The Harbinger of Change

by Matthew Travagline

  The wolf produced a delighted yip and seemed to smile at the intrusion. His ears twitched at the echoes of the crash that rung through the stilled streets. “You have made your decision, Gnochi,” the wolf said. “Look to the moon and stars. I’ll be watching.”

  Harvey spoke next, his voice a hushed whisper. “Freki? Gnochi? You can see him? What are you doing?”

  The wolf growled, white teeth bared under moist lips. “You’ll ruin everything if not kept on a tight leash, Kitten. Gentlemen, I would hurry if you have any wish to escape with your lives tonight. You,” the wolf said, pointing his snout at Harvey, “crashed over a meeting between generals still loyal to the now deceased king. And I believe Dorothea happens to be in attendance.” Without another word, the white wolf leapt over Harvey and jumped through the broken window, out into Blue Haven’s poorest district.

  “Is that who you were to kill?” Harvey’s tone was mild.

  “No time. They’ll be coming soon to investigate.”

  “All the more reason to leave now.”

  “I cannot,” Gnochi said. “It will not take them long to discover the truth of tonight’s events. They’ll quickly figure out I was responsible for the king’s murder and the burning of his keep. At least if they have me, they will not come looking for Cleo.” He pulled his coat of arms pendant from under his shirt and pushed it into Harvey’s hands. “Take this to her. Visit Nimbus. That’s where you’ll find Cleo in the care of my friend Skuddy. Tell him that the librarian sent you.” Gnochi paused for a moment, then said, “Take her east. Skuddy will guide you.”

  The quiet scuffling of boots from downstairs seemed amplified in the attic’s low ceiling.

  “What about you, though?” Harvey asked.

  “I was thrown a curve ball.”

  “A what?”

  “Sorry, wrong age.” Gnochi laughed, though the sound was dry, and he had to force it out. “I’ll try my best to keep them off your trail.”

  “We both know that she’ll be furious with you, Gnochi.”

  “Tell her to take it up with me the next time I see her.” Gnochi smiled.

  Kay’s voice called from below. “I can assure you, sirs. It’s a stray cat I was too stupid to let into that attic. I’ll shoo it out in the morn.”

  “Nonsense, woman, I know hoodrat trash when I hear it. It’s been awhile since my blade has tasted proper blood,” a voice called back.

  “Go, Harvey! Cleo needs you. She’ll need a friend.” Without waiting for another word, Harvey ducked back out of the window and disappeared down to the poor district’s maze of alleys. Gnochi heard the footsteps of the generals approaching the attic door.

  He picked up a few large pieces of the broken glass and tossed them into the air, humming a merry tune to himself. He heard men gathering on the other side of the door.

  “Res severa est verum gaudium,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

  The attic door was booted open, the force of the kick splintering the wood near its hinges. The men entered, their swords drawn.

  Looking up from his act, Gnochi noticed Dorothea lead another man into the attic who he recognized, though could not name. Both intruders wore fully regaled uniforms.

  Dorothea stepped forward and slugged his fist into Gnochi’s eye. “It’s my lucky night,” he said, smiling.

  ◆◆◆

  The sharp sting of cold metal pressing against his throat roused Roy from a haze. A wave of warm pain bloomed out from his cheek and nose. He blinked, trying to force his eyes to focus. His head pulsed with deep rhythmic beats.

  “Still your tongue, hoodrat,” a familiar voice spat. “I saw Harvey. He told me what you both have been up to.”

  As Roy continued to wake, the voice sounded more and more recognizable. After another moment, he remembered where he recognized the voice. His eyes shot open despite the pins of fire protesting in the back of his skull. They watered in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain, but when he attempted to brush the tears from his eyes, a grip as stubborn as iron forced his hand to the wooden ground below.

  “Make one move and I’ll gut you,” she threatened.

  “Kiren?” he asked. The woman sat back on her haunches. Roy propped himself up, ignoring the splitting pain spawning from his temple. “What did you do to me?” he managed to utter before gasping in excruciating pain.

  “Nothing,” she admitted. “Harvey dropped you off bloodied, bruised, and wearing a servant’s garb no less. I know what you are, though. You worked for the enemy, you filthy swine,” she hissed.

  “Wait, Harvey?”

  “He left without you,” Kiren said tossing the pence at his face. It glimmered gold in the faint candlelight. “Like he left me. At least you’re worth a few cheap coins.”

  “No, Harvey doesn’t carry around gold pence. But…Gnochi does. Gnochi? No, he didn’t!”

  “Did what?” Kiren asked, curiosity peeking through her thick veil of contempt.

  Before Roy could answer though, the door opened, releasing a wave of light that crashed into his sore eyes. He squinted as a large silhouette filled the light. “Everyone come in, Roy’s awake,” a voice shouted. Soon four more silhouettes crowded around looking down at him on the floor. Roy recoiled from the attention, suddenly aware of his exposed and dirty torso.

  Kiren noted his apprehension. “We need to leave him be. He’s still tired and weak,” she said, hardly masking the acid in her voice.

  “Call us if you need anything, Roy,” one of them said.

  Roy nodded in response, not trusting his voice to speak without labeling himself as the rat that Kiren saw him to be.

  Before leaving, Kiren bent down and put her mouth close to his ear, then whispered, “I don’t care why you’re busted up or what your plan is, but I want you out of here by morning.”

  ◆◆◆

  Harvey stood on the outskirts of Nimbus looking in at the entertainers going about their routines, unaware of the storm that would soon be tearing their lives apart. He glanced back toward the keep, observing the last tendrils of the night’s fire, only now finally smothered. Smoke billowed into the light morning sky. He tucked Gnochi’s coat of arms pendant under his shirt, wondering again why it was so special that Cleo had to have it. Gnochi made it seem like it would save her life.

  Harvey knew that the heavy pewter pendant would fail to impress any within Blue Haven’s fashion crowd, though he shook his head, knowing that Gnochi would not be so shallow. Even so, every time it shifted, he felt the jagged edges lining the scroll on the bottom of the pendant. Was the pendant a key to some chest or door? Perhaps it just chipped after a few too many falls. Looking back down at the entertainers, he pushed the curiosity about the pendant from his mind.

  ‘It’s not your place to question my orders,’ Dorothea was fond of saying, ‘but merely to follow them.’

  One of the entertainers directed him to Skuddy’s wagon. Harvey approached and tapped his finger on the door. After a minute, a plump-faced man opened the door and said, “Yes?”

  “Are you Skuddy?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “A friend of the librarian,” Harvey responded. Skuddy yanked him into the wagon and closed the door behind him.

  “Why are you spouting nonsense like that at this hour?” Though his tone sounded frustrated, Harvey watched him listen at the door for a moment, holding a finger up in silence.

  When he finally saw the man relaxed, Harvey whispered, “Gnochi sent me to secure Cleo.”

  “The bastard really did it then, huh? The fire. That was him?”

  “Appears so.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Captured, if I had a guess. He threw me out right before a patrol found his hiding spot.” The lie felt strange coming off his tongue, but he knew that bringing Freki into the mix would only lengthen the process and produce more questions than it answered.

  “Cleo isn’t here.”

  “What? Where is she? Gnochi said she’d be here.”


  “I knew that this would happen,” he said. “This.” Skuddy waved his arms around emphasizing the town. “This swamp we are about to be mucked into. They would’ve rooted her out before anyone could react, so I sent her with another entertainer, a boy about her age, to a safe house to the east.”

  “How could you send a young girl by herself with a random boy? Two kids traveling on their own?” The innate concern in his voice for Cleo’s well-being shocked him as much as it seemed to shock Skuddy.

  “Easy,” Skuddy warned. “Aarez isn’t like that. He’s different from you and I. He’ll follow the order. Plus, he’s an echoer, like her. They’ll be safe.”

  “You can direct me to them?”

  “I’ll send a pigeon out now to the place they’re going with a message telling them to expect your arrival. I can also give you a map to their safe house.” Skuddy produced a map from a cabinet in the rear of his wagon and circled a stretch of forest between Pike’s Cathedral and Mirr with a small house penciled in. “There’s where you’ll find them. You’d best leave now. The Blue guard is likely to fall down on us once they stir from their hangovers.”

  ◆◆◆

  Harvey was lucky he had abandoned his uniform because all guards, regardless of their status, were being pulled into active duty to help control the city. He avoided looking for Roy by their barracks, assuming that he would have the forethought to distance himself. Because of that, Harvey had no idea of where to start looking for his friend. He walked over to one of the merchant squares that dotted the middle district and looked through the amassing crowd. He sat on the lip of a pool. Despite the night’s fire and rumors of what actually occurred, early morning vendors were out as usual, hawking their wares. Honest people flocked in to take stock of the produce and manufactured goods. Some things just did not matter to the average person.

  A boy sprinted up to the crier, another child, and whispered into the child’s ear. Harvey turned his attentions to the crier and waited. The child-crier placed a coin in the hand of the messenger, then yelled out, “This just in folks! News so fresh, Providence’s ghost don’t even know it yet!” Harvey focused in on the boy’s enthused voice as it carried over the din of the crowd. “I’ve got word of a Luddite rally being planned for this afternoon right here in the middle district. Their plans include protesting what they call, ‘the government sanctioned homicide’ of a band of their Luddite peacekeepers outside of a small town called Pike’s Cathedral. The Luddites are asking all people to come out and support their quest for justice.”

  Harvey laughed to himself at the Luddite propaganda, and contemplated walking away, lest any early Luddites arrive and connect him to the event lauded in the announcement. They had some audacity, to call their soldiers innocent, especially as they cleaned the soot from their hands and the innocent blood from their fingernails. Glancing down one of the central thoroughfares, he saw every crier receiving the same message; growing crowds of people, all hearing the same message. An idea came to him. He stood and inched over to the crier.

  ◆◆◆

  The surging crowd of pro-Luddite protesters bayed for the blood that the town criers had each promised would be shed. A line of guards kept the protesters from spilling further into streets full of people who relied on the merchants of Blue Haven to survive. Harvey’s eyes scanned the crowd for Roy, who he predicted would come join the crowd upon hearing the lie Harvey had paid the criers to disseminate through the city. Either of them would risk imprisonment if they believed that one of the two responsible for that Luddite bloodbath in Pike’s Cathedral was going to be executed. And that is what Harvey told the boys.

  Surveying the crowd, it was easy to tell that not all who stood in attendance were supportive of the Luddite agenda. Many simply feared the backlash from others learning of their anti-Luddite sentiment.

  At the center of the mass were a dozen Blue Haven Luddites clad in their characteristic blood-red robes. Their shaven heads glistened in the waning sun. Harvey dragged his eyes back over the crowd again. From his perch, he spied someone forcing their way toward the center of the courtyard, but a long glance told him that it was not Roy.

  He felt warm breath on his neck; something prodded into his back.

  A familiar voice whispered behind him, “No sudden movements, cousin.” Roy laughed, the sound swallowed by the roar of the crowd. “I told you that I’d be able to sneak up on you one day, didn’t I? And you thought I was being dramatic.”

  Harvey smiled, turned and accepted his friend’s quick embrace. When they parted and he saw the deep bruises and healing cuts adorning Roy’s face, he winced. His friend’s nose looked like it had been broken and was reset.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Roy said. Then he added, “Oh and by the way, Kiren is mad at you.”

  “You saw Kiren?”

  “It’s a long story and now is not the best time for barding.”

  “I agree. Speaking of bards, we need to leave. Get Debs and Fester, pack anything you can’t live without, and meet me at the crossroads where Gleeman and Cleo left.”

  “What’re we doing?” Roy asked.

  “We are officially skipping out on Dorothea. It’s time to reunite with Cleo.”

  Chapter 2

  Gideon, I waited to write until I was sure of Jackal’s betrayal. As you advised, I intercepted his latest protégé en-route to his target, though I was unsuccessful in ascertaining his intentions or Jackal’s plans, as a plague of infectious hallucinations marred the man’s mind beyond cognition. Yes, it’s quite the coincidence.

  I placed the assassin’s only chance of survival in the pedicured hands of a girl running around playing as his daughter. I underestimated her. I certainly didn’t imagine that she could save him, but when I heard that one of Jackal’s men was responsible for Providence’s untimely death, I knew that he had survived.

  Jackal will no doubt be vying for the throne in an attempt to sequester the Lyrinthian army. If I might make a recommendation, mobilize your forces and plan to arrive on Lyrinth’s shores just after the winteryear begins. Jackal has set up a fort somewhere along the southern coast, though I’m afraid I don’t know where it is exactly.

  I, myself will remain close to Lyrinth’s new king, Dorothea, to ensure that the next ruler is as much a pawn as Providence was—though a pawn for me, and not Jackal. Perhaps I’ll be able to undermine Jackal’s operation. Afterall, he does not know of my existence, so he will not be on the lookout for me or my girls.

  Unfortunately I have become encumbered by a child. Such is the un-intended burden of this profession. I will be unable to travel back east to meet you. I’ll come find your forces after the birth which should be shortly after the winteryear begins.

  Write back soon, so I can learn of your intentions and your orders.

  Always in your service,

  Iris

  With sweat beading off of her forehead, Iris finished tapping out the message. She did not expect to hear a reply from Gideon for a few days, but her girls working at the way-station would notify her if word arrived sooner.

  Iris wiped the sheen from her brow and wound a fur cloak around her shoulders. Immediately she felt warmer. Too warm for the small hovel outside Blue Haven’s poorest farming district, but she considered how the temperature had dropped over the course of a few weeks and assumed that in as much time again, heat would be a precious commodity.

  Pushing open the thin wooden door, she braced against the onslaught of chill. Her cheeks smarted at the sharp drop in temperature, color rising in a vain attempt to retain heat. Hot breath steamed before her face. Curls of wispy white steam struggled against the pervasive cold and soon dissipated into the morning air.

  Iris spied the station’s clerk huddled next to the door as if trying to leech heat from the dirty siding. Upon Iris’s exit, the clerk stood.

  “I’ll return in a few days, though expect to receive a response from Gideon at any time.” Iris’s voice
sounded sharp and precise, though it quivered out of her lips like a frail leaf fluttering in a frosty wind.

  “Yes, Mistress Iris,” the clerk bowed her head, averting her gaze.

  “Good. Now return to your post. You look as though you may freeze in your boots, and I am expected in Blue Haven.” Iris allowed her words to linger, her hands forming a protective circle around her budding abdomen. She glanced to the walled city, her gaze focusing in on the manned ramparts. A frown pricked her cheeks.

  “Shall I arrange for a carriage to bring you into Blue Haven, Mistress Iris?”

  Ignoring the clerk’s words, Iris’s eyes found small spires of smoke trickling into the morning sky. Heavy clouds loomed at the edge of the horizon as if threatening to suffocate the otherwise blanket of pale blue. She shook her head. “No,” she said and after a moment, added, “This cold is nothing. The first snows have not yet even fallen. It’ll take a large fire to keep the people warm once the felled snow covers every blade of grass.” She eyed the charred edifice of late-king Providence’s castle. Stalking away from the non-descript building, Iris tugged her cloak tight to repel the mounting cold.

  Chapter 3

  Wiping her hands on coarse trousers, Kiren attempted to rid herself of the dust that seemed to cling thick to her skin. After nearly two weeks, she had completed the penance her group had imposed upon her for expelling Roy. Despite the grueling days of splitting wood and carting coal through the streets, she refused to tell them why she had driven him off. Even when her hands blistered and ran red with her own blood, she held her tongue in some child-like wish that her group’s memories of Roy and Harvey need not be tarnished by the cold truth.

  Thinking of Harvey’s deception brought a bitter taste onto the back of her tongue. She spat it onto the ground and continued navigating over the cobbled streets of Blue Haven.

  Making her way around behind the inn, she knocked her pattern into the worn door, and entered without waiting for the response. In a quick effort to prevent the suicidal heat from rushing outside, she slammed the door closed, disemboweling her own shadow. Once she had secured the door, Kiren noticed that the usual clamor of the inn failed to reach her ears; instead, a silence, thick and stark as the outside air, filled the space. She saw Callum, their interim leader, standing before an aged woman.