Vengeance of Hope

by P J Berman

  All this was running through Ezrina’s mind as she approached the entrance to the dungeons and prison guards’ quarters against the backdrop of a lurid pink sunset, dressed as a Hentani priestess; much more colourful attire than was worn by the men.

  She had dispensed with her red body paint and wore a flowing light green dress, which had a high neckline and reached down to her ankles; much less revealing than the short skirts she was used to. Only her arms were bare. On her head, she wore a thin, shimmering green skullcap, held in place with two tassels that were tied together under her chin. Four chains of tiny, shining emerald beads hung down in pairs over the centre of her forehead, reaching around her temples and attaching back to the skullcap just above her ears, perfectly framing her eyes. Long, beautiful tails of green fabric hung down from the skull cap and flowed down her back.

  ‘I come to bless the prayers of the imprisoned and to speak with Captain Ankylodin, password – block,’ she told the guard, as she walked off the city street and up the four stone steps towards the door to the conspicuous looking stone box of a building, which only had windows on a small section that sprouted off to the right.

  The guard opened the large wooden door, but then seemed to notice that he hadn’t seen her before.

  ‘The dungeons are straight ahead and down the stairs, miss. One of the guards down there will show you where to go after that. Or if you want to speak to Captain Ankylodin first, that’s the door to his office there to the right of the stairs.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ said Ezrina pleasantly. She wanted to see the prisoners first. Her meeting with Ankylodin and more importantly gaining entrance to his office had to come later, in case he was there and asked what the prisoners had been saying.

  She walked into the prison’s entrance and the guard shut the door behind her. By the light of the braziers on the walls, she could see the steps down to the underground floor below. She could hear voices coming from it. Slowly she moved down the cold stone steps. Once down, she found herself at the side of a much larger room, rectangular in shape, with six locked doors around the sides. Two guards loitered there. They were spear militia with red sashes, which were unique to prison guardsmen, worn over their brown leather jerkins. They stopped their conversation as they saw her.

  ‘Hello there, miss. You speak Bennvikan? I’ve not seen you before. You new?’ asked one.

  ‘I am. Would you show me to the tribal prisoners?’ Ezrina said.

  ‘Of course miss. But unfortunately, we’ve had to mix them in with the Bennvikans. Follow us. They’re in here,’ said the other. He walked over to a large wooden door and unlocked it.

  Their manner seemed pleasant enough now, but nevertheless, Ezrina was sure she spotted them undressing her with their eyes. These Bennvikans. Why were tribal people just commodities to them? The Hentani would not be subject to Bennvikan oppression for much longer, she vowed, thinking of her early childhood memories of soldiers like these burning their villages, killing their men, raping their women and taking their children as slaves. Subconsciously her blood grew hot and her muscles tensed in contained rage at the memory. If they weren’t so scared of the consequences surely no Hentani warrior would have come to fight for Silrith. Some said she was different; that she was a kind and just leader. But how could she be? She was a Bennvikan and anyway, had it not been her own father and grandfather who had wreaked such havoc on the Hentani in years past? All Bennvikans had to suffer for what had happened in those terrible times.

  Ezrina snapped back to reality as she walked into the dungeons with the two guards. Feeling her blood cooling again, she took in the scene around her. She found herself at the top of another flight of stone steps and from here she had a good but rather distant view of the dungeons below and their wretched inhabitants.

  ‘Your tribal prisoners are the ones at the far end,’ said one of the guards. ‘That lot there are Hentani and that big bastard at the back is Defroni. We keep him in a separate cell because of his lot being with the enemy and all.’

  ‘Yes, I do realise that,’ said Ezrina, holding back her annoyance. These Bennvikans might not be able to work out the physical differences between the tribes, but surely they could work out that she could. He’d talked about them as if they were different species and probably would have had no idea which of the tribes she was from under different circumstances. To them, they were all just barbarians, but to her even without the varying types of clothing to identify them, it was still clear as day who was from which. These guards had clearly just been told which tribes the prisoners were from because they thought the priests and priestesses wouldn’t be sure without them telling them. She was certain that this sort of goodwill was all fake; all a façade so that the Bennvikans could use and abuse the tribes.

  ‘We’ll leave you to it then miss,’ said one of the guards as both turned to leave.

  Ezrina made a point of not acknowledging them. Her surroundings were starting to make her feel uneasy. The door closed behind her. As she descended the steps to the cells, she could hear moaning. Some called and reached out to her, trying to touch her, while others simply rocked back and forth obliviously. She hoped with every fibre of her soul that Jezna wasn’t at that very moment imprisoned in similar conditions in the enemy camp, though she knew that idea was hopeful at best.

  One particularly crazed looking individual caught her eye and she instantly wished she hadn’t looked.

  ‘I smell you. I smell you,’ he sneered, showering her in spittle as she walked on by.

  The rest were less vocal and they watched her through glazed eyes, sitting in their own mess as if simply waiting for death.

  Finally, she had passed all the Bennvikan prisoners’ cells and reached those containing the tribesmen at the far end.

  She couldn’t wait to get out of there. She had feared that this part of the process may take a long time, but none of them had much to say and after completing the ritual of blessing their prayers, it wasn’t long before she was hastily making her way back up the steps and out of the dungeon. She saw the guards again and despite their polite demeanour, she felt their predatory eyes on her a second time as she continued up the next flight of steps. Once at the top she turned left to stand outside Captain Ankylodin’s office.

  She knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  She knocked again.

  Silence.

  Her heart rose in spite of her tension. What a stroke of luck! He must be otherwise engaged. She turned the handle and slowly, tentatively, clicked the door open.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, tilting her head around the door. The room was empty. She breathed a sigh of relief and shut the door behind her. She had to be quick.

  Compared to the dungeons she had just been in, the windowed room seemed strangely bright and airy. On the wall opposite was a head and shoulders portrait of King Lissoll, about a foot and half square, showing him in armour; his strong, almost sneering face framed by his silver hair and beard, with the scarlet and gold of a partially unfurled Bennvikan flag in the background. How fitting it was, that she was about to steal the Amulet of Hazgorata from right under the gaze of a man who had wreaked such havoc on her people.

  Before her, below the painting, covered in a heap of documents, was a large wooden desk, with legs thick enough to house drawers. Maybe it was in there? Ezrina could see no other furniture in here, save for the chair.

  She scampered silently around the back of the desk and, starting on the left, slowly, carefully pulled the first drawer open without a sound. Nothing. Not the Amulet anyway. Just more documents and writing tools. She tried the next drawer and the next. Still nothing. She moved to the drawers on the right-hand side. It had to be in here. She’d heard Gasbron say it and the other priestess had reported to Jakiroc that she’d seen the Captain put a large pendant, just like the Amulet, in one of these very drawers. As she reached amongst a pile of papers in the final drawer, her heart leapt as she felt something round and metal. She pulled
it out, but almost groaned with derision as she found that it was not the Amulet, simply a pendant that fell open in her hand, showing a tiny painting of a woman and a baby. She put it back, burying it as she had found it and shut the drawer. What was she going to do? She was so certain that it had been there, especially after hearing all the evidence. But this was not the holy relic she had come to find. Even so, she had to get out.

  In seconds, she was through the door, walking quickly towards the entrance of the dungeons and into the street.

  Finally, she felt safe to drop her speed to a normal walk and as she did, she had a sudden realisation. If the Bennvikans wanted to hide the Amulet from the Hentani, then where better than right under their noses? And if they wanted to do that, where better the somewhere that also retains a Bennvikan presence to look after it. Somewhere like the temple.

  She was certain that was where it must be. The Bennvikan priests had to be hiding it from their Hentani counterparts. Tensions between the two sects had been greater than ever and she reeled at the idea that all the time the Bennvikan clergymen had been laughing at them and also at the idea that she had fallen for a red herring that Gasbron had clearly set up for her. He must have been suspicious. Well, they would all regret their actions very soon.

  KRIGANHEIM, BENNVIKA

  There was an art to lying, Capaea reflected, especially when it was for the greater good. In any case, being good at it certainly had its rewards, as was borne out by the grand house in which she was now a guest. Its owner, a wealthy nobleman, had gone out, leaving her to make herself at home. She pondered her situation as she explored the house’s walled gardens, where only the faintest sounds of babbling voices reminded one that they were still in the city.

  Only the nobleman himself knew her true identity. As far as the servants were concerned she was just a distant relation of their master. The truth was that the nobleman had orchestrated a mission that had seen her steal a letter from the palace, containing incriminating information about Lord Oprion Aethelgard while using the name of the fictional maid, Lyzina. She had robbed Lord Oprion, then distracted him while her fellow spy, Taevuka, assaulted Lady Haarksa, which in turn provided a distraction while both had made their escape. The plan had worked so well that it had seemed too good to be true – and it had been. That was why Taevuka had successfully escaped from Kriganheim and possibly even Bennvika entirely, while Capaea, still posing as the nobleman’s guest, was stuck inside the city.

  Yet Capaea was unworried by this. After all, it was situations like this that made her line of work so interesting and when it wasn’t the intrigue and the subterfuge that got the blood pumping, it was the thrill of the chase. She had enjoyed meeting that young firebrand Zethun Maysith on the night before Taevuka had escaped the city. There had been such passion in him and yet she had simply played her part, affecting the appropriate character traits and led him on a verbal merry dance. She smirked as she imagined his face once he found out who she really was.

  ‘There’s some men here to see you miss.’ Capaea turned to find that a maid had entered the walled garden.

  Men? They hadn’t been expecting visitors, especially with their host absent.

  ‘Who are they?’ Capaea asked, though there was no time to answer, as from between the pillars of the grand house walked three Verusantian Lance Guardsmen in their full, black painted armour, though having dispensed with their helmets. These snarling-faced men and their comrades had sailed with King Jostan from across the sea and some, like these three, had been stationed in Kriganheim in his absence to make sure Lord Oprion did his bidding. They descended the steps and approached Capaea. The two at the back each carried a spear, while the foremost man, presumably their leader, had a sword and dagger in his belt. Surely the doorman would never have let these men in if he’d been here, but he’d gone to the Congressate to perform his guard duties there and would not be back for some time.

  ‘Ah, so the master of the house has a guest. How surprising,’ said the lead Guardsman in the harsh tones that the well-travelled Capaea knew to hail from the Verusantian south. He advanced on her with a smirk on his bearded face. ‘Let me guess, you arrived here shortly after a visit to the palace? Now that would be a coincidence-arrh!’

  With lightning speed Capaea had grabbed his dagger from his belt and buried it in his neck; the blood spurting all over her face. She kicked him to the ground; the servant’s screams ringing in her ears.

  The two other guards charged towards her. She grabbed the spear of one and pushed the spike downwards so that the man’s momentum buried it deep into his dying comrade’s groin. She ducked as the third man’s spear thrust past her face. She stuck out a leg and sent him tumbling to the ground. She turned to the other spearman and saw the panic in his face as he tried to free his weapon from the leader’s body. She ripped the sword out of the first man’s belt and swung it around with all her might, cleaving the spearman’s head from his shoulders, before darting over to the sprawling third man and burying the sword in his neck.

  Capaea could feel the blood on her face and could see that her dress was covered in it. She ran to the centre of the garden, where there was a water fountain and splashed water over her face.

  ‘Oh do be quiet!’ she barked at the screaming maid. ‘They came here to kill me. Now, fetch me a new dress. Quickly! I need to get out of here.’

  By invitation of Hoban, Zethun was seeing the inside the Congressate Hall for the first time and a little earlier than originally planned. Looking around the bustling room, he noted that the other Demokroi were all present too; their brown tunics sticking out from among the blue robes of the Congressors. Naivard though was not present. A magistrate’s clerk’s status was too low to be in attendance here.

  Zethun didn’t like waiting. It gave him an unfamiliar feeling of tension. Furthermore, it gave him too much chance to overthink what he was about to do. After all, Lord Oprion Aethelgard would soon be arriving and the extra presence of the Demokroi suggested that what he had to say was of some importance. Moreover, it was when they had been summoned to this meeting that Hoban had told Zethun quietly that one of his spies had made a discovery, though he did not divulge what it was as Oprion’s messenger had insisted that they follow him to the Congressate Hall immediately. All Zethun knew was the Hoban had discreetly gone into his house to fetch something before they left. Even when they were in the Congressate Hall itself, when Zethun asked what had been discovered, Hoban had nervously declined to say anything direct, apparently for fear of someone overhearing and taking something out of context. All he had said was that they needed to speak with Oprion before he made his speech. Zethun wondered what it was that Hoban was being so secretive about. He thought of making small talk with the other politicians as they milled about, slowly migrating to their seats.

  A stupid idea, he thought. They’d notice something was up. Finally, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  ‘He’s coming,’ said Hoban.

  Zethun followed Hoban out of the large wooden double doors and closed them behind him. The gaudily-dressed Lord Oprion was striding towards them, followed by two Verusantian Lance Guardsmen.

  ‘Lord Aethelgard,’ said Hoban, with a bow of his head. ‘I wonder if you would permit young Zethun and me to have a quiet word with you before you enter the hall?’

  ‘If you must. But, I hope this is going to be a useful expenditure of my time, Congressor Salanath,’ he said loudly, while still some distance away. ‘I have barely moments.’

  Hoban bowed his head and Zethun followed suit.

  ‘Do not worry my Lord, we will not keep you long,’ said Hoban, as Oprion stopped before them.

  ‘I wanted an audience with you because we have information. We believe that it is vital that it reaches your ears,’ said Hoban.

  ‘Of that I am sure. As it happens I too have interesting news, but I will leave that for my speech,’ said Oprion. He turned to his two bodyguards. ‘Guard the entrance of the building.’

&nbs
p; He waited until the guards were out of earshot.

  ‘Now that we are alone, you can tell me what matter can be so pressing as to delay me addressing the Congressate and doing the King’s duty,’ Oprion said, giving Zethun a suspicious look.

  ‘We have made certain discoveries that call the new leadership of this Kingdom into question,’ Hoban said.

  ‘Speak plainly, but be careful. That sounded a lot like treason,’ said Oprion curtly.

  ‘We have nothing to fear now,’ Hoban said. ‘As it is clear that under this new King a person need not have committed treason to be arrested for it. Our discoveries show us that right from the start, the noblest of ladies did suffer such a fate. Exiled for the most grievous of crimes and yet she committed none. I’m sure I need not tell you of whom I speak, my Lord.’

  Zethun was confused. Where was Hoban going with this? Oprion looked momentarily lost for words as if he’d been caught off guard.

  ‘A woman known very well to you,’ Hoban pressed. Zethun could see why Hoban had been so nervous about revealing what he had intercepted. Whatever it was must have had some connection with Princess Silrith. Why had Hoban not told him what it was? Zethun hoped that it had only been a recent discovery and there had not been time.

  ‘Yes, I am well aware of the woman in question,’ said Oprion. ‘Yet my position is precarious. As I said, I too have news. I have recently received some rather interesting letters from two of the most powerful men in the world. Naturally, they were for the King, but were read on his behalf by me.’

  ‘Yet your pair now becomes a triumvirate,’ said Hoban, pulling out a letter from within his sleeve. Its seal was broken and it seemed it had been strapped to his arm with a leather belt. He handed it to Oprion, who read it and something in his face lightened momentarily, then hardened again as he read on.