Chapter Five
“I hope you had a pleasant lunch,” Joyce said, when they made it back to the inn. “And that you didn’t cause too much trouble.”
“I barely touched the fellow,” Ted called, from inside the room. “And besides, he deserved it.”
“We had a good lunch,” John said. He strode into the room and hung his cloak on the wall hanger. “What’s up?”
“The first candidates are coming this shortly,” Joyce said. “I’m going to ask them a lot of questions. You’re going to watch and take mental notes and raise any concerns you might happen to have. Afterwards, you get to say your thoughts before we come to any final decisions.”
John raised his eyebrows. “Did you do that for me? Or Hans?”
“You both came highly recommended,” Joyce said, dryly. “And we still tested you carefully before accepting you as one of us. Didn’t we?”
“Yeah.” John wondered, suddenly, what doubts and questions had been raised by his performance. Greyshade might have sent him with a letter of introduction, and Joyce owed him a huge favour, but she wouldn’t accept John if it meant alienating the rest of her team. There were limits to anyone’s authority when their subordinates could simply walk away at any moment. “How many argued I should be kicked out at once?”
Ted grinned. “Do you really want to know?”
“No,” John said, after a moment. He’d been a naive fool back then, an ignorant man unaware of the depths of his ignorance. He liked to think he’d learnt better since then, but every so often the wildlands managed to surprise him. “As long as you don’t want to kick me out now …”
“You’re one of us now,” Joyce said, waving him to a chair. “If you are loyal to us, we will be loyal to you.”
John sat, looking around with interest. Money must have changed hands, because the meeting room had been scrubbed from top to bottom and the rotting furniture replaced with chairs and tables that didn’t look as if one good push would turn them into sawdust. The blinds had been closed, leaving the only source of light a pair of lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Scout didn’t sit. Instead, she leaned against the wall nearest the door and faded into the shadows, ready to intervene if the interviews went horrifically wrong. John knew she was there and yet he had problems picking her out against the darkness. Anyone who didn’t know to look wouldn’t see her at all.
Joyce glanced at them, her eyes flickering from face to face, then stepped out of the door and pulled it closed behind her. John had a moment of awkwardness, a sense he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, before the door opened again and Joyce led a newcomer into the room. John felt his eyes narrow as they skimmed over the man. He was almost absurdly handsome, his clothes tailored to make him stand out a mile; he wore a sword at his belt that had a decorated pommel, covered with gold leaf and precious stones. John felt a twinge of dislike that grew stronger with every passing second, backed up by the sense something was subtly wrong. It took him longer than it should to work out what was bothering him. The fancy outfit was quite bad enough, drawing every eye for good or ill, but it wasn’t tailored to allow the wearer to move easily. John felt his eyes narrow. This was not a man who expected the unexpected. He certainly didn’t move like a blademaster.
Neither does Bard, John thought. And yet, Bard tailors his clothing to make sure he can move easily if push comes to shove.
He put tight controls on his emotions as Joyce waved the newcomer to a chair, then walked around the table to sit on the other side. It was quite possible the carefully-constructed appearance was an act, one designed to make people underestimate him … just like Bard, John noted, or John himself. His perfect blond hair, and teeth, and flawless skin might be the product of magic, rather than clean living … John hated to admit it, but the vast majority of frontier folk bore the signs of a hard life on the edge of civilisation. There was no room for a peacock in the badlands.
“I am Starling,” the newcomer said. His accent dripped aristocracy, to the point John was sure it was an act. Katrina’s father was so aristocratic he made normal aristos look like commoners and his accent hadn’t been so aristocratic. “I thank you for seeing me.”
Joyce didn’t seem impressed. Instead, she bombarded Starling with question after question, ranging from his experience as an adventurer to his knowledge of healing, magic and everything else that might come in handy in the badlands. John was no expert himself, but he was fairly sure Starling was failing the test. His answers were vague, almost to the point of uselessness, and he was very good at avoiding specifics. Joyce kept her expression carefully bland, but John knew her well enough to be sure she was irritated. John had arrived with skills she needed, even if it meant having to show him the ropes before he accidentally ate the wrong thing and killed himself; Starling, for all his braggadocio, didn’t seem to have any useful skills. John made a mental bet with himself Starling hadn’t been in the badlands that long.
“You’re new in town,” Joyce said. Clearly, her thoughts were going in the same direction. “Why did you come so far from home?”
Starling’s face flickered, the emotion coming and going so rapidly John couldn’t place it. “There was a spot of trouble with one of the serving maids,” he said, his tone mildly irritated rather than embarrassed or angry. It was enough to convince John Starling was telling the truth. “I was advised to leave for a few short months.”
“I see.” Joyce’s tone was flat, but John could tell she was annoyed. “You may go. We’ll send a messenger once we make up our minds.”
“But …” Starling saw something in Joyce’s eye and hastily changed his tune. “I’ll await your reply with baited breath.”
He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. John let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Starling came across as a fop and a fool and yet … John suspected it was at least partly an act, but what was it concealing? Did it matter?
Joyce cleared her thought. “Thoughts?”
“No,” Scout said, from the wall. “Just no.”
“That guy is either a fraud or a very good actor,” Ted put in. “And he was very definitely lying to us.”
“Of course he was lying,” Bard agreed. “The question is, what was he lying about?”
Joyce nodded. “I think we will give him a pass,” she said. “Or does anyone want to argue in his favour?”
John shook his head. Starling felt wrong. He was far from the only person to reinvent himself, after leaving the civilised lands, but … no, Ted was right. Starling had been lying about something, even if they didn’t know what. And … he didn’t have anything like the right skills to convince Joyce to overlook her concerns. Starling was either going to learn a few hard lessons very quickly, now he was so far from home, or he was going to wind up dead in a ditch, as naked as the day he was born. If he really had embarrassed his family, they might be quietly hoping he wouldn’t come home …
“I’ll call in the next one,” Joyce said. “And hopefully she’ll be better.”
“She can hardly be worse,” Ted opinioned.
John suspected, five minutes later, that Ted was wrong. The second candidate was a runaway, probably from the brothel or some other form of indentured servitude. Joyce was surprisingly gentle with her, asking several questions in the hopes of discovering she had hidden talents, but there was nothing. John felt a flicker of awe and respect as Joyce gave the girl some money and advice, even though he feared the former would be stolen very quickly and the girl would have no opportunity to use the latter. Her master would already be tracking her down … probably. Pimps tended to be very vindictive indeed.
The third candidate was a little more interesting. “I came out west to marry someone,” she said, cheerfully. She was a couple of years older than John, with long brown hair dangling over a simple brown dress. “He turned out to be an asshole, and the promised shop only a figment of his imagination, so I ditched him and found work in a trader’s wagon train. It pays, but it’s boring. I was hoping for something more exciting to do.”
Joyce cocked her head. “Can you fight?”
“I have a dagger,” the candidate said. “But most of my skills are intellectual.”
“I’ve yet to meet an intellect that can stop a blade,” Ted commented.
Joyce shot him a sharp look. John winced inwardly. He’d seen too many young men being beaten up by their peers for being too smart, or going to a distant school and coming home with airs and graces more suited to a town than a village. Being clever wasn’t enough to protect you if you weren’t smart enough to realise that shoving your smarts in someone’s face would only anger them, particularly if you didn’t realise the difference between theory and practice. And yet, the cleverer you were, the more you could do with magic. John knew, without false modesty, that he was very clever indeed.
And that’s the sort of thinking that normally ends with you having egg on your face – or worse, he reminded himself. If you start thinking you’re invincible, you’ll be dead before you realise your mistake.
“Thank you for your time,” Joyce said. “We’ll send a messenger once we decide.”
“She’s a nice girl,” Ted said, once the woman was gone. “But totally unsuited to life out here.”
“She has survived for a year or two,” Scout pointed out. “That’s quite impressive for someone who started with nothing.”
“She found work, with someone who had the inclination to look after her,” Ted countered bluntly. “If she’d been on her own, she would probably have wound up warming someone’s bed – at best.”
“A likeable person, but too untrained,” Joyce said. “I’ll fetch the next one.”
John tensed, the moment the fourth candidate was shown into the room. He was a bland man with a bland face and blander outfit – the sort of person who would pass unnoticed in a crowd - and yet all of John’s senses were screaming a warning the moment he laid eyes on the man. It was … he stared, trying to put his feelings into words. The man was just … wrong. He saw Ted put a hand on his sword, ready to draw his blade at a moment’s notice. Bard seemed to have stiffened too.
“I rode with Rackham,” the man said. His voice was a faint lisp. “And …”
“That will be all,” Joyce said, coldly. “You may go.”
The man hesitated, one hand dropping to his sword. Ted stood and drew his sword. John grabbed his focus, readying a spell, as violence hung in the air. The man stared at Joyce for a long cold moment, then turned and walked out the door. He didn’t even bother to slam the door behind him. Joyce kept her hand on her dagger as she closed the door herself, her face grim. John had no idea what had happened, but it felt bad.
“What …?”
“Rackham is … is a monster,” Joyce said, curtly. “He and his gang bill themselves as mercenaries, but in truth they’re little better than glorified thugs selling themselves to the highest bidder. They’re destroyed towns, poisoned wells, killed men and raped women and children before selling them into slavery … I believe they even did some work, once on a time, for Boss Edwards until even he got sick of them. They keep moving because there’s no way they can get permanent employment.”
“And the bounties are incredibly high,” Bard added.
Joyce nodded to him. “Anyone who willingly rode with him will have picked up bad habits,” she said, curtly. “I’m not going to take chances with someone who might commit an atrocity on a whim.”
“Shit,” John said. “Why doesn’t anyone stop them?”
“They’re a tough bunch,” Joyce admitted, sourly. “They wouldn’t be much of a threat back east, where an army regiment or two could be tasked to deal with them, but out here … fifty or so armed men can dominate an entire town or country, as long as they stay together.”
“And Rackham is good at binding men to him,” Bard said. “If you weren’t a monster when you entered his service, you’d have to become one just to survive.”
“He doesn’t bother to hire decent people,” Ted said. “If Rackham is looking to hire you, the chances are good you’re a psychopath or worse.”
John shuddered. “Can’t we go after them?”
“There are fifty plus of them,” Joyce said, flatly. “We’d be heavily outnumbered.”
She shook her head. “I’ll bring in the next candidates,” she said. “And hopefully they’ll be better.”
John leaned back in his chair, wondering why Joyce hadn’t asked more questions before inviting the man to the interview. It smacked of carelessness and Joyce wasn’t particularly careless. She certainly didn’t allow her teammates to become careless themselves. Perhaps she hadn’t looked too closely or, more likely, she’d wanted to make sure the entire team was involved in selecting their new teammates. The team was too small for any major disagreements or conflicts to be tolerated, not when it could distract them at a crucial moment. Joyce knew better than to recruit someone unpleasant and try to force the rest of the team to accept them.
The door opened, revealing Joyce and a pair of young girls. John blinked in surprise. They didn’t look dangerous, even though there were daggers hanging on their belts, but there was something about them that set alarm bells ringing at the back of his head. One had a primitive focus dangling beside her dagger, the other had a magical device John didn’t recognise. And … his eyes opened wide as he realised they were practically twins. One had her dark hair cut shorter than the other, but otherwise they were identical.
Joyce took her seat. “Tell us about yourselves,” she said. “And why we should consider you.”
The girls exchanged glances. “I’m Jayne and this is my sister Jane,” she said. “We were born on the frontier, in Prestwick … a small town that is now dust. Our parents wanted to build a new home far from the old … I think they met and married out here, but I don’t know for sure. They rarely talked about their past. When we were ten, the town was attacked by raiders and put to the torch. Our father told us to run into the wildlands while he fought the attackers, but it was too late. They killed him and captured us.”
John swallowed. He’d heard the same story time and time again, a grim reminder – if he needed it – that life so far from civilisation was never safe. The girls had been lucky to survive. They might have been the only survivors from a once-prosperous town.
“Our captor took a shine to us,” Jayne continued. “He taught us everything he knew, including a handful of simple spells. I think … I don’t know what he had in mind, him and his gang. When we had a chance to kill them all, we took it and ran. Since then, we’ve been doing odd jobs for cash and places to rest our heads.”
Joyce leaned forward. “Odd jobs?”
Jayne hesitated, noticeably. “Spying, sometimes,” she said. “A little theft, a little assassination … we traded our services, once, for additional lessons in swordplay and other things. And as we grew older, it became harder to move freely …”
“You’ve been on your own for … what? Six years?” Joyce looked from Jayne to Jane and back again. “Can you follow orders? And work as part of a team?”
“Yes,” Jayne said, flatly. “We can.”
John studied her thoughtfully as Joyce ran though the same questions she’d asked Starling, trying to figure out how much they actually knew. The girls were head and shoulders above him when it came to local knowledge, correctly noting which plants were safe to eat and which were just too deadly to risk cooking and eating unless you knew precisely what you were doing. John had been told not to try anything with them unless he was desperate and even then, starvation might be a better way to go. Starling had been a handsome ignoramus. The girls, he decided, were smart enough to be useful.
“Wait outside,” Joyce ordered, finally. She turned to the team as soon as the girls were on the far side of the door. “Thoughts?”
“I heard Prestwick was burnt to the ground,” Ted commented. “The word was there were no survivors.”
John grimaced. “Do you think they’re lying?”
“No,” Ted said. “They’re clearly smart enough to come up with a better lie.”
“They’re also more capable than they wish us to believe,” Bard added. “They move like experienced fighters.”
“They probably are,” Joyce said. “They’re pretty enough to draw unwanted attention.”
John grimaced. Back east, women weren’t expected to have to defend themselves. A man who attacked a woman would be lucky if he got a trial before he was marched to the nearest tree and hanged. Even female magicians were rarely challenged openly. The taboo on attacking women was strong. But here … a woman who didn’t know how to look after herself was asking for trouble. She might have to knife an attacker at any moment.
“They will do,” Scout said. “They’re certainly the best we’ve seen so far.”
“Agreed,” Joyce said. “Any objections?”
John shook his head. “Not from me.”
Joyce smiled. “You’ll have to test their magic,” she said. “And perhaps teach them more.”
“Ouch,” John said. It was technically illegal to teach magic outside school. He was still surprised, sometimes, that he’d gotten away with doing it last year. “If I must …”