Web of Lies (The Hundred Halls Book 2)

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  Aurie didn't seem to care as much about not knowing anything about their family. Having an unbelievably hot boyfriend was a good distraction, but even before that she hadn't cared.

  Pi flicked the bug guts off her shoulder armor and checked on the bug sign. The foliage on the trees shook, indicating the attack was imminent.

  It wouldn't be long. Twenty seconds, maybe less.

  She glanced back at the rest of the fort: four broken walls creating a slight depression in the earth filled with purple flowers. If it wasn't the location of her weekly death, it might be a great place for a picnic.

  "Why is this place even here?" she asked Raziyah, who was busy channeling her faez into the ground to create an anti-flanking barrier.

  "The contest?" asked Raziyah, though she wasn't really paying attention.

  Pi felt like she had something. Rather than face the direction of the bugs, she looked behind them, tried to see the fort with different eyes.

  It was...

  An explosion ripped across the yard as a bug emerged into one of Hannah's tinker bombs.

  Pi had no time to regather her thoughts as a hailstorm of projectiles flew from the darter bugs as they exited the trees. She took a piece of circular steel she'd brought, tossed it high, and yelled, "Expand!"

  The steel stretched until it was paper thin, catching the majority of the spikes before they could injure anyone. The rest went wide of the team. She'd spent the morning working the metal with faez so it could easily change size.

  Aurie was in front, doing her trick with the sticky-earth. Last week, the burrowers had slipped between that area and Raz's wall, killing half the team before they'd begun. This time, it seemed to work, and the earth around her dimpled as the bugs thrashed in the trap.

  Rigel stood to the left side, sending sparks into the trees where the darters were hiding. A few flames caught, but not enough to hurt the bugs.

  "More faez!" she yelled to him, then over her shoulder, "Echo, we need you!"

  Even one bug could make the difference between losing and surviving the wave.

  Echo hadn't moved, and he had a crown of flowers on his head. Pi sighed. Even without him, they could still pass. This was their best start yet.

  Pi was preparing the next steel shield—the darters would launch a second volley soon—when Hannah looked down at the ground with a perplexed look on her face.

  "I think—"

  The ground exploded as two bugs burst upward, mandibles snapping. Pi dove away, warned only by Hannah's expression.

  The screams were silenced as a rock bomb, set off by Hannah, destroyed her and the attackers. She was out of the game.

  Pi staggered to her feet, ears ringing, her combat helmet thrown towards the field of battle, and was preparing to regroup when chaos fell upon the rest of the team. Within seconds Rigel was down, and her sister and Raz were almost overrun.

  She was going to make a last stand with Aurie, but decided that no matter how many times it'd happened, getting killed by giant bugs was never fun. Pi leapt from the wall and ran the other direction. She made a grab at Echo as she passed.

  "Come on! Come on!"

  She tugged on his arm, but he wouldn't come. The look of overwhelming sadness nearly made her stop to embrace him, but the bugs scrambling over themselves after her nixed that idea. Before she could go, he took off his crown and placed it on her head.

  The head start wouldn't last, so she used verumancy to give her legs more speed. She passed the edge of the fort and made the trees, branches pawing at her arms, whipping her legs. She hurried, fear of the bugs, fear of death, driving her forward.

  While the speed verumancy made her legs go faster, they did nothing for her endurance. By the time she reached the top of the nearest hill, she was tanked.

  Bent at the knees, heaving, Pi tried to keep an eye out while trying not to barf up the two chocolate bars and the energy drinks she'd eaten before the attempt. The flowery crown dipped into her vision, making Pi think that for a moment, some critter had fallen onto her. She yelped and yanked it off, mashing the pretty purple flowers in the process, and releasing an awful stench.

  "Wretched," she said, before she remembered she was being hunted by killer bugs, and slapped her hand over her mouth.

  In the valley below her, the trees moved with the swaying certainty of insects. Pi knew bug sign when she saw it.

  She was going to die, there was no doubt about that. The bugs were coming from three directions, but if she could learn something for the next attempt, it'd be worth it.

  Looking up, Pi knew what she needed to do. She jammed the flowery crown back on her head and pulled herself into a wide oak-like tree that had long droopy leaves like stunted willows. The bark was rough, which hurt her hands, but made good gripping material. Her legs still shook from the mad dash, but her arms were fresh enough to haul her up the trunk.

  She was halfway up when the first bug arrived. Using its long limber legs, all six of them, the bug ambled up to the tree, armored head searching the ground while its mandibles dripped yellow foam. Pi held still, waiting to see if the insect could detect her presence. It seemed to know she was nearby, but not exactly where.

  As it moved around the base of the tree, other bugs arrived, and she found herself fascinated by the details she hadn't noticed before. During combat, the only thing she saw was the knifelike legs and the powerful slavering mandibles ready to pinch her head off. Without that immediate fear, she studied the bugs, hoping to glean information that might help them. They were angular and tall, legs like jagged-edged protractors in their stiff-legged marching, moving in two speeds: slow fascist march and hyper-skittering annihilation. Chitinous armor had overlapping plates, protecting the soft joints, colors to blend into the forest with natural swirls and designs. Darker coloring and thicker armor seemed to indicate older bugs.

  The only other bugs she'd gotten to study at leisure were the bugs first killed in the fort. The ones initially guarding the portal had thicker armor like these, while the bugs hiding in the ground were softer, adolescents.

  Pi was so busy staring at the bugs, the flowery crown slipped off her head to float through the branches until it landed right next to a curious bug. At first, she thought the movement of the flowers would give her away, but the bugs seemed not to be interested in where the flowers had come from. But over the next minute, their attention slowly climbed upward, as if they were starting to realize she was in the tree. She had a good suspicion of why they hadn't noticed her. Something to do with the awful smell of the flowers hiding her human scent. When the first bug put its leg onto the trunk, Pi fled upward.

  This seemed to incite them to a frenzy, and a sea of clacking drove her upward. She pushed through the canopy to come out much higher than she expected. To her disappointment, the rolling hills continued in all directions. No sign of anything that might indicate where the bugs were coming from.

  Pi looked down to see a bug a few feet below her.

  "It's never easy, is it?" she told the bug as it paused and shook its mandibles at her. A moment later, she summoned a fire spear to each hand and leapt downward, a war cry on her lips.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was preview night in the Magelings Theater. Aurie and the rest of the Harpers, minus Raziyah, who had gone home for spring break, had come to support Rigel, who had the leading role in the play The Last Mage. The theater wasn't a large one, mostly run by the initiates from the Guild of Magical Dramatics. The theater reeked of spent faez and cigarette smoke, the latter a lingering ghost from pre-smoking-ban times.

  The show wasn't going to start for a half-hour, but they'd wanted to get good seats and wish him luck before the show.

  Rigel came out from the back and met them at their seats.

  "Thank you all for coming," said Rigel, a grin on his face, but eyes wavering with nervousness. He kept squeezing his hands together and taking cleansing breaths.

  "We wouldn't miss it even if you banished us to another
plane," said Aurie.

  Laughing, the others added their agreement.

  "Hopefully I'll do better here than I do against the bugs," he said. "Otherwise y'all will think I'm useless."

  "You're not terrible," said Aurie, putting a reassuring hand on his arm. "Your illusions are amazing. It just sucks that the bugs see right through them. The fault is mine that I haven't found a way to use your unique talents."

  Rigel raised an eyebrow in exquisite mockery. "That's a euphemism if I've ever heard one."

  "Not fair. I mean it," said Aurie.

  Pi leaned in. "Are these unique talents I'm hearing about getting murdered by giant bugs in new and interesting ways? I think one chopped your head off last week and it rolled between Hannah's legs. I was going to award it two points, but I caught a dart in the leg."

  "I still have nightmares about that," said Hannah from the end of the row. "Thank you very little for bringing it up."

  This was the part about the Harpers that Aurie loved. They hadn't had much success in the contest compared to the other teams, but no one had started blaming anyone else, and everyone kept trying. They'd even made it to the fifth wave last week, which felt good, despite getting promptly slaughtered. The only one she was disappointed in was her sister, who kept disappearing during the first two waves on scouting missions.

  "How's your mom doing?" she asked Rigel.

  "Mom's still a bit wobbly, being the first anniversary and all," said Rigel, eyes heavy with sadness.

  His father had died last year in a boating accident on the lake. Rigel seemed to have come to terms with it, but he was worried about his mom.

  Aurie gave him a squeeze on the arm. "Sorry, I shouldn't bring that up now."

  "Actually, it helps keep my mind off what's to come...oh no, he's here," said Rigel, staring across the theater and looking ready to pass out.

  The group of them turned their heads to see the legendary Frank Orpheum, patron of the Dramatics Hall, entering the theater with a beautiful woman on his arm. After Invictus, he was probably the most well-known individual from the university, and one of the most liked in the world due to his extensive charity work, and of course, his beaming star power.

  He'd sung for every pope and president, once did improv with the Dalai Lama in a Tibetan temple, performed a magic trick that made the moon disappear for everyone in the northern hemisphere, slept with every actress or actor who ever made the World's Sexiest lists, once hypnotized a stadium full of people into believing they were statues, and not one of them blinked for over two hours, created the iconic Magelings series about a fictional Hundred Halls, and done a billion other things. Before he'd stopped performing, people jokingly called Hollywood Frankie-wood due to his utter domination of every aspect of entertainment.

  "Great balls of fire," said Hannah. "That's Priyanka Sai on his arm. I didn't know they were dating. I can't believe that hasn't hit the Herald of the Halls yet."

  Pi poked Hannah in the arm. "You read that piece of trash?"

  "Sorry, Aurie," said Hannah, with a not-so-sorry grin.

  While Frank Orpheum welcomed the fawning attention from those in attendance, the Indian patron was studying the crowd as if she were about to teach a class on advanced mathematics.

  The difference between what Aurie had in her head and reality was rather surprising. As the leader of the Academy of Subtle Arts, Aurie had expected more cockiness, like a female James Bond. Priyanka projected quiet confidence instead, more professorial, reminding Aurie that her hall did more than teach the tools of dealing death. They were the world's best diplomats and spies. Aurie gathered that she inclined more to the other aspects of her hall than the former, which was a relief.

  "It's okay, Rigel. Don't hyperventilate," said Aurie.

  Rigel put his hand on his forehead. "You don't understand. It's not just a show. I'm trying out for the summer production circuit. All the biggest stars got their start there. If I impress him, then I get to travel the world, if not, then I'm destined for a life of doing Sunday theater for blue-haired old ladies who cough through the entire show."

  "Don't focus on that," said Aurie. "Have a good time. If you have to look anywhere, look at us. We'll be cheering you on. Remember, you're doing what you love."

  This brought a measure of relief to his eyes. "You're right. Thank you. I'm so glad you guys are here. I think I'd hide in my dressing room otherwise."

  The theater was filling up, so Rigel went backstage. While they waited, Pi kept Echo entertained playing Five Elements, and Hannah chatted with her girlfriend, a short girl with hair that kept changing colors.

  Aurie was a little jealous. She'd asked Zayn, but he gave her a vague reason for not joining her. They were seeing each other more often, but she never felt like they were actually dating.

  When the curtain went up and lights went down, everyone settled in. Rigel came onto the stage in orphan rags and with bruises on his jaw.

  His first couple of lines were delivered in a shaky voice, but when he looked at the Harpers, he visibly relaxed and started to shine. The play was about a boy who became a great mage in Guangzhou China, eventually going on to serve the emperor and win famous battles, mostly through his cleverness. Aurie had seen the movie version of the story on a bootleg copy back when she and Pi lived in the thirteenth ward. She was excited to see how Rigel and the other actors would pull off the illusions to create the battles.

  During a lull in the action, Aurie snuck out to use the bathroom, since she knew there were no parts with Rigel coming up, so she didn't think he'd mind. Alone in the corner stall, Aurie mentally griped about all the homework that Professor Mali had given on Friday.

  Before she finished, someone came into the bathroom, stiletto heels smacking the white tile with precision. The woman was talking into a cell phone.

  "I don't care what his problem is," said Priyanka Sai. "Tell him who made the request. That might loosen his schedule a little."

  Aurie pulled her feet up and held her breath while Priyanka paced. The voice on the other side of the call was distant and squeaky. Aurie thought she heard something about a team.

  "We don't have that kind of time. I need this now," said Priyanka.

  Aurie wanted to hear what was being said by the other party, but it was too quiet. As carefully as she could, Aurie touched her ears and performed verumancy. Almost as soon as the spell was finished, Priyanka's heels stopped short.

  "Hold a moment," said Priyanka.

  With her enhanced hearing, Aurie sensed that she'd been detected. She should have realized that the patron of assassins would be paranoid. Detecting faez would be the first sign of an attack.

  Priyanka marched down the sinks and stopped in front of Aurie's stall. The slider on her door started opening on its own. Aurie searched for something with which to counter the spell, but she'd left her purse at the seat and the toilet paper was no use.

  The voice on the cell phone was asking, "Hello? Priyanka? Are we doing this or what?"

  Using mendancy, Aurie reached out and told the phone to lose its signal. The subsequent click startled Priyanka, and the handle on the door stopped opening.

  "Son of a...," said Priyanka.

  Dialing beeps echoed through the room. She'd delayed the inevitable, but still needed a way out.

  Then the door opened and a trio of women came in chattering. The stiletto heels marched out of the room, leaving Aurie in her stall.

  After Priyanka was gone, Aurie flushed, washed her hands, and found the window. The lock was easy to circumvent. She climbed out the window to a ledge three stories up, closed it behind her, and found a rickety drainpipe to climb down. The bolts had rusted out, and the first time she put weight on it, the whole thing groaned.

  Another dose of mendancy convinced the pipe to hold her weight and she started climbing down. Occasional shifts and clicks gave Aurie momentary heart attacks, but she was able to make it down to the street level without incident.

  There was no way she was
going to go back in now. Priyanka would be waiting to see who came out of the bathroom. Eventually, she'd figure out what had happened and check the entrance to the theater. Aurie hated to disappoint Rigel, who would surely notice her absence, but she didn't want the patron of assassins to know she'd been eavesdropping, especially when it sounded like she was requesting something that would impact the contest.

  Aurie had no doubt that the wish spell was the prize at the end. Otherwise, why would Priyanka Sai be worrying about it? Her position within the Cabal made the involvement perilous.

  After the play was over, Aurie snuck back in amid the chaos, finding a crowd at the side of the stage with Rigel. As Aurie walked up, Frank Orpheum was leaving. Rigel looked like he was about to bump against the ceiling.

  When she stopped next to Pi, her sister gave her a funny look. "I'll tell you later."

  "Did you get it?" asked Aurie.

  Rigel was looking at his hands as if they didn't exist. "Not only did I get it, but he said that performance was better than the latest version on Broadway, and that he might put a few scenes of The Last Mage into the traveling show to showcase my performance. I think I'm numb from shock, actually numb."

  He shook his hands a few times and laughed gleefully. "Where'd you go the second half? I looked for you."

  Aurie poked herself in the gut and made a grimace.

  "Gotcha," he said. "You'll just have to see me again this summer."

  "You can count on it," she said.

  Afterwards, they went to a nearby diner that named sandwiches after famous Dramatics alumni like Frank-O-Furter for Frank Orpheum and Garbanzo Bean Salad Sandwich for Jillian Garbanzo. Rigel spent the time giving moment by moment recollections of his interactions with Frank Orpheum and contemplating his future culinary namesake at the diner, while the rest of them cheered him on. Aurie laughed in all the right places, but she couldn't help but be distracted by what she'd overheard from Priyanka Sai. The Cabal were going after the wish spell, and the wish spell had to be the prize at the end of the contest, which meant the Harpers had to win the contest. If only she knew how.