Free Farlander by Col Buchanan Page B

dropped, her armour shattered. A hand reached through the bars. Nico felt it slide around the back of his neck, fingers gripping him and pulling his head towards her, into an embrace between the cool metal.
    ‘My son,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘What have you done? I never took you for a thief.’
    He was surprised to feel the sting of tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was desperate, starving.’
    She made a soothing sound, stroked his face. ‘I’ve been so worried about you. Every time we came to the city I looked out for you, but all I ever saw were people going hungry. I wondered if you were managing to survive at all.’
    He took a shuddering breath. ‘Boon . . .’ he managed. ‘Boon is dead.’
    Her grip tightened around his neck. She began to weep. He cried with her, his numbness gone now, his emotions let loose in the shared intimacy of their pain.
    The door to the visitor’s passage cracked open, and a figure entered. Nico looked up, wiping his eyes clear, and his mouth dropped open.
    It was the farlander, the old man he had stolen the money from the afternoon before.
    The newcomer stood on the threshold, his head cocked to one side, a leather cup of chee steaming in one hand. He was shorter than he had seemed as he had lain on the bed. With a shaven head and black robe, he had the appearance of a monk, though a strange monk at that, because he carried a sheathed sword in his other hand. Nico’s mother broke away to look too.
    The man moved smoothly across the stone floor and stopped before them all, the motion not unlike the swaying surface of chee in his cup: at once contained and settling into itself.
    Close up, the farlander’s eyes were the colour of dead ashes, though they were intense in their scrutiny. Nico almost took a backward step. There was no trace here of that confused old man awakened from his dreams, blinking around him as though unable to see.
    ‘This is the thief?’ he demanded of Nico’s mother.
    She swept her eyes dry, drawing herself tall. ‘He is my son,’ she declared, ‘and more a fool than a thief.’
    The man appraised Nico coolly for a few seconds, as though inspecting a dog he had a mind to buy. He nodded. ‘Then I will have words with you.’
    He took himself to one of the stools positioned in the centre of the vault, sitting down with his spine straight and his sword resting in his lap. He set the cup on the floor. ‘I am Ash,’ he announced. ‘And fool or not, your boy stole money from me.’
    Sensing business of a sort, Nico’s mother became her usual calm self once more. She took a stool opposite him. ‘Reese Calvone,’ she told him.
    Los approached to place a hand on her shoulder, though obviously wary. She brushed it away and he retreated to the far wall, as close to the door as he could position himself. He watched them in silence, from the corners of his eyes.
    ‘Your son is to be flogged and branded no doubt,’ continued the old man, ‘as you people do in these parts. Fifty lashes, I am told, is common for daylight theft.’
    Reese nodded, as though it had been a question asked of her.
    ‘It is a hard business that.’
    Her green eyes narrowed, and she glanced quickly to Nico before returning her attention to the stranger before her.
    ‘You are taking it well,’ he observed.
    ‘Have you come here to gloat, old man?’
    ‘Hardly. To know the son, I would first know the mother. It might help your boy’s situation.’
    Reese looked down at her hands, and Nico followed her gaze. Coarse working hands, covered in the cuts and scalds of many years; they looked older than her face, which was pretty, even now, despite its tears and worry. She inhaled a deep breath before she spoke. ‘He is my son, and I know his heart. I know that he can bear it.’
    Nico dragged his gaze from his mother to the old man, whose sharp face offered nothing.
    ‘What if there were another way?’
    She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘What if he did not