by A. C. Cobble
“He went this way,” said Sam, pointing down an alley to her left.
“How do you know?” wondered Bridget, sniffing quietly. “I lost his scent.”
Sam smiled. “Music, laughter. Ivar’s found himself a crowd.”
“If he wanted a crowd, why’d he run all the way over here?” asked Raymond.
“I don’t know,” admitted Sam, “but his flight wasn’t random. He anticipated we’d come for him and had someone waiting to lead us astray. He must have been suspicious after speaking to you and arranged the decoy. Wherever he went, he expected to find allies there.”
Wordlessly, they stalked down the alley. Sam knew that Ivar himself would likely sense her approach when she got close. He’d demonstrated the ability when they’d first met, but hopefully, whoever he was around could be caught by surprise. An entire nest of potential magic users would be difficult to address, even with the other two Knives of the Council.
As they plunged deeper into the alley, she saw they’d already been spotted regardless of affinity to the spirits. Eyes reflecting the limited light in the alleyway blinked back at her. Atop the roofs of the three-story buildings, moving along the scaffolding, she heard movement. The alleyway was swept surprisingly clean, and unless Romalla was far different from Westundon, no one kept a street so clear of debris if it wasn’t their front door.
They turned a corner and stopped.
Ten yards away was a tavern. Its shutters were open and the door was closed. Inside, they could hear the tinkling of some stringed instrument and the melodies of a singer. The sound of the music was almost overwhelmed by the clunk of full mugs, the shouts and jeers of drinkers, and general revelry.
“That’s rather odd,” remarked Bridget. “Who’d put a tavern here, so far away from the main thoroughfares?”
“Neither of you recognizes it?” asked Sam.
“There are a lot of taverns in Romalla,” explained Raymond. “Can’t say I’ve been to them all.”
Nodding to herself, Sam stepped forward, her hands held clear of her body, her eyes scanning the windows and rooftops around them. There was movement, but so far, no overt threats. Watchers, likely reporting their presence, but without orders to defend the place.
“Where are you going?” hissed Raymond.
“It’s a tavern,” replied Sam. “I’m going to get a drink.”
She pushed open the door and stomped halfway across the room before stopping. At the bar, Ivar val Drongko slowly turned around. He was attired in a simple priest’s cassock, though the glittering rings on his hands and the bracelets on his wrists gave the lie to that disguise. All around them, people started to leave.
“What is this place?” wondered Bridget.
“Thieves’ guild, I imagine,” said Sam.
Ivar smiled. “You shouldn’t have followed me in here. I’m not just a perfumer, and you are not my only friends.”
“I can see that,” remarked Sam.
From the corners of her eyes, she spotted a dozen men and women forming a loose circle around them. A few head-knockers, a few door-bashers, and a few who looked truly dangerous.
“Sam…” murmured Raymond under his breath. “This isn’t the way we do things.”
A heavy thump drew their attention to the bar where the man behind it had placed a short, two-barreled blunderbuss down on the ale-puddled surface. The barman was short like his weapon, but his arms were thick with muscle. They were as wide as her waist, and it looked like the man could punch his way through a solid stone wall. From the scars on his knuckles, she wondered if perhaps he had.
“Ivar val Drongko is under our protection,” remarked the barman. “I think it best you leave.”
“Do you know who we—” began Raymond.
Sam held up a hand, stopping him.
“I could ask you the same question, mate,” responded the barman, a hand resting comfortably on the butt of his blunderbuss.
Sam held the burly man’s gaze for a moment then, in a blink, whipped her hand down and drew the dagger from the small of her back. In the same motion, she flung it at Ivar val Drongko.
The gleaming blade shone in the lamp light for half a breath before it sank into the perfumer’s neck. He gurgled, falling back against the bar. One hand grasped the hilt of her dagger, his blood bubbling around tightly clenched fingers. The other hand pawed at a pouch on his belt, but his ringed fingers were quickly losing coordination. Blood spilled down the front of his priest’s cassock, and she decided the perfumer was too late. Whatever potion he kept which might have the potency to save him, he wasn’t able to retrieve. Instead, he wavered, coughing crimson streamers of sticky liquid. Then, he collapsed, sliding down the front of the bar, her dagger still buried deep in his neck.
“Frozen hell,” muttered Raymond.
“I’ll collect my dagger, and then we’ll be leaving as you asked,” Sam told the barman. “I hope you were paid in advance.”
The muscled man gaped at her.
Not waiting for a response, she hurried forward and knelt, yanking her weapon free with a sickening sucking noise. Trying not to show her nerves, she wiped the bloody blade on Ivar’s cassock and stood, sheathing it behind her back and nodding at the barman.
“If you weren’t paid in advance, the man’s jewelry and the contents of his pouch should settle the bill.” Unsure what else to say, she offered, “Have a good evening, then.”
She turned and the skin on her back prickled as she thought about the polished brass barrels of the blunderbuss, but the room remained silent. She brushed by Raymond and Bridget and exited the open door.
The two Knives scurried after her. Once back out in the alley and a dozen steps from the tavern, Raymond hissed, “You can’t do that! You just killed a spirit-forsaken thief in the middle of the spirit-forsaken thieves’ guild! They will not allow that!”
She shrugged, feeling a bit of comfort as they walked farther from the open door behind them. She couldn’t hear pursuit, and in another score of paces, they would enter a twisting warren of back alleys. If the thieves were going to strike, they’d do it now, on their turf.
“The thieves won’t—”
“That’s why I didn’t ask, Raymond,” she said. “Of course they weren’t going to agree to us slaying one of their own. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Is that a saying here?”
“You didn’t— You can’t…”
Sam stopped and spun to face the outraged man. “You asked me to kill Ivar val Drongko, so I did. Now you’re upset because I offended some thieves? Stop and think. Once he knew we were coming after him and he found safety in that tavern, we never would have seen him again. Those thieves would have spirited him away, or if he could afford it, they would have come with knives out for us. Besides, what the thieves do is against the laws of Ivalla as well, no? Instead of berating me for doing exactly as you asked, perhaps you ought to run to the watch commander and let him know what you found. Or maybe you’re not as serious about protecting the innocents as you claim?”
Raymond snorted.
“How many sorcerers have you killed?” questioned Sam.
“I’ve lost count,” he snarled back at her.
“He’s done his share,” interjected Bridget. “It’s just… we didn’t expect you to be so abrupt.”
“This wasn’t the ending of some tragic play,” replied Sam, starting to walk again. “The man was involved in sorcery, so I killed him. It’s what we Knives do.”
Three days later, she left Romalla alone.
Bishop Constance, the Whitemask, had been enthralled with Raymond au Clair and Bridget Cancio’s depiction of Sam killing Ivar val Drongko in the midst of the thieves’ guild. The bishop’s eyes had sparkled with glee at the thought of the stunned thieves’ faces when one of their own, one expressly under their protection, collapsed dead on the floor of the tavern. Ivar’s potential usefulness to the Council of Seven and the Knives’ previous involvement with him were treated with a wave of the h
and and assurances that there would be another potion mixer coming along if they needed one. The discovery of the thieves’ guild itself was given even less attention. Evidently, the Church had no interest in enforcing the laws of the government.
Sam had spent the days worried the thieves would retaliate, but it seemed in the Church’s capital, even those operating outside of the law were not foolish enough to anger those under the banner of the golden circle.
Disgusted with the complacent council and the haughty disdain the Knives had for anyone who wasn’t them, Sam had quickly decided she would be leaving, with or without the Church’s blessing.
There was no proscribed punishment for a Knife who refused to follow orders or acted alone. Thotham had certainly done it often enough, but that didn’t mean Sam wouldn’t pay for the betrayal. The Council didn’t need a rule written down to decide one had been broken. Bishop Constance, underneath her matronly veneer, did not seem the type to easily forgive and forget. Sam knew when she left there was a risk the woman would send a pair of assassins after her, or the bishop might merely note it, and Sam would have a new enemy for life. Either way, it was certain she would never receive official help from Romalla.
As she scurried out under a gibbous moon that paved her path in pale white light, she thought it didn’t matter. The Council was broken. It would have been nice to have the assistance of the Knives, but the two she met were only interested in bloodshed. Saving mankind from sorcery? It was an unintended consequence. Not to mention, Raymond was a bit of an ass.
The threat in Enhover was real. She was more certain of it now than when she’d arrived. Raymond and Bridget spent their days hunting down harmless potion brewers, wood witches, and others on the fringes of what the Church considered sorcery. After talking to the pair of them, she found they’d never seen a circle used like she did in Archtan Atoll. They’d never faced what she had underneath Derbycross. The Council of Seven did not believe her urgency because they’d never seen the depths the dark path could reach. In all of their years, Bishop Constance and the others had never seen true sorcery. Everyone said it was dead in Enhover, but from what she’d heard in Ivalla, it was even more dead there. The Council didn’t even have the memory of Northundon to fuel their fear. The comfortable narrative they told themselves had overgrown the seeds of truth.
Ivar val Drongko had violated Church law, but the man had not been seriously moving down the dark path. He’d been a tinkerer, a man trying to make his way in the world. The fact that he was also a thief spoke volumes about how successful his potion brewing had been. He was not supplying the continent’s sorcerers with nefarious brews. In fact, she’d lay the rest of Duke’s money on a bet that Ivar’s best customer had been the Church itself.
Killing men like him did nothing to further their mission. It did nothing for the world. Killing men like him only made it more difficult to find the true threats, the ones she alone was hunting. She knew that behind the Mouth of Set and the Feet of Seheht, there was a looming darkness. There were those intent on working with the dark trinity, with Ca-Mi-He and the like of those terrible spirits. When she’d mentioned those names to Bishop Constance, the woman had laughed. Constance had claimed that no mortal could bind such powerful spirits, that even attempting to contact them would lay the sorcerer’s soul bare and would ensure an existence of servitude on the other side of the shroud.
Perhaps, but that didn’t mean no sorcerer was trying. Whether he or she paid a heavy price was not Sam’s worry. It was what he or she could do in the world before that price was due. Every time she’d confronted the bishop or the other Knives with her need, they brushed her off. They didn’t believe her because they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes.
That, and they were all old enough to recall when Ivalla had been independent. Ostensibly loyal to the Church and protective of each of her territories, they had loyalty to home as well. When Sam had raised Duke’s name with Bridget and Raymond, she’d seen it in their eyes, a gleam of bitter joy that Isisandra and her ilk have given the royal line such trouble.
They wouldn’t ignore a threat of sorcery if they believed it, but they wouldn’t shed a single tear at the fall of Enhover. Their hatred of the empire and the Wellesleys tilted the scales to inaction, and there would be no help coming, no matter what she said to convince them. The death of sorcery was a convenient excuse to avoid Enhover, to avoid thinking of the yoke the empire had laid upon their shoulders.
In her hands, she gripped Thotham’s old spear, the one imbued with his spirit. On her hips hung her two kris daggers, on her back a rucksack filled with a clattering array of Ivar val Drongko’s potions. The man’s death was serving some purpose, she hoped. The trip had not been a complete waste. Beneath the tightly sealed vials and bottles of Ivar’s work was something else she’d been saving, something she’d meant to show the scholars in the Church’s archives but knew now was her task alone.
The Book of Law, found amongst Isisandra Dalyrimple’s effects.
Filled with incomprehensible symbols and writing, Sam was certain the book contained secrets which would help find the sorcerers she hunted. A true grimoire, a map of the dark path… she just had to find a way to read it.
As the rising sun bathed the tiled-rooftops of Romalla, she saw the gates stood wide open. The Church was secure in its supremacy, supported by a new empire that had conquered the old one. No one in the city, including those she’d come to find, were worried about what was outside. They should be, she knew. They definitely should be.
The Captain II
Captain Catherine Ainsley placed the compress against the man’s forehead, unsure if that was what she was supposed to be doing. Maybe it was supposed to be cold, or wet, or something else? She couldn’t remember, but she decided it shouldn’t be wet. What good would that do? Maybe hot?
Suddenly, he stirred, and she jumped back. A trembling hand snuck out from under the rumpled linen sheets and he clutched his head, groaning.
She waited quietly, letting him wake on his own. She twitched, wondering if she should dash outside and find… someone. But there was no one else. She was the captain. This was her duty. Well, a physician’s duty, but she’d sacked the one they’d had. Arguably, that made it her obligation. Not to mention, if her patron died, it was likely she would no longer be a captain or even allowed within sight of an airship ever again. In short, if putting the dry rag on the man’s forehead was going to help keep her position, she would sit there all evening until he recovered.
Finally, the duke’s eyes blinked and managed to stay open. He licked dry lips, and she reached to the side to get one of the three copper cups she owned. She uncorked a sloshing glass bottle and was about to tip it up when he croaked, “Water.”
“What?”
“Do you have any water?” asked Duke Oliver Wellesley.
“I-I suppose I could find some,” she said. “This is grog. I didn’t think…”
He grunted. “Water first. Then the grog.”
She stood and turned, glancing over the array of items Mister Samuels had dumped on her table— a washbasin, a few rags, the grog, and another stoppered glass bottle. She opened that one and sniffed it suspiciously, given that it came from Samuels. It had the musty scent all the water on the ship acquired when they’d been aloft for some time. Had Samuels filled a grog bottle with barrel water? She wanted to castigate the man, but she supposed the bottle must have been easier to carry into her quarters. Then, she began to wonder what happened to the grog that had been in there?
Resolving to track down Mister Samuels later, she splashed a measure of water into the cup, glad that even Samuels wasn’t thick enough to bring a washbasin with no water. A washbasin. Perhaps that compress should have been wet? Would Samuels know such a thing?
Duke Wellesley sipped at the water, working the moisture back into his mouth. “Have you been caring for me?”
“I’ve been trying.” She admitted, “It’s not my strong suit.”
“What happened to the ship physician?” he questioned. “I seem to recall signing off on hiring one.”
“He was a drunk,” she murmured, looking away, “more so than usual. I was in the process of finding another when we left. The second mate had some skill in that regard, but, ah, we lost him back in Imbon. He’d gone down to assist the evacuation, and we had to leave, you understand? We could only hoist so many people up before those giant lizards and the natives overran the place. We’d started with women and the children, and…”
Duke Wellesley tensed. “The colony was overrun?”
“A total loss, m’lord,” she admitted.
“But… I… what happened?”
“I was told that Senior Factor Giles decided you were trying to be heroic and would hold until the end,” she said. “He took matters into his own hands.”
“He hit me,” guessed the duke, a hand reaching back behind his head.
“I saw the lump,” replied Ainsley. “He hit you rather hard.”
“Where is he?” demanded Duke Wellesley.
She didn’t answer, but she could see in his eyes that he understood.
“How many?”
“We left behind half-a-dozen crew members but hauled up a score-and-a-half from the compound, mostly women and children,” she replied. “Giles demanded you were next. You were unconscious…”
“I know.”
“We only got three more after that, m’lord,” she said. “Those lizards smashed through the compound’s walls, and a flood of blade-wielding men came after. We blasted two of the monsters from up here, and someone on the ground got a third, but more of them were crawling out of the jungle. Between the lizards and the native horde, m’lord, I decided there was no purpose in continuing the fight. The compound was overrun, and anyone else we hauled up was as like to be an enemy. Retribution is due, but not by us. We’re outfitted for exploration, not war. I-I made the decision as captain to return to Enhover. May the spirits watch over those we had to leave behind.”