“I’ve survived twenty-two years just fine without a sorceress’s brand.”
“You’ve nearly died several times since we—”
“Because of your meddling.” I sighed, too tired to argue. “I’m going to spend the day navigating the roofs around the spire to see if I can find a way inside. We’ll breach it tonight.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I will retrieve the Eye,” she said, as though her words alone could stop me. “You’ve done enough.” Her fingers twitched over her dagger. She was expecting me to fight her and had been since I returned.
I crunched into my apple, enjoying its sweetness, while she held hers as tightly as she held her dagger. “You’re not just going to waltz into the spire, are you?” I asked. “You don’t know how many mages are in there. It could be thousands. Sounds as though they’ve been collecting them.”
“That is why you are staying here.”
“I’m not staying anywhere. You’re not in Arach anymore, princess. As much as I hate this city, it’s my home. These are my people. Besides, you’re one of a kind. The Forgotten One. It’d be a shame if you died.”
She flinched at the name. “What else did she tell you? This guard?”
“The same nonsense the rest of them have been spouting since they learned I was bound to you. You’re dangerous.” I waved my apple, searching for the right word. “A revered harbinger of doom. You have many names, princess. Shadow, Forgotten One, one even called you The Truth In The Lies. They all believe I’m the fool you have wrapped around your little finger.” I took another bite of my apple and nonchalantly chewed. “Anuska said you’re a liar. She said you didn’t go back to save the people last night. You went back to kill them.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Eat your apple.”
“Do you believe her words, thief?”
I admired my half-eaten apple and watched her out of the corner of my eye, taking my time answering. There was more happening here, some kind of silent battle between what I knew of the truth and what she had yet to tell me.
“What would you have me believe?” I asked. Her frown tugged on my heart, more than it should have. She cared for my answer, probably more than she cared for her cup, or perhaps even the Eye. “I believe what my senses tell me, isn’t that what you say? I believe you’re all those things. You’ve told me the same. You speak of revenge and grief; I know those things well enough to recognize them in others. You have quite the reputation, but like the many artifacts I’ve stolen, these types of embellishments are rarely true. I believe what I’ve seen.” I bowed my head, remembering how the water had streamed down her back, and how she had lifted her hands to the waterfall and laughed, and how she’d danced at the festival for no other reason than because she could. “You are the things they say, but that is not all you are, is it?” I’d seen her cry over fallen ruins and seen her wrath strike fast and true. I believed the mages, I believed her, and I believed in what my instincts told me. “What do you plan to do with the Eye, Shaianna?”
“It is a relic, as am I. It does not belong here.”
She hadn’t answered my question. “Once we have it, will you destroy it?”
She wet her lips and lifted her apple. “Some things should be destroyed, don’t you think?” She took a firm and precise bite.
“Or perhaps we should bury it again,” I said carefully. “Let it be forgotten until a better time when the Eye might be … appreciated.”
“Why wait? Perhaps we should use it.” She smiled. “To create a better time today?”
“Perhaps …” I mirrored her smile, as thin as it was.
“Then you’ll stay here while I retrieve it?”
“Yes,” I lied like the good little foolish thief everyone believed I was.
Her next bite of her apple revealed a rotten core.
Chapter Eighteen
I spent much of the morning traversing the city rooftops in my search of the spire’s entrances and found only one, hidden down a set of street-level steps and flanked by two guards. The guards wouldn’t be a problem for Shaianna. She would cut through them, dagger flashing. But since I didn’t want any unnecessary deaths on my hands and I planned to get inside without Shaianna knowing, I would have to lure the guards from their posts.
The spire consisted of at least eight hundred feet of limestone. It shone in direct sunlight like a lighthouse. The stones had been polished smooth, so I couldn’t scale it, and it didn’t have a single window. I’d always assumed it was solid, but now I knew—like the rest of the Inner Circle—it was another prison.
I settled on a nearby roof and watched the Inner Circle people go about their routines, not dissimilar to the Outer Circle folk, only here they did it with polite smiles and gracious gestures. Their widespread politeness and apparent goodwill made the dark truth all the uglier. Did they all know what they truly were, what they harbored inside, or was it just a select few? Or perhaps they were so enamored with the reality fed to them that they couldn’t see the truth, even with it right before their eyes. Captain Anuska had called magic a disease. The propaganda fed to these people supported that. They might not wear obvious shackles, but these people were chained by rituals and rules. May the fire cleanse your soul.
I would be free of it soon enough. To be free, I had to devise a way to get past the wall. That too shone bright white against the sprawling backdrop of the Outer Circle with its patchwork of cottages, townhouses, and shantytowns. I’d killed the guards at the gate the first time I escaped with my sister in tow—the anger and fear driving me blindly on. Their armor and complacency had made them slow and unprepared for a terrified but well-trained boy and his sister. This time, Anuska would have told the guards to expect me.
Someone had been sending mages beyond the wall in search of the cup and the Eye. I doubted whoever it was paraded the mages through the main gate, so there had to be another way to get beyond the wall—underground, perhaps, likely from inside the spire.
The sun rode across the sky, the hours passing quickly as I ambled along the roof ridges. I could have returned to the hayloft. Shaianna had probably left, but if she hadn’t, I didn’t entirely trust myself around her. Anuska’s words and the numerous other warnings gnawed on my faith. I knew exactly what she was capable of. She had never lied or pretended to be anything else, but there was a side to her that she refused to reveal—the guarded side—and that was the most dangerous thing about her. The laughing woman, the assassin, the sorceress—I knew they were all her, but there was more she wasn’t telling me. I should have moved on and forgotten her—as best as someone as memorable as Shaianna could be forgotten. The Forgotten One. She was the shadow on the wall, and not for the likes of me.
I steered my rooftop wandering toward the square, where I should have burned on the pyre, and crouched down on a ridge tile. Scorch marks blackened the street, but the ashes had been swept up and cleared away. No bodies. No grieving relatives. If people had died, as Anuska had suggested, surely there would have been more proof?
Shaianna had saved my life, but she was also at the heart of everything trying to kill me. Should I trust her or walk away?
She wouldn’t allow me to sell the Eye. I wasn’t even sure I should. A good man would bury the gem, or take a ship out of the bay and toss it overboard. I could pretend I was a good man, but I needed to eat and I needed a roof over my head. I’d spent enough time on the street to know I didn’t ever want to be homeless and hungry again. I had to sell it. Men like Fallford could squabble over the Eye’s magical worth and its destiny. And Shaianna—well maybe once the Eye had been dealt with, we would go our separate ways as we had after Arach.
But there was a problem with that outcome: I didn’t want her to go. What I wanted was to know the real her, just once, if she would let me. I would like to laugh with her and forget who we were, forget whatever we were supposed to do, forget about the Eye, the tomb, our pasts, and just be … real. I’d like
her to be the truth in the lies. I wanted to trust her. It appeared I wanted many things, but I had yet to learn what it was she wanted.
The church bells struck three. In the distance, dusk crept down the moorlands toward Brea. I admired the spire in the fading daylight and wondered what darkness waited inside.
I strode toward the two guards on sentry duty while using my dagger to peel an apple. The lamplighters had finished their nightly patrols, and the few people left on the streets were hurrying home. In my stolen long coat and dark waistcoat, I passed for a gentleman at a distance, but as I moved closer, my insolent swagger left no doubt that I was looking for trouble.
The guards eyed me with their typical move-along glances.
I stopped in front of them and cut a slice of apple. The lamplight flickered above, briefly sparking in the dagger’s gem-encrusted handle. “I heard there’s a magic-using thief on the run from the city guard.”
They did their best to ignore me, but the dagger warranted closer inspection.
“You should move along,” the one on my right said, but his companion wasn’t as quick to dismiss me.
“Sentinel duty.” I grunted. “It’ll be cold tonight, and here you are. Did you pick the short straw?”
“Move along, sir.”
The guard to my left hadn’t spoken. He had watched me cut the apple, assessing the bejeweled dagger’s fine strokes, and now he was scrutinizing my clothing.
“So imagine the boon to your careers should you capture the thief. There are few opportunities to impress your superiors. You Inner Circle folk are just too obedient.”
My observant guard shifted his right hand, spreading his fingers in preparation to grab for his sword.
I smiled, popped the apple slice into my mouth, and crunched down. “Think you can catch me?”
He lunged and I bolted left, down a winding backstreet.
I checked that my guard was lumbering close behind and slowed my pace enough for him to think he was gaining on me. I veered around a corner and my foot slipped on the icy cobbles, snatching a few valuable seconds, but I had enough distance between me and the guard to slip inside a narrow alley and scale a scaffold. The guard couldn’t follow, not in armor designed to stop a short sword.
Dashing along the rooftops, I was back at the spire entrance, where the single guard remained. He stared down the street, watching for his companion. I came up on him fast and quiet and landed a kick to the back of his knee. He buckled, and I caught him by the shoulder, twisted him around, and slammed him hard to the ground. He managed to loose a bark of alarm before I rammed a rag in his mouth and tied his hands behind his back. He was gagged and tied before he knew what had hit him.
The sounds of our scuffle soon dissolved into the night.
I caught a handful of his hair—“Sorry”—and rammed my right fist into his nose. He grunted, spluttering blood. I moved his semi-conscious body down the steps and out of sight of any passersby. He wouldn’t stay down for long, and his companion would be back soon.
The lock picks I plucked from my pocket were crude and liable to break, but they were the best I could do with the discarded pieces of steel wire I’d found while scouring the city. I prodded the lock with both wire extensions and worked my way around its mechanism, feeling the play in the metal until it gave. The lock clunked over. I slipped quietly through the door and inside the spire.
The stench of something rancid and decayed burned my nose and clogged my throat. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Rows of cells made even more foreboding by the flicker of torchlight? Yes. But it was the whispers drifting through the air that raised the fine hairs on my arms. A short passageway brought me into a vast vertical column—the spire’s innards. Cell upon cell lined the walls, intersected by jagged cantilevered staircases. Shadows moved behind the bars. The cell nearest me housed a single mage. It sat hunched in the tiny space, claws scratching at the stones as regularly as a ticking clock. Besides its vaguely human body, nothing else suggested it had once been a man or a woman. Its hairless skin quivered, and its tongue, when it licked its lips, was a split, blackened ribbon.
I noted an opposite passageway and peered up through the inside of the spire. Some ten stories above—just a fraction of the distance to the top—stone arches branched off from the stairs and held a platform aloft. I couldn’t see what that platform might hold, but with only the cells on the ground floor, I started up the steps.
Whispers brushed across my neck as they had in the Ruins of Arach. I’d dismissed the sensation then, but now I wasn’t so quick to brush it off. Despite the mark, I wasn’t a magic user, and yet even I could feel the wrongness swirling inside the spire—the kind of inhuman wrongness that told instincts to run.
The whispers grew louder until I could distinguish separate voices. I hesitated on the steps, pressing my back against the cool wall, and peered over the edge to the floor below. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. I could go up, to where the voices chanted, or back down to explore the opposite passageway and hope for an exit. But I hadn’t found the Eye, and Shaianna would soon come.
I pushed on upward.
With each step, the increasing sensation of wrongness plucked on my nerves. I gripped my dagger tighter and listened to the rhythmic beat of the voices.
As the platform came into view, I pushed back into the wall and shadows and absorbed what I could of the scene unfolding before me. I’d seen the mosaic pattern on the floor before, in the Arachian tomb. But here it was inverted so the spirals flowed from the center, not toward it. In its center, a pedestal held the Dragon’s Eye in a stone clasp, and four figures stood around the edges: a guard, a gentleman, a Brean woman—remarkable in her plainness—and Captain Anuska. Heads bowed and eyes closed, they chanted foreign words like those Shaianna had spoken in the tomb.
Green light spilled from the Eye, rippling over the edges of the pedestal to lap at the feet of the four people.
Anuska’s words had all been lies. Not only was she a magic user, but she had known about the Eye. She had probably sent the mages to retrieve it. Whatever she was attempting to do, given the Eye’s notoriety, it wasn’t good. I checked the four figures again. They were deep into their ritual, with their eyes squeezed shut.
None of the four appeared armed.
I crept up the last few steps, placing each footfall with deliberate care and keeping Anuska in my line of sight. Their chanting washed over me, and the transparent green light licked over my boots.
Just a few more steps …
Something spooked the mages below. All at once, their cackles and wails rose in a deafening crescendo. Anuska snapped open her eyes and reached for the Eye. I lunged, knocked the gem free of its clasp, and dashed forward as it skipped and skittered toward the platform’s edge. A few shouts joined the gods-awful noise from below. I dove for the gem. My fingers brushed its surface, and then the gem was gone, vanished over the edge.
At least it’s away from the four of them, I thought, right before one of them tackled me from behind. My chin hit the mosaic floor, slamming my teeth together.
A knee landed in my back, but my attacker didn’t anticipate the dagger in my hand. I swung it blindly behind me, heard the man hiss and swear, and bucked him off. I snatched his fine clothes, yanked him close, pushed the blade against his neck, then pinned Anuska in my sights. She froze, as did her two companions. The man beneath my blade was worth something to them.
The mages’ howls and yips echoed around us, whipping up a storm of noise too loud for me to consider asking Anuska what they had been conjuring with the Eye. It didn’t matter anyway. I was about to retrieve that gem for myself. Pulling the gentleman to his feet, I kept my blade to his throat and backed away. He muttered a string of “don’t hurt me’s” as we inched toward the stairs. Anuska had been my intended target—I had planned to use the valuable captain as leverage for the gem—but this man would do just as well. All I had to do was get down the stairs with him, find the gem, and be on my way.
Anuska’s stringent glare left no doubt that she’d like nothing better than to run me through with her sword.
“Not today,” I mouthed.
My hostage didn’t fight. Having a blade pressed against one’s neck tended to dissuade even the bravest of men. We staggered down the steps, but Anuska and her two friends followed. The cacophony rattled around the inside of the spire and became almost too loud to bear once we reached the ground floor. I searched the dark for the gem but couldn’t see it. What if it had rolled into one of the cells?
Then silence rushed in on a hot blast of air, so sudden and complete that nobody moved. I could hear my thudding heart and the sawing breaths of the man in my arm. The mages had all fallen quiet at once. They were still there; their black bodies pushed against their bars, waiting—watching.
“She’s here,” my hostage muttered.
And indeed she was.
Shaianna strode down the passageway, eyes forward, cloak rippling behind her. The gems in her dagger glinted, just like those in her eyes.
“The Forgotten One,” my hostage whispered. A tremor quivered through him.
I dragged him back a few steps, keeping Anuska on my right and Shaianna ahead.
“The Eye,” I said, surprised at how calm I sounded. “It’s here.”
A curious curl of a smile played on Shaianna’s lips. She targeted each of us with a glance and then strode to a cell door, knelt, and reached her left hand inside. The mage inside growled low and flung itself at the bars, but Shaianna didn’t flinch. When she straightened, she held the massive Eye in the palm of her hand. She turned it over, admiring it this way and that, and then closed her fingers around it and squeezed. I heard the gem creak, and then it shattered, raining fragments around her feet.
She smiled, her teeth glinting in the flickering light, and lowered her hand. “It begins.”
Anuska and her two companions dropped to their knees and started chanting again.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 60