by Lana Nielsen
“No.” Fallon slammed his hand flat upon the table. The sound startled Arithel. “We are not changing anything because of this silly, boyish objection. Remember who brought you here, Darren. You were nothing but a farmer. It will take years to fully understand the gravity of your situation—until then, I suggest you listen to reason and experience.”
Fallon’s voice was shaking as he addressed Darren. Darren touched the scar on his hand.
“It’s too bad I need you to whisper in Morden’s ear,” Meldane said to Fallon. He unsheathed his sword and pulled a whetstone from his pocket, stroking the blade to sharpen it. “Or else I’d just take Darren to Paden myself.”
Arithel assumed this was the real reason Fallon wanted her at the gate instead of with him.
Zander stepped closer to Fallon, hand on his knife, eyes fierce.
Fallon laughed a little. “Let’s not go here again, gentlemen. I think you remember how it ended last time you challenged me.”
The whites of his eyes blackened and steam rose off the pads of his fingers.
Darren bounded from his seat in terror.
“All right!” He threw his hands up, and motioned for Meldane to put away his sword. “We’ll stick with this mad plan. Just promise me, that we won’t kill any more than we have to, that we’ll only go after Nureenians, and leave the common people of this city unharmed.”
“Fine.” Fallon shrugged, his countenance normal again, albeit a bit sweaty.
Darren mouthed “what is he?” to Arithel. She pretended she didn’t notice his lips moving. He briefly squeezed his eyes shut and clasped his hands together.
It was the second time she had witnessed Fallon’s gift. Perhaps he had really sent Ronan into the ice, if he could generate heat and smoke with his hands.
It was so subtle though, nothing at all as remarkable as he claimed. She saw no “manipulation of nature.” She saw something more akin to what Mother Cecilia would call invocation of the demonic.
***
For the remainder of the day, Arithel languished about the house as the others spread rumors in friendly taverns. Darren stayed, too, but she avoided him. She practiced swordplay and examined the intricacies of the hand-cannon, trying to spot something new in its engravings. She wondered how it would all go down.
When they returned, Fallon stopped by Arithel’s room as she read Widow White’s medical manuals for the fourth time. She was curled in a chair, a blanket splayed over her lap.
“How did you sleep last night?” Fallon asked her.
She closed the text. “Fine.”
“Good. You will need to rest well again tonight. Tomorrow is an important day. A turning point.”
Arithel rubbed her fingers against her temples.
He knew, of course. He had to. If she had heard his conversation with Meldane, surely they had heard, too. Especially considering Darren stupidly wouldn’t lower his voice.
“Fallon.”
“Aye,” he said, his face almost pleasant and open for once.
She fiddled with her necklace, absentmindedly twisting the stone and its binds.
“Tell me more about everything—what we’re really doing here, at the behest of your master.”
“Exactly what I’ve said. Striking a blow to the Nureenian Empire, in hopes of restoring balance to our tumultuous continent.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You know what I meant. I want to know specifics—Morden is more than just some schemer, he is a visionary, you’ve said yourself. What are his teachings? What does he require of his followers? How did he help you realize your gift of sorcery?”
“We don’t have time to get into all that. I came to discuss what happens tomorrow,” he said.
“What?”
“If things at the gate don’t go as planned, flee. Take Darren into the mountains. Don’t wait on me. I trust that you are capable of finishing this, if it comes to that. You will find the way to Paden.”
Arithel nodded. “I will.”
He knelt beside her, and took her hand in his. His fingers were cool and waxy. He squeezed her hand and brought it to his cheek. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and held it there.
“What are you doing that for?” Arithel frowned, thinking of him lying on top of Mira.
“Good luck, Arithel.” He released her hand.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The weather worsened again, just in time for their departure. It began to sleet in the witching hours, the frozen shards of rain rapping hard against the window, enough to deny Arithel a deep and deserved slumber. Mira didn’t sleep either. She sat on her stool, eerily staring into the fireplace.
In the morning, they holed themselves up in Darren’s room, drinking to pass the time. Mira told everyone Widow White was finally suspicious of them, after breakfast she caught the old woman snooping through their things. Arithel replied that Widow White was probably just ready for them to leave.
“I cannot blame her…” Arithel said as she finished her fifth cup of brandy.
***
As dusk approached, they executed the first steps of their plan. Fallon distributed his powders and matches to Mira and Zander. He emphasized again that the rest of them had to wait for all three signals before they advanced on the gate. Fallon advised that Meldane, Darren, and Arithel wear the finest clothes available, for dramatic effect. Meldane brought forth what he claimed to have left Paden with: piles of furs and soft leather, a striped burgundy cloak, and heavy gold and silver jewelry, even an earring. Darren borrowed Fallon’s green velvet doublet and leather coat. An impractical belt made from bronze medallions was looped around his waist, tenuously holding up his golden sword. As for Arithel, she was given a clean, well-tailored gown of deep blue, with a beaded, tight-laced bodice, and the skirts split scandalously to her thigh on each side. Her hair was down and loose, set by a thin silver circlet, and Fallon dipped her stone in some potion, causing it to shine a faint silvery-blue color, almost glowing. Arithel worried aloud that their gaudy appearances might attract scrutiny, but Meldane told her that anyone in the slums who dared say anything would know him as Lord Bear, and let them on their way.
Fallon, Mira, and Zander adorned themselves in rags to better stay unnoticed. Mira tucked her mounds of hair into a white coif.
Mira and Zander packed all of the provisions onto the mule-drawn cart Fallon had procured. Arithel had her doubts about how well it would hold up on the mountain roads—if they made it to said roads. On their way out, they all bid farewell to Widow White. Fallon paid her some more. The widow watched them leave from her window.
Meldane was overbearing towards Arithel and Darren, taking his position as ‘leader’ of their half of the expedition very seriously. He remarked off-hand that he hoped Fallon looked after Zander well, lest there be a blood price to pay. Darren reassured Meldane that everything would be fine. Meldane glanced at Arithel as she slipped her fingers inside her gloves.
He asked, “What is that thing that Fallon gave you, which he spoke of so much? Hand-cannon?”
Arithel was surprised Fallon had not already shown it off to the Northman.
“It came from your land, from some ruins near Staska. It is an artifact, a working relic of some more progressive time. Morden gave it to Fallon.”
“I was expelled from Paden before the ruins were discovered. The excavations had only just started. Morden’s stories of this lost city beneath our mountains enchanted court, especially the king,” Meldane muttered.
“You mean your brother?” Darren said.
“Half-brother. My mother was a lady-in-waiting, not the queen,” Meldane stated flatly.
“You’re a bastard,” Darren mused.
Just like you, Arithel thought.
“We don’t have what you call bastards in Paden. My mother was like a second wife. I wasn’t in line for the crown, but I was still a high prince and entitled to many lands and riches.”
“A curious system,” Arithel remarked. Darren seemed taken
aback by the tales of concubinage.
“You must wonder—” Meldane said as he stared with glassy eyes at the sack containing the hand-cannon slung over Arithel’s shoulder. “Must wonder—the people who built the city in the ravine—what happened to them? That folk with such fine effects could let themselves be swallowed by time, that they’d let a mountain grow over them.”
Arithel could tell that he was having trouble translating his thoughts to the Central tongue; he had a stilted way of phrasing things.
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe they were invaded? Victims of disease?”
“I think that all the things that lie in the ruins are cursed,” Meldane said. “Those people must have been cursed and died in some great cataclysm. Morden should have left the city alone. Some stones aren’t meant to be upturned.”
The stone tied on leather strings around her neck felt very uncomfortable. Meldane was right. She felt a dark sense of foreboding, a sense that the world of her youth was teetering on the precipice of an abyss, and that once it fell, once it changed, it could never really be undone.
Arithel climbed into the driver’s seat of their wagon alongside Darren. Meldane walked about thirty paces ahead. He had three blades on him: two at his back beneath his fur mantle and a dagger on his wrist.
After a brief argument with Darren, Arithel allowed him to drive the cart. He took the reins into his sun-browned hands and prodded the mule to get it going. They lumbered slowly towards the gate, the road bumpy and slick beneath the spoked wooden wheels. Their supplies bounced and rattled in the bed. Arithel’s unelected duty was apparently to keep their food and blankets from flying out into the street.
They passed from the middle quarter of the city to the outer rims, the wagon stalling in the mud as soon as it crossed the boundaries of the slums. They were within sight of the western gate; the signals were likely to go off any minute. Arithel was anxious to get it all over with. She wondered if Fallon would follow through with his plan. Perhaps he would talk himself out of it; wouldn’t be unprecedented.
Darren scooted closer to Arithel and whispered, “Fallon made the right call, keeping us together.”
Arithel was quiet, focused on a battalion of Nureenians, their spears upright, marching in formation towards the middle quarter. Was Fallon mad? The loiterers and drunks had vanished from the street corners and tavern fronts. The Nureenians had tightened control of the place.
“You really think it is all going to work?” Darren struck up a conversation again.
Arithel shrugged. There were other things on her mind. The question of what had actually happened between Fallon and Mira, for one. The question of whether she’d have to endure a long journey to Paden with just Darren and Meldane, for two. The question of which one of them would inevitably get their face blown apart or a sword through their belly, three. Meldane was slowing his pace, leaning into the mule and stroking its head. Even the Northman was on edge.
Two Nureenians dipped their heads in polite greeting. Arithel smiled sweetly back, so they wouldn’t be stopped. She knew Meldane had likely scowled, and Darren’s open face always gave away his clueless intentions. Her costume had apparently worked as Fallon intended; the dazzled Nureenian men nearly tripped over their own feet looking back at her.
“Widow White gave me a present before I left.” Darren spoke up again, voice cracking with uncertainty.
He outstretched his palm and revealed to Arithel a ring with religious symbols carved into it. Tiny crosses to represent Agron’s sword and circles to represent his all-knowing eye. He slipped it back onto his pinky.
“She said never stop wearing my faith on my sleeve,” Darren remarked proudly.
“Lovely,” Arithel said, unsure of the proper response.
Darren tugged on the reins and slowed the cart. “Did she give you anything?”
“A goodbye.”
“You’re awfully quiet.”
“I’ve a lot of thinking to do.”
“I’m sorry if things got out of hand the other night. We really have not had a chance to talk about it,” he muttered, quietly for once. “Looking back, I should not have been so forward. We shouldn’t have done it.”
“I don’t care one way or the other,” Arithel said.
“I will do more to impress you.” He gazed into her eyes with all the sincerity he could muster. His eyes looked lighter all the sudden, flecked with gold and amber.
He tried to take her hand. She promptly yanked it away.
“You are being awfully presumptuous again,” she said. “Forget about it all for now. You don’t need that nonsense clouding your head.”
Darren looked as if Arithel may as well have slapped his face. He turned a bit yellow-green. It was a shade she had seen on him an awful lot lately.
“I’ll try. It is hard for me to forget something like that.”
They neared the gates, the cobalt Nureenian flags hanging limply from their poles. They were damp from last night’s rain and the air was still despite the black clouds broiling in the violet shadows of the Great Dividing Range. They parked their cart off to the side of the gate, near a busy almshouse where they wouldn’t attract too much attention.
“Sit tall; be courageous, Darren,” Arithel ordered.
Meldane was comfortable and confident, smiling at a few washerwomen milling nearby. Darren was hyperventilating and wringing the skin on his forearms.
“Are you nervous?” asked Darren.
There were about thirty soldiers posted at the top of the gate, and three on the ground for the crank and toll. No cannons or muskets here—just spears and swords, leaning lazily against the stone walls, and crossbows. Not as many men as Arithel had expected. They paid little attention to the wagon loitering in the street. They looked tired. Tired and bored.
Arithel figured it was lightly guarded compared to the other checkpoints because not many people would be headed into the mountains this time of year.
Arithel finally responded to Darren’s question, with an exaggerated laugh. She laughed a long time, deliberately, but also a little deliriously. The brandy was still swimming inside her.
“Nervous about what?” she said.
“Having to kill again,” Darren answered.
“Maybe they’ll scatter like roaches before it comes to that.”
“Seriously, Arithel…”
“I’m not nervous.”
She wondered where Fallon was and how he would manage sneaking into the inner quarter to strike the Nureenian barracks. What route had he taken? She envisioned him fumbling with his powders and salves, the skin melting off his elegant face.
“I feel sick,” Darren said, not looking at Arithel.
“You shouldn’t. You probably won’t have to kill anyone.”
She almost patted him on the knee to reassure him, but stopped short.
“Your main job,” she continued, “is to take your hostage, and send him out to tell the city who we are and what we want.”
“I know; we’ve gone over it a hundred times.” He touched the hilt of his sword. “I know what will happen today is for the greater good, but I cannot help but think of all the men who will die, all the slum-folk who will go hungry when the granaries are destroyed.”
Arithel looked at Darren from the corner of her eye.
“If we are to keep going, you can’t think of them like that. You can’t dwell on their humanity.”
“You’re right,” Darren said with a deep breath. “I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Here goes nothing, aye?”
“Aye.” Arithel smiled. They clanked their blades together.
Meldane looked back at them and lifted his brows. A fat raindrop hit Arithel’s nose. It began to drizzle. The wheels of the cart were soon sinking further into the mire. She pulled the hood of her cloak lower, to shield her eyes.
Meldane walked over to Darren, asked how he was feeling and gave him a hearty rub on the shoulders. He whispered advice in Darren’s ear, advice that made Darren
laugh as his face flushed.
The first explosion came with no warning. The boom was louder than cannons, so loud it rattled Arithel’s eardrums. For a minute afterwards, all she could hear was a high-pitched, ringing sound.
She looked around and feigned surprise. A narrow plume of smoke rose from center of the city, from behind a sprawling black fortress with a metal roof. The barracks; Fallon had completed his task.
Worried voices soon rose as high as the smoke. Elinmoorians walked outside of their homes and shops to see what the source of the commotion was, chatting excitedly. Three guards mounted their horses and galloped away to check on the disturbance.
Arithel bit her fingernails in anticipation. Darren’s hands were blotched white from gripping the reins so tightly.
Another great boom sounded; this one from the opposite direction, from the northern portion of the slums, somewhat close to where the Walkers lived.
A large cloud of green-tinted smoke spiraled from the site of the blast. The haze spread quickly, like the branches of a tree. Debris rained down upon the flimsy rooftops of the slums. It smelled like yeast, like burnt bread.
The final explosion went off, this one the most furious yet. Shutters clattered, buildings rollicked, and the ground buckled. A soft, yellow-orange glow emanated from the blast; the ensuing fireball was plainly visible from the gate, rising into the air in the shape of a mushroom. The ash that fell smelled a little sweet, like cloves.
Everyone was in the streets by now. The Nureenians gawked at one other in apparent confusion. About half the soldiers left the gate to investigate, leaving around a dozen at the post. Some Elinmoorians cheered and embraced one another.
Did they even know what was going on? Fallon would not have been too specific when spreading rumors. The Elinmoorians clearly wanted anarchy and pain for their occupiers, at whatever cost.
Now was the time to act.
Arithel nudged Darren to join Meldane at the gate. He whipped the mule and Arithel pushed the cart from behind to get it out of the muck. Meldane was standing beside the gate-crankers. He drew his blade and assessed them silently. They didn’t notice; chaos was once again overwhelming the slums. Great mobs of people were filling the streets.