Did Janel have a way to communicate with the others?
It seemed impossible, but he knew Janel’s consciousness went elsewhere when she “slept.” He had always assumed the ability passive, not under her control, even if she’d inadvertently created that spell. But could she somehow use her ability to keep in touch with others?
No, he thought. It wasn’t possible. If she went to the Afterlife, she’d have to be able to communicate with someone else with the same ability. He didn’t know anyone else with that power besides gods. And possibly Relos Var.
He had a hard time shaking the nagging feeling he’d missed something.
And what if he had? He wouldn’t do Janel any favors by ferreting out her secret, only to report it to Relos Var the next time the wizard asked Qown to tell all he had discovered. Better to leave it alone, a truth not confirmed and thus impossible to betray.
As Relos Var himself had said, Brother Qown couldn’t be trusted.
He therefore decided to start with the other names on the list, the unfamiliar names not associated with Marakori bandit queens or her forest-dwelling outlaws. It proved difficult to track down the Black Knights, because they lived their own lives while not performing. Nobody spent every hour running around a tournament wearing black and upturning people’s ale mugs for laughs.
Then he came across a Black Knight who wasn’t trying to be funny.
It had taken weeks, hampered because tournaments didn’t happen every day of the week. On days when tournaments ran, they tended to happen all at once, all across Jorat, leaving Qown to try to goat-leap across multiple locations. Additionally, they tended to happen during the day, when people didn’t light fires, lanterns, or candles. And kitchen fires were seldom built within viewing distance of tournament stands. All this made fulfilling the Hon’s request tricky indeed.
He almost asked Thurvishar for help, thinking a retreat to Shadrag Gor would give him the time he needed. But he decided he didn’t want Thurvishar to know.
When he found the right Black Knight, he almost missed him, skipping over the horse and rider. Then he recognized the horse.
Not a horse at all, but Arasgon, disguised and wearing black.
Brother Qown didn’t recognize the rider, but the Black Knight seemed far too large to be Ninavis.
A chance arrangement of azhocks allowed Qown to see the tournament grounds from the farrier’s forge. Enough to see the Black Knight compete. Not unusual, but the fact that the Knight won contest after contest was—as demonstrated by the muttering and whispered complaining from other knights. Those complaints rode a strong undercurrent of awe.
Word of what had happened in Mereina had spread, where the Black Knight slew a demon on the tournament field. This had mixed with Janel’s now-legendary duel with Relos Var, itself often misreported. No one knew if this was a normal Black Knight or the Black Knight.
People had started to spread stories, grander with each retelling.
This Black Knight looked well on his way to taking the prize, when a great hue and cry rose from the nearby castle. Someone came running into view wearing the local Markreev’s colors. “Fire! Fire! There’s a fire at the mill!”
Chaos spread. Brother Qown tried to leap his way back across fires again, but too few existed. He did manage to spy a wagon, parked behind a guard azhock near the stands. People were loading boxes of weapons and armor earmarked for the local Markreev’s soldiers.
Brother Qown recognized Dango.
“What are you up to, Ninavis?” Brother Qown asked aloud, even though no one could hear.
The robbery finished swiftly. By the time the guards returned with the happy news that the mill was undamaged, the Markreev’s men had been robbed of their martial supplies. The Black Knight made a fast retreat before the tournament finished. And in an impressive display of obfuscation and distraction, his target rode into an azhock and vanished. Arasgon stepped out in his normal black and red. Then the black-skinned smith, whom Brother Qown had first seen in Mereina, started loudly complaining that he too had been robbed.
Everyone agreed it was the best tournament they’d seen in ages.
Brother Qown lost the thieves as they left town, since no one needed torches or lanterns in broad daylight. He saw a few he remembered from Ninavis’s party, but he didn’t see Dorna, and he didn’t see Ninavis herself.
Brother Qown might have thought Dango had joined another bandit clan, returning to a familiar life of crime, if not for Arasgon.
The second time he spotted someone who appeared to be the Black Knight, months later, the circumstances made his stomach turn. An “enterprising” baron had decided Marakori refugees fleeing onto her land could be used to harvest her crops. Whether she paid them was unclear, but Brother Qown suspected not.
She wouldn’t have needed whips to motivate them, if they were being paid.
The Black Knight sat astride a steed on the bridge to the baronial manor house after dark. In an echoing, demonic voice, the Black Knight warned if the baron didn’t release the Marakori by the next morning, he’d curse her lands with a disaster beyond imagining.
The baron laughed and ordered her soldiers to shoot him.
It didn’t go the way the baron had planned, though, as every soldier’s bowstrings snapped, and not a single arrow fired.
Then the people hiding in the forest fired back. Their bowstrings didn’t snap. More volleys followed that first, softening up the baron’s defenses before raiders dispersed throughout the compound, gathering up Marakori.
Brother Qown lost track as the group retreated into the woods, but he hadn’t needed to see Dorna to know she’d been there. He knew how her mage-gift worked. He wasn’t sure what Dorna would do with the Marakori. But several freed people had demonstrated a skill with the same weaponless fighting style Ninavis practiced, helping in the skirmish.
Brother Qown took diligent notes, but it didn’t take long to realize the numbers didn’t make sense. He’d originally suspected Ninavis and Dorna had returned to crime, since they both had a predilection for such.
But these activities had involved far greater numbers than could be explained by Ninavis, Sir Baramon, Dorna, and their five or so companions. In the months he’d been observing, he’d already seen closer to several hundred different people, including multiple firebloods, operating across the entire dominion. They seemed … organized.
Brother Qown sat back in his chair, exhaling as reached for tea long since grown cold.
What he was witnessing wasn’t some ne’er-do-well bandits with hearts of gold, stealing metal from the rich of Quur to help the oppressed.
He was witnessing the beginning of an organized rebellion.
* * *
Following the Black Knight’s exploits wasn’t Brother Qown’s only research project. Several weeks after Sir Oreth had been executed and forty-plus women had ended up simultaneously divorced, a servant brought Brother Qown a box of his favorite chocolate biscuits and a note from Janel.
The note said, “Thank you for your help researching Quuros war curses. I’m sure it will be invaluable in the future. Also, thank Thurvishar for me as well.”
But of course, Qown hadn’t researched Quuros war curses.
So he started.
Which did require Thurvishar’s help.
“How would one go about researching the war magic the Quuros used when they invaded Yor?” he asked Thurvishar when Qown next visited Shadrag Gor.