Standing beside the four hunters and having just asked one of them, Jenus, about the number of game animals in the forest, Kal looked up just as Shel’s controlled fall became a gentle glide until she set one foot and then the other on solid ground as if stepping down from a carriage. At Kal’s side, Jenus was staring at Shel with slackjawed amazement. Kal rolled her eyes.
“What is it with you Soulweavers?” Kal asked, loud enough for everyone to hear. She and Shel had agreed it would be best if the whole gang thought the young woman was a very powerful weaver. They had also decided to keep her Shadowfolk heritage a close-guarded secret. “You've always got to make an entrance, don’t you?”
Shel smiled tightly, and lifted her eyes to the open patch of sky high above them at the other end of a tunnel of midnight-hued tree boughs. The gray parrot had gotten over the fright she’d given him, and was wheeling around overhead in a rapidly circling descent.
“Word from Solstice,” she said as Rori – who had also been staring – hastily tugged on the thick leather gauntlet that would protect her forearm from the parrot’s taloned feet. Kal frowned at the redhead as she rushed to catch the parrot, which had resumed its irritated squawking.
When the bird was safely perched on Rori’s leather-clad arm, she brought him over to Kal and Shel. It cocked its head side to side to peer at them with one eye, and then the other before lifting the leg bearing the message capsule and offering it to the honey-haired leader.
Kal looked askance at Shel before carefully removing the capsule from the parrot’s leg and breaking it open to retrieve the tiny scroll inside. Dropping the capsule in a pocket of her light jacket, Kal unrolled the message and quickly scanned it.
“Thorne’s in the capital,” she said aloud when she had finished, crumpling the message and stuffing it in the same pocket as the capsule. “At his city residence in the Noble District, as we expected. The archons are rarely invited to stay at the palace. Several of the other archons have yet to arrive. Timbek Norres sent word by parrot that he would arrive in a week’s time.”
“That’s good news,” said Shel, indicating with a brief hand motion that they should walk toward the cave. Or rather, away from the listening hunters and Rori. Kal nodded, and the two women fell into step.
“Partly good news,” said Kal in a low voice as they walked. “It lets us know how long we've got to act. It also gives us a pretty good idea of just how much longer we can pull off the charade.”
Shel grimaced, but didn’t answer right away. They had reached the fissure entrance. Shel wriggled through and then looked around the upper cave while she waited for Kal. She was pleased to find the chamber empty. Still, she led Kal far to the side before she spoke.
“We need to be in place before the last archon arrives. I want to strike them all together.”
“That’s bold. Maybe too bold,” Kal said. “We'll have to divide our forces. It'll confuse any attempt at a coordinated response, but there’s still Thorne’s men for you to think about. And our own. What happens when they find out Rez is dead, and has been all along? And, confused or not, there’s still the other archons and the emperor himself to think about. How do you plan to get any of us out of Solstice alive?”
While Kal was the universally accepted leader, she had shown a very different side to Shel in private over the past week. The slightly older woman didn’t lack for bravery or intelligence, but the task of taking over for Rez was daunting. She was willing to take on the role in front of the men, but in truth it was such an intimidating burden she was depended on Shel to help carry the weight.
When it came to things like thieving parties sent into the surrounding countryside, Kal was perfectly comfortable and at home. She had planned and orchestrated every move they had made so far, from setting up the new lair to sending out the hunters. She had sent the parrots out to her contacts in Solstice, the Summerfort, and far off North Harvest.
When it came to their true goals, however, Kal was stuck. She knew what Rez had planned, but with him gone she just didn’t see any way they could pull it off. And when it came to reducing his vision of a years-long campaign down to a single daring strike in the capital itself, Kal simply didn’t think it was possible.
Shel, on the other hand, was sublimely confident.
“Thorne is powerful beyond reason,” Shel said. “He may have another weaver with him when I confront him. That’s how he got me last time, but I'll be ready for that trick. And trust me, Kal, I won’t hold anything back. Thorne will go down. He has to. And the same for all the rest of them.”
The younger woman paused, frowning slightly. Kal jumped into the brief silence. “But then what?”
“Then I will take every soul he has,” Shel explained simply. “I will be more powerful than any of the remaining archons.”
“And the emperor…?” prompted Kal. “What about him? The most powerful Soulweaver who ever lived, right?”
“Unless the emperor is a Shadowman, even he cannot match my potential.” Shel said it flatly, without a hint of feeling. Kal felt a chill run down her spine.
“Shel,” she said sadly, searching her friend’s face for a trace of the girl she had known not long ago. She worried about Shel, who seemed to have changed completely since their encounter with Sanook’s ghost. The young woman who stood before her was cold and distant, not the Shel who had fiercely insisted she wasn’t a girl and had laughed boisterously at Maul’s most off-color jokes.
Shel surprised her then, reaching out with both hands to take one of Kal’s own. She smiled, but it seemed more like a mask than an expression.
“Trust me, Kal,” she implored the older woman. “I can handle my part of the mission. I just need you to handle the rest.”
“Sanook said something very like that to Rez once,” said Kal. She regretted the words as soon as they were out, but Shel didn’t react to them at all.
“I have something Sanook didn’t,” she said simply.
Chapter 19 - The Capital
Solstice. Proud capital of the Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer, the city sat gleaming in a broad and vale of rolling hills and verdant fields. The walls of the city shone in the bright sunlight. Each day, a hundred men set out in the hours before dawn to scrub and clean and polish the outward face of the walls, ensuring its ever-perfect appearance from without.
Standing at the railing of her balcony, from which she could look out over the lower rooftops to the sun setting behind distant mountains far beyond the walls, Shel decided that cleaning crew was a perfect explanation of Solstice on the whole. The city was a frantically polished facade for the benefit of outsiders, a desperate facade proclaiming the glory of the Long Summer.
Within those walls lived the wealthiest and most privileged of all the realm. The poorest of the empire also called Solstice home. Cities always drew in the wretched like magnets, and Solstice took the lion’s share. Even the most wretched and deformed beggar, covered with crusty scabs and oozing sores, couldn’t match the ugliness of the thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens who would walk past that beggar unfeeling, utterly convinced that the truly poor had only themselves to blame.
Who could possibly be downtrodden in the Great and Glorious Golden Empire? It must be their own fault. The Long Summer was perfect. See? Look at those gleaming walls. Look at the splendor of the High Market, and ignore the squalor of the lower Market district. Skip over the grimy workhouses, the final weak hope for the orphans. Look at the spires of the palaces lining the broad thoroughfares of the Noble District instead.
Shel had lived in this city for seven years, but for the first time now she thought she knew it.
“I hate it here,” she mused aloud.
“What was that?” Behind her, Kal stepped out onto the balcony from inside the suite of rooms the two women had taken as both lodgings and command center. They were on the fourth and uppermost floor of the largest inn in Solstice.
Even though most of the gang were in other i
nns and hostels, and some gone to ground beyond the city walls, Kal had hired out the entire floor. She didn’t want any strangers wandering around. Kal was positively on edge about this whole thing, Shel thought.
“I said I hate it here,” she repeated, turning from the railing to smile at the other woman. “Solstice. I think it’s the ugliest place in the whole world.”
Kal looked puzzled. “Shel, this city is home to some of the most beautiful architecture in the known world. The Golden Empire is corrupted and evil, but even I have to admit this is an amazing city. What do you mean, it’s ugly?”
“Solstice is the heart of a tumor,” Shel said, her lips twisted with distaste. “It’s the shining symbol of the lie. Everything the empire is, Solstice is it’s miniature reflection. I hate it here. I think I'll burn this city to the ground.”
She saw a flash of alarm in her friend’s eyes. Shel hadn’t missed the brief signs which had slipped through Kal’s guard. She knew Kal was worried about her, and she knew why. Shel worried too, but she worried about bigger things. Thorne. The emperor. Justice for the Shadowfolk, her own people. Justice for every citizen of the empire who hadn’t grown fat and rich off the toil of others. Most of all, justice for Rez and Maul and Sanook.
“I’d get everyone out first, Kal,” she told her concerned friend, shaking her head. “Dunmir, what you think of me!”
Smiling at Kal’s flustered expression, Shel moved past the other woman and went into the main room of their suite. It was a spacious chamber, lavishly decorated in overstated imitation of genuine wealth. The furniture was all sturdy, plush, and comfortable. Aside from the main door, leading out into the inn, two larger, double-doors faced each other from opposite sides of the room. Behind each was a bedchamber as tastelessly decorated and even more abundantly comfortable.
Kal and Shel had rearranged the furniture in the main room, of course. They had set up a long table in the center of the room, with chairs arrayed around it. Three of the seats were occupied at the moment. Alban was there, visibly nervous and doing his best to hide it. Rori stood immediately behind his chair with her hand resting on his shoulder. Beside the young man was Peele, undisputedly the best sneak-thief in the whole gang. On Peele’s other side was Collam, the oldest man in the entire gang.
Shel went straight to the table but didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood at the center of the table on the opposite side from the newly promoted lieutenants. She regarded each of them for a long moment before she spoke.
“I trust you're all clear on what you have to do,” she told them. “If any of you have doubts or questions, now’s the time.”
Peele and Collam exchanged a quick glance. Both men had been with Rez for years. Shel was depending on them, especially old Collam with his multitude of contacts here in the city.
“I'm not as popular as I used to be.” It was Collam who spoke first, after clearing his throat noisily. The old timer leaned on the table and fixed Shel with an even stare. He was a frail-seeming man with wispy white hair, a heavily wrinkled face, and watery blue eyes. Shel knew he played up the “old man” angle, but he’d never fooled her. He was sharp as well as connected.
“What do you mean?” she asked, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“I write letters to my friends,” Collam explained gruffly. “Not as many write back as would've ten years back.”
“Thirty, better yet,” quipped Peele in an undertone. Collam heard it, of course, but rather than irritating him the joke twitched his lips up in the hint of a smile.
“Here,” said Collam, fishing a cheesecloth bundle from one of his deep coat pockets. He rested it on one palm and quickly unwrapped it to reveal a small assortment of hard candies which he held out to Peele. “Suck on one of these and pipe down, young'un.”
Collam and Peele were old friends, and they both chuckled at their own exchange. Another time, Shel might have joined in the pair’s comfortable laughter. Not now. There was too much on the line.
“Enough.” Shel’s command wasn’t harsh or angry, but both men caught the stern reprimand in the flash of her eyes. “Collam, how many of your friends‘wrote back'?”
The old man made a show of scratching his head and thinking. “On about twenty,” he finally said. “Between‘em, call it a hundred men.”
Shel nodded. The number was actually better than she had expected, if lower than she’d hoped. “That will have to do,” she said. “You're friends know what we want them to do?”
“Aye,” Collam said with a nod and a smile. He couldn’t resist a wry, sidelong glance at Peele as he added, “Thing about old thieves, you see, is none of‘em’s slow and none of‘em’s stupid either.”
Shel nodded in agreement. She’d been a thief long enough to know that if you were foolhardy you didn’t last long enough to get old. Neither of them pointed out that what Shel was asking from Collam and his friends was, by definition, foolhardy.
“Don’t worry,” the old timer added with a smile. “We'll keep the Suncloaks out of yer hair.”
“That’s all I ask.” Shel returned a brief smile of her own, then turned to Peele next. “Are your teams ready, Peele?”
Slouched in his chair and sucking at his lower lip, Peele nodded his head slowly. “Ready as they can be, I reckon,” he said. “I could use a few more experienced hands, but needs must, eh? I divided up the ones I've got best as I could. Not always the best match-ups, but they'll come through.”
Shel ignored the sneak-thief’s complaint. He already had the bulk of the gang, every single man she could spare. True, he had to split them six ways – one team for each archon’s palace.
“They all know what to look for?” she pressed. She had stressed to Peele several times on the journey to Solstice that his men were to get the soul gems and get out, nothing more. She wanted those gems – and the precious souls locked within – safe and secure.
“Reckon they do. They'll come through,” Peele repeated.
Shel nodded, mollified, and turned to Alban. “And you're clear on what I want from you?”
Behind the burly young man, Rori stiffened slightly. He reached up and squeezed her hand on his shoulder.
“My guys will be ready,” he promised Shel.
“Ready to get killed for you,” muttered Rori. The auburn-haired thief might have meant it to be inaudible, but they all clearly heard her.
“I'm not sure why you're even here, Rori,” snapped Shel. “I know it isn’t because you're one of our lieutenants sitting in on the strategy session, because you're not one of our lieutenants.”
Rori’s face flushed with anger, and she opened her mouth to shout back. Kal stepped forward and slammed her palms down on the table between them, glaring daggers at the redhead.
“I wouldn’t say anything,” Kal said. “Nothing at all. We're all risking our lives, understand?”
Rori snapped her mouth closed and nodded tightly. The redhead was obviously fuming, but it looked like she would keep it to herself. Kal held her glare a moment longer before straightening and moving back from the table to let Shel continue.
“We'll deal with Thorne’s armsmen, Shel,” Alban said, reaching up to squeeze Rori’s hand. He looked over to Kal briefly, then back to Shel. “You just get Rez back, all right?”
Shel and Kal exchanged a quick look, but said nothing.
Chapter 20 - Crime Wave
At night, sprawling Solstice became three cities.
The busy streets of the lower market never slept. Light spilled from tavern windows and the open doorways of all-night shops. In the neighboring residential area, lanterns burned brightly over front stoops and neighbors went visiting or headed into the market for late-night purchases or to stop in for a pint. There was noise in all quarters; conversation, laughter, the various metal clinkings of coin changing hands or utensils tapping on plates in dining nooks and common rooms. The common people bustling to and fro on their nightly business unconsciously avoided the narrower streets and seedie
r alleyways closest to the Wall, where thieves and cutthroats tended to gather. Yet even there, where street corners were not so brightly lit, sounds of merriment or at least shared company drifted through heavily-shuttered barroom windows.
The High Market was, by contrast, almost utterly silent. Evenly spaced lamps on tall poles marched up and down the broad, cobblestoned boulevards. Here, the shop-fronts were as often stone as brick, and none were built of wood. There were no striped and patched awnings extending shade out over the sidewalk, no trestle tables or spread blankets full of goods. Here, the windows were all glass and most shuttered within by heavy, expensive curtains. Plaques of bronze or even gold, engraved with the names of shop-owners, gleamed in reflected lamp-light beside the doors.
On the upper floors, above the showrooms and inventory closets, rich proprietors dined from china dishes with real silver utensils. They slept on feather-stuffed mattresses or stayed up late counting their coins or drafting purchase orders and shipping manifests.
At the southern end, as divided from all the rest as if an imaginary branching of the Walls cut across the High Street just at the intersection where it became the Archons’Avenue, the Noble District stood aloof. Miniature walls surrounded the lavish mansions of the Nine Archons, the grounds and courtyards of seven of them brightly lit within. Armored guardsmen patrolled the streets of the Noble District at all hours, wearing the livery of the seven remaining archons. Soldiers in one house’s colors seldom greeted or even acknowledge armsmen of another house, though they passed one another frequently.
There were no shops or taverns, no storehouses or low residencies here. The streets were wide and lined with tall hedges behind which squatted the low, thick stone battlements that separated the highest lords of the empire not only from the common mass, but from each other as well. Within the seven lighted manses, armies of household servants bustled about their constant tasks. Flapping pennants blazoned with coats of arms announced from tall masts atop six mansions the presence of the archons.
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