But Rickon had found his brother. Lorson was wandering the streets of the marketplace. His arms, now stumps, their ends wrapped in filthy cloth. Permanently pale, staggering around in a confusion that would never end. Rickon brought him to the new hideout. Lorson died two days later.
Before he went, he’d asked for Shel. She stayed away at first. Never think about failure; never think about dying. How could she not, if she went to speak with the dying boy?
But she’d gone at last. And Lorson had told her the truth. It was never the seamstress he was interested in. He’d wanted that silk to give the seamstress, true. But he planned to commission a dress, a fine silk dress. He’d give that dress to the girl who’d really stolen his heart.
Lorson was always a fool. Shel never thought of him that way, and she never would have. He was a fool and that was what killed him. In the end, he told her something very strange. He told her he could see it, his life. All of it, stretching off into the past like a frozen painting. Then he was gone.
She’d thought it was more of his foolishness, but now she wasn’t so sure. With death a heartbeat away and nothing she could do to stop it, Shel found herself thinking back. There was no more future to look forward to anyway, so where else could she look?
She saw Lorson again in her mind. Lorson, his brother Rickon, West…all the others. The fat merchant in the marketplace the day all this started. Each step in the path that led her from that moment to this. Every step that had brought her to that fat merchant in the first place. The day she stole her first trinket. The day she came to the city. The months before, wandering the countryside.
Vallen. Her parents. Her mother’s constant misery. With no release and no respite from the torment, the misery souring in her mother’s breast and turning to bitterness and spite. Her father. Reeking of the bottle, unshaven, unkempt. Stumbling around the house, knocking into walls and upsetting the furniture. His hands, gnarled hands from hard labor, thick with calluses and scars. His hands, clenched into fists.
Earlier, earlier. She didn’t want to see her parents. Never again, and certainly not now. Shel gritted her teeth and raged inside. She wouldn’t waste her final thoughts on them. Anything else.
A village. Not Vallen. Somewhere else. Somewhere dark and bitter cold. Colder than she had ever imagined. What was this place, this memory? Something forgotten? Fires in stone hearths, blazing against the cold and dark. Not so much dark, just dim. Weak light, gray light…wintry light. Surely she had never known winter.
But the ground was white. She’d heard of that magic. Fairy tales. No such thing as snow. No such thing as Shadowmen either, but she’d met them. They were everywhere, all around her. This village was theirs. Her parents – no, they weren’t her parents but she knew them as parents, and they whispered love to her, their little boy. Shel didn’t understand.
Her father – no, not hers, someone else’s father…
And then she realized what she was seeing. Aemond, said her father. Little Aemond. You have to be brave, my son. You have to be strong. The Summer War is coming for us at last, Aemond, so you must be brave and strong and never give in.
Aemond, oh! Aemond, my son! Her mother – his mother – was weeping. And then his father, reaching for the mask carved from the midnight wood. The mask fitted and formed to his own face, carefully wrought from the sacred midnight wood. His father placed the mask over his face, hiding from sight the intricate markings of their people, their tribe, their clan, their family. Hiding the marks of his heritage so the hated warriors of Summer couldn’t know who they faced…
The memory burst like a bubble, pierced by a needle. Shel looked up into the hate-filled eyes of Archon Thorne and knew she was about to die.
Chapter 10 - Aftermath
Stars shone brightly overhead in the clear night sky. Kal groaned, rolling over onto her back and staring blankly up at them.
She could smell the bodies strewn around her. The coppery tang of blood. Other smells, rank and stinking. The waste voided by bodies as life fled. The smells blended together, thickly overpowering. Kal fought down an urge to vomit and sat up instead.
Sharp pain lanced up her leg and exploded in her mind. Her leg was broken. Kal gritted her teeth, unwilling to cry out. The enemy might be near.
But as she looked around, Kal realized the enemy was long gone. Assuming she was dead, they had left her behind. Just another body lying across the road. There were dozens more. Though night had fallen, thankfully chasing away the buzzing flies, the darkness hadn’t sent all the birds to their nests.
She could see their shadowy forms perched on twisted branches, as if to replace the leaves which had been burnt away by Thorne’s incredible attack. Sanook…
Kal shook her head. The Shadowman was gone.
But what about the others?
She couldn’t get up, not with this broken leg. She cast her eyes about, straining to see in the darkness. She had to find something to use as a crutch. One of Thorne’s soldiers lay unmoving to her right. His throat was torn open. An enormous black crow perched on the soldier’s forehead, dipping its beak periodically. Beside his hand, the shaft of the spear he had dropped as he died.
When Kal reached for the spear, the crow squawked angrily and flapped its wings.
“Go back to your nest,” Kal spit at the noisome bird. “It’s late.”
The crow flew away and Kal took up the spear. Its shaft was broken, the tip missing. But it would do. The remaining length was enough for her to use as a cane. She pushed herself up, trying not to put any weight on her ruined leg. Agony spiked all the same, as fractured bone ground together. Kal nearly blacked out, but she took a strained breath and forced herself up.
Leaning heavily on her makeshift cane, Kal panted for breath and surveyed the battlefield. Bodies and blood and broken weapons were all that remained. A few more crows hopped to and fro, pecking at the corpses. The other scavengers and carrion birds had retreated when night fell, but she knew they would return with daybreak.
The fires had burnt out. All that remained of the Archon’s carriage was a pile of blackened wood and ashes.
They had been beaten. It was worse than Kal had ever imagined. The defeat was total.
But she was alive.
A low moan rose shivering on the night air. Kal turned toward the sound, and her leg responded with another insistent wave of agony. Kal stumbled forward, momentarily blinded by the pain washing over her. The moan sounded again.
“Hello?” she called. “Who is it?”
“Kal?” The voice was anguished, twisted by pain. It was hoarse and broken but she recognized that voice.
“Maul!” The giant was still alive.
“Here…” He was fading though. Hobbling as quickly as she dared, Kal made her way slowly over and around the piled corpses until she found the big man. He had a spear through the guts, and a dozen other wounds still seeping blood, but he was alive.
“Maul!” When she saw the extent of his injuries, Kal nearly gave in to a rising tide of despair. “Merciful Dunmir,” she breathed. “How are you still living?”
“Stubborn…as…I am…big,” Maul struggled to say. Bloodless lips turned up in what might have been a smile. “Can’t…kill…me…so easily.”
Kal smiled in spite of the situation. “Oh, Maul,” she whispered. “You never did know when to quit.”
Maul’s response was a dry, cracked laugh that sounded more like a death rattle. She had no idea how the giant was clinging to life, but she didn’t think he could manage it much longer.
“The others?” She didn’t want to ask, but she had to.
Maul’s head moved left, then back to the right.
“What about…” Kal broke off. The words seemed to hurt as they rose in her throat. The lump remained even when she stopped. Her eyes burned with tears. “Rez?” she forced herself to ask. “Shel?”
“Taken…” Maul closed his eyes and heaved a struggling breath. “The Archon…got them…took them…caged
…like animals.”
“But they're alive,” said Kal, clinging desperately to the thin hope. “They're still alive, Maul.”
“For…now.”
Kal bit down on her reply. They were alive. She knew they were. They must be. But Maul was dying. There wasn’thing she could do to stop it. Just like she hadn’t been able to save any of the others. They had thought it was an ambush; they just hadn’t realized whose ambush it was. The others were dead, and Maul would join them in minutes. But she was alive. Rez was alive. That sweet child Shel was alive.
Kal brushed a thick strand of hair back from her face. Its honeyed color was stained dark, the strands clotted together with her own dried blood. She looked sadly down at the giant. Her friend.
“I'm so sorry, Maul,” she whispered. “Oh, Maul. I'm sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Maul grunted softly, wincing at some twinge of pain. “Find…find them.”
“I will,” she promised. It was a vow to her dying friend, and a vow to herself. She would find Rez and Shel. She’d rescue them from Thorne, or die trying.
The second outcome seemed more likely at the moment. Kal realized she had to get back to the fortress. She’d need the rest of the gang. But would they follow her, a woman? Especially after they learned what had happened?
Kal resolved herself. She’d make them follow her. She’d tell them all the truth, if she had to. They were good men, and most of them would follow if they knew what was really at stake. Rez would be furious with her. Rez, with all his secrets. Sometimes she thought the fool man believed no one would follow him if they knew the truth. Well, she and Maul and Sanook and Aemond had all known the truth. Hadn’t they followed him?
“Kal…” Maul lifted one weak hand about an inch off the ground, reaching for her. “Kal…”
Sanook and Aemond were dead. Now Maul would join them. Kal didn’t feel very lively herself. Sure, they’d followed Rez. She clamped down on that thought at once, angry with herself for even thinking it. The Cause was true and just. When she told the others, they would follow.
“What is it, Maul?”
“Kill…that weasel Thorne…for me…would you?”
The light went out of his eyes. A final breath rose from his lips and Maul was still. Standing over him, leaning on a length of broken spear, Kal hung her head and wept.
***
She wanted to bury them. She couldn’t do so. Even if she could stand without the crutch, it would take her hours to find the bodies in this mess of corpses and blood. The sky was lightening in the east. She had to be on her way.
Kal hobbled away from the road, picking her way carefully cross country until she came to a felled sapling. Letting herself sink slowly to the ground, she took out her dagger – the only one remaining – and set to work fashioning a splint. Torn strips from her clothing served to fix the splint in place.
Finished, Kal sat for a long time with her splinted, broken leg extended before her. She was tired, more tired than she had ever been. Pain and sorrow weighed her down and she wanted to just lie down in the dry grass and let herself slide away into forgetful sleep.
It was hard to believe they were gone. She’d fought with those men before. Especially Maul and Sanook. She and Maul and the Shadowman had been with Rez from the beginning. Now she was all that was left. The only one who knew the truth.
Five years.
She’d barely been older than Shel when a darkly handsome man with unruly brown hair and a roguish wit found her in the scullery of an inn off the Western Road. He had seen something in her even then, and he had asked her to join his Cause.
At first it was just the five of them. Kal, Maul, Sanook and Aemond, and the leader: Rez. Charming, clever Rez. Arrogant, infuriating Rez. Five against the world.
Their group had grown, become a gang. It had nearly become an army. Kal had been amazed at first by the number of people willing to join them, especially given the fact that Rez was lying to them. So many, disaffected, disenfranchised, despondent. In the Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer, who knew there were so many disgruntled, unhappy people?
They had joined for the chance at better lives. Many had been on the verge of selling their souls to make ends meet. It was shocking, how many flocked to join the most daring gang in all the land. The brash, unbelievable gang that stole the most valuable prizes in the empire. The Soul Thieves. All a lie.
Would they have stayed if they knew the truth?
For Kal, it had never been a choice. When Rez told her his plans, she had known she would follow him to the end. Because he was right. The Golden Empire was a lie, too. It was a greater lie than any Rez had ever dreamed up. If their gang of soul thieves wasn’thing but a smokescreen for their leader’s true purpose, what was the empire?
Rez was right: it had to be stopped. The emperor had to be brought down. The rebellion must rise.
She had always expected him to spill the secret. One day, she knew, Rez would have to tell the others. Kal never knew where the money came from, or the food. Rez told the others he could sell the souls they lifted from fat merchants and wealthy nobles, but Kal knew better. Rez and the Shadowmen divvied up those souls and absorbed them, growing in power against the day they would have to face the ultimate battle. But the gang never hungered, never wanted. Where did the funds come from? Did it matter?
Five years, and Kal had never doubted Rez’s Cause. But what about the others? When they learned the truth, how many would stay? Kal didn’t know where the money came from. She didn’t know how to keep it going. She didn’t know how she would feed Rez’s secret army. She didn’t know how she could possibly convince them to stay, especially after such a stunning defeat.
Kal’s hands had clenched into tight fists, knuckles white, fingernails digging into her palms sharply. She forced herself to relax, and reached for her crutch. She had to get up, to keep moving. She had to get back to the fortress, to the hideout.
She only prayed she could find a way to convince the others once she got there.
Chapter 11 - Prisoners
They put her in a cage. When she woke up, she took in her dismal surroundings and nearly succumbed to her rising dismay. Another dungeon, thought Shel hopelessly. The fortnight she’d spent with Kal, Sanook, Rez and the rest of the gang suddenly seemed like a fleeting reprieve, nothing more than a brief stay of execution. Here she was, back in a cell.
Slumped against the wall near one corner of the claustrophobic room of cracked and pitted stone, Shel stared blankly at the diagonally cross-hatched iron bars of the tiny doorway. They must have slid her unconscious body through the aperture; if she was ever getting out of this cell, it would only be by crawling.
Shel figured that was on purpose. It was cruel, but from her perspective cowering on the filthy, straw-scattered floor within Shel knew it would be effective. The only way out of this cell was in a posture of abject supplication.
Thoughts like that one wouldn’t have occurred to her fifteen days ago, on her first experience with incarceration. That time, at least until Rez showed up, she had wasted on dark thoughts of her father and her own miserable fate. These same thoughts threatened to overwhelm her yet again, but they were tempered by something new.
Shel frowned in the darkness of her cell and wondered at the change in herself. It was an uncomfortable realization, because it highlighted how naïve and…weak she had been as recently as two weeks ago. The moment she recognized where she was, she had given in to her fear and despair. Those feelings had been the real prison, she thought now.
It was just like making a prisoner crawl to come out of the cell. Dungeons were designed to mess with your head. By frightening you, by forcing you into submission; that was how the jailers truly caged a prisoner.
Shel had been in the dungeons before. Her fortnight of freedom might seem fleeting, but she had been free. It could happen again. No, thought Shel. It would happen again.
Resolved, she got up from her corner. The ceiling was too low
for Shel to stand upright, but she moved about the cramped space in a slight crouch and began examining the walls. Unlike the city dungeons in Solstice – and that reminded her, where was she anyway? – the cell she found herself in now wasn’t constructed of stone blocks. The walls were jagged and pitted, but unbroken and apparently of a piece. This cell must be a natural cavern, a pocket of air in the stone that builders had exploited. There was no way out besides the barred crawlspace.
Shel thought back to the battle on the King’s Road. She had been knocked off balance, lying atop the ruined carriage staring up into the hate-filled countenance of Archon Murdrek Thorne. She’d seen him weaving a spell. There’d been a blast of some kind, a magical fireball hurled from below. That must have been Sanook, or possibly Rez. At the last instant, Thorne had spun and released his weave in that direction instead. Shel surged to her feet, but almost before she could rise Thorne whipped an arm out toward her and light burst from his fingertips. That was the last she remembered before the cell.
She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but it couldn’t have been that long. She doubted she was more than half a day’s travel from the site of the battle. Less, most likely.
That she was in Thorne’s power was obvious. Therefore, this was Thorne’s dungeon. It was most likely beneath some palace or outpost of the powerful archon’s holdings. Shel thought back to the maps Maul had shown her in the days leading up to the failed heist.
The gang had lain in ambush beside a stretch of the King’s Road far from any city or town. It was a full three day’s ride from Solstice; longer for the archon’s convoy, most of which was afoot. But Thorne wouldn’t spend nights in the open, or even at some low inn. Shel closed her eyes, trying to conjure up mental images of the maps.
Maul had pointed out a small estate a bit further along the King’s Road toward Solstice from the ambush point. A modest sized orchard, bounded by thick forest on three sides. It was owned by a noble family called…Shel struggled to remember the name, and why Maul had thought the estate significant. That’s right, she remembered; Rez and Maul had agreed it was the archon’s most likely stopping point for the night of the ambush.
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