by Drae Box
“We may get into a fight,” he warned. “Are you ready to go against your uncle’s men?”
“If it means saving Alika, yes.”
Raneth gave her a quick smile before he slowly opened the door and peeked out into the green corridor.
The Brethren was walking down the right side of the corridor, his short, blond buzz-cut reminding Raneth of a royal official he knew. Same height, too, he realised. He frowned. This isn’t the time to start remembering royal officials. I have to save Alika first. He stepped into the corridor and turned to the left, walking on the balls of his feet. He heard the soft thuds of Aldora’s footsteps behind him. Then I can rally the royal officials to me if I need to.
A door ahead swung open and Raneth grimaced. He glanced to either side, looking for a room to duck into, but they were between doors. A Guardsman stepped out into the corridor. Stop any alarms, thought the royal official. He sprinted at the man and tackled him to the ground with a loud thump; the Guardsman uttered a soft cry of surprise. Raneth smashed his fist into the man’s nose, and then again. The Guardsman lifted his forearms over his face and yelled out for help. Raneth grabbed the Guardsman’s head and slammed it against the ground twice. On the third strike, the man fell still.
Another door opened ahead of them and a Brethren stepped out, curiously frowning down the corridor. His eyes widened when he spotted them, and he looked into the room he had come from and spoke to somebody.
“Raneth?” uttered Aldora warily.
“Use your gift,” said Raneth, staying low to the ground against the unconscious man’s body.
Aldora nodded, thought for a moment and then yelled, but no gift-scream came loose. Desperately, Raneth thrust a hand towards the now-advancing Brethren and white mist twirled towards him. It smashed into his body and the man’s face became obscured as the mist clung it.
“Come on,” he urged Aldora as he leapt to his feet.
He flung himself towards the suffocating Brethren, who clawed at the ice across his face. Raneth slammed his shoulder into the man, shoving him back into the room he had come from. Six sets of eyes looked back at him. Heck, no! He reached for the door handle, yanked the door shut and thought of the handle and hinges covered in ice. White mist swept from his hands and fastened the door shut as the hostiles on the other side charged towards the door. The door thudded as they tried to open it.
“That won’t hold for long,” he warned Aldora, before sprinting off down the corridor. “Look for stairs.”
“I’m looking.”
They found a set of stairs almost at the end of the corridor. Raneth grabbed the railing and vaulted over to the other side. He paused and looked up as Aldora huffed and ran down the steps, curving with the stairs when they turned.
“You can’t vault at all?”
“I’d break my ankle,” she stated.
“Hmm. We should fix that,” he said, before ploughing down the rest of the stairs.
On the ground floor, he froze at the edge of the stairs and listened intently. They were in a canteen. Three rows of mismatching tables ran down the length of the long rectangular room, and a small kitchen joined on to the room, its interior visible to the eight Guardsmen and three Brethren at the tables. Raneth grimaced as Aldora thudded into his back. She stepped around him to stand at his side.
“That’s not good, is it?” she asked in a low whisper.
“No,” agreed Raneth. He tugged at his borrowed jacket and then took Aldora’s hand in his. “Walk slowly and calmly towards that door there,” he said, pointing towards another door with a small square window in its upper half that revealed a new corridor behind it. Aldora nodded.
The royal official eyed the Brethren sitting at one of the tables, snacking on slices of cooked potato as they jabbered among themselves. One rolled his head back and laughed, catching sight of Raneth and Aldora. Raneth gave him a smile. Don’t recognise me. Don’t recognise me. The Brethren grabbed another chip and shoved it into his mouth before continuing his conversation with the others around him. Thank goodness for that.
Raneth reached the door and stepped out into the new corridor, followed a moment later by Aldora. The left side of the corridor was filled with metal lockers; each one’s door was painted red and secured with a simple lock that hooked into a small handle.
“This place is built with brown bricks, so this building’s layout should match local factories that were built before we were born, unless they did some serious remodelling when they renovated.”
“OK, so?” asked Aldora as they ignored a door with a toilet sign.
“There should be a huge room in the centre we can use to get everywhere else. These buildings were designed for ease of storage and use. They would take supplies from the loading bay and store them in that central room.”
He paused at a set of doors that could swing open either way and peered through a narrow window in one of the doors. “It’s clear,” he whispered, before pushing the door and stepping into a narrow hallway with a set of metal stairs ascending on his left side. He cautiously eyed the staircase, grateful to find it empty. Gotta figure out where they would put Alika, but there’s no obvious place. Probably just one of the offices somewhere. He eased closer to the edge of the stairs and stood under the upper level of the steps, peering up at those above him.
Aldora crept to his side. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I think we need to capture someone and ask where Alika is being held. We’ll need to be quick about it too.”
“Maybe someone out there will know,” she suggested, pointing to the doorway at the end of the small hallway. Sunlight streamed in from two thin, rectangular windows in the inner edges of the double doors.
“Maybe,” agreed Raneth. He gave Aldora a small smile.
Gonna have to go either fast or slow in there. With the amount of sunlight coming in, that’s got to be that central room we’re looking for. He prowled to the double doors and pushed the left one open, looking across the edge of the central room at the wing opposite. The wing had windows that looked into the central room. Six windows would give Denzel’s men a clear view of him and Aldora. Raneth swallowed, grateful the headache seemed to have died away as he looked them over carefully, looking for even the slightest hint of movement or a body. They were clear. Raneth stepped out into the central room; the wall of the wing he and Aldora had come from jutted out at his side to provide a meagre amount of cover from the rest of the wings’ windows and whatever was in the large room at the building’s centre. The royal official rested his back against it as he spotted somebody walking past one of the windows in front of him and Aldora, but they didn’t stop to look out into the central room.
He grabbed for Aldora as she stepped free of their cover and yanked her back.
“Stop doing that,” she grumbled as she rubbed her hand against her chest. “That hurts.”
“Stop walking right out into everyone’s line of sight, then,” parried Raneth, burying a twinge of guilt in his gut for accidentally hurting her.
He peered out from the corner of the wing and immediately spotted something that made his heart race. In the middle of the central room, a metal pole had been secured in the concrete ground, with another jutting from it to create a T-shape, and two more metal bars welded to the top bar to strengthen it. Standing by it, her hands behind her back and a Guardsman holding her shoulders, was Alika Brice.
Her blonde hair stood at messy angles from her face, the strands sticking up into the air and away from her ears. Her curved body was entombed within her royal official uniform, which had dried mud clinging to it. The cheek under her left eye was purple and blue from a fresh bruise, and her lower lip was puffy from a punch to her face. Dried blood had crusted onto the skin under her nose, and on her chin, her neck and her cheek, warning that she had been unconscious with a large nosebleed. Must have knocked her out when they caught her. Looking again at Alika’s hands, he spotted a silver sphere surrounding them. A sorcerer’s
sphere. With that Giften contraption on her hands, she wouldn’t be able to use her gift to escape or help him and Aldora.
“What do you see?” asked Aldora, patting Raneth’s shoulder from behind.
“Your sister,” he admitted. He swung his arm out as she tried to step past him to get a look, preventing her from being seen. She scowled at him.
“And she’s not too happy either,” added Raneth. “We need to get a better view.”
He looked up at the glass ceiling, noticing that the morning held nearly no clouds in the sky, then swept his gaze back to Alika. The man standing behind her glanced over his shoulder, and Raneth watched as a Brethren stepped into view with a rope. He strode past Alika and ignored as she spat at the back of his head. The Brethren secured the rope to the bar nearest Alika’s head and let the rope drop down, revealing that he had already tied it into a noose.
“They’re going to kill her. They must be pushing her death up because they know we’re here, or because she’s being a handful.” But why aren’t they swarming the building looking for us?
“Alika’s always been a handful,” muttered Aldora.
The royal official looked around the limited view they had of the room. A few metres in front of them, a stack of sheet metal leaned against a support. That’ll do.
“We need to get behind that, and fast,” he told Aldora, pointing to the metal sheet. “On the count of three, we run and duck behind it, OK?”
Aldora nodded. Raneth tensed his muscles as he counted up.
“Three.” He jerked into a sprint and slid the last step behind the metal sheet.
Aldora followed. “What next?”
Raneth poked his head up from behind the metal sheet. Along the wing where the canteen was, the royal official could now see others standing in the central room, watching Alika and the two Broken Crown members. He ducked back down.
“The Rivermuds and a handful of Brethren are here too.”
“That can’t be good,” murmured Aldora, before taking a peek of her own. “That guy without a jacket, by the Rivermuds, is my uncle.”
Curious, the royal official peeked out once more, taking in an eyeful of his partner’s uncle. He could see the resemblance to Isadore in the cheekbones and nose. They even had the same grey eyes but whilst Isadore’s were usually gentle, Denzel’s were sharp and had a frown set above them. He wasn’t muscular like his brother either, his frame neither wiry nor athletic, hinting that he had until recently spent hours behind a shop counter, a slight paunch overhanging his belt. The Dagger of Protection was tucked into the belt, barely avoiding slicing two deep holes into the man’s excess weight from the two points on the pommel. One of the doors swung open and another Guardsman stepped into the room. The Bayre watched as the Guardsman looked around the room, spotted Denzel and went over to whisper into his ear. Denzel’s growing smile as the man whispered made Raneth’s back grow cold. He suppressed a shiver.
“Aldora, I know you’re here,” said Denzel Leoma.
The Brethren nearest Alika glanced Denzel’s way. Alika stamped on his foot and ducked as the Brethren swung a fist at her. The Guardsman grabbed Alika by her hair, dragged her nearer to the noose and grabbed it. He pulled it near her face.
“Wait,” ordered Denzel.
The Guardsman and the Brethren stilled. Alika gritted her teeth as she jerked in the Guardsman’s hold, but she couldn’t wrench free.
Hold on, Alika. We’re coming. Somehow. Raneth glanced at Aldora. She was nipping at the inside of her left cheek.
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered. “He might not know for sure we’re here.”
“I know you have the royal official captain with you, Aldora,” said Denzel as they peered at him from behind the metal sign.
Must have been a trap and we walked right into it, realised Raneth as he checked his sword at his side. Should have given Rider this instead of my throwing daggers.
“Use metal wire on Alika,” instructed Denzel, looking towards the two men by Aldora’s elder sister. “The ROC has the Common Gift of Ice – no point using something he can shoot through with an icicle and break.”
He’s seriously going to kill Alika! Raneth glanced at Aldora at his side. How’s she looking at this? She’s been so determined to see her uncle as family and not the enemy, but now there’s not much more he can do to prove he is the enemy. Raneth clenched his eyes briefly shut, then reopened them and peered out from behind the metal again. I need to focus on saving Alika and us, not on how Aldora’s thinking or feeling.
“Aldora, please, if you can hear me, come out. I won’t hold you accountable for the actions of the royal official,” continued Denzel.
Raneth eyed Aldora. She was still nipping at the inside of her cheek.
“I won’t kill Alika if you come out,” continued Denzel. “I should, because she tried to stab me last night, but I can change her sentence to imprisonment if you’re scared to trust me. Aldora, I’m not a bad person. I just have to lead the way for the other citizens of Giften – let them see I’m fair, not unjust like Cray was.”
Aldora gripped the top edge of the metal sheeting. Raneth grabbed her arm and slid her hand back off.
“You’re not seriously listening to this rubbish?” he asked.
“Don’t listen to him!” yelled Alika. “He’ll say whatever he has to to get you to join his side!”
Aldora turned to Raneth. “I can save her,” she whispered.
“You don’t know that,” he insisted as he slowly slid his bag off his back.
“I can save you. The Dagger too.”
What? I don’t need saving! Raneth gently held her hand. “Aldora, no.”
“I’m sorry, Raneth. I have to.” She pulled her hand free and stood up.
Raneth grabbed for her hand but missed. His elbow bashed against the metal and knocked it over. He swallowed as he observed the Brethren, the Rivermuds, the Guardsmen and Denzel Leoma all looking back at him and Aldora, fully exposed. Alika Brice muttered something with a roll of her eyes. Raneth stood up.
“Aldora, come to me,” said Denzel.
Raneth drew his sword at Aldora’s side and scowled at her. “Don’t you dare.”
“I have to, Raneth,” she uttered, gently touching his arm and taking a step away from him.
“Aldora!” Raneth lurched forwards and grabbed her wrist. “Please. Please stay with me,” he uttered, his eyes stinging as he struggled to hold back tears, his chest tight.
Aldora looked up at him, her own eyes sparkling. The first of her tears slid free of her eyelashes and crept down her face. “I can’t.”
The royal official captain watched as she moved away from him, walking towards the leader of Broken Crown. Raneth swung his sword into a protective stance. My sword won’t be much good here. He eyed the Broken Crown members around him, as Aldora stopped short of her uncle and his men. Raneth tried to ignore the churning in his stomach at her choosing her uncle instead of him.
Denzel Leoma stepped closer to Aldora, but she took a step back, raising a hand. “Let Raneth and Alika go and I’ll–” She paused, looking back at Raneth. He swallowed, not daring to breathe, his chest so tight it hurt as she looked back at him, mouthing that she was sorry. She turned to her uncle. “Let them go and I’ll join you.”
Raneth yelped a strangled no, so hard his throat burned.
Denzel took hold of Aldora’s hands and smiled. “If that’s what you want,” he said softly. He smirked at Raneth.
It can’t be that easy.
The elder man’s eyes glinted with barely contained rage. How could Aldora not see it? “Aldora, no,” warned Raneth. “Get away from him!”
She turned to Raneth. “I’ve made my choice. I told you. I told you I can save you.”
Raneth shook his head and swung his sword. This didn’t feel right. If Denzel was so willing, why were so many Brethren and Guardsmen sticking around? Keep a few for protection against him, sure, but this? This was overkill. Raneth ignored the
fast beating of his heart and focused his attention on the Rivermuds at Denzel’s side. Harry shifted, his smile directed at Raneth, his eyes pinned to him.
There’s no way he’s backing down from attacking me.
He focused on the other two Rivermud brothers. Simon, the eldest, looked uncomfortable, his hands firmly wedged into the large pockets of his Brethren jacket as he looked back at Raneth.
He doesn’t want to fight me at all. That’s… new. Raneth frowned at him and Simon shoved his hands a little more firmly into his pockets. Definitely signalling his disinterest. Raneth gave him a miniscule dip of his head, letting Simon know that he had recognised and accepted the signal, before looking to the last of the Rivermud brothers, whose name he didn’t know.
He’s watching Harry. Why watch the youngest brother when I’m right here?
Raneth turned his attention away from the Rivermuds and inspected the Brethren and the Guardsmen. They didn’t have guns. Weren’t they supposed to? Were they that arrogant, that confident in their gifts and swords?
This is going to be a close escape if ever I’ve had one. There’s too many of them.
He eyed the distance between him and Alika, then him and Denzel. He might be able to get to one of them before he’d have to start dodging and defending himself. Maybe. But he wouldn’t be able to go after both of them. I came for Alika, he reminded himself. Save Alika and then we can both come back another day and drag Aldora out, somehow.
“Kill the captain,” said Denzel.
The Brethren lifted their palms out towards Raneth.
Too many. Don’t panic. Your Common Gift will help.
He hoped that not many of them had mastered whatever gifts they were about to unleash upon him.
Aldora stepped back from Denzel, straight into the waiting hands of a Guardsman who gripped her wrists behind her. Raneth’s heart dropped to his gut at the sight. He’d been right. Denzel couldn’t be trusted. Aldora’s safety wouldn’t be a sure thing. She’d given their position away for nothing.