by Rob J. Hayes
“I have a boat waiting to take you out of Soromo and a horse waiting for you when you leave the Emerald Sea. From there you can make your own way to Larkos.”
Thanquil nodded. He couldn’t really tell what he was currently feeling, his emotions seemed a jumble tied in a knot wrapped around a mess but he had a strange inkling that killing Drake Morrass would help.
“Thank you,” he said to the herald. “I’ll make certain Drake doesn’t come back here.”
Two hours later Thanquil found himself astride a horse heading towards Larkos in the most direct route he knew. Heading towards Drake Morrass. Heading towards Jezzet.
Jezzet
True to his word Drake led them to Larkos without being eaten by any of the empress’ dragons. His inside knowledge of how to give the flying beasts the slip turned out to be the cunning plan of staying under the tree cover. It was a plan Jez wagered she could have figured out on her own but then at least the pirate was pleasant enough company that she could cope with his wild boast.
Both Drake and Princess turned out to be more than serviceable companions for the trip. The pirate captain, apart from his dashing good looks, had a wildly mysterious way of talking that Jez found drawn to and was determined to dig deeper into the man’s past and his vague motives. His subordinate on the other hand had a stoic camaraderie and a near permanently cheery disposition so long as no one made fun of his name.
They rode their first horses near to death, streaking through the night and the rain in a flight as terrifying as the storm chasing them. Jez counted it a miracle none of their mounts slipped, breaking legs and throwing the riders to certain death. They changed those horses for new ones, with Drake generously footing the bill, at the first town they came across and at every small village and large city in between. By the time they arrived at Larkos each of them had ridden no less than four different horses and Drake had ridden five after one had turned up lame only a mile from the shoddy town from which they had bought it.
The ride up to the great gate of Larkos was nerve-racking. Jezzet almost expected to see dragons perched upon the battlements waiting for them but it was nothing but foolish fancy. The free city did not allow dragons within its limits and they had the weaponry to enforce that rule. Ballistae, repeaters, catapults and scorpions all sat atop the walls of Larkos and all were well maintained and regularly tested. No soldiers in the known world were as accurate a shot nor so quick to aim for no other soldiers in the known world lived under the constant threat of dragon attack.
Jez looked up at the great gate as they approached. Really is a fitting name. It wasn’t the first time she had seen it but no matter how many times she did, it never failed to awe her. Standing somewhere close to a hundred feet high and almost the same wide it was without a doubt the biggest gate she had ever seen. It closed in times of war and the mechanisms that closed it also barred it in a thousand different places. It was just one of the tourist attractions of Larkos and understandably so. Never in all its history had the great gate ever been breached. Armies had tried in the past but most gave it up for a bad idea and decided climbing the hundred and fifty feet high walls to be a more likely and less costly avenue of attack.
Upon each side of the gate were carved thirteen symbols, one for each of the companies that both ran and protected Larkos. The city was split into twelve public districts and one, central, private district. Every five years the companies randomised which of them controlled each district and that in turn randomised which of them was the richer but not the more powerful; each of the thirteen had equal say in the running and ruling of the city and though they occasionally squabbled, they were always united in the cause of Larkos.
There’s a reason the Dragon Empire has failed to take this city no matter how many times it tries.
Jezzet liked Larkos. It was a city she would happily have named home if it weren’t for the rigid adherence to the laws and the companies’ brutal and unmerciful upholding of those said laws. Some were known to be worse than others but none were known to be particularly kind to criminals and Jez had a habit of falling into that category.
Drake was smiling at her. The pirate didn’t even bother to hide his bold-faced leering. “Don’t worry, Jez,” he said with his golden grin. “Long as ya’ here with me, you’re safe.”
“Is anyone safe when they’re with you?” she shot back earning a snort of laughter from Princess.
“I got an accord with those that run this city. Protection and a certain amount of… discretion. All for a hefty annual sum of course but then I count it as full worth the cost.
“I get free port, pick of the litter when it comes to berth, good prices so long as I sell to the companies and not direct to the merchants and I get to conduct my own business even when it’s not entirely, um, legal. I also get to hide from the empire and its empress should the need ever arise and right now there’s a definite rising.”
As they queued to enter through the great gate, waiting with all the merchants, commoners and tourists, a hooded man detached himself from the side of the road and approached. Alarm bells sounded in Jez’s head, she knew a thief when she saw one but it was clear Drake had seen the man too and he didn’t appear alarmed.
“Cap’n,” the man said with a voice like grating rock. He stank of stale casher weed.
“What’s the word?” Drake asked.
“Envoy from the empire arrived just yesterday. Queen o’ Blades is puttin’ them up and keepin’ ‘em well and truly companied. Plenty o’ time for us ta get gone.”
Drake nodded. Jezzet watched him with more than a mild suspicion. “What about the Fortune?” the pirate captain asked.
“Ready ta sail soon as you are, cap’n. She comin’?” he jerked his head towards Jez.
“Aye, that she is,” replied Drake.
Am not! Jez thought but for some reason she kept silent.
“Skip ahead and tell the boys we’ll be sailing come sun down,” Drake said. “Best we slip away under cover of night and no lights above deck. We’ll be along soon enough.”
“The Oracle?” asked Princess.
“Best we say hello,” Drake said with a nod. “Him and the Scarred Man both.”
The hooded man turned and darted away, quickly disappearing into the crowd. Jez waited a few moments before turning to Drake. “I’m going with you?”
“If you’re hoping to survive this bloody empire you are. Her dragons might not be allowed within sight of the walls but you’re fooling yourself if you reckon she ain’t got agents inside this city.”
Jez snorted. “Let them come. I’d happily have something to hit.”
“Oh aye, you’d be a real terror to them if they came at you straight with swords a swinging but I don’t reckon that’s too likely. They’ll wait until you think you’re right. Few days from now you’ll be sitting down with a beer or chewing a strip of beef and your throat will start to itch, little bit at first but it’ll grow. Soon you’ll find yourself coughing but no matter how much you can’t seem to shift it. Then it gets hard to breathe as your airway starts to close and the wheezing begins. You claw at your throat, neck swelling and face turning all sorts of purple and then… well then you die.”
Jez couldn’t help but rub at her neck, imagining it itching already. She glared at Drake. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
Drake grinned, his gold tooth glinting. “You don’t get to be Drake Morrass without living through a poisoning or two.
“Fortune sets sail tonight, Jezzet. You want on it and the space is yours. I’ll deliver you back home to the wilds, well out of her reach, and from there your life is yours again. Do with it what you will. You don’t want on it and I reckon you can count your remaining days on one hand. Again, your choice.”
Not much of a choice at all. Flee to the wilds, Jez. Get word to Thanquil and convince him it was all a lie. She looked up to find Drake regarding her through cool, green eyes. Bastard’s responsible for you being here in the
first place but he’s also the only chance you’ve got at surviving the whole fucking mess.
“Fine,” Jez spat with a grin. “But if I’m sailing for you, Drake, I best get paid.”
Princess burst into laughter and Drake nodded with a bemused half-smile. “Aye. Reckon we’ll make a pirate out of you yet, Jezzet Vel’urn.”
Thanquil
Thanquil glared at the young boy and the young boy glared right back. His very first mission since graduating to the status of Arbiter was not going exactly as he had planned. Thanquil had imagined folk would be cowed his presence, gazing on him with awe and respect. He was half right in that regard, they were most certainly cowed but instead of awe and respect there was fear and barely concealed hatred. He had imagined he would stride into the small village with his head held high and, using a combination of the skills he had been mastering for the past twenty years, he would determine the identity of the heretic, should there be one, and subsequently fight a short but heroic battle against the forces of darkness. Instead he had stolen into the village in the dead of night and slept most of the following day away in the local inn. Upon waking he had discovered, far from the epic battle, much of his calling seemed to entail a series of lengthy interrogations and the continued use of his compulsion. While the process was not without its own sense of enormous pleasure, the compulsion was a joy to use and left him with a heady feeling of power, it was also a very dull process.
The boy bit his lips and swung his feet, the chair was too tall for him. Thanquil scratched at his day-old stubble and decided he would need to shave soon. He couldn’t imagine ever living with anything resembling a beard. The boy mimicked his action.
Thanquil dropped his hand back down to his side and tilted his head a little to the left, the boy also dropped his hand but titled his own head to the right. Thanquil grinned in triumph. The boy grinned with him.
“Stop that,” he ordered the child. “I need to ask you a few questions. Do you understand?”
He felt the pleasure surge through him and saw the boy frown with concentration as his will was dominated and he was forced to speak the truth. A simple question and a simple answer but the boy still resisted. Thanquil had to admit, though only ever to himself, it was more fun when they resisted.
“Yes,” the boy said with a wince and then promptly commenced sulking, his bottom lip sticking out and eyes lowering to the floor.
“Good. Then we’ll begin. What is your name, boy?”
This time he answered immediately. “Damien.”
“Do you ever see any of the other villagers practising dark magic, conversing with demons or possessing of strange powers, Damien?”
The boy winced and moaned, his eyes tearing up. “I don’t know.”
It was possible, Thanquil had to admit, the question may have been a bit too complicated for a four year old. Instructor Noin liked to say the questions should never be routine but an Arbiter should tailor them to the individual. He would need to ask the question in way in which the boy would both understand and be capable of answering.
“Damien,” Thanquil continued before the boy could start crying. “Are any of the villagers here… evil?”
The boy shook his head and sniffed loudly. “No. I don’t think so.”
Thanquil nodded, picked up his notebook and scribbled down the results of the interrogation. It did not take long. “You can go now, Damien.”
The boy slipped down from the chair and rushed for the door, he spent a few moments attempting to reach for the handle before giving up and kicking the door twice. A moment later it opened and the boy rushed out. A thin man of advancing years and more hair in his nose than on his head stepped through into the little room and looked around in distaste. Thanquil had painted the symbol of Volmar on the wall in dark black ink and had cleared the room of all but two chairs. The thin man obviously did not well appreciate the use of his office in the town hall.
“Can I fetch you anyone else, Arbiter?” the man asked in a deep baritone of a voice.
Thanquil snapped to his feet and turned on the man, staring him down with a vicious glare. “I will be doing the questioning around here, not you.”
The man backed up a step, nodding and casting his eyes to the floor. “Is that a no or a yes then?”
Thanquil suppressed a sigh and stepped close to the man. “No. That will be all for now. Leave, quickly.”
The man sketched a hasty bow and turned and fled, almost tripping over his own feet as he went. Thanquil closed the door behind him and only then allowed himself a grin. There were most certainly some perks to the job and the ability to make folk uncomfortable certainly seemed like one of them. There was also the fact that no one would suspect it was he behind the recent spree of pick-pocketing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wooden toy, roughly half the size of his fist. It was conical in shape and had thin protrusion on the top. He had seen the boy playing with it the day before, spinning it on the floor and seeing how long it could remain upright. The opportunity had presented itself earlier so Thanquil had taken the toy. He stowed it quickly down in the bottom of his pack and decided to review his notes. It did not take long.
He had interrogated almost every citizen in town and was quickly coming to the conclusion that there were no heretics here. Tinfield was as peaceful and sleepy a place as it appeared to be. Thanquil was beginning to wonder whether the council had sent him here knowing this, the polar opposite to a baptism of fire they sent him to a town filled with citizens living normal lives and knowing little to nothing of the heresy he had come here hunting. In a way it made sense, the Inquisition sending Arbiters on their first mission to a place where no action would be required. He doubted any of the new graduates were sent to deal with real heretics straight away. He could still, of course, accuse one of the townsfolk, execute them under suspicion of heresy to set an example for all others, it was well within the bounds of his authority but Thanquil did not feel like murdering an innocent for little more than no reason at all.
He placed his notebook back inside one of the many pockets of his coat. The long, brown duster was so new it still had the smell of cured leather about it and that smell was enough to make Thanquil smile. His coat was proof that he had endured his Arbiter training and graduated, proof that he was a full agent of the Inquisition and wielded the authority of such a powerful and prestigious organisation. Now he needed to check in with that organisation, send word to the council and receive any orders that had sent to him. He would have to steal out into the nearby forest and summon a demon. If he said the thought of summoning one of the creatures didn’t excite him, he’d be lying. Ever since that first time he had been fascinated by the demons of the void and subsequent summonings did little to extinguish that curiosity.
Inquisitor Poole himself had observed one of Thanquil’s demon summonings and the entire council admitted that strange occurrences were almost the norm when it came to Thanquil. Every time he summoned one of the beasts he had to wonder; what would happen? His only disappointment was that not once had his first encounter ever been repeated, not once had he seen a demon attempt to manifest itself properly to such an extent that it was able to interact with this world.
Sneaking out wasn’t a problem for Thanquil. Even if he hadn’t been as stealthy as a cat in the dark he was an Arbiter now and people purposefully tried not to notice him and would happily let him go about his business. Even so, it was far more exciting edging out through the first floor window, pulling himself onto the rooftop and creeping along the tiles, as silent as a breeze until he reached the backside of the building. There he shimmied down to the ground, looked to make sure there was no one about to see him and sprinted for the tree line.
It was near total darkness in the woods, the only light coming from the occasional moonbeam striking the forest floor between gaps in the canopy and creating strange swirling eddies of moonlit dust in the dark. It was impossible to be silent here, twigs snapped underfoot and leaves rus
tled in his wake but there was no one around to hear him but the animals and there were none in Sarth dangerous enough to cause him damage.
He moved a fair distance from the town, judging a mile or so to be sufficient. Thanquil was always mindful that the demons sometimes made a lot of noise and he also knew the judgement he would have to administer to anyone who was unfortunate enough to witness what he was about to do. The Inquisition’s best kept and dirtiest secret; that they used the demons responsible for people’s heresy. They were hypocrites of the highest order but that did not mean they did not do good. The demons were bound to the Inquisition by Volmar himself and had to obey all of the organisation’s agents no matter the order. Through the demons the Inquisition performed good to outweigh the sin, through the demons they were able to communicate over any distance.
Thanquil took out the wooden rune he had prepared before leaving his room. A small chip of brittle wood scored horizontally across the centre and painted with three symbols. The summoning rune, the power rune and the control rune; only with all three was he able to bring a demon into this world and control it.
He drew in a deep breath of crisp, night time air and let it out as a ragged sigh, full of nervous excitement. Then he snapped the rune and dropped it to the ground.
The world grew somehow darker and colder. His breath began to mist in front of his face and Thanquil dug his hands into his pockets to ward off the chill. Then came the rattling of the chains, huge, heavy chains made from a metal that only Volmar knew. The God had forged the chains too bind the demons and he forged them so only he could break them, sealing the beasts’ subservience for all time.
A patch of darkness in front of Thanquil, almost as large as he, grew darker still and he could just about make out the spiked form of the demon’s head as it phased into this world from the depths of the void. Two tiny sparks of yellow blossomed into intense flame as the demon opened its eyes.