by A. C. Cobble
“No, unfortunately not,” responded the thief, “but we do have one into the building on the other side of it, which we also control. The Veil and her men will be watching our palace, knowing you entered. When we come in from a different angle, hopefully, we can surprise them.”
“They’ll still sense our entrance,” warned Amelie.
Cogdill nodded, the torch bobbing with his movement. “That is why within a few moments, our building will explode, and thieves will swarm the Veil’s palace. With any luck, we’ll be just one more pack of rats scurrying around in confusion.”
“And you planned all of this since you received our note this morning?” wondered Ben.
Cogdill didn’t respond.
“You were planning this assault since before we arrived,” guessed Rhys.
“We didn’t know if we’d get a chance to implement it,” admitted Cogdill, moving again, leading them down the tunnel. “We always make plans, though. It’s good practice, and you never know when an opportunity will present itself. On a target like the Veil, of course we made a plan. Do you have any idea how rare it is that the woman is outside of the Sanctuary? The artifacts she has with her... Well, let’s say there was already a hotly contested debate about whether it was worth sacrificing our headquarters. When we got your note, it was simply a matter of ensuring you were serious and incorporating you into existing plans.”
“You needed us to deal with the magic,” guessed Amelie.
Chuckling, Cogdill admitted, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m afraid it’s worse. We have some talented members who can distract the mages. They can’t stand against the power of the Sanctuary, but they can make enough noise before they vanish. What we do not have is a place far enough away to hide from the Veil. If we stole from her, wherever we ran, she would track us down. That’s where you’ll come in. If any of us survive this, I expect that woman and all of the might of the Sanctuary will be looking for you. Any petty thievery we manage will be blamed on you or forgotten. Think you can keep her distracted for us?”
“We’ll do our best,” muttered Ben.
“I’m sensing a theme here,” whispered Prem behind him.
“Everyone just assumes other people will want to kill Ben,” replied Rhys, his voice pitched just loud enough Ben could hear it.
He tried to ignore the rogue and kept following Cogdill down the tunnel. Two hundred paces further, they found another flight of stairs that led up.
“A few more moments for everyone to get in position. Then, we’ll need to be very quiet when we get up there,” advised Cogdill.
The man shifted his grip on his blackened crossbow and waited. He looked to be counting. When he was satisfied it had been long enough, he started climbing the stairs. Ben and his friends tagged along, carefully feeling the steps in the darkness. Behind them, as the torchlight disappeared up the stairwell, Ben caught a glimpse of half a dozen shapes following them. Faces masked, the men looked uncomfortably similar to the assassins they’d faced in Whitehall, but Ben knew these were the Elders of the Fabrizo Thieves’ Guild. The best in the world at their trade, and they were prepared to stage an assault on the Veil right next door to their own lair.
Ben was curious to see what they could do.
They made it up the stairs and paused behind Cogdill as he poked his head out the door. He motioned them forward, and they entered a sparsely used storage room which they passed through into a hallway similar to the one in the Thieves’ Guild. Instead of taking them upstairs, though, their guide led them down the hall to where a stout wooden door took up the entire end of the corridor. He slid a bolt and cautiously opened the door. In front of him, Ben saw the lapping waves of a canal and a small wooden pier which boats could tie to. It was the delivery entrance to the palace.
“When we get in,” whispered Cogdill, “we’ll split up. Best of luck making your escape. Don’t come back near these tunnels, and don’t come looking for me. I hope you understand that if we see you again, we’ll have to put a knife into you.”
“Thanks for your help,” grumbled Ben.
Cogdill winked at him and then stepped out into the bright morning sun.
Ben followed and immediately heard sounds of chaos coming from the opposite side of the building. It seemed there was quite a ruckus growing in the street, but on the canal, all was still quiet.
Cogdill handed the torch back to Ben and slung his crossbow over his shoulder.
The man jumped nimbly off of their pier to land a dozen paces away. He removed a small paper tube from his belt and set it against a door which led to the Veil’s palace. Unwinding a long cord from the tube, he jumped back and landed next to Ben.
“We need to jump that?” asked Ben nervously.
“Maybe,” responded Cogdill. He stood still, listening.
Ben frowned, unsure what the man was waiting on. They were out in the open, in view if anyone from the palace looked down. A patio jutted out from the floor above them. Ben eyed it, swallowing nervously.
“Should we—”
An explosion tore through the air, followed by a quick succession of others. A shower of broken stone and mortar cascaded into the canal from where the Thieves’ Guild had once stood. A billowing cloud of dust swirled into the air, blocking the sun and throwing the day into shadow. Several more sharp concussions followed, and Ben stared dumfounded at the destruction. The building had simply imploded, barely damaging the structures beside it, but certainly killing whoever was inside.
Cogdill winked at Ben. He stuck the cord he was holding into the flame of his torch, and Ben’s eyes widened when the strand caught, throwing off a sizzling shower of green sparks.
“It’s treated with a special chemical,” explained the thief, dropping the cord into the canal. “You might want to step back into the hallway.”
Ben stared in amazement as the cord continued to burn underwater.
“Sorry,” said Cogdill, lightly pushing Ben through the doorway back into the building. “I should have phrased that as, ‘you definitely want to step back into the hallway’.”
Ben did as instructed, and a moment later, there was another explosion. The sturdy stone of the hallway didn’t move, but a cloud of dust rained down from the ceiling where the impact of the blast shook it free.
“Street magic,” said the thief, wiggling his fingers at Amelie. “Stay here a moment while we clear the hallway.”
He vanished back out into the sun, and a wave of masked figures squeezed around them. The elders of the thieves’ guild slipped outside and vanished, heading to the Veil’s palace.
“Well,” whispered Rhys after a dozen heartbeats. “If we’re going to do it, I’d say now is the time.”
Ben nodded and poked his head out the doorway.
“Down there!” shouted a voice.
Ben glanced up and saw an armored man standing on the patio, peering down at him and gesturing.
“Damnit,” muttered Ben. He stepped out and saw the wooden pier which Cogdill had jumped onto earlier was missing. The exterior wall of the palace had been smashed, like from a giant fist. Loose chunks of stone and mortar hung from the wall, but it was now ragged where the explosion had torn away pieces of the building. It’d be an easy climb if the mortar didn’t give way underneath his hands and feet.
Cursing to himself, Ben tossed the torch into the canal and set a foot against a blasted section of wall. He swung out, finding a handhold, and starting to scale sideways away from the pier, only the cloudy waters of the canal below him. He tried to ignore the growing shouts from the man above.
“Towaal is going to be buying rounds for ages after this mess,” grumbled Rhys, climbing behind Ben.
“You’re making a generous assumption that we actually pull this off,” responded Ben.
“That bastard Cogdill knew the guards would come running at the sound of the explosion,” snarled Rhys, climbing carefully after Ben. “He knew they’d see us. We’ll be the ones they search for.”
&n
bsp; Ben reached the gaping hole that Cogdill’s street magic had blown open and stepped inside. Just like the other palaces, it was a plain stone hall dotted with unremarkable doors. Storage rooms for goods delivered on the water, guessed Ben.
He frowned. The thieves had already passed out of sight, but Towaal was being held somewhere in the building. It could be down below in a storage room just as easily as a comfortable guest suite upstairs.
When Rhys climbed through the blasted-open hole, Ben gestured at the string of closed doors dotting the hall. “Do you think…”
“No,” responded the rogue. “Wherever they’re keeping her, they’ll have guards posted outside.”
“I think the thieves went that way,” said Ben, pointing to the stairs. “Hopefully they spring a few traps for us. We can use all the distraction we can get before the real fun starts.”
“You don’t feel bad about them triggering a trap?” asked Amelie, coming to stand beside them and brushing rock dust from her hands.
“They are a guild of thieves,” replied Ben sardonically. “Plus, the last time we saw them, they would have executed me if it hadn’t been for Rhys.”
“I’m always there, pulling your ass out of the fire,” declared the rogue.
Ben grunted. Prem and O’ecca joined them, and he asked, “Ready to make some noise?”
O’ecca spun her naginata. “Want me to lead the way?”
“Stay behind me,” advised Prem. “It’s not the soldiers we need to worry about. When you see lightning coming… just, stay behind me.”
O’ecca’s lips pressed into a pout, and Ben shook his head. Amelie winked at him, a nervous smile on her face.
Sighing, Ben started off, heading toward the stairwell the thieves had taken and drawing his sword. It would be next to useless against any mages they faced, but it gave him a great deal of comfort to hold the sharp steel. He could at least try to do something instead of simply standing there and hoping it was over before he was roasted like a Newday chicken.
More explosions shattered the still air, echoing down the stone hall.
“Cogdill wasn’t joking,” said Rhys. “They were prepared.”
“I don’t feel any significant manipulation of energy yet,” confirmed Amelie, walking ahead of them, activating wards, and gesturing them past the barriers. “That was the thieves, not the mages. They’ll know we’re here, though. I don’t have time to disable the wards.”
“No matter what we did, they would know we’re here,” assured Ben. After another quick succession of blasts, he added, “How could they miss it?”
They scampered up a flight of stairs and stepped out into a huge kitchen. Two scullions lay on the floor, fresh blood leaking from wounds in their throats. Thirteen, fourteen summers, if they had seen that.
“That’s unfortunate,” said Ben. “If I see those thieves again—”
“Come on,” said Rhys, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“We knew there’d be collateral damage,” said Ben, unable to tear his gaze away from the bodies. “I thought it would be mages, the Sanctuary’s soldiers…”
“A lot worse will happen if we do nothing,” suggested Amelie.
Closing his eyes, Ben gathered himself and then started moving again. He whispered back to Amelie, “I’m sure the Veil and Avril use the same rationalization for what they do.”
She didn’t respond.
Ben peeked into one door and saw a well-appointed dining room. A polished mahogany table, crystal stemware, silver utensils, and all of the trappings he’d expect to find in such a place. No people, though. He led the group through the dining room and several other entertaining spaces.
They found one broad room which looked promising. It was filled with notebooks, scraps of paper, and a huge board dotted with notes that had been pinned to it. Three bodies of Sanctuary soldiers littered the floor.
“They’re looking for signs of Avril,” said Rhys after a quick glance at the board.
“And?” asked Ben.
“They haven’t found her,” replied Rhys, “hopefully because she’s right here in Fabrizo.”
Ben grunted.
They stumbled across several frightened staff members but left them alone after confirming they were not a mage pretending to be less than they were. They found dozens more bodies. A few appeared to be thieves who’d stormed the front of the building, but most were left by the thieves.
In several locations, the walls and floors were blackened by spent munitions, but they could hear that the active engagement was outside or on the floors above them. The main floor was for entertaining, not storing valuables. The weapons Cogdill’s men used left ugly smears of crushed bodies, and Ben’s discomfort with using the thieves in his plan grew as they went.
“If we see them again, we can settle it,” advised Rhys.
Ben grunted and stepped over another pulped pile of meat and bone. He passed an open stairwell but led them toward the rear of the building instead.
“Towaal should be upstairs somewhere,” reminded the rogue. “She’s going to be held in a room, not a kitchen.”
“The fastest way to find her will be to find a guard,” replied Ben. “When we came in, we saw some of them looking down at us, remember? They have to be around here somewhere.”
They had no luck, only finding terrified staff who couldn’t answer their questions, until they entered a huge ballroom which spanned the back of the palace. It had tall windows, rising two stories along the back wall, letting in the morning sun and opening onto a patio. Several Sanctuary soldiers were standing outside, looking down and shouting to someone below.
“I saw them enter there!” cried a man. “You must have passed them.”
There was a muffled response.
Then, the man yelled down, “How would I know who they are? Probably assassins. Come back and find them. They’re inside the palace somewhere.”
Ben walked quietly across the polished floor and stepped out into the sunlight. “Excuse me.”
“What?” cried the guard, spinning around.
Ben smashed his fist into the man’s face, sending him reeling back and flipping him over the stone railing. A short scream and loud splash followed.
Prem stepped up and sliced neat lines across the necks of two other guards, and Rhys buried a long knife in the back of the fourth before he could turn. Ben frowned, looking between the three dead bodies.
“You didn’t have to kill them all,” he complained. “We needed one to tell us where Towaal is.”
“You killed yours!” protested Prem.
“No, I didn’t,” retorted Ben. “I only punched him, and he fell in the water. I’m sure he’ll be fine, as long as he can swim.”
He glanced over the balustrade and didn’t see a sign of the man.
“You did knock him over the railing, Ben,” said Amelie. “And he was wearing pretty heavy armor. I’m not sure he could swim in—"
“There!” yelled a voice from below.
Ben looked at the blasted door they’d entered and saw a guard poking his head out.
“Come up here!” called Ben. “We need to ask you a question.”
“What?” responded the guard, staring at Ben, confused.
“We need to ask you a question,” repeated Ben.
“I’ll ask the questions, assassin!” barked the guard. The man was leaning out of the open doorway, shaking his fist at Ben.
“I’ve got one,” said O’ecca from within the ballroom.
Ben turned and rushed inside, the guard below yelling for him to come back.
O’ecca was standing behind a man, the shaft of her naginata wrapped around him and pressing against his throat. He was struggling against her, but the small girl tightened her grip, and he went still.
“Where is Lady Towaal?” asked Ben.
O’ecca loosened her grasp so the man could speak, but instead of answering, he spit at Ben.
“We don�
��t have time for this,” growled Rhys. He strode forward and placed one hand on the man’s face, spreading his left eyelids wide open. The rogue’s other hand rose, the razor-sharp tip of a long knife hovering a finger away from the soldier’s eye.
The man started thrashing violently. O’ecca swept a foot around his leg, spilling him onto the floor. Rhys pounced on him, slamming a hand down on his head and bringing the knife in front of the man’s eye again.
“Upstairs!” cried the guard. “Third floor, third… or fourth room on the right, I think. There are guards out front! You won’t get in.”
“Rhys,” said Ben quietly.
The rogue glanced up.
“Get Towaal out of here safely.” He turned to Prem and O’ecca. “You go with him.”
“We’re not leaving you here,” announced O’ecca.
“You have no protection for what’s about to happen, O’ecca,” declared Ben. “Go with Rhys, and get Towaal away safely. Prem, you too. If we fail, someone has to tell your father and Lloyd.”
“I can—”
“You’re the only other one who can reach them,” reminded Ben. “Maybe with the army, Adrick and Lloyd can figure out another way.”
“Are you sure about this, Ben?” asked the rogue. “The Veil has the strength to slap you and Amelie around like children.”
“No,” answered Ben. “I’m not sure, but we don’t have time to think about it. Someone has to face the Veils with Amelie, and someone has to get Towaal. We knew we might have to split up.”
Rhys grunted. Then, without hesitation, he plunged his long knife down into the guard’s eye.
Ben winced.
“Sorry,” muttered the rogue. He stood after wiping the bloody blade on the dead man’s tabard. “I know we are trying not to kill too many people, but…”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Ben. “We don’t have anyone to watch him.”
Rhys shrugged, and Ben looked away.
“We need to go,” said the rogue to O’ecca and Prem.
O’ecca swept Amelie up in a quick hug. “It’s been fun.”
“If you say so,” mumbled Amelie.
“Go now, before we lose our chance,” instructed Ben.
