by Drae Box
“I would be careful with your tongue, Mr Leoma,” replied Koyla calmly. “Royal Official Bayre has already managed to escape, much to the Brethren’s embarrassment. It has made your brother somewhat grumpy.”
Aldora leaned back in her chair as she resisted the urge to smile at Raneth’s escape. She rested the side of her head against her hand, and snuck a glance at her uncle. What if Raneth didn’t escape? What if they already killed him and are pretending otherwise so I don’t find out? She pushed her dinner to the side.
“What’s wrong with you two?” asked Denzel. “What’s wrong with the food?”
“I’m just not hungry,” muttered Aldora.
Isadore pulled his plate back and shoved a piece into his mouth. “Nothing. I was just listening.” He turned to Aldora, swallowed and said, “You need your strength. Eat.”
Aldora ignored the chill that rumbled down her frame and nodded. She looked at Koyla. “How did Raneth escape?”
“We believe he had inside help.”
“Where’s Alika?” asked Isadore, directing his question at Koyla.
Dad must have realised Koyla’s more willing to talk to us, noted Aldora.
The ex-tribune mulled over his words, hesitating a moment longer than a person normally would before answering a simple question.
“She’s being kept under lock and key in a different part of the building,” butted in Denzel. “She’s safe, unharmed and alive.”
If I can get close to Alika, I might be able to get her out and find Raneth. Alika knows him well from their assignments and training together. She’ll know the best spots in the village to look for him.
“Can I see my sister, Uncle Denzel?”
“No. All royal officials, even the one I’m related to, are not allowed visitors. If your sister would just stop being so ruddy stubborn, she could become a Brethren, but she won’t listen to me.”
Isadore smiled broadly. “Of course she won’t, and if you do somehow make her into a Brethren, she will always find other ways to rebel against you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Raneth
At the fire station, Raneth and the others had agreed that they needed to capture a high-up member of Broken Crown, to pump them for information about the Kingdom’s Shield. Thankfully, Raneth had a suspicion of where they might find one. Retracing his steps with Rider, Raneth toyed with the throwing daggers that had now been returned to his belt. The village was quiet as they walked through the streets, the people suspiciously absent despite the time of day.
“Do you think this is going to be the norm if we don’t put Cray back?” asked Rider as Raneth watched a couple skirting around them and hurrying faster down the road.
The captain shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the couple, wondering if they had recognised them, or if there was a curfew in effect because of his escape. Broken Crown should know I’ve escaped by now. With that many criminals working for Denzel, I’d have to guess one or two would have wanted to have a turn beating me up before I was executed. He peered at his blue, regulation royal official belt, with its many silver eyelets used to connect various weapons to it, including his remaining throwing daggers. He noticed that Rider had his recognisable belt on too.
“I think we might need to ditch the belts,” he stated.
“No way. I like how many weapons I can get on this thing,” said Rider as he tapped on the box-shaped metal buckle.
Raneth didn’t like the idea of losing them either. “Alright, but we will if we have to. Those people might have recognised what we were.”
Rider looked back the way they had come, just as the couple stepped around the corner of a building. “Oh? Well, let them come. I’ll run my horses through any Brethren that disturbs us today, OK?”
Not exactly the sort of attention we want, noted Raneth as he gave Rider a scowl.
“What? I’m the best royal official you have at your disposal. Enos–”
“Enos is my optio in wartime and when I hook up with the army for my legion time, and he’s got the Common Gift of Fire – a Common Gift the Brethren seem to be way too comfortable with.”
“So? You’ve got ice.”
“Multiple gifts trump a lone gift,” stated Raneth. He flexed his left arm, feeling the burn protest as the muscles along his forearm contracted and relaxed. He looked ahead and pointed to the right. “That’s where we need to go.”
“That’s where Aldora found that Rivermud.”
Yep, thought Raneth as he gave a nod. He paused at the corner of a building that gave way to the path Aldora had taken. He rested his side against the wall as he peeked around the corner.
“It’s clear,” he said, before stepping into the cobbled street and standing almost exactly where the Rivermud had stood. “The direction Rivermud came from suggests that he was coming from Broken Crown’s headquarters.”
“OK, so?” asked Rider as he joined Raneth’s side between the two rows of gardenless houses.
“So that means that if he was following a set pattern, he’ll come back here at some point. You know most people stick to the same routes.”
Rider nodded. “So how do you want to do this?”
Raneth nodded up towards the roof of the building. “See if you can find a way up,” he said when he noticed that there weren’t any of his usual go-to drainpipes on this side of the building. “We’ll sit on the roof and wait for a Rivermud to show up.”
“Alright. You keep a lookout in case he comes before we’re up there.”
Raneth nodded and strolled towards the wall of the building. He rested his back against it and rubbed at the bandage on his left arm with the heel of his hand. Rider prowled back from the building, looking up as he backed up until his back touched the building opposite.
“Might be able to climb up the windows. I’ll try it, and if I can’t, I’ll look for a drainpipe on one of the other walls.” He strode to the right of Raneth and stepped onto the ledge of a bricked-off window on the ground floor.
Folding his arms, Raneth watched the direction they had come from, but started to frown as he thought again about the fight that had given him his burn. I might have gotten out of it if Aldora had helped me and not given our position away so quickly. There might have been a way to walk through them or use my gift or my blood-gift to catch them off guard, rescue Alika and get out of there. He tensed as he thought of his plea to Aldora not to walk to Denzel, not to take her uncle’s side, and how her eyes had been teary. What does that mean? Did she already regret betraying me? Or did she cry for another reason? What if Rider’s right and I shouldn’t be bothering with her anymore? Raneth swept his gaze towards his friend. She told him about Enos and the resistance and it meant they could rescue me. She’s still a friend.
Rider looked down at him from an upper window ledge, his body dangling. “Hey, look out!”
Raneth swept his gaze away and looked to either side of the cobbled street; a creeping lone Brethren eased closer. Raneth swept his palms up towards her. Wait. He frowned and peered more closely at her face. Her long brown hair was tied back, but some of it was loose against the front of her face. Is that… No, it’s not. Content he wasn’t about to shoot his girlfriend, Raneth jerked his uninjured hand at the Brethren. A white plume of mist raced from his hand and smashed into the Brethren’s gut as sparks ignited in front of her. She jolted to a halt and rested her hands against her stomach as blood seeped free, blossoming against her yellow shirt under the gaping Brethren jacket. Raneth looked up at Rider as the Brethren slumped to her knees, the sparks of her Common Gift of Fire dulling before they died.
“Sorry, Rider.”
“Don’t worry about it. Grab the jacket.”
The royal official captain nodded. Good idea. He prowled towards the dying woman and inspected how she had curled onto her side, her hands pressed to her gut as she grimaced.
“Here. Let me help,” uttered Raneth gently. He slid free one of the throwing d
aggers from his belt and eased the Brethren onto her back.
“Leave me alone,” she growled. “Haven’t you done enough?”
Raneth didn’t reply. He jammed his short blade into her heart and wiggled it free with a grunt. He slid a hand over her eyes, closing them, then looked up towards Rider.
“I don’t know why you care about clean kills,” stated the other royal official, now sitting on the edge of the house’s roof. “I would have just let her writhe on the floor like the criminal she is.”
“We’re supposed to do clean kills where possible,” said Raneth firmly as he carefully pulled the Brethren jacket from the still-warm corpse and shrugged it on over his body. He dragged the body into a doorway cloaked in shadow. “With Enos’ Brethren jacket, that gives us two of those and one Guardsman’s, right?”
“Unless Elenee and Erasmus have any I don’t know about, yeah.”
Raneth nodded and strode to the bricked-up window Rider had used. He climbed into the windowless crevice, reached up for the first window ledge and grabbed it as he jumped. His injured arm screamed, making him clench his jaw.
“You alright?” asked Rider as he repositioned himself to have only his head over the side of the roof.
“Just keep watch,” growled Raneth from between his teeth.
“Alright, bro.”
Grabbing the next window and the edge of the roof hurt too, but Raneth soon joined his friend. They huddled side by side as the sun started to sink in the sky. Raneth tucked his injured arm against his torso on his lap, resting his other in front of it to protect it a little from the chill the breeze was bringing them now that the sun was retiring.
“I am worried about the whole Aldora thing,” muttered Raneth as a twinge from his burn reminded him of the moments before the fight and left the feeling of ice in his gut. “As a Bayre, there are certain expectations for me.” Raneth rubbed at his bandage.
“Stop irritating that before you make it worse.”
“I’ll probably turn into my griffin-self and heal it that way sooner or later,” stated Raneth. “As soon as it makes sense for us to take advantage of my blood-gift. With Aldora, I have to accept that, what she did, everyone else will see as betrayal, like you already do. She argued and it gave away our position, tried to sneak off before that to speak with the enemy. She’s gotten…” Raneth glanced at Rider to see him frowning back at him but otherwise unreadable, “…iffy. Unreliable. I can’t marry someone who isn’t going to work with me as a team against the Frey and whatever else we have to deal with. Bayres are supposed to marry someone who will always take their side in anything that’s going on. That’s one of the reasons Bayres have survived despite centuries of the Bayre–Frey Feud.”
“You mean besides the fact that the Freys are terrified of ending the Feud by actually killing both you blood-gifted Bayres?” asked Rider.
Raneth nodded. “What am I supposed to do about Aldora? And don’t say kill her.”
“Well, that was going to be my go-to response,” admitted Rider. “But I want you to think. You’ll get no sympathy or pity from me. You know that.”
The Bayre nodded.
“Besides, what if Aldora planned it all along? To bring you to her uncle? I mean, it’s not exactly hard to walk off when two royal officials are knackered, or to step out from what is probably the losing side of a fight and join the other team. How do you know she wasn’t planning on delivering you to Denzel Leoma from the start? As soon as she realised what had happened and that her uncle had seized the kingdom illegally? And where does her telling me to come get you play into it all? Was I supposed to get caught too? And why did she say not to rescue her?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t imagine–”
“So imagine,” snapped Rider. “She’s not some innocent teenager anymore. She’s killed, just like us, in the line of duty. Bayres won’t allow possible traitors to be their suitors, so start looking elsewhere.”
“That means an arranged marriage,” grumbled Raneth. “I’d much rather marry Aldora and wonder if she’s going to stab me when I’m asleep than let that happen.”
Rider cuffed the back of Raneth’s head, and Raneth had to grab hold of the roof edge to stop himself falling off.
“Ow.”
“Don’t say stuff you wouldn’t actually do. You’d enter an arranged marriage. Your father won’t let you marry Aldora now.”
That’s probably true. “But if it’s just because she was confused about who to work with, I could forgive her. She said sorry when she joined her uncle.”
“She betrayed your trust in her. Never mind if she knowingly or not led you into a trap.” Rider poked the front of Raneth’s head. “Get that into your lovestruck skull of yours. Anybody can apologise. Doesn’t mean they mean it. Look, little brother. You know I don’t usually give touchy-feely advice. I hate it. I say we focus on the mission. Get that girl out of your head. She’s not important right now. What is important is putting Cray back in power. We need to keep our eyes on the prize: safety for the Three Ks and us royal officials.” Rider poked Raneth’s head again to make his point.
“Get off,” grumbled Raneth, batting Rider’s hand away.
“Just think it over.”
Raneth nodded. “I will. And thanks. I know you don’t like talking lovey-dovey stuff, but that helped.”
“Yeah, well,” uttered Rider. “It’s not like she’s drop-dead gorgeous or that impressive in a fight. She’s just a civilian who happened to do something that caught people’s attention. Not exactly the best match for you.”
I don’t agree with that, noted Raneth, though he didn’t push it with Rider. He’d made his feelings about Aldora clear since he met her, and they weren’t the feelings Raneth had hoped for. Then again, it’s not like they met under normal circumstances. He looked at the street below. And she didn’t betray me, no matter what he thinks. She just doesn’t solve everything with a sword.
“Here.” Rider slipped Raneth’s grebunar into his friend’s hand.
Raneth tucked it into his belt pouch. “Has she tried to contact us back yet?”
“No.”
Raneth frowned at him.
“I wouldn’t lie about that, even if it is her.”
Cold fingers pressing against Raneth’s mouth woke him. His head was cupped by Rider’s warm lap. When did I fall asleep? He looked up at Rider, watching his brown eyes focusing on something past the roof edge. Must be a Brethren below, or a Guardsman. Unless I started muttering in my sleep. At least it wasn’t a gift-dream. I probably would have screamed.
He gently tapped Rider’s hand and without even looking at him, Rider released his mouth. The Bayre slowly inched his torso up, aware that any fast movement might catch the eye of anybody below.
“Rivermuds. All three,” whispered Rider, his eyes still fixed on the criminals below.
Raneth leaned forwards so he could see over the edge, and watched them. The three brothers were walking side by side in silence, heading towards the Broken Crown headquarters, rather than away from it like Raneth had expected. Maybe they’ve been looking for me. He glanced at Rider and pointed at him, then his own chest, before pointing at the ground. Rider nodded with a flash of a smile.
Raneth slowly stood up and Rider mirrored his movements. They both moved closer to the edge and jumped. Raneth landed behind the Rivermuds and rolled into a stand. Rider matched the roll and rose beside Harry Rivermud.
The Rivermud squealed and lifted a hand up defensively, watery mucus gushing from his palm and slamming into Rider. Raneth grimaced and thrust his hand out towards the water. White mist curled around the watery goo and crept into the flow, hardening it into ice. It smashed onto the ground.
Harry and Rider stepped apart from each other. The elder Rivermuds looked towards Raneth, but didn’t raise their hands like their brother had. Still don’t want to fight me, he realised. But why?
“I’ll tell HQ!” yelped Harry, bolting.
Rider jerked a step
forwards, but one of the other Rivermuds grabbed his wrist. Rider slammed a fist into his nose and the Rivermud stepped back.
“Whoa, Rider. Wait,” ordered Raneth as Rider glanced towards Harry’s retreating back. “These two don’t want to fight.”
Find out why, then get out of here before Harry brings reinforcements.
Rider frowned but eased back from the two remaining Rivermuds. He smiled at the one who was pressing a hand to his now-bleeding broken nose.
“I’m leaving,” said Simon Rivermud as he wiped some of the blood along his sleeve. “to stop Harry. You deal with these two.”
The other Rivermud whose name Raneth didn’t know nodded and watched his brother leave him with the two royal officials. Rider lunged and grabbed him. The Rivermud jerked back but Rider picked him up and slung him onto his back.
“Put me down! At least let me walk.”
“Nope,” said Rider.
Raneth prowled closer and removed the weapons at the Rivermud’s belt. “Come on,” he said to Rider. “That was too easy. After the last trap, I don’t want to step into another one. Let’s take him to the detectives.”
“Sure. Turn left,” said Rider.
Raneth sprinted ahead and drew his borrowed sword as Rider barked the directions. The night had removed all the civilians from the pathways, but a black cat sat on one of the cobbled paths and watched them pass. When Raneth reached a street that flanked the edge of the park and the village hospital, he swept his gaze into the park, but he couldn’t see if anyone was in there. Unfenced and without any lights illuminating its interior, the park looked as dead as the streets.
Rider bumped into Raneth’s back. “What?” he asked.
“Parks are never empty in Giften.”
Rider glanced at the park, then at Raneth. The Rivermud wiggled on his back and Rider smacked his butt. “Stay still, crimmy,” he said. “Just move, Raneth. No point worrying about that. Probably means the criminals don’t care to watch over it anyway.”