There’s many corridors and hallways, and though my senses are all fine-tuned and highly honed because of all the alertness moving through my body…I don’t really notice the décor. There’s a lot of red, that much I can see, but other than that, it’s just unending hallways and the constant worry that someone’s going to catch us.
Finally (finally!), we make it to a corridor that is, obviously, much more ornamented than the others, so ornamented that it finally causes me to notice. There are dragon gargoyles everywhere, dragons carved into the banister of the stairs, dragons carved in the wood around each doorway, with large maws open, and pointed teeth on full display.
“These are the royal chambers. The general’s is the very last one on the right,” Fane murmurs. “Her horde will be located right off of her living chamber. Let’s go.”
“How do we know the door’s not locked?” asks Tahlia worriedly. “You said it wouldn’t be, but how do you know?”
“Because no one’s ever been daft enough to rob the palace, that’s why,” Fane snorts.
As Fane continues down the corridor, followed by Cinda and Lellie, I hang back and pluck at Tahlia’s shirtsleeve. She turns, annoyance clearly outlined on her features, and then sighs when she sees my expression.
“Don’t start, we’re almost there,” she tells me, holding up a hand, but I do anyway.
“Tahlia…have you even questioned how Fane knows this place so well?” I lick my lips. “Haven’t you noticed? She has a fairly amazing knowledge of the palace itself. Don’t you find this a little strange? Why are we trusting her?”
Tahlia shakes her head. “Because we are, Tal. She’s trustworthy, I promise you that.”
“But…but how do you know that?”
Tahlia’s face is inscrutable. “She’s saved my life more than once—we have to trust her. And, anyway, we’re already here. The time for wondering is over. Now is the time of doing.” She waves her hand, and then she plucks her shirtsleeve out of my grasp, and trots—feet light, making no sound on the floor—to catch up with the others.
I sigh for a long moment, and then follow after her. I like Fane, like her a lot—she strikes me as a good person. But there’s an itch along the back of my neck, the kind I used to get when something awful was about to happen…
I have a bad feeling about this.
But I have no choice. Tahlia’s right. We’re already here. I have to go along with it.
But my senses are extra heightened as I follow the rest down the corridor. I look at the magelamps flickering along the wall and shudder a little.
They glow a dark, sinister red.
We get to the last door on the right, and when Fane reaches her hand toward the doorknob—an ornate, golden thing—I wonder, for a moment, if it’s actually going to turn. But it does. The knob gives way in Fane’s hand, the door creaks eerily as it opens fully into the dark room beyond.
“After you, ladies,” says Fane with a sweeping bow, her mouth turning up at the corners. She’s pleased with herself, that much is obvious. We let ourselves into the room, glancing about. There’s no light, so it’s hard to make anything out until Tahlia snaps her fingers, and a magelamp appears over her right shoulder.
“All right—where’s the door to the horde?” she murmurs, glancing around. There are two doors off the main living quarters, and the first one we try is unlocked—it opens upon a bedroom with a large, blue canopy bed with rich, velvet drapes and coverlet.
The second door is locked.
“This will be the one to the horde,” says Fane sighing, tapping the locked handle. “The horde doors are always locked.”
“I thought you said they don’t lock the doors in the palace?” hisses Tahlia, reaching into her hair to unearth a hairpin. She finds one, crouching down in front of the door and begins to pick the lock.
“Well, hordes are always locked—it’s a Draco thing,” says Fane with a shrug. “Dragons steal from each other’s hordes all the time if we’re not careful.”
Tahlia sighs, but in a moment—or a bit less—she has the lock picked, and the door opens.
“There’s no booby traps, right?” asks Tahlia, but she doesn’t sound so sure of herself. Fane shakes her head.
“We don’t do that here,” is all she says.
Again, I worry that we’re simply going on her word alone. Though there’s no indication that she’s lying to us, and though she feels like a good person, the hair on the back of my neck is rising now, and when we step into the horde, I look at my sister, my jaw clenched.
“We need to find the ring and get out of here, fast,” I whisper to her.
“I’m right there with you,” murmurs Tahlia.
“I’ll guard the door. I’ll alert you if anyone comes,” says Fane with a little salute. She eases past us and goes to stand in the hallway, shutting the door softly behind her.
I look to my sister, my eyes probably conveying all of my are we sure we should trust her? feelings, but my sister ignores them, taking a deep breath. “Okay, ladies, it’s a simple ring with a fox head…you’ll know it when you…see it…” Tahlia trails off as we all step into the horde.
I don’t know what I was expecting. I suppose a small room with shelves and bits of treasure stacked along said shelves.
But that’s not what we encounter when we step into the general’s horde.
“How is this possible?” Cinda breathes out.
The answer is…I don’t know.
For the general’s horde is a cavernous maw of a room, going back and back…and back. The mage lamp over Tahlia’s shoulder doesn’t illuminate the far corners of the room, because I don’t think a bonfire could illuminate the far corners—they are, in fact, too far away to see.
“How are we going to…no,” says Tahlia, and she chokes out the word and with a sharp dismissal of her hand, sends the magelamp up into the air to hover over all of us. “No,” she repeats, and though her voice quavers, she forces the words out of her mouth: “we came this far. Surely…surely the gods are on our side. Look hard. Look fast. It’s here—we just have to find it. Maybe there’s some sort of…some sort of system to all this.”
The room, itself, is glorious—a thief’s dream come true. It’s as cavernous as a cave in here, and it seems that every bit of that space is taken up with treasure. Everything you think of when you hear that word is here: golden coins, golden statues, golden crowns and rings and chains and necklaces and bangles and there’s an actual golden chair, off to the side, where the general must sit to gaze on her horde and be pleased by it.
All of the treasure is in differently sized mounds, heaps and hills of the stuff, and there’s no rhyme or reason to the heaps, no matter what my sister said. It’s all a jumble, piles of treasure as far as the eye can see, limitless treasure…
I stare at the monstrosity of the task in front of us, and I know…I know, like I know, that we’re not going to find my mother’s ring in all of this. It’s impossible. The general obviously uses magic on her horde—the space is so much bigger on the inside than the outside—and if she uses magic for that, then what else does she use magic for? Maybe she has my mother’s ring hidden away in a compartment we could never find.
Maybe she threw out my mother’s ring long ago.
I stand there, and all of the wind is taken out of my sails as I stare at this impossible task laid out before us.
And that is, of course, when I am at my lowest, that my trickster goddess would choose to take things from very bad to so much worse.
Because the door to the general’s chambers, the door to the main living chamber, just beyond the horde’s door…
I can hear it opening.
For half a heartbeat, I tell myself that it’s just Fane, letting herself back into the quarters, wondering if we’re done yet. But I know it’s not Fane. I know it, because the bootfalls upon the floor are hard and flat, and Fane was being as quiet as possible…
So, when the door to the general’s horde is thro
wn wide, I know it’s not Fane we’ll see.
And it’s not.
It’s not Fane.
It’s a palace guard.
It’s obvious that this woman is a palace guard. She’s dressed in red and black—the Bright Coast colors—and she has a golden sword strapped onto her back. Her hair is swept up into three braids that are then pulled into tails that dangle down her back. Her slitted pupils graze over all of us, and her eyes narrow.
I take a deep breath, spread my hands.
Maybe, just maybe, I can explain our way out of this.
But she grabs one of my wrists, pulls me forward—not ungently.
“What are you ladies doing here? You should have been down to the Circ an hour ago. They are going to flay me alive if you’re late!”
I throw a glance over my shoulder at Tahlia. She looks as desperate as I feel, but she’s immediately smoothing it over, putting on her most charming of smiles.
A thief is many things, and—at the very top of the last—a thief is a very, very good bullshitter.
“Late?” she asks coolly, a little haughtily. The guard looks back at her as if she’s grown an extra head.
“Are you drunk?’ she asks, voice rising in anger. “If you’re drunk, you’re going to die in a matter of minutes, and they’ll know if you’re drunk, and then it’s my hide that’s in trouble.”
Tahlia shakes her head quickly. “Not drunk!” she promises, flashing a cheeky grin, though the cheeky grin is as transparent as glass.
Die?
This is not good.
This is very much not good.
“Come on, quickly now, we don’t have a moment to lose!” says the guard, pulling me forward. She tugs me out into the hallway.
Fane is gone.
Cinda and Tahlia and Lellie follow, because they must, though all of their eyes are wide.
We may be very good at bullshitting, Tahlia and I…but even the best sometimes get in over their heads.
And, right now, we’re very much in over our heads.
Chapter 18
CINDA
Well, I wanted an adventure.
And now it seems I’m having one.
Just…not the type of adventure where everyone survives at the end.
I heard the woman with the sword and the uniform—I’m assuming she’s a palace guard? She reminds me of the ones in Arktos—and she said the word “die,” and I don’t think she was talking about what happens when you dunk clothing in a vat of bright colors. She was talking about death, the kind I was hoping I wouldn’t see until I was a ripe, old age, and was in the middle of having sex with a very attractive and very lovely woman who I’d just baked a cake for.
Everyone has their ideal scenarios for death—mine just involves a lot more cake than most.
So we were following the guard who gripped Talis’s arm fairly tightly, and we followed her down the corridor of the palace, trying to keep up with her very long strides. I kept looking to Tahlia to see if she was about to act on a brilliant plan—but, no, she seemed just as uncertain as I was feeling—and then I looked to Lellie to see if she had any ideas, but her face was grim and determined and dark. Which made me assume that any ideas she had would involve drawing swords and lots of shouting.
And Fane was nowhere to be seen.
So I guess that leaves…me.
Do I have any bright ideas?
And the answer to that is no. Solidly no. Nope. Not a one.
But I can’t do nothing. I’m watching a guard drag the woman I love away, and I’m following after because I’ll be damned if any harm comes to Talis on my watch…but no, I…have no ideas.
Because I have no idea what we’re up against. And I don’t see any good moments where we could make a break for it, maybe bop the guard (poor lady) on the head and get away.
So I follow after, and I pray to any goddess listening that this ends well for all parties involved. Or, if not all parties, at least us.
And, at least semi-well. I’d take semi-well at this point in the evening.
So we follow the guard out of the palace and down the street and down another street. The guard is moving fairly quickly—she did mention something about being late—and we follow after her through all the twists and turns of the city, beneath the steadily glowing magelamps and through the crowds—but there aren’t that many crowds in the side streets—I’m thinking as quickly as I can.
I realized the moment that the guard came into the general’s horde with us, that she was, of course, mistaking us for someone else. But the only other time I’ve been a victim of mistaken identity was when my mother thought it was someone else who’d eaten all of the cookies. Which is a charming case of mistaken identity. And a delicious one.
Somehow, I don’t think this time around is going to be as charming.
As we stride hurriedly down the street, as I try to keep up with the guard, following along behind Talis and Tahlia and Lellie, I’m breathing fast, my heart roaring in my ears…but as I trot along, I begin to realize that I’m hearing something else beside our footsteps, besides the hum of the crowds for Wild Night, besides my own breath and roaring blood.
I start to hear a noise…a noise like none I’ve ever heard before.
We’re approaching a structure that’s tall—very tall, as tall as the palace itself. But whereas the palace had towers, buttresses, interesting architecture that created the shape of a building, what rises before us now isn’t a building, per se… it’s more like a solid black wall, tall and unyielding and fairly foreboding, without any breaks in its surface.
Honestly? It looks like a prison, which makes my heart rise into my throat. But it’s not a prison. Because as we duck into a side door—the first break in the wall that I could glimpse—I realize that the sound we’re hearing?
It’s shouting.
And rhythmic feet banging over and over again against something.
And many, many people rhythmically clapping over and over and over again.
When Talis looks back over her shoulder at Tahlia, there’s a change to her expression. She was worried and unsure before, but it’s changed, now. There’s a grim determination on her face. Grim determination that she seems to be sharing with her sister. I glance sidelong at Lellie, and she, too, has her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed and steely, as we move through the low, dark corridor.
It seems that she’s just realized where we are.
But I’m still in the dark.
“Lellie?” I chirp, giving her a big smile as I throw an arm around her shoulder and draw her close, doing my absolute best to act nonchalant (and probably failing). “Lellie,” I hiss into her ear, “what the hell is going on? Do you know where we are?”
“Yes. But we’ll get you out of this, don’t worry,” she promises, patting my hand before slipping out of my half-hearted embrace. “Don’t worry,” she promises again, and she seems to be making a genuine effort to try and calm me.
But I’m calm.
I’m very calm.
Completely and utterly calm.
“Where…exactly…are we?” I ask again, and—even to me—my voice sounds very high-pitched, even as I try to keep it as calm and even as possible. Because, of course, I am very calm right now. Totally calm. A calm and serene sea.
The chanting gets louder as we walk down the dark corridor.
I swallow.
“Do you remember hearing about the Circs that used to take place in Arktos City?” asks Lellie mildly, staring straight ahead.
I wrack my brains. I paid attention when I was a child and going to the temple teachers, but the history of all the countries on Agrotera and Arktos itself…it never interested me very much.
To be perfectly frank, I was often glancing about the classroom for who might be the next girl that I’d consider starting something with. Possibly. This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn quite a great deal—I just applied myself to things I cared about. And history…was not one of those things.
“No?” I answer with a whisper, cocking my head and glancing at Lellie. “What were they?”
Tahlia falls into step alongside me and leans close. Her face looks dire. “People pitted against one another for sport. Against creatures. Fighting to the death. Lots of blood. In front of an arena full of people. That’s what the Circ is. Fighting to the death for entertainment.”
“That…doesn’t sound very entertaining,” I manage, but Lellie is shaking her hair out over her shoulders, straightening her back, lifting her chin and her eyes are blazing.
“We’ll get through this. We’ve been mistaken for another set of warriors, obviously. But Cinda isn’t a warrior. They won’t make her fight,” murmurs Lellie to Tahlia.
“We have to get out of this,” Tahlia is hissing. “We may be warriors, but that means nothing in the face of whatever they’re going to put us up against. Have you heard about the Draco Circs? They’re the bloodiest that have ever been. They get creatures shipped in from far away countries, creatures that people haven’t ever seen…” Tahlia trails off, biting at her lip. “Shit. Shit. This is all my fault.”
“If anyone’s going to do the blaming around here, it’s going to be me, for even allowing any of this to happen. I could have stopped you from kidnapping Cinda, probably,” says Lellie severely, but then her face softens when she glances at Tahlia. “I love my mother and I understand why you wanted that ring back, understand why you were trying to start up a relationship with your sister again. I understand. But this is bad. The best we can do is make certain Cinda stays out of it as a civilian.”
“Yes,” Tahlia agrees, though she, too, looks as if she wishes we could all stay out of this.
“Ladies.” I clear my throat. We’ve fallen somewhat behind the guard and Talis, and I’m able to talk in a soft murmur now. “Civilian or not, I’m here with you. We promised we’d stick together.”
“I’m not going to send you to die for honor’s sake,” Lellie snorts, shaking her head. “Talis…she cares about you. That much is obvious. She is thinking the exact same thing we are right now, I guarantee it.”
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