Heroes' Reward

by Moira J. Moore

  Taro shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t face the consequences of his actions.”

  It must have been so difficult to say something so callous without the anger spreading over his face.

  “I hope you will use your influence over Lady Westsea,” said Natson. “To make sure she doesn’t … overreact. If she did so, the instability it would create for everyone, especially here in Erstwhile, would be … catastrophic. Lady Green is very worried about this.”

  The fury that rose in me at her words was almost overwhelming.

  She looked down at the book, and then she held it out to me. “Lady Green asked … ordered … me to give this to you. It’s just some … instructions. What’s expected of you. How you should … get about. That sort of thing.”

  The cover of the book was about a foot square, the paper four fingers thick. The list of rules was that extensive? Was Green serious?

  I took the book, but Natson clung to it for a moment. “Please be careful with it. Some of the pages aren’t as well bound as I would like. And it is very easy to burn.”

  Now that was a very odd statement to make. Yes, books could burn. They could also be damaged by being dropped in water. The pages could be torn out. There were all sorts of ways to destroy books.

  But the only one she mentioned was burning it.

  Which suggested to me that she wanted us to burn it. But why would she give it to us if she just wanted us to destroy it?

  She released the book. “Good evening.” She bowed to Taro. “My Lord.”

  He closed the door behind her and frowned at me.

  The last thing I wanted to do, after the day we’d had, was read what was surely a vile and offensive list of rules. I set the book on the table.

  And I heard just the faintest clunk. Not the sort of noise I associated with a book. I unbuckled the cover.

  The first page wasn’t bound, and the words on it were handwritten. It was signed by Lady Green. It looked like a note, a greeting, thanking us for accepting her invitation – summons – to Erstwhile, and she hoped we had been provided with all we needed to make a pleasant new home for ourselves.

  Home. More like a prison, though I found it distasteful to use such a melodramatic term, even in my own head.

  There were several paragraphs dedicated to Lady Green’s expectations concerning the engagement of our duties, in which she had great faith we would perform with the highest of professionalism and ability.

  The next page, properly attached and heavy, was the first of five describing protocol, how we were to behave with pretty much everyone in Erstwhile. How to speak, how much distance to maintain, how deeply to bow.

  These were followed by a map of the city, covering several pages. Parts of it were darkened, which I assumed meant those were areas we weren’t supposed to go to. Did receiving this mean we were finally allowed to leave the grounds?

  The next few pages were dedicated to a floor plan of the palace, each storey. There were darkened areas there, too.

  The next page was loose. It was a picture – newly drawn – of a building I’d never seen. From what I could determine, it was in one of the darkened areas in the city. And from the notations, it appeared to be some kind of prison.

  In the past, it had been claimed that there was no crime in Erstwhile, therefore no prison was necessary. ‘Confused’ people were taken outside of the city limits and to the nearest settlement, Patlach, where they were tried and sentenced. The residents of Patlach were, I was sure, delighted with this custom.

  By constructing a prison, were they discarding the fiction that there was no crime in Erstwhile?

  Turning the next page revealed a small cube cut out of the rest of the pages of the book, and crammed into the cube was a ring of iron keys.

  I spent a moment in confusion, unable to think of any reason to create such a book, or any motive anyone would have to give such a book to me.

  And then it hit me. I was dead sure we had just been given the means to rescue Tarce. I showed the book to Taro.

  It might be a test of our loyalty. If we made the attempt, we might find ourselves arrested, forced through a mockery of a trial, and executed. But we didn’t have a choice. We had to try.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Of course we didn’t know what we were doing, and the risk was enormous, but it had to be done, so there was no point worrying about the negative consequences.

  That sort of thing used to work, telling myself not to worry. No longer.

  We waited as long as we could bear and just had to hope everyone was in bed. In the meantime, I dug out the necessary ingredients from my casting bag, using only my fingers to identify them. We’d blown out our candles hours ago and thought it best not to relight them. I had only the faint moonlight to work with.

  Only then was I surprised that I still had the casting supplies, that no one had even checked our baggage. Were the Guards at the gate supposed to have done that? Or some servant along the line who’d forgotten?

  I rubbed the ebony dust, ground glass, and butterfly wings on Taro and myself, whispering the cast.

  Taro disappeared from my sight.

  Unfortunately, the cast didn’t work on anything we wanted to carry. Besides the keys, we had my pouch of casting ingredients and the purse of coins Taro insisted on taking with him in case we needed to bribe someone. If someone were alert enough, they would see these items floating around. Brilliant.

  We could partially obscure the visibility of items with our own hands. If I wrapped the keys up in palm and fingers, very little of the iron shone through. This was disturbing in its own right.

  We’d spent all evening doing our best to memorize the maps. It was then that we noticed tiny indentations in the paper illustrating, we thought, a path to where Tarce was being kept.

  Why did anyone want Tarce freed? Why him in particular, and not all of the others who had been illegitimately convicted? Was this really a test?

  The door didn’t squeak as we slowly opened it. If I were paranoid and didn’t want people moving about surreptitiously, I would have made sure all the doors in the palace squeaked.

  I would have made sure everyone was locked in at night, actually, but maybe that was seen as taking things too far. If you squeezed people too hard, some would decide risking death was preferable to being strapped down too tightly to breathe.

  There was no one in the hall. For the first week, before Taro had repeated his oaths, there had always been an Imperial Guard lingering around our door, day and night. Every time we had left our chambers, there had been someone there to follow us. Since Taro’s oath, we were given more privacy and freedom. It was my hope that his oath and the rumour that he wasn’t the sharpest of blades had caused the Emperor to believe he was harmless.

  We’d soon find out, one way or the other. In the meantime we had work to do.

  “Wait,” Taro whispered. “Where are you?”

  Oh. That would be a problem. “My hand is on the door lever.”

  I felt Taro’s hand cover mine. We would have to hold hands the entire time. That would get awkward.

  Getting through the palace wasn’t that difficult. There weren’t many doors to get through, or many servants or Guards to evade. But I had assumed that would be the easy part of the plan.

  We didn’t try to exit through the grand front entrance, which would be locked and guarded. There was no way we could get through unnoticed, unseeable or not. Instead, we went downstairs into the largest kitchen I’d ever seen.

  The kitchen wasn’t empty of life. The poor youngest members of the kitchen staff, lowest in the servant hierarchy, slept in tiny pathetic bundles of ragged blankets, curled up in whatever out-of-the-way nooks they could find. They would be exhausted, working the hardest and granted the least amount of sleep. They didn’t even twitch as we tiptoed through the room.

  The door to the outside was locked. I gave Taro the keys. He had a better chance than I of figuring out which key would fit into wh
ich lock merely by looking at them, having a better eye for space and how things fit into them.

  It was strange and discomforting to watch the keys being shifted about while hanging in mid air.

  A key entered the lock, sliding in smoothly, but when Taro turned it, there came a clink and then a clunk. Someone moaned behind me and I froze, my heart pounding painfully. I turned, but saw no movement.

  Taro returned the keys to me. We found each others’ hands and silently passed through the door and up the stairs to the grass.

  There were Guards on patrol, but they were easy to pass and easy to avoid. The real challenge was going to be the stone wall. We weren’t going to try to get through the gate. That would be insane. Instead, inspired by Aryne, we were going to try to scale the wall. Which was also insane, but hopefully a little less so.

  We would be climbing some distance from the gate, of course. Still, there were Guards walking around who might hear us.

  Only some of them seemed to be drunk. Some of them spoke so loudly I knew they were coming long before I saw the light of their lanterns. Not the best of the lot, perhaps. It made me wonder if this post, wandering the palace grounds at night, was considered an honour for the best or a meaningless chore thrown on the least skilled and diligent.

  We walked along the wall, looking for a stretch of it that might be relatively easy to climb. Only ‘looking’ wasn’t the right word, as we didn’t have any source of light. I ran my fingertips along the stones over what looked like a repair to the original wall.

  When two stones felt a little farther apart than the others, I pressed between them.

  And the mortar crumbled.

  I pulled on Taro’s hand to get him to stop, and then I continued to press. More mortar crumbled. Using my fingernails, I was able to dig it out, so much that I was inspired to pull on a stone, and it shifted. I pulled the next stone, and it shifted, too.

  So this was what happened when one chose friends to perform important labour instead of people who might actually be good at it.

  I placed Taro’s hand on the unstable stone.

  We then spent the time between passes from the patrols digging out more of the mortar. Not too much, we didn’t want the stones to actually fall out, just enough to accommodate fingers and toes.

  Climbing the wall wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected. I ripped my fingernails off, though, and scraped the skin from my palms and the pads of my fingers.

  Once we were over, we found each other with whispers and headed down the street. It was almost as easy to navigate as had been the palace. Again, we had to avoid Guards, but the soles of our boots were nearly silent against the flagstones as we ran, and no one showed any signs of perceiving our presence.

  We heard a racket long before we reached the wall of the prison. Shouts and some other noise, a sort of pounding that was foreign to my ears.

  Then we turned a corner and saw chaos.

  Torches everywhere. Dozens of people, shouting threats. A group of about ten were bashing a battering ram against the large wooden door set in the wall around the prison. It was working. Not only was the wood starting to splinter, but the stones around the door were shifting apart, some of them falling into the street.

  So the same people who’d repaired the wall around the palace had built the wall around the prison. Maybe they’d built the wall around the city, too. That would be handy for us. Potentially.

  Guards had come running, swords flashing, but members of the mob were picking up the stones from the street and throwing them. Some of them had fantastic aim.

  The door was torn apart.

  When Natson had come to us that evening, I’d assumed it was because she knew Tarce could be executed at any time, but I now suspected she had known this assault was going to happen, because I couldn’t imagine a better distraction.

  We ran through the gap in the wall. It was a challenge avoiding the bodies and flying debris.

  Unfortunately, not every Guard was running to the wall. A group of them were gathered by the small door that lead into the prison proper. Taro and I weren’t the only ones charging at them, though. We were surrounded by the members of the mob, who were armed with stones and pitchforks and swords of their own. They engaged most of the Guards.

  We ran through the door and found the stairs down to the second level. In the corridor full of iron doors, we found only one Guard, pacing nervously.

  Now what?

  I couldn’t see exactly what Taro did to him, but from the way the Guard just slammed backward against the wall and then slid to the floor, Taro had tackled him.

  The Guard screamed, and kept screaming. He lashed out with hands and feet, but he clearly had no idea what to do. He must have felt Taro on him, but he didn’t seem able to get a hold on any part of Taro and shove him off.

  I wondered if the fear brought on by the riot and the experience of having some unseeable force work on him was too much for his mind.

  With difficulty – the panicky Guard wouldn’t stay still, damn it – I unbuckled his belt to get at his keys.

  I didn’t know which cell Tarce was in, but it turned out that the keys opened all of them. I found Tarce at the third attempt. He was chained to the wall of a tiny stone room that stank of urine and feces. The only light came from the lanterns in the hall. He had probably been in darkness the whole time he was there.

  He was squinting in the light.

  I knelt before him. “Tarce.”

  He nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “It’s Mallorough.” I put a hand on his forearm.

  He jerked away. “I’ve gone mad,” he muttered.

  I figured the best way to prove I was really there was to take off his manacles. “I’m using a cast so people can’t see me. Or Taro. He’s here, too. Browne taught me how to do this.”

  At least the manacles were in good repair. They were easily opened. Perhaps they were new. “I’m going to use the cast on you, to prevent others from seeing you. Hopefully we’ll be able to get through the mess out there without anyone noticing us.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A mob is attacking the prison. They’re having some success at it.”

  “You organized a riot?”

  It was curious that he thought I had the means to do something like that. “No, it’s just a lucky coincidence.”

  “My luck hasn’t been too positive lately. How do I know I haven’t gone mad?”

  “You’re going to have to trust me. We don’t have time for you to question me every step of the way. Stay still.”

  I performed the cast and he disappeared from sight.

  We left the cell. I wanted to free all of the prisoners, but we couldn’t spare the time.

  The Guard was curled up on the floor beside the wall, trembling, eyes wide. We stepped around him. “I’ve got him,” I said, and I had to assume Taro heard and followed us up the stairs.

  The noise had risen to deafening and frightening levels. There were a lot of screams, and the blast of a wailing whistle. The whistle was probably calling all of the Guards in the city to the prison.

  When we reached the main floor, the room was filled with people fighting. The Guards seemed to be winning. Everyone was slipping in the blood on the floor, adding another layer of gruesomeness to the sight.

  Hanging on to each other, Tarce, Taro, and I stuck close to the walls, where it was harder for the fighters to swing swords and fists. This was the longest I’d maintained the unseeable cast, and every moment I worried, on top of everything else, that it would simply cease working.

  Then black clouds appeared out of nowhere, jagged lights within. They wrapped around individuals, who screamed and writhed in agony.

  Gifford’s casters had shown up.

  They were having problems, though. They weren’t targeting only the rioters. Guards were caught up in the clouds, too. Was that intentional, or the result of incompetence?

  Worry about that later.

  We esc
aped the crowds and the mess and finally the prison itself. Guards were running from all directions, but once we were beyond the wall around the prison, the streets were almost empty. At that point we felt safe enough to run ourselves.

  We sprinted to the new city wall. There were no Guards at the gate, which I supposed should be shocking, but I guessed every city enforcer had been sent to the riot.

  I pressed a finger into the mortar of the wall, just to check. Like the other wall, it crumbled. It would have been handy to climb over it, but I didn’t think Tarce had it in him to perform such a difficult task.

  Maintaining the precise control he’d acquired at the Arena, Taro disturbed the soil enough to tear the gate from the wall. For a moment, I wondered if the whole gate would fall, which would make a racket and might attract attention we couldn’t handle. Then the gate settled, and there was just enough space for a grown man to squeeze through.

  “Here,” said Taro, and he held out his purse. “It’s not much, I’m afraid. I haven’t been in the mood for gambling, recently.”

  “Anything will help,” said Tarce’s disembodied voice. “I’ll go through some of the settlements I stopped at during my way here. Someone will remember I’m Lord Tarce. I’ll tell them I was robbed and promise them Fiona will honour my debts. How do I end this … this cast?”

  “Just rub the powder off your forehead,” I told him.

  “All right. Thank you. Truly. I thought I was dead.”

  “We couldn’t have done anything else,” Taro told him.

  “I hope you don’t suffer for it.”

  “We won’t,” Taro said with a confidence we all knew he didn’t actually feel.

  “All right,” Tarce repeated.

  I heard him leave, heard a slight creak as he squeezed through the gap in the gate.

  Taro and I ran back to the palace wall, and found many more Guards milling about the place. But they were talking a lot, loudly, about the riot. They couldn’t see us, and they were making too much noise to hear us. We climbed over the wall.

  It hurt even more than it had the first time.