On the far side of the pit, Arachnus of the Fall waited, his banner hanging high above him as well. He seemed pensive, hesitant, small.
Breigh fixed her eyes on him and snorted hot air from her nostrils. She rolled her wrist; Bloodfeast whirled about in a lethal arc.
From his back, Arachnus drew a pair of huge sickles. He scraped their blades against one another and seemed to delight in the sound. He crouched low, still scraping his weapons back and forth, back and forth.
Breigh crouched as well. Fiercely, she pounded Ballstomp upon the ground. Then again. And again. The audience began to clap along with each new impact.
Their eyes locked.
Ballstomp's cadence grew faster.
The audience began to howl.
Arachnus sneered.
Breigh laughed, madness given breath.
Ballstomp fell silent.
And they lunged.
Allister
It was all Allister could do to keep walking. The rhythmic clapping and stomping of the audience outside the Great Archway matched his own heartbeat, rising in intensity until the pressure of the blood pounding in his ears became unbearable.
In front of them, he could see the two mages from the stairwell. Behind him, he could feel the other two mages' presence as an aching tension in his shoulders.
The voice in Allister’s head had taken to singing a song entitled “You’re a Twitchy Mess and You’re Going to Fuck Everything Up.” At that moment, it was on the fifteenth verse.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Phaedra look his way. He could hear her breathing from four feet away. Her eyes were wild; she watched the mages as they drew closer.
They weren’t paying attention to them. Allister tried to take solace in that. And he wanted to remind Phaedra of that as well. She looks like she’s even closer to pissing herself than you are, said the voice in Allister’s head, and Allister would have been hard-pressed to disagree.
The mages, talking quietly amongst themselves, kept walking. Devan, humming nonchalantly, kept walking. They would be passing each other any second.
Phaedra opened her mouth and a soft sound came out, halfway between a gasp and a sob. Allister tried to catch her eye. He shook his head gently. But she didn’t see him. All she saw were the mages.
One of the mages turned to Devan and nodded his way as he approached.
That’s when Allister saw her set her jaw. That’s when he realized she’d resigned herself to something.
“Thieves!” She shouted. She pointed at Devan and Allister. “Help! These men are thieves! They're making me help them rob The Palace!”
The bottom dropped out of Allister's stomach. His jaw followed the same trajectory. Devan froze, stock still, in the middle of the gaming hall floor, as the mages closed in around them.
Breigh
The sound of metal hitting metal stabbed at Breigh's ears. The impact of Arachnus' sickles against her mace jarred her down to the skeleton as he struck again and again. The man was as big as a bear; his strength was nearly unbelievable, even to Breigh. At this rate, he would wear her down and have her in minutes.
That is, if she intended to continue a defensive posture, which she most certainly did not.
She let him land blow after blow against Ballstomp. The crucial moment, she knew, was when Arachnus shifted from attempting to land a hit to expecting to land a hit. The key was watching his posture, watching his demeanor, and waiting for that moment to arrive.
And when it did, Breigh stepped ever so slightly to the side. His sickle caught nothing but air, followed by the sand of the pit. Bent forward, Arachnus turned his head to see where Breigh had gone. Which is when he got a mouthful of Breigh's boot.
The big man toppled over to his side, bleeding buckets from his mouth.
The crowd went insane. Mount him! Breigh's mind roared at her. Finish him! But instead she stepped back, giving him room to rise. The crowd only screamed louder. She cursed her luck; it wasn't time yet.
Arachnus wiped the blood from his mouth and spit a two-inch wad of meat into the sand. It used to be his tongue. He showed her his bloody teeth and took up his sickles again.
A boot like that had once put one of Breigh's rivals at The Collegium in the nurses’ floor for two weeks. Arachnus barely seemed fazed by it, to say nothing of the loss of his tongue.
Ever so slightly, Breigh took a step back as Arachnus climbed to his feet.
Devan
Devan put his hands up, palms out, and turned to face Phaedra. “Phaedra? Honey?” He said with a smile. “What are you talking about?”
In his mind, he heard Allister say,
Phaedra reached in her pocket and produced the bronze tile she had placed there, showing it to the four assembled mages. “They broke into the vault room and stole this,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We each have one. They're going to use them to rob the vault. And they wanted me to help.”
Three of the mages had one stripe on the sleeves of their robes. The fourth mage had three stripes. The third-stripe mage took the tile from Phaedra and examined it. She turned it over. It was now a plain, blank plate with no trace of a floral pattern on it; the illusion spell Allister placed on it had worn off and diffused some minutes ago. Wordlessly, the mage looked to Phaedra and raised an eyebrow. Phaedra gaped, confused.
Then the head mage looked to Devan, who was already turning out his pockets. He and Allister had surreptitiously ditched their decoy tiles some time ago.
Devan sighed. “She's had a rough day on the job, your grace,” he said, shaking his head, “and her sense of humor takes some getting used to.” He turned his belt around so he could open his pouch for the four mages.
The third-stripe mage looked to Allister, catching him off guard. All Allister could do was nod vigorously. The three first-stripes began to whisper amongst themselves.
The third-stripe mage handed the blank tile back to Phaedra. “Young woman,” she said, gravely, “As you undoubtedly know, Mr. Faerathore takes all threats to the security of The Palace very, very seriously. You will come with us now.”
“What?” The look of panic returned to Phaedra's face.
One of the first-stripe mages gestured at her, and she began to levitate, kicking her legs in futility. “I suspect you will find your conversation with Mr. Faerathore...less than pleasant.” She turned to Devan and Allister. “You two will follow us as well.”
“Your grace,” one of the first-stripers gaped. He’d been inspecting Devan’s pouch; from it he produced a room key. On the head was a bright, gold-etched “3”.
The third-striper closed the distance between herself and Devan, leaving Phaedra flailing in mid-air. “And how,” she said cooly, “do you have a key to Mr. Faerathore’s room?”
Devan looked abashed. “Mr. Faerathore asked us to inquire among the wait staff for someone who was interested in filling a particular...function...in an after-hours gathering he’s conducting. We were to escort someone of Ms. Phaedra’s…” Devan actually managed to blush. “...general proportions...to Mr. Faerathore’s suite.”
Devan stepped a hair closer to the third-stripe mage, as if to speak with her in confidence. “Please, your grace. This is not the kind of request one survives the failure of.”
Reluctantly, the Mage nodded. “Fine. Go find another.”
“Yes, your grace.”
The mage turned to leave, motioning for her subordinate to bring the prisoner with them. “Ah...your grace?” Devan said quickly, hobbling to place himself in her path. “If it pleases you...I’ve worked with Ms. Phaedra for some time. May I...have a final word with her?”
The third-stripe mage sniffed. “It does not please me.” But nonetheless, she relented. “Be brief.”
“T
hank you, your grace.”
With Allister in tow, Devan walked quickly over to Phaedra and looked up at her, where she hung in midair. She’d stopped flailing, but her eyes were still wild. Devan smiled; he couldn’t help himself. Of all the plan’s various moving pieces, the trek across the gaming hall was the part that had worried him the most, but it had worked out just perfectly. Before, Devan assumed Phaedra would rat them out at some point during the job, but he couldn’t figure out when or where. A slow march across the gaming hall floor left them nice and vulnerable, giving her the perfect opportunity to call for help, and the fake tiles left her just off-balance enough to turn the moment to their advantage.
And, as an added bonus, since they ‘forgot’ to tell Tolem about this last-minute change to the plan, it also served as a little extra protection in case the old man was planning anything duplicitous of his own.
“Drake…” Phaedra whispered in her child’s voice. “Drake, you can’t let them take me. I’m sorry...I’m sorry I...I panicked.”
Devan smirked up at her. “You can drop the act now, Phaedra,” he said.
Phaedra studied him for a long moment, then said, in a voice far more natural, “Look…I know what you think, but…”
“Mm hm,” Devan said, adjusting his fake beard with practiced casualness. “Listen, you can tell your boss—”
“My boss isn’t who you think, Drake,” she sputtered, glancing nervously at the mages.
“You can stop now,” Allister whispered to her with a smirk. “You're just kind of embarrassing yourself.”
Devan put a hand on Allister’s shoulder. “You can tell Faerathore—”
“I’m not working for Faerathore. You idiot.”
Devan smiled, at least on the outside. “Of course not.”
“If I was working for Faerathore, your whole stupid crew would be dead now. You would have been dead five minutes after you showed me the arts and crafts project Allister whipped up in his toilet bag.”
Allister gripped Devan’s forearm like a steel vice. ‘Allister,’ she said. Not 'Appleford.' Devan fell silent and looked away, his mind racing.
“Get. Me. Out of here, Devan.” she hissed at them. “Now!” Devan looked back up at her. Her veneer of wide-eyed innocence was tattered, and underneath, peeking out, was something hard. Something vicious.
“We have to go,” Devan said quickly, turning to leave and pulling Allister with him by the arm.
“You bastards…” she said at their backs through gritted teeth. When Allister looked away, she looked like her eyes were welling up with a fresh set of tears.
The mages moved to lead her away; Devan and Allister hurried toward the hall's main exit.
Devan told Allister. But he knew he couldn’t keep at least a note of concern from his thoughts.
Just then, Nalan's voice came in over the link.
“Wait!”
From the far end of the gaming hall, Phaedra's voice split the air. Devan and Allister turned and looked back. Hovering above the carpet, Phaedra had fixed her eyes on Devan. “They don't have the vault icons. But their accomplice does,” she called out, speaking as much to Devan as she was to her captors. “His name is Nalan, and he's on his way back to the airship bay.”
“He should be easy enough to find,” she said, eyes narrowed to slits. “He's stuck in a suit of guard armor.”
Breigh
Breigh cried out as the tip of Arachnus' sickle bit into her side. A lucky swing. One of too many.
She deflected another attack and another, as she backpedalled, looking for a moment to breathe. Ten minutes, she was finding out, was a very long time. She shifted her thumb ever so slightly down Bloodfeast’s grip and opened the link.
Breigh said.
Breigh leapt to the side and a sickle narrowly missed taking her leg off at the knee. Something was going to have to change, she decided.
So she took his arm off at the shoulder.
The crowd inhaled sharply, then released that breath as a mighty cheer, loud enough that even Arachnus' screams were lost in its fury.
Breigh rested her hands on her knees, Bloodfeast and Ballstomp crossed out in front of her. She was sucking wind. Her mace arm was nearly dead from exertion. But this would buy her some time.
Or so she thought. From Arachnus’s direction, she heard a guttural gurgling. He was babbling, she thought, from loss of blood and loss of his tongue. Whatever it was he was saying, he said it again.
She straightened and moved closer. “What's that, beast?” She panted. “What do you want now?”
Arachnus slumped to his knees. Holding his hand to his bleeding stump, he turned and looked into her eyes. “Kuhh. Muh,” he slurred. “Kuhh. Muh.”
Kill me. Breigh straightened up. It wasn't yet time.
She looked across the pit at the wretched Arachnus. He hung his head. She could hear his ragged breathing even over the din of the spectators.
Her shoulders slumped. She didn't want her first win in the great arena to be a mercy killing. But she looked around at the crowd. They wouldn't wait for blood.
Breigh nodded to Arachnus. Beneath his mask, Arachnus closed his eyes.
She reached down to the scabbard Torg had strapped to her thigh. She opened the latch, lifted the dagger free…
...and as she did, she felt a sharp pinch in her leg underneath where the sheath lay.
She cried out, pulled the scabbard away from her skin, and inspected it. Jutting out from its underside was a tiny blade, dripping with her blood, as well as with something else. Something black and oily.
Poison, she thought. Then, with gritted teeth, she thought: Torg.
Her thoughts returned to the here and now just in time. She dropped to her knees; Arachnus leapt up from his. He was on her like a crashing wave, and his sickle missed her head by inches.
The faces in the crowd began to blur into one another, and her limbs began to react to her commands in unexpected ways.
Again the tip of a sickle struck home, this time grazing her across the back. She screamed. And again the crowd joined her. But this time they screamed for Arachnus.
Zella
Zella had been watching from the mezzanine as the mages circled around Devan and Allister. But now she raced to the other balcony on the far side, pushing past debutantes and dowagers to find a spot on the railing. Below, Breigh was on her hands and knees. Arachnus was rearing back to kick her again. The toe of his boot caught her under the chin and sent her rolling in the dust.
like a third guard by the armpits. One of them tore the helmet off the third guard’s head as they walked.
Devan fell silent. Then:
Zella shook her head and steepled her fingers in front of her mouth.
Behind her, the crowd grew briefly quiet, catching its breath between eruptions. And in that silence, she heard a wet impact of bone on bone and Breigh crying out in pain. The crowd boomed its approval.
Zella bit her fingertips. She ran to the arena side of the mezzanine. Breigh spit a mouthful of blood into the dirt. She was still clinging to her hatchet. Across the field, her mace lay in the dirt.
“That's it,” Zella said quietly to herself.
She turned and ran back again, looking out over the gaming hall. Behind the four mages, the two guards, her three captive friends, and that cunt Phaedra, the gas lamps of the betting cage burned blue. In the window were two signs. One that said “Betting closed” and one that said “Arachnus / Breigh: 16 / 1”.
Zella clapped her hands. “That's it!”
New plan, kids, she thought to herself, not daring to turn on the link. Allister, Nalan, and Devan, you'll know what to do when the time comes. And Breigh? You just stay alive, girl. Give me thirty seconds. All right? Thirty seconds!
Zella laughed and raced into the heart of the mezzanine crowd.
Nalan
“They have another accomplice up on the mezzanine.” Still floating, Phaedra pointed up at where Zella was just a moment ago. “She's wearing a hideous business suit. You can't miss her. And the woman gladiator. She's with them too.”
Proper Thieves Page 21