by Wren Handman
“Darren! Fire! Help!”
Almost simultaneously, she heard swearing from within and the sound of the upstairs window’s shutters slamming back against the wall. Framed in them was a man she had never seen before. He had sandy blond hair and a beard that lent a gravity to his relatively young face, and Taya couldn’t have cared at that moment if he was the Emperor of the Lost Kingdom.
“What’s going on?” he cried down to her, and even as he spoke Taya heard the sounds of shattering earthenware within and saw a flicker of brighter light against the glow of the kitchen lanterns.
“They’re lighting a fire! Get out!” she screamed, and as she spoke she saw the two men emerging from the house, a trail of smoke on their heels. She awkwardly launched herself off the horse, unable to catch herself because of her bound wrists. She hit the ground hard, twisting her ankle, but managed to scramble up to her feet. The two men were getting closer fast, and desperately she looked around for an avenue of escape. There was nowhere to run—the courtyard in back had no connections to her neighbors’ yards and the only way out was via two small paths that ran down either side of her building. There was no way she could reach them before one of the men caught her.
The first man, who seemed to be in charge, drew a long knife from his boot. “Get the horses. I’ll get the girl,” he instructed his companion in Sephrian, who immediately ran to obey.
“You think you can take me?” Taya snarled beneath clenched teeth, struggling for a tone of bravado she did not feel. He gave a short, barking laugh, and switched the blade deftly from his right hand to his left; no doubt partly to show off, but also likely to make grabbing her easier.
“I don’t think it will be a problem,” he told her in her own tongue, Sanitas. “Now why don’t you stop playing hero, before you get hurt.”
His accent was strong but he knew every word, and when he spoke, his teeth fair gleamed in the firelight. This was no hired hand, but someone of rank and station. She would never get anywhere in a fight with this man, not even if both her hands weren’t tied behind her back. She moved behind the pump, even its meager protection worthwhile.
“Something! They’ll be here something something,” the man with the horses hissed, and the man in charge lunged for Taya, who stumbled away from him around the pump.
The feeling of playing a game of tag was a dizzying mental dissonance, and she wanted to laugh from the sheer exhausting terror of the whole thing.
She heard a faint noise, almost a whistle in the air, then a sound like a slap of skin on skin and the man chasing her screamed, startled and pained. She turned to see him, tripping over her own feet and falling as she did, her head hitting the ground with a sickening thump. Stars appeared in front of her eyes, and through them she saw the man pulling a knife out of his shoulder, moving and looking at the same time in trained precision. Metal hit metal as he knocked another knife from the air, retreating now, back toward the horses. It all happened so fast, and she was having trouble breathing, and there was Ryan framed in the window. He caught the edge of the window ledge and dropped to the ground, rolling with the fall and coming up into a perfect crouch. The man he had wounded reached his horse and mounted easily, despite the trail of blood he left behind. Ryan spared Taya only the briefest of glances before pivoting perfectly on his feet and taking off in pursuit of the retreating horses.
Taya heard noises from the front of the house and wanted to cry out, but she still had no breath and the world was starting to spin in sickening circles. She heard the sounds of things in the kitchen crashing to the floor, and then it seemed like the yard was full of figures: men from the house, yelling in Sephrian; neighbors screaming for the fire brigade; dogs barking; a woman screaming. Everyone was washed out and turned to puppet figures by the flames and her exhaustion. She felt like she had to remember something very important, but she couldn’t, and when she stopped trying the whole world was tilted, like a picture hanging crooked on the wall. She realized she had fainted, and someone was calling her name and someone else was screaming, and her house was truly aflame now, the heat enough to dry her face and parch her lips. Someone helped her to her feet—Antoine, the butcher from across the way. She looked around, desperate, ignoring his question.
Darren and the others were gone.
And her freedom was burning. The home she had risked so much for, all those dreams that she had made come true…burning. Antoine was helping her out of the ropes that still bound her wrists, asking her questions, but her freedom was burning, the smoke reaching out to cover the stars; she was spending all her efforts not to cry, and she could do no more.
Antoine led her like a lamb to the front of the house, away from the immediate danger. A crowd had formed, people bringing water from everywhere they could, the fire brigade likely still minutes away. She heard someone saying it was too late to save her house, that they should only ensure the others didn’t catch, and she knew they were right. She stood, alone in the crowd, shivering in the night air, and watched the flames light the sky.
Chapter Six
HE HATED TRAVELING. He hated oceans, he hated horses, and most of all he hated Miranov. He hated the streets which dead-ended into streets which proceeded to dead-end into the same first street. He hated the net of urchins that the populace relied on to get around. Hated the smell of the tanneries by the water, and the sailors at the docks. Hated the food, which was either too spicy or too bland. Most of all, he hated that damnable Darren who thought he had the right to call himself a king.
Lord Mendaci stared at the blank paper in front of him and wondered how in Oblivion he could twist this political suicide into something to his advantage. He had to inform the king, who had handpicked him to ensure that this minor nuisance to the safety of his crown didn’t become a true threat, that this upstart sailor had somehow survived an assassination attempt by one of the finest killers for hire this side of the Great Ocean. Not only survived, but left the assassin dead, with a knife in the heart. No sailor could do a thing like that. It had to be that Oblivion-cursed Mask of Retribution. Everyone had heard tales of that killer for hire, best in his business, who for reasons unknown changed his allegiance and started fighting for the rebel forces. Asses on horses, it made him sick to his stomach just thinking about idealistic manure like that. Imagine, giving up a life of fame and riches in order to live like a beggar with an entire country out for your blood. The man must have suffered a concussion.
He picked up his quill and dipped it into a pot of ink, but paused before setting it to the page. Perhaps he could concentrate on the plan in motion to burn the Oblivion-touched nest of them to the ground, Darren and the original would-be-king to boot. That was sure to go smoothly, and even should it fail they would have the girl as collateral. That was the wonderful thing about revolutionaries: they were so damn predictable. They were willing to give up their lives for freedom, love, no person expendable. All one had to do to defeat them was ensure they were in a situation where you controlled that something they were fighting for, and you could make sure they gave their life to you. So he would control the girl, and this upstart kingling would happily walk off a cliff to keep her safe. In fact, he might even have him do that very thing.
He hummed to himself as he set the quill against the blank space and began to write. He could already see the rewards this would bring. This King Octarion knew how to reward those who did him good service. Perhaps a new post, or that bit of land he had been considering for when his wife gave birth to their third child. He outlined the plan carefully in the letter, pleased with his own ingenuity, and signed the bottom with a flourish. Preparing the wax with which to seal the envelope, he twisted his seal of station absently around his finger as he waited for it to melt. A tentative knock at the door interrupted his thoughts, and he gave it a cross look.
“Yes, what is it?” he snapped.
The door swung hesitantly open and a face with a raccoon mask of sweaty, grimy, soot-blackened skin peered cautiously thro
ugh the crack. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, and Lord Mendaci saw that it was Grayson. He narrowed his eyes.
“Is there a problem?” he asked through clenched teeth, rising slowly from his seat.
Grayson coughed, shifting from one foot to the other, and hesitated for what was probably only a second but seemed to Lord Mendaci to be far too long for comfort.
He cut him off the instant before he opened his mouth. “You idiots! Where is my son? What did you do?”
“We did like you said, sir. We went to the house, an’ the girl was there like you said, sir, and I grabbed her, sir, I did. And then she fainted, see, and Mik said to leave her an—”
“Leave her?” he asked. His voice was calm but there was deadly iron behind it, and Grayson quivered back a step.
“I didn’t, though! I mean, I did, but I didn’t. I tied her up, and I left her on my saddle, and Mik said you gotta come and help, you know, so I left her there on the saddle, but she was tied really well, sir, she was, and we went to burn the house like you said, sir, we sprayed it down like you said, but then she started to set up a holler, sir. I think she was only faking—”
“Are you both half-wits, or just my dullard son?” Mendaci snarled. He slammed the candle off his table in a rage, and then snarled again as he had to stamp out a burning ember. The last thing he needed was burn the inn down around his ears—there had been quite enough arson for one night. “And where is the lack-wit? Too scared to face his father after he made such an Oblivion-cursed mess of the whole affair?”
“Beggin’ pardon, sir, but he couldn’t come, see. He tried to grab the girl like you said, sir, an’ he woulda been sure to get her, sir, only someone threw a knife at him, sir. And, well, it hit him sir and he’s alive, but we took off after that; there were more knives coming, I think it was the Mask of Retribution, I know some people say he isn’t real but I swear you’ve never seen a throw like that in all your life, sir! And he chased us, and us on horses and him on foot but he was on our tail for a good long while, sir. We lost him on the straight stretch but Mik was doing, sorry, beg your pardon sir, Lord Mendaci the junior was doing pretty badly, sir, so I left him at Ashua’s Green Arbor to get stitched up and then came straight here to tell you…what happened. Sir.”
Lord Mendaci felt his anger deflating, replaced by a dull sense of embarrassment. This could not have gone worse if he had sent his infant son to do the job rather than the fully-grown one. He picked up the letter, mechanically, and began to shred it. What would he write in its place? How could he face his liege with this level of failure?
“Go saddle my horse. I should check on my useless son. His mother will be upset if I bring him home in a box.” He used the harsh words to cover his concern. Mik was a good lad. He’d brought him not only out of family duty, but because he genuinely trusted him to see the job done. If he had failed, it was because the deck was stacked rather differently than they had assumed. That assassin would be a problem, and no doubt the other guards Darren had collected were higher caliber than they had given them credit for. He would need something more on his side than half-trained noble boys.
“And me, sir?” Grayson asked.
“Hire some big strong men for the night, and go get that girl. I want collateral. But if she’s well-guarded leave off; I don’t want the city guards getting their hands in this. And while you’re hunting some strong arms, find out which mercenary companies are in the city. These rebels are a tiny force, and if we can use the girl to lure them out, we’ll do best in a frontal assault. The Mask of Retribution won’t be any help in an all-out war.”
The fire brigade had given up trying to save her home, and instead was simply ensuring the fire didn’t spread to the neighboring houses, wetting their walls and rousing their residents. There was no sign of Darren and his would-be revolutionaries; she supposed that now that they had become separated, it would be too dangerous for them to return here. Likely the house was being watched—perhaps she would never see them again. Perhaps someday she would hear the criers in the square announcing the crowning of a new king, and she would know that he had won…and that this was the last of her part in his story.
A child tugged impatiently on the back of her shirt, and as she turned the world took a sideways jaunt before righting itself. She needed sleep, needed a quiet, safe place where she could let herself break down and mourn her losses.
“Miss? Miss? This miss house?” the child asked.
“Yes, it’s my house,” she said. She touched her head and felt a bump near the nape of her neck, and remembered that she had hit it sharply there. How much of what she was feeling was exhaustion, and how much the blow? She was having trouble focusing on the child.
“Gray Men be wanting miss. Come come. Come come,” he insisted when she didn’t immediately move.
“Yes. Of course.” She would have to explain the fire, and no doubt Antoine had explained how he had found her, bound and dazed in the backcourt. She was too tired to think of a plausible lie. A robbery gone wrong? Perhaps she would just pretend total ignorance. Looking lost would hardly be a problem, and dressed as she was, yet clearly the homeowner, they would no doubt already believe her odd.
She followed the child to a nearby carriage, where the driver flicked him a gold nobble and leapt down to let her in. She had the briefest thought that it was an odd thing, Gray Men in a carriage…and she paused with one foot on the step and one hand wrapped around the doorframe, trying to see into the darkened interior.
Something round and hard hit her sharply in the small of the back, and she crashed headlong into someone’s lap. She sensed more than saw the door slam closed behind her, and felt the carriage begin to move. Instinctively she rammed her elbow down as hard as she could, and heard a grunt as she connected with what she thought was his shin, but the feel of cold metal on the back of her neck drove her to stillness.
“Enough of that,” a man’s voice said in heavily accented Sanitas. From the position of his voice it was clear there were two men with her in the dark interior, one whom she was lying on, and one who had what she assumed was a knife pressed to the back of her neck.
“Congratulations, you successfully subdued the unarmed woman,” she snapped. She knew she was turning to anger to hide her fear, but it felt good. To have an emotion she didn’t have to hide from, one that chased away the cobwebs in her mind and sent shivers of fire through her skin.
He didn’t answer her barb. The man she had elbowed pushed her up and shoved her sideways so she was on the carriage bench, and the one with the knife guided her carefully into a sitting position. She considered fighting them tooth and nail, just to let loose the beast in her chest, but there were two of them, and the point of the knife never strayed far from her chest. She wasn’t sure if they would kill her, but the chance was very real, and biding her time was wiser, if not as satisfying. She supposed she could ask what they wanted, but she knew the answer to that, so what would be the point? They seemed to feel the same, because neither man said a word as the carriage moved through the empty streets.
Every time a streetlamp came close she got a glimpse of her captors in the murky light through the curtains, and as they moved away their figures would drift back into obscurity. She wasn’t sure what help it would be, but she did her best to memorize the glimpses of their faces. An eye here, a nose there, all put together in her mind to make a picture of the men. One had the fair hair and skin common in northern Sephria, and he was the man who had spoken in the accent, so that made sense. The other seemed darker, either tanned or naturally, and his hair was either brown or black—Miranovo, then, or perhaps from Marabour far to the north, though their borders had been closed for a long time. He didn’t speak, so she couldn’t tell by his voice.
The one with the knife seemed, oddly, the higher station of the two; his clothes caught the light in flashes of gold and silver, whereas when she had fallen against the other man, her cheek had definitely been pressed against simple hom
espun. A nobleman and his servant, perhaps? Sephria and Miranov hadn’t been at war for at least forty years, but their peace always seemed tenuous, with one or the other raging about trade tariffs being too high or immigration being too lax. For any Sephrians to arrive here in force would surely cause diplomatic scandal if they were caught out. But was there any way for her to use that to her advantage?
By the time the carriage was pulling to a stop she still had no plan better than to wait it out and hope some advantage came to her. The man with the knife leaned in close and whispered, “No now fuss. You come out the carriage nice and gentle, or I stab you in the stomachs.”
“You’ve taken me as a hostage—you’re not going to ‘stab me in the stomachs,’ so you might as well put the knife away,” she retorted.
“You quiet, or you stab!” he insisted.
The darker man opened the carriage door and the Sephrian helped her down, keeping the knife hidden by the stretch of his arm as he followed her out. As they climbed into fitful dawn light, she saw that he was one of the men who had grabbed her the night before. She should have recognized his voice, but gave herself a pass. With the way she was feeling, she was surprised she recognized him even now.
She prayed to Ashua she was right, and her value as a captive outweighed his desire to cut her, because once they got her into a building, there was no way she was getting out. And they were moving toward one, a two-story residence with a gold crest by the door.
So she bit him and tried to make a break.
Lying on the ground a few seconds later, trying to figure out exactly how that had happened, she decided her escape hadn’t gone quite as well as hoped. She vaguely remembered something hitting her in the back—the other man, she supposed. And she wasn’t sure the bite had been strong enough to entirely break his hold, or else he had gotten it back very quickly, because even now he was hauling on her arm, swearing in Sephrian.