by A. C. Cobble
Oliver spun, hoping the rear of the building offered an easier exit than the front. Somewhere out there, someone was tossing incendiaries into the broken windows. He had no desire to catch one on his way out the door.
In the back, he found staff quarters, storage rooms, and other spaces that didn’t attract the presence of the society’s members. Fortunately, they also were not yet attracting the interest of their assailants. Unfortunately for the woman Oliver had left in the hallway, she did. He heard her pained, warbling scream as he finally found the rear of the building.
He kicked open a locked shutter and peered out. Below him, flame and smoke poured out of the windows on the basement level. An alley ran behind the building, and on opposite ends, he saw figures moving about, guarding against escape. They’d soon be joined by the fire brigade and curious citizens, he hoped.
One of the figures saw him and pointed, shouting. They began to mill about, arguing amongst themselves.
Oliver could feel the heat of the fire below him growing. The assassins in the alleyway had no way to approach him on the second floor, but he was stuck. He looked behind him, and while he didn’t see anyone yet, he could hear men moving about, ransacking and burning the place. If they found him, he’d be cornered. He had no weapons, no way to call for help. He glanced out again and saw more shapes appearing at the ends of the alleyway.
The fire brigade or more attackers?
Wishing it didn’t feel like such a foolish decision, he clambered up onto the windowsill and then jumped down, falling through a haze of smoke and fire. He landed heavily in the dirty cobblestone alleyway. On the front side of the building, there was a wide tree and mansion-lined boulevard. Behind the buildings, though, it was a maze of narrow streets used by servants, delivery men, and refuse-takers. At the end of the alley, he could see the watchers shifting in agitation and then starting to come toward him. They must have seen him drop from the window. He guessed they’d have orders to leave no witnesses.
He darted across the alley, clambered up a pile of discarded crates, and flopped over a wall into the garden of a building across the way. Some public offices, he thought, perhaps a barrister or physician, but he didn’t take time to look. He ran through the back to the carriage yard, checking his mask and robes to ensure they were still in place, that his identity was still secret. He knew he looked strange, covered from head to toe in black silk, but he had to move quickly to gain distance between himself and the attackers. There was no time to make himself appear less suspicious.
Running into the night, half an hour past midnight, he saw a mechanical carriage rumbling ahead of him. He sprinted after it and leapt to catch onto the back of it where a footman would have ridden if his master was inside.
Oliver had no idea where the carriage would take him, but he had to go somewhere.
The Priestess I
“Another?” asked the barman.
“Why not?” she replied.
He grabbed her mug and turned, pulling on his tap and spilling a frothy golden liquid into the container. When he sat it down, his eyes stayed locked on the book she had open in front of her.
“What?” she said, glaring at him.
“I’m not sure the old man would approve,” remarked the barman. “Your kind is meant to destroy that knowledge, are you not?”
“To defeat your enemy, you must know them first,” she replied. “I read that somewhere.”
“No you didn’t.”
She snorted. “Maybe not, but someone probably wrote it. If we do not understand what we’re up against, how can we defeat it? How can we even know what we’re supposed to be fighting? You say Thotham would disapprove, but he learned more about sorcery than anyone I’ve ever known. He walked the dark path as far as he was able. He had to walk it to do his job.”
Andrew grunted, shaking his head. “And how did that go for him?”
She glared at the barman.
Holding up his hands, the man muttered, “I can see I won’t convince you, but know this. The dark path is difficult to walk, but even more difficult to turn from. Once you’ve gone far enough, you may not be able to come back.”
“What do you know about the dark path and the people we pursue?” questioned Sam.
“I’m a simple pub owner,” replied Andrew, scratching at his short beard. “I don’t know what’s in those pages any more than I know what King Edward had for breakfast this morning, but I do know what is not in there. The old man is gone, girl. He’s gone, and reading that book won’t bring him back. What you seek is not down this path, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to find something that is better left undiscovered.”
“I know he’s gone,” she snapped, “but if he was here, he’d be doing exactly as I am. Our purpose, his purpose, was defeating sorcery. We cannot do that if we do not learn about it. Maybe if he’d had access to this book and time to study it, he wouldn’t have died.”
Andrew stared at her for a moment and then moved away, muttering darkly under his breath.
She snorted. If the man kept his nose out of her business, he’d have no reason to be upset by it. She knew Thotham wasn’t coming back. Trying to decipher the leather-bound grimoire on the bar wouldn’t change what had happened, but it was all she could think to do. Her mentor had died pursing his mission, trying to battle the shadowy memory of what he’d seen in his prophecy. He would want her to finish what he’d started, but without his guidance, where else was she to turn? The Book of Law may hold the answers she was seeking, and she’d be foolish to ignore it.
In his prophecy, Thotham had described a tree of darkness spreading out from Enhover, a deep root of sorcery in the one place it was supposed to be impossible. It was all as obscure as the mysterious diagrams and script she’d been mulling over. Since she’d put Duke in the carriage and returned to the pub, she’d done nothing but drink and try to tease out some meaning from the grimoire.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Isisandra Dalyrimple had been able to read the ancient manuscript. The Book of Law, stamped with the symbol of the Feet of Seheht. The sorceress had carried it in her personal effects for a reason, Sam was certain. There was something within those cryptic pages worth learning. Maybe tonight, Duke would find something they could use, some paradigm that would help untangle the ancient terms and language of the book.
She wasn’t hopeful, though. Even if the ranks of the Feet of Seheht held the secrets they sought, the society was unlikely to hand them out to aspirants at the first meeting. Still, there could be something, and she was glad the nobleman had agreed to pursue it. Without him, she’d be entirely lost.
She picked up her ale mug and took a sip, looking down at the thin ink that covered the pages in front of her. An old dialect of Darklands script, she was pretty sure. Frozen hell. Duke or no Duke, she was entirely lost.
She closed the grimoire and glanced around the pub. An hour after midnight, it wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty, either. A few men were drinking heavily and tossing daggers at a painted target on the wall. Another man was passed out a dozen paces away with his forehead flat against the rough plank table. A pair of men were sharing a nearly empty bottle of murky brown liquor, and half a dozen were clustered together in a corner booth, laughing uproariously at a joke one of them had told. They were armed heavily. Perhaps security for a merchant who had no livery or perhaps privateers. Either way, they were solely focused on their own jests, and despite the weaponry, she sensed no threat from them.
She frowned. There were no women in the room except for her.
Waving Andrew over, she asked him quietly, “Why are there no women here?”
“You’re here,” he mentioned.
“Aside from me, why are there no women?”
He stroked his beard, flattening it down from where his furious scratching earlier had tangled it. “There are never any women here.”
“Why is that?” she wondered.
“Is there a man in here you couldn’t be
st in a fight?” questioned Andrew.
She brushed a strand of jet-black hair behind her ear and replied, “Probably not.”
The barman nodded, satisfied.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she wondered.
“You can out-drink and out-fight every man in here,” he explained. “You’ve probably slept with more women than any two of them combined. You’ve traveled farther, you’ve seen stranger things than most, and if I needed a new bottle opened and I was struggling with it, I’d ask for your help before any of those louts. By the way some judge these things, you’re more man than any of the rest of them. You don’t have a penis, though, of course.”
“No, I don’t have a penis,” she agreed. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to compliment me or insult me, Andrew.”
He smirked. “The patrons of my bar aren’t here because the chairs are comfortable or the decoration is attractive. They didn’t come because it’s convenient or even that the other clientele is worth talking to. If I had latrines, they wouldn’t be cleaned, not by me at least. No, these fellows come here because I’ve got the best drink in Westundon. That’s the only reason anyone comes here, and I’ve learned over my years, that’s not enough for the fairer sex.”
She sipped her drink and set it down. “You do have good ale, but I think you’d sell a lot more of it if you enticed a few women inside. Not everyone heads to the pub just to drink, you know?”
“In here they do,” replied Andrew. “Find yourself a man, if you want some entertainment. They didn’t come for softer company, but not a one’a them would turn it down.”
“I prefer women,” she remarked.
“Aye,” he replied, “I know. I also know a man’ll do the job. Probably be a lot easier to talk them into it, too. Where’s that chap, Walpole? You scare him off?”
“Walpole has done the job, but I’ve had better,” she claimed. “A lot better.”
“That’s my point,” declared Andrew. “When you prefer a good lay to a good drink, you go and find yourself another pub. When drinking is what’s on your mind, the doors of the Befuddled Sage are always open. That, my girl, is why there are no women here. This establishment is for drinking. Woman wants a man, or a man wants a woman, they’ll go somewhere else. I promise the best drinks in Westundon and that’s all. Everyone knows women want a little decoration on the walls, maybe some better lighting, a place to empty their bladders other than the alley out back. They want to talk to people. Here, it’s just about the drink.”
Sam snorted, taking another sip.
“Fancy another before your nobleman gets back?” asked Andrew.
She turned and gazed over the other patrons in the pub. “Why not? Not much else to do in here, is there?”
Grinning, the barman poured her another, and she sat quietly, unwilling to reopen the Book of Law, but finding it impossible to shift her focus away from it. She sat silently for half an hour, nursing her ale, watching the room. None of it changed until a new group entered, four men, covered in soot, looking like they needed a stiff drink.
“Barman,” called one of them, “a bottle of gin and four cups.”
Andrew nodded and then gestured to their torn and smoke-fouled clothing. “A fire?”
“Aye,” confirmed the man. “Some rich peer’s mansion. Whole thing burned like a pitch-covered torch. Can’t for the life of me imagine what he was storing in there. In less than a turn of the clock, it was just fire-blackened stone. Craziest thing I’ve seen since I joined the brigade, a big mansion like that burning so fast. He must have been a lamp oil merchant and was saving on warehouse expenses. Stupid way to die, if you ask me.”
A second man snorted. “Aye, that or something darker. It smelled funny in there, you know? Like meat over the fire, ‘cept not like any meat my missus cooks.”
“Well, with a big mansion like that, there could have been some staff trapped inside or even the peer himself,” said the first man. “Not that you’d have much luck identifying what they was now. Peer or pauper, they’re all the same after that fire.”
The second grunted. “Maybe. Must’a been a lot of ‘em to stink it up like that. You could smell it a block away.”
“Where was this fire?” asked Sam quietly.
The first man eyed her up and down, his gaze lingering on her hips, on the kris daggers hanging there. Then, he looked to her face and answered, “About eight blocks north of here. Normally outside of our territory, but they called in fire brigades from five different boroughs to deal with it. Didn’t want the peers and the merchants getting their mansions damaged, I suppose. Fine by me. We get paid a bonus anytime we have to venture outside of our district.”
Sam slid off the stool, collecting the Book of Law and sticking it into the satchel she had Duke’s clothing in. She didn’t expect him back at their meeting point for another hour, but a mansion, just eight blocks north… She had to find out.
“Careful out there, Sam,” murmured Andrew. “It’s dark tonight.”
She nodded curtly and then slipped out the open door. On the damp night air, she could already smell the smoke.
The Cartographer II
He staggered against the wall of the building, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He’d been running flat out for half an hour, panicked that he would accidentally stumble into the attackers who’d struck the Feet of Seheht. That many of them, assaulting a crowded building so blatantly, would stop at nothing if they knew he’d been inside.
And there was little chance they wouldn’t know he’d been inside. He was prancing around in the society’s flowing black silk robes and mask. Inside of the chapter house, they’d felt silly. Running through the dark streets of Westundon in the middle of the night, they were ludicrous. But while he felt a fool, there wasn’t much to be done about it. Sam had his clothing, and if someone did see him, he’d be glad of the mask.
He’d leapt off the mechanical carriage a league and a half from his brother’s palace and even farther from his own estate in the city. He’d considered racing toward either place, no matter how absurd he would feel banging on the gates, but he realized that if the attack on the Feet of Seheht had been directed at him, then Sam was in grave danger. He’d zigzagged across Westundon, heading back toward the Befuddled Sage. Now he was within two blocks, leaning against the wall, watching Sam’s unmistakable kris-adorned hips as she hurried down the dark alley toward him.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Fire, attackers,” he gasped.
“Attackers?”
“Everyone is dead,” he explained between breaths. “The pub, what—”
“Nothing,” assured Sam. “There’s been no disruption at all. I came to find you because members of the fire brigade came in. They said a mansion had burned. Duke, they reported that there were no survivors. Is that… is that true?”
“There’s at least one,” he said, finally catching his breath and standing upright, “but maybe only one. They locked the doors and tried to corner us in the basement. I got out, but the fires had already started. I didn’t see anyone else escape. Sam, I need to change.”
She glanced at his clothing and nodded curtly. “My apartment.”
“They may look for us there,” he warned.
Shaking her head, she took his hand and led him back the way he’d come. “We can avoid the main streets this way. I don’t think they’ll come for us at my place. If they wanted to find me, they would have at the Befuddled Sage. Remember, we both went in there. If this was directed at either one of us personally, they would have had to follow you to the meeting. They would have known I was inside the pub. I don’t think either of us were the targets tonight.”
He was silent for a moment before responding. “If not me, then you think it was the society itself they were attacking? Some rival organization taking the opportunity to destroy the Feet of Seheht?”
“A rival or someone inside,” she muttered.
“Someone inside?” h
e questioned.
Sam grunted, stopping him behind a building and removing a key from her vest to open the door. She led him in, and they were quiet until they entered her apartment and fastened the bolt behind them.
“Colston performed real sorcery,” she said, turning to him. “We saw that. Isisandra Dalyrimple knew real sorcery as well, though I suspect she learned it from her parents instead of the Feet of Seheht. What if when she arrived back in Enhover, she sought out a mentor and found Colston? He had true power and took her on knowing that she was skilled as well. Sorcerous knowledge is prized and protected. Even if he was the superior, it’s possible she knew things he did not. It’s likely that few others in the society were true sorcerers. Maybe none of them.”
Oliver shook his head. “Someone had that book before Isisandra. Someone taught Colston. Members of the Feet of Seheht had occult knowledge, even if I didn’t see it tonight.”
“What if there was someone who ranked higher than the elder?” mused Sam.
“Higher than the elder?”
“They could have attacked tonight to cover up their involvement in the society,” she speculated. “The elder may have been only a figurehead, albeit one with knowledge and skill. The true master could still be out there and is destroying anyone who would lead us to him.”
“Or her,” grumbled Oliver.
Sam smirked. “Or her. We think this all started when someone found out Hathia Dalyrimple was returning to Enhover with an object tainted by the spirit Ca-Mi-He. It wasn’t her daughter, and it wasn’t the elder who killed her, right? It had to be either a rival or a superior. Which do you think makes more sense, that some rival was able to guess what she was up to on the other side of the world, or that a superior in the society learned of what she’d done? For all we know, she could have told this person herself and was going to meet them, but then paid the ultimate price for her candor.”