Evren cocked an eyebrow. “I’m certain you have enough problems to handle without bringing them into the mix, yes? What with the Keeper’s Council vying to overthrow the Pharus, someone trying to poison Shalandra’s water supply, the Azure Rot, and, oh yes, the Keeper-damned mob hammering at your door!” His voice rose to an angry, growling shout. “But you so much as lay a hand on my brother, and I’ll bring every Cambionari in Shalandra down on you faster than wildfire through a corn field.”
Anger sparkled in Ennolar’s eyes and his fingers flashed in their silent language.
“The priests of the Mistress don’t take kindly to threats,” Briana translated. Once again, she shot him a warning look.
Evren bit back the retort forming on his lips. Briana seemed to know the ways of the Secret Keepers intimately—if she thought he was pushing it too far, it might be wise to back off.
“Then don’t call it a threat.” Evren lowered his daggers. “I don’t want to get the Cambionari involved any more than you do.”
Not if it meant Hailen went back to a life of confinement, surrounded by the ever-present reminder of the burden he carried. His Melechha blood made him the only person alive that could activate the Serenii mechanisms that would one day seal the rift against the Great Devourer, the ancient being of chaos that threatened to destroy all of Einan.
“So we strike a deal,” Evren said, his tone dropping to a more polite timbre. “Hailen continues his studies with Briana and, if he is willing, you can study him. You can learn everything you want about the Serenii through him.” He shot a questioning glance at the boy. “But the secrets of his blood are not yours to claim. He is not some artifact to be tucked away in your temple against his will.”
Hailen hesitated a long moment. Evren could see the war raging within the boy’s eyes—he had no desire to be poked and prodded like one of Graeme’s dissections, but he knew the stakes. They had been entrusted with a holy mission to protect the world from secrets too dangerous for the common man, and the truth of Hailen’s existence was one such secret. But the moment passed and, with a resigned expression far too world-weary for one so young, he gave a little nod.
Evren turned to the Arch-Guardian. “Do you agree?”
The moment of truth had come. Ennolar’s ire was written plainly across his pudgy face. The Secret Keeper’s hands quivered with the same rage that burned in his eyes. Evren’s insolence and defiance hadn’t won him any friends here.
Yet he gambled that the Secret Keepers wanted to know about Hailen’s Melechha blood far more than they wanted to be bothered with the Cambionari. The circumstances lent his side of the bargain added leverage. Surrounded by enemies, the city in chaos, the Mistress’ priests would be better off with fewer problems.
Finally, Ennolar gave a curt nod.
“Good.” Evren gave him a broad smile and held out a hand. “Shake on it.”
Ennolar stared down at his hand as if at a coiled serpent. Ignoring it, he turned to Briana, his fingers flashing.
“Kodyn,” Briana said without taking her eyes off the Secret Keeper’s hands, “can you bring the sack from the bed?”
The Praamian’s brow furrowed, but he complied with her request.
Ennolar took the velvet sack from his hands and rummaged through it, pulling out three small artifacts—one cone-shaped and two wrist-sized circlets, all carved from the same black stone. Those, he tucked into his robes, along with the artifact Hailen had wielded.
Evren caught a subtle movement from the corner of his eye. Aisha’s hand went to something at her chest, a small shape tucked beneath her shirt. Another artifact? If so, it was one she didn’t want the Secret Keeper to take.
Ennolar fixed them with a hard glare, his hands moving in the silent hand language.
“Too dangerous to leave in our care?” Briana asked, her eyebrows rising. “Need I remind you that without that”—she stabbed a finger at his pocket—“Hailen and I would be lying dead on the floor instead of those cultists?”
Ennolar shrugged and responded something Briana didn’t translate for him. Her scowl, however, made the meaning plain. If they took the artifacts, they must have deemed them too dangerous for even Hailen to use. The sack he handed back to her was visibly lighter and emptier.
The Arch-Guardian made a gesture Evren recognized as “Let’s go”, and the six Secret Keepers turned to leave. The two that had crouched over the dead Hallar’s Warriors now lifted the bodies to their shoulders to haul them away. The sharp-faced one pressed her hand against a dark blue stone and a section of wall slid aside, revealing a corridor.
A thought struck Evren. “Wait! What happened to our prisoner?” he called after the departing Arch-Guardian.
Ennolar didn’t bother looking back, simply raised his hands and signed something before striding out of the room. One of the Secret Keepers, a dusty-haired man with deep-set wrinkles lining his mouth and eyes, remained in the doorway.
Evren turned to Kodyn, Aisha, and Briana. “What did he say?”
“Our prisoner is still unconscious in the entrance chamber,” Aisha translated. “But he’ll be in for a nasty surprise when he wakes up and finds himself facing a handful of pissed-off Secret Keepers.”
Evren grinned. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he does!”
Kodyn nodded to the Secret Keeper. “He’ll take us to our captive so we can interrogate him.”
Evren hesitated, worry thrumming in his gut. He shot a glance at Hailen, who had bent to lift the chair that had been knocked over in their surprise. There was no mistaking the stiff, tense movements—Hailen was scared but tried to hide it.
And he’s right to be scared, Evren thought. He’s just lost the last of his freedom, all because he fought to protect Briana.
His fists clenched. “Go,” he told Kodyn and Aisha. “I’m staying here.”
The Secret Keepers might have given their word that Hailen would be safe, but Evren’s experiences with priests made him wary. He’d be damned if he let Hailen and Briana out of his sight until he was certain they were safe.
Chapter Five
Issa stalked through the Artisan’s Tier, her jaw set in fury, short swords held at the ready. Rioters swirled around her, leaving her an island of rage in the midst of the seething chaos. Any of the packs of looters that drew too close were met with a glare that promised only pain and death. All scurried away to find easier prey.
Few of the men and women rampaging through the stalls of Industry Square paid her much heed. They were too busy ransacking the merchants’ shops and loading their arms with as much as they could carry to their hovels on the Slave’s Tier or Cultivator’s Tier. One more sword-wielding Earaqi drew little attention.
Yet Issa wasn’t just one more Earaqi. She was a Keeper’s Blade, blessed by the Long Keeper himself, a servant of death. She had vowed to protect the city against all threats, internal and external. She and all of the others so sworn were failing in their duty. Violence and turmoil held Shalandra in an inexorable grip.
It took all of her self-control not to rush toward the people crying out for help, or to bark a command at the mob battering down doors and stampeding through the marketplace.
Though it went against every instinct, she had to shut her ears to the screams of agony and turn a blind eye to the death, destruction, and bloodshed that filled her city. Alone and unarmored, she would do little more than get herself killed if she tried to help. Any attempt to still the crowd would only cause them to turn on her. She couldn’t flee two hundred thousand rampaging Mahjuri, Earaqi, and Kabili. Her only hope of survival lay in blending into the crowds until she was certain of her grandparents’ location.
I just need to speak to Killian! The thought rang in the forefront of her mind. He has to know where they are!
Killian always knew everything; his Mumblers served as his eyes, ears, and feet in Shalandra. Not just the Artisan’s Tier in which he lived, but on all five tiers, even in the Palace of Golden Eternity.
When he had first approached her five years earlier with his offer to train her, he had surprised her with his knowledge of her grandparents. Over the course of their acquaintance, she’d come to learn just how extensive Killian’s network truly was.
The blacksmith had known that her grandparents abhorred the idea of her becoming an Indomitable or a Keeper’s Blade. She’d had to keep her training with him a secret for fear that Saba or Savta would find out and come storming up to the Artisan’s Tier to give the smith a piece of their minds. Yet Killian always seemed to know the things that happened in her life—his Mumblers, very likely, keeping an eye on his pupil and trainee.
That was why she went to see Killian now. Even if the recent Ybrazhe attack on Killian had forced him to curb his activity, she hoped that his Mumblers still ran the streets. Maybe one of them saw what happened to my grandparents, or where they were taken. In times of peril, the Mumblers would always go to ground in one of Killian’s many safe houses, but not without sending word to the blacksmith of anything important. Let’s just hope that was important enough to get back to him.
West of Industry Square, the crowds thinned out, but the deafening symphony of destruction hung thick in the air around her. A crowd of young, angry-eyed Earaqi wielding swords, clubs, daggers, and farm implements marched toward her. Their shouts of “Child of Secrets, Child of Gold, Child of Spirits, bring the judgement foretold!” rang off the stone walls of the Intaji houses lining the Artificer’s Courseway.
Better avoid them! Issa decided. She had no time to risk a confrontation, not so close to her destination.
Ducking down one of the side lanes between Miller’s Alley and Smith’s Alley, she raced north toward the golden sandstone cliff that marked the border between the Artisan’s Tier and the Defender’s Tier above. Killian’s forge stood a few hundred paces away from the looming wall, one of the farthest from the Artificer’s Courseway.
The fact that it was considered one of the “poorer” smithies on Smith’s Alley might be working in his favor. The riots shouldn’t have swept this far north. Most of the protestors clustered on the Artificer’s Courseway, attacking the Indomitables and rampaging through Intaji homes. She could deal with a few looters any day.
Her hope died as she rounded the corner that led toward Smith’s Alley. A crowd, easily two or three hundred strong, clustered around the front entrance to Killian’s forge. Twenty or thirty strong men roared and drove a heavy four-wheeled cart into the smithy’s door, using the solid wooden tongue as an improvised battering ram.
“Bring it down!” roared a tall, thick-necked man.
The crowd roared and shouted, anger echoing in their voices. Frustration only added to their rage as they tried again and again in vain to break through. The plain wooden door cracked beneath the assault, yet behind it, their ram clanged off a thick steel door that Issa had never seen before.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any of the defenses that now suddenly ringed the smithy.
Killian had always been cautious, installing heavy oaken doors with solid locking bars at both the front and rear entrance to his smithy. He’d reinforced his stone walls using a metal framework he and his Mumbler helpers built with their own hands. Issa had spent hours forge welding steel bars, poles, and beams together, and she knew how solid they were.
Yet to her eyes, the smithy appeared as well-defended as a fortress. Sharpened stakes rose from the tops of the wall, wrapped with razor-tipped barbed wire. Anyone that tried to clamber over would be shredded in seconds. Spikes protruded from the walls at two-foot intervals—crimson glistened where the surging crowd had impaled themselves upon the points.
“Come on, you true sons and daughters of Shalandra!” The heavily-muscled man waved his short sword toward the door. “Anyone in need of such defenses is sure to hoard riches. Let their greed be their undoing! We, the people, deserve to share in the wealth!”
The irony of his statement was lost on the crowd, but Issa recognized the truth for what it was: more of the Ybrazhe’s manipulation. The man who shouted at the crowd wore the black rope headband of a Mahjuri, but there was nothing wretched about his solid frame, sloped shoulders, and beefy arms. It was as if he wore the costume of hunger, dirt, and disease in an attempt to blend in with the ragged, emaciated people around him.
Issa sucked in a breath. He’s a Syndicate thug!
She had stood in the warehouse on the Cultivator’s Tier and listened as Blackfinger whipped the crowd into a frenzy with his impassioned pleas of “give the rule to the people” and “a return to the ways of Hallar”. But the Ybrazhe Syndicate served the Keeper’s Council—either unwittingly or, far more likely, in exchange for greater power in the city once the Necroseti overthrew the Pharus and controlled Shalandra for themselves. The riots were just one more Syndicate tool to control the people.
And now they were after Killian.
The blacksmith’s network of Mumblers lacked the muscle and wanton brutality of the Syndicate’s thugs, but the information he collected offered power commensurate with the Ybrazhe. If they’re looking to take control of Shalandra, they’d definitely want to get him out of the way.
That explained why he’d been held captive by the Syndicate a few nights earlier. They had likely wanted his black book, the one he locked away in his hidden strongbox. All the information he collected went into that book for safekeeping and future use. The secrets on those pages offered immense power, the sort no swords or coins ever could.
If the Ybrazhe got their hands on that, they could even take on the Keeper’s Council. A shudder ran down Issa’s spine at the thought of the ruthless Syndicate taking control of the city. That would never happen now that they had captured Blackfinger, but the thugs riling up the crowd might not know that their leader had been snatched up. They would still follow their orders and continue wreaking havoc in the city until they heard otherwise.
Or until someone brings them down. A part of her wanted to charge the thugs goading the crowd on, but logic held her back. An attack would be suicidal. Mobs acted like herds of cattle, following whoever had the force of will to command them. Yet these cattle had swords, clubs, and fists that would tear her apart if they saw her as an enemy.
What do I do? She hesitated, uncertain.
Killian might have the answers to her grandparents’ whereabouts, but they’d do her no good unless she could get to the blacksmith. Her only hope was to use the secret back entrance.
Yet even as Issa slipped toward the rear, she realized she’d never reach the hidden door. More than a hundred rioters stood between her and the dilapidated, empty hut near the sandstone cliff—the one that contained the trapdoor and the hidden underground passage into Killian’s smithy.
To her horror, she found another, graver threat facing Killian. While most concentrated on the front entrance, fifty or sixty rioters, driven by a pair of Ybrazhe thugs, had laid siege to the throng attacking the stone wall that surrounded the smithy. Ropes had been thrown over the spikes and razor wires and strong arms were trying to pull them free. Men and women shoved at obstacles with improvised polearms—little more than wooden poles snapped off merchants’ stalls in Industry Square.
Beyond the wall, Issa could see flashing steel as Killian and his Mumblers fought to repel the besiegers. Swords and spears severed the ropes and pushed back against the assault on the wall’s defenses. Yet there were so few, too few to hold them back. And Issa knew Killian had reinforced the wall to prevent it from being smashed inward, as would happen with a battering ram. It might not hold against the besiegers trying to pull it down stone by stone.
Her gut clenched as one of the spiked poles bent and pulled free. A rioter screamed as it fell atop him, impaling him and tangling him in the razor-sharp bladed wire. Blood spilled across the dusty street, turning the golden sandstone a grisly ochre. Yet the man’s screams fell silent moments later as his comrades trampled him in their haste to assault the wall. Grappling hooks were thrown over and the assault
ers began hauling on the stone, trying to bring it down.
Heart hammering, Issa watched as the topmost section of wall crumbled outward. Even the shortest rioter could clamber over now and, without the razor wire, nothing would stop them from getting in.
“Get in there!” shouted a broad-shouldered man that could only be a Syndicate thug. “Get in there and take his riches for your own!”
The mob thronged toward the crumbling section and grasped the top of the stone wall. One man hauled himself up and dropped into Killian’s training yard. Then two more, a third, then five. Men and women scrambled over each other, clambered on their comrades’ backs, and crushed each other in the thick press. All of the rioters and looters surged toward the wall, eager to be the first to despoil the promised treasures.
But not the Syndicate thugs. Three heavy-necked men, accompanied by two smaller, scrawny men better suited to thieving, stood waiting in the street as their sixth comrade—likely the leader of their crew—waved on the mob. They stared down the alley, eyes wary, swords drawn.
Issa raced toward them, her eyes fixed on the wall. She waved the rusted sword taken off the dead looters while hiding the other at her side. To the eyes of the thugs, she appeared as just one more eager young woman joining in the chaos. One, a brute with a scar along the right side of his neck, actually smiled at the wild light in her eyes.
He died first. Issa buried her rusty short sword in his gut. He gaped at her, his eyes wide. His hands went to the weapon embedded to the hilt in his stomach and he doubled over, gasped, and collapsed to his knees.
Issa tore the short sword from his thick-fingered hand and swung it at the next thug in the short line. The man, caught off-guard by the suddenness of her attack, had no time to raise his sword or dodge. Her stolen blade sheared halfway through his neck and ripped a gash in his throat. Blood misted in the air from his severed jugular vein.
The third man, a pencil-necked thief with darting eyes and quick fingers, actually dodged her left-handed blow. He drew a dagger and swiped at her, forcing Issa into a desperate lunge to the side. But instead of pursuing the thief, she finished off the third of the nearby thugs with a savage swipe of her sword. The heavy blade chopped into the side of his neck and he fell, gurgling, a pool of crimson turning the dust to mud around him.
Secrets of Blood Page 4