To Whitney’s shock, a few of the wealthier onlookers in their posh outfits agreed.
“And who might you be to question a Darkings?” Bartholomew said.
“I be the true voice of the people, standing up to those who think themselves above the law because their daddy’s a big shot in Yarrington.”
Bartholomew laughed humorlessly, then his face contorted into a scowl.
“I assure you, my bearded friend, that the prefect is busy securing the region against possible rebellion and has vested in me the power to take this unfortunate matter into my own hands. Tayvada was…” He closed his eyes and feigned sincerity, “…a dear friend.”
“Tayvada fed my children when we had nothing!” a Panpingese man hollered from the back.
“Hang the bastard!” A cacophony of onlookers voiced their agreement.
“And someone will pay for his death!” Tum Tum said. “But, I’ve known Whitney for years, and the man be gentle as they come.”
“Hey, I’m not that…” Whitney said, before realizing how stupid it would be to argue that. “Yeah, he’s right! I can’t even hurt a spider.”
“This man was found in Tayvada’s very home,” Bartholomew shouted, “blood on his hands.”
“Yeah, so I hear. So ye say he slit the poor bloke’s throat—let the blood drain from him. The Whitney I know retches at the sight of a cut.” Tum Tum hopped—or, rather, rolled—up onto the stand. A kind onlooker even rushed to help him to his feet after watching his struggle. “My Panpingese brothers and sisters, I know ye are angry, and why shouldn’t ye be? But is this really Winde Port justice?”
“Maybe the dwarf has a point,” that same highborn in front said. Whitney thought he recognized him from the Guild Hall. “Should we not hear the accused’s defense before he is sent from this world?”
“Yeah, what he said!” Whitney cried out. “I’m weak and harmless. But maybe there’s someone else who gets something out of painting a new villain. Maybe he’s right here among us.”
A mixture of approval and distaste spewed forth from the non-Panpingese members of the crowd. Bartholomew leaned in close to his one-eyed guard. “Kill the dwarf as soon as we’re gone,” he whispered so only Whitney could hear.
He turned back to address Tum Tum.
“Your complaints are duly noted, Dwarf,” he said. “But this decree has already been made and signed by Prefect Mortimer Calhoun.” He unfurled a piece of paper from the folds of his jacket. Whitney couldn’t see it, but he could see Tum Tum’s features darken and knew his fate was sealed. And even worse, he could once again see the grin on the assassin’s face now that Bartholomew had moved, teeth and hair white against the shadow.
“Today,” Bartholomew pronounced with renewed vigor. “The murderer, Whitney Blisslayer die—”
A sudden scream rang out. “In the bay!”
Whitney turned toward the water. A flaming rock crashed into one of the Glass Kingdom warships floating in the bay. Then, suddenly, an arrow exploded through the chest of the noble that had taken Whitney’s side. For a moment, Whitney thought someone was coming to spring him, but then he realized… only a Shesaitju barbed arrow could tear through a man with such force.
A frenzy broke out as more arrows trickled down, men and women tripping over one another. Even the Glass soldiers overseeing the execution dispersed.
Whitney saw his opening. The executioner no longer stood on the platform, and Bartholomew’s guards were otherwise occupied. Just as Whitney began to duck out of the noose, one of the lumbering brutes bumped into him. In turn, he bumped another guard, who bumped into Bartholomew, and finally, the man’s fat ass struck the lever. In an instant, the floor fell out beneath him and Whitney was hanging.
He gurgled and strained. As he struggled, he wondered why his neck hadn’t snapped, though he wasn’t complaining.
His vision grew blurry, blood rushing to his eyeballs. He could feel drool against his cheek before he went lightheaded. His ears rang, but he heard a loud crack-boom, and suddenly, he was falling again.
It took a moment for him to figure out what happened. A shower of wood fragments rained down on him as, somehow, he lay safely on the ground. He stood beneath the gallows, sides broken but for a few supporting struts. Beyond the structure where the crowd had just been, was an open marketplace. Everyone was busy running for their lives.
The Shesaitju are attacking again?
Whitney didn’t wait around for an answer. He went to run, but Bartholomew grabbed his ankle and sent him sprawling.
“You won’t escape me again!” Bartholomew hissed.
“You’re right, I won’t.” Whitney kicked him across the jaw. Then he rolled over and jumped on the man. He used the rope that still bound his hands and pulled it taut against Darkings' neck. “Where is she!”
“Unhand him!” The loyal, one-eyed guard grabbed Whitney and flung him off.
Before either could make a move, another volley of arrows rained down. The guard raised a chunk of broken wood and kept an arrow from shredding Bartholomew’s head. Another landed in the dirt, right between Whitney’s legs.
He stared at it, frozen by fear. He knew firsthand what the barbed arrows could do. All the while, Bartholomew’s men lugged their master away while he vowed revenge again and again.
With them gone, the sight of Kazimir standing through an open doorway across the plaza finally stirred Whitney. While everyone fled for their lives, the Breklian assassin stayed in the darkness, calmly juggling one of his many knives.
Whitney rolled and hopped to his feet, then ran, arms bound and severed noose flapping behind him. He saw the source of his salvation in a massive ball of stone that had apparently been catapulted into the city. There was no time to celebrate his renowned luck. He needed to get out of the target zone, lest another boulder or arrow come crashing down.
Kazimir was now nowhere to be seen, and none of the city guards paid any attention to the escaping prisoner. Whitney sprinted as fast as he could and only stopped once he knew he was free of the threat of discovery. Ducking into an alley, he slid the noose from his neck and worked the rope until his hands were untied.
He rubbed his neck. Knowing there’d be a mark, he pulled his collar up tight against his ears. Only then did he finally allow himself to catch his breath. Once he had his fill of the precious, life-giving air, he peered around the corner toward the bay. From the morning fog along the shore, emerged hundreds of dark rowboats cracking through the ice toward Winder’s Wharf. Each of them carried gray-skinned rowers by the dozens, so many that some were even hanging off into the freezing cold water.
On the back of each, stood an archer, loosing arrow after arrow into the city. Glass soldiers fired back and formed along the wharf, but boulders from catapults soared out of the fog. They came from the direction of the coast as if somehow an entire army had snuck right onto Winde Port’s doorstep overnight.
The Shesaitju mounted the wharf, descending upon the shields of the Glassmen like a tsunami.
Bells tolled from all around him. Whitney felt the breath catch in his lungs. This was no mere raiding party with a lust for bloodshed. It was an army. The biggest Whitney had ever seen. And once again he was in the wrong place while they were attacking.
He backed away and as he did, noticed Kazimir on a sunken balcony on a neighboring building, staring out at the bay. The assassin was enraptured by the sight of the invaders, same as he was. Whitney used the man’s distraction and sunk all the way back into the alley. He found a sewer cover nested at the base of a building and weaseled his way in.
Darkings, Panping—they could all wait. He had to find Sora before the whole city burned down around them… or Kazimir killed them both.
XVI
THE MYSTIC
By the time sunlight filtered in through the stained glass, Sora’s throat felt like tree bark.
“Help!” she grated. She thrashed her body and clenched the muscles in her stomach until they finally gave out
and she hung slack.
Multi-colored light painted the cobwebs like splintered diamonds hanging from rotting beams in the otherwise empty room that would be her grave. A spider flitted across one. It was tiny, but it still brought her back to the Webbed Woods and the last time she thought she was going to die.
She tried to force herself to think about the same things she had when Redstar was killing her—when she lost control and the energy of Elsewhere coursed through her like a hot spring. About all the places in the world she’d missed out on seeing while hiding beneath a shack. She considered every scar. How Wetzel used to cut her mercilessly, bidding the darkness within her to rise up.
She begged her body to bring that power back to bear.
But it never came.
“At least I’ll die in a church,” she groaned, sardonic.
She’d never been religious. Wetzel didn’t care for anything but his studies and his potions. But as a child, she’d gone with Whitney and his family to the Troborough church house. Her first few visits, everyone stared at her. Whitney’s mother told her it was because she was “just so cute.” But his father’s eyes shot daggers sharper than her ears.
But she’d watch the other families leave service, their eyes circled by luminous white paint once a year during the Dawning, when the moons blotched out the sun, and the people of the Glass were forced to look inward for Iam’s light. Tears speckled her eyes as she recalled how they smiled and caroused, mothers hugging their daughters, fathers tussling their sons’ hair.
She’d always longed for that. One year, Whitney’s parents even took him to Yarrington for the ceremony led by Wren the Holy at Yarrington Cathedral. She remembered being the loneliest she’d ever been in her life, sitting by the stream staring at the empty Troborough chapel while Wetzel called for her to help with his potions.
No matter how many times Whitney told her what a load of shog it all was, she always wanted to belong. Wetzel cared for her the best he knew how, but he wasn’t her real father.
She hung her head and closed her eyes. Wetzel didn’t believe in any Gate of Light, didn’t believe that the dead would be delivered into the waiting arms of Iam. Like her ancestors, he believed that after death, the spirit went to Elsewhere. To linger without purpose, watching until the essence of one’s soul would one day be returned to the world of the living. She wondered if she might find her true parents on that eldritch plane.
In truth, she only hoped death would bring relief from painful memories. That when her eyes shut for the last time, she would no longer have to remember the pain of abandonment, the shame of her heritage, or the brutality she’d experienced at the hands of men like Kazimir.
She swore. There were no men like Kazimir.
The steeple door creaked open.
“I won’t go with you,” she said. She opened her eyes and expected to see Kazimir, only the entry was empty. She searched from side to side, trying to keep her heart from beating through her rib cage. She’d seen him move like this, like a shadow. “You might as well kill me because I won’t come with you.”
A faint clicking noise drew her gaze to the floor, and there, sniffing her dangling feet was a wyvern.
“Aquira?” she said, incredulous. “What are you…”
The creature blinked. She stood up on her hind legs and stuck her forked tongue at Sora’s feet.
“You need to leave right now before he returns. You need to go home…” The words trailed off as she realized that, like her, Aquira had no home to return to. Her master had been murdered for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like Sora’s own parents.
“I’m so sorry girl,” Sora said. “You didn’t deserve any of this. Neither of us did.”
Sora stretched her foot to pat the wyvern on the head. Aquira’s frills rippled as she closed her eyes, purring softly in a series of rhythmic clicks. Sora could feel the heat radiating off the creature, even through her heels.
The corners of her mouth rose.
“Aquira,” she said. “Do you want to help me out of here?”
The wyvern merely stared up at her and blinked again.
“The chains. Can you melt them?” Sora shook her arms, and in doing so, her entire body. Aquira scurried away, and Sora cursed under her breath.
“Why don’t I speak wyvern?” she groaned. Aquira stopped a few paces away and turned to look back at her. Sora inhaled slowly and remembered one of Wetzel’s lessons about ancient Panping mystics who learned how to dominate the minds of lesser beings. Sora couldn’t do that but the birds her old master always tested his concoctions on always favored her.
“Aquira,” she whispered. “I know you can’t understand me, but if you don’t break me free, I’ll lose everything.”
A chorus of distant screams echoed, then a loud crash outside kicked dust off the ceiling and made Aquira dart for the door.
“Aquira!” Sora shouted. “Please, stop!”
The creature stopped in the entry near the stairs and turned.
Another crash, louder than the first, made the entire steeple rumble. Aquira tilted her head and before Sora could say another word, rushed back to her.
She flew up onto Sora’s leg, claws poking into her.
“Good girl,” Sora said, gritting her teeth. “You can do this.” Aquira’s needle-like claws wound their way up her body until she was sitting on Sora’s shoulder.
Sora shook her right arm, so the chain holding her bound to the ceiling rattled.
“Right here,” she said.
Aquira’s strange, yellow eyes blinked in Sora’s face, then she growled and turned to the cuff.
“Yes!” Sora exclaimed. “That’s right.”
Aquira’s scaly tail wrapped the back of Sora’s neck for balance. It was like wearing a campfire for a coat the wyvern was so warm. Then, she flapped her wings to hover just overhead. The weight made Sora’s already sore shoulder feel like it was going to tear from the joint.
Sora squeezed her eyelids shut to stifle the groan festering in her throat, not wanting to scare her reptilian savior again. A sweltering brush of air wrapped her forearm. Fire spewed from Aquira’s mouth, bright and hot. It was aimed at the chains, but Sora’s hand blistered anyway.
The metal wilted like the wax of a candle. Even Sora’s magic couldn’t compare. When half her body swung free, Aquira used the momentum to leap up onto the other chain. In an instant, the second was reduced to molten slag as well.
Sora crashed to the floor, one of her heels driving a hole in the old wood plank. She gasped for air. She hadn’t quite been crucified, but with both arms stretched she hadn’t realized just how labored her breathing had become until she had a lungful. She clutched her chest. Against her cheek, she felt a dry, coarse tongue.
She threw her arms around Aquira. The wyvern didn’t fight it, just nuzzled against Sora’s neck, frills tickling her chin. More screams and banging noises sounded from outside, but Sora couldn’t bring herself to let go. She squeezed harder and Aquira’s purring intensified.
Before she knew it, she was sobbing. Her tears trickled down onto Aquira’s scales and turned to mist. Her whole body, inside and out, grew warm from holding the wyvern but she didn’t care. Her life had been so chaotic since the Black Sands took everything away from her that she hadn’t even really had time to stop and let it all out.
Wetzel. Troborough. Seeing Whitney again and dealing with his ‘jobs’—tears over all of it poured from her eyes like a dam had been broken. It took all her effort to pull away and momentarily focus her blurry vision on the lizard-like face of her unexpected rescuer.
“I promise, you’ll never be without a home again,” she sniveled.
Aquira went to lick her again when the bang of the church doors slamming shut downstairs made her heart sink. She waited for the loud thumping of boots against the stairs, same as she’d heard when Kazimir left her earlier.
“C’mon,” she said, scrambling to her feet. Her legs were numb from hanging,
but she didn’t let that stop her. She ran to the stained glass window, she wrapped her fist with the hem of her dress, then bashed on it as hard as she could. The glass vibrated but didn’t break. If there was one thing for which the Glass Kingdom was proficient, it was hardened, stained-glass panels.
Sora struck it again and again until Aquira released a snarl that raised the hairs on her arms. She turned around, and in the entryway, saw the white hair and dark, callous eyes of her captor. Her hand fell toward a knife she didn’t have—a knife Kazimir had stolen from her.
He strolled forward calmly, clicking his tongue in disapproval. He purposefully avoided the beam of sunlight flooding in through the high window, but as he turned, she noticed that, unlike before, he was now covered in grime. His hair was unkempt, and a few of his knives were missing from his bandolier.
“Where are you going, my dear?” he asked. “We were just starting to get along.” The sound of his voice made her spine tingle, but she also noticed something new in it. For once, he seemed flustered.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said.
“You are going to help me find your friend and honor my pact.”
He’s alive?
Hoping Kazimir wouldn’t see the relief on her face, she looked down as she unwrapped her hand from her dress and balled it into a tight fist. Aquira snarled at Kazimir. Only a spark came out of her mouth, clearly drained from melting the chains.
“And who is this adorable, new friend?” Kazimir asked. “I swear, today is just full of surprises.”
“Stay away from us!” Sora screamed. She drew back her bare hand and punched through the glass. It was only a small hole, but when her hand recoiled, it was sliced all over.
Bleeding.
Now she felt it, that dark, unexplainable power inside. All at once, she was unstoppable and vulnerable, as if she, herself, were walking the planes of Elsewhere. Fire erupted from her injured hand and blew the entire window open just before Kazimir was able to grab her.
Wind howled, and light flooded the steeple. Kazimir leaped backward into the shadows, wincing as if in pain. It was then that Sora remembered another of the lessons in one of Wetzel’s old books. The upyr were fearsome, but immortality came with drawbacks… the insatiable need for blood, and a horrible allergy to sunlight which turned their skin to ash.
The Redstar Rising Trilogy Page 52