The Hunt for the Three Roses

by Jason Hubbard

  After they ran a few blocks, Rainer dropped into an aqueduct three meters deep. He gave no warning, so Callie jumped in without steeling herself. She thankfully didn’t twist an ankle, but she did slip and fall, prompting Rainer to cruelly yank on the chain. She gagged as the collar bit into her neck and barely managed to stand back up, her clothes partially drenched from the aqueduct’s thin layer of icy water.

  They went into an underground tunnel, their footsteps echoing in the dark. As if the freezing air wasn’t bad enough, now Callie had to endure the terrible stench of sewage, her gorge threatening to heave up her last meal. At least Rainer was staying silent. She thought he would gloat over his victory on the journey, but he was too intent on reaching his destination to make small talk.

  Once they reached daylight, Rainer halted and retrieved from a notch on the wall a satchel of coins. He quickly looked through it then slung it over a shoulder and bade her to keep running. They ran down a length of the exposed aqueduct then climbed a flight of stairs to continue racing down a series of alleys.

  As miserable as she was, Callie kept on a brave face, refusing to show her captor even a gram of fear. Her courageous front slipped, though, when they came to a fence with warning signs not to cross. What lied beyond was undoubtedly the Red Borough, a district that was nearly abandoned due to its magic taint. What few vagrants it held would be of no help to her, leaving Rainer to do to her whatever his sick imagination could come up with. As they went through a gate with a broken lock, she felt the end was drawing near, and she bit her lip to stave off incoming tears.

  Not long after they ran down an empty street, she heard the high-pitched whine that the Red Borough was infamous for. According to Sean, he had to endure this whine the entire time he was in the cellar, only it was muffled. She desperately wanted to cover her ears before the noise made her crazy, but Rainer had cinched the shackles tightly around her wrists. There was no escaping this constant assault on her hearing.

  After going around a few corners and up adjacent streets, they finally saw another person. A man with a red bandana and a brown leather coat awaited them by a stairway on a slope leading to a dilapidated wooden house. Rainer took off the satchel and threw it at him. “There, as promised. Happy trails.”

  Mr. Red Bandana opened the sack and ran his fingers through the contents. “It’s all here?”

  “Yes, nearly all of it,” Rainer replied.

  The man glared at him. “It’s either all here, or it isn’t.”

  “It’s all there! Enough to get you to Aldrüt. Now piss off.”

  Mr. Red Bandana spat on the ground and headed up the stairs. As soon as no one was looking at her, Callie hunkered down and lifted one leg over her shackles, followed by the other, taking care not to rattle the chain. With her hands in front of her, she silently neared her captor, intending to bring her bound hands down around his head and strangle him with the shackles pressed against his throat.

  But Rainer had sensed her coming. He sidestepped her, pushed her hands down, and rammed an elbow between her eyes, then punched her belly and tripped her. She landed on the ground hard, grunting and moaning in defeat, and she gagged as Rainer tugged on the chain. “Come on, get up! Get up already!”

  She slowly obeyed, but before she could stand straight, her captor grabbed a fistful of hair and led her up to the house. She had enough energy to further resist, but with her dizzy head and sore neck, all the fight had gone out of her.

  A heart-wrenching wail came from the front door. Callie entered the living room in time to witness Princess Alyssa being forced to drink from a flask by one of the five men around her. She spat the liquid out onto the man’s brown waistcoat. “Dammit, girl, just drink it and we’ll be on our way!” he said.

  “Noooo!” she bellowed with her head down, tears spilling from her eyelashes. At a gesture, two of the men forced her head up and her mouth open, and the burly man with the flask shoved its opening between her teeth.

  Rainer was undoubtedly entertained, but Callie couldn’t bear to look. The princess may have been a spoiled brat, but she didn’t deserve the hell she’d been thrust into. She was tied to a chair, her legs and hands barely able to move. The men had cut her blue-and-cream gown to ribbons, and her beautiful hair was now an ungodly mess of stray locks of different lengths.

  Once the flask was removed and the princess started wailing again, Rainer brought Callie to a nearby cage just large enough for a dog. He ordered her to crawl inside, and she obeyed without question. He then shut the door and locked it with a key, leaving her in a cramped space where she barely had enough room to lift her head.

  “How long are you waiting?” Rainer asked his partners. The men didn’t answer, as they were too concerned with plugging their ears against the whine of the Red Borough combined with the everlasting screams from Alyssa.

  “When my father learns of this, he will kill you!” she cried through a raspy voice. “He will have your heads mounted above the palace gates, and the dogs will have the rest of you! You’ll be fertilizer for the gardens, do you hear me! You’ll be fertilizer!”

  She coughed and then bellowed some more, but eventually her head drooped, her speech slurred, and she fell sound asleep. “Thank God!” cried Mr. Red Bandana. “Come on, blokes, let’s get a move on!”

  They untied her from the chair, slung her over someone’s back, and quietly departed the house. Callie looked curiously at Rainer, who hung his leather coat on the empty chair. “You paid them to get rid of her? Shouldn’t it work the other way around?”

  “I paid them to help me capture her and keep an eye on her while I was away,” he said as he rummaged among things on a table. “She’ll fetch a pretty price on Aldrüt’s black market. Girl like her might become a prostitute, then work her way up to concubine if she’s lucky.”

  “That’s only if they make it to Aldrüt.”

  “Oh, they will. I gave enough money for food, supplies, border passes, and a few bribes if necessary.”

  “All just for me? You overpaid.”

  “I sure as hell did, but I guess no number of slain innocents would convince you to turn yourself in.”

  Remorse hit her like an ocean wave, and she sighed deeply to keep from crying. “You said you would let her go. I thought you were a man of your word, Rainer.”

  Her captor approached the cage and knelt down to face her. “And so I am! I said I would let her go … I never said I would let her go free.” He put on a chilling grin and pointed at her. “Eh!? There’s power in words!”

  He returned to the table, leaving Callie to rub her cold arms and hang her head in shame. Not long ago, she had dreamed of joining Asturia’s criminal underworld as she had in St. Mannington. She would make friends and family and help them by stealing what they needed to survive. But the criminal underworld involved murder, kidnapping, extortion, and slave-trading—heinous offenses that Rainer and his partners committed without a second thought. Thinking that she nearly joined such a racket made her feel sick, and on top of that, she was fooled into believing she was saving the princess’ life. Now Rainer had her, and Princess Alyssa would never return home.

  I should have listened to you, Sean. There’s no point in letting Rainer win, because when he does, everyone else loses.

  His heavy eyelids started to drop, and he briskly shook himself to keep awake. Sean had been running on very little sleep since he left Callie at the guard station, keeping himself busy preparing for her rescue.

  He had first rented a horse at a livery and galloped all the way to the Royal Palace, where a gatekeeper had miraculously let him past the wall after recognizing him as the King’s special guest three weeks ago. He then found Captain Sutton and asked for his help. The captain was reluctant since King Paulson had ordered every guard in the city not to jeopardize his daughter’s safety, even if it meant letting Rainer remain free. But Sean convinced him by explainin
g his vague outline of a plan, which involved tailing Rainer from afar by using seeking stones. He then spent much of the evening creating the stones, using a small guest room as a spellchamber. It was a long and arduous process, and he got little sleep before the captain woke him up and said it was time to go.

  So now here he was, leading thirteen men on horseback through the streets of Hayes, which had been cleared of autumn leaves and now hosted groups of masked children playing make-believe. He glanced gratefully at Captain Sutton, feeling honored that the big man had agreed to this risky scheme. He could do without the complimentary guard uniform, though, for it was a little too big on him and the helmet bounced uncomfortably with each step of his horse. He pointed in the same way the seeking stone was and said they were on the right track, their horses trotting past a bakery and a clothing store. It was all he could do now until they had Rainer and the princess in sight—and hopefully Callie as well, if the madman hadn’t slain her as soon as he had her in his clutches.

  After twenty minutes, Sutton said they were nearing the fence that separated Hayes from the Red Borough. It made sense that Rainer would be there, though Sean had secretly wished the killer’s new hideout was well away from that dark, tortured place. He wanted to hear that godforsaken whine in the air as much as he wanted to lose another finger.

  As the cavalry neared a church with a green dome, Sean noticed something. He had been trying to keep his bearings, mindful of which way was north, and from the looks of it, the stone’s light beam had veered a little to the left—and it wasn’t because they were nearing the princess. “I think she’s being moved. What should we do, captain?”

  After a moment’s deliberation, Captain Sutton said, “We catch up to them before they get too far away. Keep an eye on that stone.” He commanded his men to break their horses into a canter and leaned forward with a determined look on his face. Sean held on tightly to the horn of his saddle, which wasn’t easy since he still had the seeking stone in one hand, and he prayed they weren’t making a big mistake. The princess’ life was in their hands, and if Rainer saw them in pursuit, the best they could hope for was a standoff with Alyssa held hostage.

  At worst, Rainer would gut her just to punish them for their insolence. It wouldn’t matter then what happened to the killer; Sean and the captain would likely be sentenced to the executioner’s block for provoking him.

  Rainer picked up two instruments that looked like torture devices, one made for piercing a tongue, the other for binding hands or feet together with screws. Fearing for her life, Callie grew short on air and felt claustrophobic in her cage. She cupped both hands over her mouth and breathed into them, which warmed her fingers and helped settle her nerves.

  “I thought this would be easier,” Rainer mused. “I don’t know where to begin with you. Should I leave you blind or take your hearing? Should I leave you begging for mercy, or have you beg for death?” He crossed the room and knelt next to the cage. “What method do you think I should start with?”

  She lowered her hands and looked up at him fearfully, hoping this wasn’t a trick question. “How about you start with the one that lets me walk away, unharmed and unspoiled?”

  Rainer brayed laughter and returned to the table. “I think you missed your calling in life! You should have been a bard, telling jokes and stories. But no, you had to be a thief in Clan Reno, and you had to volunteer for my special mission. You’d have been better off killed by that lonely road.” Her eyes grew as large as marbles, and she clutched one of the bars in front of her. Rainer sauntered over and knelt with a wicked dagger in hand, its serrated edge stained from overuse. “Yes, Callie—I’m the one who killed your parents.”

  She wanted to scream, spit at him, claw those insane eyes out and make him feel the pain of fifteen years of sorrow and loss all at once. But something seemed off. He didn’t seem the right age to be her parents’ killer, plus he was one of the Three Roses who were created only two-and-a-half years ago, if Sean was correct. Rainer couldn’t have been that mysterious man.

  Rainer screamed at her, making her jump a little, and he laughed as he went back to the table. “I’m just fucking with ya! I heard your story from Giacomo last I saw him. Believe me, I wish I had been the one who did it, but alas, I can only dream it.”

  She hung her head in exhaustion and despair, her thoughts drifting to her old clan leader. Giacomo had been like a third father to her, a man she looked up to for teaching her how to survive the mean streets of the Rim. Now she learned he had divulged personal information to this monster that wasn’t his to give. He had probably meant no harm by it, but it still felt like a breach of trust.

  “Are you really doing this for money?” she asked, unable to keep the whine out of her voice. “You went through all this trouble over—how much was it? A hundred thousand crowns?”

  He struck two blades together, sparks striking his tunic. “Three hundred fifty thousand crowns.”

  Callie thought nothing could surprise her anymore, but that enormous figure did. “What would you do with that kind of money? Please, I want to know what my life is worth to you.”

  He shrugged. “Everyone needs money. It’s what helps drive goods and services. The more you have, the more you can get.”

  “But you’re an assassin. You don’t need a house or enough food to raise a family; you have to keep moving or else you’ll get caught.”

  “Well, maybe it’s not the money itself I need but the satisfaction of attaining it. Money determines my worth, and that kind of coin would make me quite worthy indeed.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “You sure do have worth, putting your Goddamn neck on the line to capture the princess. Once the King finds out what you did to her, your head will go from five hundred gold to five thousand—no, fifty thousand! It won’t just be guards looking for you then!”

  Rainer gave her an unreadable expression, his hands continually sliding blades together. He then made one of his chilling grins and said, “I’m going to enjoy breaking you.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair and rested her scrunched face in her left palm. The end was coming soon, and it would be painful. She may as well beg for mercy, because Rainer sure as hell won’t grant her the swift death she’d desire.

  The cavalry turned a hard right onto a narrow avenue of apartments. Pedestrians scrambled out of the way of the horses trotting double file, and a few onlookers from above yelled at them to watch where they were going. It was the second northbound street they went on, and Sean still couldn’t be sure if they were nearing the princess. Captain Sutton’s constant demands for directions were getting annoying, but Sean tolerated them since he knew the captain was anxious about the princess’ safety. He wasn’t the only one.

  As they grew close to a bakery with fresh tarts on display, Sean thought the stone’s light beam swiveled to the left. It wasn’t a quick change, but it was enough to encourage him. He ordered the men to make a sudden turn onto a crowded street where holiday revelers drank booze through their masks and played horseshoes and tests of strength. Ordering the people to shoo and step aside earned the guards dirty looks and trash thrown their way, but they thankfully got through in a hurry.

  Just when Sean chided himself for choosing a lousy route, the light beam made a hard right. The princess was on the next street over, which turned out to be a shopping avenue wide enough for the horses to spread out. Problem was, there were several carriages on either side and pedestrians who crossed with little regard for safety.

  “She has to be in one of these vehicles,” Captain Sutton said. “Which one?”

  “I can’t tell,” Sean replied, his eyes glued on the seeking stone. “Let’s keep going, I’ll find it!”

  They prodded their steeds into a canter, consistently ordering people to stay out of their way. Sean’s gaze darted back and forth between the various carriages and the stone in his sweaty palm. There were as ma
ny as five carriages up ahead, and he couldn’t see which one the light beam honed in on. He didn’t want to point to the wrong one, because once one was targeted, it would be near impossible to get the guards to switch targets.

  He waited until he passed a black carriage with gold stripes before he considered making a call. The light beam was hardly moving now, pointing to one of two vehicles that overlapped each other. He didn’t want to get close for fear of spooking the coachmen, but he would probably have to so he could determine which vehicle to pursue.

  Fortunately, he had a stroke of luck. One of the carriages turned on another street, followed by the one behind it—and the light beam didn’t move until the second carriage did.

  “It’s that one!” Sean cried. “The one that’s all black!”

  “All right, we’ll ease up behind it,” the captain said, and ordered the men behind him to make the turn after the black carriage.

  For a while, it seemed they could surround the carriage and force it to stop without much trouble. But then the two coachmen noticed they were being tailed and whipped their animals into a gallop, barely skirting the carriage in front of them. The captain whipped his reins and dug in his heels, and the entire team raced up the street with screaming pedestrians leaping out of the way. Sean barely had time to tuck the stone into a pocket before he kicked his horse into a run, falling behind the captain.

  “Sean, do something!” the captain barked.