“You can get me past the Keepers, then?” she asked, ignoring the comment about her face.
“That I can,” he said, and she waited for what she knew was coming. Speaking it at the same time as he did. “For a price.”
The old man laughed, rapping his stick upon the road. “Ah, I see that we are of one mind. Yes, as you know, nothing in this world is free.”
“I have coin. How much? It is a short passage, one could argue as short as five feet to step over the threshold.”
“I’m afraid a coin is not enough,” said the old man.
“Coins,” corrected Merrill, annoyance in her tone.
“And neither are they. You misunderstand me, merchant. It is not money which I seek, money is easy to come by. Instead, I ask for a favor, for favors are much harder to find.”
“And what is it that you think I can do for you, if I can’t even leave the city?”
“That has yet to be decided. But everyone has a talent, and talents are most useful. If you are leaving this inn for search of another, perhaps I can suggest to you The Circle’s Edge. Tonight, of course.”
He started to hobble away, leaving Merrill standing at the intersection.
“And don’t forget to bring your talents.”
That evening, Merrill arrived at The Circle’s Edge as dusk struck. Rather, she arrived at what was left of the building. Only a skeleton of the structure was left, wooden beams stretched like ribs over an empty heart, the siding all burned away, the roof fallen in. Its location already prompted Merrill to keep an eye over her shoulder, her hand clutching half a brick she had found from a collapsed wall as a weapon. Her other hand hovered over the pocket containing the ember’s core seeds: a toss of those would burn and sting the face of any pursuer, but they were still sewn away, and a single toss would cost more than all her nights at the inn combined.
She’d consulted two men on her way to the inn, both of which had given her strange looks before pointing her in the right direction. Now, standing before the ruin, the only identifier left was an old wooden sign dangling on a rusted chain that swayed slightly in the breeze.
“They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” said the old man as he surprised her from behind, nearly earning himself a thunk on the head with her brick as he strode past. “But I, for one, think they could have been more subtle about it. The Circle’s Edge has been burned down for three years, and now all the other inns in the city are trying their hand at the aesthetic. Come in, come in.”
“I’d hardly say they had a choice,” Merrill said, picking her way after the old man. He rapped on the front door, winking at Merrill as he slipped his hand around the gap in the wall to open it from the inside, and led them inside.
“It appears that we’re welcome tonight. Small crowd, I must say,” he continued. “Now, dearie, help me with that iron ring, will you? My back is more bent out of shape than a Keeper’s promises.”
He jabbed his stick at a rusted ring set into a trapdoor, covered in ash and debris, and Merrill lifted it, revealing a staircase leading down, each step clean and free of dust. Far below, candles flickered.
“You expect me to go down there?” she asked, waiting on the ledge.
“Safer than outside the city. And inside the city. Figure if the whole inn burned down and left the cellar behind, there’s not much else that can get you down there, eh?”
“I wasn’t talking about the structure–” Merrill began, but the man was already descending, his hand gripped tightly on the rail.
“Shut it behind you, will you? Voices carry. I’ve only secured you a ten minute slot for your hearing, so do hurry.”
Merrill took another look around her, at the darkness closing in and the empty streets. If someone wanted to ambush her, they could have done it here, in the open. There was no reason for the extra cellar step. And so she descended, closing the door softly enough behind her to ensure there was no click of a lock.
At the bottom, another figure waited beside the man: a woman, seated at a table set with two wine glasses. Her own was empty, and the older man poured some for Merrill before stepping back into the shadows.
“Thank you, Matthias,” said the woman, sipping her glass and watching Merrill over the rim. “Please, newcomer, have a seat. We have little time. Matthias is my extension in the streets, a recruiter if you will. With the recent conflict, we have been quite busy. What is your name?”
“Abigail,” said Merrill out of force of habit.
“Abigail,” the woman repeated, letting it roll off her tongue. “A moment, if you will. I would prefer we are not heard.”
Merrill clutched the edge of her chair as the woman raised a finger, drawing in the air, red sparks trailing behind it. Nets of kernels covered her arms, and they flashed as she finished. Merrill heard crackling in the stairwell and turned, expecting to see flames, but only the darkness greeted her.
“The sound of fire. Or many fires. Anyone at the top of those stairs would have trouble hearing what we are saying down here—it works as an excellent muffler. My name is Valen. Now, Abigail, I understand you seek to depart the city. I can give this to you, but what can you give to me? What service do you offer? You look like a merchant—what goods do you carry?”
“No longer a merchant,” Merrill said. “My store burned down with the rest of them. Before then, the Keepers were giving me the squeeze. You’re not… You’re not one of them, are you?”
She turned back nervously to the crackling without a source. Magic, of course, the specialty of Keepers. Now she may have just entered their den to be arrested for treason.
“Once, but no longer. Ah, a distaste for the Keepers. That is a start, a fine start. What else do you have, besides coin, of course.”
“I do have some rarities,” Merrill said, and reached into a pocket, breaking the thin thread that sewed it closed with a nail. She’d prepared these for negotiation, in order to never show too much at once. And she pulled from her pocket a bottle of sourbean extract.
“Sourbean?” said Valen, before Merrill could even begin. “That is no rarity. Were you a candy shop owner? I could have some use for someone well versed in hospitality—servers are always in demand, and the most talented often find themselves in rooms where they should not be, hearing conversations not for their ears. If you are a server, I would ask for three nights of your service, and your memories after, then I can grant you safe passage.”
“Not a server,” Merrill said, then grimaced as she reached into her next pocket, since Valen recognized the extract. She’d skipped the one loaded with dried nistlante, no longer useful in this form, except for planting. And she pulled out three seeds of ember’s core.
“Ah, what’s this?” the woman said, leaning forward, the glint of smoldering fire catching her eye.
“Ember's core, which can be used as–”
“As an aurel, yes. A decent one, too, if properly harvested. But why is it that you offer me seeds? Why not the flower? The seeds themselves have no proper use. And why this flower?” Valen narrowed her eyes as she placed her hands on the table, the kernels at her arms flashing.
“I offer it because I know it is valuable. And from the seeds you can grow the flower, as many as you would want.”
“Yes, yes I could, if I knew how,” said Valen, leaning back in her chair. “And I suppose you could grow such a flower for me?”
“I could, but it would take time. Longer than I intend to stay. After my garden burned down, there’s little for me here. I wouldn’t even have a plot of land.”
“Abigail,” the woman breathed, as recognition blossomed across her face. “The gardener Abigail? How I’ve heard of you. Damn difficult, it was, to get my hands on the aurels from your wares. I suspect that’s not all you could grow for me then, is it? There would be more. Far more.”
Valen turned to Matthias in the shadows, her voice cracking a command.
“The rest of my appointments are cancelled for today, Matthias. Leave n
ow and reschedule. It’s time for negotiations, and I fear I am already in the hands of a master merchant.”
“I can’t grow everything for you and still leave the city!” protested Merrill as Matthias departed. “You said we would have a deal for me to depart.”
“Typically, in negotiations, it is unwise to tell an opponent that they should ask for more. This, however, exceeds that rule,” said Valen, her teeth tinted red in the candlelight from wine. “Abigail, you wish to escape—perhaps to set up a garden somewhere else, to create a new life—but what I offer you is something greater. I offer you a garden here, hidden under the Keepers' noses. A garden the likes of which this city has never seen, with you at its head.
“A garden producing aurels for The Fractured. To give Hell to the Keepers.”
Chapter 51: Merrill
In the six months since starting with Valen, Merrill did not advance in title under The Fractured. She was head gardener, or head aurel producer, a position that initially began as a division of one. By month two, as Valen saw the first of her plants come to bloom, the valuable portions harvested, that division grew to three. The next month her headcount doubled again. And by month six, fifteen people reported to the head gardener as Merrill’s position in The Fractured solidified.
Both she and Valen had personally vetted each of the members of her crew. Merrill required a basic knowledge of plants and the desire to work. Valen required a distaste for the Keepers and desperation. Matthias took both perspectives in mind when he wandered the city streets, the man surprisingly stealthy despite his cane and always with a penchant for overhearing just the right conversations. One by one he brought his leads to interviews and tests, and one by one they joined, many of them not even realizing that they had become a part of The Fractured. It had almost been that way for Merrill as well until month three, when Valen had confided in her exactly what The Fractured were. By that point she needed Merrill to know, for if the operations of the gang called for aurels of a specific variety, Merrill would know best how to manufacture them.
Already at three months, keeping her in the dark cost more than sharing their secrets for her expertise. Another negotiation, Merrill knew, as she gained an ear into the gang’s activities.
At first she’d been horrified that she now worked for the same people who had nearly burned the entire city down, especially after realizing they had used her aurels to do it, but Valen had spoken to her at length, explaining the motivations behind the attack.
“Through oppression, the Keepers brought this upon themselves. We fight for our freedom. More heads fall from the Keepers in a year than from our small attack. The Keepers must be dethroned. And if it takes blood to mop the floor, may they bleed crimson.”
With her memories from the knower and Merrill’s own experience, she had only nodded. After all, the attack of fire had been what had freed Merrill from the Keepers. Who else could better understand liberty through blood?
So Merrill continued to grow the new garden, seeking out rare plants to rebuild what Fel had created, both for aurels and for funding. Until Matthias brought her a sixteenth worker.
One unlike the others.
“It’s my understanding that you were searching for rayflower,” Merrill started, staring at the man across the table from her. Roughly her own age, his eyes were sunken in more than they had any right to be at that level of youth. Strong worker, she noted, looking toward the bulges coming through his shirt at the chest and shoulders. An odd shirt, a fuzz lined undershirt—it had to be hot during the day when Matthias had retrieved him, even now toasty with the sun setting outside The Circle’s Edge's cellar. The young man had a gauntness to him, too, an outline of almost no fat on his jawbone, which meant he was probably desperate for food. He’d work hard then, this one, and she needed someone with a bit more brawn to lug around the sacks of soil and pottery.
“Do you have any for me to buy?” he asked, and he fished his hand into his pocket, pulling out a handful of carved rocks and placing them on the table. Each inlaid with a small sliver of metal, she noticed as she inspected them, and just above worthless. Not enough for even a single petal of rayflower.
“I’m afraid we don’t deal in coins,” she said, pushing them back to him, and he grimaced. “But if you can pay off the debt of buying it with work, I think something can be arranged.”
The man’s head jerked upward at the word debt, and his lips parted. Not unlike a snarl, she realized, and she tensed as she caught a whiff of smoke. Had Valen left a crackling fire burning here to obscure the sound? Or was this man carrying some other hidden aurels?
“Debt? Are you a Keeper? Only the Keepers have asked me for service, always service!” the man demanded, hands flat on the table, though his nails dug into the wood.
“Me? A Keeper? You are mistaken, I–”
But the man was not listening; instead, he turned his head left, demanding into the empty room.
“Is she a Keeper?”
Only silence answered him, as Matthias cocked his head sideways. Behind the man, he shrugged, before the man met Merrill’s eyes once more.
“I want rayflower to make tools to sell for my own preservation. But neither debt nor service shall I give to you, nor none else. Especially not the Keepers. Never the Keepers. If you work with them, I am done here, and I hope you rot as thoroughly as they will.”
“Matthias,” Merrill commanded, watching the young man’s hard face, “a glass of water for him, and some food. I’ll fetch Valen. She is going to like this one.”
Merrill stood and departed up the stairs, doubling around the corner before turning back and climbing to the room above a nearby shop that Valen occupied. Below, Matthias had brought their visitor a hunk of bread and slice of roast beef—far better than anything he would find on the streets with his meager stones. The man switched between eating voraciously and brooding intermittently until they returned, at which point his plate was so clean Merrill wondered if Matthias had fed him at all.
When Valen appeared behind her on the stairway, she rolled up her sleeves, revealing the nets of kernels on her arms. Usually this was a show of wealth, or intimidation—few could afford kernels for jewelry—but instead of showing awe, the man leapt up, shouting as his hand drew a rune in the air.
“You liar! You are Keepers!”
Valen shoved Merrill to the side as she stood, transfixed, watching the blast of flame approach with widening eyes. Merrill hit the stone floor as Valen reached out a hand, curling the stream of fire in as if she were coiling a rope, and holding it between her fingers.
“Spicy,” Valen said, then she drew a small rune, and the fire dispersed into the air, fading as quickly as it had come. “But not a way to welcome someone who has just paid for your dinner. I’m no Keeper, but now how do I know you aren’t?”
“I’d rather die,” said the man, his finger poised to draw another rune. The smile spread across Valen’s cheeks, her eyes glinting.
“Excellent,” she said. “Matthias, find this man a room. Man, your name?”
“Draysky,” he answered, sparks still trailing from his finger.
“I should like to hear your story. I think there’s a way we can benefit from this arrangement. All three of us. You, too, have been fractured.”
Heavenfall festival occurred on a Saturday that year.
Of course, as legend would have it, Heavenfall was to occur on the day after the summer solstice, when the days stopped growing longer and instead started to shrink. As time seemed to flick by quicker, and Earth struggled to pack all of its activities into daylight hours, while night chased at dusk’s heels with faster and faster speed.
Heavenfall honored Aerlick, whose actions had solidified the Keepers' order. A reminder that in a thousand years, the forces of heaven would rise again. A reminder to prepare the defenses while celebrating an age of peace.
Fortunately for Earth, Aerlick had spoken that prophecy about six hundred and fifty years ago.
“
To another three hundred and fifty years!” the ale halls cheered as Draysky passed, Valen and Merrill near either arm. The three of them were masked, following the tradition, each as a creature of heaven. A reminder of what waited above.
Merrill, fittingly, was a phoenix. Valen, a dragon. And Draysky had worn the face of a stone golem for a half hour before the elastic strap grew too loose, and now it dangled around his neck, leaving his face bare.
“Three hundred and fifty more years of misery,” muttered Valen. “Do you know why they are called Keepers, Draysky? Supposedly, they keep the horrors of heaven back from us. But I have walked the heavens, and the worst horrors I have seen are here. Every Heavenfall, they seek to remind us how bad it could be. Once, when I was ignorant, I believed them.”
They passed the teeming taverns and picked through the throng at the market to take their place in a crowd that stretched far back along a center square. At the front, a line of Keepers had arranged themselves, their robes glittering off the noonday sun.
“So they give us commoners gifts. They remind us how lucky we are for their presence. After all, what man isn’t grateful for a day of free beer and food? Then, of course, we hear our yearly ghost story.”
Around them, the crowd quieted. The Keepers stirred, seven of them stepping forward, arms interlocked.
“We are locks!” they chanted, their voices amplified by Keepers who lined the side of the crowd, furiously scrawling air runes that drew the sound waves farther. “Among our seven, we hold heaven at bay!”
“Not just heaven, but us too,” whispered Valen. “See there, far to the left? She is the one who shut down our operation. Not just that, but her mother is the worst among Keepers that hunt our ranks, who squeeze the commoners dry for their own greed. See her? There, in the back, in the line of the council, watching her daughter. They are who we target next.”
Draysky nodded, his eyes narrowing. But these Keepers seemed different than those who had run the outpost. Softer, somehow, which made them harder to hate.
Heaven Fall Page 47
