by Eric Ugland
“So there’s a mine in the jail.”
“Not that I know of. But I make a point of not knowing anything about that horrid place.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “How do we get into the prison?”
“That has been arranged. Your bag please.”
I took the unfillable knapsack, my most valuable possession, technically all my possessions, and I set it on the table.
“You must actually let go of it, you know?” Philomon said.
This was a stupid idea. But I did it.
His hand dangled above it, and I saw bright runes float down out of his ring, settling onto the bag.
“Oooh, very nice, indeed,” Philomon said with just enough of a wink to make me feel terrible about everything that had so far transpired. “If you will kindly go upstairs and wait outside, someone will be along shortly.”
“And the bag?”
“It will be with you again—”
I felt someone grab my shoulder. Giles pulled me to my feet, and then gave a pretty solid attempt at making me move. Thing was, I wasn’t interested in being handled, so I stood my ground. Giles frowned, making the sort of face I’d seen plenty of times where the dude who’d built his life being the strongest and the biggest met someone who was stronger. It was a confusion, mixed with anger. Giles tried harder, and I just smiled at him, not moving.
“Hey—” he started, and I could see him moving quickly towards violence.
I put my hand in my pocket, and I pulled out the favor coin. I flipped it onto the table.
“Let’s just put this back into play,” I said. “As a favor, make sure all my stuff gets back to me. And tell your mook to keep his paws to himself.”
Philomon’s smile slowly crept up. “Dear boy, I am hurt. We have entered into an agreement, a quest. We are connected. Do you really think I might do something so base as to steal from you the thing you require to complete the quest?”
He flipped the coin back up at me, and I caught it from the air.
“Though some of us may traffic in the darkness, there is yet honor amongst us. I will give you a piece of advice,” Philomon said, pulling a small book from his pocket and setting it on the table. “When you have an object of this value, this rarity, you must learn to hide it better. Especially amongst unscrupulous types.”
I picked up the book.
Goodness, you have found the spell-book: Conceal Truth
Without hesitation I slipped the book open and gave it a look. The pages whipped back and forth, a light seemed to shoot into my eyes, and then that delicious and horrible pain took over as my brain was rewired to make room for a spell.
Look at that, you’ve learned the spell: Conceal Truth (lvl 1)
Conceal Truth allows you to alter what others are able to read about you and your objects. At higher levels, you can conceal more. At level one, you are able to conceal certain details of your possessions.
“You are a daring man,” Philomon said. “Taking in magic like that while in public. I daresay I look forward to seeing what you do in the future. Now begone.”
Chapter Eight
My hirð and I left with little fanfare, walking up the stairs, through the fake bar, and out into the streets. A cold wind blew off the Emerald Sea, west to east. The intoxicating scent of pine and wilderness was overwhelming. The sounds of the city were muted, and I had an intense feeling of being isolated despite the urban setting.
The otters perked up and immediately started scanning the area. They’d heard something.
I picked it up a second later. The jingle-jangle of armor. Of armors. Boots tromping on the stone roads.
Across the square, a group of guards came marching in quickstep. They were fully armed and armored, all bearing the sigils of the city. The city guard.
“That was quick,” I said.
“Too quick,” came Skeld’s reply. I could see him tighten his grip on his spear.
“No,” I snapped. “Arms down. We’re not here to fight.”
“We are here to be arrested,” Ragnar said, dropping his spear and leaning up against the wall.
The three of us watched the guards come across the square until they were about fifteen or so feet away, at which point they stopped, and leveled their pikes at our faces.
“Montana Coggeshall?” the leader asked, loud and proud.
“Yeah,” I replied. “But wouldn’t it be embarrassing if I wasn’t?”
She was a little confused by my response. “You are Montana Coggeshall?”
“He is Lord Montana Coggeshall, Duke of Coggeshall,” Ragnar shot back, coming to standing and bearing his teeth at the guards.
“Apologies for forgoing your whole title, my lord,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm, “but I have the warrant for your arrest, and you will come with me.”
I lifted my hands and showed my palms. “No need for weapons. We will come peacefully.”
The city soldiers looked to their leader, who looked at me. I think she saw I had nothing on my person. No blade at my side. No bag on my back. Just a few small pouches tied to my belt. Finally, she nodded, and the pikes slowly went up.
Again I offered up my wrists, ready to receive some manacles. The leader nodded to one of her underlings, and there were soon chains on me. The guy who snapped the manacles around my arms stepped back quickly, as if he was afraid I might attack him. I didn’t. I mean, obviously.
The Lutra were allowed to remain free, and walked beside me. We were marched through the city, north until we hit the main road, then going east a goodly distance before turning back south, back towards the poor side of town. No one was awake — at least, that’s what it seemed like to me. Outside of a few main streets, there weren’t even many street lights going. Just a whole lot of dark corners. Every once in a while we’d pass a tavern, and if anyone was outside, they’d make a quick jump back inside and away from the guards. The mountains loomed ahead, tall, imposing, a slash of absolute darkness in the otherwise star-filled sky.
The road dead-ended directly into a large wooden door plonked in a massive, unpleasant building. There were no windows I could see. Just sheer stone, somewhere north of a hundred feet tall. It was the ultimate example of brutalist architecture. As that thought popped into my head, I stopped walking. Where the fuck had I learned about brutalist architecture?
The guards came to a stop directly in front of the door, and the leader slammed her fist against it. Three pounds.
A small door within the larger door opened up, light spilling out and silhouetting a figure. Someone who wasn’t big.
“Dropping off or picking up?” the figure asked the guards.
“Dropping off,” the leader replied.
“Just a minute,” the gate figure said, then shut the door.
We all stood in silence together. It started to feel awkward.
“Do this thing a lot?” I asked to the man next to me.
He seemed shocked I had spoken to him. He just turned away, pretending he hadn’t heard me.
“You could at least be civil,” I said.
“They have orders not to speak to you,” the leader said. “The Empire wants to know what you know. If you were to tell one of these men or women anything, then they would garner Empire interest. Perhaps enough even to make the Empire come and collect them in the middle of the night to disappear into this hellhole for the rest of their lives. So, please do not speak to them.”
I was super-tempted to start blabbing about all sorts of things that sounded like important secrets, but then I realized that these cats were just doing their job. And, for the most part, they’d been total professionals about it.
So, back to awkward silence.
A moment later, the door opened again, and a tall, thin man in long grey robes came out. His hair reached nearly down to his elbows. As he moved forward, all the city guards backed off. He walked right up to me. His breath fetid, his teeth a horror show, and his nails so long and black they’d easily pass as talons. He grabbed my arm,
and I felt an intense fire spread over me.
My indicium stretched out across me, and the man’s eyes seemed to light up, even though my skin was covered.
“Nobility,” the man said, almost breathless with excitement. “Oh how I look forward to having you in my possession. What I can do to you, I am so very excited. It is like a holiday for me. You can go now, officers. Thank you.”
The lead guard nodded, and the city guard marched away into the night.
“Are these your pets?” the man said, looking from Ragnar to Skeld. “How cute. Perhaps I will let you keep them for the night. Skin them tomorrow at your first indiscretion. I find many are more willing to chat honestly when their pets are threatened, even over their own lives.”
I gritted my teeth, really wanting to see if I had the strength to tear through the manacles. Then maybe see if I could rip this asshole’s teeth out of his head and beat him to death with his jawbones.
“Oooh,” the man said, pulling on the chain and leading me in, “you are tempted to hurt me, I think. Keep that anger inside. There is much yet to come.”
Despite the other ideas bouncing around in my skull, I knew the best course of action was compliance while waiting for my opportunity to make a run for it. So instead of violently tearing the man’s eyeballs from his sockets and making a bolo tie out of them, I merely kept alert and watched everything, looking for any weakness I might exploit.
The other side of the door was a well-lit courtyard, larger than I expected. A few wagons, a horse stable, a smithy set-up in the corner with men and women still working the forge despite the late hour, sparks flying into the night sky like tiny meteors. There was a single door at ground level on the far side from where I’d entered, and windows farther up. Some lights were on, but most of the rooms were dark. A small walkway rimmed the courtyard, about twenty feet above ground level, where archers stood watching me. Arrows nocked.
The robed man led me away from the door, which confused me until I realized the dark spot we were headed to wasn’t just a shadow. It was door. A flat door, like that for a tornado shelter or a root cellar. As we got closer, it started to lift up. Light flared out, and I saw a set of stairs.
We went underground. I had no way of knowing how long it would be before I saw the sky again.
Chapter Nine
At the base of the stairs, an armored man sat behind a desk. He looked up, saw the grey robe, and made a quick note in a large book.
“Cell 212, S,” the guard said.
“No,” Grey Robe countered. “I want something, more... unpleasant.”
The guard sighed, and flipped through his book. “Cell 642?”
Grey Robe thought a moment, then nodded.
The guard made another mark in the book.
“Proceed,” the guard said.
Another armed and armored man looked me and the Lutra over, then opened a door and stood to the side.
Grey Robe pulled me in.
“They will not speak to you,” Grey Robe said. “No one will. They all know of the new duke. The one who wears a beard. The one who had taken land not meant for him. I am the only one who will speak to you. Unless your pets talk. Do they talk?”
“Mutes,” I said.
“How unfortunate.”
Grey Robe grabbed the chain connecting my manacles and pulled me along.
I quickly lost my sense of direction in the maze of hallways. All the walls, floors, and ceilings were made of dark stone. All the doors looked identical. Large, uniform candles were placed at regular intervals. Suddenly, Grey Robe reached out and opened a random door, revealing a staircase. We marched down. More hallways, more dark stone. Everything perfectly designed to make it impossible to remember where you were. To incite confusion and consternation. It was working. For the most part.
There was, however, one thing they didn’t seem to really count on, and that was the ability to read. I had little to do as we walked, considering that someone was leading me along, basically determining my every step for me. So I spent that time scrutinizing everything I could. And right above the doors, I started to notice small numbers carved right where the ceiling joined the wall. Super easy to miss. But once you see it, like Tom Cruise’s smile being out of place by a single tooth, you couldn’t ever overlook it again.
Finally, Grey Robe opened another door, this one to a cell. It wasn’t small — I’ve certainly spent nights in worse ones — but it was impressively oppressive. Twenty feet tall, thick chunky stone, a small hole in one corner, some old straw in the opposite. There were several spots on the walls where someone could be chained, as well as extra chains hanging down from the ceiling. He shoved me in, leaving the manacles in place, and ushered the two Lutra in after me.
“I will come for you when I decide morning is,” Grey Robe said. “Sleep well one last time. And know that if you choose to give me what it is I need, then I will be merciful.”
“You want to just ask now? Maybe it’s something I don’t even want.”
“Oh, I doubt that very much.”
The door slammed shut. I heard the unmistakable clinks of a very heavy lock snapping into place.
A small hatch slid open, and some eyeballs peered in at me. Grey Robe again.
“Hey man,” I said, “why don’t you just ask?”
“A man,” Grey Robe said, “even one as you, will not likely divest himself of his inheritance if he is just asked.”
“My inheritance? Who wants the land, huh?”
He smized, then slammed the hatch closed as well.
The room was dark. Very dark. Just a thin strip of light squeaked under the door.
“You guys got dark vision, right?” I asked.
“We do,” Skeld said.
I flipped that mental switch, and the room came to light.
“All right,” I said, “we need to take inventory here.” I patted my pockets and checked my pouches. “I’ve got a bit of gold and a bit of silver.”
“I got a dagger,” Ragnar said.
“As do I,” Skeld added. “And some coins.”
“I have some hard tack,” Ragnar said.
“Two biscuits,” Skeld said.
“Well, I have a fishing line and hook.”
“I have bait.”
The two Lutra were getting closer, face to face, staring each other down as they pulled various bits and bobs from their persons.
“Not a competition here, gents,” I said. “We gotta work together. And pretty sure we’ve got basically nothing useful here. Look around the room, see what past occupants have left us."
"Are you expecting to find the bag?" Ragnar asked.
I shook my head. “I’m optimistic we’ll get the bag back. Philomon didn’t exactly seem trustworthy, but he did believe in honor and paying debts. Biggest problem: I don't think this was his plan. I think Valamir found out about us quickly—”
"Or you."
“Sure, or me, and he wanted to question me."
"I don’t think," Ragnar said, "Valamir is the one behind this."
I blinked. Ragnar had just used a contraction. I wondered if my style of speech would spread further. And if that would be a good or bad thing.
"And why is that?" Skeld said.
"Because the grey-robed man said something about you taking land that was not yours. Makes me think, and this is just postulating,” Ragnar started to pace back and forth, "makes sense someone wanted the Coggeshall Dukedom for themselves, but you got it first."
"Northwoods," I said.
Ragnar just shrugged in reply. "I would not say he is without suspicion."
I felt anger course through me. The cold kind of rage that was always behind my stupidest mistakes. I wanted to find Northwoods and rip his fucking head off. My hands were clenched so tight I could feel my nails digging into my palms. I wanted to break something. I looked at the door, and I even managed to take a step towards it before realizing I had to play this smart. There were more people who were depending on me he
re. Pointedly, Nikolai. If I just broke the door down, I'd be forced to fight my way through the prison. That would definitely mean killing a lot of people, people who were just cogs in the machine doing their jobs. And that was no way for me to build a relationship with my closest neighbor city. I had to be sneaky and smart, my two worst skills. Realizing that only made the desire to break things even stronger.
The manacles seemed like a reasonable place to start. I wrapped the joining chain around my wrists, over the actual manacles, and started pulling. Harder. And harder. The weak link in the chain started to unbend, until it failed rather spectacularly, shooting out and ricocheting off the wall. With my arms free, I stretched out, and got the blood flowing again. Despite breaking the manacles, I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to break more.
I jumped up, grabbed the chains, and started climbing.
"Is this a thing we should be asking about?" Skeld asked.
"No," I snapped back.
The climbing itself felt amazing. There's something almost magical about climbing with just your arms. I'd always been too heavy to do more than one pull up, and I'd never climbed the rope in gym class. But here, in my new body, climbing was easy. Effortless. Almost fun. I got to the ceiling and did a little peeking around. The dark stone bricks were flat and regular. Whomever had done the construction on this place was remarkably skilled. Still gripping the chain, I flipped upside down.
"Uh, boss?" Ragnar asked, looking up at me.
"Move," I shot back.
I got my feet planted and pushed, getting my arms out straight so I could pull the chains out of the ceiling. At first, nothing happened. I just strained. But just as I was about to give up, there was a very slight pop, and that was that. Those damn chains were coming out of the ceiling.
I reset, getting a little more bend in the knees. Then I gave it everything I had. Groaning, straining, feeling that glorious burn in my legs, my arms, and across my whole body, blood rushing into my head.
A sharp crack rang out as the stone block split in two, releasing the heavy metal eyebolt. Then the chain, the ceiling, and I went crashing to the ground.