Muddy smoke billowed high above the commons; wood had begun to burn. Guards tried to make sense of the chaos, but their training hadn’t prepared them for this. They ran and pointed. Said little, did even less. I looked into the commons but saw nothing except a dense curtain of rolling smoke. A guard sprinted past me, stopped dead before the smoke. He ran around, toward the dross, probably trying to find a less treacherous way in.
I had, for all intents and purposes, devised a way to render myself invisible. But this trick wouldn’t last long. Chaos is a short-lasting disruptor. It’s like pinching a candle and evacuating all light from a room. At first, the mind is overwhelmed. It can’t see. But the mind is nothing if not adaptable. Which was one reason this chaos would come in two phases.
Pressed against the backbone of the second plateau — home to the Gleam — behind the walls of structures who had so far been spared the fury of fire, Rovid was bent over. Huffing, puffing and wheezing.
“Glad you could make it,” I said.
“Thought I was done for. Followed the fire inside like we’d planned, but the smoke came quick. Here.”
He gave me one of the ebon blades he was holding. “Ready?” I asked.
He punched his chest and coughed a few times. “Let’s go.”
The reaper and I bounded up the steps, to the Gleam. Guards were like ants now, even the officers who were coming down from the third plateau, out of the keep. Their eyes were wet and bulging, reflecting the holocaust before them. Trebuchets were being rolled into action. These poor fucks probably thought war had come to their walls.
We made it to the steps of the third plateau, and I saw the last of my friends waddling up, embracing a large bucket. Phase two of Fireworks in Erior was about to begin.
Erior’s dungeon lay in morbid placement adjacent to its mortuary. It tunneled deep beneath the ground, its entrance marked with a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. I went down the earthen steps, but Rovid didn’t follow.
“You’ll hear it all the way down below,” I told him, figuring he was awaiting the big bang.
“You might want a look at this,” he said. “And we might want to hurry. Otherwise, I don’t think we’re gettin’ out of here.”
He wasn’t looking at the keep, waiting for it to smoke and smolder with the explosion of eight buckets full of black powder. He was looking at the sea.
The sea that looked like it was giving birth to thousands of tiny creatures. There must’ve been a hundred ships out there, more swarming in from the haze. If you listened real hard, you could hear a war chant.
It went like this.
“For the Mother!”
Everything I’d planned for… gone. It was all… gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We were beneath the ground when it blew. Four tremendous bangs, each in succession. So loud you couldn’t help but shiver like a hoarfrost had settled atop your bones. The eruption shook the walls and the ceiling, displacing mud and rock in chunks that fell onto our heads.
“Hope this ceiling holds,” Rovid said.
Disoriented, I kept down the mostly straight hallway. Couldn’t see but a couple feet in front of me.
Rovid said something, but my mind ignored it. I couldn’t get over what I’d seen outside. Kane and I had a deal. We’d struck it in blood. What would he gain from attacking Erior while it burned? He’d storm the walls, sack the city, maybe. But then what? The might of the East would be on him, in far greater numbers than if he had waited for Braddock’s successor to attack.
I had a plan, dammit! Kane and Dercy would form a wall across the Bay of Selaph land bridge. Their armies would serve as a bulwark which the reaped wouldn’t be able to overcome, not for some time at any rate. I’d lied to Kane about a Glannondil attack; there’d be no such thing. An empty crown would send the East into a civil war, claims abound. There was no clear successor to Braddock.
Kane wouldn’t be able to hold on to this city for more than a couple weeks at best, but that didn’t matter. Without that idiot’s help in the South, Dercy wouldn’t be able to push back the reaped.
They’d swarm into Mizridahl, a society of mangled bones murdering all they came across. By the time an organizational effort could be made to combat them, it’d be too late. And with Mizridahl on the brink of extinction, the second part of my plan… well, it didn’t much matter, did it?
“I think we’re at a fork,” Rovid said, waving his hand in front of him. “You hear that? This way.”
I had to pick my mind up out of its deep, dark hole. No matter what happened out there… no matter how dismal the future looked, I had a job to do: save my Rots.
“Hello?” Rovid hollered. “Here to, er, free you. Got your Shepherd with me.”
A distant echo rolled through the hallway. “We’re over here!”
“That’s Rimeria’s voice,” I said.
I jogged into the slender darkness. Would’ve run, but I didn’t feel like sprinting into a surprise pillar and having Rovid not only free my friends but also carry my sorry ass out.
“Would’ve helped if you’d brought a torch, Shepherd,” Rory said.
Smart-ass couldn’t have been suffering too badly to be cracking jokes. “I can go back and get one if you want,” I said. “Just sit real tight.”
Several of my Rots laughed. Good sign, there.
“Astul?” croaked a meek, feminine voice. Vayle.
“Yeah,” Rimeria said. “Man of the hour’s here. We’re getting out. I told you we would.”
From the sounds of their voices and their vague apparitions it appeared they were stowed down here elbow to elbow. Probably chained to pillars I couldn’t see.
“Where are you bound?” I asked.
“Ankles and wrists,” Rory said.
Some chains rattled. I squinted but couldn’t identify a thing.
“Can you stretch your hands enough that a blade can fit between them?” I asked.
“Er… yeah. Maybe.”
I reached out with a hand. Felt gritty flesh that seemed to crawl in reaction to my touch.
Rory hissed. “Easy there, Shepherd. Fucked my knuckles all up.”
“Sorry. All right. I feel the chain. Going to guide the blade to it now. Tell me if I cut you.”
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered. Then a long, drawn-out sigh.
I felt steel beneath my ebon blade. There wasn’t much to work with here. A smidgen right or left and I’d cut off a finger or two. So I held my breath and pushed the sharpest edge in all of Mizridahl downward.
“Fuck yeah!” Rory yelled. “Had all my faith in you, Shepherd.”
A careful strike to the chain binding his ankles set him free. Well, to be perfectly accurate, it sent him jumping up and then falling right on his ass. Idle your body for more than a day or two, and you’ll find your legs forget how to work properly.
With Rovid lending me a hand, we cut the remaining Rots free, up to the very last one — my commander. Her fingers were clammy against mine, gaunt and shivering. She’d been in here longer than the others. Soon as her chains were broken, she fell into me, weeping.
Every word I’d intended to say got stuck in my mouth like a thick ball of cotton. I simply rubbed her back and helped her up. She wobbled and crashed into my shoulder, unable to support her own weight. The others had gotten used to their weakened legs now and, while not running, were at least walking about.
I ordered everyone out, then had Rovid assume the lead. Vayle and I limped behind.
We emerged into an air full of fresh burning wood. Ash had sidled along from the commons, now blanketing the sky above us.
“Wait,” Vayle said, pushing off me. “I think I can do it myself.”
She looked bad. Black, swollen puffs for eyes, a crooked nose. Old blood staining her cracked lips. But she balanced herself and attempted a smile, however brief.
“You’ll have to move quickly,” I said, gesturing toward the beach that was marching toward Erior. “I brought a war w
ith me.”
She smiled weakly. “You have a penchant for that.”
“Come on,” Rovid said. “Smoke’s only gonna get thicker.”
I ogled at the keep for a moment. Pockets of soot painted its stones, and fire raged from its windows. I wanted to see Braddock’s face then. Watch his expression as he reaped precisely what I’d told him he would if he ever waged war with the Black Rot. I wondered if amongst the cacophony of screams was his voice, bleating.
As I turned to catch up with the others, a realization squeezed my chest like a vise. I had overlooked something. Rather, someone. She was small and bouncy on her feet, hair spun up in the tightest of ponytails. As inquisitive as they come, curious as a kitten.
“Astul!” Rovid hollered. “Let’s go!”
I ran to him, put my face to his shoulder. “Take them to the Swamplands. I’ll meet you there.”
Voices reached for me as I tore off toward the keep. Ignoring them wasn’t easy — particularly those cries from my commander — but it’s a lot easier to disregard your friends’ concern than to brush off the knowledge that you murdered a child.
Fire bellowed from a window in the keep, flames punching out and licking up the stone exterior. The main entrance was fucked — nothing but blaze and smoke. But the rear would likely still be in good condition, if I could reach it.
I climbed the steps into the front courtyard of the keep. Even here, a good thirty feet from its walls, the miasma of the cataclysm before me choked my lungs. The warmth of a rampant fire clung to my skin like humid vapors.
A man jumped from high in the keep. Head over heels he tumbled down, down, down. He screamed briefly, before the cobbles received him like an iron pillow.
I could live with incidents like that, fucked up as that sounds. But if the next jumper had been Braddock’s daughter… that wasn’t a good thought.
Around the outer edge of the keep I dashed, along the dirt parapet of a narrow retaining wall. Rather ugly back here. Lots of weathered stone the color of winter clouds and stringy grass and dirt tilled from the elements. You wouldn’t know it, though, unless you were busting ass through here. Huge shrubs and bushes of colorful flowers rose up past the rim of the retaining wall, obstructing your view from the outside.
The rear courtyard greeted me with a bounty of purples and pinks and yellows and blues, its flowers blissfully unaware that in approximately twenty minutes, they’d all be ash.
I checked the double-leaf doors leading inside the keep. No luck. They gave me a creaky laugh as they rocked on their hinges, telling me it’d take more than a few forceful shoves to break ’em down.
I didn’t have anything except forceful shoves.
A quick glance around the courtyard revealed nothing helpful. Violet orchids and bluebells and amaranths may effuse color and beauty, but they’re pretty shitty in terms of practicality.
From inside the walls, a voice. “The tablecloths! Make a gurney with ’em. Hurry it up.”
I pounded on the doors. “Let me in! Let me in! I’m here to help.”
There was a grinding and clicking and clacking. Then something scraped against the doors, like a reinforced plank of wood being removed.
The doors opened outward, slowly. A warm gust of air seethed into the courtyard, and a sooty face stared at me.
“Who’re you?” he asked. Behind him, guards were shedding their armor. Some were already in loin cloths and tattered shirts, on their knees fastening mail to sawed-off table legs that would serve as a gurney.
“Here for the market,” I said. “Saw the keep go up in flames, thought you could use my help.”
He wiped the spit and snot from his nose and mouth. “All right. Clearing out from top to bottom. I’ve got at least four lords—”
I blew past him like a flame through a door that’d just been opened. He might’ve wailed and hollered for me to stop, but I didn’t hear a thing as I bounded up a spiral staircase.
The ceiling above me shuddered, and the floor below trembled. Smoke snaked through the hallways I trespassed, a cloud of blackness and grays, unfurling like the ocean over its shore.
It stung my eyes, made me gag and cough even though I’d lifted my shirt up over my mouth and nose. Could barely see a thing except the hot fog that dimmed the guiding wall torchlight into thumb-sized flickers.
I had no sense of direction here, but I knew I needed to go up. With hands prowling the hallway walls, I felt something grainy on my palms.
Wood.
As if I was groping a long-lost lover, my fingers searched frantically for a handle.
The smoke was searing my eyes now. I grunted and gnashed my teeth. Don’t scream, I told myself. Stay calm. Stay in control.
There — the handle. I pulled, then pushed. It was the push that did it. The door swung open, and I went with it, tumbling inside. Quickly back to my feet, I elbowed the door closed.
A trail of smoke had followed me in, and a thin film of the stuff crept beneath the door, but the air in here wasn’t nearly as toxic. Wouldn’t be that way for long, though. Thankfully, a set of stairs lay before me. Had no idea where they led, but they went up, so I followed them.
About twenty steps later, another door greeted me. I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt again, counted down from three and yanked on the handle.
Through the leaden gloom, something whisked by.
“Hey!” I called out. “Where’s Lord Braddock?”
“C’mere,” answered a man.
“Keep talking,” I said, following the boom of his voice. “Can’t see shit.”
He coughed, and I coughed. He gagged, and I gagged. Thankfully, he never stopped talking.
“In here, in here,” he said.
Into an apparent inlet I went, then I tripped and smacked my forehead on what felt like the riser of a stair. Getting back to my feet confirmed that suspicion.
This staircase went up another twenty or so steps, which is hell to climb when you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. It led into a wide hallway. Here the smoke filtered through like steam rising from a geyser. Still not pleasant to suck into your lungs, but considerably more tolerable.
It was here that my guide and I first took stock of one another.
I’d thought his voice sounded familiar, and I was right.
He glared at me, his fragile body swallowed by a crimson robe. “What are you doing here?”
“Search and rescue,” I said. “Where’s Braddock’s daughter?”
Rike’s eyes thinned in those old, deep sockets of his. “Probably dead. You did this, didn’t you?”
A quick assessment of the hallway revealed crimson carpet and banners strung along the walls. The doors here were massive, with handles of gold plate. Down a ways, the head of a wolf painted in blood stuck out from the center of two broad doors.
“Thanks for the directions,” I told Rike. With two fistfuls of his robes, I slammed the old man against a wall so hard, the back of his skull ricocheted off the stone. And his eyes went blank. Probably too forceful, to be honest. But I couldn’t risk being held up. The smoke was thickening, and the fires were climbing.
Hopefully Talira reacted like most children when fear crawls through them. Even the most fiercely independent ones seek Mommy and Daddy when their world crumbles. To that point, hopefully Braddock hadn’t already been whisked away to safety.
The snarling snout of a sculpted crimson wolf split into two as I opened the doors to what I assumed was Braddock’s chambers.
“Dear, please! You must—”
A young woman in a dingy red gown stood beside a four-poster bed. Her hands were looped around the thin arms of a little girl who was balled up in the sheets, clinging to her mummified father.
All four windows were open, allowing smoke to filter out. But like two separate storms coming to a head, the ashen clouds from the commons and those from the keep met halfway. Soon, this kingdom would suffocate.
Talira’s eyes opened wide when sh
e saw me. “Ass-assin,” she said. Her narrow mouth opened and closed, rosy lips tight with fear. “Please don’t kill my father.” She bit her lip. “Or me, or Madrie. Please. Please!”
I stood at Braddock’s beside. He was wrapped from head to toe in white cloth, every inch of flesh concealed. Only his eyes were naked to the world. But they weren’t really eyes. They were pockets of blisters, lids sealed shut and colored the red of infection.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” I told Talira.
Braddock jerked when he heard my voice. And he made a noise. A pathetic gabble.
I put my hands on the edge of the window frame and peered out. Ground lay about forty feet below. Falling that distance wasn’t exactly an enticing thought, but neither was trudging back through a smoke-filled keep, especially when I wasn’t confident I’d be able to retrace my steps.
“Off the bed,” I told Talira.
She looked to the gowned woman — the apparent Madrie — for guidance.
“Look,” I said, “either I get some cooperation here, or you’ll be coughing up smog in about five minutes. What’ll it be?”
Madrie tugged at Talira’s arm. “Come on, now. Off, off.”
Talira’s fingertips slowly slid away from her father’s bandaged body as Madrie pulled her away.
I stripped the bed of its linens, from the thick top quilt to the thin sheets beneath. Braddock moaned when I wrenched them out from under his immobile body.
“You’re hurting him!” Talira said, throwing her little self into the back of my legs.
I ignored her and went to work knotting the bedding together into a single rope. I took one end in my hand and tossed the other out the window. It fell short of the ground by about five feet, but anyone can handle a five-foot drop.
I tied the other end around the bedpost and gave it a good yank. It passed the eye test; hopefully it’d pass the rappelling test.
“Listen to me,” I said to Talira, crouching before her. “Lord Rike and the others are coming for your father. But you have to come with me. Okay?”
The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) Page 23
