by Jon Sprunk
“What's the matter, Josey? Come in here.”
Josey let herself be pulled into an adjourning parlor room and seated alone on a padded settee with tiny green leaves embroidered on the cushions.
Anastasia kissed her again. “Something's wrong, Josey. Tell me.”
Josey told Anastasia about her father's decision to make her leave. By the time she finished, she was sobbing openly.
Anastasia lent Josey a handkerchief to wipe her face. “That's simply not fair. Othir is as safe as a nursery. Forgive me, Josey, but I fear your father may be feeling his dotage. You know how old men get. They see specters in every dark corner.”
“I know. But no matter what I said, he refused to budge on the matter. I don't know what to do. That's why I came to see you. You have to help me, ’Stasia. I cannot miss your wedding. It will be the happiest day of my life!”
“You have to be there!” Anastasia looked on the verge of tears herself.
Before her friend started to cry, Josey rushed on. “I will be. I promise. But I need a plan. Father won't give in to emotional pleas.”
“You could stay here with me. With the armsmen we keep, this house is virtually a fortress at night.”
“I'm not sure Father would feel that's adequate. My safety has always been his chief concern. There were bodyguards everywhere when we lived in Navarre. Sometimes I could hardly breathe.”
“But the westlands are abysmally lawless. This is Othir. It's entirely different.”
“I know. I just don't know how to convince Father of that.”
Anastasia squeezed her hand. “Don't worry, darling. We'll find a way.” She reached up and touched the pendant hanging from Josey's neck. “I've always admired this piece, Josey. It's beautiful. So simple, but elegant.”
Josey lifted the pendant, an antique-style key in gold. “Father gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday. It's my favorite piece of jewelry.”
“It must be. You never wear anything else.”
“Father says it's the key to his heart, that it would give me everything I ever wanted and more. Sometimes he's the sweetest, kindest man in the world. I wish he would see reason and let me stay here until your wedding day.”
“It will work out, Josey. I know! We'll go to the basilica and say a prayer for it.”
Josey dabbed her face with the silken cloth. “I don't think praying is going to solve anything, ’Stasia. This is serious.” Then she saw the stricken look in her friend's eyes. “Forgive me. I'm just overwrought. Yes, let's go.”
As they made to leave, a servant appeared at the entrance of the room. “Pardon, milady. A visitor has arrived for you.”
“Let him in.” Anastasia turned to Josey. “That must be Markus. He's been coming by every day since the engagement was announced. He's such a romantic. Do you like him, Josey? Tell me true.”
Josey hugged her friend and laughed, glad to speak of something else. “He's a dream come to life. You two will be as happy together as a pair of larks.”
Anastasia giggled. “Markus is nearly a knight, you know. Well, very nearly. Second prefect is a worthy rank, and soon he'll be promoted. I'm sure of it.”
They turned to the clack of hard boot steps as a tall shape filled the doorway.
“Markus!” Anastasia ran to him and they embraced beside a bronze bust of one of her famous ancestors. Then, as if noticing Josey for the first time, the couple parted and came over to sit with her.
“I adore this uniform on you, Markus.” Anastasia brushed her fingers over the circle emblazoned on his jacket. “It makes you look so handsome.”
He smiled, revealing rows of large, white teeth. He was starting to grow a mustache and sideburns in the military style. Josey squinted, trying to imagine him with a full face of hair. Something in the way he looked at her made her uncomfortable.
“What do you think?” Markus asked. “Does it make me look dashing?”
Josey dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes, quite dashing.”
Anastasia patted Josey's knee. “Poor darling. Her father's sending her away, and we've been trying to concoct a scheme to keep her here.”
“Sending you away?” The note of real concern in his voice touched Josey. Perhaps he was as genteel as a knight after all. “Whatever for?”
Josey folded the loaned handkerchief into a square on her lap. “He says it isn't safe here in the city anymore. He says people have been assaulted, even killed.”
“How horrible!” Anastasia said. “Is it true, Markus?”
“Oh, it's not for you to worry about. The Low Towners are forever at each other's throats, like a pack of curs fighting over a bone. That's where most of the attacks have taken place.”
“Most?” Josey asked. “But not all?”
He brushed at the breast of his uniform, dismissing the idea. “Sometimes a matter spills over across the Processional, but it's nothing to trouble you ladies. You're as safe as lambs in their pens.”
Josey wasn't sure she liked his description, but she put on a smile for her friend. “I hope I can convince Father of that.”
“I have a wonderful idea,” Anastasia said. “Markus could escort you home and tell your father just what he said to us. I'm sure it will comfort him, coming from an officer of the Sacred Brotherhood.”
“Would you?” Josey asked. She didn't like the idea of riding home with him, but she was willing to make sacrifices if it meant being allowed to stay in Othir.
Markus stood with a shake of his head. “I'm sorry, but I cannot. I have business to attend this afternoon. I just stopped by to remind Ana of our date for a late supper this evening.”
Anastasia rose to embrace her betrothed. “I didn't forget. I'm having Maya make something special for us.”
“Excellent.” He bowed to Josey and gave Anastasia a peck on the cheek. “I shall see you later.”
Josey remained behind as Anastasia walked Markus out. They whispered their good-byes out of eyesight. Several minutes passed before Anastasia returned to the sitting room. Her eyes danced with joy as she plopped down beside Josey.
“Isn't he magnificent? I'm so happy, Josey. I feel like a cloud floating high above the world.”
Josey hugged her friend and murmured the words Anastasia wanted to hear, but she couldn't shake the suspicion that things might not remain so congenial between husband and wife after the wedding day. Markus was polite enough in mixed company, but his cavalier manner didn't suit her friend, who was the picture of a perfect lady, refined and unassuming. Yet Josey kept those fears to herself. Anastasia was clearly smitten, and there was no use spoiling her good feelings. And some part of Josey wondered if she wasn't just the tiniest bit jealous that her friend had found such love while she was still alone, chaste and waiting for the man of her dreams.
Josey listened with half an ear while Anastasia chattered about visits to the seamstress, finding the right orchestra, and all the other minutiae required to plan a wedding. She nodded at the appropriate places and made polite noises, but the greater part of her thoughts were on her own problems. Her ship departed in two days. The matter couldn't wait until she devised an airtight argument. She had to speak with Father tonight.
Ral watched them from the shadow of the Emperor Tronieger monument in the center of Torvelli Square, the strapping officer of the Guard and the young daughter of a respected statesman, as they shared a deep kiss on the front steps of the manse. The prefect's hands slid down to clutch his lady's slender bottom in broad daylight. Ral smiled to himself. The wagging tongues of High Town would wear themselves ragged.
Ral didn't understand the fascination with romance. Oh, he enjoyed the company of women aplenty, the sorts who were attracted to a man of means, and the girl was a pretty slip of a thing, but he didn't have time for anything that outlasted the night. Perhaps after his work was done he would take the time to find a companion, someone suitable for an upcoming man with a bright future.
Finally, Markus bid the girl farewell. Ral followed him
, keeping his distance. The prefect, in his scarlet coat, was simplicity itself to shadow through the broad streets of Opuline Hill.
The sights and sounds of High Town did not distract Ral. Growing up, he had sampled every type of excess that wealth could buy. His life might have turned out differently if his father had lived to a ripe old age, but fate had intervened in the form of news off an Arnossi trader bound for Illmyn. Both of his father's ships had disappeared in a storm off the Hvekish coast, lost with all hands. In an instant, he went from a boy to a man of means. He sold his interest in the shipping company and bought a big house. He found new friends in the sons and daughters of the city's finest families, hosted lavish parties that went on for days, and lived the life he'd always wanted. Until the money ran out. Then the loan sharks started circling. He borrowed to keep up his sumptuous lifestyle, and then again when that ran out. By the time he realized the depths to which he had sunk, it was too late.
They found him dead drunk in the back room of a Low Town dive. Five big men with cold eyes propped him on a rickety chair and lashed his hands behind his back.
“Mr. Ayes isn't happy with you,” the biggest of them rumbled. “You been spending his money like it's piss, and he ain't seen nothing back in more than a fortnight.”
Another thug flashed a long-bladed dirk, so big it was almost a sword. “Not a smart thing to do, making Mr. Ayes angry. Now we come to collect.”
They cut off his clothes and shook them out, but Ral laughed at them, too drunk to care whether or not they killed him.
The man with the big knife rested the point between Ral's legs and whispered in his ear. “If you can't pay, friend, then you have to make good some other way.”
They gave him a simple choice: lose his skin or do one small favor for his debtor in exchange for wiping the books clean.
All he had to do was kill a man.
That job changed him forever—the apprehension as he stole into another man's home in the dead of night; the tingling of his skin as he found his quarry abed, oblivious to the doom looming over him; the euphoria that surged through his veins when he drove the knife into that soft belly. His victim's death moan had been a paean of rebirth, setting him free from all the constraints that had been ingrained into him by a society blind to his needs, apathetic to his desires. That night he had stepped into a world where the power over life and death rested in his hands. He had never looked back.
Ral followed Markus through the old Forum with its afternoon strollers out for their constitutional amid the rows of vendor stalls. The shouts of hawkers punctuated the susurrus of the crowd. Markus strode straight ahead like a charging bull, never glancing to his left or right. Complete obliviousness to the city's dangers, great or small—that was the prerogative of being an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood. Markus's stride didn't even slow to the sound of cracking whips.
Ral slipped behind a stack of cloth bundles as a band of men in bloodred robes burst from a merchant's tent. Their scourges split the air as they flung the object of their ire onto the dirty pavestones. The man was dressed in the tattered remains of a fine suit. His round cap rolled in the dust. The Flagellants surrounded him—Ral could now see he was the owner of the stall—and proceeded to beat him without mercy while a scrawny woman, possibly his wife, wrung her hands and sobbed in the tent's doorway. What had been the man's crime? Ral couldn't guess. It could be almost anything, from cheating his customers to failing to display a proper image of the prelate within his establishment. Like the Brotherhood, the Flagellants were a law unto themselves, answerable only to the Church.
Ral skirted the scene. He found his quarry on the other side of the forum and followed him into the Temple District. A few streets farther, Markus entered the Pantheon, a converted pagan temple. While the prefect entered the stolid building through the front via a set of immense bronze doors, Ral went around to a side entrance located in a constricted alley. Avoiding piles of garbage, he wedged the tip of a dagger into the keyhole and snapped the simple lock. The door accessed a crowded storage room. The deep tones of choral singing filtered through another door on the other side of the room. Ral took a moment to rummage through a varnished wardrobe, selected a white cassock, and pulled the garment over his head. A red stole stitched with circles in gold thread went around his shoulders. Smiling, he slipped through another door.
The Pantheon's circular walls bowed over the main worship chamber of the church. The building was an architectural masterpiece, dating back to imperial days when Nimea had enjoyed an era of magnificence unmatched by any nation in the world. The ceiling was open to the sky, another sign of its pagan origins. Prayer mats formed orderly rows on the floor's red-and-white checkerboard flagstones where priests and trains of dutiful acolytes walked among the faithful, swinging pots of smoking incense and murmuring prayers.
Ral pulled up the robe's hood and slipped behind a gaggle of old women in black shawls, their eyes downcast as they walked the stations around the perimeter of the great chamber. He slowed as they stopped before a hollow niche inhabited by the gray stone statue of some saint. So pious, they made him sick as they whispered fervent prayers over clenched fists. If any of them dared to raise their eyes high enough, they would see the marble base of the original statue that had adorned this shrine before the advent of the True Faith. Perhaps it had been the likeness of Torim, the Storm Lord, or Hisu, the patron goddess of love and nauseating poetry. Whichever god it had been, the name had been chiseled out of the pedestal as if it never existed. Ral smirked under the hood. It was a shame people couldn't be eliminated as easily as deities. His life would be a lot simpler.
As the old women shuffled off to the next station, Ral sank down beside Markus, who knelt in the last row, his large hands clasped together.
Markus barely looked over. “No, thank you, Father. I'm—” Then the prefect caught sight of his face. “Ral? God's breath! Isn't anything sacred to you?”
Ral glanced at the massive sculpture of the Prophet of the True Faith. Lord Phebus, the Light of the World, towered above the high fane at the end of the nave. The statue was clothed as a simple peasant, but glittering rays chased in real gold radiated from his bloodied brow.
“I'll worry about God when he starts worrying about me.”
Markus looked around. “Someone could see you.”
Ral had already checked during his approach. No other worshippers were in earshot.
“Not likely. These bleaters are too busy worrying about saving their souls. With all this praying, you'd think there was an army of Shadowmen banging at the gates, eh? Or old King Mithrax riding from the grave with his Hellion Host.”
The scabbard of Markus's sword scraped on the floor as he shifted position. He moved easily for a big man. “What are you doing here?”
“Just making a last-minute visit. I take it you haven't heard the latest?”
“No, what?”
“Your grand master has been arrested.”
“On what charges?”
Ral put his hands together as if to pray. “Treason. Sedition. It doesn't matter. Our benefactor will make sure he never sees the light of day again.”
“I never thought—”
“That's your problem, Markus. You never think. But now that the head of your order is out of the way, the way is clear for new blood to rise to the top. Especially for those with allies on the Elector Council.”
Markus sucked in a deep breath.
Ral let him ponder that idea for a moment. “Is everything in place?”
“Sure. The plan is simple. I'll get there a candlemark after sundown. The signal is—”
“How many men are you bringing?”
Markus glanced over, a flicker of annoyance passing across his pale blue eyes. “I got a few boys on board, just like you told me. A couple of them owe me money, and another guy is bucking for a promotion so he can move out of his mother's house. They'll do what I say without question.”
“And afterward?”
&nb
sp; “They'll keep their mouths shut.”
“They'd better. Our patron doesn't forgive mistakes. If one of these men talks—”
“I know what I'm doing.”
Ral leaned into Markus, hooking his right arm through the man's elbow. His left hand pressed into the prefect's side, the needle-sharp point of the stiletto held in his palm pricking through both surcoat and mail to touch the flesh beneath. Markus huffed and strained to remain still.
Ral pitched his voice to a low whisper. “Listen to me. You don't have to worry about the boss. If you mess this up, I'll peel your worthless hide from your back myself. Do you understand me?”
Markus nodded. With a hiss, Ral released him. The stiletto vanished into his sleeve. Markus clutched his side and stared at the floor with his lips compressed into a tight line. The prefect wasn't used to being manhandled, but he had to understand and fast. Both their lives hung in the balance if he messed up.
“Get more men,” Ral said.
The prefect rolled his shoulders. “I'll need more money for that. God's soldiers don't come cheap.”
Ral wanted to laugh, but he didn't let it touch his features. He reached under his cassock. Markus stiffened, one hand dropping to the hilt of his sword, but he relaxed as Ral passed him a heavy pouch.
Ral stood up and rested his hand on the prefect's beefy shoulder, the very picture of a pastor counseling one of his flock.
“Remember, Markus. No mistakes. No loose ends.”
“Don't worry. We'll arrive just a moment too late to save them.”
“And their killer?”
An evil grin dimmed the prefect's chiseled features. “Sadly, he'll be killed trying to elude capture.”
“Perfect.”
A moment later, Ral was out the side door and down the alley, heading toward home. He had his own preparations to finalize. A horse was waiting for him at the west gate, reserved by the offices of the Elector Council, with remounts at every roadhouse and garrison station between here and his target. Tomorrow night, the culmination of his dearest ambition would begin. He would rise higher than his departed father had ever dreamed. Soon people would call him the most feared man in the city, and in the process he would eliminate his only true rival to that title.
