Highlords of Phaer (Empire of Masks Book 1)

by Brock Deskins

  The worst one, the one every smart child paid before anyone else, was Remus Shakely. Remus was a nobody. A big, ham-fisted, groping pervert of a nobody orderly. He stalked the halls at night to make sure everyone stayed in their beds unless they were going out to earn their tributes. Anyone who could not pay in coin paid in flesh. The kind of flesh depended on your age and usually gender, but not always.

  It only took Kiera a few beatings to learn that paying in coin was vastly preferable to paying in flesh no matter what it took to get it. Even so, she suffered more than her fair share of beatings thanks to an inability to check her temper and keep her mouth shut.

  That ended two years ago when she and her two brothers decided it was time they all left the Wayward House together. Wesley and Russel were not her real brothers, but they were the closest thing to family she knew. Wesley and Russel were brothers in blood. They had a family before coming to the Wayward House when Wesley was nine and Russel was seven. That was before their father had died in an accident at his job. Illness had taken their mother a few years before.

  Despite being just a year older than Russel and three years younger than Wesley, Kiera became something like a big sister or even mother to them. Wesley was a terrible thief and was almost always short on Remus’ tribute, partly because he had to pay for both him and Russel on account of Russel being…special.

  Russel never talked. Kiera did not know if he could. When he did decide he needed to speak it was in sign. Mostly, he sat on his bed with his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth.

  When Wesley came up short, Remus took his tribute in flesh. Wesley took the beatings in stride, but Remus was not always satisfied with just beatings. Probably because Wesley did not cry enough when he got them. Wesley and Russel were oddballs, and being an oddball herself, Keira took a quick liking to them. It was a lot of work, but she managed to placate Remus with her tributes enough to cover all three of them when Wesley needed the help.

  When Wesley turned sixteen and was forced to leave Wayward House, Keira and Russel decided to go with him. Wesley would not leave Russel behind and Russel could not manage without him. Keira knew that Wesley and Russel would never survive on their own, so she left Wayward House telling Remus she and Russel were going on a job and never returned.

  Still being under the age of sixteen, she and Russel were considered fugitives. If the gendarmes caught her or Russel out on the streets, they would immediately return them to the home where they would be severely punished and kept as prisoners until they became of age. Keira was not too worried. Russel never left the derelict airship where they lived and she never got caught. Tonight would be no exception despite the job’s high risk.

  Hedon’s twin moons poured bluish light through the large room’s pair of windows and illuminated the two forms sleeping in separate beds. The larger of the two filled the bedchamber with rasping, half-choked snoring. Moving as slowly and silently across the chamber as the moons’ orbit, Kiera crept to the big dresser at the end of the room opposite of the beds.

  A large wooden jewelry box inlaid with gold and semi-precious stones rested atop the dresser. The lock was simple compared to the ones in the doors she had already bypassed, and she had it unlocked in less than a minute. Kiera used the thin strip of metal to probe beneath the lid and felt it catch on something partway down one side.

  “Paranoid much?” Kiera whispered to herself.

  She froze when the master of the house snorted and stirred. When his rattling snoring returned, she held the alarm pin down with the probe and opened the box. A broad smile crept across her face as she gazed at the glittering jewelry inside. Kiera jammed a small nail between the alarm pin and the box’s frame to keep it depressed so she could free her other hand.

  Retrieving a small sack from her pocket, she carefully plucked the valuables from the box and dropped them into the bag. Satisfied with her haul and not wanting to risk setting off any alarms attached to the box’s two drawers, Kiera lowered the lid and tiptoed toward the windows off to her left.

  All she needed to do was slip out of the window and scale the wall surrounding the mansion. Once she was on the street, she was all but home free with enough loot to satisfy Nimat, Velaroth’s self-proclaimed underlord, for at least a few months. Kiera stepped up to the window, slim probe in hand, and bent forward to slip it into the jamb to check for the inevitable alarm trigger. Her heart lurched when she felt the floorboard beneath her soft-soled shoe dip ever so slightly.

  “Shit.”

  The shifting floorboard depressed the catch hidden beneath it, releasing the pin holding the spring-loaded alarm bell hammer. Now free, the hammer beat against the bell like a deranged blacksmith. The master and mistress of the house bolted upright in their beds, startled awake by the bell’s angry klaxon.

  The lady of the house spied Kiera next to the window and released a shriek that nearly drowned out the alarm. The lord cursed, rolled his bulk from the bed with surprising speed if not grace, and fumbled for a flintlock pistol resting on the nightstand.

  Kiera lunged for the window but dropped to the floor when she heard the flintlock’s hammer cock back. The room lit up with the flash of the discharge and filled with smoke. Shattered glass rained down onto Kiera’s back when the ball shattered the window.

  “Guards! Intruder!” the man sputtered as he fumbled with his bag of powder and shot.

  Kiera bolted for the window once again only to find two men on the ground aiming their muskets at her. She threw herself away from the window and dropped back onto the floor as one ball struck the wall above her head and the other shattered a section of the frame to her right.

  The man cocked his pistol back and swung it about. “Where’d ya go, you little rat?”

  Kiera rolled beneath the still shrieking wife’s bed and kept crawling until she saw the man’s pudgy ankles sticking out from beneath his long nightshirt. She grabbed one ankle with both her hands, her fingers sinking into the puffy flesh, and yanked as hard as she could.

  The man cried out, toppled backward onto his rump, and discharged his pistol into the ceiling. Kiera swung her legs out from beneath the bed, kicked him in his prodigious gut with both feet, and blasted the wind from him before running for the door.

  Keira left the man wheezing and gasping for breath. She burst out of the bedroom and into the hall to find a pair of men charging up the stairwell to her right. She waited for them to reach the landing she was on and start running toward her before vaulting the balcony banister and hopping over the side.

  One of the armed men shouted at her to stop. The other fired his musket. Kiera felt a powerful tug on the pouch full of pilfered jewels tied to her belt when the ball ripped through it. Several pieces jettisoned out into the open room behind her and chimed as they struck the floor.

  She dropped below the railing, caught the second-floor banister, and made to jump to the ballroom floor in hopes of retrieving at least some of her precious loot. Another man ran in and raised his musket. Kiera swung her legs over the second-floor railing and threw herself onto the landing as the lead ball shattered the wood beneath her left hand.

  “Dammit all to the Tormented Plane!” Kiera cried.

  She grabbed a vase from a stand, hurled it at the man reloading his musket, and threw herself over the rail after it. The man raised his musket with both hands to protect his face, and the vase shattered against the weapon in a spray of clay shards.

  Kiera came in just over the musket, wrapped her legs around his neck, and rode him to the floor. She planted her hands on his face and pushed off, driving his head against the floor, and tucked into a roll. The man’s metal helmet struck with a clang and skittered across the floor.

  Casting a glance up at the balcony, she dived away, narrowly avoiding the musket ball that shattered the marble tile. Kiera stretched out as she lunged for a large piece of fallen jewelry. Another musket shot struck the jeweled bangle and sent it sliding away and nearly took off the tip of her middle fin
ger.

  “You morons!” Kiera shouted at the men on the balcony. “The powder you’re shooting off is worth more than I stole!”

  The guards leveled their reloaded muskets once more, and Kiera lunged for the doorway, scooping up a ring and a bracelet from the floor in her hasty departure. Two musket shots struck the doorframe in quick succession, powdering her face with plaster dust as they tore through the wall.

  Kiera raced through the foyer, flung the door open, and ran straight into two gendarmes waiting just a few yards from the door. Pulling her weighted baton from her belt, she hurled the weapon without breaking stride. The rod tumbled end over end and struck one of the gendarmes between the eyes.

  The second man scrambled backward with a terrified look on his face as he met the girl’s charge and stared into her furious eyes. Kiera sprang into the air, narrowly avoiding impaling herself on the wavering bayonet, and kicked the young gendarme in the chest with both feet.

  Kiera and the gendarme both went crashing to the ground. Kiera saw her baton lying next to the felled man next to her, grabbed it, and began beating the one she was kicking in the head. The baton clanged against the metal helmet like a child banging pans. She kicked the man’s helmet off and walloped him hard enough to stun him before getting back to her feet.

  “H-hold there!”

  Kiera turned back and found the gendarme she had initially brained standing on shaky legs. He fumbled for the whistle at his belt and brought it to his lips. Kiera stomped toward him, a scowl creasing her brow. She kicked him in the groin and sent the whistle falling from his sputtering lips. A small shove was all it took to push him over, where he lay grasping himself and moaning.

  Shouts from inside the house forced Kiera to pick up a shuffling jog. The street lay nearby, just beyond the wall surrounding the manor. Duke Rastus Velarius’ estate was the only one in the city to sport anything resembling expansive grounds, so escaping into the city was simple once she cleared the wall.

  Some of the wealthiest citizens had started buying up large tracts of property just outside of the highborn district where most lived, tearing down several poorer houses and erecting grand mansions that could accommodate nice gardens, but that was a recent development and only a few were finished and occupied.

  Velaroth was a huge city. The cataclysm, insurrection, famine, and disease had wiped out nearly three quarters of its population, creating large, derelict sections of the once grand city that were up for grabs to whoever could afford it.

  Squatters had claimed much of the abandoned homes, stores, and buildings after the fall, but with the return of a properly functioning government and prosperity, it suddenly became the people’s property, but not the ones who had been living in the structures for generations. It belonged to the city and the city belonged to Duke Rastus Velarius.

  Those who came into wealth bought the property from him. People who did not have coin were escorted to “free settlements” by the gendarmes. It was only free because it had taken the brunt of the cataclysm’s fury and no one wanted it. Like everything else in the city, it was free in name only.

  The underlord claimed to own everything not contracted by the government or the wealthy and powerful, and he or she, no one was sure which it was, protected their property and criminal fiefdom through brutal measures. It was a kingdom within a kingdom, and everyone who mattered seemed fine with it.

  Since all of the free settlements were near the wall and the city grew more prosperous as one approached the center, Kiera had a long walk ahead of her. She removed the few pieces of loot still rattling inside the sundered pouch on her belt to a pocket inside her shirt as she skulked from shadow to shadow, avoiding the gendarme patrols and other Night Birds like her.

  Kiera had nearly reached the inner wall separating the highborn from the middle- and lower-class filth when three shapes emerged from the darkness to block her path.

  “Whatcha doing out so late and in this neck of the wastes?” the one flanked by two notably larger bodies asked.

  Keira paused, placed the voice, and made to push past them. “Piss off, Langdon, I’ve had a bad night.”

  Langdon and his two cohorts, Iggy and Micah, refused to budge. Kiera knew the three goons from Wayward House. They had left not long before her, Russel, and Wesley had due to their coming of age. They had gotten lucky and signed on with Rafferty Valentin, leader of one of the largest and most powerful gangs in the city.

  “I hate to pile on whatever bad luck you’re having, but you know how this works. You’re poaching in our territory.”

  Kiera stopped a few paces away. “What am I supposed to do? The people in my territory are as poor as I am, and you know tributes are due tomorrow.”

  “Right, tributes Rafferty owes Nimat just the same as you and everyone else. Just give us a cut of what you got like you’re supposed to and everything is fine.”

  Kiera jammed her hand into her hidden pocket and flung a ring at Langdon’s feet. “There’s your damn cut. Can I go now?”

  Langdon struck a match, lit a smoke weed hanging from his lips, and plucked the ring from the ground. “Come on, Kiera. We all know you are better than this.”

  She ripped the pouch from her belt, shoved her hand inside, and stuck her fingers through the two large holes in it. “Yeah, I was until I almost took a musket ball in the back and lost it all over the floor!”

  Langdon looked at the bag and frowned. “But this barely covers the working fee. Then there’s the…”

  “The what, Langdon?” Kiera demanded.

  “You know…the punitive fee…for not having permission and all. We caught you poaching.”

  “Well that’s all I have.” Kiera sauntered toward him, emphasizing the waggle in her hips. “What do you want to do, Langdon, search me? Do you want run to your hands up and down my body, probing my nooks and crannies for hidden loot? Is that what you want to do?”

  Langdon swallowed the lump in his throat and felt sweat beading on his brow. “Well…it is my job, and…we gotta earn our keep with Rafferty so he can…can pay Nimat her tribute tomorrow too.”

  Kiera touched a finger to Langdon’s chest with her left hand. “Well, I guess we gotta do what we gotta do.” Kiera’s baton, gripped in her right hand, flashed up and struck Langdon a powerful blow to the groin. “But we ain’t gonna be doing that!”

  Langdon choked back the vomit trying to erupt from his stomach and fell to the ground with a plaintive moan.

  “Oh, right in the giggle berries!” Iggy crowed. “I saw that coming from a mile away. Didn’t you Micah?”

  Micah nodded to his twin brother. “Yep. I guess Langdon missed the tell on account of all the blood leaving his head”

  “Bugger off, the both of you,” Langdon mewled.

  Kiera stepped over Langdon’s body and stomped toward the hole in the wall.

  Langdon raised a hand and gasped out, “I’ll put your poaching fee on your account.”

  “You do that!” Kiera called back.

  Her blood boiling once more, Kiera stormed through the merchant sector with barely a modicum of caution, hoping her fierce glare and determined stride would keep anyone from looking at her as a possible mark. It was usually sufficient and it held true this night. She finally reached the area Nimat leased to her and sighed. It was a big property for an independent and someone as young as her, but it was a dump. Not just because it was rundown and poor. There were many places like that in the city. It was literally a dump.

  Looking out over the city wall, she could see the busted-off mainmast of her home backlit by the night sky. The derelict airship rested atop a small mountain of rock cleared away from other sections of the outer ring during reconstruction. They could have gotten a better location for what they were paying, but Russel had locked himself in one of the airship’s cabins and refused to leave until she and Wesley had signed the contract.

  The airship had probably once been a grand little boat in its day, but a century of disuse had left i
t in ruins. It was a hundred feet long and boasted several cabins and a sizable hull. Built on a scow design, like almost all airships, its flat bottom allowed it to set down on the ground without requiring a massive cradle. Not that it would ever fly again.

  Russel did not work, at least not the kind that paid the rent. However, he had kept himself busy fixing up the airship bit by bit over the past two years until it had become an almost decent place to live. If it weren’t for the fact that it sat in the most destitute section of the outer ring, she might consider it a fair bargain.

  With little to nothing to steal in their area, that left them having to either pay to work in someone else’s territory or poach and risk getting caught and fined, beaten, or even worse. She was lucky that Langdon had something of a crush on her and that it was him and not Rafferty or any of his other goons who had caught her. Otherwise, it could have been a lot worse.

  Exhausted and suffering pain from a myriad of bruises and scrapes, she retired to her room near the bow of the vessel, dropped her ill-gotten gains on her nightstand, and collapsed onto the rickety cot that served as her bed. She took a moment to pray that Wesley had fared much better than she had tonight. Otherwise, tomorrow was going to be even worse.

  ***

  A small hidden panel slid open, slow and silent so as not to wake the room’s notoriously light sleeper. Russel could see the gleaming jewelry on Kiera’s nightstand bathed in the moonlight streaming through the cabin’s porthole. He stuck his arm through the hole in the wall but could not quite reach where the loot rested on the nightstand. The arm retracted and vanished with its owner.

  Moments later, a metal, mechanical appendage appeared in its place, reaching out toward the small table and its bounty. Russel wore the contraption like a gauntlet, but instead of just covering his hand like a metal glove, it increased his reach by some fifty percent. Hovering over his prize, Russel made a fist, closing the metal fingers around the jewelry.