“We can’t put him down there like this.”
“The bloody Gyun can rot for all I care.”
“The king will be upset if he dies before the trial.”
“Gah . . . Tend to him, if you like, but make it quick. I don’t have all night, you know.”
Their words floated through the air near him, but Ian felt no need to respond. The effort to do so was beyond him.
“Hold him down while I set this break.”
Heavy hands pinned him to the . . . table? What had happened to the wagon? When had he been moved? He blinked and tried to focus on the hard, unfriendly faces all around him. Why were they holding him down? He felt so weak. Did they think he would try to leave? Where would he . . .
Red-hot pain lanced up his arm and his back arched, lifting him clear off the table. A long agonizing scream escaped his parched, muddy lips and then everything went black again as he fell . . . down . . . down . . . down . . .
He fell for a very long time, much longer than he thought possible. He had only fallen from a great height once before . . . or was it twice now? No, that couldn’t be right, could it? As a boy, he’d slipped off a ladder while harvesting olives back on his family’s plantation in Gyunwar and though the brief sensation of weightlessness had been exhilarating, the abrupt landing had quickly diminished the entire experience.
“Will you live?” his father had asked, towering over him, hands on his hips.
Ian nodded, still struggling to catch his breath.
“Anything broken?”
Ian shook his head. He didn’t think . . . wait . . . his arm . . . RED . . . his arm felt like it was on fire . . .
His father offered him a hand up. “If the One had intended us to fly, he would have given us wings.” He pushed him toward the ladder. “Do you have wings?”
Ian managed to pull enough air into his lungs to offer a simple, “No . . .”
“Then get back up there and pay attention to what you’re doing.”
Pay attention . . . Ian . . . Ian! . . . IAN!
“Will you live?” his father asked, towering over him, his face . . . his face was changing . . . changing . . .
Ian stared up at him blankly.
IAN!
“Will you live?” his father . . . no, it was someone else. Someone else was bending over him, staring straight into his face.
Will you live?
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know . . .” he whispered painfully. “I don’t . . . RED . . . I don’t think so.”
chapter 17
“Why did you stop?”
“I’m tired.”
“Start again. He is getting close.”
“All the more reason to stop now.”
“No.”
“I want to be rested when he breaks.”
“Start again!”
Retreating footsteps echoed in the darkness.
“Start again!”
A door slammed closed.
“Shit.”
chapter 18
Josephine lunged for the falling body. Her fingers brushed against his shirt, his trousers and at the last moment, she snagged his boot. A jolt of pain shot up her arm, into her shoulder and across her back. Her feet jerked off the catwalk. Her thighs slammed into the upper bar and she was bent in half with her hips balancing on the top railing. Blood rushed to her head. Directly below her, a workman in a bloody apron was combining the upper parts of a man with the lower parts of a horse. Josephine had read stories about such mythical creatures. According to legends, similar nomadic beasts had roamed the ancient wild lands across the sea thousands of years ago. But they were just characters in stories. No one believed they had existed. And yet these . . . workmen, these . . . demented healers . . . were using their . . . earthen magic . . . to fuse these parts together in ways nature had never intended.
She reached back with her free hand and blindly found the top rail. Perhaps if she could just . . . every muscle in her body strained but she couldn’t pull herself and the dead man up. She didn’t have the right leverage.
“Edgar . . .” she dared to call his name even as she watched the man below continue his gruesome work. Next to him, another worker, this one dressed in blue robes, lowered a completed man-animal hybrid into a large wooden crate, fitted the lid and spread his hands out, palms down across the top. With a few muttered words, a thin layer of ice formed around the crate. She’d seen food packaged this way before, magically frozen before a long sea voyage. Was a similar voyage in store for these . . . unnatural hybrids?
“Edgar . . . please . . .” she tried again, just a little louder. The dead man shifted, and she felt his leg slide just a little inside his boot.
Still nothing.
Below her, the iced crate and dozens more like it was hauled out of the room through a door in the opposite wall. Josephine couldn’t be sure, but since they were somewhere in Motre-liare’, she assumed the crates would find their way onto a ship. Perhaps Lipscombe’s ship? He was setting sail tomorrow. But where was he going?
“Edgar . . .” Her arm and shoulder and back ached. Her face was red from the strain. She ground her teeth. The dead man’s leg slid a little further in the boot. A bit more and she’d lose him. “Edgar . . . please . . . Help me . . .”
Was he so mad at her that he’d let her fall? She held her breath and tried to pull herself up again. The muscles in her arms quivered. She squirmed, trying to find some purchase with her legs . . .
Something in the railing beneath her hips gave, not much, but it was enough for her to notice. She tore her eyes off the workmen below and searched for what was causing the movement. It took her only a moment to find the problem. The section of railing she was leaning over was part of a gate. The latch was a few feet away and the bolt holding the gate closed was starting to bend. Instead of hooking and tossing the bodies over the railing like she had done, the collectors would have simply unlatched the gate making their work that much easier . . .
The gate shifted again. She glared at the bolt. The thin piece of metal was bending little by little. Soon, it would give way entirely and the gate would swing open pulling her off the catwalk.
“Edgar . . .” she tried once more. “I’m sorry I lied . . . please . . .”
The bolt broke. The gate wrenched loose. Josephine screamed. Somewhere a large bell clanged. She started to swing off the catwalk. A hinge on the gate snapped and she lurched sideways too. Her hand tore free of the railing. She was falling . . .
And something caught her belt and for a long agonizing moment she dangled suspended in place. She was still bent over the broken gate, but she wasn’t falling anymore.
“Let the body go . . .” Edgar said between clenched teeth. “I can’t hold you both . . .”
The bell clanged again, a dark ominous tone, and one by one the workers below stopped what they were doing, cocked their heads to one side and listened. The man directly beneath her happened to look up. His eyes bulged when he saw her dangling above him.
“Hey . . .!” His lips continued to move but the clanging bell drowned out the rest of his words.
Josephine dropped the dead collector. The worker raised his arms, but he didn’t so much catch the corpse as become crushed beneath it. The man in blue robes glanced up, his blue eyes shining, his severe face pinched tight with concentration. Josephine had seen that look before. Her father always made that face when he was working out a difficult incantation.
Edgar hauled her off the broken gate and pushed her back toward the wagon. He said something to her, but between the clanging bell and the sound of her heart still beating in her ears she couldn’t make out what it was. He said something more and then waved a hand toward the bench.
“LET’S GO!” she read his lips.
He ducked under the tarp in back while she climbed up onto the bench. She released the brake and gave the reins a sharp snap. The pair of horses trotted forward following the catwalk to the far end of the
building. As she had suspected, there were double doors at this end too, and as luck would have it, they were open, however as she drove near them, a fist of water surged up from the lower level and slammed into the catwalk. The metal platform groaned and shook, and the disturbance spooked the horses. They bolted. The wagon careened out of the building and into the yard beyond. Rain pelted her face. Someone shouted something about closing a gate. An arrow whizzed past her head. Another sunk into the wooden bench beside her. The rain suddenly turned into sleet and then hail. She recognized the work of the water mage.
The buzzing in her head began softly but quickly grew louder until it blocked out the steady clanging of the distant bells. Larger and larger pieces of hail struck her. One piece glanced off her bruised cheek and she winced. Enough was enough!
In one fluid motion, she leapt to her feet, drew her crossbow and spun around. The water mage stood framed in the double doors behind her. His arms were raised toward the dark, rain-filled heavens. His eyes shone a bright, bright blue.
She pulled the trigger. The bolt sped toward its target, piercing hailstones and raindrops only to plunge harmlessly into the ground a few feet in front of the mage, its thin shaft coated in ice.
She’d missed!
The buzzing grew to a teeth-chattering whine. Eerie staccato music, fast and frenetic and oddly familiar joined the hum. She raised the sighting bead and pulled the trigger again. This time, the bolt’s metal head and shaft shone a brilliant orange as it traced a fiery arch through the hail-filled sky and thudded ice-free between the water mage’s startled blue eyes.
Josephine dropped back onto her seat. The driving hail returned to a steady drizzle. The mage might be down, but they weren’t in the clear yet. Dark shadows paced the wagon on either side. Every so often, she’d catch a glimpse of what looked like young boys chasing after them, but their angry faces were so dirty and covered with grime it was hard to tell. Other times, she swore it was savage, slobbering dogs. Up ahead, a man scrambled to close a double-door gate. Josephine waved him away. She had no plans to stop. He swung one side closed and ran to get the other. The galloping horses hit him first, trampling him beneath their churning hooves, and then the left side of the wagon struck the closed wooden door and tore it off its hinges. An arrow thudded into the bench next to her thigh. Someone was on the roof across the street.
She drove the galloping horses out of the yard and onto the street and headed north. In the rain, all the gray dismal streets of Motre-liare’ looked the same, but she assumed as long as she kept the bay on her right-hand side, she couldn’t be too far wrong. Another arrow whipped past her head and a second hammered into the wagon down by her feet. She raised her crossbow and searched the roofs for a target. A head popped up and she squeezed the trigger. The archer dove to one side. Another appeared on her right and she swung around and pulled the trigger in one swift motion. A third archer emerged from an alley directly ahead of her, but she chased him back with a steady stream of bolts, the last of which caught him in the shoulder and knocked him down.
After that, no more archers appeared and eventually, Josephine slowed the galloping horses. She had no idea where to go, and it was too dark to tell if anyone was still following them, but she decided to head in the direction of the ominous carillon bells. Eventually, their clanging noise would lead her out of Motre-liare’.
Half an hour later, she drove onto a road which eventually would lead them past the Rose Theater. The bells were still tolling. Something bad must have happened or was about to happen to the city. There was no other explanation for their sour ringing at this odd time of night. She drove past a brothel, its gaudy green door propped open by a broad woman with a hint of a mustache.
“You know wha’ th’bells about?” the woman hollered. “It’s puttin’ m’clients inna bad way.”
Josephine shook her head.
“You lookin’ for work? Come back ‘ere when yer face ain’t all beat t’shit. I’ll gitcha work.”
Josephine drove on.
“O, you think you too good for hole work?” the woman shouted after her. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hole, bitch, you ‘member tha when he beats you ‘gain. ‘Member tha when he kicks yer teeth in.”
Lipscombe’s face loomed in front of her mind’s eye. Her tongue probed the spot where he’d knocked out one of her back teeth. He’d said something similar while he’d been raping her, a grunting mantra of sorts whispered in her ear, ‘you ain’t nothin’ but a hole, bitch, nothing but a hole’.
Josephine brushed the memory aside, but it didn’t go entirely away. She wondered if it ever would. Her hands shook. Rain had soaked through her shirt and her long hair was plastered to her scalp. She had a warm cloak bundled up inside her pack.
She pulled off the main road and brought the horses to a stop. One stamped its hooves while the other pissed. The smell of urine brought back another foul memory of Lipscombe . . .
Josephine shook her head and slammed her fist against the wooden bench. Damn that man!
She jumped down. The dour bells were still clanging, and it was starting to give her a headache. She knew they ought to head to the Tower Square immediately, to learn the bad news, but first, she wanted to set the record straight with Edgar. Already too much regret was bouncing around in her head, she didn’t want any more. Besides, he deserved to know the truth about Owen, especially if she hoped to involve him further with her plans.
That is, if he forgave her for what she had done already and was still willing to help.
She pulled back the tarp and stared. Edgar was gone. So was Owen’s body.
Josephine spun around to see if perhaps they’d fallen out somewhere along the road behind her and found herself face-to-face with a royal warden. He was tall and young and obviously quick and quiet and any other time she might have found him handsome and dashing in his fine uniform, but his sword was drawn, and he’d leveled it at her chest. Apparently, not all the dark shadows had stopped following her at the gate.
“Josephine Hewes . . .” The warden gave her a smarmy smile which made her skin crawl. “You’ve just begun to make my night.”
chapter 19
Kylpin hurried toward the docks, his mind filled with worry for Evie’s safety. He wasn’t sure where to start looking for her exactly, but since she was Lipscombe’s prisoner, he had a few ideas where to begin his search. Although it had been several years since he’d last seen him, every time the wily old sailor was in Belyne he had stayed in a roach-infested, broken-down brothel near the south end of the docks called, The Toothless Whore.
The proprietress, and the inn’s namesake, had been Lipscombe’s primary . . . Kylpin wasn’t sure what to call her exactly. Sex slave would have been too kind. During their two-month voyages north to Scylthia, Lipscombe often passed the time by regaling the crew with tales of his sexual exploits. Some of his more basic stories would entertain the crew well enough, but the ones involving the Toothless Whore were stomach-churning to say the least. The things he did to her before, during and after . . . Kylpin shuddered at the thought of Evie falling victim to even one-tenth of the old sailor’s depraved acts.
Jogging off the main road, Kylpin ducked down a narrow street that angled toward the southeast dock ward. The storm was passing slowly out to sea and the steady rain was finally beginning to lessen. He stopped beneath a flapping awning to empty the water out of his hat and to wipe the moisture from his face and beard. Quite a few people were out on the streets still, braving the weather, though most of them were headed in the opposite direction toward the bell tower. Kylpin prayed his initial premonition about Ian was wrong, but his gut told him he was not. A dark cloud had hung over him and his friends for many months now and it seemed bad things just kept happening to them all . . .
Kylpin sighed. A sliver of guilt pierced his consciousness. He should have gone with Lumist. He should not have forsaken his friend . . . and yet . . .
Evie was in certain danger. Ian was . . . he didn’t kno
w yet. Given the circumstances, Ian would understand his choice. Besides, with Lipscombe working for Lord Ragget, it would benefit everyone, Ian included, if the oily, one-eyed bastard was found and dealt with properly.
Permanently.
The muscle in Kylpin’s jaw clenched. There would be no dunking Lipscombe in the sea and hoping the sharks feasted on his tough hide this time. That had obviously been a mistake and not one he intended on making again. He should have just killed the man when he’d had the chance the last time.
Regrets. They just kept piling up.
Kylpin plopped his hat back on his head. Killing Lipscombe by himself would not be an easy task though. Last time, it had taken nearly every hand on deck to corner the bastard and as it was, four of his men had paid for his capture with their lives. Despite his twitchy eye, Lipscombe was a master with the sword and he seemed capable of surviving even the nastiest of injuries. The memory of Lipscombe beating on the shark’s head as the creature dragged him below the surface of the water replayed in his mind.
How had he survived that?
Kylpin stepped back into the street and hurried on. The familiar tang of the salty air filled his nose as he drew near the dock, and his pace slowed. Painful memories of his lost mates returned, and he pushed them aside, only to find them replaced with images of his beautiful ship. Serenity had been a fine vessel. Strong and sleek. There was nothing better in the world than standing on her quarterdeck while she ran before the wind chasing after the distant horizon . . .
Kylpin lingered over that cherished memory but eventually he put that aside too. There would be time to reminisce later. Now, he needed to concentrate on finding Evie.
The pitch black of the night closed in around him as he entered a street where most of the lamps remained unlit. He moved forward cautiously, his dark eyes searching the shadows for movement.
The clanging of the bells ended and Kylpin found the returning silence almost as loud as the noise. The block was deserted and the old buildings on either side sagged out over the road. In some places, the peaked rooftops nearly touched. Accustom to the open expanse of the sea, Kylpin found the closeness of these buildings unpleasant.
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