"The Gentleman Rogue, Pt. 2" by Travis W. Herring

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The room Etienne provided was not large, but it had only one window, as he had asked.  The inn  (they’d decided that if the assassins had known Etienne by sight that they might also be able to find his home) was near the outside of the River Quarter, near the main road that led from the gates to the docks.  So many people moved through the area that Etienne was certain their presence would not be noticed.  Even so, Alana had entered with her cloak on and her hood up, to cover any specific details, and Etienne had placed a large number of coins on the table when ordering his room.  As they stepped inside, they eyed one another, the idea of spending the night in the same room with the other person not necessarily a positive one.

“You can take the bed,” Etienne said softly.  He moved to the window, checking the latch and pushing it open to see how much noise it made.  It was half his size, but a talented sneak could make his way in with a minimum of effort, he knew.  He began to remove his jacket, closing the window and latching it before moving to secure the door. 

Alana stood quietly in the middle of the room, not moving.  She was watching Etienne.

“What?” he asked, finally satisfied that the room was secure.  “You can have the bed,” he repeated.

“You will need to sleep,” she said.  She reached up and loosened her cloak, loosening the scabbard of her massive scimitar so that she could get it off her shoulders.  Once it was loose, she tossed it over the bed, allowing Etienne a clear view of her.

She was lean, the only fat on her body in the places required to make her attractive to the opposite sex.  The rest of her was well muscled from years spent practicing, her arms and legs bare, her upper torso protected by heavily worked armor.  The loincloth and boots left much of the rest of her skin exposed.  Etienne found he could not look away for a moment.

“You are staring,” she said, drawing his eyes back to hers.

“Right.  Sorry.”  Quickly, he found somewhere else to look, ending up staring out the window.  “I’ll…  I’ll wait for you to change outside,” he said.  He moved toward the door and set his hand on the handle.

“You do not have to leave,” she said.

Etienne turned and stared for a moment, uncertain what to do.  Alana reached up and loosened the belts on her shoulder plates, shrugging them over her shoulder a moment later.  Beneath, a padded leather shoulder set and matching bra kept her pale skin from chafing below the metal.  She stared at him meaningfully, setting the armor on the floor next to the bed before sitting on it.

“If we are to defend one another,” she said, leaning over and pulling one boot and then the other off, “we had better get comfortable around one another.”  She stretched a leg, flexing her foot and watching his response.

Etienne blinked, eyeing her foot, the long length of leg and exposed upper body before meeting those blue eyes of hers once more.  Reaching up, he leaned against the wall by the door and offered an insouciant grin, crooking one leg over the other.  “You going to take anything else off?”

“You want me to hit you, do you not?” she asked, finally grinning.  Despite herself, she was beginning to like him. 

He was handsome in a manner, the scar across his nose adding something to an already attractive face.  Dressed in black leathers with a thick red piping along the seams over a white shirt, he cut a fine figure.  Black hair hung somewhat randomly about his features, highlighting good looks that hovered somewhere between boyish and handsome.  The blade at his side, a rapier, it seemed, was an elegant weapon, finely worked and somehow accenting the sense of danger that hung about him.  His tongue, she decided would be what got him into trouble.  She almost dared him to say the wrong thing.

“You sleep first,” he instead offered, his words polite.  He pushed off the wall and moved to a small table and chair, sitting back after maneuvering his sword out of the way.  “I’ll stand watch for half the night.  You get to watch until morning, if that is alright with you?”

Alana nodded, smirking.  Damn him.  If he said the wrong thing all the time, it would be easy to dislike him, which she desperately wanted to do.  But there were times when he was the perfect gentleman, unlike what she would have expected from her people back home.  There, they would have done as they wished, and she could deal with it or no as the case was.  Here and elsewhere that Alana had traveled, the men were unlike those back home.  Here, men treated women as if they could not fend for themselves, taking the stronger roles for themselves alone.  And the women!  They could not even wield a dagger without revulsion.  Her father would have been sick at heart had Alana acted that way!

Relaxing finally, knowing Etienne would do his part and leave her be, she climbed beneath the sheets and lay down, staring at the ceiling as she forced herself to let the day’s fears fade from conscious thought.  A last glance at her newfound companion found him staring at his boot tips, lost in meditation, perhaps, and she was asleep.

***

Etienne had to admit, it had been an unusual day.  It had started with the average routine – checking on friends, making certain that he was fulfilling enough of his father’s requirements to qualify for the stipend he was offered each month (a stipend that paid for his apartment in the city and kept him with food and supplies, if not much more), but it had ended much more interestingly than he’d ever expected it to.  His evening watch over the gates of the city had given him something interesting and potentially dangerous, and Etienne always considered himself a better thinker and fighter in such situations.  Now, he stood watch for a slender, lean woman with a blade nearly as long as he was tall and who had held off and even surprised an assassin, albeit with his assistance.

She was an amazing woman, he told himself, letting his focus travel from the tips of his toes to the figure on the bed.  Clad in straps of leather with cups where they needed to be to keep her private portions hidden but in nothing else, she was daring in a way he’d never experienced a woman, and he had no idea of how to deal with it.  The average Sithrain woman would not dare to even let her ankles show given the choice, yet here he sat in a room with a woman clad in next to nothing!  The blade at her side was reason enough to not try anything, however, and Etienne knew that there would be no approaching Alana for quite a time, if ever.

Quite simply, she scared him.  A woman as certain of herself as Alana was represented something new to Etienne.  A warrior born and bred, she had grown up on the open plains with her barbaric brethren, swinging a blade by the time she was four, if he believed the tales.  They fought, cursed, rutted, and traveled the plains to the east of the Realm, occasionally raiding villages along the edges of their wide-open homeland for food or other supplies.  If one was lucky, when one saw a large number approaching, they meant to trade.  More often than not, however, it meant rapine and pillaging were in order for the unlucky viewer.

Yet she seemed unlike any barbaric warrior Etienne had ever seen before.  All those he’d met prior to tonight had been in their cups, not speaking coherently and worried for their lives.  Now, rather than worrying for Jean-Claude, Etienne found himself worried about his own life, and perhaps the life of the Prince of the Realm.

He was so lost in thought that he did not hear the click of the latch at the window until it was too late.  By then, the figure who had flipped the lock from the outside had slipped halfway through.  Before he could call out a warning, the door exploded inward, propelled by the foot of another assassin, his ally charging through moments after, blade outthrust for Etienne’s stomach.

It missed, Etienne falling back just as quickly as he’d stood.  The blade would have impaled him, except for the swiftly rising curved blade of Alana, the warrior woman on her feet and snarling even as the assassins came on.

Etienne rose to his feet in an instant, throwing the chair he’d been dozing in out of his way as he drew Whisper with a quick drawing action.  Another blade lashed out at him, Whisper rising to knock the blow out of the way before it could connect.  A boot followed, but the assassin ducked backward, twisting out of the way.  Nearby, the first man shrieked in pain, reaching up to grasp at his side.  Alana’s blade slid free of his side, the woman in question smashing out with a fist and impacting with his face moments later.

Turning from the impressive display of close-in combat, Etienne deflected another impaling thrust and slid his blade down the other’s weapon, catching his tang on the other’s.  Eyeing the man opposite with a faint grin, he lashed out with a punch, grazing the fellow’s shoulder as he spun back.  In response, the fellow came back with a three-cut combination that had the young rogue staggering backward in defense. Whisper rose in a dazzling display of swordsmanship that kept him free of injury, but only just.

***

Nearby, Alana had switched from the wide-swept blows she was accustomed to, exchanging them for the close-in spins and parries she had been taught to take on when surrounded at close quarters.  Instead of enemies all about her, however, it was furniture and the walls of the chamber she and Etienne had chosen for the evening.  The opponent before her was skillful in placing items of the room’s furniture between himself and her weapon.  She was continually adjusting the plane of her blade to alter its course, encountering and forcing her enemy’s weapon back.  Two clangs rang in the room as the two tested each other’s defenses, Alana’s clear blue eyes meeting the hooded eyes of her opponent.  He sidestepped her spin the third time around, bringing her weapon out of line with his motion and dashing in when the blade’s momentum carried her out of position.

***

Etienne countered the assassin’s blow with an upward slash, followed by a mid-level thrust when the fellow brought his own weapon down to stop his blade.  The black-clad man leapt away, throwing his arms wide to avoid the killing blow.  The action gave Etienne a split second to check on his female ally and he took it, hoping to place himself at her side if possible.  Together, the two would provide a front of blades and make up for each other’s failures.  Two sets of eyes, after all, can see more than one.

He did not like what he saw.  She was turned away from her enemy, who was lashing at her side.  The blow went wide when the rogue behind him flung himself in that direction, crashing into the would-be killer and sending him sprawling to the floor.  Etienne flinched as a slash cut into his side and went down with a heavy crash.

***

Above him, Alana finished her sweep, her head turning to take in the tactical situation even as her body spun about on its axis.  Surprised not to be injured, she turned in position, seeing the second assassin drawing a knife back from a stabbing motion.  She yelled in fury, raising her blade stretching her arms as it came back into the length of the room, lengthening her reach and surprising Etienne’s attacker, catching the assassin in the chest as he looked up, too late to avoid the blow.  A moment later, he crashed into the wall, his heart cleanly split in two, his life’s blood spread across the wall as her blade continued on its course, pulled up close to the warrior woman as she caught her balance.

***

Etienne lay atop his opponent, dazed by the sudden, stinging pain at his back, knowing he’d been cut but not aware of how badly.  It hurt, and every movement brought a stinging exclamation of pain from his muscles.  Still, the man beneath him hadn’t stopped moving, and the fight was not over.  Concentrating past the pain, the young rogue rose up, pressing one elbow into the man’s neck and punching at his face with his other hand.  Whisper had been lost in the tumble, and the only other weapon at hand was stuck to the man’s belt.  Yanking the dagger free, knowing he had only a few moments left before he blacked out due to the intense pain at his side, Etienne plunged the weapon into the assailant’s side drawing a sharp jerk and a cessation of motion.

“Etienne!” a woman’s voice called in the growing darkness surrounding the young man.  A voice he could not recognize as his own replied, but he could not comprehend it.  A moment later, none of that mattered, as he spiraled into the darkness and let go of the pain…

“Toulouse,” he managed.  “Captain… of the… Guard…”

Then, all was black.

---

Alana stared around the room, setting her blade point first on the wooden floorboards and catching her breath.  In the distance, she could hear doors closing, see shadows in the half-lit hallway outside the doorway.   She knelt beside the black and white-clad form of Etienne, rolling him over and inspecting his wound, pulling his shirt out of his pants to inspect the puncture mark.  Someone stuck their head in the doorway, drawing a sharp jerk of Alana’s blonde mane as she turned to take them in, her blade off the floor and rising into a defensive motion before she could stop it.

“Hold!” the figure said, raising his hands.  “I come from next door!  I heard…” he eyed the ruined door in the frame, “a noise…”

“Assassins,” Alana spat, turning back to inspect Etienne’s wounds.  “This man is poisoned.  Find someone who can fetch the Captain of the Guard.”

“Captain of the…  I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with, but you can’t just get the Captain of the Guard out of his bed in the middle of the night…”

“FETCH HIM!” Alana roared, turning and rising, her weapon rising along with her slender form.

The figure disappeared, swift footsteps on the floorboards letting her know the man was at least on his way downstairs to find someone who COULD find the Captain.  Etienne had stated the man’s name.  Perhaps this meant he knew him?

She hoped so.  For if she knew assassins, the poison working its way through her young friend’s system would be lethal if not treated quickly, and the City Guard tended to know how to deal with such things.  They dealt with them often enough.  Hopefully, if Etienne knew him, perhaps there was a chance.

---

“Of course he knows who I am,” Toulouse said, eyeing the pale form of his brother.  They had taken him downstairs to the common room and laid him out on a table.  Alana and his things had been moved to another room in the inn and a pair of guards stood watch at their door.  The woman in question, however, had never left Etienne’s side, even when faced with six angry guardsmen and an even more outraged Captain of the Guard.  “He’s my brother.”

“Your brother,” said Alana, uncrossing her arms for the first time since they had arrived.  “That would explain why he asked for you.  Can you deal with the poison?”

“The weapon that stabbed him is on its way to a local alchemist,” the handsome Captain said, eyeing his brother’s quiescent form worriedly.  “He’s gotten into trouble before, but nothing like THIS.”

“It was not his choice,” said the warrior woman. 

Toulouse turned to her, his expression going from worry to one of careful concern.  “What do you mean?”

Alana quickly brought Etienne’s brother up to speed on what had happened, including the attack in the alley, but leaving out mention of Lord Destai.  Who knew which lord the Guard here was loyal to? 

When she was finished, the young Captain stared at her for a long moment, nodding softly.  “When he recovers, he will want to speak with our father,” he said.

“Why is that?” Alana asked.  “And how do you know he will survive?”

Toulouse smiled softly, nodding toward the window, where a torch could be seen approaching in the distance.  “Because that man carries the antidote, or he would not be returning so soon.”  His grin was very close to that of Etienne’s, she noticed.

A guard stepped into the room, carrying a small black bag, which he handed to his commander upon arrival.  Toulouse opened the pouch and pulled out a vial filled with a clear liquid, which he poured into Etienne’s mouth.  Hesitantly at first, and then more willingly, the half-conscious rogue began to swallow, choking for a moment and then accepting the liquid in slow gulps.

“How long will it take?” Alana asked softly.  She hovered around Etienne’s side, one hand on her blade, the other on the young man in question’s hand.  He had proven his loyalty by taking a blade in the side for her.  She would not leave him, even if the man who had come to save him was his brother.

“I don’t know.  Master Thently’s concoctions tend to work relatively quickly if they work at all.  It was a while before we arrived, however, so it may take some time…”

Etienne sat up, gasping, one hand going to his side, his eyes wide as he looked around the room hurriedly.  Toulouse was instantly at his side, taking his other hand and squeezing.

“Easy brother!” he called, calming the injured rogue and drawing his attention.  “You are safe!”

“Toulouse!?” Etienne replied, looking around the room.  Seeing Alana, he stopped, looking her over and seeing her bloodied hands.  He stared.

“Your blood,” she replied, raising them and shrugging.  “You needed to be moved…”

“Ah,” the younger man answered.  Turning back to his brother, he stared.  “What are you doing here?”

“You apparently asked for me,” said Toulouse, grinning.  “Always come running to big brother when the chips are down, don’t you?”

Etienne grinned back, snickering.  “I’m surprised at you, brother.  To think, you actually got up in the middle of the night to come save my life…”

The older (but still young) Captain of the Guard fell silent, his smile fading immediately.  “What is this about assassins coming in the night, Etienne?  Who is your friend that you’re facing members of the Scarlet Dagger in the middle of the night?”

“Scarlet Dagger?”  Etienne and Alana’s voices mirrored each other and they turned to look at one another before turning back to Toulouse.

“Assassins.  Some of the best, from what I understand.  I am surprised you are still here to talk about them, Etienne.  Everything I’ve been told tells me that they’re usually not this clumsy.”

“They had a debt to settle,” Alana offered.  “They were the same men who tried to kill me earlier today.  I would be dead if Etienne had not interfered.”  She squeezed Etienne’s hand, drawing a curious look from the newly-recovered youth.  “I do not believe they considered that we would both be in the same room.”

“I’d like to know how they found which room we were in to begin with,” said Etienne, sitting up and recovering his hands from both of them.  He wrung them together, sitting at the edge of the table.  “Someone must have told them something…”

“The owner of the inn was not in the building when we arrived,” said Toulouse.  “Perhaps it was not a choice he was offered?”  The handsome brother raised an eyebrow suggestively.  “I can send men out to find him if you wish…”

“No,” replied Etienne, scanning the room and sliding off the table.  He flinched when the wound in his side announced its presence.  A dressing had been applied, the ties about his body holding it close against him, and restricting his movement.  “Now that they are dead, they cannot return to advise of their failure.”  He eyed Alana carefully.  “They ARE dead, yes?”

“You killed the man you stabbed,” the warrior woman replied, nodding.  “I slew the other just after he cut you.”  Reaching down, she produced Whisper from where it had been leaning against the table, watching as he strapped it about his waist.

Etienne shuddered.  He had never expected to see her fight in such confined space.  That they were both still alive was a minor miracle.  The fact that he was lucky to be alive was not missed by any of them.  “Thank you,” he said wholeheartedly.

Alana’s faint smile was more than enough to let him know the point was understood.  He turned back to his brother.  “I need to speak to Father.”

“That may not be easy,” Toulouse replied, nodding.  “He is visiting Lord Graverre, in Iratea.  That is a two-day ride…”

“I am aware of the distance,” Etienne said, interrupting him.  “When is he expected to return?  This cannot wait…”

“Not for a week.”  Toulouse shrugged.  “It is the best I can tell you, little brother.  Lord Graverre has been most insistent.”

“I can imagine.”  Etienne frowned, imagining the fat Graverre posturing before his father, all with some grand scheme that would end up with Guy D’Allionde’s name on a document and Graverre’s already overfilled coffers growing heavier with gold.

“If it helps, I am aware that Graverre is holding a masquerade three days hence.  While he may not exactly be pleased at your presence, at least you could hide it from him for a time.  That might just be enough to get to Father without HIM being aware, either.”

Alana’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline.  “You are not welcome at your father’s side?” she asked.

“Let’s just say that my father and I do not get along well and leave it at that,” said Etienne, glaring at his brother.  “I am not welcome in his house, if that explains anything.”

“Then why do you think he will assist you?”

“Because he is loyal to the crown,” Etienne replied, still staring at his brother.  “If there is a plot against the Crown Prince, then he will want to know and may be able to do something about it.”

“Wait a moment,” Toulouse exclaimed, moving to stand before his brother.  “There was nothing said about a threat to the Crown Prince!”  He looked from his younger sibling to the half-clad woman standing nearby.

In response, Etienne turned to Alana.  “You did not tell him?”

“I did not know if he could be trusted,” she replied simply.  She shrugged.

“He is my BROTHER!”

“He is the Captain of the Guard,” Alana answered, eyeing them both flatly.  “More than one brother has been undone by the workings of his sibling,” she said.

Etienne raised an eyebrow, nodding.  “True…  But he is loyal, both to his family and to the High King.  We can trust him, just as I know we can trust my father.”

“Are you so certain?” the tall blonde asked softly.  “He is at the heart of your kingdom’s politics, is he not?  He could be aware of this…”

“The Heroes of the Light are beyond reproach,” Toulouse said sharply.  “That includes my father and the other heroes, no matter where they are, or what they are doing.  Just because your people do not trust one another and cannot manage a court system…”

“Stop,” Etienne said, waving a hand as his brother’s words grew more heated.  “We are all friends here.”  Turning, he stepped between the Captain of the Guard and his angry opposite.  “Alana, he is my father.  I trust him.  I do not necessarily agree with everything he does or stands for, but I know that Toulouse is right in this.  My father would do nothing against the King.  It is he who knighted my father in the first place!”

Alana relaxed, somewhat mollified.  She met Toulouse’ angry eyes with her own heated orbs, however, not pleased at what Etienne’s brother had said, whether in the defense of his father or not.  Where she came from, the word of a father could mean everything, or nothing, depending on whether the son was strong enough to depose him.  She would have to wait and see what this man was like before deciding whether to trust his sons’ opinion of him…

“When do we leave?” she asked.

“I can have you on the road in two hours,” replied Toulouse.  “It will take that long to provision and prepare a pair of horses and see you out of the city without anyone being the wiser.”

“Then I suggest we get going.”