Begrum rubbed the sides of his mouth thoughtfully. “I hadn’t heard about that.” He seemed troubled. “The rest of what you say is true. But you’re wrong about one thing... it all goes down tomorrow night, not now.”
“How can you be so sure?” Raven asked, her brow furrowed.
“Here I thought I was the one asking the questions.” Begrum’s fingers tapped the wooden tabletop. “My little mice have heard tell that the emperor, Max the Great himself, will be visiting the tower tomorrow. My gut tells me that’s when whatever the Order has been cooking up will happen. And my gut is never wrong.”
Raven glanced at Cole, who shrugged and nodded. “It... seems a reasonable assumption,” she admitted. “All the more reason to release us. The tower is well guarded and it will take time to come up with a plan to gain entry.”
Begrum stared at her for a few moments, before suddenly banging on the table with his fist. A heartbeat later, Jax pushed open the door. “You can leave whenever you wish,” the bearded man said with a sweeping gesture. But before they could move, he added, “Or you could stay and we’ll work it out between us.”
Raven turned to face him. “Are you saying you want to help us?” She didn’t attempt to conceal her doubt. “You don’t strike me as the altruistic type. What’s your interest in this?”
Begrum glanced at the shaven-headed boy. “Go and fetch him,” he muttered. When the urchin scampered away, he turned back to the three of them. “You think just because we’re thieves and cutpurses that we don’t care about our city? Our country? A strong Empire is best for all of us. I’m as patriotic as the next man.”
“Not to mention that purses become a lot lighter in times of trouble,” said Caspian. Raven was impressed with Cole’s old friend; despite his nervous disposition he seemed determined not to be cowed by the thief-master.
“If you mean to insult me you’ll need to try a lot harder,” the bearded man replied dismissively. “That’s one reason, but not the only one. If some stuck-up noble or fat merchant decides to follow the green star, that’s their look out. But my little lads and lasses are going missing, and that bothers me.”
“What do you mean, missing?” Raven asked.
“One day they’re running around like good little mice, the next they get nabbed and don’t come back.”
“Perhaps they get sent to prison,” Cole offered.
Begrum shook his head. “Remember that one lad I mentioned before?” He drew his thumb across his neck. “Certain whispers reached me and I paid good gold to spring him from the Clink. That was weeks ago. He was the last one to come out from there, and as best we can tell, none are left inside. A couple of my lads swear they’ve seen some of our lost lambs going in and coming out of the tower... but no sign of chains, save the silver one around their necks.”
Cole and Raven shared a knowing look. “We believe you,” she said. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
Before he could answer, the room’s door banged open and two others entered. The one standing in the doorframe with his hand resting firmly on the other’s shoulder could have been the twin of the bouncer she had seen earlier. The man who was pushed into the room by this giant was bearded, like the thief-master, but fairer of face. Unlike the tavern’s other patrons, his clothes were scrupulously neat. As he came into the room, his face lit up with a broad grin and he slapped the young man standing beside Cole on the back. “Caspian!” he cried. “What the blazes are you doing here?” Then, when he caught sight of the figure next to him, the man’s mouth hung open in surprise. “Cole! Is it really you? I had thought that your journey might perhaps bring you this far, but it is good to see you.”
“Captain Brandt!” Cole beamed and clasped the older man’s hand. “Cas told me that you’d made it to the city. I wish I’d known you were coming this way, it would have made my journey a lot easier.”
“Don’t count on it,” the captain replied with a grim smile. He turned his gaze upon Raven. “And who’s this?”
Over the next minute or so, they made the necessary introductions. It seemed the captain had stumbled into the tavern earlier that night in the course of his intelligence-gathering, and the nature of his questions had aroused the thieves’ suspicions. Fortunately his incarceration had been brief and not too unpleasant.
Begrum seemed irritated by the display. “Well isn’t this a heart-warming reunion.” His tone was withering. “Shall we continue with business before I bring my supper back up?” When they quieted, he smiled thinly. “Have you any thoughts about how you will get inside the tower?”
“A couple,” Raven replied. “When I went to the plaza, I saw several iron grates in the ground. If there’s a sewer, then it’s likely that it connects to the tower and...” she tailed off as Begrum sat shaking his head.
“We had a similar notion,” he told her. “I sent a few of my little mice into the tunnels to investigate, but it’s no good. There is a way in, but it’s blocked off by steel bars as thick as your arm, set deep inside the rock. It would take days to cut through.”
Raven was undeterred. “Then we climb. We’ll find a rope and grapple and...”
“And you’ll fall and break your necks,” the bearded man finished. “The outside of the tower is smoother than my arse, and it’s a hundred feet or more until the first open window. Even if you don’t fall, the guards will see you and shoot you down before you reach it.”
This time, Raven felt slightly put out. “It feels like you already have a plan in mind,” she said, crossing her arms again. “Why don’t you share it with us?”
“Well, it seems to me that the only way you’ll get into that tower is through the front door,” he replied, holding her gaze.
“That’s your plan?” Raven threw up her hands. “There are twenty guards at least, and probably more inside. And only four of us?” She glanced at her companions. The captain was likely able to handle himself, but Cole was raw at best and his skinny friend was a completely unknown quantity. “It’s suicide,” she said firmly. “We’d need an army to get in through the front.”
Begrum pushed back his chair and stood. He was not a large man, she saw now, but there was a burly strength to him that suggested he was more than accustomed to the physical aspects of his profession. His beard parted in a wolfish grin, revealing a golden tooth that shone in the candlelight. “Now that,” he said, “I can help you with.”
CHAPTER 32
The threat that had gripped the city in a state of fear since the first days of winter had been ended, though it would be some time before most noted its passing. For the present, the curfew remained in place and, when the dawn arrived, the streets of Ehrenburg were at peace. Or so it seemed.
Some of its inhabitants remained simply unaware that the night had ended, the dark clouds brewing above the city serving to obscure the sun’s rays. Others, though aware of the hour, were unwilling to venture out of doors. The gathering maelstrom above their heads was unlike anything they had ever seen; an anomaly of weather that had little of the natural about it. Across the breakfast tables of Ehrenburg, grim-faced citizens muttered about ill omens, though all were at a loss as to what, if anything, it might portend or what should be done about it.
Many more, however, awoke as they ever did, their breast filled with a calm serenity that they ascribed to their devotion to their new-found faith. For some reason that none could ever explain, however, upon waking these disciples of enlightenment were always overcome with a great weariness; a draining of energies that left them unable to do more than sit awhile before feeling able to start their day. If any spared a thought for the green gem they wore morning, noon and night, it was simply to regard it as a pretty bauble, albeit one they were oddly loath to ever be without.
In his sleeping chamber, perched far above the city streets, the Archon was none of these things. He woke with a start, his fingers clutching at his bedsheets. Damp with sweat, the nightshirt he wore clung unpleasantly to his back.
The d
ream was always the same. It was the one that boy had touched briefly upon, that day he had returned to that frozen rock in the middle of the ocean. Growing up there, he had left it as soon as he was able, and had it been up to him alone he would never have returned. But my life is no longer my own.
Despite the panic still tightening his chest, the Archon closed his eyes and lay back, enjoying these first few minutes after waking as best he could. It was only in these brief moments, so few and far between, that he was truly himself. All too soon, he knew, his god would return to him.
As it always did at these times, his mind raced. There was so much he wished to think on, and the time was so fleeting. Images flashed by his closed eyelids. Fragments of a distant childhood in the south. His mother, her easy smile replaced by tears. Untold days waiting expectantly as men returned to the village, swords wrapped in bundles upon their backs and shadows behind their eyes; the number of those returning fewer than had set out the summer before. Being packed off and sent to be raised among the priests, his young mind uncomprehending. Years of his life lost among musty tomes and meaningless rites. Breaking free to search for greater truths; for the god he believed must exist, not the one he had been told to obey.
And deep down in the endless dark, far from any home he had ever known, he had found Him.
He shied away from that memory; it was enough to relive that moment of terrible discovery every night in his dreams. Instead, he tried to focus on the question he always came back to, one that he never came any closer to answering. My name, he thought forlornly. What was my name?
In his mind, his god stirred. He felt the slither of scales across the edge of his thoughts, like the unfurling of a great serpent.
YOU ARE MINE. WHAT NEED HAVE YOU FOR A NAME?
He cowered in his bed as the thunderous voice assaulted his brain. Each word struck him like a physical blow. Thankfully, it was rare for his god to speak to him directly. Whenever He did, though, His tone was as it was now; cruel and mocking. “I’m sorry, lord,” he whispered. His hands were clamped protectively over his ears, though it did not help. “Forgive my foolish thoughts.”
He felt the presence demur. Then, with almost casual disregard it reached out and overwhelmed him. The Archon’s limbs twitched as the alien influence spread along them. A mind as old as time looked out through his eyes. There was a brief moment of disorientation, the strange feeling of two disparate beings occupying the same space, and then his perspective changed. He felt his purpose clearly once more, knew what needed to be done.
A callous smile crawled across the Archon’s face as he climbed from his bed. A memory of that fateful day in the bowels of the earth came to him again. But this time he was filled with gratitude that his god had blessed him with an aspect of His power, a gift beyond value, and sent him out into the world to carry out His will. And tonight all our years of planning will finally bear fruit, he thought, exultantly.
When he was dressed, the Archon left his sleeping chamber and climbed the short flight of steps that lead to the tower’s summit. At the top of the Spire was a vast, open room, in the centre of which was what most simply referred to as The Device. He approached it, and ran a hand lovingly across the cold metal surface. Soon.
If there was any part left of the man he used to be, that rebelled against these actions much as it had done on countless other occasions, it was restricted to a faint, tiny flicker at the back of his mind. The Archon ignored it.
* * *
In the backstreets and thieves’ dens of Copperton, the day passed in a frenzy of activity. With their plans laid, Begrum had been unwilling to let any of his new cohorts back onto the street, so Cole, Raven, Caspian and Captain Brandt stayed within the murky tavern and watched helplessly as numerous bodies of all shapes and sizes scurried back and forth carrying out their master’s orders.
The thief-master had at least seen fit to send runners to their various hostelries to fetch their packs. Any qualms the innkeepers may have held in handing over the belongings of their guests to the bare-footed street urchins that presented themselves at their back doors vanished in the face of a clinking purse.
Despite the hustle and bustle around them, Cole felt at a loose end. His own preparations had taken just the time needed to retrieve his sword from his pack and attach the scabbard to his belt. It might help if I knew what I was preparing for, he thought.
In the absence of anything better to do, he whiled away the day talking to the captain and Caspian about their own travels. His face paled when Captain Brandt spoke of the destruction of the Havørn and the death of half its crew; men he had known, if not well. It brought to his mind a dream he recalled having some weeks before, but kept it to himself. The captain was still clearly grieving for his loss, and it seemed frivolous to mention it.
Of particular interest was their account of the strange city they had found beneath the northern mountains. “And you think the creature we fought last night came from there?” he asked, when they described what they had seen there.
Caspian drew out two cylinders from his robe. “I found this last night after your friend’s encounter in the street,” he said, indicating one. “But this other I took from another being of similar construction that we found there.” He handed over both objects.
Cole weighed them up in his hands, then turned them, one after the other, examining the surfaces of each. “They’re the same,” he said after a pause.
“So it seems.” Caspian took them back and secreted them once again about his person. “At the least we can speculate that they were crafted by the same hands. I’m not sure yet what links them, but it seems too much of a coincidence to believe they are unrelated.”
Raven listened to their tale without much comment. Most of the time, she was to be found standing at one of the tavern’s windows, staring up at the tower that dominated the skyline with a thoughtful expression. She held herself stiffly, perhaps because of the bandage wrapped tightly around her ribcage... a task she had been assisted with by a blushing Caspian.
When their tale was finished, a thought occurred to Cole. “Wait, what about the other member of your crew, the one who helped you to escape the Legion?”
“Sten,” Captain Brandt said, with a sad smile. “He brought us practically to the city gates, but then on my orders he returned to his kinsmen in the Shadowlands.”
“He seemed like he would be useful in a fight. It’s a shame he is not here to help us in this.”
Caspian glanced at Captain Brandt, who stared at the floor. Cole got the sense that it had been a matter of disagreement between them. “Perhaps,” the captain replied. “He wanted to stay with us, Divine knows. It was my decision to send him away.” He sighed. “I just wanted to know that one of them had made it safely home.”
Of their host, they caught but brief glimpses most of that day. On occasion, the squat, bearded thief-master clumped through the tavern, barking instructions to his army of lackeys as he passed by. Long after the morning had given way to the afternoon, however, Begrum strode up to them and clapped his hands. “The hour draws near,” he told them. “My little mice have seen the emperor and that bastard son of his getting into a carriage. Even now they approach the tower.”
Captain Brandt looked up sharply. “Prince Adelmar will stand against us?”
Begrum grinned. “Not unless he’s grown wings since the last time I clapped eyes on him and can fly faster than an eagle. No, it’s the younger, Jarrod. Had a face like a slapped arse to boot.”
“What does it mean?” Cole asked.
“It means that it’s time to put on your dancing shoes, my lad. Grab whatever you need, we’re leaving.”
“What do you say, Grume?” Cole whispered into his pouch, one of the items retrieved by the street-children, while the others stirred themselves to follow the thief-master. “How about seeing this through to the end with us?”
The boggit’s gleaming yellow eyes regarded him coolly. “Wot’s in it for me?”
“Fine, worrever.” The little creature replied in grudging tones. “I’ll come. Yer’d only go and get that fool ‘ead of yers lopped off if I weren’t there to keep an eye on yers.”
Cole grinned. “I’ve grown very fond of you too.”
“Faggorf.” The boggit continued to grumble as Cole closed the pouch, but he detected a note of affection in his tone. There’d been plenty of opportunities for him to leave them since that day in the swamp, had he a mind to do so. Yet he had been a near-constant companion on their trek across half the Empire.
When they left the Charnel Arms, a full day after entering it, they were directed to follow after a throng of stern, flint-eyed men armed with an array of vicious-looking weaponry. Before he could take a step, though, Begrum laid a hand against the captain’s chest. “Not you, my jolly jack tar,” he growled. “You’re to follow Garling here to the docks.” He indicated a dour thief, cheeks dark with stubble, behind him.
Captain Brandt appeared confused. “What? Why?”
“I’ve a boat waiting there, one that’s well used to slipping in and out of the city without attracting the attention of the guards.” There was a flash of gold as the thief-master grinned. “Now, I’m not entirely sure how they’re going to react when you and your friends tweak the nose of the emperor’s chief advisor, or whatever it is you’re planning, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a means of escape lying close by.”
“A welcome suggestion,” Cole interjected. “But does she not already have a captain?”
“She did,” Begrum conceded with a shrug. “Unfortunately, he came down with a fatal case of believing that my money belonged in his pocket. A real tragedy, it was.” He gestured for the captain to leave in the direction of the harbour. “I thought with such an opening presenting itself, you’d be the perfect man for the job.”
Captain Brandt stared at him for a moment, clearly torn between the desire to accompany his friends and the logic behind Begrum’s suggestion. Finally, he nodded. “Cole,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to part ways here.”
Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) Page 69