The City of Lies

by Robert J. Crane

  The City of Lies

  The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 3

  Robert J. Crane

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  Prologue

  Let me tell you about Ostiagard.

  But before I do, picture my library.

  Not the stacked shelves.

  Not the diminutive Chinese girl often lulling in aisles, reading with that icy, sullen expression I’ve come to think of as Resting Heidi Luo Face.

  You can also ignore Carson Yates, perched forever over his latest find, nose so close to the pages that he could kiss the words.

  Disregard me, too: Mira Brand, slightly fidgety, because if there’s one thing that sets us Brands apart, it’s that we cannot sit still.

  And finally, you can ignore the orc (when he’s in attendance), whose passage throughout the library is somewhat more awkward than ours. Mostly that’s due to his armor, but Burbondrer takes up a lot of space even without it.

  What’s important are the pieces of paper on the walls. For in many places throughout the library, someone has printed, very neatly, the names of cities throughout my world: London, Tokyo, Paris—and more.

  My library is a kind of hub on top of many intersecting lines.

  And Ostiagard is like that, too. Only it’s so much more. Because Ostiagard connects … well, damn near everywhere.

  (That’s an exaggeration, just fyi. Infinite possibilities, and all that; mathematically it just doesn’t work out. But I think you know what I’m getting at.)

  Ostiagard is a city of angles: jagged, MC Escher-esque architecture spills across the landscape for miles upon miles, rising to a great central peak of layers, streets stacked upon themselves, winding up, up, up … Abuzz during the day, yet peculiarly quiet at night, it’s at once alien and reminiscent of home. The tang of smog lingers in the air, coughed in plumes into a pale green sky. It’s subtle, not suffocating, and nowhere near like Chinese cities you see on the news, where people wear masks so as not to breathe the fumes. But it persists, underlining everything else. Almost, in its way, homely.

  Almost.

  Something else you should know about Ostiagard: people call it the City of Lies.

  See, way back, Ostiagard was a shining, prosperous jewel. Think of the Roman Empire in its heyday. That’s what Ostiagard was, for centuries and centuries. It commanded respect … and drew its share of envious eyes. And why wouldn’t it? An imperial capital, so laden with great treasures, growing richer and richer, fatter and fatter …

  Well, that fosters ambition.

  Ostiagard was invaded three times: once from within its own world, and twice by armies that spilled forth from another. Each time, the city was ransacked. Blood was shed. Each time, it was almost toppled, but it was never destroyed, and each time, Ostiagard was rebuilt. Still, enough damage was done that the invaders won.

  Technically.

  You see, for all of Ostiagard’s supposed riches, every single invading army left empty-handed. Not one single coin, one tiny relic, was taken from the city itself.

  The citizens? Sure, they lost their fair share.

  But the city vaults were entirely empty. All the invaders had to show for their efforts was blood on their hands, and their wounded and dead.

  And thus Ostiagard was branded ‘the City of Lies.’ Prosperous? Hah. All those riches must have been long-spent—and all that bloodshed, all that death, was for naught.

  But maybe that’s a lie too. Perhaps there is a great treasure, hidden in some impossible-to-find cache buried far below Ostiagard, one that Ostiagard’s assailants never managed to find.

  Or what if it’s been hiding in plain sight all this time? Millions of people, all going about their lives, for centuries upon centuries, all failing to see Ostiagard’s greatest secret—its greatest lie—right in front of their noses.

  I don’t know which version of this story I believe.

  But if it is the last one, and the treasure remains …

  Well. I’m a Seeker.

  And I think it’s high time someone uncovered the truth hidden in the City of Lies.

  1

  “I wanted to ask you,” Carson said, leaning back. A slow smile crept across his lips. His eyes glinted, boring into mine. “Are you ever going to tell her that you got the Tide of Ages to work?”

  I froze.

  The question hit me square in the chest. And for all the times that I, like everybody else in the world, tried to tell myself that I was a good liar, I knew right then that I was wrong. It was written on my face, and I could damned well feel it.

  “Uh …”

  “You’re surprised,” Carson pointed out.

  “Um …”

  “Definitely surprised.”

  Blinking in hopes that my lids would keep my eyes from just bursting out of my head like the guts of the fat slugs I used to step on when I was a four-year-old psychopath, I tried to collect myself.

  I failed.

  “How’d you know?” I stammered at last. And then I shot a look back up the aisle, just to make sure Heidi—the ‘her’ Carson was referring to—had not returned via the London link to our lair. Thank goodness it was directly opposite the central aisle, where I could see if a perfect black antipode opened before the pixie returned from her midnight jaunt.

  “I was holding one of the key orbs that opened the last temple,” Carson said. “I assume the orb excluded me from the effects when you activated the Tide of Ages.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “Not a lot. It only happened for about twenty seconds. Time just … spun backward. That’s what the Tide of Ages did, right?” When I didn’t answer, Carson glanced away. “I know it did, so you don’t need to be cagey with me. The ripples on the water’s surface suddenly reversed direction. One moment they were coming at me, lapping against the rim of the ledge, and the next …” He pushed outward with his hands in a gentle motion to indicate the water’s surface moving backward. “And then I slapped on the telepathic thing, and caught your thoughts. They were really jumbled, by the—”

  But Carson’s explanation was momentarily lost on me, because something he’d said—about the orb, and its effect when the Tide of Ages undid Heidi’s death—echoed in my mind far too loudly.

  “Hold up,” I said. “Borrick had the other orb until he found out Heidi and I had the Tide of Ages. Was he … immune too?”

  Carson pulled a face. “I was kind of watching the water, to be honest. Also, Bub was … he’d said something, so it all came back in reverse.” He imitated Burbondrer’s reversed speech, affecting a lower pitch to really sell it.

  “Sounds like a mess.”

  “Mm. Anyway, I was distracted. But Borrick didn’t have the orb in hand, I think … although I’m not one hundred percent sure … but he didn’t say anything when you surfaced, did he? And you know what he’s like.”

  “Unable to keep himself from gloating?” I suggested.

  “True, but not exactly what I was thinking,” Carson said. “I meant curious. Every time he has a key,
he asks so many questions. It’s not unreasonable to think that he’d want to know all about the Tide of Ages working, how it happened, why …” His eyes flashed to mine again. “I mean, I’m curious. Anyone would be if they saw time run backward for twenty seconds of their life.”

  “Fair point.”

  I glanced back down the central aisle. Still no exit portal, no black line—and still no Heidi.

  “Right,” I said. Pulling a chair up, I perched it as close to Carson as was possible to look natural should Heidi step back through, but not so close that I couldn’t keep watch over that blank section of wall headed up by the word London in black letters on an unevenly torn scrap of paper.

  “Right,” I repeated. I took a long breath, and began to explain.

  “When we were down there, locked in the cathedral, we were outnumbered.”

  “Big surprise,” said Carson. Seeing my expression, he cleared his throat. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “The odds weren’t so bad; four on two. And we were doing all right. But we were tired, and the marachti just kept coming. And then part of the organ fell away, like the coral eroded into dust, and it revealed the Tide of Ages, and we knew we had to make a dash for it. So I ran up to grab it … and then when I had it, I turned round, and …”

  I trailed off, momentarily replaying that fatal wound, the way the light had died in Heidi’s eyes, and how her body had just dropped.

  “One of the marachti stabbed Heidi,” I finished, quiet.

  A pause. Carson filled in after ten long seconds with a short, very uncomfortable, “Oh.”

  “But then the Tide of Ages did its thing,” I continued, forcing myself away from the echoes of Heidi’s death, “and time reversed. I saw the dagger go into her back again … but it was … ungoing in, or whatever, and then the marachti walked backward. And then it all paused, because I guess time was about to speed back up again … so I just ran in there and stopped it from happening.” Lamely, I finished, “The end.”

  “Yeah,” said Carson. “You didn’t have to explain that, by the way. Or not all of it. I, um, kind of knew; the telepathy ring … I just kind of wondered if you were going to tell her or not. You know, right now she thinks it’s busted.”

  “And I want it to stay that way,” I said firmly.

  “Why?”

  I glanced back toward the empty wall opposite. Still no Heidi.

  “Because who wants to know about their own death?” I said, low as I could.

  “Hmm.”

  “You disagree with my decision.”

  “Yes,” said Carson promptly. And before I could say, “Are you going to tell me why?” he began to list his reasons, tapping his fingers one by one as he did so.

  “First, Heidi went to a lot of effort for the Tide of Ages. All of us did, of course. And admittedly Heidi was a real pain in the backside. But this was her Chalice Gloria. She deserves to know that its charge was used to save her life, rather than continuing to believe the whole thing was a waste of time.”

  Guilty unease settled in my midsection at his words.

  “Secondly, we can’t lie to each other,” he continued, tapping his middle finger. “We’re a team, and that means being able to trust one another.”

  The murky void at the bottom of my stomach grew just a little more cavernous. Also a very good point. What would happen if at some point in the future, Heidi found out I’d inadvertently used the Tide of Ages? By rights she ought to focus on the fact that I’d saved her life, and that I’d kept the truth from her in order to protect her from the knowledge that she had died, to stop it from eating away at her, knowing just how perilous our lives were …

  But I’d come to know Heidi Luo this past month and a bit. I didn’t think that was likely. All she’d think of was the fact that she’d been lied to.

  And would I honestly be any different?

  Knowing the answer and wishing it were not true, I bit my lip. Eyes on the wall below the London sign again, I murmured, “Heidi didn’t tell us where she was going tonight, or even that she was going.”

  Carson shrugged. “Maybe it’s a late night walk. She’s got a lot to digest. The Tide of Ages not working was a big disappointment for her.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Or maybe she’s got a secret, too,” Carson said, leaning back as far in his seat as he could go. “She might be honest with us if you decide to be honest with her.”

  I met his gaze, lips sealed tight.

  “Just saying,” he said. I hated that phrase.

  He wasn’t pushing, really; Carson didn’t have that in him, and I was eternally thankful for that right now. Still, the topic was uncomfortable, and in spite of all his not-pushing, Carson’s opinion of my decision was perfectly clear on his face even if his words had been more tactful.

  Seizing on anything I could to change the subject, my gaze darted to the oversized book Carson had been bowed over when I came in, the latest in a long series.

  “What’re you reading?” I asked.

  A wry smile. “You can dodge for now, but this isn’t the end of the conversation, Mira Brand. And be aware that I am only letting you dodge because you’ve asked a very interesting question of your own.”

  “How very kind of you.”

  Leaning forward again, eyes lighting up, Carson flipped the book back to the front cover, holding his place with a finger. “Ancient Treasures and Artifacts,” he read. “Inspired name, to be sure; I think there about sixty others with the same or a similar title littered throughout these shelves. Regardless …” He turned back to his place, rotating the book so I could take it in.

  Dominating yellowed pages with two columns of very small text, the letters oddly proportioned, was an illustration comprised of spider-silk-thin lines. The picture depicted a room, packed to the brim with treasures the likes of which I dreamed of. There were mottled plates that could only be obduridium, and stacks of metal bars which I first assumed were gold. Then my eyes drifted over the inscription, lingering over the word ‘platinum’ long enough to spike my heart rate—

  And then I saw the name of the city where this trove was supposedly held.

  All the breath left my chest in a sigh. “Sorry, Carson,” I told him, patting his hand, “but that stash, though very appealing, is the lost treasure of Ostiagard … which makes it, regrettably, a total myth.”

  “Oh.” The excitement faded in Carson’s eyes. He rotated the book again, appraising its text. “But a footnote here says it’s not.”

  I resisted rolling my eyes, chastising myself silently for getting so excited. A mound of treasure like that could only be mythical, and of course that specific myth would refer to the City of Lies.

  “Sorry, Carson,” I said, “but your book is wrong today, and it was wrong however many centuries ago it was written. The place is a dry hole—one pretty much every Seeker has stuck their head into at some point in time to confirm that, yep, there’s not a single treasure to be found. It’s empty, is Ostiagard.”

  Steps suddenly came from the opposite side of the library.

  I looked up to see that, in my distraction I hadn’t noticed Heidi’s arrival. Only a last dark line lingered on the wall behind her—the back-end of her gateway via the usual spot beside Tortilla—before closing.

  As ever, she looked serious.

  “All right?” I asked.

  Carson stretched around the bookcase to stick his head out. He waved.

  “Hi,” said Heidi. She stopped by us, looking stiff. “I had to step out for a bit.”

  I ignored Carson’s surreptitious glance.

  “So,” she said, looking between us, “what’s this about Ostiagard?”

  2

  “Show her your book, Carson,” I told him.

  He obliged, holding it up like a teacher would a picturebook.

  Heidi gave it a cursory sort of consideration, looking her typical sullen self. “What am I looking at?”

  “Carson’s been reading about the ‘long lost treasu
re of Ostiagard,’” I said, fighting to keep back a chuckle.

  “It’s a fool’s game,” Heidi told him. “City’s been ransacked enough times up to yet.”

  “But the margin says—”

  “Where have you been, anyway?” I asked. “You have an errand to run or something?”

  Heidi stiffened. “No.” She folded one arm across herself, gripping the other elbow. “I fancied a curry.”

  “At this hour?”

  At the same time, Carson said, “Can you seriously get curry at this hour in London?”

  “It’s not that late,” Heidi said.

  “It’s creeping toward one a.m.,” I pointed out.

  “Curry at one a.m.,” Carson echoed. “I could never do that. I’d get killer heartburn. Anything spicy just tears me up.” Then he paused, squinting. “Didn’t you eat a burrito not long ago?”

  “I’ve had an exhausting day,” Heidi replied snippily. “I’ve burned a lot of calories. I needed more than just beans and meat to refill me.”

  “You don’t smell much like a curry,” I said.

  “I don’t drop half my food down myself, do I?” Heidi replied. Definitely on the verge of snappy now. I decided to ease off; it was probably the wisest thing for all of us. No one wanted a blow-out in the middle of the night when we could all be getting some shut-eye right now. And Carson would no doubt remind us not to disturb Bub, whom I’d left to find digs of his own in one of the side rooms.

  Although, having said that, shouldn’t we have been treated to a melody of orc snores this past ten minutes?

  I blinked the thought away, shaking my head. Orcs didn’t necessarily snore. Maybe they were peaceful sleepers. Kind of like cats. Big, green, armor-clad cats. With weapons.

  Disregarding my failed analogy, and mentally underlining the need for shut-eye as urgent, I tuned back into Heidi and Carson.

  “… lost treasure of Ostiagard, honestly,” Heidi was saying, shaking her head. “You could have at least found a myth that hadn’t been proved fruitless about twenty thousand times by now.”

  “Three,” I corrected. “Not counting the endless parade of Seekers who have gotten all glittery-eyed at the thought of pretty treasures.”