The King's Watch (The Adventures of Carmen Delarosa Book 2)

by Kody Boye

  Don’t look down, she thought as she climbed. Don’t look down don’t look down don’t look down—

  Of course she looked down; and when she did, she swore her heart stopped beating.

  Her sweaty palms loosened, her chest tightened, the weight of her body felt a thousand times more oppressing.

  Before she could think any further, Carmen scurried up the ladder and thrust herself onto the ship, where she landed on a very impressive deck with a hard thud.

  “Ma’am?” a man asked as he drew near. “Are you all right?”

  “Just peachy,” Carmen sighed. “Just fucking peachy.”

  A short moment later, Ignatius appeared and helped her to her feet. He was followed by Anna, Adrian, Stella and then Kairan, whose hood had since been swept of his head to reveal a clean-shaven skull with ruddy brown stubble atop it.

  “Take us to the western caves!” Ignatius hailed as Kairan withdrew the ladder and positioned it along the inside of the ship. “We have a bandit problem that needs to be solved, and quickly.”

  The ship began to turn.

  Carmen’s stomach, already in knots, fluttered. “Oh Gods,” she thought. “Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods.”

  “What?” Stella asked.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  She only just barely made it to the side of the ship when she projectile vomited.

  Somewhere below, a man yelled.

  The group laughed.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a land-lover,” Kairan smiled.

  “Fuck,” Carmen managed, “you.”

  Then she threw up again.

  - - -

  It would take them several long days to reach the western caves—double that what it would’ve normally taken them on foot or by boar. This, Kairan said, was because they would not be able to use the propulsion systems upon the ship, as they would likely crash into the mountain as a result of it. They would have to solely on the currents pushing the sails; and in the event that those failed, Kairan’s magic, to push them onward.

  For that reason, they meandered about the upper deck, trying to avoid the tenebrous clouds of bugs that threatened to insert themselves into their mouths, or in the places below deck where they would be given mercy. Carmen, however, was unable to relax, and as such perched herself near the bow of the airship where she could see anything and everything in the distance.

  We’ll find you, she thought, allowing her eyes to trail along the sunlit stone and the darkened places where the sunstone lights were only just beginning to reach. And when we do…

  She tightened her grip around her mace.

  She’d enjoy bashing Xaspraine Paddox and Cabara Matthers’ heads in.

  Though the sound of approaching footsteps would’ve normally been enough to stir her, Carmen kept her focus on the route before them as the person drew near. “Carmen,” Ignatius’ voice said.

  “Yes?” she asked, not bothering to turn to face her commanding officer.

  “I know you’re upset about everything that’s happened. But I just want you to remember: we might not find them.”

  “We’re going to,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  She couldn’t explain it properly—at least, not without him thinking she was an absolute nut. A ‘gut feeling’ only went so far, and a ‘hunch’ could easily be perceived as a feeling and nothing more than that. For that reason, she merely shook her head and cast her eyes along the crevices that extended beyond the roads and split the earth—not willing, or particularly wanting, to look at the man who could easily reduce her to tears with one look.

  Rather than respond to her silence, Ignatius drew up alongside her, pressed his elbows to the railing, and leaned forward to look at the world below. “Isn’t it something?” he asked. “Ten years ago Dwarves were only dreaming of getting off the ground. Now they’re actually doing it.”

  “And soon they’ll be able to leave the mountain if they want to,” Carmen replied.

  “I don’t think that’s likely to happen anytime soon.”

  “You don’t?”

  Ignatius shook his head. “No. We like having something over our heads. It gives us a sense of security.”

  “More like a sense of being boxed in,” Carmen mumbled. “I swear. You can ask a Dwarf to build a whirligig but you can’t get him to fly it beyond his city gates.”

  Ignatius smiled and leaned over to bump her shoulder with his. “That’s the kind of Carmen I like to see,” he replied. “The one that can laugh and joke and make light of a bad situation.”

  “There’s darkness inside me.”

  “Right now, yes. But always?” Ignatius shook his head. “No. You’re not that kind of person. And before you ask how I know, let me just say that I can tell.”

  “Thanks,” Carmen replied. “I… guess.”

  “I know you liked Colby, Carmen, and I know he liked you. And I just want you to know that you’ll find someone, someday, who will make you happy—who will make your heart sing and dance and make your spirit flutter. Regardless of all the bad things that’ve happened to you, you deserve that. No matter what you think.”

  “They went for Colby because he wasn’t as heavily-armed.”

  “They went for Colby because I did not announce my intentions,” Ignatius sighed. “Please, Carmen: don’t pin this on yourself. And for the Gods’ sakes, don’t twist his death into a curse upon yourself.”

  “Everyone around me dies.”

  “I haven’t died.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What makes you think I’ll die?”

  “It’s either extraordinary chance or dumb luck that I happened to be sitting right beside him and not get shot first. Or that the only reason I survived the drake attacking the caravan on Infinity Falls was because I was buried beneath the wreckage of my family’s cart.”

  “You were meant to do something important,” Ignatius said. “Maybe this is it.”

  “Maybe,” Carmen thought.

  Somehow, she doubted so.

  - - -

  She slept on the upper deck that night, within the open air and beneath the fading glimpses of stars upon the horizon. Snuggled in her bedroll, and alone on the outskirts of the ship, Carmen looked on as, above, the constellation that looked like a unicorn beckoned to her like a single flame within the night.

  Oh Colby, Carmen thought with a sigh. Poor, poor Colby.

  She’d barely known him—had barely known anything about the man, save that he was a machinist and that he was good with blunderbusses—but she could’ve known him more, if only fate had not stolen him away. He’d been the first man to show interest in her—the first to kiss her lips, to hold her hand, to hug her close as if she were a diamond treasure pulled gently from the roughened earth. Maybe that was why she was taking this so hard. Maybe it wasn’t his death she mourned, but the possibility of what could have come with his life.

  Happiness, she thought. Family. Fortitude.

  “Love.”

  The single tear that slipped down her face was enough to inspire within her a lifetime of sadness. Having not felt such hopelessness since her family’s deaths over one year ago, feeling such dire emotions was heart-wrenching—enough to rip from her body the thread need had stitched through her wounds and bare to the world the sealed canvasses beneath. She wanted to bleed—wanted, desperately, to let those feelings out in screams and cries—but somehow restrained herself from doing it. She was no child, no babe let loose to the fields after a mother’s admonishing lecture. She was an adult woman, conscripted into the armed guard for a purpose better than what she could have ever imagined for herself. She couldn’t scream—not now, not when everyone could hear.

  And come running, she thought.

  If she screamed now, they’d be convinced she was being murdered.

  With that in mind, she tucked her head into her bedroll and muffled her cries in the soft lining—knowing that sleep, as desperately needed as it was, woul
d not come easily this night.

  - - -

  “So,” Ignatius said, crossing his arms across his chest. “We don’t know where they are.”

  “No,” Kairan said. “But we will. Soon.”

  Suspended in the air before the mage, as if attached and pulled taut by wires, was the scroll of bloodied parchment that had been stuffed inside the dead man’s mouth.

  “What’re you doing?” Carmen asked as she looked upon the scroll, which wavered slightly as the ship continued to meander throughout the air.”

  “I’m trying to determine its origins,” the mage said. “Magic always leaves a trace It’s all just a matter of finding it now that I know a mage touched this scroll.”

  A series of lights began to enter the air and formed, within the empty space of the cargo hold, a constellation of images—the first of which began as simple lines, then metamorphosed into more concrete detail. It soon became apparent, from the way the image was progressing, that this was a map of Dorenborough and the Roads beyond—and that the glimmering beads that highlighted its interior was following their exact trajectory, all the way down to their location near the farmlands.

  “What,” Stella asked from Carmen’s side, “are you—”

  The glimmering beads—a lighter pink than the red light of the map—continued to progress toward the systems of caves, then stopped before anything further could happen.

  “Come on,” Kairin said, his voice wrought with tension. “Just a little further—”

  The image disappeared.

  Carmen gasped.

  A new image began to take shape—this time of a level Carmen knew was the one above their own.

  “It’s the layer above us,” Carmen said as she stared at the image before them—which, in but a moment, rotated to form a three-dimensional map of the world around them. She watched as the pink bead of light flickered in the spaces directly above where the entrance to the cave systems lay and breathed as she focused her attention on it.

  “It’s no wonder they had such an advantage,” Ignatius said. “We never would’ve seen them.”

  “But what about the damage sustained during the blast?” Adrian asked. “We don’t know if it scared them off or if they’re still there.”

  “They would’ve had to have some pretty impressive equipment to move not only an entire bandit troop, but the number of people on the farms to a secondary level,” Anna said. “They likely have an airship.”

  “Or some kind of rudimentary climbing apparatus that transported people in groups.”

  “You mean like the elevators they use in the mines?”

  “Yeah,” Adrian said. “Either way, we won’t know for sure until we’re there.”

  “We know for sure,” Kairin said.

  What? Carmen thought.

  The image before them faded as the mage pushed himself to his feet. He turned, faced Carmen, then reached down and set a hand on the hilt of her mace. “They’ve been tracking you,” he said.

  “What?” Carmen asked.

  “The stones in your mace are a natural beacon to thieves such as them.”

  Carmen looked down at the weapon at her side. “You mean,” she said.

  “They’ve been able to follow your movements based solely on your weapon,” the mage replied, sighing as he circled the bejeweled hilt at Carmen’s waist. “I knew I felt something when I first met you, but I thought it was just the residual magic streaming from the airship. Now I know.”

  “That Xaspraine’s been tracking the Fifth Battalion’s movements baed on my weapon,” Carmen sighed, taking hold of her weapon.

  She wanted, at that moment, to cast it aside—to do nothing more than to hurl its contents into the deepest parts of the mountain to where it could never be found again—but knew she couldn’t do it. Her father’s namesake would never allow, and if she were to kill anyone, it would have to be with it. She knew no other weapon by heart.

  And besides, she thought. Even if they know we’re coming, there’s no way they can move in time to block us.

  “They may simply think we are advancing on foot,” Kairin said, breaking the spell of thought Carmen had fallen into. “There’s no way to know for sure, but I’m doing my best to create a barrier around your weapon so they cannot track our movements.”

  “Are you able to do that?” Stella frowned.

  “They already know we are approaching. They just don’t have to know when.”

  “So it’s settled then,” Carmen said. “We know where they are, and we have an idea of how they possibly got there. Which means we can stop them.”

  “We will,” Ignatius said, turning to face her. “Don’t worry, Carmen. We’ll stop them if it’s the last thing I do.”

  - - -

  Carmen sat at the bow of the ship watching the terrain shift. Over crevices they passed and near the path to the Dorenborian Mines they drifted, steadily rising in altitude until eventually she began to see the next level appearing upon the horizon. Its countenance in the dark was an ominous specter to her bewildered conscience, pulling upon her preternatural fear of the dark and the heights which she had never scaled before. Even the drake’s den had not been this high.

  But I made it, Carmen thought. I’m here, and we’re almost there.

  Nearby, Kairin continued to keep watch, one hand braced around his wrist as his other hand faced the exterior of the ship. She felt, upon the air, a static that she had come to associate with the mage—and realized, in that moment, that it was he who would be the only one that could defend them once they neared the lair that housed the Xaspraine bandit clan.

  “We’re walking into a trap,” she mumbled.

  “Naturally,” Kairin replied. “Did you really think this would be easy?”

  No, she thought, but kept that comment to herself.

  A series of guards armed with blunderbusses began to file out from the cargo hold to take position upon the upper deck. Wickedly armored and bearing full-faced helms, they trained their weapons on the darkness and waited for something—anything—to materialize.

  Carmen closed her eyes, expelled a pent-up breath, and waited.

  Though they were drawing closer to the platform with each passing second, she imagined they wouldn’t be seeing anything for a while. The terrain was too flat, the land too exposed for anyone to be hiding in the darkness. A simple flash of the airship’s forward-facing sunstone lights was enough to prove that.

  But below—

  Carmen looked down.

  Though from above the platform was completely exposed, from below it was shielded from prying view.

  It’s no wonder we were ambushed, she thought, trailing her eyes on the distance.

  “You’re sure it was here?” she asked, turning her attention to Kairin, who continued to keep his hand braced forward as if expecting attack.

  “I am sure,” the mage replied, not budging in the slightest.

  “It just… doesn’t seem like this would be a good place to camp out, you know?”

  “I understand, Carmen, but you have to consider the idea that they may be shrouding themselves from view.”

  “Xaspraine could do that?” she frowned.

  “An illusion can go a long way,” the mage replied. “Besides—we don’t even know the full extent of his abilities.”

  Which scares me, Carmen thought, but refused to give voice to her mind’s inner workings. She didn’t want to curse them with unlikely ideas, especially if they didn’t happen to be true.

  Reaching down, she took hold of her mace as from the cargo hold Ignatius emerged, quickly pursued by Anna, who was also adorned in a heavy helm. “Carmen,” Ignatius said. “You shouldn’t be up here if you aren’t going to be helmed.”

  “I know,” Carmen replied.

  The man passed her a helm that was big enough to cover her entire head and shield all but a thin sliver over her eyes. Though not wanting to slide it over her head, she did so anyway—knowing, without a doubt, that a well-char
ged shot could instantly end her life.

  Just like it did Colby’s.

  Carmen fumed at the thought and secured the helm in place, turned her head as she watched Anna take position beside the mage, then witnessed as she lifted her blunderbuss and held it steadily at her shoulder.

  “Do you see anything?” Ignatius asked as the sunstone lights amped up and lit even more of the platform before them.

  “Not yet,” Anna said, which was promptly added with grunts and nods from the other men and women taking note of the scene before them.

  “What about you, Kairan?”

  “I sense nothing but magic in the air.”

  “Which means we’re getting closer,” Carmen said. “Right?”

  The mage only nodded.

  Carmen turned her attention back to Ignatius and sighed. Almost there, she thought, giving him a resounding nod when he turned his heavily-armored head to look at her.

  Soon, the game would end, and with it the reign of terror that had fallen upon Dorenborough and the Far Roads.

  Chapter 10

  They disembarked the airship at the edge of the nearby platform and filed off—the Fifth Battalion and the mage in one group, the conglomeration of city guards within another. The captain of the airship was quick to ensure them that he would not be able to maintain their steady altitude and cautioned that they would either have to whistle or send a magicked message in order to have her return to pick them up.

  “We understand,” Ignatius said as he turned to regard the woman.

  She gave only a stout nod before turning and entering back into the spherical cockpit, covered with glass and arranged above where the stairwell descended into the cargo bay. Here, she took hold of the metal wheel, messed with a series of levers and dials upon a dashboard’s surface, then began to lower the ship until it disappeared from view.