by Dora Machado
“I’m loyal to my lord,” Clio said.
“Then stop talking about him being dead,” Cirillo said. “Or I’m going to have to beat the crap out of you.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Petrus said. “He’s just saying what everyone else is thinking.”
Severo sighed. How right Petrus was. The Twenty had been gone from home too long and his lord had been gone from them for too many days. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if his lord died, but on nights like these, it was hard not to feel failure’s stench stinking the air. As he readied his horse for the long ride, he tried to shake off the dread gnawing at his belly.
“It’s the wench,” Cirillo muttered. “She’s the problem. If only you hadn’t tracked her down.”
A rush of anger flushed Severo’s face. “Are you going to blame this flop on me?”
“Had you not brought her to Lord Bren’s attention—”
“What was I supposed to do?” Severo snapped the straps securing his saddlebags with excess force, startling his horse. “Keep the damn lead all to myself?”
“Maybe had you been more thorough—”
Severo whirled on Cirillo. “Is that what you’ve been doing, picking and choosing? Is that why we’re all screwed up, ‘cause wise asses like you think they know better?”
“Take that back,” Cirillo barked, shoving Severo.
Severo shoved him back. “Get your hands off me!”
Cirillo tripped and grabbed Severo’s stirrup, which broke from the saddle. He stared at the stirrup in his hand.
“You whoremonger.” Severo lunged. “You broke my stirrup!”
“You two need to settle down.” Petrus shoved the men apart. “Do you see what’s happening here? We don’t need any damn hotheads in this outfit. We are brothers for Laonia’s cause, not mongrels fighting for scraps.”
Severo clenched his jaw. He was so angry he almost clobbered Petrus in the gut. But Petrus was right. He was losing it and he knew it.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Cirillo mumbled, staring at his feet.
“Yeah, me neither.” Severo dug his hands in his pockets. “You and I—we—we’ve all been through a lot of crap together.”
“Heaps of crap,” Petrus said.
“Mountains of crap.” Cirillo handed Severo the stirrup. “Here, this is yours.”
“I can’t afford the delay.” Severo examined the broken stirrup. “I’ve got to fix it and fast.”
“I’ll help you.” Cirillo held up the saddle flap. “Hey kid, bring us some light!”
Clio fetched the lamp and held it over Severo’s shoulder while he surveyed the damage.
“I think I have some spare leather straps,” Petrus said, rummaging through his pouch. “Yes, here.”
Severo braided the new leather straps through the stirrup belt. “I think we can all agree that the wench is to blame for this mess,” he said as he worked. “Lord Bren would be safe with us if that witch hadn’t fled in the middle of the night.”
“Witchy but sultry.” Cirillo cracked a smile. “I wouldn’t mind dipping into her magic well.”
“And risk getting your pecker turned to lard?” Severo said.
They laughed. Severo felt good to be laughing with his peers. He hated what had just happened. The ranks splintered when men cracked. Bad things happened when brothers-in-arms started doubting each other.
But they were a manic lot these days, one moment as solemn as the dead, the next moment fighting among themselves, and then rowdy and irreverent, back to their usual selves.
“Maybe you were right, Cirillo.” Severo affixed the stirrup to the strap. “I wish I had skipped the lead altogether.”
“You couldn’t,” Petrus said, threading a fearsome looking needle. “If Orell was after her, then our lord was bound to be interested.”
“He should’ve killed the troublemaker right away,” Severo said.
“Let me add some stitches to that.” Petrus dug the curled needle into the leather.
“She’s probably just another fake from Ali the Craftsman,” Cirillo said.
“Maybe it’s true what they said and she’s an oddity.” Clio’s eyes widened with fear. “Do you think she bewitched Lord Bren into following her?”
“Hogwash,” Petrus said. “She’s just a woman, nothing more.”
“Why did her town turned her out then?”
“The townspeople were probably afraid of King Riva’s wrath,” Petrus said. “He massacred most of the kingdom’s oddities within five years of seizing power.”
“Maybe if Lord Edmund would’ve done the same, we wouldn’t be this situation,” Cirillo said.
“I don’t know about that.” Petrus knotted his stitches and bit off the thread. “In the old times there were a lot of oddities around. I knew a fair number of them. None had the power to ruin the house of Uras. Spells and charms cannot a blight unleash.”
“Oddities give me the shivers,” Clio said.
“That woman is an all-around fake,” Cirillo said. “She’s got no business messing with my lord.”
“She could be a trap.” Severo tested the stirrup. “I think it’ll hold.” He mounted his skittish horse.
“Here.” Cirillo handed him a flask. “For the road.”
“Much obliged,” Severo said, taking the flask and shooing his horse into a trot.
“Safe speed,” Clio called after him, waving.
It was only later, as Severo was making his way through the dark forest that he realized why his thoughts had discomfited him so. Because if the woman was a trap and if the lord had fallen into it, the Lord of Laonia was right now surely in Riva’s hands.
Chapter Twenty-one
BREN CLIMBED DOWN THE TUNNEL IN the darkness, silently thanking Hato for everything he had taught him during all those extensive genealogy lessons. Laonia’s standing had plummeted lately, especially when compared to the times of Brennus the First, when Laonia was first among the houses and his illustrious ancestor had been appointed by his peers as Master Builder of the Temples. And yet some things never changed. The same old rivalries played on. As he grappled with the ancient irons his famous namesake had fastened to these walls a thousand years ago, he thanked Brennus the First for the foresight.
The steep vertical tunnel tested his endurance. His muscles burned with the rigorous descent. He had broken into a sweat by the time he landed at the mouth of a dark passageway running in opposite directions. He took a moment to calculate his bearings, then chose the passageway going to his right. He wished he had brought along a Laonian shimmering stone for illumination. But shimmering stones were too heavy for traveling and these days he chose speed over convenience. He had to crawl on his hands and knees while holding up the little candle he had swiped from Suriek’s shrine to illuminate the way.
The passageway snaked around like an old river. It was taking a long time. The candlelight glimmered off the fine silk threads of the expansive cobwebs draping the narrow tunnel. Long-legged spiders feasted on the oversized moths using the abandoned tunnels as breeding grounds. The moths struggled, trapped within the transparent cocoons where the spiders kept them alive until their next feeding. He pitied the moths’ terrible fate.
The passageway ended abruptly in a solid wall. Bren swore in frustration. It didn’t appear as if his celebrated ancestor had finished the job. That is, until he ran his hands over the stone wall. His fingers tripped over a metallic plate painted to match the wall. The fluttering little candle revealed that the plate had no knobs or levers. It could not be opened by any means Bren could detect. Then the wick sank into the last of the wax and the light quit, leaving him dreading the long return to Suriek’s shrine in the pitch darkness.
What good was a secret passage if it didn’t offer a true escape?
There had to be a way out. By Hato’s account, Brennus the First had been a competent fellow. The only logical reason for his ancestor to block the escape route he had so stealthily constructed was to preve
nt enemies and impostors from making use of it. The secret passageway was meant to give Laonia a strategic advantage over the rest, which meant that Brennus the First had designed the exit in such a way that only an anointed Lord of Laonia could open it.
What was the one object granted exclusively to the Lord of Laonia?
Bren grappled for the ring he wore around his neck. In the darkness, he traced the metal plate, until he found the tiny notch he sought, an almost imperceptible indentation that would have been invisible to the human eye even if lit. The ring fit neatly into the notch. He rotated it as if it were a key. The plate popped out of the wall with a quiet hiss.
Bren set the plate aside and crawled through the opening into a small chamber where he could stand. Groping the wall before him, he found a tiny louver located at face level. Cautiously, he opened a slat. He recognized the place right away.
The late afternoon sun spilled through the opened doors, illuminating the scrolled bars separating the tiled vestibule from the treasure vault, where some of the valuable offerings that Laonia had gifted to the thirteenth temple over many generations were displayed to impress. But it was Bren who was impressed once again by his ancestor’s shrewd forethought. He had anticipated Bren’s needs—as well as his plan—a thousand years ago. And now together, the two Brennuses—the first and the last—conspired to give Laonia a chance.
Bren had visited the temples enough to know that the House of Laonia was located on the main row of the courtyard, where each of the Free Territories kept a ritual house as required by the code. In this case, it was a one-story pavilion, constructed of rare Laonian slate in the simple classical lines that Laonian architecture favored. It stood in stark contrast to some of the more elaborate and ornamented buildings other territories had erected. Nevertheless, it attracted a fair amount of visitors who came to admire the exotic stones’ shimmering veins, which sparkled an astonishing array of phosphorescent silhouettes, nature’s spontaneous works of art.
Bren shook off the cobwebs from his hair and dusted off his clothes. He had to wait until the hour turned, when the Ascended posted at the pavilion’s gates would be distracted and any lingering sightseers would be lured away by King Riva’s famed tempest-maker. The mechanical gadget, installed on the cupola of the kingdom’s lavish pavilion, was this temple’s foremost attraction. It was said to spew booming thunder and real lightning at the odd hours of the worshipping day.
He waited until he heard the commotion and the visitors cleared away. After taking a final look, he undid the hasp and stepped out from behind the hanging mosaic decorating the vault. The invisible door clicked shut behind him. As he expected, the Ascended had also stepped out to watch Riva’s storm. Surrounded by Laonia’s treasure, Bren had no time to waste.
He ignored the proudly displayed catalogued pieces. Those would be easily recognizable to the temples’ authorities and their absence was likely to raise suspicions. Instead, he went to the back of the chamber, where the old coffers were kept. He needed something valuable but also portable, safe to carry and easy to conceal through the journey ahead.
Scavenging at the bottom of one of the oldest chests he could find, he selected ten pieces of exquisitely carved garnets. Long ago, when the garnets had been plentiful in the Crooked Mountains, Brennus the First had included them in his gift to the temples as part of the annual tribute. These days, Laonian garnets were so rare that their value had multiplied a hundredfold. Was it a crime if a thief stole from his own purse?
The ten pieces he stuffed in the little purse he fastened to his belt would be enough to secure a stay on Laonia’s upcoming tribute obligations and maybe even serve as an acceptable deposit. With the tempest-maker’s demonstration coming to an end and a fitting alternative to Laonia’s tribute stowed away in his purse, Bren put his ring to the padlock and hid behind the vestibule’s voluminous curtains just as a group of sightseers entered the pavilion.
By the time the group wandered out of Laonia’s ritual house, Bren was among them, slipping out undetected by the Ascended who had resumed their posts by the steps.
He made his way through the crowds, ducking behind walls and monuments to avoid the processions of cane-wielding Ascended patrolling the streets. The shrines were a lively if eclectic collection of assorted buildings. They varied in size, style and decoration. Some were richly appointed. Some were abandoned or decrepit. A growing number of worshippers navigated the crooked lanes meandering through the crammed courtyard.
Bren knew exactly where he was going. He filched an old cloak from a young man loitering by Puernicious’s shrine. The man and his companions were so entranced in a rowdy game of dice that they never noticed him. He wrapped the old stinky thing around his shoulders and, pulling the cowl over his face, moved on, feeling better about his chances, now that the cloak concealed his face and the weapons he had retrieved from Suriek’s shrine.
The flower stands were set up along the middle wall, a long line of stalls ablaze with a stunning selection. Bren looked around and elected to join the line of worshippers waiting their turn to enter Liliaveth’s shrine. He had no intention of worshipping the grisly Goddess of suffering, but the Goddess’s shrine offered an excellent view of the flower market.
From his convenient post, he observed the market’s dealings, watching as people came and went. Attendants assisted the customers in matching the appropriate flowers to the right gods. Judging from what he saw, Puernicious preferred blue lilacs, Odalis coveted anything red, and Liliaveth reveled on the rotting petals of the purple bells.
Orell, the king’s brute, favored a handful of expensive camellias, which he purchased from the young woman he was flirting with. He was using the woman and his purchase as excuses to linger in this part of the courtyard. Orell’s preference to stalk the flower market gave Bren cause to suspect the note he had received even more. Come learn of butterflies among Laonia’s sweetest blooms. The note was likely the lure of Orell’s latest trap.
Bren had to be patient or risk giving himself away. He was sure Orell and the king had spies among the Ascended. As long as Orell believed that Bren was confined to the Higher Temple in Suriek’s shrine, the thug would be at ease. On the other hand, Orell was no fool. He and his men would be alert and suspicious of anything out of the ordinary.
Orell was still lingering around the flower market, so Bren had to go into the shrine when his turn arrived. Liliaveth’s shrine was a small, windowless building capable of holding only a worshipper at a time in addition to the old Ascended napping on the stool by the door. The fetid pile of rotting tissue strewn upon the pedestal looked less like a pair of divine lips and more like a heap of putrefying offal.
To avoid raising suspicions, Bren knelt on the weathered cushion and bowed his head. He welcomed the short reprieve. Ever since he had left his room, he hadn’t felt like himself. His head hurt and the bloodletting hadn’t helped. He wondered if the sensation was real or imagined, if it was a presage of things to come. He set the thought aside. No sense in worrying about fate when one didn’t really have a future.
He remained still for a few moments, as if praying, holding his breath to avoid breathing in the relic’s putrid stench. Someone had left a jug of water and a loaf of bread as an offering for the Goddess. What a waste. The lesser gods and the baseborn who worshipped them were a bunch of brainless dimwits. He was about to get up when the relic moved, or rather the heap writhed and quivered, shocking both the Ascended and Bren.
“Doomed and damned are the souls of the wicked,” the relic gurgled. “Useless are their struggles.”
The Ascended jolted out of the shrine faster than a startled cat. Bren stumbled onto rubbery knees. It had to be a trick, something the temples did with their fake relics to make an impression on baseborn worshippers.
Why then had the old Ascended taken off as if demons were after his soul?
“Kill her,” the relic croaked again. “Kill her, before it’s too late.”
Bren reeled. It was i
mpossible and yet it would appear that even the lesser gods were intent on his curse. He forced himself out of his shock and hopped over the flower garlands to examine the relic, trying to figure out what had to be a trick.
Voices rose outside. Questions were being asked. People were beginning to gather. He couldn’t linger. As soon as the old Ascended could muster his courage, he would return, maybe even with the Pious in tow.
Bren groped for the door and, blinded by the afternoon sun, staggered out of the shrine.
His heart hammered in his chest like a set of war drums. He ducked the crowd’s questions and found anonymity in the throng. The relic seemed like a memory and yet the words were unforgettably real. He was doomed and he was damned and even her gods wanted Lusielle dead.
The rush of Ascended converging on Liliaveth’s shrine reminded him of the dangers. The law of refuge would not protect him in the courtyard. The reappearance of Orell and his men forced him to flee the flower market. It would not be long now before Orell would begin to suspect his ruse. Friend or foe, whoever had sent him the note would have to wait. He had to get out of the thirteenth temple. But before that, he had to get Lusielle.
He was on his way back to Laonia’s ritual house when something snapped into place. His mind ignited with a burst of clarity. His senses homed in on an odd sight. He saw beyond appearances what he had so keenly sensed.
Chapter Twenty-two
LUSIELLE STARED AT THE UNCONSCIOUS PIOUS sprawling on the floor. What by the gods was she going to do now? Vestor was kneeling on the floor, trembling, holding his head between his hands and whimpering like a frightened child. She knew she had to rally if they were going to survive the day.
“What have I done?” Vestor wailed. “I’ve disobeyed the Pious. I’ve broken my oath!”
“You didn’t break your oath.” Lusielle scooted on her knees over to Vestor. “He attacked you. He broke his oath.”
“What was he doing to you? Never mind—It was wrong. The Pious, he’ll kill me with the punishment—both of us—when he wakes.”