by AC Cobble
Rew frowned. “A disguise… It could work, but we’ll need to find—“
“There’s a flighty young lass who owes me a sum she cannot pay,” said the herbalist. “I’ve been treating her for various ailments caused by… ah…” The herbalist glanced at the younglings. “The lass is friendly with some of the guards. It doesn’t matter. She cannot pay for my services, and I cannot turn her away, so the poor thing has been accumulating debt that we both know she’ll never have coin for. She’s friendly to a fault with the men, but she’s as honest as winter is cold. If we ask her, she’ll help you, and she’ll thank us for giving her a way to wriggle out from underneath the debt.”
“Can we trust her?” wondered Cinda.
“She won’t turn you in on purpose, but she’s not one to keep her mouth shut,” said the herbalist. “I’m sure you can concoct a convincing lie for her. She’s not very bright, unfortunately.”
“If she gives Zaine away…”
“If the lass can find as many quiet spots in the keep with the guards as she seems to, then I’m certain she can discreetly walk your thief in the front gate,” assured the herbalist. The woman peeked outside of her window. “Her shift starts at midnight. If we hurry, we can catch her before she goes in.”
“Tonight?” asked Zaine, swallowing uncomfortably.
“You’re in a hurry, no?” replied the herbalist.
“Well, yes, b-but…” stammered Zaine.
“How will Zaine find Kallie’s rooms?” asked Cinda.
“Let’s ask the maid. Perhaps a solution will present itself,” suggested the herbalist. She put down her knife and the vegetables she’d been chopping then gestured to the party. “Hurry up. Finish your meal and prepare yourselves.”
Rew peeked around the corner of the stone wall of a pastry shop, looking at the backs of several dozen men and women who marched through the gates of Duke Eeron’s keep. The space around the gates was well-lit with roaring braziers built high with fires and half a dozen lanterns hung on the wall, but outside of those lights, the city was dark.
They were high above the roofs of the city and even the peaks of the Spine as its final jagged thrusts tapered down and the towers of the keep rose in its place. Close to midnight, the sky was black with cloud, and even below, the luminous glow of Spinesend had dimmed as, one by one, people put out their fires and their candles, and the winding streets were filled with night. So high above the city and the mountains, the wind whistled like a slashing knife, keening as it blew around the stone of the keep, cutting through the wool and cotton of their clothing.
Rew tugged his cloak tight and kept an eye on the crowd of people entering the keep. Somewhere in that group was Zaine, though he couldn’t tell which of the bundled shapes was the thief.
Half an hour earlier, they’d gotten into position, tucked between a pastry shop and a haberdasher, almost directly across a courtyard from the main gate of the keep. There were no lights near the shops, and they’d easily slunk in behind the buildings. Poking their heads out while staying deep within the shadows, they had found an excellent view of the gates. During the daylight hours, the courtyard would be filled with people bustling about on errands, but at this hour, it was completely empty except for the approaching crowd of men and women, their livery hidden beneath cloaks and jackets.
There were two dozen guards milling about the gate. They made little effort to stir themselves from before the fires to peer into the hoods and cloaks of those coming inside. Rew thought it made little sense to even bother having guards at the gate if this was all of the inspection they gave visitors, but on the other hand, it was a cold night, and their fires were warm. The servants entered and exited this way every night, and at midnight, it was unlikely any of the guards’ senior commanders would be making a surprise inspection. The commanders, like most sensible people, would be abed.
Rew looked up at the passing clouds, obscuring the light of the moon and casting the towering keep in a cloak of black, though the top of its walls and the yawning maw of the gate flickered with fires to light the guards’ way. From where the ranger stood, he could see nothing beyond the stone edifice, but he knew on the other side, the city fell away, dropping one thousand paces before it reached the exterior wall and the lake outside of it.
It was no wonder Spinesend had never been overthrown.
The legend of the place was that even when King Vaisius Morden the First was consolidating Vaeldon, Spinesend had not been taken. Instead, the rulers at the time had elected to bend the knee for the good of the people. It was probably true they bent the knee without a fight, but Rew doubted they were thinking of anything other than their own necks. By the time Vaisius Morden had reached the Eastern Territory, the king would have claimed all of the rest of Vaeldon. Still, it was impressive that at least in recorded history, control of the city had never been transferred due to violence. Fighting one’s way up the thousand paces from base to peak, through narrow streets and easily defensible alleys, would be a bloody, horrific endeavor.
“What now?” asked Cinda in a whisper as they saw the last of the servants pass into the keep with no trouble.
“Now we wait,” said Rew, shifting his cloak, wishing they’d taken time for him to purchase a warmer one.
Behind him, the others retreated between the pastry shop and the haberdasher. Clustered together, they tried to avoid the bitter wind, but Rew didn’t leave his post. He knew it’d be hours before Zaine returned with word from the Fedgleys’ sister Kallie, but he had to wait. It made sense to send the thief in alone, but worry gnawed at his belly, and it wasn’t going to subside until she returned. If something were to happen to her inside of the keep, he wasn’t there. He wouldn’t even know. She could do this, he told himself, but…
He stood at the corner, staying in the dark of the alley but keeping his eyes fixed on the gate of Duke Eeron’s keep. For a while, Anne joined him, looping her arm through his and leaning close so they shared the brunt of the wind. They did not speak, and after a time, she returned to the others, whispering quiet assurances all would be well and that they’d all known it would take Zaine most of the night to work her way through the keep. She had to find Kallie Fedgley’s room, slip inside unnoticed, wake her, and convince her that her father had been captured by someone in Duke Eeron’s service. They’d all known that would take time. They’d all known there was nothing they could do but wait.
At some point in the long night, Raif and Cinda fell asleep. They were burrowed in a pile of scraps from the haberdasher’s shop, and with Anne watching over them, they’d succumbed to boredom and weeks of accumulated exhaustion.
Rew stayed awake, though, a sentry watching an empty gate.
He blinked, surprised, when he realized the sky was lightening. The keep was no longer a black monolith defined by the fires lit along its walls, but a silhouette with silky gray, pre-dawn gloom behind it. Rew glanced at the others and saw the children were still sleeping. Anne might have been. Her chin was cradled in her hand, and she was slumped over with her hair hanging down in front of her face.
Looking to the keep, Rew began to get nervous as the sun rose near the horizon. Pink and peach crept along the black walls, reflecting the striated clouds above. There was movement around the open gate, but he saw it was merely the guards changing shifts. A few individuals began to appear on the streets outside of the keep, taking quick steps through the cold morning, bodies bundled up, breath blowing clouds of white vapor like drake’s fire.
A few jests and barks of laughter drifted on the air as one group of weary, chilled guards shuffled away and another took their place. A man dragging a rumbling handcart piled high with bulging sacks passed by, whistling tunelessly as he went to deliver his goods to some shop beyond where Rew could see.
In the building beside him, Rew noticed warmth emanating from the wall, and he realized the ovens must have been lit in the night. The heat was soaking through the thick stone. Soon, the bakers would be sliding pastries
in and out of those hot ovens. He cursed himself for not hearing the people moving about inside. It was constructed stoutly, but he was the King’s Ranger. He’d lost his focus, standing there in the cold. He shuffled deeper into the alley, gently stamping his feet and swinging his arms to get his blood flowing again. He leaned out so he could keep looking toward the keep.
From the open gates, he saw a pair of guards glancing toward him, and for a moment, he thought he’d been spotted, but he realized they must be eyeing the pastry shop, waiting for it to open. Troops of soldiers, servants, courtiers, and other palace visitors would soon be passing in a constant stream in front of his hiding place.
Rew grimaced. Someone had to wait for Zaine, but they couldn’t do it there any longer. The bakers or the haberdasher might come to drop refuse in the alley. Any passerby could chance a glance and see them. If those people happened to call to the guards across the way, Rew and the others had no explanation for why they were lurking in the shadows.
He was about to turn and wake the others so they could use the last bit of predawn darkness to slip away when a bevy of servants showed up at the gate, the same ones Zaine had entered with, he thought, but now their shifts were over, and they were leaving for their beds and their families.
Rew waited, his eyes fixed on the three dozen liveried men and women. From a distance, he couldn’t tell if Zaine was with the group or not.
Finally, as the servants cleared the gate and started moving to the different slopes and stairs that poured down the side of the mountain and through the city, Rew spotted her. Zaine’s hood was up, but he could see her looking directly at him. She flapped her cloak, gesturing down a street, and kept walking.
With a sigh of relief, Rew turned to wake the others, and when another pack of servants arrived at the gates, they used the distraction to leave the alley and head in the direction he’d watched Zaine go.
“She’s scared,” said Zaine, twisting a steaming mug of dark coffee in her hands.
“Of course she’s scared!” barked Raif. “Our father was taken by these people and has been held captive for weeks. Duke Eeron marched on our barony, and we can only guess what atrocities he committed when his men got to Falvar. I worry that what happened to Baron Worgon and his men is a bitter clue. If Kallie wasn’t scared, she’d be insane.”
Shaking her head, Zaine responded, “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean she’s scared of… of you. She says she doesn’t know where your father is, that she’s heard nothing about him, and she refused to meet with you. She told me that you should leave and return to Falvar.”
Raif snorted. “Never. Until we’ve rescued Father from Duke Eeron, we cannot leave this place.”
“She said you should go home after she suggested turning yourselves into the duke, and I told her you wouldn’t do it,” said Zaine. “Raif, she thinks you and Cinda are being foolish, that the duke does not have your father, and that you’re only going to get yourselves hurt and damage your family’s reputation. I worry she’s going to tell the duke you’re in Spinesend. I made her promise she would not and that you’d leave for Falvar, but—”
“What!” shouted Raif, shooting up so quickly from the table that he nearly knocked it over.
Anne grabbed the big youth’s arm and dragged him back down into his seat. The empath glanced around the coffee shop they sat in, smiling as if to cover the outburst, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind. Patrons were downing their brews at the counter and then quickly scurrying off on their morning errands.
“Zaine, tell us what she said,” requested Cinda. “Exactly what she said.”
“When I told her that you two were in the city,” continued Zaine, looking between the nobles, “she began trembling. She was… mad, I think. When I offered our help, she refused it. She was nearly shouting at me. I worried we’d draw the guards. She said it’d be best if you came to the keep and asked to see the duke. I argued that he was the one who’d betrayed your family. Then, she demanded I go and that I never speak to her again. She, ah, she said she only wants to see you if it’s on the way to the throne room to see Duke Eeron. Kallie told me she believes the duke can explain everything if you talk to him, but if you refuse, then you’re safer back home than in Spinesend. She’s worried what you’ll do here.”
“That does not sound like Kallie,” worried Cinda. “Are you sure you found the right person?”
Zaine stared back at the noblewoman blankly. She shook herself, and continued, “She barely let me describe the arcanist we seek, and I think it’s possible even from my brief account she recognized the man, but she wouldn’t tell me who he is, and when I tried to press her, she almost physically tossed me from her room. I tried, but I’m afraid it was of no use.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Cinda looked like a boiling kettle.
“It’s been three years since you’ve seen her, Cinda,” mentioned Rew. “Much can change in three years. Much has changed, it seems.”
“We’re family,” stated Raif flatly. “She is one of us, and that has not changed. I think you were right, Ranger. We should have gotten our father first and then our sister. I hoped she’d be able to assist, but… We’ll get him, and then we’ll get her out of there as well. We should have suspected Duke Eeron would attempt to turn her against us. He’s a powerful man and a talented high magician. With time, working against an unsuspecting mind… We’re going to have to come up with another plan, quickly.”
Rew grimaced, refraining from pointing out how much easier things could have been at numerous occasions had everyone just listened to him. Instead, he commented, “We’re still stuck. We don’t know where your father is, and if anything, trying to scout the keep and find him now will be even more difficult.”
“Kallie did not give me a clue as to who the arcanist may be, but I think I have an idea where Baron Fedgley is,” said Zaine.
Rew turned to her in surprise. Everyone quieted and leaned close.
“When I entered, most of the servants were free to go to whatever section of the keep they worked in,” explained Zaine. “That floozy Anne’s friend set me up with was one of them. No one spoke to us. We just started walking toward the senior officers’ quarters where the girl works fluffing, and apparently warming, quite a few of the beds. She told me all about… Ah, before we passed out of sight, I saw there were two groups that the guards took particular time with. They stopped them, searched them, and seemed to be checking names off on a list. I asked my guide what was happening, and she said one of the groups served the duke in his private quarters, and one tended to the duke’s guests. She gave me a little wink and told me she meant the guests that had not planned to stay. She said the duke keeps prisoners in a highly secure section of the castle. These aren’t the same sort that are locked in the dungeons, apparently. She told me they are important people, so the servants take care of them rather than the guards. The girl claimed there’s a spellcaster who has been there for several weeks, and they are taking extra precautions because of him.”
“That must be Father!” exclaimed Raif.
Zaine shrugged. “Of course my guide could not confirm who was imprisoned there, and as I mentioned, I got nowhere with Kallie. I didn’t want to risk sneaking in alone without giving you an update, and after meeting with your sister, I figured I needed to get out of there. It would make sense, right? How many captive spellcasters can the duke have? The extra precautions sound exactly like what I heard the arcanist discussing months ago.”
The younglings all turned to Rew, and he nodded. “If he hasn’t been moved off somewhere by one of the princes, then it makes sense your father would be held close because they’d want easy access to him. Unless Duke Eeron also captured Baron Worgon, I don’t imagine there’d be another spellcaster worth the hassle of keeping alive.”
“We have a plan then,” said Raif.
“I’m not sure what we have counts as a plan…” protested Rew. He turned to Zaine. “Where is this secure section of
the keep?”
Zaine nodded out the window of the coffee shop, and they all turned to look out over the vista. A tower thrust up from the edge of the city like a piece of the keep that had been built in the wrong place. It soared above the buildings below it, and Rew knew from past experience its shadow was used to tell time by the denizens of Spinesend. Connecting the tower to the keep was a thread-thin bridge that hung hundreds of paces above the city below. The sides of the square tower were sheer, worn smooth by masons when the tower had been built in some forgotten age. From a distance, the sides looked as flat as a piece of glass. Even if weather and time had done their work and left the stone pocked and broken, climbing it would require ascending a straight vertical with no breaks for five-hundred paces, and the entire stretch was in sight of the city below. Any climber would be visible in the light of the sun or the moon, and without light, the climb was utter suicide.
“King’s Sake,” muttered Rew.
“W-We can’t… There’s no way…” stammered Cinda, looking open-mouthed at the tower.
“Perhaps we could overwhelm the guards on the bridge,” suggested Raif, his voice wavering between hopeful and crestfallen. “It’s narrow… Ah, there can’t be that many guards on such a small bridge, right?”
Rew shook his head. “With surprise and enough force, maybe we could get inside, but how would we get back out? If we fight our way in, it’s certain to alert the men in the keep. There could be thousands of soldiers there, not to mention whatever spellcasters that the duke keeps in his employ. To leave that tower, we’d have to battle our way through all of them. No, stealth is our only hope.”
“I don’t mind a climb, but I don’t think I could scale those walls,” said Zaine. She glanced at Raif and his sister and didn’t need to mention that it would be simply impossible for the nobles to make it.
“No, we can’t all climb up that tower,” said Rew. He was scratching at his neck, thinking absentmindedly that he needed a shave, staring at the tower and the bridge. “The tower itself is too visible…”