Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  ***

  Exhaustion pulled at Jareen’s eyelids like heavy weights, but he forced himself to push on despite the late hour. Evening had given way to early morning and all but the Night Birds had long retired. With Claire’s “poems” in hand, he plodded his way down the city streets, visiting one drinking house after another.

  With scores of such establishments throughout the great city, it was an arduous task, and the odds of finding any of the specific few he sought out were strongly against him, particularly since Inquisitor Quinlan’s recent raid and arrests. With sunrise likely no more than three hours away, Jareen began to consider that his search was hopeless, at least for this night. He resolved to check one more tavern before going home—his empty, lifeless home.

  He paused before opening the door and rubbed the heel of his palm against his closed eyes in an attempt to massage away their exhaustion. Blinking at the scintillating motes of color his action elicited, he glanced up at the top of the doorframe and spotted a symbol, just visible in the flickering orange light of the establishment’s lantern, carved into the wood.

  Jareen shuffled the few pages in his hand, holding each of them up to the light until he found the one containing the same image as the etching above the door. This was it. He had suspected that the images Claire had drawn on the pages represented different recipients or perhaps meeting locations. He had recalled seeing one of the sigils on something Aiden had made for them. It was his brother-in-law’s maker’s mark. Jareen had also seen the same symbol scrawled onto the wall of a tavern he and Aiden had drunk at before becoming bitter enemies years ago.

  There were perhaps half a dozen men in the drinking house, and they all paused to look at Jareen the moment he strode through the door. All were hard-eyed and appeared to be well acquainted with late-night drinking. Even the bartender gazed upon him with an unfriendly scowl.

  “Can I get you something?” the barman asked.

  Jareen flicked his eyes around the room and began walking toward a door at the far end. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Well, if it ain’t one of the sots sitting here and if you ain’t drinking, then I think you had best be on your way.”

  He ignored the man until chairs scraped against the floor as he reached out to open the door.

  “That’s a private room, friend,” one of the men who had stood up said. “Best you leave now. This isn’t the place for you.”

  Jareen turned and found all six men and the bartender converging on him. “Given your reaction, this is precisely where I need to be.”

  Two of the men pulled knives while the others gripped thick mugs, ready to bludgeon the intruder. The knife-wielders were the first to charge in, thinking to cut the interloper down before he could draw the sword hanging at his hip. Little did they know that Jareen was far more than a simple butler. He was one of the finest swordsmen in the city, a secret he and Auberon enjoyed keeping.

  Jareen hooked a chair with his foot and sent it tumbling into the path of the nearest man, tripping him up and giving him the split second he needed to draw his sword. The second man charged in and made a clumsy thrust only to find Jareen’s sword waiting for him. He sidestepped and slashed the man across the forearm, deep enough to make him lose his grip on his knife.

  The man stumbled past with a cry of pain, arrested his momentum, and spun about in hopes of tackling the intruder from behind while his compatriots held his attention. Arms out wide, he rushed at the finely dressed man’s back only to be brought up short by the sword digging into the soft flesh beneath his chin.

  “Hold, or your man starts breathing through his neck!” Jareen ordered.

  The other men in the room stopped their charge but held their position, weapons at the ready.

  Jareen inclined his head toward the door. “Open it.”

  The man fumbled behind him for the door handle as a trickle of blood ran down his neck and mingled with his sweat. “Ain’t nothing in there but death, friend.”

  “Then I shall be in good company.”

  The door opened and Jareen pushed the man inside with the tip of his sword. There were five more men inside the room standing around a large table, each gripping a knife, one holding a crossbow pointed at the doorway.

  Gill lowered his knife a bit. “I know you, you’re Aiden’s kin, Claire’s husband.”

  Jareen looked over the shoulder of the man he held at sword-point. “That’s right. Can we all relax a bit now? We have much to discuss.”

  Gill sheathed his knife and sat down. “Put ’em away, boys. We can kill him after he’s said his piece if we don’t like what he says.”

  Once the men in the room put their weapons away, and the ones outside backed off and took seats near the private room, Jareen sheathed his sword and shoved his captive out to rejoin his friends before closing the door behind him.

  “What do you want, Jareen?” Gill asked. “You here to spy for your masters? Maybe issue us some demands?”

  “I am here because we serve a common cause.”

  “Since when have we had a common cause? You finally feel what the rest of us have been going through, so now we got us a common cause?” Gill asked amid angry rumblings of agreement.

  “Something like that, yes. I did what I thought I had to do to protect my family and give them the best life I could, and I will not apologize for it. It is no different than what you all would do for yours.”

  “Except we are doing what we can for everybody’s families, not just ours!” someone countered.

  Jareen turned a furious glare toward the speaker. “Like you did for mine? Like you did for Claire and Aiden’s family all the way down to first cousins? How many necks were stretched all on account of you doing better for everyone’s family? All you have done is create a bit of chaos and a lot of pain!”

  “So, what, you mean to join us and change all that?” Gill asked.

  “No, I mean to lead you.”

  Gill laughed. “What are you going to do, teach us to serve them bad tea until they surrender?”

  Jareen upended the heavy sack he was holding and emptied its contents onto the table. “No, I mean to kill them. I mean to kill every damn one of them.”

  The men stared at the half-dozen porcelain masks without speaking until Gill broke the silence. “How are we going to kill highborn, much less an overlord and the highlords, with masks?”

  “We’re not. The masks will allow our people to get close to the overlords and highborn. I realized tonight that, with the exception of perhaps those who directly serve under them, the masters only know the slaves by their masks and are clueless as to the identity of the men and women behind them.”

  “Then what?” Gill asked. “We might kill a few, but the moment the alarm sounds, those sorcerers throw up their wards and our steel don’t stand a chance. Assassination has been tried, and it always failed.”

  “We don’t kill them with steel. We kill them with this.”

  Jareen pulled the short arquebus out from beneath his coat and lit the slow match with a candle. He aimed it at an old breastplate hanging on the wall and touched the ember to the hole exposing the powder. The weapon fired with a whoosh and a cloud of smoke. Several men shouted their surprise and leapt to their feet, wafting the acrid haze with their hands.

  The door burst open and the men standing guard outside pressed in to lend aid against whatever sorcery Jareen had wrought. Gill held them back with a raised hand. He approached the breastplate, studied the hole in its center, and felt the breeze emanating through it from the outside.

  “It’s fine, lads.” He faced Jareen. “It’s a neat toy, but I don’t think it’s going to topple the overlord much less the emperor.”

  “It is a crude prototype, and the highborn will not think it a toy when they are staring down the barrels of several hundred of them pointed at their chests.”

  “Even if we knew how to make the damn things, it would be a trial to get the few blacksmiths we have to churn them out,
especially under the highborn’s noses.”

  “We won’t make them here. I have a plan to go to Vulcrad and have them made in secret inside one of their mines. I expect Vulcrad’s metalworkers will have ideas on how to improve it and make as many as we need. From there, I can have them transported not just here but to Vulcrad, Thuum, Nibbenar, and Glisteran.”

  Jareen leaned onto the table and gazed into the eyes of every man in the room. “Gentlemen, this is not a mere uprising, this is a rebellion, one that will destroy the hierarchy that is crushing us beneath its heel. We will become the masters of our own lives and choose our fate as well as that of our families.”

  “Or we’ll all end up dead,” Gill responded.

  “Either way, we’ll be free men.”

  Gill looked around the room, reading his men’s faces. “What will you have us do?”

  “I need an airship crew.”

  Gill’s face split into a broad smile and he threw his arms out wide. “Is that all? You are in luck. I’m a certified pilot, Clemm and Virgil are the best innervators in the city, and Lorne can shoot rainbows out his ass to light our way through the thickest of sandstorms!”

  Jareen brushed aside Gill’s sarcasm with a sigh. “Just find me some loyal people who know how to work the rigging and the more mundane airship tasks. Get me as many as you can and send them to the mooring yard. The ship is the Voulge. I will have Sah Auberon give me license to hire a pilot and innervators from the guild until I can replace them with our own.”

  “Do you really think you can find sorcerers willing to betray their own kind?”

  “I think it will be easier than you imagine. Pilots, especially innervators, are of the lowest class of highborn and most are first generation, having been elevated from their lowborn births due to their ability to wield magic. They have seen and even experienced our suffering. I am confident that I can find a few who are willing to join our cause.”

  “And what of the rest of us? What do we do while you and Sah Auberon are off flying around Eidolan?”

  “For now, absolutely nothing. You all have been quiet since the raid that took Aiden and several others. We have to let the gendarmes, Inquisitor Quinlan, and the highborn think they have won. Let them believe that the dissidents are vanquished, the survivors scattered. This is going to take some time. My plans go far beyond making a few weapons. I will lead an army to Phaer and stab the empire through its heart while those left in the cities cut the heads off this hydra. A new dawn is rising, and while it will come with a whisper, it will go out with a thunderous cry.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Jareen managed to sneak in two hours of sleep until he had to return to the palace before Auberon awoke. What he had done with Grace would anger him, and he steeled himself to weather the inevitable rebuke, not that he cared anymore. Not long ago, incurring a highborn’s displeasure was anathema to him. Then Tyler got sick, lost his sight, and was killed. Displeasing any of them was the least of what he had planned for them.

  He stood patiently outside Auberon’s rooms for nearly half an hour before his master awoke and discovered the “gift” he had left him.

  “Jareen!” Auberon’s agitated voice called through the door. “Jareen!”

  Jareen opened the door, crossed through the sitting room, and nearly collided with Auberon as he approached the bedroom.

  “Jar—!” Auberon broke off his bellow as he barged from his room. “Ah, there you are, Jareen. I was not sure you were even in the palace.”

  “You were right, sah. I need to get back to work and make better use of my mind than dwelling on my mourning. I knew you would want to return to the laboratory and was just about to wake you. Is there something amiss?”

  Auberon cast a look over his shoulder. “There is a dead slave on my bedroom floor!”

  “I see. Did they displease you, sah?”

  “No, I didn’t do it! I woke to find her sprawled across the floor. I am damn well displeased now though!”

  Jareen stepped past Auberon and found Grace lying on the floor near the foot of the bed. “Ah, I suspected it would be her.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  “It appears she made her choice.”

  “What choice? Speak clearly, man, before I become cross with you as well!”

  “I am afraid that is to be inevitable. You told me to deal with her pregnancy, and so I did. I created two potions. One that would terminate just the child, the other to allow her to stay with it in the afterlife.”

  Auberon’s face reddened and a deep scowl creased his features. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Perhaps it was due to having just lost my son. The pain of living on after losing a child was fresh in my heart, and I thought I might spare her such suffering. I think she chose this place to die to spite you.”

  “Jareen, you had no right to make such a decision. You have deprived me of property no different than if you had stolen from me! I am indeed very cross with you. Clean up this mess. We will discuss it further in my laboratory.”

  “Yes, sah. I have tea coming. I shall redirect it to the laboratory.”

  “You can bring it yourself when you have disposed of this.”

  “Yes, sah.”

  Jareen waited for Auberon to leave before rushing from the rooms and retrieving the serving cart he had stashed nearby. He returned, loaded Grace’s body onto the cart, covered her with a sheet, and hastened them both down the halls and out of the palace where he had a horse and cart waiting.

  He drove the small wagon down the cobbled lane leading from the palace to his home nearby where he carried Grace inside and laid her on the guest bed. His movements furtive, Jareen retrieved a small paper packet from his pocket, opened Grace’s mouth, and sprinkled the powder inside the envelope beneath her tongue.

  The results were swift. A minute later, Grace bolted upright, drawing in a great gasp of air. Jareen pressed her back onto the bed.

  “Easy now. Lay back and try to relax.”

  Grace pressed a hand to her breast. “My heart feels ready to explode,” she gasped as she fought to keep from hyperventilating.

  “That’s the antidote I gave you.”

  “Antidote? I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be dead. My baby!”

  Jareen held her still with a hand pressing down on her shoulder. “As far as I can tell, you are both fine.”

  “You said the potion would kill me.”

  “And there was every possibility that it would. Reviving you was a slim chance. You needed to make your choice based entirely on the likelihood of your dying, not on some glimmer of hope.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You stay here and rest. Do not leave the house until after dark. Let no one see you. Speak to no one. Everyone, and I mean everyone, must believe you are dead. There is some money in the nightstand. Take any of Claire’s clothes you want. Take them all. Even if it is something you are unlikely to wear, some of them will fetch a good price. Choose a new name and get as far away as you can.”

  Jareen took Grace by the hand. “Your child will have the blood of the emperor in its veins. Such a thing can be a powerful force and drive him or her to do great or terrible things should destiny choose to manifest itself. Arikhan is a creature of fate, a cosmic inheritance such as my forefathers and mothers passed on to me. Who can say what shape it might take or when. Just know that what you carry is special. Your child and their children are now woven into the fabric of destiny. Who can say what they will achieve when those threads are pulled.”

  Grace squeezed Jareen’s hand and smiled. “Thank you, Jareen. I don’t know how I can ever repay your kindness.”

  Jareen stood. “You won’t have to. This debt and thousands more belong to others, and I mean to make them pay them all.”

  “Please, be safe.”

  “Safe ceased being an option when I lost everything I had to live for.”

  ***

  Jareen left Grace at his home, confident she w
ould follow his instructions. He wished he could be as certain about her and her child’s future. Jareen did not have time to dwell on things he could not control. He barely had any sort of grasp on his own designs.

  Driving the cart he had used to bring Grace home, he returned to the palace and had begun to head straight for the laboratory when he remembered that Sah Auberon had ordered him to bring the tea himself. The mundane task, usually left to lesser servants, was likely just the least of his punishments while his master thought up something more fitting.

  Jareen pushed the metal tea cart, the very one he used to transport Grace’s comatose body, toward the laboratory, its wheels clacking rhythmically on the stone walkway. The smell of sulfur and other odors found his nose well before he reached the laboratory, indicating that Auberon was already at work. With any luck, it would have distracted him from dwelling on Jareen’s punishment.

  Auberon turned away from his workbench when Jareen entered, pushing the tea cart before him. “There you are. Pour me some tea, and then we can discuss your treasonous actions.”

  Jareen flinched inwardly at his master’s choice of words but poured his beverage without showing any concern. Auberon took the cup and stared at his slave over the rim as he drank. Jareen continue to stand with his hands clasped behind his back, as rigid and emotionless as a statue.

  The sorcerer set his half-finished cup of tea on the workbench without taking his eyes off Jareen and stood silent for several seconds as if weighing his words and his slave’s fate. Jareen was certain it was all part of the act and that Auberon had known precisely what he was going to say for the better part of an hour.

  “You did more in here last night than devise a way to deprive me of my slave,” Auberon finally said.