by Rob Scott
At the age of one hundred and thirty Twinmoons, Jacrys had been badly wounded, stabbed twice and slashed across the abdomen by an angry customer who was just as skilled with a short blade. Jacrys was nursed back to health by the whores, then packed quietly one evening and slipped away. He had realised that although talented, he would not last long here; no matter how deliciously the girls rewarded him, it was time to go.
He had enlisted in the Malakasian Army, being promoted to sergeant after only eleven Twinmoons in the Prince’s service and making master sergeant before turning one hundred and fifty. One night, while patrolling the border between Averil and Landry, Jacrys’ platoon had been attacked by a crowd mostly of Pragan students. The angry, inebriated mob had decided that together they could march, unarmed, through Averil and north all the way to Welstar Palace. Strengthened by too much Pragan wine and fennaroot, the mob had taken a border station, killed several guards and begun moving through a residential area of southern Averil, lighting fires and attacking Malakasian citizens as they went.
Jacrys’ platoon, one of three, had been ordered to show no mercy, and to send a powerful message by bringing back prisoners for a public display of Prince Malagon’s disapproval. His lieutenant had ordered Jacrys to move his squad into position alongside the mob’s exposed flank, using the narrow alleys as cover. Anticipating a quick – and bloody – victory, his soldiers had hurried into the fray, in their eagerness breaking formation. Screaming orders, Jacrys had tried to keep his squad together, but the scent of blood and the promise of carnage was too much. Though unorganised, drunk and disorderly, there were now hundreds of Pragans: they had taken heavy losses, with scores of them dead or dying, hacked down, knifed, some even set alight with torches – but they had not retreated.
A gang of the rebels had rushed Jacrys’ position, killing or maiming several of his men and effectively cutting them off. The lieutenant ordered a charge through the enraged revellers to rejoin the remainder of their platoon, and with a shout, the handful of Malakasian soldiers had brandished their weapons and charged.
Less than a third of the way through the crowd, Jacrys had realised that he and his lieutenant were alone, the soldiers with them were missing, killed or injured. Knowing he was about to die, the young master sergeant had grown furious at the notion of dying under the boots of a band of drunken students, and the weight of his anger lent weight to his arms: Jacrys, swearing like the proverbial trooper, cut a swathe through the crowd, pulling his lieutenant with him – until the man had stumbled, felled by a sword stroke below the knee, and crashed to the ground. Jacrys hadn’t hesitated: he rushed to the lieutenant’s side, threw himself over the man and summoned one of the spells he had learned from the fennaroot addict in the whorehouse basement, praying this one would work.
Jacrys knew their lives had been saved when the mob’s collective attention shifted away from the two forms huddled quietly in the dirt. Jacrys once again thanked the dead sorcerer for teaching him the simplest of magic, for it had taken only a moment to utter the curious, ancient words, then the mob eddied and swelled around the two men. His little suggestive spell had them convinced that he and the lieutenant were already dead.
Much later, Prince Malagon’s magicians had helped Jacrys refine this spell; he used it to keep from being detected even by the great Gilmour, the Larion Senator, who had periodically searched for him, casting his gaze back over the partisans’ trail with irritating unpredictability.
Returning to save his lieutenant’s life – only Jacrys knew it had been an act of rage rather than compassion – earned him the respect of the officers and the ambitious master sergeant took advantage of his elevated status in Prince Malagon’s army, however temporary, to secure himself a transfer to the Eastlands and a chance to train with a covert corps of Malagon’s personal spies and information specialists. One hundred and sixty Twinmoons later, Jacrys was a master of intelligence and espionage.
The prince himself called upon Jacrys for some of his most nefarious plans, and the spy had never disappointed – not until now. He dipped the last of the bread and pushed aside the empty mug. There was work to be done today – although he was not looking forward to another five avens roaming through Orindale searching for Steven Taylor, the foreigner with the stone key Malagon wanted so badly. With Gilmour dead and the bowman, Garec, badly injured, Jacrys thought it would be relatively easy to retrieve the key from Steven – if only he could track the partisans down. He was fairly certain he had not killed Garec, so they must have gone underground.
It had been days since he had seen any sign of them and he was beginning to grow frustrated with his lack of progress, particularly as this group was about broken: their leader was dead; Sallax, the traitor with an axe to grind, was either missing, found out, or killed, and Garec had at least a few cracked ribs, maybe even a punctured lung.
He muttered a curse, recalling the night he had been forced to choose between Garec and Steven. Jacrys had been huddled in the shadows behind the warehouse for over an aven waiting for the two so-called freedom fighters to return. Then when they came, their cloaks had been pulled closed and their hoods lifted to cover their heads. There had been rats, lots of the ugly little demons, scratching about at his feet – ironically, it had been the rodents that had given him the answer: the boots. Steven Taylor’s boots looked like nothing Jacrys had ever seen; it was easy to spot them, heavy with leather and silly crisscrossing bits of twine holding them together.
But the horsecock archer had been wearing them.
For days Jacrys had wondered why the two men had exchanged boots – were they a disguise? Or were the two men softies, sneaking away to exchange who knew what else? Yet again he felt anger welling at his wretched luck. If only he had chosen right, he could have killed the staff-wielding foreigner, then retrieving the stone would have been so much easier.
Now they were all missing and he had to brace himself for another futile day of asking questions and paying off Orindale whores, barmen and criminals for any information leading to the Ronans’ hiding place. He didn’t know how they had managed to make their way into the city, given the array of forces blockading Orindale from Falkan and Rona, but Jacrys was certain they had managed to spirit themselves past the Malakasian picket lines and that they were still in the city. With Garec injured, they would not have risked a retreat through enemy lines; it would have been too dangerous. They had to be inside city limits, and Jacrys would continue searching until he found them.
The one piece of good news was that the dark prince hadn’t appeared, even after the explosion at the old imperial palace and the unexpected sinking of the Prince Marek in Orindale Harbour. His carriage hadn’t been moved and there was no talk of anyone coming or going from the Falkan ancestral residence. The army remained entrenched and no one moved in or out of the city without attracting Malakasian scrutiny. Without Prince Malagon seeking him, Jacrys was free to move through Orindale as he pleased.
These things, considered together, gave Jacrys hope. ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ he said quietly. ‘I will get that key and the dark prince will owe me – well, whatever I wish.’ He chuckled, stood up and tossed a coin on the table, then stepped out into the brilliant morning sunlight.
He didn’t notice the young woman, white as a corpse, pay her own tab at the bar and unobtrusively follow him out.
DENVER
Freezing cold and sodden through, Steven broke into Howard Griffin’s house for the second time that day. He took a change of clothes and grimaced at how the older man’s jeans hung about his narrow hips for a moment before falling off like a collapsing circus tent. ‘This won’t do,’ he said, looking to find a pair that came within four inches of his waist size.
In the end, he decided it was quicker and easier to dry his own clothes and, stripping to his boxers, tumbled everything he had bought or stolen in the past three days, including Garec’s borrowed boots, into Howard’s clothes dryer and set the timer. Returning to the kitchen,
he made two roast beef sandwiches, careful – despite his harrowing morning – to smell both the meat and the mayonnaise. With his mouth full, Steven gingerly slid aside the curtains of Howard’s kitchen window and waited for Nerak to show himself again.
Outside, Idaho Springs had come to a sudden, unexpected halt. Except for the intermittent wail of fire alarms, ambulances and police sirens, the town was silent. From Howard’s kitchen Steven could see Miner Street, and in the first fifteen minutes, he saw three police cruisers, two fire trucks, their lights ablaze, and the red pick-up their town fire marshal used when making inspections or running back and forth between Idaho Springs and the surrounding observation towers. All of the emergency vehicles had been going dangerously fast, as if the fire might somehow burn itself out if help didn’t arrive as quickly as possible. From somewhere east of Howard’s home, a hollow voice with too much reverb warbled out half-comprehensible instructions through twenty-five-year-old speakers mounted on lamp-posts and rooftops throughout the city.
That was it; no civilian vehicles passed. He spotted no SUVs loaded with school children, no tourist cars ornamented with three thousand dollars-worth of ski equipment, no big yellow buses hauling the middle school basketball team to Georgetown or Golden. He wasn’t really surprised; he knew what everyone in town would be doing. The fire fighters would either be battling the flames near the high school and the few homes and businesses on the south side of the creek, or they would be hustling to make their way across town to assist those who had been at the firehouse, gearing up for another Friday night of poker and college basketball.
Like voyeurs at a fatal traffic accident, the citizens of Idaho Springs were outside, lining the streets and sidewalks to watch, in stunned silence, as the hillside blaze made its way inexorably towards them. As he stared out of Howard’s kitchen window, Garec’s boots clumping and banging inside the clothes dryer, Steven felt a cold sense of dread begin to creep across his naked flesh. Blaming his time in the creek and the burgeoning lump on his head, he took a blanket from the back of the couch, wrapped it around his shoulders and returned to the window to watch as the fire, now several miles across and at least three miles deep, cast a false sunset over Idaho Springs. Deep orange smeared through the sky in broad strokes, seeping into warm violet, as forbidding as it was beautiful. If it had not been for the clouds of black and grey smoke roiling east towards Floyd Hill, Steven might have believed that the sun was setting in the south, somewhere behind the Mt Evans wilderness.
Outside, people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, lining the streets. Some had taken to the rooftops to improve their view; others climbed up into truck beds or onto park benches for a better view of the devastation. They talked in whispers, because speaking in a normal tone was somehow inappropriate in the wake of such a disaster. They were standing silently, reverently watching as the fire claimed the hillside along Chicago Creek Road. It wasn’t the right season for this; the hills were wet with snow and there had not been a significant fire in January for as long as anyone could remember – yet a blaze of epic proportions threatened the canyon, threatened the entire city…
Twelve minutes after pushing the start button on Howard’s old dryer, the spell was broken. It started as a scream, a lone voice piercing the morning with what sounded like Sandy! or Mandy! – then slowly, like a rollercoaster starting down its initial hill, the people of Idaho Springs began to move, as if time had caught up with them, starting now to hurry, in an effort to retrieve the minutes they had lost. It was Friday and school was in session; there were nearly five hundred students at the high school across the river and the citizens of Idaho Springs, slapped awake from their twelve-minute reverie by the sound of someone screaming for Sandy or Mandy, began mobilising to get the children to safety.
Mayhem ensued and Steven decided that, dry or not, he would take advantage of the clamour to get into the bank. He dressed quickly, jammed half a sandwich into his mouth and the leftovers into his pocket next to Lessek’s key. He didn’t worry about the students; the path of the burning avalanche had followed him when he turned east to get across the Clear Creek bridge and although three exit routes would be blocked by the conflagration and cars were most likely exploding in the faculty lot, Steven’s lazy right turn would have left open a path from the school down to the river. Any student who had ever sneaked out of lunch to smoke would be able, like the Pied Smoker of Hamelin, to lead the others to safety through the streambed and north into town.
When he reached the bank, Steven scanned both sides of the street, hoping to spot Howard and Myrna; he looked up to find his old boss standing on the roof of Owen’s Pub. ‘Figures,’ Steven said with a smile. ‘Probably enjoying a beer with the show.’ He shook his head wryly and peeked through the lobby window for some sign of Myrna Kessler. She wasn’t in her usual perch behind the teller window and Steven waited a couple of minutes to ensure she wasn’t going to emerge from one of the rear offices.
It wasn’t like Howard to leave the bank unattended, even on those periodic occasions when everyone would file into the street to chart the progress of a smaller fire somewhere in the hills above town. But this was different; it was January and the fire burning along the canyon wall was an anomaly, a potentially deadly anomaly. Perhaps Howard had asked Myrna to work the window and answer the phones. Instead she’d stepped out to watch from the front step.
Steven leaned back and peered through the front windows to see if she was standing outside, but instead of Myrna, he saw, crisscrossing the bank’s front door, a crooked row of crosses made of yellow police tape.
Alarm bells ringing, Steven turned the corner, ducked beneath the bottom cross and pushed open the front door. He spotted an Idaho Springs police detective standing on the hood of a rusty old Chevrolet Caprice Classic, the town’s answer to an unmarked vehicle, parked across the street – Steven had met the young cop once at the pub and remembered him as a witty guy with a penchant for pistachio nuts and Irish jokes. Like the rest of the city, the officer had fallen prey to the overwhelming urge to watch as the fire, no longer falling down the hillside with unnatural speed, but inching its way ever closer with grim certainty.
The lump had been invisible from the street, but inside it was obviously a large body, probably a man, draped with a white sheet – awaiting the arrival of the Clear Creek County coroner, Steven guessed. He stepped over the corpse, reached through Myrna’s window for her bag and as soon as his fingers closed around her car keys he quickly moved towards the side exit, away from the detective who was still gazing towards Chicago Creek Road.
His hand on the doorknob, Steven hesitated, looked back into the lobby and sighed. He had to know.
He peeked out the glass door: the detective was swapping between hand-held radio and cell phone, apparently unconcerned that he had left a dead body lying on the floor of the town bank while he watched a forest fire consume a high school car park. Steven considered snaking his way across the lobby on his belly, then shrugged. No one was interested in the bank right now. He walked across the floor and crouched beside the corpse. He didn’t recognise the man beneath the sheet – death changed facial features – he did recognise the uniform. This man, D. Mantegna, from his breast plate, must have been one of the officers working at Charleston Airport three days earlier. Steven turned away from D. Mantegna’s sallow, sunken visage and looked down at the man’s left wrist. There, a black circle that looked like a third-degree burn, was Nerak’s calling card, the same entry wound the young mother must have been hiding when she boarded the plane with the baby held in the crook of her arm like a football.
The Idaho Springs Police were not waiting for the county coroner. With a dead body in a Charleston International Airport security uniform turning up in a bank eighteen hundred miles from the scene of an apparent terrorist attack, the detective outside would be waiting for the FBI.
Steven stood up and hurried out the side entrance towards Myrna Kessler’s car.
Twilight fell as the fo
ur riders carefully navigated the dirt road between vast fields of potatoes, greenroot, onions, carrots and pepper weed. Hannah tried to make out individual smells, but the onion and pepper weed were too flamboyantly aromatic to separate. She slouched in the saddle, resting her back, and waited for Alen to halt them for the dinner aven.
Pacing them were a brigade of horse and mule-drawn flatbed and slat-sided farm carts, dozens of them, stretching from either side of the road. Teams of harvesters, farmhands and children alike, trudged slowly behind the carts, tossing in vegetables in slow rhythm. The scene looked to Hannah like a sweeping Hollywood epic where, as the sun fades to red, the camera pulls back from one toiling child to capture the masses, stretched out to the horizon…
When the wind died for a moment, she could hear their cries: Potato… ho! Carrot and pea… hee! Onion or greenroot… come harvest with me! At first, she thought the cries were filled with sorrow, suffering, as if these people had been enslaved by some heavy-handed plantation owner with a team of whip-wielding overseers, but after several stanzas, Hannah realised the calls and responses were changing, the words moving through a variety of activities: leisure time, cool beer, sex, the coming winter. After a particularly flirtatious verse about women and men, Hannah heard laughter, scattered giggling at the crudity of the text. It was improvisation; they were making it up, keeping the rhythm steady to match the slow gait of their horses. Leaning in the saddle, she tried to make out another verse, but the breeze returned and drowned them in a swirl of onion and pepper weed. Stillness fell over the fields once again; the riders had moved on ahead. Hannah turned to watch the harvesters until they faded from view.