Chapter Twenty-Four

The Knights were already there when Lusya and Ariya entered the dining room the next morning. For some reason, Lusya had gotten them up super early. There was no clock, so Ariya didn’t know the exact time, but she knew it was darker than usual, even though it was getting lighter earlier these days. She had looked outside, and the sun had just been peeking up into the sky. When they stayed at inns, the whole thing was usually visible by the time they woke up.

When she saw the Knights, Lusya did her “annoyed,” head tilt. It was a bigger angle than the angry one, but smaller than the confused one, and came with one quick blink. It had taken over a month, but Ariya could now read those three almost all the time. She had some good success with other expressions too.

Ariya wasn’t sure why the Sacred Knights being there was a problem. She knew Lusya didn’t like the Knights, but it was just eating in the same room as them. She didn’t even have to look at them if she didn’t want to.

Indeed, she looked away and led the way to the same table she and Ariya had sat at last night, on the other side of the room from the Knights. Once she and Ariya were seated, Lusya didn’t seem to pay the Sacred Knights any further mind. Ariya, however, did. Even if Lusya didn’t, Ariya still thought Sacred Knights were cool. They protected people and their uniforms looked awesome too.

They seemed like they were in a better mood than last night. Maybe they had been cranky from traveling. Now they were all talking and laughing with each other. Even the captain gave a small smile and pitched in to the conversation sometimes.

The other two guys weren’t there, but Ariya didn’t know if they had left or if they were still sleeping. She would have liked to see the reltus again and get a chance to talk to one other than Lusya. The other one was no loss, though. He was loud, annoying, and gave Ariya the creeps. Something about him reminded her of those guys from Gavamir.

The innkeeper brought Lusya and Ariya’s food. Lusya attacked it. She always ate pretty fast, but she might as well have inhaled the food this time.

“Are we in a hurry?” Ariya asked. “Is that why you woke us up early too?”

“I would like to be on the road quickly,” Lusya said. “But you may eat at your normal pace. It is not of vital importance.”

Ariya nodded and went back to eating. She knew she sometimes got them in trouble by not listening, but she also knew that Lusya said what she meant. If Lusya said it was okay to eat normally, then it was.

As she ate, Ariya thought of home. After a month, she had already missed Mama, Papa, and Jak and the feeling was fading. She did still miss them, but not as bad. And she was happy Lusya had taken her on this trip. Even putting aside getting to be a hero, Ariya had gotten to see so many things and meet so many people. Not all of it was fun, but it was worth it.

Plus, even if Lusya was mean sometimes, Ariya liked her. Whether she was being mean or nice, Lusya always protected and took care of Ariya. Lusya was being nicer lately too. With her being so strong and having a Sacred Blade, it was like Ariya had her own personal Sacred Knight. She knew not to say that to Lusya, though. Ariya wasn’t sure what had caused Lusya’s grudge against Sacred Knights, but it always drew some of the most obvious emotion Ariya had seen from Lusya. Though Ariya wanted to know more, she wasn’t sure how to ask about it without making Lusya upset.

A bang from outside interrupted Ariya’s thoughts. It sounded like it must have been right up against the building. The Sacred Knights paused in their conversation and the innkeeper scowled at the wall it had come from as he drank a dark-colored liquid. Ariya thought she smelled coffee, but it was hard to tell if that was his drink or coming from the Knights. Then, there was another bang, louder this time, which made its source clearer. It seemed to be something striking the inn itself from the outside.

The innkeeper sighed, put down the mug he had been sipping from, and marched over to the front door.

“I’ll check it out,” he said. “Probably just some beast that smells food. Happens all the time.”

He opened the door and walked out. The door slammed shut behind him, then there was silence for several seconds. He must have been walking around to find what was making the noise.

“Who are you?” he shouted, his voice muffled by the walls. “What do you want?”

Someone else replied, but they were too quiet for Ariya to make out what they said from inside the building.

“Bah, get lost,” the innkeeper replied. “Don’t think you can—”

Whatever he was about to say turned into a scream that made Ariya’s skin crawl. Then there was another thud and a few more voices talking to each other. It sounded like they were arguing, but they still kept quiet enough that Ariya couldn’t understand them.

“That didn’t sound good,” Brigit said. Ariya thought her red hair was pretty, and she had a cool accent too.

“We’ll check it out,” the captain said. He had the same accent, though not as thick. He looked to Lusya and Ariya. “You two, stay inside where it’s safe.” He nodded to the blonde lady in his group. “Yunise, stay here to guard them, just in case.”

“Yes, Captain,” the lady said with with a shallow bow, one fist over her heart.

The rest of the group hurried outside. The voices outside were still arguing, but stopped once the Knights were out.

“Shit!” the captain exclaimed. “Rejib, he’s still alive, tend to him.”

“Yes, Captain!”

“If you surrender now, this can end without further bloodshed,” the captain said. “You will have to face justice, but I believe that is preferable to losing your lives.”

“Big talk,” a man’s voice Ariya didn’t recognize said. “Somehow I’m doubting you can back it up, pretty boy.”

“What’s going on out there?” Ariya asked.

“It sounds like bandits,” Lusya said. “They likely saw the inn as an easy target.”

Yunise sighed. “That’s probably it. I hear the beginning of tranquil ages are always like this. I know it’s the same in the end, but I can’t help but wonder why this group has turned to crime.”

“We are rather far from the areas most damaged by the war,” Lusya replied. “They are likely mere opportunists, assuming they were not already engaged in banditry before the tranquil age began.”

“You do have a point. But it’s possible they started out there and roved over here.”

“Perhaps,” Lusya said.

Yunise smiled. “But don’t worry, a thousand ruffians aren’t a match for one Sacred Knight, let alone four. And if one does slip by, I’m here.” She paused and looked at Lusya. “Although, if the captain is to be believed, you don’t really need my protection.”

“That assessment is correct,” Lusya said. “I am much stronger than you.”

A blanket of silence settled over the room. Yunise opened her mouth a few times, like she was about to respond, but each time she shut it before making a sound. Ariya, meanwhile, scowled at Lusya.

“Then why don’t you go help?” Ariya asked, when it was clear Yunise didn’t know what to say.

“As this Knight just said, they do not need my assistance,” Lusya said. “The bandits are unlikely to pose a threat.”

“But what if they somehow do?” Ariya asked. “It doesn’t even matter. We’re here anyway, you don’t even need to go anywhere.”

She stared into Lusya’s eyes, pleading for several, painfully long seconds.

“Very well,” Lusya said. “I will lend my aid.” She stood up and walked toward the door. “I leave the child in your care, Lady Knight. See that she is here and unharmed when I return.”

Yunise nodded. “I will. But are you sure you should go out there?”

“I will be fine,” Lusya said. Then she walked out the door.

#

Lusya strode out the door and headed toward where she assumed the confrontation would be happening. Based on the noises, it would be on the eastern side of the building, near the stables. Sure enough, that was where everybody was. Ten humans dressed in rough, tattered clothing stood, brandishing weapons, in a semicircle around the Sacred Knights. As she had surmised, they had the look of bandits who thought an isolated roadside inn an easy mark.

She noted as well that two of the horses from the previous day were gone, along with the slaver’s wagon. He may have wanted to avoid the Knights as well if he was not adhering to the laws. Two new horses, however, had replaced his, and she had spotted a luxurious white and gold carriage in place of his wagon.

Behind the three of the Knights who were facing off with the bandits, the innkeeper was splayed out on the ground, groaning with a pained expression on his face. The tiransa man among the Knights knelt beside the innkeeper, holding an ornate torch around the innkeeper’s abdomen. That was sure to be the tiransa’s Sacred Blade.

There was a tear in the innkeeper’s shirt over his belly, stretching the width of his body, the edges and the ground beneath him soaked with blood. Lusya could only see a tiny cut, however, little more severe than if he had nicked his finger with a kitchen knife and nowhere near large enough to produce so much blood. So, the tiransa’s Blade had a healing ability, then. She had pegged him as one of the two other than the captain with a Sacred Blade, the other being the blonde woman the captain had left as a guard.

“…you have no chance of winning this fight,” the captain was saying. “Don’t throw your lives away.”

One of the bandits, a middle-aged man with a tangled black beard, stepped forward and scoffed. “With that one out of the fight, we’ve got you outnumbered more than three-to-one. I don’t care how strong they say a Sacred Knight is, the odds are in our favor. How about you surrender and hand over anything worth coin you might have?”

That strengthened the case for his group being mere opportunists or having already criminals before the war ended. It had never occurred to her before, but once Izurb had expressed as much, it had seemed obvious: seeing Sacred Knights—or any powerful motomancy users, for that matter—fight in earnest must have been a terrifying experience for any layperson. Someone from the wartorn regions would not have underestimated these Knights so, and would have had to be an exceptional fool to confront them with bravado.

Not that it made much difference. She couldn’t help but ponder such matters, but their motives were irrelevant to Lusya in the end.

“Boss,” another bandit said, pointing at Lusya as she approached.

The boss chuckled and shook his head. “One more, so what?”

“You should have stayed inside,” the captain said with a scowl.

“The child demanded I help,” Lusya said. She did not think refusing would have led to any appreciable increase in Malice, but there was no reason to upset Ariya and risk it over something so minor.

Brigit smiled at Lusya. “Hey, the more the merrier.”

Lusya walked to the front of the Sacred Knights’ formation and turned her attention to the bandits’ boss.

“I will give you one verbal warning,” she said. “Leave this place at once.”

He laughed as if that was the funniest joke he had ever heard. “Or what, little girl? You don’t look like you could hurt a fly if you tried.”

Lusya remained unsure why so many underestimated her. It was true that she did not look strong, but, even without knowing she was a demon, that meant little when motomancy came into play. They may not have known she could use it, but it they also had no reason to think she could not. Motomancy users, in particular those of considerable power, made up a small portion of the population, but not small enough to make such an assumption. Even more so since mortals assumed she was a reltus. Relti learned motomancy more commonly than either of the other races, often for little more than making everyday tasks easier, though such users did not tend to be very powerful. Perhaps this was another manifestation of the bandits’ ignorance.

She strode toward the boss. She could have killed them all, but that seemed inconvenient given the circumstances. If she killed them through more conventional means, it would be difficult to keep Ariya from being exposed to the field of corpses. On the other hand, if she used Miudofay to burn the bandits to ash, the Sacred Knights would recognize the sword, by name if nothing else. The women and the tiransa man were not a problem, especially now that she knew the latter’s Blade had a healing ability, but she did not want to start a fight with the captain if she could avoid it.

In that case, a demonstration of strength seemed in order. In the past, she had not given her opponents a chance to appreciate how outmatched they were before giving them a chance to flee. Perhaps it was worth trying. If it worked, it would be a useful tool in the future.

“What are you doing, fool girl?” the boss asked as she approached, turning his sword on her.

She stopped a couple feet away. “Try to strike me.”

He narrowed his eyes and ran them over her. Looking for some sign of a trick, she supposed. Once he had finished, he smiled, apparently satisfied there was none.

“You asked for it,” he said.

He stepped forward and swung his sword at her in an overhead slash. This man may have been a soldier at some point. The strike was simple, but his stance and technique were those of a trained fighter, not some thug who had picked up a sharp object to appear threatening.

Lusya held out a hand and caught the strike, the flat of the blade held between her fingers and the blade resting on her palm. The swing stopped dead, as sure as if he had struck stone, with not a scratch on Lusya. Indeed, the grunt he let out suggested the sudden stop had been rougher on the boss’s wrists and hands than the attack had been on her.

Using motomancy, she almost always had her physical abilities—already well beyond any human’s base capabilities—enhanced, including her resistance to harm. She was more than up to the task of stopping an ordinary sword swing from such rabble without any injury.

The boss pulled on his sword, trying to yank it out of her grasp, to no avail. She released the blade, and the boss pulled it back with extra vigor. Whether to strike her again or as a mere reflex at his weapon being “freed,” it was futile. His sword stopped against the invisible barrier she had placed around the blade, his attempt to reclaim it accomplishing nothing more than throwing him off balance and bending his arms at an awkward angle. The barrier would be short-lived, but it was more than enough to serve its purpose. She stepped forward and threw a powerful punch into the side of his head and let out a shockwave from the blow. She felt the skull buckle under the force of the strike, and it was clear from the angle his neck bent at that it had snapped.

He was already dead when the attack sent him flying back across the clearing, sailing close to fifty feet through the air before his corpse slammed against a tree and flopped to the ground, bringing several chips of bark with it.

The remaining bandits watched their leader’s corpse’s flight and stared as it lied in a heap, the broken head oozing blood onto the ground beneath it.

“Holy—We have to go,” one woman said.

A man whirled on her and snarled. “No way. We still have numbers, and now we know how strong she is.”

“What does any of that matter if our weapons can’t scratch her?” the woman asked. “We’re going.”

She retreated into the woods. With obvious reluctance, the rest started to follow her, one-by-one. The man who had argued with her was last to go. He shot one last glare at Lusya and loped after his companions.

None of them tried to retrieve their boss’s body. That was fine. Lusya could handle keeping Ariya away from a single corpse.

“Great Telresen,” Brigit breathed. “She is strong. You see that, Nimrik?”

The woman tiransa nodded, her green eyes wide in surprise. “I saw it.”

The captain approached Lusya and ran his eyes over her in much the same appraising way the bandit boss had. Once he seemed satisfied, however, he bowed to her. It was a proper bow this time, one fist over his heart and back bent forward forty-five degrees. The traditional bow in this region had both hands on the chest, one open-palmed and one closed, but Sacred Knights always used the western-style bow, which had had the side effect of driving some others to switch to it as well. She suspected this captain was from that region anyway.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said. “Any loss of life is regrettable, but I fear there would have been more bloodshed had you not intervened.”

He stood and Lusya nodded in acceptance of his thanks. He stared at her, silent, for a moment. It seemed he expected her to say something in response, but she did not. She did not wish to speak with this man more than necessary and he had not said anything that demanded a reply.

He pursed his lips for a moment, then spoke again. “Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Captain Kadel Highmoor, of the Sacred Knights of Ysuge. I believe your name was Lusya?”

“That is correct,” she said.

He had the bearing of a nobleman. As soon as his bow had completed, he had gone back to holding his head high, coming just short of quite literally looking down his nose at her. His introduction was another clue. Though many commoners across Ysuge had surnames, it was uncommon for any other than nobility to feel the need to state them. She had never heard of a Highmoor family, but there were many noble houses throughout the continent she knew nothing about.

He hummed in thought and nodded. “That does not sound like any reltus name I have heard. In fact, it sounds Talsian more than anything.”

“My mother was human,” Lusya said. “I am told she named me.”

That much was true and served well-enough as an explanation. The three mortal races could all interbreed. While many of those hybrids ended up taking traits from both parents, there were some who favored one or the other to the point of being indistinguishable from a full-blooded member of that race. She did not know if her mother had been from Talsia, the northwestern most nation in mainland Ysuge, but it was true the name Lusya had the sound of having come from there or one of its neighbors.

“Interesting,” he replied. “What is your family name, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Lusya blinked. What did he hope to gain with this line of questioning? “If I have one, I do not know it.”

Father had claimed a single, self-assigned forename, as most demons did, Romoro, meaning “wandering one” in Tofkish, a language spoken on the island of his birth. She was sure that, at some point, she had known both her mother’s name and, if the woman had had one, family name, but Lusya had long since forgotten. She did not even remember her mother’s face.

“And you said you learned motomancy outside the Sacred Knights?” the captain asked. “Not so much as a day in an academy?”

Lusya nodded. “Yes.”

“Fascinating. You are quite skilled. Maybe even captain-level. Who is your teacher? I would love to meet him, if the opportunity arises.”

“He is dead,” she said. “And I doubt the feeling would be mutual if he were not.”

Kadel’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a shame. You have my condolences. I suppose you would not be receptive to recruitment then.”

“You are correct,” she said with a nod.

“I can’t say I think highly of any who oppose the Sacred Knights,” he said. “I understand we’re not perfect, but we are the best the mortal races have.”

“I do not care if you think highly of me,” Lusya said. “The child and I should resume our journey.” She walked past him toward the inn’s front door. “Good day to you.”