The Ford and its Approaches

[Marunae]

He looked at her, deadpan. "Greave Racker is dead."

She stomped over to a chair, and sat down. "What."

"Official word is training accident. You know how vassals can be with bow and arrow."

"...I don't want to know the unofficial word, do I?"

"We didn't dare leave Racker unburied long enough to turn. The Rattlers' representative's second - Buran, I think? He sang for her. He got the impression of venom in return, he said. Unquestionably an assassination."

Marunae leaned forwards and put her head in her paws. "I've been gone three seasons, sir. This is... this is chaos."

"And I need you to investigate."

"Sir! This had best be a joke!"

"You're of the great family. They have a reputation for not caring much about what goes on in the council chambers, aside from what their representative brings. You're the only Knight here at the moment who stands a chance of investigating without the assassin realising."

Marunae let out a long slow breath. "Any leads, then?"

"Two. The ex-Rattler I told you about? Snuck into the morgue without authority and dug around in Racker's corpse. She found this." He held up something small, thin, easy to miss.

Marunae took it, and looked it over. "A barb?"

"Aye. From a porcupine."

"Sir, that ex-Rattler seems far more able to me to carry out this investigation."

"Not from a jail cell she's not. She cut Racker's corpse open. Not even the Rattlers had enough sympathy to argue her out of that one. I only got hold of this through illicit means, and I will absolutely be noticed if I try anything like that again."

"...ah."

"Aye. There's a positive. She said there was blackening around the entry wound, which gives us something like a second piece of evidence. Your first job, then - go to every apothecary in the city until you find one who knows a poison that leaves a blackening on the skin. Get the seller over a barrel - or stake them out, however you prefer to play it - and get the name of any beast who's bought any poison like that any time recently."

"Right. Right. This is... sir, I still haven't got my head around Chandler's Light. How can I possibly do this as well?"

"I know you, Maru. You're good at setting things aside for later. Better you find out about Chandler's now, from me, before you get it through somebeast else. Better you take that nasty parcel and find out what it takes to keep it out of reckoning now rather than later."

"Damnit, sir. Respectfully."

"I know. But everything's tense. Nobody knows who's responsible. Anybeast asks a question, they get three tails for the rest of the day or longer. Use the great family's reputation to your advantage. Spin some yarn about encountering the poison up north, and wanting to know the antidote for the future. And above all, keep that casual side up-front. You were always better at that than most."

"You wouldn't think so, sir, with how Kavo's Trove almost went."

"Whatever that doubt is, set it aside. Tell me about it when you're done with this job. Understood?"

Marunae stood, sighed and looked out of the window for a moment. "Yes, sir. Understood."

"Good. Dismissed."



Kenai was there in the hallway, and she saluted. "Hello, ma'am. Knight Fare says I'm to put myself at your disposal until the work is done."

Marunae nodded. "Have you been here in Beacon for long, Vassal Kenai?"

"Yes sir, six seasons and counting."

"Will you take me to an apothecary, please? The one with the... let's say, the second-nastiest reputation. We'll also need to make a stop in Hearth Ward - I'll need to dump my armor."

"Of... of course, sir. Care Ward has a fair few apothecaries, Kastor knows there are enough beasts who need them, and most of them are well-stocked at the moment - the floods got a lot of beasts ill, so they saw a lot of trade, and now they've put their profits to work, see."

"Good eye, vassal. Keep that observation; it'll serve you well in the future."

"Aye, sir."

They carved their way out through Duty Wall to Hearth Ward, and within that ward to a particular street and house along the way. This was one of the homes that was set aside for the great family in exchange for the crops and supplies they brought in on the yearly cycle, it had a simple sign on the door, a tree with faded green dye where the leaves should have been.

Maru rapped on the door a few times, and a face cracked it open. "Mama Telfen, how-fare-you?"

"Words of the family, hm? And who's this come to visit?" An older hedgehog opened the door and squinted at them both, leaning much too close to their faces for comfort. "Oh!" she said a moment later. "Oh, it's little Mar! Ashi's friend, yes, of course! Do come in dear, and bring your friend here with you."

The vassal closed the door behind her.

"I'm very sorry, Mama Telfen," Marunae said, starting to unfasten straps on her armor. "I've Council business out in town, and I'm only here for a moment to leave my possessions with you, if I may? I'll be back for dinner, Ashi already invited me." And then, quieter: "You'll need to do the same, vassal, or hang well behind when I go in."

"Ha! Always doing that without letting Mama Telfen know. Bothersome child. Yes, yes, leave your things in the corner dear. Mama'll put some more roots in the pot for you, big strong Knights need their roots, hm?"

"That we do, Mama." Maru shucked off the last plate of armor and leaned it in the corner of the already-packed little room where they seemed to eat every other evening whenever she was stationed here in Beacon. She stretched out her shoulders, groaning out the knots from the muscles, and looked over the two little cabinets and their cacophony of trinkets and gewgaws. The rabbit vassal dropped her last armor plate the last few inches onto her own pile of kit with a clatter.

"Mama... can I ask a favour?"

"You can always ask, dear. If'n I don't like it, I'll tell yer."

"Can I borrow Papa Telfen's old hunter's knife? I'm due somewhere a Knight's sword will get me in trouble, see..."

The hedgemarm closed her eyes. For just a moment, Marunae thought she was going to say no.

"Take it, go on. I just don't want to see it taken off the shelf. Sneak it back sometime Mama's not looking, when whatever it is you're doing is done."

"Aye, Mama."



"You played along?" Kenai asked.

"Aye. Doesn't hurt any. And if anything happens, she can say the truth - that she never saw it leave the shelf, had no idea what I was doing with it."

"Might something happen?"

The summer evening was beginning to draw in. The sky was bruising, there was a little chill in the air, and the kind of humidity that comes before heavy rain. A tundra hare and a sable rabbit walked the streets in plain tunics. Chatter of beasts and cries of younglings filled the air like the crowding sounds of the Green Forest or the scratching of a grass field's insects at night.

"Days like these," Maru said, looking up at the sky and finding herself very much missing the radiance of the dancing lights of the far north, "Something always happens."

They passed through the gate between Hearth Ward and Care Ward, losing themselves in the throng without trouble. Marunae had to stop in a shop doorway and peer about for a moment.

"This is quite fun," Kenai appeared at her elbow. "Second-worst reputation, you said?"

The tundra hare suppressed an undignified noise of surprise, and restricted herself to a nod.

"Alright then," the sable rabbit said. "Ezira Tinctures. Sell all sorts to all beasts but draw the line at dreamer's dusts."

"Seems a strange line, if they'll still sell death."

Kenai shrugged. "Death costs one beast. Dreamer's dust costs everybeast around them as well."

Marunae didn't let herself pause or slow. Those were not the remarks of a vassal, even one near Knighthood.

The streets got grimier as they walked. Marunae concentrated carefully on not fiddling with the hilt of Papa Telfen's hunting knife. No point in giving the game away, no matter how certain she now was that she was walking into a trap.

The sign hung, tainted by pipesmoke, above a simple open door. Kenai trotted in, and Marunae followed.

A rough cough from behind the counter. A hulking otter, scarred in ways that Marunae could only assume had to do with his trade. "How do, ladies? What'cha need?"

"Hello sir!" Marunae put on her best new-to-town voice and waited for the trap to close. "Friend of mine took a spine from something nasty on the trail. Left his skin all black around the puncture and he's doing so bad, sir. Wondered if you might know what might cause a thing like that, and if I could maybe trade somethin' for a cure?"

The otter looked over her shoulder. "Lemme get this straight. Your, ah, friend. Still alive?"

"Oh surely, sir. Hurtin' bad though."

"Thing is, you're describin' Loxos venom. Only way you're coming back from that is a stab of this." He held up a thin glass vial with a thick needle set in the cork, waiting ready in the solution. "Administered within the hour."

A beat of silence. The otter finally transferred his gaze to Marunae.

"Doesn't linger, see," he said, low and dark. "Kills you quick."

Pain blossomed in her shoulder. She kicked out hard behind her, staggered forward, leapt for the otter's now-closed fist. Kenai crashed into something loud and glass somewhere behind her, and Marunae's body weight barreled the otter into the shelves on the back wall. She grabbed his wrist in two paws and twisted until she heard a pop and a scream, and prised the tiny vial out of his paw. She scrambled out of the way as Kenai jumped the counter and leapt for her again, grabbed a heavy-looking bottle from the shelf and flung it right at the rabbit's face.

Kenai ducked easily. Marunae took the consolation prize - the otter screaming again as the bottle shattered on his head - tucked her legs under her, and flung herself over the counter again, holding the little glass vial close.

She landed on her hurt shoulder, and screamed. There wasn't time for pain, though - Kenai was in front of her again. Marunae dragged herself up from the floor and bullrushed the smaller lapine hard, praying that the impacts from her good shoulder and then the wall behind her would keep her from landing any good blows.

Something cut into her, down to a rib but no further. It had been a good blow, stopped only by luck. Marunae staggered upright and finally reached to her belt for Papa Telfen's knife.

Of course it wasn't there. She darted out of the doorway as Kenai lunged for her, stepped smartly to the side as soon as she was out, and brought a heel up and round hard, cracking Kenai's forehead as she gave chase.

The sable rabbit reeled and Marunae grabbed her knife-paw, twisting it up and around until something gave and Kenai let it drop.

Marunae kicked it away. She'd find it later - for now, she needed Kenai disarmed and alive. She yanked hard on Kenai's already-twisted paw, forcing her into a collapsing run that tanked her hard into the wall below the apothecary's window. She couldn't chance the vial any longer - she yanked the cork out and didn't give herself time to dread the massive needle, plunging it into her already-raw and burning shoulder flesh with a scream. She splashed the last drops of the liquid onto the wound, then threw the vial and cork-needle to the cobbles in front of Kenai.

"Knights pick vassals based on what they don't have to be taught, based on the wisdoms they gain for themselves as they progress through the Vassaling." She picked up Papa Telfen's knife and hunkered down next to the bleary Kenai. "Same trick doesn't work twice, that's the lesson Greave Racker favoured. Now, you tell me who hired you, maybe you don't die at a Knight's paw."

Kenai hauled herself upright and chuckled. "A life in jail, with guards who know I killed one of their seniors? Doesn't suit me, friend." She took something small out of a little pouch under her tunic, and held it up so Marunae could see it. "Doesn't suit me at all." And she jabbed the little barb into her own neck.

By the time Marunae had ransacked the space behind the shelf for another vial, woken the shopkeeper, and found that he had no more of it, the sable rabbit was dead.

The evening was dark now. Through the sizzling pain in her shoulder and the growing need to vomit, Marunae remembered that it was nearing dinner time.

And then she remembered who she was having dinner with.

She shook the shopkeep down one more time, this time for the key round back to where the shopkeeps all kept their handcarts and wagons locked up.

Marunae wrapped the dead rabbit up in hessian and dumped her in one of the handcarts. She patted the deadbeast's face. "You're not getting out of it that easy, friend."

She closed the last of the hessian over the rabbit's head, and set off.