Chapter 9

“Thank you. That’ll be all for now.” Wren gives the woman a warm smile and shakes her hand gently. The woman returns her sentiment and walks off, allowing Wren to approach the shed. Lucas waits in the doorway, hands in his pockets and a flat look on his face. When she’s close enough, he turns and walks into the small building, followed by Wren herself. The room is dimly lit by two torches in opposite corners. The rest of the light comes in through the still open door.

Lucas has turned back around, now standing in the middle of the shed. His expression remains flat, conveying a form of exhaustion. He’s looking for the right words before he opens his mouth, but Wren needs no time to predict what he’s about to say.

“I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t know about his family.”

“You don’t.” Lucas sighs, rubs his eyelids, and shrugs. “It’s just that this is exactly the kind of thing I would like to be informed of before taking a job like this.” He starts to look around the room for anything that catches his eye. He then turns and approaches a workbench to his right.

“The Court didn’t know. They would have told us.” Her eyes follow his movements and she also approaches the workbench when she sees that his hands have come to rest upon a metal chestplate.

“I highly doubt that either of those statements are true.” He picks up the piece of armor and inspects it, turning it around and lifting the shoulder caps. It’s a piece identical to those worn by guards in the capital. “You mean to tell me the Court doesn’t know that their own blacksmith has a wife and child?”

Wren’s eyes narrow and she reaches a hand out to take the piece. She immediately turns it around and inspects the inner section of the breastplate. On this surface, a seal of authenticity is stamped. She runs her fingers over it. “It’s real… but that doesn’t mean he forged it.” She begins looking around the room.

“Is there a way you can be sure?” Lucas follows her eyes, trying to figure out what she’s looking for. When she’s found it, she leaves the workbench, approaches a locked chest on the other side of the room, and kneels in front of it.

“If you can open this, maybe.” Wren moves to the side to let him look at the wooden box.

Lucas removes his hatchet from his satchel and walks up to the box. “Step back a bit.” He places his left foot on top of the chest, grips the handle of his hatchet with both hands, and lifts the weapon over his right shoulder. It comes down swiftly and with a crack against the iron lock below. The box jolts beneath his foot, but holds steady. The result is a shallow and sharp cut into the rusted metal. A repetition of this motion results in a much more dramatic snapping of the lock. It falls to the floor in pieces.

When Lucas removes his foot from atop the wooden box, Wren proceeds to lift the lid and use her right hand to sift around the contents. After brief searching, she finds what she’s looking for. Her hand emerges, holding a wooden stamp with a metal bottom. The metal rises out of the object in specific places in order to form the outline of an image.

“This is what he used to make that seal.” Wren shows Lucas the stamping tool. “They’re only given out to certified, regularly commissioned blacksmiths.” She looks back at the armor on the workbench and sighs through her next sentence.

“Well that’s that. Not only does he work for the Court, but he’s got a family to look after.” He places his hatchet back into his satchel. “I wonder what other important information your superiors have neglected to let you in on.”

“They’ve told us what we need to know. This doesn’t change our objective.”

His eyes wander around the room once more. “We’ll see how long you can apologize for them.” Lucas speaks with contempt, not particularly for Wren, but for the very idea of having found these things out so much later than he should have. After finding nothing more to look into, he begins walking out of the shed.

Wren closes the box, slides it under the nearest workbench, and places the stamp into her backpack. Then, she follows Lucas out of the room.

Once outside, Lucas looks around to ensure that none of the civilians of the town are close enough to overhear him. He turns to Wren.

“I was hoping we’d find some hint as to where Homer’s trying to go, but I don’t think anything like that is lying around here. See if anyone who saw him leave has an idea of where he’s going.” He sets his gaze over to the main house once more. “I’m going to look around.”

Wren nods and begins scanning the scene for the woman she had first spoken to. Lucas walks off entering the space between the house and the shed. He squeezes through with his body turned to the side until he emerges on the other side. Initially, he faces his right, the direction of the shed. In this direction, only grass and olive trees greet him. He turns to his left just as a sound from that direction startles him.

A horse stands in the house’s backyard, its reins tied to a post a few meters away. It feeds on a bail of hay, the rustling of which drew Lucas’s attention before he had made a full turn to face the horse. The first thing Lucas finds out of the ordinary is the creature’s breathing. For being at rest, its breaths are those of one that has recently galloped away much of its energy. Beyond this, the horse sports a black saddle and a scar on one of its back legs.

Lucas’s eyes widen as the realization hits him. The horse before him is the same one Homer has been riding since leaving the capital. “If this is his horse, how did he—” His thoughts are cut short at the sight of a second rope lying tied to the post, the sign that two horses are usually kept in this yard.

Immediately, Lucas makes his way around the other edge of the shed and appears at its front once more. Once there, he finds Wren closer to the main path of the town with her back turned away and approaches her with eager breath. But as he gets closer, he can see that she’s holding something in front of her. He’s surprised to find that a raven stands on her shoulder, something he failed to notice until now.

Wren hears his approach, turns ninety degrees and prepares to address him. She looks mildly surprised as she continues to read the parchment paper in her hands. Her reading is finished by the time Lucas is properly before her. She hands him the paper.

“You need to read this.”