving stiffly and wrapped in a dark cloak, the hood pushed back.  “I didn’t expect it to actually happen.”

“I’m a man of my word,” Phelan said evenly, looking the other man up and down.  “What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?  Stormed the walls like some kind of marauding thug?”

Cariocecus shrugged slightly.  “I hadn’t decided.  I’m still slightly addled from blood loss and the shock of betrayal.”

Phelan didn’t miss the bare traces of sarcasm in his voice.  He just shook his head slightly.  “They’ll accept your offer of peace so long as you agree to their terms,” he said.

“Name them.”  Cariocecus crossed his arms, meeting Phelan’s hard gaze head-on.  There was no guile in his gaze, his jaw set firm and his body rigid—nerves rather than a man tensing to strike.

By all that’s sacred, he’s nervous.  Phelan brushed the thought aside and stood a little straighter.  “You guard the ways in and out of the area,” Phelan began.  “Failure to warn of something coming that you should have seen is grounds for a termination of the agreement.”

Cariocecus frowned briefly.  “And how is ‘something I should have seen’ defined?”

“If you see something, you tell us,” Phelan said flatly.  “And woe be to you if we discover that you’ve lied about something.”

“I assume that none of this is truly negotiable?”

“Not if you want peace with us—or our leave to stick around.”

Cariocecus sighed and nodded.  “All right.  Go on.”

“Second, you’ll swear not to harm any of them for any reason.  If you do, your life is forfeit.”

“Are they going to forgive my past sins in exchange for that?” he asked.

Phelan’s lips quirked into something close to a smile.  “Mostly.  After you and I are done here, the Seers want to talk to you.  You’re going to tell them everything.”

“Everything,” Cariocecus echoed.  “Just like I’m going to tell you everything?”

“That’s the idea.”

His lips thinned and he looked away.  “Wanderer…there are some truths that should only be for your ears.”

Phelan’s brows went up even as he blurted, “I have no secrets from them.”

It was a lie, of course, but Cariocecus didn’t know that.

Or did he?

He smothered a frown as Cariocecus gave him a long, hard look.

“Very well.  If you want them to know everything…”  he paused, then frowned.  “Your original negotiations indicated that you wanted to hear what I had to say alone, though.”

They did.  Phelan frowned slightly.  “What would you possibly tell me that I might not want them to hear?”

“Perhaps why I spared your life on the battlefield.  What your sister could bargain for your life.”

A shiver shot down Phelan’s spine.  “What did she bargain?”

“Information,” Cariocecus said simply.  He fell silent for a moment, then looked Phelan in the eye.

“Seamus the Black is alive.”

Phelan decked him.

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