Sefiros Eishi: Chased By War (The Smoke and Mirrors Saga Book 2)

by Michael Wolff

  The food was delivered promptly, just as the serving wench promised. It looked delicious, but the ranger didn’t taste it. He was too busy scouting the kitchen slot where the chefs worked.

  Every Eden’s Fruit establishment guaranteed a unique experience. Towards that end this bistro disposed of the walls separating the kitchen from the dining room. This allowed the customers to watch their food being prepared right before their eyes. It allowed a certain sense of interaction to the meal, but on the other hand it stripped the chefs of privacy. To the practiced eye the chefs, and every other employee, were exposed cards on the poker table.

  Him. The sweat beading his forehead didn’t come from the steam. Hands twitched where there should be calm. A tightness of the frame that erupted into fearful surprise at the slightest touch. Yes. Definitely him.

  Midnight found the ranger hiding in the shadow of the snowflakes alongside the bistro. One by one the chefs – often drunkenly – left in expensive-looking wagons. All except one. All except him.

  Entrance was easy. Without the chefs, the bistro returned to being a simple tavern. Already the usual suspects were clamoring for the seductive call of cheap wine and well-endowed dancers. Except the boy Stromgald sought wasn’t among the number of departing chefs. From the sudden torchlight in the highest window, the ranger was willing to bet the lone chef had retired for the night. It was enough of a path for the jord ranger to follow. He climbed the wall as easily as a man might cross a bridge. The mirror at the far end of the room reflected the image of the boy in question. He seemed intent to scrub the flesh right off his face, if he didn’t do it to his hands first. Classic signs of guilt.

  Stromgald blended so easily into the room that the boy was already snug in bed when he caught sight of him. Stromgald crossed the distance between them with such speed that he caught his mouth before the boy thought of screaming. “Quiet. I’m not here to harm you.” The ranger locked gazes until the azure blue of the boy’s eyes softened. “I’m going to take my hand away. Do not scream. I’m not going to hurt you.” He nodded, and even kept silent despite the haste of the encounter.

  “I am John Stromgald. I captain a team of rangers. What is your name?”

  “Daniel.” The jord already knew that, just as he already knew most of the details necessary for this operation. In his experience, foreknowledge of events curried fear faster than threats. “Daniel Alix.”

  “Daniel, I am investigating the deaths of the Aiagel village.”

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t know they were going to kill them, I swear.”

  “They?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He shrank, shivering as though an icy gust glided across his body. “Daniel. I need you to focus. This is very important. Who do you mean by they?”

  “My brothers. My brothers prepared the meal that killed them.”

  I thought as much. “Keep going.”

  Daniel sniffed and hugged himself as though pressing back into the comfort of the womb. “I heard them talking. They were discussing if vineroot was better than ringweed.” Some of the fire returned at facing Stromgald’s confusion. “They’re toxic if not prepared exactly,” he explained. “Those roots are declared illegal. The only way to get them is to smuggle them into the country. Most traders avoid the stuff.”

  Most. Stromgald liked the discussion less and less. “There must be a high-end fencer to keep the market alive.”

  “There was another guy there.” Daniel wiped his nose with a dirty sleeve. “I couldn’t see him, but my brothers weren’t talking to themselves. One of them mentioned a word and was knocked clear across the room.”

  The pieces began to fall together in a sequence that was growing more familiar by the minute. “Daniel. This is important. It’s not a word. It’s a name. What was the name that knocked your brother across the room?”

  “Locus. That’s the name.”

  Dammit. A fencer so deep in his trade that he named himself after the very drug he peddled. There were towns, whole towns, sterilized of human life by the hypnosis of the emerald locus. A person’s greatest fantasy came to life at the cost of their minds. All those that partook of the drug knew not their memories, their goals, and their families. Just the crazed craving for more dreams come to life. “If we can get you to a magistrate –”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t do that! If my brothers find out I squealed they’ll kill me! They were professional soldiers in oversea campaigns! I’ll disappear and no one will notice. And don’t think about going to Lazlo, either.”

  “Lazlo?”

  “The town magistrate. He’s in their pocket, just as my brothers are in someone else’s pocket. I’ll die for sure!” The fear in the boy’s voice set Stromgald’s nerves snapping. The course of the war could be decided by this pathetic little shit? Suddenly Stromgald hoisted Daniel up three feet in the air; he was naturally surprised to see his own hands keeping Alix dangling in midair.

  “Listen to me. Maybe you think that out of some familial connection your brothers will forget your little crisis and will take you back into their fold. They won’t. If they didn’t hesitate to murder someone, they will not tolerate a frantic accomplice. I know the make of men they are. They might offer sympathy. They might protect you against the more aggressive of your brothers. But sooner or later they will realize your reluctance is a noose around their necks. They will kill you. Their secret is of more worth to them than your well-being. You already know this. I know you know this.”

  “What will I do? They’re everywhere. I can’t take a shit without one of them knowing.”

  “I will protect you. I won’t let any harm come to you. But if you really want this business done with, you must confront them. You must expose them for their crimes and put them in the hell they deserve. Because if they were so callous to one victim, think how easy it will be for them to kill anyone in their path. You have to do this.”

  The resulting silence made Stromgald fear the speech wouldn’t take root. One more push and Daniel would shatter like fine crystal. The jord raged against the fact he could do no more. Daniel had to do this of his own volition; otherwise he would be a puppet for the rest of his days.

  “All right,” came the whisper. “All right. I’ll do it.” The words were a hell to utter, but already Stromgald could see a strength filling Alix; one that he never knew was his to begin with. “What do we do first?”

  “First? You stay here.”

  “Stay here?” Here came the cowardice again. “If I stay here they’ll kill me. You said so yourself!”

  “Daniel.”

  “They’ll hunt me down –”

  “Daniel.”

  “They’ll hang me up to the rafters and no one will care –”

  There was a sharp snap, and Daniel’s nose was a bloody mess. Stromgald hated to resort to violence, but the boy was poised over the abyss. “Did that hurt?”

  “Did that hurt? Of course it did, you son of a bitch! Why would you even ask that?”

  Stromgald was undeterred. “How do you feel?”

  Now Daniel was looking at the ranger as though he were the crazy one. “Pissed off. What do you –”

  “Hang onto that for now and listen. I need time to set things in motion. We must bring the battle to our field, not theirs. If they suspect any deviation from you, our entire defense will fall apart. Do you understand?” Slowly Daniel nodded. “Good. Let me take care of the heavy lifting. Just do as you normally do.”

  Once outside Stromgald wished he’d felt half as encouraging as he sounded. If this mystery was as deep as he feared, then there was no limit of fingers in this particular pie. Don’t hesitate, he told himself. You know what you must do. Do it. The valor
did not rise as hoped it would at the steps of the local monastery, but it mattered not. You know what you must do.

  Stromgald took his place at the nearest pew. He already knew the history of whom he sought. He was a ranger, and a ranger survived by thinking five moves ahead. In the space of thirty minutes Stromgald watched the people stream in and out of the confession booth, until at last there were none. Taking a deep breath to gird himself for what to do, the ranger captain entered the confession booth.

  The confession booth gave Stromgald pause. This was not the den of a common man, no. Red velvet was everywhere, lush from foreign markets. Stromgald had seen its equal once or twice, but never in this fashion. Somebody spent a fortune for this place. The ranger hoped the dear father wasn’t vain. It would make the confession harder to accept.

  Then came the rustle of cloth, and the grated window between them filled with an apple-cheeked face. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been fifteen years since my last confession.”

  “What is it that ails you, my son?”

  “Actually...I am here for what ails you.”

  “For...For what ails me?”

  “I think you need the confession, Father Laraty. I think you know about the poisoned meals. I think you know because the perpetrator confessed to you right here where I’m sitting.”

  “You know not what you speak, son.”

  “Oh, I think I do. You’ve been at this parish for twenty years. You helped birth most of the inhabitants and blessed their heads. They came to you for their guilt and you lifted their burdens. You probably watched the Alixs grow up. It’s eating you inside, isn’t it?”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” the priest whispered. “My vows –”

  “Your vows say to help people. They say to heal the wounded. They say to protect these people from evil. And there is evil out there, right now. How long must it fester before you realize that?” Stromgald checked himself with a sigh. “Sometimes you have to break your vows to do God’s work. Goodbye, Father.”

  Stromgald itched with helplessness. He knew the little speech had as much a chance as firing an arrow blindfolded. Then why did it rankle so much? No. Focus. One path closed; that was simply the name of the game. There was always a new path. Then he came within the church’s inner sanctum and his mood soured. It was a jigsaw puzzle of several outhouses that gave little proof as a horde of secrets.

  Next, more research. One man, even a priest, might not be enough to reveal corruption. Two men would be enough to cement the foundations of this charade’s demise. Lazlo. The local magistrate. Except no one knew where he was. It was as if he disappeared. Stromgald knew better. To keep their intentions shrouded the brothers would have dismissed the magistrate’s disappearance as a lie. They would not risk Lazlo’s death. Bloodshed would make any plot flounder in any point of the execution. So Lazlo was alive. But where?

  Then it struck Stromgald. Prison.

  Finding the records was far more difficult than analyzing them. The town was small, so the grandest crime listed was vagrancy. Lazlo’s profile had no statement of crime. No listing of where he was sent, or even a manner of execution. He committed his crime, and that was the end of it. After an hour Stromgald staggered from all the research. The towers of the remaining tomes were openly mocking him, it seemed. How does Mykel do this? Stromgald could see the librarian, never wavering in his determination of study and analysis. If Mykel can do this, so can I.

  Stromgald’s patience won out when he found the apprentice jailer’s report. It said that a new prisoner was moved into the black cells. Interesting. Black cells were common to a city’s budget, not a backwards village. And yet the date of the new prisoner’s imprisonment was but a day or two after Lazlo disappeared. The problem, of course, that there were no blueprints of the black cells anywhere in the records. What, you were expecting this to be easy? Mykel’s voice whispered. Dig deep, John. The answer’s waiting for you. You just have to find it.

  Stromgald frowned. If the black cells were secret to its villagers, then it was logical to say the black cells were there first, and the town was built over it. Stromgald found the town’s historical records and smiled. The village was once a prison used to detain hostages caught between civil wars that speckled the border countries of warring barons. The village was too far away for anybody to notice; the ranger was willing to bet there wasn’t a single person in the capital that knew the borderlands’ existence. Hell, half the border towns weren’t even on the maps.

  Stromgald read on. The prison was called Chat’du, Weirspeak for Shamed Shadows. When finally the civil wars caught royal attention and the hostages freed, the prison was destroyed brick by brick by the very people it imprisoned. Royal pardons were scattered, and the hostages were appointed the current village in their exchange for their silence. The villagers did know about the black cells, but they thought it destroyed or kept quiet about it. It was only recently that the kingdom had delivered its newfound refugees from peace treaties or humanitarian campaigns. The apprentice was one of those refugees. One way or the other, the war was promptly buried.

  But if the prison was destroyed, then it had to have been built. Stromgald pressed on, giddy with the anticipation, with the feeling of the pieces clicking into place, hungry for the last bit of information that would make perfect sense. Now I know why Mykel stayed in the library. The search was damn near intoxicating.

  The answer proved elusive, and it made its capture all the sweeter. Chief amidst the builders were the Bock family. They were the wardens of the building; all decisions great and small came through their command first. So, it was only natural that the king assigned the Bocks as the rulers of the new colony. Royal edict demanded the Bock manor to be two inches smaller – in every dimension – than the king’s own court. Only the architects forgot to mark the distinction. There was a square upon the town map that had no right to be there; most especially in the back of the baron’s manor.

  The black cells. Genius. Who would accuse the ruling family of a detail so minuscule it was barely worth noting? If he were here Raptor would have bet a small fortune that Lazlo was kept in the secret cells. Thank you, Mykel.

  LXX

  Even though everything was falling into place, Stromgald knew better than to take risks. Not now, so deep in the mix of things. Prodded by caution, the ranger captain retreated to the snowy glens outside the village and waited. Darkness would be too great a boon to ignore. The jord passed the time going over his plan. Lazlo would be a valuable ally against the Alix brothers, and the backing of one witness might bolster Daniel’s own courage. If he was not tortured. If he wasn’t already silenced by fear. If he was still alive. The ranger captain put the ruminations aside and, when the black clouds finally enveloped the moon, started his descent into the darkness.

  Stromgald glided from shadow to shadow, hunching small and tight against the houses to avoid the glare from the stark-white snow. His analysis of the townsfolk’s footsteps enabled him to slink across paths not even the townspeople knew. Even the nightwatch had no idea how close they came from the ranger’s touch

  He slowed upon the stout gardens at the manor’s back. A fence of square-grid wood rose to the curves of the balcony above, stiff with vines of dead-black leaves. It took long moments of dedication to shear his way through the shrubby without making a sound, and even longer moments to find the telltale cracks of a sealed-over foundation. Stromgald pressed his hand upon the weathered wall, and tiny green creepers seeped into the cracks, growing and growing, forcing the cracks to widen inch by careful inch, until finally the wall bore a hole a frostbitten man could find. One final glance out of habit, and the ranger captain speeded into the dark.

  Almost immediately the whimpers started. Through the cell bars Stromgald saw ragged, soiled men,
cowering in the corners with only rats for company. Sometimes their hard, deep-lined faces lifted. At first Stromgald held his ground, only to discover the eyes that met him were blank. Stromgald hurried onward.

  The path played a game with him. Sometimes descending a staircase was necessary to reach the level above, and vice-versa. After an eternity, he paused. It was distant, but the telltale scuffing of boot on stone was unmistakable. A glance around the corner revealed a pair of man-shapes in the distance, their backs to a small pair of gilded doors. Finally. He was beginning to have trouble telling the turning between corridors.

  The two guards were no problem. Middle-aged men, their hair thin and paunches fat, grumbled at the ill luck fate had cast down of them, didn’t even know what hit them until it was too late. An Eastlands technique ordinarily taught to first-year students dropped the pair as though their bones disappeared. The lock was of the same challenge; a mere slash from the katana parted the metal in twain. Stromgald strode inside.

  A man lay spread-eagled upon the wall, dull iron manacles jammed into the even duller stone. It was Lazlo, all right, even with the scarecrow frame and the thick layers of dust coating his frame. Stromgald cast a glance at his jailors. He had seen their faces before, he realized, on their fathers and brothers and cousins that flowed through the village paths with the telltale unease of forcing the illusion of normalcy. These fools sprawled at his feet had grown up with Lazlo, and yet theirs were the hands that kept him under lock and key. It was a terrible thing to behold.