The City of Lies (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Path to London on the left,” I said, peering at the compass face.

  Heidi took us down a quiet alley. It was tight, well shielded from the road—and the Via Cavour’s ample number of passersby.

  I cut open a gateway after a quick check that we were clear.

  “Carson,” Heidi started as he made for it.

  “Leprechaun gold disappears anyway,” he bit back. And he disappeared.

  Heidi glanced to me, lips pursed … and the corners creeping down just a fraction.

  Before I could question, she passed through the gateway too.

  I followed.

  12

  We came out on a moor. The sky overhead was purple, deep, as though wine had spilled across the heavens and seeped into the clouds. There was no sun, not that I could see anyway, but judging by the slight tinge of pink toward the west, it was somewhere below the soft horizon. This didn’t seem much like dawn though; twilight was giving way to true dusk.

  Roads were cut along the moor. Cobbles underfoot led roughly north and south, going by the compass. Past a knoll rose a signpost, and other roadways linked up, roving away into the night as though linking to the corners of an invisible hexagon.

  The entire landscape was scattered with rocks. Swinging back, I saw we’d come out of one, portal antipode evaporating into its craggy face.

  Carson had gone off ahead.

  “You all right?” I asked Heidi.

  “He didn’t even wait to ask if he’s going in the right direction,” she grumbled.

  “Call him back.”

  “No,” she said. “He is going the right direction. I’m just annoyed is all.”

  We strode to catch up to Carson.

  “Where are we?” I asked when the distance had been covered.

  “Felldawn,” Heidi answered. “On the Spurn Wyle.”

  “Huh?”

  “The road.” She stamped a foot for emphasis. “The cut-through to London is a couple of miles away.”

  “Won’t it be dark before we get there?”

  “Summer,” said Heidi. “This is about as dark as it gets.”

  “Hmm.”

  We walked without speaking for some time, the only noise between us our feet on the cobbles. I enjoyed the silence—didn’t much want to think right now, after listening to that last conversation between Carson and Heidi before we came through—and tracked the landscape as we went. So much rock, all over. It was like some great god had salted the moor.

  Considering night had fallen, it was surprisingly warm. More than once I ran my fingers across my forearms, expecting gooseflesh and finding none.

  The moorland was grassy, without flowers. Yet a peculiar tang pervaded the air, delicate in its subtlety. It was like roses, but there was a hint of orange in there too—or, I thought as I sniffed, the slightly artificial orange scent to a flavored chocolate bar. It wasn’t unpleasant, but the mixture was an odd one.

  At the crossroads (was it still a cross roads when it created a kind of star rather than a cross?), Carson lagged for Heidi and me to catch up the last span separating us.

  “Sorry,” he said when we arrived. He didn’t look at us, taking great interest in the signpost by the roadside.

  True enough, behind us ahead and forward: Spurn Wyle. The nearest on the left, and therefore the farthest on the right, was Melloway, and the other Cairn Walk. Not quite as cheerful, that. I thanked our lucky stars we weren’t headed that way.

  “It’s okay,” I told Carson, putting a hand on his elbow. “I understand.”

  He nodded like it wasn’t okay at all. Clearing his throat, he turned to give me a fake smile. It slipped just a fraction as his gaze fell to Heidi, and he looked away. Beside me, she did the same.

  “So,” he said, a poor facsimile of cheer, “you said we can get back to London this way?”

  “That’s right,” Heidi confirmed. “Just carry on ahead, and I’ll say when to stop.”

  We fell into step again, a line now.

  Carson looked behind us. “I thought there were many roads to Rome.” He gave a hollow laugh.

  Heidi and I returned blank stares.

  “It’s an old quote,” he said uneasily, and cleared his throat again. “Like a cliché.”

  I glanced to Heidi. She remained just as blank. I was glad that it wasn’t just me being a total cretin.

  I decided to try a gentler approach.

  “Carson,” I began carefully, “what’s behind all this? This urge to seek out treasure?”

  He shrugged, but there was something affected about it. “I don’t know. I guess I just think it’s time I bring something to the table. You know, something more than being a spotter in the temples.” A pregnant pause. “Or a drag on the team.”

  “You’re not a drag, Carson,” I said, hand on the elbow again. “How can you say that?”

  He didn’t look at me. “I’m not much good, am I.”

  “Of course you are. You do add something. A whole lot, in fact.”

  “Spotter doesn’t count for much. Half the time you’re both doing that stuff yourselves, anyway.”

  Heidi huffed. “And you’ve just forgotten tearing a hole in the Chalice Gloria’s chamber and sending the Order of Apdau out into a tornado, have you?”

  “No, but—”

  I cut in: “What about the time you bludgeoned Borrick and stole his telepathic ring?”

  “I didn’t really—”

  “Plus there was that time you totally exposed the fact that Mira is crushing on that Clay guy she eats burritos with.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Oh, or how about when we all got to experience Heidi peeing in the water?”

  “Technically only you experienced that,” she said.

  “And also that she can’t stand your fashion choices,” I carried on, “and that you have a stupid face.”

  Heidi’s expression twisted. “I never said he has a stupid face.”

  Carson, caught between us, ran his fingertips across his forehead and down his nose, then across his cheeks. “I—” he started.

  Oops. Too far in the name of one-upping Heidi. “Carson, I’m sorry,” I started. “I didn’t—need to tell you …”

  He looked at us sadly. Looked at Heidi sadly. “I guess I know I’m not, you know, the … the most handsome man around. But my face is stupid?”

  “It’s not,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “I swear it’s not.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just … I dunno. Trying to get the heat off of me. You know, after being reminded of my …”

  “Burrito crush,” Heidi said. “Enchilada lover. Nacho, um …”

  “Not easy, is it?”

  “Nacho prettyboy.”

  “Err.”

  Heidi huffed. “Shut up, Brand. Carson: your face isn’t stupid.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really.” And, snapping back to typical Heidi fare: “If anything’s stupid, it’s the brain behind it.”

  I shook my head. “Fish in a barrel.”

  Heidi told Carson, “You’re all good. Okay?”

  “Right.” Unconvinced, but at least he sounded as though he was trying to take her word for it. “So where do we turn off?”

  “Three quarters of a mile, give or take. It’s the biggest rock out there.”

  Carson squinted. I did too, mentally calculating how far away Heidi was talking, then tracking over the dark smears scattered across the landscape. In this light, it was hard to make out which was larger than any of the others; their bases blurred into dark grass, brackish under the purple sky, rendering all height meaningless.

  Carson frowned. He took his glasses off, blew onto the lenses, and wiped them on his sweater. Back on his nose they went, and—

  “Are there people up ahead?”

  Just as I was opening my mouth to say, “I think you’re seeing things,” Heidi cut me off.

  “Looks like you’re right.”

  I squinted harder
. “Where are you looking?”

  Carson pointed, away from the road.

  I followed—and saw.

  The figures blended into the moorland, but now I knew to look, I saw them. Hard to tell how many, though if my eyes were working properly at discerning them from rocks or knolls, I was certain of at least a dozen. I’d be able to count better if only they’d just—

  “Are they just standing there?” Carson asked.

  —move.

  “Looks like it,” Heidi muttered.

  “Who are they?”

  She shook her head, didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know,” I offered.

  “Other Seekers?” Carson asked.

  “Could be. I imagine there are lots of cut-throughs along the Spurn Wyle.”

  “But they’re not on the road.”

  Mm. Yes, I hadn’t overlooked that little detail.

  “What do we do?” Carson asked.

  Heidi found her voice. “Keep going.”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  She nodded, not taking her eyes off the sentries. “I don’t know any other route home. We have to keep going. We’re most of the way there anyway.”

  “And we can run if we need to, right?” Carson asked.

  I wanted to say it wouldn’t come to that … but I couldn’t quite bring myself to.

  We carried on. None of us wanted to speak, and yet Carson and I kept trying to fill the silence with random observations that neither of us were truly interested in. They were so falsely casual, as though this were normal, and we were just three friends taking an evening stroll. Not one kickstarted a conversation longer that a couple of sentences.

  And all the while, my unease rose.

  The figures did not move.

  Nor did they speak.

  I pointed this out to Heidi. “We’d hear them by now,” I said in a low whisper. “It’s so silent out here, we’d hear their voices over the moor.”

  “Maybe they’re not Seekers,” Carson said.

  Heidi didn’t address either point. “They must be able to see us by now.” She shook her head, eyes roving over them. Ever closer now, it wouldn’t be long before we passed the first of these sentinels, silent and unmoving amidst the loose rock that spilled across the gently rising moorland beside the Spurn Wyle.

  “How far to our exit?” Carson asked.

  “Past them,” Heidi said flatly.

  “We can’t go around?”

  “Do you see anything to divert around? It’s just grass and dirt and stone out here.”

  “Sorry.”

  She quieted again, watching.

  Our footsteps were too loud now. Each clipped noise on the cobbles sent a flutter throughout me. I wanted to mute us so we could escape undetected.

  But we were the only people trekking across the roadway, the only movement all around us. If we silenced everything, even the beating of our hearts, we would still be seen.

  “Are they dead?” Carson breathed. No answer. “I hate to go all Han Solo here, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  He wasn’t the only one. “Maybe we should double back to the crossroad and try another route,” I said to Heidi. “The Melloway might lead to Paris.”

  “It might also lead to the bottom of a swamp,” she countered. “Besides,” she added begrudgingly, “they might follow. We have to keep going.”

  We did.

  “It’s bothering me that I can’t see them,” Heidi grumbled quietly. “Why can’t we see their faces?”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” said Carson. “We should keep it that way so we don’t have to look our murderers in the face as they stab us to death.”

  “Thank you so much for that wonderful image,” I whispered.

  “Don’t be so scared,” Heidi chastised us both. But there was no conviction in her voice, and nothing came on the heels of her words.

  A hundred meters from them.

  Still indistinct.

  Eighty.

  No making them out at all. Unclustered, it was possible to see now which of the vague shapes were people. But there was no form to them, and no color; just darkness, a ghostly outline with a head and shoulders and who knew what beneath them.

  Fifty meters.

  The smell on the air was starting to taste acrid, sour, like vomit rising up your throat preceded by a breath of sickly gas—

  Cloaks.

  These people were wearing cloaks.

  “Oh, hell,” I said—

  As one, they began to move.

  Carson yelped. “What’s—?”

  “Behind us,” I said—but he’d already gone, my hand groping for him behind me as the other snatched the umbrella from my belt, swiping it off of the metal loop holding it in place.

  Heidi fell in next to me. Already Feruiduin’s Cutlass had sprung to its full length, silvery blade ethereal in the night.

  I shook out Decidian’s Spear, brought it around as the cloaked figures came down the hill at us.

  “Who are they?” Carson cried.

  “The Order of Apdau,” I muttered. “And they brought friends.”

  13

  The Order rushed at us, the first of their number leaping the last of the distance to the road—

  “So much for sending them to Florida!” Heidi shouted.

  She swung the cutlass high.

  I had just time to catch a flash of a dagger as one of the Order swung out to block the blow. The other was too slow, and fell backward, head jerking around—

  Then I was jabbing with Decidian’s Spear. Low, to disable.

  “No mercy, Brand!” Heidi yelled. “They wouldn’t show you any, so why do them the same favor?” This last word was punctuated by another violent swing of the cutlass. It struck metal, bouncing off one of those stupid daggers the Order used, with the shallow troughs through the metal. What were they called? Something with an S, or—

  Two of the Order rushed for me. I swung around, swiping low again with the spear. The tip sailed across the leg of one, cutting a hole through his cloak—but the other leapt over like it was a skipping rope, still surging forward—

  I yelped and backpedaled, slamming Carson—

  “Sorry!”

  I ducked as a dagger flew for my head—

  Cinquedea—that was what they were called!

  Spear brought around, I clutched it with both hands and slammed it against the cloaked figure’s midriff.

  He stumbled back—

  Another cinquedea swung for me, from the left. I parried the blow—the Order member stumbled, overbalanced—I slammed the wooden haft of the spear into where I figured—hoped—his mouth or nose would be—

  Carson gasped.

  I pivoted to see one of the Order tugging his manbag. His free hand rose, cinquedea dark against the deep purple night—

  Heidi barked, “Leave him alone!” and swung.

  I had a flash of something I couldn’t quite place; something heavy fell, too heavy, and the blade rang against the cobbles—

  She cut off his hand. She cut off his hand.

  —then someone’s hand encircled my wrist, and I swung around.

  One of the Order had come in close. The hood of his cloak had shifted just enough to give a glimpse of his jaw, and gritted teeth—

  I clenched mine, and headbutted him.

  He reeled back. Something rattled—had I knocked teeth out? Or was that just my brain coming dislodged?

  So many stars across my eyes …

  “I need a weapon!” Carson was saying from behind me.

  “You’re good as you are!” Heidi snapped back.

  “Something sharp, and foldable—”

  “No!”

  That was both of us. I was fairly sure we’d just imagined the very same thing: Carson, well-meaning as ever, accidentally stabbing one of us in the back. And this time there would be no Tide of Ages to reverse time and fix it.

  Another blade sailed for me. I brought up Decidian’s Spear to m
eet it. The cinquedea glanced off, skittering down the pole toward my fingers—

  I gasped as I felt its tip graze a long line along my knuckle. Pulled back—

  Blood.

  I squeezed the spear. Brought it around, back—stabbed low.

  The tip sailed through cloak, but met no other resistance. Missed his leg, damn it.

  I yanked back again, jabbing out for another of the Order with the wooden end.

  Another flash of metal, and I just managed to meet cinquedea with the spear’s tip. The weapons screamed on contact, a short, high-pitched whine.

  “How did you know we’d be here?” I demanded.

  No answer.

  The one on the left made another beeline for Carson.

  I stepped forward to block him, and stabbed out again. Almost caught him this time—almost.

  “You just loiter in the Felldawn, do you?”

  From Heidi: “Less talky, more stabby, Brand!” Then: “Back off from that, Carson!”

  “But he dropped his cinquedea—”

  “Do not touch that! Let Mira and me deal with this!”

  “But I could help—”

  Heidi grunted. She swung the cutlass high, driving it across the chest of one of her attackers—then she darted low, dropping to her knee as she rolled around—

  Up again—

  “Brand, catch!”

  She threw the downed blade in a lazy arc, just enough spin on it so the handle presented itself to me—

  Carson dove across, snatching it out of the air instead.

  He stared at it, wide-eyed, like it was a trophy.

  Horror wrenched my face down, and Heidi’s.

  “I can fight,” he whispered.

  “No, Carson, sorry but—” I swiped with Decidian’s Spear, wide and high, all the force I could muster. The Order scattered—

  “You can’t,” I finished. And, grabbing Carson by the sleeve, I high-tailed it up the road.

  Heidi sprinted after us.

  “Where are we going?” I called back.

  “Two hundred feet! It’s the big rock on the left; looks like it got broken in two, because half of it is in fragments around the base.”

  “Which side?”