Once Called Thief

by Lexel J Green

Hannar-Ghan stood ready, face grim, lance aimed at the gate.

  Lor-Qui sat cross-legged on the floor, scribbling into his notebook, seemingly oblivious to everything around him.

  Junn-Kri looked distinctly nervous, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, unable to stand still.

  “You know the drill by now,” Roon-Kotke announced, as he put on his helmet and fastened the neck strap. “We go in, we pinch every oconic relic we can find, then we get out. Nice and simple. No heroics. And, as our beloved Captain has recently reminded me, no blowing stuff up!”

  Technician Sandy placed a small hourglass on the lid of the capacitor, the bottom ampoule filled with blood red sand.

  Ember tightened the straps of his valise, tapped the hilt of the sword hanging at his hip and clutched his bow tightly.

  Here we go again.

  “Ready lances,” Roon-Kotke barked. He glanced over at Ember. “And barbarian museum pieces if you've got ‘em.”

  Junn-Kri pulled out the throwing knife he’d found back in gate eighteen. He looked at Ember, smiled and waggled the blade. Ember shook his head and motioned for him to put it away.

  The Caster-Corporal nodded at the two technicians. Sandy stepped forward, pulled the lever on the oconic capacitor and uttered the words that activated the gate binding. The capacitor duly buzzed and the portal expanded to fill the blackiron archway. An inky darkness lay beyond.

  “Another hole,” Hannar-Ghan moaned. “What a surprise.”

  Technician Fuzz upended the small hourglass and the red sand began to fall.

  “Lamps on,” Roon-Kotke ordered. “Sands are running. Let's move out. Quickly and quietly does it.”

  Junn-Kri twisted open the longlamp clipped to his belt. Hannar-Ghan and Lor-Qui followed suit as Ember pulled out his own lamp. He slid the curved, blackiron cover open. It jammed halfway.

  Roon-Kotke gestured towards the gate. “Do you want to go first, Cobb?”

  Ember peered into the black, pulling at the snagged cover plate on his longlamp. It wouldn’t budge. “Uh, maybe next time. After you.”

  “I'll go," said Hannar-Ghan, stepping through first. Junn-Kri trotted through after him, followed by Lor-Qui and Roon-Kotke. Ember shivered as he stepped through the portal last, crossing an unknown distance in the blink of an eye. It was cold on the other side, large flagstones illuminated by the light streaming in from the Terminus. Behind him, Fuzz wheeled the smaller capacitor through, dumped it and retreated. Ember saw the tech give them a wave before the gateway popped, his view of the Terminus bubbling away like water on a hot plate.

  “I don’t think we’re underground this time.” Junn-Kri’s voice.

  Ember fiddled with his lamp, jiggling the stuck cover until it finally slid all the way open. Around him, four other lights bobbed in the darkness. Without the cold oconic glare of the lamp, he wouldn’t be able to see his hand in front of his face. Not that he could see much with it. Where were they? He angled his lamp down and swung it around, illuminating the large, smooth flagstones. There was a definite chill in the air, a noticeable breeze prickling his skin. He heard a faint swishing sound too, like the wind in the trees.

  “I see stars,” said Roon-Kotke, somewhere ahead.

  Ember looked up. The darkness above him was freckled with light.

  “We're outside,” said Lor-Qui matter-of-factly. “But where?”

  “Careful,” called Hannar-Ghan ahead of Ember in the dark. “There's an edge here. No telling how far down. We must be on some sort of raised walkway. A battlement, maybe.”

  “Edge over here too,” said Junn. “I’ve got a broken wall. About waist-high. Looks like a long drop. Can’t see the bottom…”

  “Step lightly,” Roon-Kotke warned. “We're a long, long way from the Empire. We left in daylight and it's night here. Wherever here is.” The Corporal held up his lamp so the squad could see him. “Thoughts, casters?”

  “We should move,” said Junn-Kri.

  “We should hold,” suggested Ember. “Wait for daylight. We have no idea where we are or what we’re standing on. There could be anything out there in the dark. We wouldn't see an enemy until they were right on top of us.”

  “I don’t fancy fighting in the dark,” said Junn.

  “Just what I was thinking.” Roon-Kotke frowned in the longlamp light, weighing up the two options. “I agree with Cobb. We stay here for now. Sit tight ‘til morning. See where we are then.”

  “Or we could go back,” said Hannar-Ghan, walking to stand by the Corporal. The combination of the longlamp light and the snake tattoo around his eye made the bald Sergeant look slightly terrifying. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

  “We’re staying,” said Roon-Kotke firmly. “I’m not coming back from another mission empty-handed. We need a success here. Lor, crack open a Sanctuary and let's hold position. I'll take the first watch and we’ll wait for the sunrise.”

  ***

  Ember woke to a warming breeze and bright sunshine. He’d slept on a thin bedroll, his blue legion jacket rolled up as a pillow. Yet his back felt stiff as a board, his right arm blazed with pain at the elbow joint, and his neck ached as if somebody had been standing on it all night. Each malady a sobering reminder that he wasn’t a young man any more and shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

  Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Ember lay on his back, waiting for his aches to ebb, staring up at a sapphire sky. It was a rare moment of blank and blissful calm. Three or four deep breaths at best, before the agonising memories of that night in the Watcher’s Eye besieged his mind anew. They always returned. Mordume’s sneering smile; his wife’s eyes widening in horror as she fell; his own realisation that he was powerless to save her. Each vibrant remembrance cut a stinging slash across his soul. But as painful as the memories were, they kept Aarhyn bright in his mind. They helped him to remember the shape of her face, her chocolate-coloured hair, the blue-grey eyes he’d stared into so many times.

  He didn’t want to forget.

  “Hey, you’re awake.” Junn-Kri’s face loomed over him. “We let you sleep in.”

  He could hear the other casters moving about around him.

  “Where are we?” Ember croaked.

  “On a bridge,” said Junn. “The biggest damn bridge I’ve ever seen.”

  For once, the kid wasn’t exaggerating. As Ember painfully sat up, he caught a glimpse of a paved, arrow-straight roadway stretching off into the heat-hazed distance. It resembled a castle battlement — a waist-high wall on each side built with a mix of large sandy stones and darker bricks. If he had to guess, it looked two wagons wide, the width of an Imperial thoroughfare, but with a scope beyond anything Ember had ever seen.

  Struggling to his feet, Ember wandered to the right-hand side of the roadway. He peered cautiously over the edge, looking down on a vast wall of sandstone blocks, improbably smooth and hundreds of paces high, no archways or gaps, but angled at the bottom like an old castle. At ground level, bare earth gave way to patchy scrub that was quickly swallowed by a thick forest stretching to the horizon. Ember marvelled at the view. Not a bridge then. It didn’t seem to ‘bridge’ anything. He crossed the roadway to join Roon-Kotke on the opposite side. The view was the same, although the edge of the forest was not so distant.

  “I wasn’t quite expecting this,” said Ember. He leant on the old wall, staring out across the treetops. It was an impressive sight, a canopy of mottled greens, some dark like wet moss, others light and bright like the first shoots of spring.

  “Nor I.” Roon-Kotke let out a long breath. “Never seen anything quite like it.”

  Junn-Kri joined them at the wall, taking up a position next to Ember. “Even we couldn’t blow this thing up,” the boy joked.

  “Where do you think we are?” Roon-Kotke asked.

  “No idea,” Ember replied. “I doubt we’re in the Empire any more. I’ve travelled from one end of it to the other and this doesn’t look like any place I’ve ever served. Somewhere south judg
ing by the heat.” He scanned the sky for clouds, but couldn’t see any. “And I suspect that it’s only going to get hotter.”

  “Hey Corporal,” said Junn-Kri. “Where do you think this road goes?”

  Roon-Kotke stood up straight, picked up the valise at his feet and slung it over his shoulder. “Good question. Let’s find out, shall we?”

  ***

  “Hells,” groaned Roon-Kotke. “I don’t think this road goes anywhere.”

  They’d walked for an hour. Maybe two. Their collective pace slowing as the sun rose higher into that clear sapphire sky. Birds cawed, crickets chirruped, all too infrequent breezes blew fine sand across the roadway. Nothing but scrubland and dense forest to the left. Same to the right. The road stretching before them remained unendingly and magnificently straight, no end to it in sight.

  Ember felt his strength fading. The squad’s march along the improbable roadway would have been hard enough in the heat without the armoured breastplates and woollen tunics they wore, not to mention the fully-stacked oconic lances they carried. As the sun hauled itself up to its highest point, he was thankful for the canteen he carried on his belt. He stopped to take another swig of lukewarm water, cursing the fact that the metal flask was already half empty.

  “Maybe we should head back,” the Caster-Corporal said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Han’s right. There’s obviously nothing out here.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Ember squinted into the distance. “This road must go somewhere. Otherwise why put an oconic gate out here? Why build a bridge that doesn’t cross anything? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

  “Did you hear that?” said Junn, leaning over the edge of the waist-high wall. “Sounded like…”

  “Come on, kid,” snapped Hannar-Ghan, striding past him. “It’s nothing. Keep up.”

  “Maybe it’s not a bridge at all,” said Roon-Kotke up ahead. “What if it’s actually a wall? The last King of Sauzza once built a great wall to protect his lands from the Bayne. Although it was nowhere near as grand as this.”

  Lor-Qui ran his hand along the old stone as he walked. “If it’s a border wall designed to keep invaders out, then it’s an extraordinary feat of engineering. It must go on for miles. Look at it! Perfectly straight and level. Fantastic. Utterly fantastic… I’ll wager the Kajjon built it and…” Lor-Qui suddenly stopped dead. “We might be in Old Kajjon itself!”

  “Hey,” called Junn from behind them. “I really heard something…”

  “Can’t be Kajjon,” said Roon-Kotke, shaking his head. “Look around. This place isn’t grand enough. Old Kajjon is supposed to be all towers of fire and light. This place looks like the arse-end of nowhere.”

  Hannar-Ghan swung his lance around to rest it on his shoulder. “Exactly why we should turn right around and head back. Otherwise…” The big caster glanced back the way they’d come. “We won’t make it back to the gate before nightfall. I suggest that we…”

  “No,” snapped Lor-Qui. “We can’t go back.” The combat-tech stood in front of them, hands clasped together. “Listen,” he pleaded. “Please. This place could actually be the ancestral home of the Kajjon.”

  “Now, come on Lor…”

  “No. Hear me out. We've come here from a Kajjon terminus, through a Kajjon gate and we’re standing on a perfectly straight roadway built on top of a giant wall, a feat of engineering beyond any clan in the Empire. And if this is Old Kajjon… Think of the secrets it might hold. The discoveries we might make. We must keep going. We must. Just think, we might be the first people to walk this road in hundreds of years.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Roon-Kotke. “If these are the Old Lands, then where are the cities? Where are the towns and villages? Why this bridge to nowhere?”

  “Maybe they built it so they could travel faster, without being hampered by the changing landscape.”

  “Doesn't that seem a little excessive?”

  “Hey…” Junn called.

  “This is the Kajjon we're talking about,” said Lor. “Everything they did was excessive. The Hourglass is a vertical city, hundreds of feet high; the Hierin Bridge is an arc of solid air and light; they built fortresses underwater; cities that flew amongst the clouds; bred creatures as weapons... Hells, if reports are true, the Old Lands are surrounded by a giant wall designed to keep the rest of the world out.”

  “Nobody can fly, Lor,” said Ember. “There are no flying bindings. If there were, why would the Kajjon need to build roads like this?”

  “I’m sure they had a good reason.”

  “Did you hear that?” said Junn, looking over the wall again. “Seriously, Corporal. I heard something. Come. Listen for yourself.”

  Roon-Kotke sighed and crossed over to the right-hand side of the bridge. “Heard what, Junn?”

  Ember followed suit. He put his hands flat on the stone wall and peered down towards the forest. It didn’t look any different. Didn’t sound any different. Nothing but trees, trees and more trees. Far as the eye could see. Short shrubby ones, vase-shaped ones, spindly-looking palms jostling for space with broad canopied trees wide as houses, tall as Su-Zo’s four-storey home back in Ocos. If there was something down there beyond the ragged forest edge, it was of a mind to stay hid.

  “I don’t know,” said Junn, staring into the trees. “Sounded like…”

  Then Ember heard it. A growling. Faint and low.

  “There! Do you hear it now?”

  Roon-Kotke nodded.

  “That can’t be good can it, sir?”

  “Sounds big,” said Ember. “Has to be if we can hear it this far away.”

  “Or there’s a lot of them,” Hannar-Ghan said, joining them. “At least we’re safe up here.”

  Ember nodded. “Seems so. Maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong. Maybe this roadway is built up high because it’s not safe to travel on the ground.”

  “That certainly makes sense,” said Lor-Qui. “But it begs the question: what’s down there?”

  “What do we do, chief?”

  Roon-Kotke frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe Han’s right. We could be walking for hours and we might not even discover an end to this road. Or bridge. Or whatever it is.”

  “Corporal,” said Lor-Qui. “If we could just…”

  “There ain’t nothing here, Lor.” Hannar-Ghan stepped in. “Maybe there was once. Maybe this was Old Kajjon. But long ago. This place is abandoned. It’s wild.”

  “Sir, I must protest! I know I’m right about this. I believe we—”

  “Hey look!” Junn-Kri jogged ahead of them towards what looked like a big piece of wood, leaning up against the side of the roadway.

  “What is it?” yelled Roon-Kotke.

  Ahead of them, Junn-Kri bent down and struggled to lift up the object.

  “It’s a wheel,” the kid called back.

  Ember could see it as the rest of them caught up. A wooden cart wheel, twelve-spoked, sections of its iron tire bent and twisted. But it was still intact.

  “Where did that come from?” wondered Roon-Kotke out loud.

  “Evidence that someone is here. Or was here… I say we press on,” argued Ember. Han shot him an angry look. The big caster still didn’t like it that Roon-Kotke let him speak his mind. Or that the Corporal listened to him. “At least for while longer,” he added. “We’ve come this far. We’ve still got enough light. Because Lor’s right… What if this place is Old Kajjon? What if the Great Weapon lies at the end of this road? The very thing we seek? We could be so close and not even know it. You wouldn’t want to go back empty-handed, would you?”

  Roon-Kotke rubbed his chin. “You make a good point.”

  “Based on a busted wheel? Come on, chief…” Hannar-Ghan complained. “That could have been lying here for years!”

  “It’s your call,” prompted Ember. “You’re in command.”

  “Look!” Lor-Qui pointed into the distant haze, where the endless road met the sapphire sky. “There's something up ahead. H
ard to make out. A shadow on the horizon. Might be a...”

  Ember looked. They all did. Hands cupped over their eyes to shield them from the sun, trying to discern some recognisable shape from a blurry-edged hump of grey.

  “A cloud?” said Hannar-Ghan.

  “A mountain?” Junn suggested.

  “A castle?” said Ember, thinking he could make out straight edges. “It could be a castle.”

  “And it could be a cloud,” Hannar-Ghan said again.

  “Yes,” said Roon-Kotke, taking a gulp from his canteen. “But if it’s a castle, that suddenly makes my decision a whole lot easier.”

  10. YOU CAN’T SAVE ME

  THERE WERE ONLY TWO things anyone needed to know about Ash House.

  The first was that the grim-looking building was a debtor's prison on the north bank of the Eene, an old legion barracks reinvented as a lockup for bankrupts, swindlers and fraudsters. You couldn’t miss it — high stone walls, huge metal gates, penniless sods peering out through its small barred windows, watching the world go by with sad, black-rimmed eyes.

  The second thing was that Ash House was run for profit by a cheating, no-good, low-down weasel of a warden who didn't have a compassionate bone in his body. A man called Orin Fowley. Mister Fowley to you and I. A Mulai by birth, navy blue/white armband proclaiming his allegiance to the Kelsen clan.

  Stone hated everything about him. The way he combed his hair (with a centre parting and entirely too much wax); the tone of his voice (throaty and pompously smug); and his vast belly (Stone feared the waddling chunker might have eaten the last child who’d crossed him.)

  Every time Stone visited Ash House, he wished that he was bigger and stronger; that he could brawl like the older boys in the Rook’s employ. For he dreamed of beating the warden to a bloody pulp, smashing his nose, punching out his teeth, breaking his fingers, before freeing his mother to the cheers of the other inmates.

  “The man is a crook,” Stone said, his daydream fading. “A big, fat, lying, cheating crook.”

  He sat opposite his mother, in a room set aside for visitors. A small space with a corrugated iron roof, bare walls white-plastered and unpainted, barely room enough for the five wooden tables and ten chairs somehow crammed into it. The inmates called it the Shed.