Cliffside

The cliff is ten minutes out of town if you walk, five if you want to risk twisting your ankle. There’s a path most of the way and then there isn’t, and at the end of it, a small clearing, with an attempt at fencing off the long drop to the water below.
There’s a flat bit of stone near the edge that I’ve sat on so often it’s got a shine to it. I sit on it now. The rain isn’t really rain at this point, almost as if it’s being considerate. Even the sea at the bottom of the cliff has gone quiet.
I could take the rune off. That’s the thing. It’s not even well made, something you use to find a crate that fell off on a journey, and I could have it off my shoulder in three seconds and be two towns over by the morning. I’ve got a bag under my bed with everything in it. I’ve had it ready for three years.
Still, I don’t move.
Because if I run, he looks for me properly. And if he looks for me properly, he finds me properly, and I'd prefer the version of this where it’s him who finds me. At least this way I won’t cause any problems for Maerwen who’d have to answer every kind of question the Guard can think of about the boy who rented a room off her. She’d answer all of them, honestly, at length, while feeding them.
So, I sit on my rock and wait to be found, which is the thing I’ve apparently been doing since the day I got here, and just hadn’t noticed.

It takes him about twenty minutes.
I hear him before I see him, boots wet on stone, and then the sound of a very large man deciding which bit of ground is going to hold him. He doesn’t say anything. He just comes and stands at the edge for a moment, looking out at the water, and then lowers himself down beside me with a grunt that’s half his knees and half performance.
Neither of us does anything about the rain. He could. Either one of us could put a warm dry nothing over the top of us without breaking a sweat. He doesn’t, so I don't, and we sit there getting slowly, thoroughly damp in the dark like two idiots.

“Well,” he says eventually. “It’s bracing, but shit.”
“It could be worse, Gordwin.”
“It’s the most miserable spot I’ve ever put my ass down on and I've slept in a swamp.” He shifts to get comfortable, gives up on getting comfortable. “Twice. Same swamp. Don’t ask.”
“Don’t need to.”
The mask hangs at his hip, the crack on the cheek turned up towards the sky, filling slowly with rainwater. He hasn’t touched it once.
“You’re not wearing it,” I say.
“Would you like me to?”
“No.”
“No,” he agrees, and that’s the end of that.

We sit. Down below, in the darkness, the sea goes in and out. He smells like wet wool, mud, and the expensive oil high-ranking Mage Guard gets to use, which is a smell I hadn’t thought about once in three years and which now arrives all at once, bringing forth memories I thought I had thrown away.
“You look well,” he says. “That’s not a line, before you start. I’ve seen people after, people who left on more agreeable terms as well. You look well.”
“I eat.”
“Barely. The woman behind the bar gave me a full report and I didn’t even ask for one.” He laughs, low. “Told me all about a lodger of hers who doesn’t eat unless she puts it in front of him, and sits out on a cliff in the rain like a widow. I thought, well, that’s a coincidence.”
“She means well.”
“She means tremendously well. She’s the only person in that building who wasn’t afraid of me and I include my own men in that.” He wipes the rain off his face with the flat of his hand. “I’d have paid her for the room and gone on in the morning, you know. That was the plan. Rest the men, eat something nice, leave. We’d have been past you by noon.”
“So, what happened?”
“You walked past me.”
I don’t have anything for that.
“We were four days out from Harrowmoor on the coast road,” he says. “Carrying something back that requires care, and refuses to be teleported, and one of those newbies goes and puts his foot in a rabbit hole, so we’re already delayed, then this weather rolls in from off the water, and the nearest roof is a town I’ve never heard of.” He shakes his head slowly. “I’ve been in this job twenty-two years. Do you know how many times it’s been a rabbit hole? Too many.”
“You put a tracker on me.”
“I did.”
“Why, if you were going to leave in the morning?”
He’s quiet for a second. The rain barely breaks the silence.
“Because I’ve walked out of one room in my life thinking I’d see somebody the next day,” he says, “and I’d rather not do it twice with the same person. It’s a bad rune anyway. You could have had it off in a breath.”
“Three seconds.”
“Three seconds. There you go.” He sounds almost pleased. “And here you are.”
I keep my eyes focused over the cliff. That’s the trouble with him. That has always been the trouble with him. He hands you the things you’ve done and doesn’t say anything about what it means, and then you have to just sit there holding it.

“Did you look?” I ask after a moment of silence. “After.”
“For about a year.” He says it flat, no weight on it, which is how I know. “Every lead we had, and then the ones we didn’t. Then I stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d made yourself very clear, and I’m not in the business of dragging grown men home.” A pause. “And because you’d have got better at it than I was at looking.” He knocks his boot heel against the rock. “Doesn’t mean I liked it. I want that said out loud once and then we can leave it.”
“It’s said.”
“Good.” He exhales. “Right. Now the ugly part, and then maybe we can talk about something better. You understand what I’m meant to do here, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Say it, so I don’t have to. Please.”
“You’re the captain of the Royal Mage Guard,” I say, “and, even if by accident, you’ve found a man the crown has an interest in, which means it’s your job to bring him in.”
“That’s the one.” He nods slowly. “It’s not an arrest or bounty order, before you panic, just a summons. But I know you don’t want to come back. At least not yet.”
“So don’t bring me in,” I state simply.
“I’ve got to do something, Irra-”
He stops.
It’s such a small thing. Half a word, bitten clean off, and he sits there with it in his mouth for a few seconds before slowly closing it. The rain fills up the quiet.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s fine.”
“It isn’t. Old mouth, old habits.” He rubs the back of his neck. “What do you go by now?”
“Iori.”
“Iori what?”
“Just Iori.”
He takes it in. Turns it over. Doesn’t ask where it came from, or what it means, or why I chose it, and I’m thankful for it.
“Iori,” he says, trying it out. “That’s a good one. Suits you better than the last.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious, that last one was a mouthful.” He grins. “Took me a month to learn it.”
“And you still got it wrong most of the time.”
“I got it wrong with feeling at least.” He settles back onto his hands, and the grin drains off his face, turning into something more careful. “Right, here’s my idea, and I want you to let me finish it before you start saying no, because you’re wearing that look you always have when you’re halfway through turning an idea down.”
“I’m listening.”

“House Ashveil,” he says. “Cold, west, one of the four. Duke Cassian Ashveil. Do you remember him?”
“Tall. Loud. Strong. Hates being stuck inside. Has the important job of defending the border from monster attacks.”
“That’s him. He’ll be thrilled that someone thinks his job is important. He’s got a daughter. Fourteen years old. Wants to head to the Royal Academy next year when she’s of age, and wants it badly.”
“And?”
“And she can’t cast.”
I look at him for the first time since he sat down.
“Not badly,” he says. “Not slowly. Can’t. Nothing. And before you ask, yes, they’ve had people look, they’ve had everyone look. Court physicians, academy examiners, hell, Duke Cassian’s brother has a five-circle mage as his advisor, and even he couldn’t figure it out. Every single one of them says there’s nothing wrong with her. But something is clearly wrong with her, because she can’t even light a candle.”
“So, how does that relate to me?” I ask.
“He wants someone who’ll actually look at her, instead of a list of what she ought to be able to do.Someone who’ll actually take it seriously that something’s wrong, because everyone so far has told him there isn’t.” Gordwin’s voice has gotten lower, the voice he uses when he’s trying to be serious, which is rare enough that it works on me. “Somebody with a good sense for mana. Maybe someone who might know some unconventional methods, or know something that only they might know.” He lets that sit exactly as long as it needs to and not a breath longer. “It’s a live-in post. Room, board, a wage that isn’t half bad. One girl, one more year for you to collect your thoughts, and hopefully a happy powerful noble.”
“You’ve thought about this, haven't you?”
“If by that you mean I came up with it during my walk up here, then yes, I have. But let’s not pretend it’s a masterwork idea.” He shrugs, and then continues. “And of course, since you’d be doing me such a huge favour, I’d have run into an old friend in this town instead of a person of interest. Because what interest would the crown have in a two-circle mage like yourself?”
“That seems very convenient.”
“Such a convenient meeting. And even if someone figures it out, since you’re already employed by a high-ranking noble, then there’s still a bunch of procedure, petitions, and paperwork to do if they wanted to drag you back to the capital. My hands would be completely tied.”
The rain has completely stopped.
“Why?” I ask quietly.
“Why what?”
“Any of it. All of it.”
He doesn’t answer straight away. He looks off the cliff, over the dark water, the last of the rain caught in his eyebrows, he’s fifty years old, sitting in the wet, in a town nobody’s heard of because a kid he used to know walked past him in a crowded room.
“Because you were still a kid,” he says. “Fifteen when I picked you up. I said I’d look after you. I know you don’t see it the same way, but we failed you both.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
“Sleep on it,” he says. “We’re away after breakfast, weather permitting. If you’re at the table, you’re at the table and an old friend of mine. If you’re not, I never saw you, and that’s that, and I would never hold it against you for a second.” He puts his hands on his knees, ready to haul himself up, then stops.
“She misses you, you know.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it. He doesn’t put anything on it. It’s the thing I wanted to hear least, and he knows it. He leaves it there anyway.
Then he stands, and walks back down the path toward a town that isn’t hidden anymore.
“You just had to, didn’t you?”
I sit there for a long time after.