The Raike Box Set

by Jackson Lear

  What I had failed to spot was a kid climbing along the rooftops across the street. He whistled, waving his hand through the air and pointing straight at me. A spy. Every company in the area would have noticed all these watchmen marching past their windows. They would want to know what was going on. This kid was no older than Qin and just as problematic. As soon as I turned he squinted at me. I was unknown to him. An intruder. He bellowed at the top of his lungs and pointed at me. “Thief!”

  The watchman on the roof looked over, saw me, and recoiled in surprise.

  “Thief!” shouted the kid, now at the edge of the building and narrowing in on me. That little shit. All around me were uneven rooftops and steep drops, but it was a hell of a lot safer crossing those than giving a dozen soldiers and watchmen a clear shot at me through the streets.

  Castor’s voice roared behind me. “ARREST HIM!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I ran out of roof top, forcing me to the ground. I had the misfortune of being the only one running from the city watch, and those who run from the city watch have enough of a guilty conscience to warrant a pursuit. Maybe even a quick death due to some over-zealous asshole finally on the job that he’s always dreamed of. And who could blame him? I literally was the scum they hunted down and executed, scum number one of that day thanks to running off with Castor’s daughter.

  Everyone in the street stopped, turned, looking for the odd man out. Some locked eyes on me in an instant. Those who did looked away just as quickly, their attention drawn to the side of the road, to their wares, to whatever they could find so that I wouldn’t be forced to kill them to silence a witness.

  I hurried forward, keeping an ear out for anyone following me. I ran past some youngsters sweeping the ground, old enough to be put to work while young enough to not know that they shouldn’t be staring at a stranger who was priming himself for a fight to the death. Their mother ran to the doorway, yanked her youngest inside and slapped her on the back of the head, scolding her. The kid’s elder brother, probably all of seven years in age, hurried inside and was slapped as well for not getting to safety the moment they heard the whistle.

  They shouted out after me. Lots of, “Stop him!” to any spectator I ran past. With any luck the locals thought I was Vanguard and that repercussions would come their way if they interfered with my escape. Or it was simply because they barely had enough time to figure out what was going on.

  I didn’t dare glance over my shoulder. I just ran, taking the first corner I could find, then the next. The waft of the dye house was strong along certain streets, the wind carrying the stench towards me. I knew the area. Probably not as well as those chasing me but I knew it well enough.

  My lungs turned to fire. I could hear my own voice as I gasped and wheezed. It was like I was some bizarre creature calling out in agony. My sides dug into me. If I had looked down I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a thick rope lassoed around my waist. My joints started to ache. I was moving slowly, too slow for what was chasing me. No matter how hard I tried I simply couldn’t run faster.

  “Stop him!”

  Around another corner I went.

  “Stop!”

  Odd. It was the same voice from before. The chorus of voices had either fallen away, or they were just as out of breath as I was, all except for that runner.

  Above me, someone at a Vanguard watch point registered my intrusion. I definitely wasn’t someone he recognized. He kept his weapons to himself though, watching the spectacle unfold as I ran through one street after the next.

  The dye house was nearby. I stumbled, catching my toes on the uneven ground beneath me. I fell forward, comically, like someone was holding me up by a set of ropes and teasing me with my descent. Maybe the gods of mischief were giving me a chance to recover from the fall. Forward I went, teetering on regaining my balance until the tile I wanted was an inch lower than I needed. I flopped onto the ground, somersaulted over myself and came to a rest with my face an inch from a brick staircase. The palms of my hand stabbed me with pins and needles.

  Finally, I had a chance to look behind me. I couldn’t see the watchmen but I could hear them. I checked my hands. Flecked with grit, blood, and gravel. Pressing them together was a mistake, the stab turning the pins and needles into a row of spears but I had to make sure I hadn’t broken anything. I drew in a nauseating breath, figured out which way the dye house was, and headed away from Vanguard territory as quickly as I could.

  After what must’ve been an hour I reached the edge of the city. There weren’t any walls along this stretch. They would be built, one day, but this side of town was so poverty stricken that there just wasn’t any money in defending these people to a high degree.

  “Who are you?”

  I turned, looked over a man my own age with an ax slung over his shoulder. The tone in his voice and the look in his eye suggested that I shouldn’t fight this man if I cherished my life.

  “Yeah, you. Who are you?”

  “Obi.” I turned and walked away, keeping an eye out as the axman debated what he should do about me. Maybe he was an army reservist, maybe he was just a concerned resident who didn’t like intruders in his part of town. Either way, I was miles from where I wanted to be and I wasn’t in the mood to exchange life stories.

  The guy whistled after me. “What did you steal?”

  Yep, I wasn’t going to stick around. He started calling to his kids, barking orders for them to check on their neighbors and see if anyone had been robbed.

  I circled Erast as best I could, ducking away from farm shacks and sticking to the mud roads as much as possible, though no road carried me for long. Most of the fields were walled off with rocks stacked on top of each other or fences made from weaving twigs together. In the overcast sunlight I saw my first live sheep that day. I had seen them hanging in the markets, or their skin lining someone’s bed. A boy about eight years old was herding a dozen of them through a fence with a stick.

  I pressed on, stopping when I had to pop the blisters which had formed on my Achilles, and found my way to the start of the city walls again. In the distance stood a walled compound along the main road. Colored banners hung from one of the walls. Banners with a black bear rearing upward.

  A glob of buildings stood near the compound, manned by Erast workers and not the army. They watched the main road and no doubt collected taxes. I approached, pausing whenever necessary to hide from a wayward worker, and hustling whenever I saw an opportunity. I scaled the side of a two story building and laid myself down on the sloping roof. The tiles had started to bake, though the cloud cover kept them from bursting into flames. Very rarely am I grateful for the weather but I was at least relieved that Syuss wasn’t renowned for its screaming heat. For the first time in my life I got to see inside one of the wealthiest homes in the province.

  As far as compounds went, the Kasera estate was on the small side. The largest building, the villa, stood in the shape of a horseshoe. The two sides were single story, the central section was two. Each roof was an A frame covered in gray slate. It was a gentle enough slope to walk on but I was willing to bet that the slate wouldn’t hold a man’s body weight for long. If anyone tried to sneak into a bedroom, they’d drop through. Maybe not to the floor below but enough to impede their movement. And they’d have cut their legs to shreds. The shards of slate would scatter off the roof and smash on the tiled floor surrounding the villa. The dogs would alert everyone nearby and you’d be stuck there, trying to climb back down, breaking more tiles, shredding more of your leg.

  Smaller buildings were dotted nearby. Some were villas, some weren’t. Some were for staff, some were for troops. It took me a while to figure out that some of the buildings were stables, as it never occurred to me until then that rich families kept their horses indoors.

  On any other day there was nothing remarkable about the area. It was wealthy, certainly, but there were larger properties. It had the feeling of ‘beginner wealth’. Word had it, Kasera s
enior came from nothing. His version of nothing, not mine. A born citizen. I’m still a little foggy on the dates and years since much of what senior is alleged to have done never officially happened. I guess he and I have that in common. I’d heard enough of his smuggling past to know that he usually had a ‘let’s break some legs to make this happen’ attitude that he was later trying to sweep under the rug. Word around my kind of people travels fast, usually through intermediaries like whores or child spies.

  Senior made his money back when Lessius was emperor. Lessius blockaded Kardel, trying to starve them out and cripple their vaults. All silk and spices exported from the area were illegal. Along came Kasera senior and plenty of others, ready to sneak across the land and buy it all for dirt cheap, set up a trade route, and offer it to the wealthy elite in Ispar. All they had to do was claim that their silk and spices had been in Ispar since before the blockade. Since no one could prove otherwise it was all deemed legal. Senior made a fortune. The blockade was eventually seen as a failure and the general consensus is that Emperor Lessius would’ve had more luck getting a sixteen year old to stop whacking off than to dissuade money-driven folks from crossing the border and capitalizing on the largest proverbial goldmine in the known world.

  The blockade lasted for five years. Senior made enough, bought the villa I was now staring at, moved to Ispar to establish himself as a gentleman of industry, and drifted out of public knowledge for some time. Then another Kasera popped up: a younger one who rose quickly through the ranks in the army.

  As I said, on any other day there would have been nothing remarkable about the compound. I expected to see a couple of soldiers on the front gate and maybe an aide or two inside. This was more of a family area than the center of Erast’s military command.

  What I saw was three villas on full military lockdown. A hundred spearmen, cavalry in pairs patrolling the perimeter and, curiously, a civilian litter. It was plonked next to the front door of the main residence. I couldn’t see the passengers but I assumed they were inside the building somewhere.

  A hundred fucking spearmen. Perhaps Kasera was paranoid about one of his kids being abducted by the Eyeless Ghost. Someone had gone after Castor’s, so Kasera’s family was at equal risk of being targeted. Either way, something had spooked him into whipping everyone he knew into protection detail.

  I pressed myself against the roof as the now more familiar clop clop clop of horseshoes returned. The general was back with his eight soldiers hustling after him. With any luck, Greaser was still following the woman and hadn’t been spotted.

  As Kasera rode into his grounds, two men appeared at a second floor window. One was a man in his seventies, the other half his age. I couldn’t get more than that from this distance but curiosity was driving me now. Kasera had taken Día’s note. He stood as still as a rock when he read it. He claimed to have never seen something like this before. It was time to call his bluff.

  There was no way I was getting into that compound. Not in broad daylight. And since I valued my life, probably not in broad moonlight either.

  All I wanted now was a comfortable bed. Instead, I was on a rooftop looking over General Kasera’s compound, convinced that his guest of honor knew more about Día’s whereabouts than Kasera did, and I was about to try something stupid.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I charged one simple word: listen. As I concentrated the sides of my brain seemed to pinch together, pushing me forward. Though I lay immobile on the rooftop, oblivious to anyone even if they climbed up behind me and spoke to me, I could sense myself crawling through the air to the open window in Kasera’s home.

  At first it was garbled mumbling. My hearing was directed to whatever I looked. I caught the whinny of the general’s horse before shifting to the room upstairs. I had created a tunnel in thin air, rendering me deaf to everything else but I was able to listen to a conversation happening two hundred yards away.

  Kasera strode into the room, his helmet and armor no longer worn. An aged gentleman rose and waved to two other men in the room.

  “Luqa. You remember–”

  “I remember, all right,” growled Kasera.

  “My Protector,” said the gentleman in his seventies. He clasped the general’s hand in his own, forcing a pleasantry that was strictly one sided. “It has been too long. I trust your journey from Ispar was pleasant enough.”

  “Far from it, though seeing you again makes me wish I was back there.”

  Kasera’s father, Quintus, waved quickly to the table in the center of the room. “I was just offering our guests some wine.”

  “And I was just accepting,” said the old man. Erast accent but somewhat muddled. He took a cup, the younger one did the same. It was an unusual group. Two men were getting on in age, two were still fairly spry. I couldn’t tell what the quiet young one was up to. He seemed to be the silent type, there to do his master’s bidding whenever the situation deemed it necessary.

  Quintus forced a cup of wine into his son’s hand. “They came as fast as they could.”

  “How long have you been in Erast?” asked Kasera.

  “Since the new moon,” said the older one. “I had hoped to pay my respects to you before now but I have been unforeseeably busy, I’m afraid.”

  “I forgive you. Why are you here?”

  “I can not say.”

  Disgruntled silence followed, broken a moment later by Kasera saying, “There was a kidnapping during the night. The captain of the city watch’s eldest daughter was taken. This note was left behind.” Kasera handed it to the older one, the older one handed it to the younger one, the younger one went to the window to hold it up against the light.

  “Curious,” said the young one. Erast accent. Also muddled.

  “How so?”

  “This was written for someone else.”

  “The girl from the orphanage?”

  The gentleman held his tongue. The older one sipped his wine.

  “Do you have any idea the kind of shit storm you’ve unleashed because of this?” asked Kasera.

  The old one held a gentle smile in his voice. “I assure you, My Protector, my people did not take anyone belonging to the captain of city watch. This is the work of someone else.”

  “Using your methods.”

  “Unlikely. Once bound to our cause, our members leave only through death. We are all accounted for.”

  “Then someone has been spying on you.”

  “It’s possible. I daresay this is the same note used for both girls. The first one, the orphan, is of no concern anymore.”

  “And what of Castor’s daughter?”

  The gentleman lingered in silence. He had been exposed, that much was certain. The tone in his voice shifted from pleasantly keeping the peace to something darker. Distrusting, even. “I take it you would like us to find this girl?”

  “I would. And quickly.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Thank you for your hospitality, My Protector.”

  “You said the orphan is of no concern anymore,” said Kasera, stepping across to block the doorway. “Is she still alive?”

  “These things are complicated at the best of times, as you know.”

  “The last time we met you made assurances that fell through. You’re a brave man for coming back.”

  The pleasantry in the gentleman’s voice returned. “I admit it was … unexpected.”

  “And I’ve been left picking up the pieces ever since.”

  “Stop,” called the younger one. “Someone’s listening to us.”

  My vision was from two hundred yards away but even so, I knew I had been spotted the moment he pointed in my direction.

  I was too tired to react in time. With a quick word under the young one’s breath I was catapulted forward, hurtled over Kasera’s wall and into his compound, landing face-down.

  By the time I sat up I had two spears an inch from my throat.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I had about the time it take
s to draw in a single breath to charge a word – Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! – anything that would slow my landing before I hit the ground in front of General Kasera’s villa. Still, that ordeal hurt worse than what happens after you flick a donkey in the balls.

  The right side of my face stung from the impact, a grazing rash cut deep into my skin. My right arm was numb. I had grit in both eyes and some more tickling the inside of my nose. I remember somersaulting over and at least three thumps against my face before I came to a stop.

  I vaguely remember a, “Seize him!” then some enterprising little shit punched me in my gut, winding me. If a couple of my ribs weren’t already broken, they were now.

  “Blindfold! Get a fucking blindfold on him!”

  As the world swirled around me, the two spearmen seemed to sway at such an angle that they should’ve fallen over. The whole villa, in fact, now appeared as though it had been built on a slope with unseen slaves trying to drag it to the top of a mountain with thick lengths of rope. They seemed successful for a few paces, then the villa would slip back. Forward and back, up and down this hill which, admittedly, was perfectly flat. It was not the first time I’d had a concussion.

  Thunderous hooves spun me again. Spears jangled through the air as their owners sprinted my way. A gray rag was fixed around my eyes. The dull ends of two spears rested on my shoulders, there as a reminder that if I didn’t behave myself then the dull ends would quickly become the pointy ends. They stuffed a gag into my mouth and kept me sitting on the grass, right when I wanted to barf.

  A voice I had been eavesdropping on for the last couple of minutes spoke from behind me. I guessed the asshole who had taken Día didn’t trust the blindfold all that much and opted to stay out of my sight completely. “Who are you?”