by Brian Farrey
It was probably the desperation.
Supplies were gathered. Maps were collected. The entire village pitched in. We got a good night’s sleep and then, just before dawn, everyone rallied in the square. The morning mist down the street parted as a parade of backpack-wearing assassin-monks strode into town, Edilman and Bennock at the head.
Everyone divided into the groups I’d assigned. I walked around to make sure they were ready. Maloch stood near the scaffold, doing a last-minute check through his backpack. A pair of monks did likewise at his side.
“I should be going with you,” he said when I approached.
“I know you want to,” I said. “Splitting up is the fastest way to get things done.”
I moved to Callie and her monk bodyguards. She gripped the straps on her backpack so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. She smiled but I could see the terror in her eyes.
“You okay?” I asked.
She gave a single nod. “I’ll be fine. I just—”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be great.”
“But what if she’s forgotten—”
“She hasn’t.”
Callie clicked her tongue as Edilman moved to each team, issuing instructions. “I can’t believe you let him into our lives again, after last time.”
“He’s had several chances to get revenge,” I told her. “I think he and the monks really want to help. And we need them now, in case we run into trouble.”
She wasn’t convinced. “I’m glad he’s not coming with me. Edilman Jaxter is the last person I want by my side in a crisis.”
Across the way, I heard Uncle Garax yelp in fear. One of the hardest things had been convincing everyone in the village to release Garax. But he was an important part of the plan.
I went over to find Luda intimidating Uncle Garax near the entrance to the Ghostfire house. As I approached, Luda pulled me aside.
“I should be going with you,” she said.
Everybody wanted to go with me. I liked being popular.
I shook my head. “Luda, I need you to go with Uncle Garax. You’re the only one I trust to make sure he does what he’s supposed to do and doesn’t just take off. Can you do that?”
She arched an eyebrow. “You doubt my abilities?”
No. The only thing I believed in more than Luda’s abilities was my uncle’s low tolerance for pain. Something Luda could exploit if he got out of line.
“Who knows when I’ll see you again?” I asked. “How about a hug?”
“How about broken bones?”
Life as a rebel had made Luda sassy.
Finally, I got to Da. He pulled me in tight and, for a minute, I didn’t think he was going to let go.
“At the first sign of danger—” Da started.
“I will honor the Grimjinx name and run like a demented gekbeak in the other direction,” I promised. “Are you okay working with Edilman?”
Da glanced across the square where the abbot stood with most of the population of Slagbog. Everyone was armed with some kind of weapon, from pole arms and halberds to garden hoes and egg whisks.
“I still don’t know that I trust him,” he said, “but I have to admit that it feels a bit like the old days. If he can do what he promises . . .”
I gave Da an extra hug. “Come back safe.”
“We’re wasting time!” Edilman shouted. Bennock and a female monk named Keela moved to my side. I exhaled loudly as Bennock gave my shoulder a squeeze. Everyone nodded to one another. And one by one, our teams departed, each in a different direction.
“Harash porr glagg!” Oberax called out. An ancient par-Goblin blessing: May your good fortune flow swifter than your enemy’s. No doubt about it: we needed every bit of luck we could get.
The second morning of our trip started as the first morning had: with pain. Luckily, it wasn’t my pain.
I hunched over our campfire, cooking a breakfast of gekbeak eggs, while Sister Keela trained Bennock in hand-to-hand combat. He had the punching down. But any time he tried to leap in the air and kick, he ended up in a gnarled heap of limbs on the ground.
When Keela took our flagons to be filled in a stream, I handed Bennock his eggs.
“Eat up,” I said. “You’re a growing assassin.”
Bennock grumbled. “I don’t think I’ll ever learn.”
I shrugged. “You’re just a little clumsy. Like me.”
“You?” Bennock laughed. “I’ve hardly even seen you stumble.”
“Well . . . I’ve gotten better. I’m not as clumsy as I used to be. Trust me, you’ll get better too.”
Bennock sighed. “I think you’re confusing my ‘I can do this’ look with my ‘I just want this to be over’ look.”
Leaning in, I lowered my voice. “You mean . . . you don’t want to be an assassin-monk?”
The question caught him off guard. The eggs slipped from Bennock’s hands and into the fire. He groaned. I split my own portion of eggs in two and gave him the second half. He smiled with embarrassment.
“Most acolytes come to the Abbey because they want to join the order. I was an orphan and—”
“You were never given a choice,” I finished for him.
“They’ve done so much for me,” he said, pushing the eggs around his plate. “It wouldn’t be right not to join the order.”
“Let’s pretend,” I said slowly, “that you could do anything. What would you choose?”
“I’d work with Sister Andris,” he said without hesitation. “I love the idea of language. I almost wish I was back in the Abbey, helping her translate that message from Aubrin’s journal. If I could do anything, I’d study language.”
It seemed like every time Bennock and I talked, I realized how much we had in common. I wanted to tell him about how everyone assumed I’d be a master thief like my father but instead I became the Dowager’s scholarly apprentice. I wanted to tell him there was hope. But Keela returned and Bennock suddenly grew quiet.
We finished our breakfast in silence before breaking camp and heading out. An absolutely insane idea popped into my head. What if—when all this was over—I could go back to studying at Redvalor Castle with the Dowager? And what if she would take Bennock on as an apprentice as well? The three of us doing research? We’d be unstoppable.
But a lot had to happen before then. And, at present, not a lot of it seemed very likely.
“I count eight mages,” Keela reported, peering through a spyglass.
We crouched behind bushes on a hillside overlooking the Palatinate Palace. Something didn’t seem quite right to me. The last time I’d been here, the golden walls had shone and pulsed with magical light. But now they seemed darker, burnished. The whole area was unsettlingly quiet.
Outside the main gate, a small caravan had assembled. Two mages stood at the head, spellspheres throbbing with light in their hands. Just behind them, three vortakaars—lumbering beasts with thorny exoskeletons—dragged their considerable knuckles on the ground, growling softly to themselves. Behind the vortakaars stood four mages. Next in line, a strange assortment of creatures marched in place, just ahead of two massive mangs pulling a large covered wagon. The caravan ended with a pair of mages.
The main gate to the palace swung open. A mage with dark, spiky hair stepped out and didn’t bother to close the doors behind him. He wore the robes of a member of the Lordcourt.
“Spellspheres at the ready!” he shouted. “Let’s move out!”
The mage climbed into the back of the wagon. A moment later, the caravan trudged forward. They pulled away from the palace, and we watched until they’d disappeared into the forest.
Bennock regarded the palace with shock. “That’s it?” he asked. “They’re just leaving it wide-open?”
“It’s got to be some kind of trap,” I muttered.
Our plan had been to sneak in through the same underground tunnels Maloch and I had used to infiltrate the palace many months ago. As the Palatinate’s headquarters, th
e palace would be crawling with mages. All we had to do was avoid them and get to the gallery filled with glass statues.
Sister Keela shook her head. “We heard rumors that the Palatinate was going to move to Vesta and inhabit the High Laird’s old palace.”
“But why leave in a caravan?” I asked. “Why not just use a quickjump spell to get to Vesta?”
Nothing about this felt right. But we didn’t have time to overthink it.
We approached cautiously, stepped through the door, and entered the cavernous main gallery. As Keela lit a torch, the firelight flickered off a collection of glass statues atop mordenstone plinths. The Shadowhands. But the number of statues had grown since my last visit. It appeared that the Palatinate had continued freezing their enemies with shimmerhex curses even after they seized control of the Provinces.
All the better for us.
“Keep an eye on the door, Keela,” I told the monk, “just in case they come back.”
I took the vallix skin gloves Aubrin had given me for my birthday from a hook on my belt and slipped them on. They’d protect me from accidentally catching the shimmerhex curse while I worked.
“So where do we start?” Bennock asked.
I spotted a familiar face in the crowd. A man, about Da’s age, held his fist tightly to his chest.
“We start here.”
Bennock helped me take the man down off the plinth. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Vanguard.
“What’s that?” Bennock asked.
“Erm, something Callie said might help,” I lied. Da and I had decided to keep the Vanguard a secret a mite longer. It was our best weapon in the upcoming battle. We couldn’t risk tipping our hand with anyone. Even our allies.
I touched the crystal pyramid to the statue. Deep within the glass, flesh-like color spread. The glass shimmered and fell like melting water to the floor. The man gasped, drawing in a huge breath, and fell forward. Bennock lowered him to the ground. Looking up, the man spotted me.
“Jaxter Grimjinx?” Maloch’s da asked.
“Oya, Mr. Oxter,” I said.
Bennock and I moved from plinth to plinth. While I liberated people from the shimmerhex, Bennock explained our plan to raise an army. As I’d guessed, recruiting was easy. Everyone here had reason to hate the Palatinate. We had a small battalion in no time.
“Are we done?” Bennock asked.
“Not quite,” I said, nodding to the last statue. The one I’d been avoiding. Kolo. A couple of Shadowhands laid the statue on the ground.
I paused, Vanguard in hand. Kolo himself had said that his frail body wouldn’t survive being awoken from the shimmerhex.
“Bennock,” I said quietly, “can you take everyone outside? I need a moment.”
Bennock ushered everyone away, leaving me with Kolo. I stared down at him for a long time.
“You chose this,” I said, “but I don’t think you want this.”
Kneeling, I touched the Vanguard to Kolo’s forehead. The glass washed away. Kolo clutched his chest and howled in pain as he drew a breath.
“Easy,” I said, slipping my backpack under his head.
The elderly Sarosan squinted, as though he couldn’t quite see. “J-Jaxter?”
“I’m here, Kolo.” I gripped his hand. He could barely squeeze back.
“So, you found the Vanguard,” he said, a ghost of a smile crossing his wrinkled face.
“You didn’t exactly make it easy.”
Kolo coughed. “I couldn’t risk the Palatinate finding it.”
“You were right. About everything. The Palatinate succeeded where the Scions failed.”
“The Scions . . . ,” he said. “You were in the whisperoak forest?”
“Yes. But how did you get in there?”
“As a boy, I was arrested and sent to serve at the Creche. I learned all about the Great Uprisings the same way you did. The knowledge changed my life. That’s why Tree Bag has a picture of a whisperoak.”
Kolo turned his head and spat. A small trickle of blood oozed from his lips.
“We have to get you to a healer,” I said, panic setting in.
The old man shook his head. “You have the Vanguard. You can still stop them.”
“But how?” I asked.
“Think about it, Jaxter,” Kolo wheezed. “I sent you to retrieve the Sourcefire. Why?”
“When you betrayed the Shadowhands, the Covenant’s magic gave you Mardem’s Blight,” I said. “The Sourcefire was the only thing powerful enough to destroy the Covenant. It was the only way to cure you.”
“But I had the Vanguard. It absorbs all magical energy. I could have used that to destroy the Covenant. So why did I really want the Sourcefire?”
I mumbled in frustration. This wasn’t the time for riddles. I looked around at the gallery walls. Their magical luster had gone dark.
“Because,” I said slowly, “the Sourcefire was protecting the palace.”
As I said the words, the truth became obvious. Using magic drained energy from any mage. So how did the Palatinate power the palace’s magical defenses? They drew power from the Sourcefire, an infinite source of magical energy.
Kolo had planned to blow up the palace. But he couldn’t as long as the Sourcefire was protecting it.
“The Sourcefire is the key,” Kolo rasped, pulling me closer with his thin fingers. “Only the Vanguard can eliminate the Sourcefire. Remember . . . they can’t find the Vanguard . . . with magic. . . .”
I was still confused. Even without the Sourcefire, mages could cast spells. What good would destroying it do?
Kolo shuddered. I felt every muscle in his body tense under my hands.
“Don’t . . . let them . . . do it . . . ,” Kolo said. Then a great breath left his body. He went limp and died.
I sat next to him for a long time, not moving. Wiping tears from my eyes, I took the empty Tree Bag from my backpack and laid it atop Kolo’s body. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Bennock leaned in.
“You okay?” he asked.
My mouth had gone dry. “I don’t know, Bennock. I don’t know if any of us is okay.”
29
A Patchwork Army
“A rogue’s deed is truer than his tongue.”
—Ancient par-Goblin proverb
The worst part of our army recruitment plan was how long it took. By the time Bennock and I returned to Slagbog with a platoon of Palatinate adversaries and recently freed Shadowhands, the next tribute was nearly a week away. We had to be ready to face Xerrus by then.
One thing we hadn’t anticipated was what happens when you suddenly add a hundred former statues into a village with a shortage of houses. We had nowhere to put everyone. Thankfully, the assassin-monks graciously opened the doors of the Abbey to take in our new recruits. It was a cozy fit but not crowded.
Crowded happened when Da and Edilman returned.
To hear Da tell the tale, Slagbog’s assault on Umbramore was the greatest battle since Mannis Soranna led a Satyran army to destroy the Onyx Fortress of Rexin. Whatever the real story, the mission was a success and the population got even bigger as the Umbramore escapees arrived, led by . . .
“Ma!”
Aubrin squealed as she and I ran to greet our mother. Ma knelt, arms outstretched, and the three of us hit the ground in a hug so powerful it made the Sourcefire look like a candle. Ma had grown a bit thinner but was no less strong when she pulled us into her arms.
“Well, that was an interesting little vacation,” Ma said brightly. “I hear you’re planning a revolution. Thanks for inviting me.”
“We’d never start without you,” I said.
A day later, Oberax called a meeting in the square and revealed Slagbog’s newest problem: a food shortage. The village had already been on the brink of starvation. Now, with our growing population, food was scarcer than ever. I never thought I’d be sad to see a shortage of grubslush.
As we discussed options, the Ghostfire house rolled into town with Luda in th
e driver’s seat. Da and I went to greet them. The house came to a stop, the door flew open, and a howl of pain erupted from inside. A moment later, Uncle Garax staggered out, followed immediately by a small, silver-haired woman with her hand clamped firmly around my uncle’s ear.
“Oya, Nanni,” I called out. “Glad you could join us.”
My grandmother dragged my squirming uncle over to me and Da, hugging us with her free hand. Then she pulled hard on Uncle Garax’s ear.
“Don’t you have something to say to your brother?” she asked Garax.
My uncle winced. “She hasn’t let go of my ear for a week.”
“Garax . . . ,” Nanni warned.
“No, really, she even holds it while we sleep.”
“Tell him!” Nanni yanked so hard that I thought Garax’s ear might come off.
“I’m sorry!” Garax screamed, tears falling down his cheeks. “I should never have turned you in to the Palatinate. Grimjinxes don’t turn on Grimjinxes, no matter the price.” He held out a large scroll of parchment to Da. Written on it, over and over, were those very words: Grimjinxes don’t turn on Grimjinxes. It had to be on there at least a thousand times. “Please accept my apology. Please, Ona, I’m begging you.”
Da shrugged. “I guess this’ll do . . . for a start.”
Nanni released Uncle Garax, who caressed his sore ear like it was a newborn babe.
“Bangers, Luda,” I said as the Satyran climbed down. I’d asked her to make sure my grandmother learned about Garax’s betrayal. I figured Nanni would have a thing or two to say about it. I also figured those things involved lots of swearing at my uncle.
Luda nodded. “Your grandmother is a formidable warrior. I would not like to meet her on the field of battle.”
Who would?
Another day passed. Just as we’d started to figure out how to live with all of us crowded into the tiny village and the Abbey, our newest recruits arrived. Dressed in tattered clothes, a flock of Sarosans emerged from the swamp at dawn. Once inside the village, they immediately knelt, took flasks from their packs, and began the ritual of drinking at First Rise. I wended my way through the crowd, looking for Maloch. Icy fingers gripped my leg and when I looked down, I found familiar dark eyes staring up.