A muscle twitched in Fallford’s jaw. “I may not know you very well, Mister Vance, but I do know you came here for a reason, and it wasn’t to sit in my kitchen and ruminate over the death of your friends.”
“I have nowhere else to go.” I laughed, but it was an ugly, desperate sound. “Everywhere I go, everything I touch, death follows me like a—”
“Shadow?” he finished for me. “All the more reason to get to the heart of this. I can’t galvanize my associates without you.”
I slumped forward and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I just wanted to steal the Eye, sell it, and leave. I didn’t want any of this.”
“Do you think any man has a choice in his fate?” Fallford snapped. “You’re the only Inner Circle citizen to escape, besides the mages. You have a responsibility to help others, or are you truly just the thieving coward?”
I rubbed at my temples. A thieving coward wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was probably the truth. “In the workhouse, they beat defiance out of you until you’re as numb and dead inside as clockwork machines, going through the motions. I might have been a good man once, or I thought I was, but that man is gone.”
“You escaped the workhouse.”
“Because my sister chose to end her life rather than live another day in that nightmare. I was too much the coward to do the same.”
Fallford slammed a hand onto the tabletop. “Open your eyes! You’re not a coward. You are a survivor. And survivors sometimes do what others are afraid to. It doesn’t make you a good man or a bad one. It makes you strong. It makes you brave.”
He made a convincing argument. I could see why Molly spoke so highly of him and why others might follow his lead.
He lifted his chin and straightened his waistcoat. “I understand this city has not been kind to you, but it is your home. Tens of thousands of lives are at risk. Help me to help Brea.”
He was right. Brea hadn’t been kind to me. I owed it little. But I had been a good man once, so perhaps I could be again?
“My assistance doesn’t come cheap.”
One of Fallford’s dark eyebrows rose.
My lips ticked up at one corner. “I’m always the opportunist.”
I found myself standing in Fallford’s library, addressing a small crowd of Brea’s well-to-doers. They regarded my filthy boots, blood-splattered clothes, and unkempt hair with a mixture of surprise, distaste, and curiosity.
One face I knew well: Tassen’s. Since meeting in Calwyton, during our trek back to Brea, and before his apparent “meeting” in the square, he’d neglected to mention he knew Fallford.
Fallford introduced the others and, with some trepidation, said, “You’re already acquainted with Captain Tassen, I believe.”
Tassen tipped his hat and smirked. “Thanks are in order for stopping the mage at Agatha’s, Vance. I guess that makes us even after I saved you back in the tomb.”
Captain Tassen. I narrowed my eyes on him. He looked a great deal better than when I saw him covered in blood at Agatha’s, but his skin held a milky pallor, where before it had been a healthy shade of bronze.
“You’re like a cracked gem,” I told him. Difficult to be rid of.
“I’ve been called worse.” He shifted in his seat and winced, clearly favoring his side.
“You hired him to track me?” I asked Fallford.
“I asked the captain to discover why a well-known thief—who’d had his hands on a revered artifact—and a distinctly foreign woman had taken it upon themselves to venture into the Draynes. You weren’t exactly subtle.”
“You knew I had the cup?”
“I suspected. I was aware of the cup and its mythos, but it was secure at the museum. As soon as it went missing, I assumed you’d stolen it. There are few Brean thieves with the talent to pilfer the museum’s archives. Your unusual expedition confirmed it. And then, of course, there was the woman you travelled with. Oh, she attempted to conceal who she was, but someone like her can’t easily hide. After tales of how fire had torn through the camp of highwaymen, I sent word to Tassen that the woman was to be closely observed and, if necessary, retrieved. The Calwyton fire was … unfortunate.”
I should have known Fallford was Tassen’s client from his parchments and existing infatuation with the mythical. He’d known about the cup, Arach, and the Eye. He had always known—or at least suspected.
“Shaianna had nothing to do with the Calwyton blaze.”
Fallford’s smile ghosted across his lips and then was gone. “Initially, I sent Tassen out to observe, nothing more. I wasn’t sure whether you were heading to Arach or merely being led astray by the woman in your company. Now, of course, I—we know differently.”
“The mages caused Calwyton to burn. Tassen? You saw Shaianna. You saw how she danced among the people. She is not a killer.”
“She was a delight.”
“Why, then, would she set the town ablaze? She adored it.”
“It is a mystery, for sure. But I also recall how she threatened to kill me.”
“As did I. Am I also to blame for the fire?”
“Now Vance,” Tassen scoffed, puffing out his chest. “The woman is a riddle, and a dangerous one at that. You know it just the same as we do.”
“So, what is this?” I gestured at the people quietly observing me. “If you already know of the Eye and its potential, what do you need me for?”
The sting of Fallford’s deception burned. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I was a thief paid to retrieve goods. The reasons why didn’t mean anything to me—or they hadn’t, until now.
“We are collectors,” Fallford explained. “Investors and sometimes traders of antiquities from foreign lands. The cup, the Eye …” He looked at his small group of treasure hunters. “These items were intriguing artifacts and little more. Call it a game, if you will. We did not expect the truth to be so … devastating.”
“The legends may be real, so now you want my help.”
“It makes sense for us to pool our resources,” Lady Porter suggested. She appeared to be a tall, slim woman, even seated at the table as she was. The colorless gray layers of fabric she wore would have drowned out most people, but the splash of pink to her lips brightened an already warm face. I guessed her age to be somewhere around thirty. She spoke with a deep, smooth voice—the type of voice that didn’t need to be raised to be heard.
“Warg attacks outside the city are increasing. Beasts that never venture close to Brea are suddenly within sighting distance, as though they are compelled to come or fleeing something beyond our understanding.”
“Conjecture,” Tiber, the city guard, said.
Until that moment, he had been sitting rigid and silent, barely raising a brow when I glanced his way. He wore the High Guard coat of arms on his shirt sleeve, but no indication of his rank. Heavier than Tassen, but in a muscular way, he looked like the type of man who could end an argument with a word or a fist. I had met his kind—well, mostly ran from them—many times over the years.
“Conjecture, yes,” Fallford agreed, “but not without reason.”
Lady Porter shifted in her seat and fired short, sharp questions at Tiber, apparently unimpressed by his assessment. It was a little like watching a bird flutter around a bull. I had no doubt Porter could easily land one of her pointed questions and challenge Tiber’s arguments, but I was beyond caring.
“The tunnel near the docks is a good way to proceed,” I said, loud enough to break up their heated discussion.
“Agreed,” Tassen replied. “If what Vance says is true and the tunnel leads into the heart of the spire, I could get a look at our enemy without them knowing. With the walls as they are, there is no other way inside, besides months of formal written requests to the High Guard, who are notoriously stubborn when it comes to allowing visitors.”
“If it’s true?” I carefully asked. “Do you doubt me, Tassen?”
The captain lifted his chin. “You’re a decent man, Vance, but you’re als
o compromised.”
“Compromised?”
“You forget. I was the one who pulled you out of that tomb. I know exactly how you feel about our rogue sorceress.”
“Why would I lie about the tunnel?”
“Perhaps to lure me and my crew into an ambush?”
I laughed. “Oh, I am so desperately sorry. I didn’t realize this was about you. But now that you mention it, an ambush is a fantastic idea. Why didn’t I think of that before? I shall mobilize my invisible army of scoundrels and get right on that.”
“Vance,” Fallford warned.
I lifted a single finger, silencing him and the rest of them. “Let me be very clear. This is not about me or you or your hunt for trinkets. Whatever you waste your gems on is none of my concern. What I do care about is stopping the mages, because believe me, I have seen what they can do, and Outer Brea is not prepared. You sit here in your finery and pretend you know exactly what you’re up against. You do not know; you cannot know. They are mindless husks of men that have been bound and imprisoned for generations. The wave that hit Calwyton destroyed the town, and they poured into the Arachian tomb and likely collapsed it behind Tassen and me. Brea does not have an army and the city guard is not equipped to deal with them, but we have an opportunity to stop them now, at the source. So instead of calling me a liar and looking for reasons to discount the thief, perhaps you should put your quick minds to better use.”
The room fell silent.
“And what of the sorceress?” Lady Porter asked.
“I will deal with her. It’s safer for you all that way.”
Tiber glanced at Fallford and then back at me. “It is a risk, venturing into the spire on the word of a thief.”
“The bigger risk is, of course, that we do nothing,” I said, “and your fine businesses turn to dust when the mages are set free. You can’t run businesses without customers.”
“I don’t have Lord Fallford’s faith in you. I see facts, and those facts are not your friend, thief.”
“We start with the tunnel,” Fallford said. “Tassen, take a handful of your best crewmen and see what awaits inside. Are you up to it?”
Tassen tipped his hat. “Always.”
“Vance, as you’re already familiar with the area, you go with the captain. Do not engage the mages. Report back with your findings. Tiber, approach your senior officer with this information.”
“They’ll want to know its source,” Tiber grumbled.
“Then wait for Tassen and Vance’s return. The captain can vouch as to the tunnel’s significance.” Nodding at both Tassen and me, Fallford added. “We shall await your return,”
Tassen’s small group of seafaring crewmen obeyed their captain without fault, leaving me little to do besides offer directions. I told them where the entrance was and hung back as they shifted the barrels only to find it locked from within. I’d lost my picks, but after scrounging some thin pieces of metal from the crew’s rigid boots, I broke open the lock easily enough. Inside the tunnel, torches spluttered, illuminating damp stone walls. We hadn’t gone far before I suspected the trip would be a wasted one. We should have been hearing evidence of the mages, but the quiet was too thick, broken only by the scuffing of our boots. We breached the spire’s internal chamber and discovered the cells were empty.
The cell doors hung open. The platform with its mosaic floor and pedestal was exactly as I’d described it, but even in the gloom, it was clear nobody was here and hadn’t been for some time.
“That passageway takes you out to the Inner Circle streets,” I said, my voice echoing into the blackness the torchlight failed to penetrate. “It was guarded before.”
“Is it guarded now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Tassen’s men wandered around, kicking over extinguished torches. They whispered among themselves, instinctively keeping their voices low.
Patches of crusted blood marked the stones where Shaianna had stabbed Anuska.
Tassen noted it, and then lifted his torch to gauge the whereabouts of his men. “It’s as you said, but missing one vital component.”
“The mages.”
“Indeed. It’s mighty difficult to rouse the city guard without evidence, Vance.” He looked again at the opposite passageway, likely wondering if he could break into the Inner Circle and find evidence inside.
He might have taken his men that way had a rumbling not shaken the foundation of the spire and us with it. I’d heard of incidents across the sea, where the earth shook and toppled buildings, but I had never experienced it. Stones and grit clattered and bounced against the floor. Small stones rained from above. One of Tassen’s men cried out. I caught the flicker of his torchlight as it seemingly shot upward into the black and then vanished.
The rumble deepened. It shook the air and rattled against my chest. “We need to leave!”
Shielding his head with one hand, Tassen ventured toward where his men staggered, illuminated in their dark by the halo of light thrown from their torches.
Something brushed by me in the dark. Air fluttered against my face, jolting my heart. I turned my torch toward it but saw only raining debris. A low-level grumble joined the noise of shifting earth.
Something else was here with us.
Not a mage. A fearful shiver skittered down my back. I tossed my torch back the way we had come. It slipped and skidded across the floor and halted not far from the exit passageway, illuminating the way out. The grumbling ceased. A few more stones clattered around us. Heavy, suffocating silence filled the spire. Tassen’s men started moving toward my torch, when a vast blur of movement knocked the last man in the line clean off his feet. He hit the wall and fell in a heap.
“Run!” I barked. They hadn’t seen it. They couldn’t. Their torchlight blinded them to the dark. But I saw something—a presence in the dark—and felt the weight of something huge, something powerful. Whispers raised the fine hairs on my arms.
Two huge emerald eyes pierced the black.
Tassen and his men ran for the passageway. The eyes watched them disappear inside the tunnel mouth.
I pushed back against the cool wall, and hoped, without a torch spotlighting me in the dark, that the beast didn’t see me. The eyes blinked slowly. Snuffling sounds filled the spire, the rumbling started up again, and the eyes blinked out. Darkness once more folded around the beast.
Time dragged as I waited for all sounds to cease. Eventually, the grit stopped falling and the rumbling faded until all I could hear was blood pumping hot and loud in my ears. I carefully inched my way along the wall toward the burning torch, moving silently into the tunnel.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I lost two of my crew, Fallford!” Tassen paced in the library. “Two families ruined. I’ll have to inform their wives. And what do I tell them? I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m not even sure what I saw. It was too big to see all at once. I caught blurs, shadows, movement. Nothing solid. Nothing I could aim at.”
“Slow down, Tassen,” Fallford urged. “You’re saying there were no mages there. Nothing of that nature?”
“Nothing but a wretched nightmare.”
“Can you better describe it?” Lady Porter asked.
“No, I told you I didn’t see it. You couldn’t see it. But it shook the earth.”
“Is the Inner Circle hiding it from us?” Tiber asked from the window, where he’d been leaning in silence, watching and listening as before. “Is it a weapon?”
“We were about to break out into the Inner Circle when it revealed itself,” Tassen replied. “Plucked one of my men right into the air. Gone. The restless gods only know where his body is.” Tassen stopped pacing and looked straight at me. “You’re quiet, Vance. You saw it too. Shit, you were the last to leave. Did you see more than me? Tell me it wasn’t what I remember. Tell me it has an explanation.”
I was slumped in the chair by a cold, dark fireplace, going over and over how the eyes had glowed and its magic h
ad licked across my skin. I didn’t want to share these things with Tassen or Fallford’s colleagues.
“No more than you,” I lied.
“That thing. You didn’t see that in the spire before, Vance?”
Anger flared hot in my veins. “I would have told you, wouldn’t I?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“His word is worthless,” Tiber snarled. “How was this not an ambush, just as Tassen had feared? This thief lured you in there. He was born there; he is likely working for the Inner Circle—”
Porter’s voice rose and joined the discontent, either defending me or berating me, but I didn’t care to listen. Fear churned in my stomach and shook through my tense muscles.
I pushed from my chair and strode from the room.
“Vance …” Fallford’s footfalls beat on the soft hallway carpet after me. “Don’t you prove me wrong and prove them right.”
I stopped at the top of the stairs, my hand resting on the bannister. “I wasn’t leaving.” I glared at him side-on. “I just …”
“You saw more, but you will not say. Why?”
I tightened my grip and eyed the entrance door below—my way out. “I’ve seen its kind before.”
“Then don’t keep this information from us.”
“You can’t do anything, Fallford. Your friends can’t save themselves from this. Our pistols and short swords are useless against it.”
“What was it? You know … Tell me. Tell them. By the gods, man, keeping it to yourself won’t help anyone.”
“In Arach. The tomb.” I leaned against the bannister, needing the support. “I told you I climbed a huge monument to get the Eye?”
“A dragon statue, yes.”
“What if we’ve gotten this all wrong? What if the mages are just … by the by—just a mistake, a distraction? Or perhaps the mages were a misguided attempt to control something else entirely. What if the real threat is something far worse?” I needed a drink. Several drinks. “In your books, the constant references to the earth, to stone—to how the queen summoned the wrath from the earth. What if the mages aren’t the worst of this? What if the monument in the tomb was once real?”
The Heartstone Thief (Dragon Eye Chronicles Book 1) Page 20