"I'm going to town now," she called, and her father grunted as usual. Her mother hobbled up to her and embraced her daughter warmly.
"Remember to ask about your brother, if you see a dragoner," she said, "perhaps our luck is changing at last!"
With a chuckling promise, Bequet gathered herself and put her purse into its traditionally close position, then went out to the trail. She flitted like a child in a candy shop from one place to another when she got to town, proudly displaying her new status to those who cared. She stopped in at the yardage goods store, and showed off, crowing that she'd attained a rank that her father never did. The woman was pleased, yet oddly distracted.
Everyone was, in fact. Yet they smiled and handed her the items she was buying, putting on the airs for a newly appointed Journeywoman was always a pleasure to most people. It was a strange day, someone commented.
Bequet didn't know why he'd said that, but she moved along anyway. She found a bolt of cloth which she just knew that her mother would love to work with, the soft material colored in subdued warm greys and spattered with the occasional bright yellow threads. She'd located a leather strap which would be perfect for her father's leg braces, it would keep the long metal splints in place better than the improvised cloth which was on them now. She'd made the splints, she knew the dimensions perfectly.
"I don't know how I'm to carry all this home," she breathed, when she'd found a set of nicely fired mugs that could sit on their hearth and be used for the stew later that night.
"It won't matter, girl," said a voice, deep and cold, "you aren't going home tonight. Thieves and killers don't have homes around here."
She turned, and recognized Amarast's pair of personal bodyguards, standing behind them was the man himself -- the middle aged man who'd stolen her family's mine from them.
Bequet's face changed from an innocent and happy mask, to one of pure rage and confusion. "What are you talking about?! I earned this! It's mine!"
She wasn't. Her knife had been tucked away in her room, safe -- she hoped.
"I stole nothing," she said, drawing herself up, and suddenly trying for the confidence she needed to bluff her way out of this. There were people around, anyway. They'd all seen her proudly showing off her new pin. "Master Collins will sho--"
"Master Collins has disappeared," Amarast growled, but the way his lips turned to a slight and sinister smile at the end made Bequet's blood run cold.
"You've k--" She started, but the big guard snapped out his hand, catching her on the throat before she could finish.
"You stole this purse, and the pin was meant for someone else," Amarast stated loudly enough and plainly for the other people watching. Bequet could not even groan, her throat was bruised and the wind had been knocked from her. She spun around, and at the toss of Amarast's head, several others came and took the items from her arms. "Those will go back to their rightful owners," he said.
"Th- they're mine, I earned it... I earned it..." She sobbed, suddenly dropping to her knees. This wasn't fair. This was not how today was meant to be! She was a Journeyman! And they'd-- She looked up at the smirking snarl on Amarast's face. "If you've hurt him, you bastard, I'll kill you."
Amarast leaned down, his short dark hair remaining perfectly over his eyes. He tightly grasped Bequet's already-injured throat, and tightened his small hand around it. "That's just what he said," he whispered to her, "but look where it's got him."
He stood, taking her up with him. She was taller than he by several inches, but he was for some reason a far more imposing man than he ought to have been. Perhaps it was his huge twin-shadows, lurking behind him. Circling like wolves, other guards took care of the items Bequet had bought, and tidied up behind them as the group left the town square.
Bequet was numb. This was not happening... Master Collins -- gone? How! When?! When she'd gone... The realization that the caravan which arrived just as she was leaving had to have carried these men, had to have been when --
"You miserable bastard!" Bequet shrieked. If she was going, she wasn't going without a fight. She used her forge-trained strength to break Amarast's grip, and dodged around his fist when he tried striking her. His other hand grasped the pin on her collar, and ripped her shirt away with it.
"You little cackling wherry, do you think for a minute I'd let you get away with this?" He spat, "when you come to trial, you'll have nothing more than that to say, you cannot prove anything -- no one was with you."
"Stop it!" Bequet cried, reaching for her neck and then for the pin clutched in the Holder's hand. "That's mine!"
"It's mine now," he said, "And so will you be, if I want you. You're a bit thin, too wirey. But a few days without food and sunlight will take care of that, won't it."
The pair of guards made to grab Bequet's arms, but she shimmied out of their thick hands, and kicked one of them in the shin hard enough to break his stride. The other bolted after her, when she made a quick run for the trail.
But she knew this trail. She'd lived in this area all her life, she knew every tree and bush, every stone outcrop and gulley. She grew up with some of the saplings, knew which ones held open spaces inside, and which could be bent for a springing leap across a streamlet. Bequet hadn't run through the woods in a year or more, but she still habited the place. It was all her back yard anyway.
She quickly lost the man, trying to lead him on a path that would take him farther away from her house and the mine, and in doing so did not realize how much time it would take for her to reach those places, herself.
But she had no time for this. Her knife was still where she'd left it, in a slighty loose rock crevice below her bed. She took a strap off the binding for her reed filled mattress, and used it as a belt for the knife over her hip.
Though there were tears streaming freely from her eyes now, Bequet's mood became cold and calculating. She'd felt this way many times, and would likely be so again. The need for revenge, to find her parents and her Master smith, was overwhelming. But she used her head. She could always trust herself to strike the iron properly, even if her daydreaming was taking her far away. Something inside her detatched, and her body moved almost of its own accord, toward the door.
She looked at the ground. There were two sets of foot prints, and the dragging ones which indicated her father's struggling form. Her mother's faint prints were scattered about, but it was obvious that someone picked her up and carried her off with them.
Bequet followed the trail, realized that it would lead her to the mine. That was fine with her. Amarast didn't know the inside of the mine. She did. Bequet passed two apprentices who were shouting about the forge being cold, and where was the Master, and what was she doing now?
She didn't stop. Instead, she bolted past them and on to the wider trail toward the main entrance to the mine. She didn't see anyone like Amarast, or his bodyguard. There were three stunned workers sitting with their hands limp and their lunches on their laps.
"Where did they go," she demanded of them. One shrugged, the other opened his mouth to say something, and the third hit him so he couldn't speak. "Where. Did. They. Take. My. Parents."
The second man winced when his partner gripped his arm tightly, to prevent him from speaking, but his eyes drew around to the deeper part of the mine, the trail which led to the older portions.
Bequet saw that, and it was all she needed to know. She ran back outside, up the trail to her house again, and went into the secondary entrance to the mine. Her home's mine.
Her mine.
Bequet was used to the dim light of the mines, knowing each turn was like knowing the grain on the hammer she'd used for her training. It was almost impressed on her hand like a map. Her feet knew the way down around each turn, even when there was no light. Nothing was ever left in the way in the tunnels, she had made certain of that. The workers weren't stupid enough to leave personal items down there, no sacks in the way, no broken tools lay down across the tunnel.
Bequet slowed when she knew she reached the main mine. It was deep, here, her ears and pressure in her sinuses told her that. The shaft from the main area had to drop almost a hundred feet to reach her part of the mine, so she would be at an advantage. She knew the way up, more easily than the holder and his guard. At least his other guard was good and lost, out in the hills, and would not be a problem.
She held the handle of her knife, her beautiful, deadly knife. It was going to be hard, restraining herself from ...
Perhaps it was time to stop restraining. Master Collins might be dead, her parents were more important than her own life now. She was no thief, she was no ... she was no killer. Her throat got a big lump in it, hard to swallow. How could she save them, and not do this thing which would condemn her?
She listened, the sound of her own pounding heart was the loudest thing in her ears. There, an echo, a tapping of metal against rock. Her father's leg brace, being repeatedly moved. She wasn't sure if he'd taken it off, or if he was walking and banging the side of the mine shaft. Either way, it would lead her to the right place.
It was a wider tunnel, where she knew they rested. The tunnel which led into an open cavern where the floor below was more than forty feet down. There were several skeletons from old accidents, which people had never been able to retrieve. Bequet remembered the stink of decaying flesh, as it wafted up in her mind. That stink she'd never forget.
She paused, her walking boots made her quiet on the dirt floor, where her work boots would have been too noisy. Using that to her advantage, she glanced around and saw no one. No workers remained in this area, she heard their voices quietly up the tunnel toward the main entrance. They'd obviously been cast out by Amarast.
That meant it was just him, her parents, and the smaller of the two bodyguards. He was faster, though, but he was still probably going to be limping a bit from that kick she'd delivered. Good. Her parents would need help out, but as long as they were healthy, she was satisfied.
If they were injured... Bequet tightened her hand on the knife hilt, feeling how her work had been finished to its perfect end. It was a bit too light in the blade, of course, but the blade wasn't short. So it's balance was a little off. She was no knife fighter, she had never really been trained in anything but creating blades and tools. She knew balance, though, and she knew distance.
And this knife felt like an extention of her own hand. She pulled it from the scabbard, and prayed that she would not have to clean blood off of it.
She picked up a stone from the crumbling edge of the wall, and tossed it against the main entrance tunnel's area. It clattered and she heard Amarast's voice. "Go see. These two aren't going anywhere."
Bequet heard a soft thud, and her mother's stifled sobbing. Then she froze in place, as the guard ran up to the entrance tunnel. He was limping a bit, she confirmed it. While he was invstigating the tunnel, around its turn and up into the shaft elevator, Bequet stepped out from the other tunnel. From the main room, the tunnel she was in could not even really be seen. It was a trick of the light and the stone's coloration, but it looked for all the world like she merely stepped from the stone itself.
She raced across the distance between the wall and her prey. Amarast barely had time to look up from kicking Quian's side, before he was bowled over by the angry woman.
Bequet pushed him head over heels, and then they wound up at the edge of the tunnels' ledge, overlooking the deep pit. It was dark below, no one wanted to illuminate the craggy and sharp surfaces there. They were spooky enough as it was, what with the remnants of men who'd fallen.
"Father, throw that torch down the pit." Bequet said. Her father reached up with his hands, not able to prop himself up too far. The guard was returning, when he saw one of the dozen or so torches fly through the air and over the edge of the pit.
