by Claire Luana
Ansel strode into the room and hoisted the man to his feet. “Come on, man. We can do introductions after we get ya outta here.”
“How’s the city?” Liam asked, letting Ansel half-walk, half-carry him into the hallway. “I’ve feared...what they’ve been doing.”
“It’s not great,” Pike said. “You’ve pretty much brainwashed the entire populous.”
“Oh,” the man said, his voice quiet, his jaw going slack.
“But that ends now,” Wren said.
They hurried around the corner and pulled up short. Wren let out a squeak of fear and disbelief.
They were face to face with a pack of Aprican soldiers—their spears leveled.
Behind them stood a smug-faced Willings. “Oh, Miss Confectioner, if only that were true. But alas. You aren’t going anywhere.”
Dash stood up straight and saluted. “Lieutenant Dashiell Cardas, reporting in. Please inform Captain Ambrose I’ve brought him two fugitives and a person of interest.”
Chapter 38
“Traitor!” Ansel shouted, leaping into action before Wren’s mind had time to even register the threat. Dash had betrayed them. Flame it all to hell, she’d known...she’d told Olivia... Her thoughts spun from her as the flash of swords pulled her back into the moment.
Ansel’s blade swung directly at Willings’s ginger head.
Willings dove out of the way, his eyes going wide with fear. Wren didn’t blame him. Ansel was a sight to behold.
Willings’s men did a bit better than Willings. The front man, short but stocky, in the Aprican uniform of sky blue, had his sword out in a blink, parrying Ansel’s wicked strike.
And then, chaos reigned.
Pike threw himself into the fight, hitting at Willings’s men with the force of a whirlwind.
Willings scrambled to his feet, coming for Wren and Liam, who had backed against the far wall.
Dash seemed to be holding himself back out of the fray; perhaps some small decent part of him couldn’t bring himself to come to blows with those he’d supped with just hours before.
Wren kept her arm under Liam’s armpit, holding him erect. The man was weak with exhaustion and hunger—he was in no shape to fight. He was in hardly any shape to run. It would be up to Wren.
She pulled a dagger from her belt, letting its solid shape strengthen her resolve. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but neither, it appeared, was Willings. “I should have known I’d find a bottom feeder like you here,” Wren practically spat. “Always riding on better men’s coattails. You’re like a parasite.”
“Better a parasite than a little bird. So easily crushed. Give him over to me,” Willings said, a short sword in his hand. He circled her warily, not seeming to want to test his skills against her own.
“You can’t have him,” Wren said, baring her teeth. Best be bold, oversell her skills here. “You’ve exploited this man long enough.”
“Another dozen men are on their way to our position right now,” Willings said. “You’ll never get out in time. There’s nowhere to go but the gallows for you, confectioner.”
”Funny,” Wren said. “I could say the same about you.” She lunged at him with her knife, and as she predicted, Willings scrambled back, rather than blocking with his own sword.
She grabbed Liam with her other hand and yanked him forward, past Willings, towards the storeroom they had come out of. Ansel and Pike had downed several Aprican men, but if Willings had been telling the truth that there were reinforcements coming, they had only moments to make their escape.
Out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw Ansel turn his wrath towards Dash, and the man held up his hands, backing up.
“Ansel!” Wren called. “Leave him.”
Liam’s breathing was ragged as she pulled him along behind her, scooting around a corner, only to be confronted by another band of soldiers hurdling down the hallway towards them.
“We’ll never get out,” Liam moaned.
“We’re not far.” Wren puffed, pulling him down the hallway and wrenching open the door to the storeroom they had come out of. Ansel and Pike ran down the hallway, naked blades in hand, and skidded to a halt behind.
“What are you doing?” Liam asked, his eyes wide. “We’ll be trapped in here!”
“No, we’re not,” Wren said as Pike wedged a chair up against the door handle to stop the soldiers who were already crashing against the door.
Ansel pulled open the trapdoor and motioned to Liam. “Inside!” he hissed.
The man scrambled forward with wide eyes, dropping into the tunnel below. Wren quickly followed, then Ansel and Pike brought up the rear.
“What is this place?” Liam asked.
“The sewer,” she said. “If we can get through to another exit, we’re home free.”
“I can’t swim,” Liam said, misery etched across his face.
“We won’t have to swim,” Wren said. “Come on.”
“Quit your complainin,’ man,” Ansel snapped, close on their heels. “We’re tryin’ to save your life. Sorry we couldn’t drive up front with a comfy carriage for ya.”
Wren couldn’t help but agree as she grabbed the torch they had left burning at the base of the trapdoor and they ran forward through the dark tunnels. An explosion sounded behind them, and they all flinched inadvertently.
“They’re in,” Pike said. “But they don’t know which way we’ve gone.”
“They can tell from our light,” Liam said. “It’ll lead them right to us.”
The pounding of boots behind them was growing louder.
“He’s right,” Ansel said. “Come here.” He shoved both Liam and Wren into a little alcove and tossed the torch into the water, snuffing it, plunging them into darkness. “We’ll be right around the corner,” he whispered.
Wren and Liam scrunched down into the alcove, pressing themselves against the slimy wall.
The bootsteps had slowed. It seemed their pursuers were making a more leisurely investigation of the tunnels. “Come out, come out wherever you are...” Willings’s nasal voice called in the dark. Wren shivered and Liam clutched her hand. His own was shaking like a leaf in a gale.
“I won’t go back,” he whispered.
“You won’t have to,” Wren said. She wanted to pull the chocolates from her pocket but feared that the crinkling of the paper would give them away. “Trust me.”
A light was blooming at the end of the tunnel. They were getting closer. What had they been thinking, trying to hide here? If the Apricans happened to come this way, they would see them—they’d be totally exposed.
The light grew closer, and Wren’s breath hitched in her throat. Even knowing Ansel and Pike were nearby, she worried it wasn’t enough. It was two men against how many? If it was too many, they’d be slaughtered.
Wren felt like she was going to explode. Liam’s hand was clutched in hers, his breathing coming in short little bursts of air.
The light was just feet from them, and Wren could see Willings’s face now, his pockmarked skin cast in garish shadow.
Wren squeezed her eyes closed, wishing that it could make her invisible.
And then a roar sounded from down the tunnel, and two men hurdled through the blackness, crashing into the group of soldiers behind Willings. Ansel and Pike were like berserkers in the night, tossing men bodily into the channels of dirty water, slicing others clean through with bloodied swords.
“Come on!” Wren cried and grabbed Liam’s hand, darting past Willings towards another tunnel that she prayed led towards Violena’s. In the mad dash of their flight, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure where they were in the maze of the sewer.
Wren could have wept in relief as she saw two men tearing after them and recognized the brawny forms of Ansel and Pike.
“Did you get him?” Wren asked breathlessly.
“Redhaired bastard? Scuttled off,” Ansel said. “More men’re coming; we’ve gotta go.”
“More?” Wren said with dismay, skiddin
g to a stop in front of a wide channel of sluggish water. She pulled the crumpled map from her pocket, looking at it, willing it to reveal its mysteries to her.
“Now’s not a great time to be lost...” Pike said, looking back. Shouts were ricocheting off the tunnel behind them, growing nearer.
Liam had his eyes closed, moaning softly.
“There.” Wren pointed across the wide stretch of water. “We’re a few tunnels down, but if we cross this, we should be just one or two turns from the entrance to Violena’s.”
“Across?” Ansel said with dismay. “Ya know what’s in this water, right?”
“It’s this or the sword,” Wren said, and with a cry of disgust, she leaped into the center of the river.
She gagged as she came up for air, stroking quickly towards the other side. It wasn’t far, and as long as you didn’t think about what might have been floating in the water with you...it wasn’t so bad. Splashes and curses sounded behind her, and she knew that the others had joined. She reached the other side and with all of her strength, hauled her wet self up onto the slimy stones. She gasped and turned to see Ansel and Pike crossing the channel. Liam was standing on the other side, his eyes wide with terror.
Oh, gods. He had said he couldn’t swim.
“Come on, Liam!” she cried. “Go back. Help him. He can’t swim.”
Pike swore and turned, swimming back across the channel with sure strokes. He pulled himself out of the water with a heave. “Come on, man,” Pike said, shaking like a wet dog. “I’ll help you across.”
It was then that another half-dozen Aprican soldiers manifested from the blackness behind Liam.
“Pike! Liam!” she screamed. “Jump!”
But Liam appeared frozen to the spot. A soldier seized him, three others leveling swords at Pike. He lifted his hands slowly. “Easy, mates.”
Liam struggled against the soldiers, his eyes meeting Wren’s. She recognized what she saw there because she had felt it at times too—in some of the darkest moments of her life. Despair.
“Liam, no!” Wren cried, and the moment seemed to slow as he reached for one of the soldiers’ belts and seized a knife. But instead of stabbing the soldier or fighting his way free, he turned the knife towards his own stomach and plunged it in to the hilt.
Hale was stunned. The baker was free. Or possibly dead. But wherever he was, he wasn’t in that oppressive kitchen, baking his fingers to the bone anymore. Someone had freed him. But who?
It had to be the Falconer. It had been a risk—passing every piece of information to the man. Making his way to Gemma Park, to the carousel. It was risky even leaving the palace anymore, strange and unsettling to move among the people of Maradis, to hear the same whispered words, the same flat professions of admiration and love for the emperor. He had thought what Daemastra had done to him had been bad. What he had done to the baker. To the icebox full of Gifted he had ground up into dust. But what he had done to the people of Maradis, robbing an entire city of their free will, their very faculty to think and dissent and engage...it was something else entirely.
Yet somehow it seemed Daemastra had missed a few. While the Falconer’s attacks had diminished significantly after the infused bread had swept through the city as soundly as the Red Plague, they hadn’t stopped. And that meant that there was hope, however small and insignificant a thing it seemed.
The sounds of fighting had roused Hale from his bunk, where he’d dosed the afternoon away. They had been too quick for Hale to catch a glimpse of who it was. Except one. A man Hale had seen before... He wracked his brain to place him as the man strode past him liked he owned the place. The foreign haircut, long in the middle and shorn on the sides. The stern set of his handsome face... There it was! The memory bloomed to life in Hale’s mind. He had seen the man once before on the steps of the Confectioner’s Guild, pacing before the door. The day Hale had gone to warn Wren. Hale craned his neck at the man’s retreating form. Who was he?
Hale found himself before Liam’s little cell, the door hanging open. He’d tried to give the man what comfort he could—bringing him extra rations, a book to read. Not that Liam had much time to do anything but bake and collapse on his bunk in an exhausted haze.
Voices sounded down the hall and Hale pushed inside the room, closing the door partway so he couldn’t be seen. Boots echoed on the floors as the men drew closer. It sounded like several. Half a dozen soldiers, maybe?
Hale recognized one of the voices and his eyes narrowed. The nasal words of Willings floated to reach his ears. “—all the guard and legionnaires should be looking out for her. And the redhaired man she was with.”
“What should we do with this one?” a man asked.
“Take him to the morgue. He’s dead,” Willings said.
Hale risked inching forward, peeking out the bars of the cell door, keeping his form in the shadow. Who was dead?
His heart sank as he saw Liam’s gaunt form hauled between two soldiers, blood trailing behind. No. Hale’s heart seized in his chest. Poor man. He’d almost made it. So what had happened to the rescuers?
A gasp of shock escaped him as he saw who walked between the next two legionnaires, their swords leveled with deadly precision. “Pike?” Hale whispered, twining his fingers through the bars, craning his neck to see as they rounded the corner towards Daemastra’s workshop.
He pressed himself back against the wall, his mind racing. Guildmaster Pike was here. Captive. What did that mean? Was Pike working with the Falconer? A thought struck him and his mouth went dry. There were only two more ingredients Daemastra needed to make his formula. Luck and time. With Pike here—if the man’s magic was what Daemastra needed—the madman would be one step closer to transforming himself and his soldiers into gods. And perhaps he’d forgo luck, if he was this close.
Hale had to know what was happening. He needed to get near that room.
He passed several of the legionnaires as they hurried from Daemastra’s workshop. He didn’t blame them. There was something about that place that made a man’s skin crawl. He’d felt it even before he’d known what it was. The ground-up bones of dozens of Gifted, kept in refrigerated jars.
Hale sidled up to the wall beside the door, listening to the voices inside. Pike. Willings. Daemastra.
“I’m so pleased you could join us Guildmaster Pike.” Daemastra was purring. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
“And I hadn’t thought of you at all,” Pike countered.
A smooth chuckle from Daemastra. “I doubt that, Guildmaster. I doubt that very much. There’s so much I want to ask you. So much information you have to share that will aid the Empire. The identity of the Falconer, for instance. The location of the rest of your guild members and the missing members of the Confectioner’s Guild. Perhaps even, if I’m lucky, the location of our missing heir to the throne.”
Flame it! The man knew where Wren and Callidus and Thom were? It was worse than he thought.
“And then, an item of personal interest,” Daemastra went on. “The nature of your Gift.”
“If you think I’m going to tell you anything, you’re more deluded than you look,” Pike spat at him. “You can go straight to the Piscator’s watery hell. You and your dog here and your whole blooming empire.”
Pike’s defiance warmed Hale and a grim smile crossed his face.
“Your spirit is admirable. In fact, it’s no less than I was expecting from the notorious head of the Spicer’s Guild. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to dispense with the pleasantries. You will tell us what you know because you’ll have no choice. Willings, I believe I have a bottle of ice wine in my chambers. Would you send for a servant to fetch it?”
“Gladly,” Willings said, and Hale launched into action, sprinting down the corridor and slipping into the nearby empty kitchen. Hale watched from the dark room as Willings passed, a smile baring his crooked teeth. Ice wine.
Hale slumped against the wall, horror welling within him. Wren, Thom, C
allidus. Lucas and his two remaining siblings. The last resistance in the city. If Pike knew anything about any of it, they were all doomed. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Chapter 39
Ansel pulled Wren along through the wet Maradis night. Her body was numb, her mind more so.
The Apricans hadn’t followed them across the disgusting stretch of sewer water; they had seemed fixed on getting Liam and Pike back to the palace. Liam hadn’t been dead when Wren and Ansel had turned the corner, the slimy stones blocking her final glimpse of Liam’s pale visage and Pike, his face a mask of fury.
Wren wasn’t sure whether she was praying for Liam to die a clean death or to live. She didn’t know anything anymore. Her mind was shrouded by fog, by shock, by exhaustion. She needed...she didn’t know. She had thought that getting Lucas back would bolster her courage, her resolve to do what needed to be done. But now she’d lost him. And seeing that knife thrusting into Liam’s gut...she didn’t know if she had that in her. Would she kill herself, to avoid being used by these monsters? Or would she take the coward’s approach and live—knowing that her magic was being twisted and used for evil?
They turned the corner onto the street that housed Violena’s townhouse, and Wren recoiled.
Ansel pulled her back into the shadows between two buildings, pressing her against the hard brick. Aprican soldiers milled on the steps of the townhouse, and the door was open. A carriage stood in the street before the house, another blue-clad soldier sitting at the reins.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“I think the safehouse ain’t safe any longer,” Ansel said.
A hand fell on her shoulder and a screech escaped from her lips as she whirled into the darkness of the alley—to face the other figure there. “Shh!” the man said, clapping one hand over her mouth, resting a finger against his own lips.
Her blood thrummed through her veins as she registered who it was, relaxing slightly. Bran. She nodded and he lifted his hand.