Pathfinder Tales--Gears of Faith

by Gabrielle Harbowy

  Zae swore under her breath. She’d run out of time for subtlety.

  The gnome punched her hand through and immediately conjured fog. Vapor rose around her, thickening the air and pouring through the conduit. She couldn’t get her ear to the hole while her arm was still through it, so she strained to listen while she fumbled for the door latch. It had to be right here. It had to …

  It was. Her fingertips brushed it. But she’d miscalculated the height of the hole, the length of her arm, and the amount of reach she would have with just the bend of her wrist on the other side. It was just slightly too far and too awkward for her to get purchase.

  A crash on Keren’s side of the wall sent her heart leaping into her throat. She withdrew her arm, looking around wildly. There had to be something she could use to extend her reach. Anything!

  She drew her hand through her hair. There was no time.

  Her fingers caught on hardened leather and glass.

  She still had her goggles. They had been tangled up in the mess of her hair during her struggle in the net, and no one had searched her bird’s nest of wild curls.

  The connection between the lenses was sturdy but not stiff. She would only have one eye-cup’s worth of extra reach, but it would have to be enough. Winding the strap around her wrist so that she couldn’t drop them if she lost her grasp, she navigated her arm back into the hole, with an eye cup clasped firmly in her hand. Sounds of scuffling could have been a fight, blind navigation, or just her paranoia. She couldn’t focus on them now.

  Once she was through the other side, with her shoulder pushed flush against the wall, she manipulated her grip on the leather and made as if to scoop up water with the eye cup. It caught on the latch and she jerked her hand upward. The door flung free and the metal bar clattered, catching nothing. She pulled her arm back and charged through.

  * * *

  Feet shuffled on stone, but without a visual reference Zae couldn’t tell how many feet there were. For a moment she thought maybe fog hadn’t been the best choice, but she had committed to it so there was no point in questioning it now.

  A quick glint of light flashed in her peripheral vision and she ducked. It was a knife in a large hand, attached to a black-clad arm. She cataloged it quickly: human, taller than Keren, unfriendly. She wanted to call out to Keren, but she didn’t want to give anyone else help finding her.

  She saw wood, some sort of stick, on the ground just faintly in front of her feet and paused, reaching out to trace it with her hand. The cross-rung was looped with rope and the rope was attached to ankles, and at once she filled in the rest: Keren on her side, next to a wooden stool with three legs. Now that she knew what she was looking at, the vague shapes fit together more sensibly to her dampened vision.

  After having removed her own bindings behind her back, the mobility to undo knots while unbound was a luxury. She didn’t need her eyes for this, just her fingers and a little bit of time. As soon as ankles were free, Keren moved. She’d just woken, or she’d been playing unconscious until she divined the intent of the hands that had found her, but by now she must have recognized Zae’s touch. She sat upright, offering her hands. The shape of her strong nose, vague outline of her hair, little details like these teased at Zae’s eyes without fully resolving into Keren. When the knot was loosened enough for the knight to free her hands, Zae squeezed them. She was comforted to feel the same squeeze in return.

  Keren released her and reached for the stool rungs. The wood rose up and out of sight. Keren was standing, readying the stool to use as a weapon or a shield, or possibly both.

  Zae shuffled backward until she felt wall at her shoulder blades, ticking off the spells available to her and getting ready to cast them. Keren was whole enough to recognize her, and to stand, and that was enough to fill her with relief and strength. She prayed for courage to fill herself and Keren, then lifted the fog.

  It burned away as if dawn were rising, starting at the ground and gradually clearing past Zae’s line of sight. She did a quick scan around the room and saw only one pair of legs other than Keren’s. Focusing on those, she prayed for their captor’s weakness as she’d prayed for Keren’s strength.

  Keren was shorter than her captor, so her vision cleared a moment before his, but a moment was enough to give her an advantage. She swung the stool, connecting with his shoulder. He staggered back but recovered quickly and lashed out with his knife, catching Keren’s sleeve. Zae cast about for something she could use. Near her was a small table with a pillar candle on it. The fog had quenched the flame, but the candle was thick enough to bludgeon with. Then she remembered how she’d almost tripped over Keren’s stool and knew what she could do.

  The man facing Keren was huge and muscled, with a fine fuzz of black hair over his head and jowls. He was focused on subduing Keren and didn’t seem to have noticed Zae yet; she watched for a moment, creeping along the wall, and he didn’t look her way.

  Keren swung again and he grabbed for a stool leg. It slipped from his hand but muffled what was meant to be a hard swing into a jarring close-range thud against his jaw.

  Zae was behind him now. She set the candle down, started it rolling toward him, and slipped out of the way. Keren was careful not to look at her, but Zae knew she was at least peripherally aware. Her next swing was slow enough for the man to grab the stool. Once he had a grip on it, she leaned in with her full weight, pushing him back. He tripped over the candle, Keren let go, and down he fell. Before he could get his bearings, Keren had snatched his knife away. She knelt on him and brought it down into his chest.

  The candle stopped rolling with a tap against the wall. For a moment, silence was louder than any sound.

  Keren straightened and looked her way. Her hair was stringy and matted, and her face and shirt were stained with blood. She eased carefully from a kneel to a slump, wincing. Zae had the prayer to Brigh already at her lips before she could reach Keren to touch her cheek. One deep gash healed, and the bruise behind it faded, color coming back to her ashen face under the layer of blood.

  “Hey, Pixie. Are you okay?” Keren eased back, crouching, studying Zae at arm’s length.

  “Me? They didn’t do anything to me. Are you okay?”

  Keren turned away. “I tried. I tried to call to Iomedae and she didn’t answer. Maybe I failed her by getting captured and she was disappointed in me. Maybe I’m just not meant for magic.”

  “Quit that. You can’t know how a god thinks, or what a god thinks, so you can’t second-guess them. Maybe you needed to be here for a reason. And you don’t have your holy symbol on you. You need that, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Keren muttered. “I know all of that.”

  “At least you’re safe and—”

  “No one’s safe now. There’s a graveknight on the loose—they made me watch while it killed Sula and Barent and probably more by now. By the time we get out of here, I may not have an order left to report to.” She took a deep breath and let it out roughly. Her eyes still looked haunted, but they turned hard and her strength shone through them. “Let’s not let it be for nothing.”

  Zae sighed a sharp breath. Her skin tingled with adrenaline and relief. “Good. Let’s find our stuff and get out of here.”

  When she turned, Keren let out a sharp curse and was instantly at her side again. “Zae, you’re bleeding.”

  That drew her up short. “I am?”

  Her dress was crusted and stiffening in the back, but Zae couldn’t remember injuring herself. When Keren touched gently, feeling for a wound, Zae remembered. “Oh! That’s just from my finger.”

  “Your finger?”

  “I’ll explain later. Long story. Come on, there’s someone else in the other room here that we need to rescue.”

  21

  PAPER TRAIL

  ZAE

  “It’s a maze in here,” Keren complained. The building in which they’d been held captive was indeed a repurposed warehouse, as Zae had suspected, but there was little rhyme or r
eason to the way in which the space had been reapportioned. The interrogation room’s other door led to a flight of stairs leading upward. The second floor took them through twisting hallways to a landing. Only the two of them explored. Turis had made a hasty retreat once freed from his net.

  “Up or down?” Zae asked. Keren jerked her chin upward, and Zae followed her up another set of wooden stairs.

  There weren’t provisions enough for the warehouse’s top floor to be the main lair of Arazni’s agents, but there were signs of it having been an outpost. Under a roof of oilcloth nailed to bare rafters, they found a sitting room of sorts. A weather-beaten wooden door had been repurposed as a warped, splintery table, and rickety chairs were scattered around it. Their gear was piled on the table, all intermingled. Zae picked out her bits and set Keren’s aside.

  “Come and look,” Keren called, and the floorboards creaked under Zae’s slight weight as she joined Keren in the middle of the room.

  The wall behind the door was a patchwork of maps, diagrams, and plans, with more of each spilling out onto the floor. Keren lifted the top sheet of parchment from a fallen stack. It was a crude pen-drawn map of Absalom with district boundaries marked in. Nothing was labeled, but a few areas had been circled in red. “The ink on this one is still fresh.”

  “Where?” Zae craned on tiptoe to look. Keren, distracted, lowered the page so that she could see it.

  “This circle. The older circles are dry. I’m not sure where this is…”

  “That’s in the Wise Quarter. Where the libraries are.”

  “Hm. And this one?”

  “That’s the heart of the Coins—not far from where we were ambushed. And this one’s in the Foreign Quarter. Do you think these circles are where the thief has used the Bloodstone? I wouldn’t think they’d stop to document it before running off to chase it.”

  “No, they probably told whoever was up here to stay behind, and they were probably were too excited to listen to orders. It would make sense, especially if the latest attempt is what made them all scramble out of here so fast. If they could catch up with the thief…” Keren’s lips were pale, pressed together tightly. “Help me go through these papers. There might be something else here.”

  Zae desperately wanted to ask Keren about her interrogation, to make sure she was all right, but she was learning that there were times when humans didn’t want help; the times when help was most needed were the times when humans got the most stubborn. She had to let Keren talk about in her own time. In the meanwhile, there were snowdrifts of papers to sort through. They reminded her of the drifts of Appleslayer’s fur that accumulated in the corners of the house if she didn’t brush him often enough.

  The top sheet was a bill of sale for food provisions. It was an interesting glimpse into obsessive cult life, especially since it suggested how many living agents Arazni had in Absalom. After all, the undead didn’t need to eat.

  “This is strange.”

  Zae looked up to find Keren studying a sheet on the wall. “It’s the floor plans of this warehouse, Keren.”

  “Yes. It’s the plans to a very simple building that they’re already in, and yet it’s in a position of prominence.”

  Zae frowned and extended her hand. “Let me see.”

  Magic was sunken into the page, strong enough to tingle her fingertips. She felt the strong urge to ball up the page and destroy it, but some small twinge in the back of her mind told her that wasn’t a reasonable urge to have. Why would she feel compelled to destroy it instead of putting it back where they’d found it?

  “There’s something else here under the plans. Give me a moment.” A quick murmur under her breath and ink started to fade, as if it had returned to the very fibers of the parchment. While she glanced over the writing that had emerged instead, Keren looked on, her gaze stormy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The knight shook her head. “Just … How easy that is for you.”

  “You’ll get it, in time. Nobody masters magic in one day. Think of it like this: if you’d gotten free sooner, we wouldn’t have this fresh ink on this map to track down; or we would have had to fight them all ourselves, instead of with most of them having run off.”

  Keren considered that instead of answering right away. “What’s on that page?”

  Zae clicked her ring against her teeth. Or tried to, and only now realized it was missing. They’d taken her lip ring but left her goggles? On second thought, it made sense that an organization which used poison capsules in their teeth would think to be suspicious of jewelry she could bite.

  While Zae had heard the guards talking to Keren, she’d been too focused on escaping to pay attention. As long as the cadence of their voices stayed even, she’d assured herself that there had been no change in conditions. Now she wished she’d listened more closely. “It’s a list of names. Do you think these are the agents in town, or…” Zae skimmed down the entries, then did a double-take. Ruby Tolmar. “This name. I know this name.”

  “That’s the Ruby from your cognate? The one I met?”

  Zae nodded. “I’m positive. I don’t know what it means, though. Is she an operative? A spy? But the net they caught us in was Rowan’s commission. I’m sure of it. I helped him make it. So did Ruby, but … the job was his. So maybe he’s the one on the inside and he’s been assigned to follow her? Should we warn her?”

  “Are any of these other names familiar?”

  Zae slowed down and looked again, lingering on each line. “No, just Ruby. How about you?”

  A lock of hair fell in front of Keren’s eyes as she leaned down over the page, but she didn’t seem to notice it. Zae’s fingers itched to tuck it back behind her ear. “This one sells fruit in the God’s Market. I’ve passed his stand several times and his name’s printed right across the banner.” They exchanged a look.

  “Spies, or suspects?” Zae repeated. “Do we warn them or pretend like we aren’t onto them?”

  “Maybe if we find the rest of the people on this list, we’d know … but it’d mean running all across town, and they’re already closing in on the Bloodstone.”

  “Maybe not. These circles cover a lot of ground.”

  Keren looked unconvinced, but let it go.

  Once satisfied that all her possessions were accounted for, Keren went through the process of shrugging into her chainmail shirt with practiced ease. The familiar jingle of it settling on her shoulders made her stand a bit taller. She didn’t replace her good tunic over it.

  “So, what’s our next step?” Zae asked. “The list, or the map, or keep digging here?”

  Keren grimaced. “We need to get out of here. This clearly isn’t the Araznians’ main headquarters—or her top agents, for that matter—but we can’t afford to be here if they come back.”

  “You should take the list to the training hall,” Zae said. “Maybe they know more. If not, there’s got to be a city census record or something that can help you track these people down. I can take the map and go visit the places where the Bloodstone was used. Between my magic and Apple’s nose, maybe we’ll pick up a trail.”

  Keren stiffened. “What? I’m not leaving you.”

  “Are you the same Keren who was worried that we’re running out of time?”

  “Yes, and you’re the Zae who, in the last day, cast a lot of spells and lost a lot of blood. You may not mind that your back looks like a butcher’s apron, but the city guard might take an interest in that long story I look forward to hearing.”

  Zae looked back over her shoulder, but couldn’t see the blood in question. She didn’t think she’d bled that much in the process of pulling the metal sliver out of her finger, but it was true that she didn’t know how long she’d spent stanching the wound with her dress or how much it had spread. “I’ll go home and clean up first,” she conceded.

  “Here.” Keren draped her tunic over Zae’s back like a cape, fastening it with a knot of sleeves around her chest. “That’ll do for now. So we’ll stop
by the house first, and then we—”

  “Keren.”

  “What?” Keren asked, but her guilty expression said she knew exactly what.

  Zae took Keren’s hands and squeezed them. “I know you’re worried about me, but we don’t have time for this. We have to split up, at least temporarily. I can take care of myself. And so can you.”

  Keren’s lips moved like she wanted to protest, but no sound came out. At last she squeezed Zae’s hands back and said quietly, “I know.”

  “That’s settled, then. You take the list to Yenna. I’ll check out the circled areas. If those are places the Bloodstone’s already been used, they should be relatively safe. And if I can find a clue your order’s missed, maybe Yenna will start taking us more seriously. But getting those names to the church is key. We don’t know if they’re targets or allies to the Araznians. And if they’re targets…”

  “If they’re targets,” Keren finished for her, “then they might not have much time.”

  22

  BLOOD TRAIL

  ZAE

  To Zae’s relief, she found Appleslayer pacing outside their flat, whining, when she arrived home. He ran to her, bowled her over, and barely left her side while she changed quickly out of her bloodstained dress and into something clean and practical, then raced through her spell preparations.

  The sites where the Bloodstone had been used days ago held no information that Zae could find, when she overlaid a city map with the crudely sketched one. Because of the map’s small scale, the first two circled areas encompassed too much ground to be informative.

  She started closest to home, riding through the Coins on Appleslayer’s back. If the circle on the map was remotely precise, and she had no choice but to go on the assumption that it was, it could have marked a rickety hostel where the turnover of tenants was too high to offer any leads, or the very center of the market, or a cul-de-sac where a slave auction was just beginning. A pleasant-looking human apparently assumed she was there to buy and offered her a front-row seat. Zae swallowed her disgust and managed a polite refusal before continuing on her way.