Tom kept retreating until he felt a wall jut up behind him. He stumbled against it, pinned. The guardsman smiled a thin, evil smile. He lifted his sword, tucking the tip of the blade beneath Tom’s chin.
Tom sucked in his breath, bracing himself for the impact of cold steel. But before the guardsman could drive his blade through Tom’s throat, an enormous iron pulley dropped from above, landing squarely on top of the man’s head. He swayed. His eyes rolled loose in his head. His sword clattered to the ground as he staggered forward, hitting the floor with a low moan.
Tom’s gaze shot upward.
The boy flashed him a grin from an overhead beam, the rope he’d untied and set loose dangling in one hand.
Umbrey crashed into the wall beside him, his hands wrapped around his opponent’s throat. “The map, lad! Do you have it?”
Tom ducked a punch and twisted toward Umbrey. “Yes.”
“Then go! Get out now, while it’s easy!”
While it’s easy? This was easy? Both stairwells were blocked. The entire room was a scene of brutal chaos, of swords and knives and hand-to-hand battles. No way to escape.
“There!” the boy cried from his perch on the beam. “The rats!”
Tom stared across the room. The rats that had earlier been swarming the sack of grain now scurried single-file across the room, disappearing down a square hole in the floor. The hole was barely large enough for Tom and Porter to squeeze through, and impossible for Keegan’s men to enter.
The boy swung down the rope, grabbed Tom’s sleeve, and tugged him along. Porter stepped in beside them and gave Tom a push from behind. “Go!”
Tom planted his feet, his gaze finding Umbrey in the middle of the melee. “What about you?”
“Me? Forget about me!” Umbrey hobbled up and down on one leg. His wooden appendage, splintered and shattered during the fight, lay in pieces on the floor. “I’ll only slow you down!”
“We can’t leave you to fight alone!”
“Fight? You think this is a fight?” Umbrey gave a shout of laughter. “Why, this is child’s play, lad! Wait’ll you see what Keegan has in store for you once you bring back the sword!” He thrust his blade at a guardsman, slicing him across the shoulder, then elbowed him in the belly, doubling the man over. He looked at Tom. “Mortimer’s journal—”
The rest of Umbrey’s words were swallowed up by the din of the battle.
“What?” Tom shouted. “What about the journal?”
“I said—”
The young thief dove into the hole. Porter followed. A guardsman swung his blade, narrowly missing Tom’s ear. Whatever wisdom Umbrey meant to impart was lost as Tom sprang forward, pitching himself headfirst down the rat hole.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DARKER THAN NIGHT
Rats crawled across his face, his skin, his hair. Slimy tails slid over his nose and lips, and sharp claws dug into his ears. Tom fought them off in a blind panic, twisting within the confines of the narrow metal tube—a grain chute of some sort, he guessed.
Abruptly, the chute ended. Tom went into free fall, tumbling through the air. He landed with a sickening splat in a steaming pile of trash—slops from the adjacent pub, most likely. He clawed his way through spoiled cabbage, moldy potatoes, soured ale, rotting fish, and stringy pork innards. And rats. Even more rats than there’d been in the storeroom, hissing and clawing one another to get at the putrid feast.
Tom staggered to his feet, gagging. Porter rose beside him, slipping and sliding through the rancid pile of slop. He shoved Tom toward a large wooden bin. The boy from the market was already there. They crouched down beside him, tucking themselves against the bin, as a set of rough-looking men raced past them, storming into the warehouse where the battle still raged.
“Good,” Porter grunted. “Let’s go.”
Tom paused.
“Umbrey can take care of himself,” Porter said, correctly reading his hesitation. Tom frowned at the unwelcome intrusion into his thoughts, the sort of mental shorthand twins were supposed to routinely use. Not that he knew much about it, given that he hadn’t even known he was a twin until thirty minutes ago.
In any event, the question of whether or not they were abandoning Umbrey was answered as the sound of shattering glass exploded above them. A body—one of Keegan’s Watch—soared through the air, landing with a heavy thud on the dirt-packed street. The first body was soon followed by a second.
“Follow me!” the boy whispered.
They zigzagged through the narrow streets, keeping close to buildings to avoid being seen. After several minutes of running, they ducked behind a mass of empty crates to watch an old man herding goats into a cart. “Old Raynard,” the boy said. “His route carries him through my village at daybreak.”
Porter studied the man. “You think he’ll help us?”
The boy shrugged. “Maybe. He likes his coin. Give him a few bits and he’ll take us to Willa. A few more and there might be a meal in it as well.”
He took Porter’s money, darted across the street to the old man, and struck a deal.
He sprinted back and ducked behind the crates, lodging himself between Porter and Tom. “He says we can board as soon as he settles his goats.”
Porter gave a tight nod and sunk into a crouched position, breathing hard. Tom, his heart hammering against his ribs, did the same. He’d barely drawn a lungful of air when the sound of voices raised in anger drifted their way. He tensed, watching from behind the crates as a large group entered the square where they’d stopped. Keegan’s Watch. Tom counted a dozen of them, their black boots pounding the pavement, their black capes swirling, their ruby-red eye clasps glowing in the late-afternoon sun.
Between the fore and aft guards walked a man and woman, barefoot and dressed in rags, accompanied by four similarly dressed children. The eldest, a copper-haired boy, looked to be the same age as Tom and Porter. The boy lifted his chin in a bold gesture of defiance that might have been effective had the terror in his eyes not been so apparent. His sisters openly wept beside him, the youngest child shaking in her mother’s arms.
Trailing them was a group of perhaps thirty townspeople. Some of their faces were stiff with barely contained rage, while others held only sadness, but they made no move to halt the procession. The group stopped as it reached a wooden scaffold in the center of the square. The Watch drew their swords and prodded the helpless family up the platform steps.
Tom’s blood ran cold. “What is this?” he whispered. He turned to Porter, only to find that his brother’s face had gone deathly white. “What?” he demanded. “Who are they?”
Porter let out a low, shaky breath. “That’s the man who provided our Letters of Passage. They’ve already traced the forgeries back to him.”
“Maybe the townspeople will help them,” the boy whispered, his voice rough with desperation.
“No, they won’t,” Porter said. “They can’t. Their families would be next.” He drew a shaking hand through his hair. “They might hate it, but they’ll let it happen.”
“Let what happen?” Tom choked out, barely speaking past the tight knot of fear in his throat.
“They’ll make an example of them,” Porter lashed back, his pale eyes furious. “Like they do with anyone who tries to resist Keegan. They’ll execute the parents now, and Carter as well. Or maybe they’ll send Carter to work the ice mines in Ventus, get a few years of hard labor out of him before he dies. His sisters will probably be sold to a slave shipper in Aquat.”
The horror of what Porter was saying struck Tom like a physical blow. Then something else struck him. “Carter,” he repeated. “You know him.”
Porter gave a tight nod. A muscle ticked near the base of his jaw. “A friend. We grew up together. Our parents knew each other well. They knew what was at stake. That’s why they agreed to provide the Letters of Passage.”
Beside them, the boy shifted. “Old Raynard just gave the signal. He’s leaving.”
Porter cut a glanc
e toward the goat cart, then back to the scaffold. He gave a low growl and bit out an oath. “Not now. Not yet.”
Two members of The Watch moved to tie the man’s hands behind his back. Two others tore the little girl from her mother’s arms and lashed the woman’s hands.
Raynard climbed into the cart’s seat and lifted the reins.
Porter grabbed a handful of coins and thrust them at the boy, shoving him toward the goat cart. “Make him wait! Pay him whatever it takes!”
The Watch forced the man and woman into a kneeling position facing the crowd. Carter’s sisters sobbed. Tom scanned the crowd. The faces he saw were tight and angry, but, as Porter had predicted, they made no move to stop what was about to happen.
“No,” Porter muttered, so softly Tom wasn’t sure he’d heard him. Then he said it again. Firmly. Definitively. “No.” He grabbed a piece of lumber and moved to stand, as though intending to launch a single-handed attack on The Watch.
“Not like that.” Tom caught his arm and tilted his head toward the scaffold. “The rope.”
He waited a fraction of a second, just long enough for his meaning to be clear, then sprinted full speed toward the scaffold, Porter a heartbeat behind him. The structure was just under five feet high, made of roughly cut lumber supported by four corner pillars of stacked stone. Beside it was a thick coil of rope, perhaps last put in use when the scaffold served as a gallows. That didn’t matter. What did matter was that Tom had noticed the scaffold shake under the weight of the people atop it.
Which meant that it was unstable—and with any luck, would be relatively easy to knock down. They raced toward it from behind, so The Watch couldn’t see them but the crowd could. Not slowing his stride, Tom reached down and grabbed one end of the rope while Porter grabbed the other. Tom coiled it around his wrist and slid under the scaffold as though stealing home plate, while Porter ran opposite him, pulling the rope taut from the outside.
Knocked sideways, the right rear pillar crumbled into a loose pile of stones. The scaffold tilted crazily, then listed like a ship taking on water. Tom scooted clear of the structure a second before it collapsed entirely. The Watch tumbled to the ground. The man, the woman, and their children tumbled after them.
In that instant, the crowd surged forward, shouting and shoving. In the pandemonium that followed, one woman grabbed the youngest girl and took off at a run. Others grabbed the remaining family members, pulling them away from The Watch under the cover of chaos and spiriting them to safety.
Porter shoved Tom toward the traveling goat pen. They jumped in, slipping between the boy and the goats, then pulled the cart’s gate shut. The lower half of the pen was constructed of solid wood and matted with straw; the upper half, thin wooden slats through which the goats could poke their heads. They were relatively safe, Tom supposed, though he wasn’t entirely sure how the term safe was defined here.
Tom took a jagged breath as Raynard flicked the reins and set the cart in motion. The old man paid them no notice, humming loudly to himself over the bleating of the goats and the rattle of the cart’s wheels. The cart lurched forward and then began rolling at a steady, if bumpy, pace, leaving the demolished scaffold behind them.
Tom waited a few minutes, allowing the cart to lumber farther down the badly rutted road, then rolled onto his belly and lifted his head, risking a glance at the scene they’d left. Only The Watch remained, angrily kicking through the debris. The crowd had vanished, taking the copper-headed boy and his family with them.
Tom rolled onto his back and sent Porter a smile. “You did it. You saved them.”
“Proof that you’re not the only one capable of behaving like a complete idiot.”
Tom’s smile froze, then splintered. “What are you talking about? He was your friend—you had to do something!”
Porter, the tension radiating from him so great that Tom could almost feel it, gave a curt shake of his head. “It was reckless. Unforgivably stupid.”
“What choice did you have?”
“Leave them.”
“You could have done that?”
Tom’s disgust must have shown in his voice, for Porter jerked toward him, his eyes blazing. “You still don’t understand? After what you just saw? Then let me be very clear. Carter doesn’t matter, his family doesn’t matter, you don’t matter, I don’t matter—we matter—but only if both of us are together, alive, because that’s the only way we can find the sword. Because the only thing that does matter is finding the sword!” He drew back, his chest heaving. “You think what you just saw isn’t happening somewhere else this very moment, to some other family? Keegan rules through terror. It may be his only trick, but it’s a good one. Very effective.”
Tom watched him for a long moment. “If the only way to stop him is to find this sword, why didn’t our parents come for me?”
Porter gave a bitter laugh, shaking his head.
“Why?” Tom repeated.
The anger seemed to slowly drain out of Porter. A note of resignation crept into his voice. “Those last years under Keegan were beyond difficult. Our mother and father began to doubt, to fear. They were convinced the burden was too heavy to place on us, the risk of failure too great.”
Tom blinked, confused. “You mean, if we fail to find the sword?”
“No.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
His brother looked him square in the eye. “What if, by finding it, we allow the most powerful weapon ever created to fall into the hands of a monster like Keegan?” He shook his head. “There were many who tried to convince our father to destroy the map he’d spent his lifetime creating. Now that you’ve had a glimpse of what Keegan is capable of, what do you think? Is it worth the risk?”
A heavy silence hung between them. The boy, who’d been quiet until that point, spoke. “But you won’t fail! Everyone’s heard of you.” He looked from Tom to Porter, his gaze eager. “The dark and the light. The Hero Twins, that’s what they call you—come to end Keegan’s rule!”
With an effort, Porter shook off his somber mood. “Yes, of course. The Hero Twins, come to end Keegan’s rule.” A goat shifted in the cart, shoving his hindquarters in Porter’s face. He gave the beast an impatient shove and stretched out his legs. “Unless, of course, we are killed in the attempt—a circumstance which seems to be growing increasingly likely with every passing moment.”
The boy fixed a look of fierce determination on his young features. “If I were to die, I’d rather be killed fighting Keegan than any other way.”
Porter looked at Tom. “Well, there you have it. We have little to fear. If all else fails and we fall into dire straits, we’ll have this one on our side. All forty pounds of him.”
A heavy silence settled over them. A coarse linen sack, given to them by Raynard, sat beside the boy. The child opened it and withdrew the contents: a bottle of creamy white liquid, three pewter mugs, and assorted foodstuffs—biscuits, cheese, apples, and some sort of dried meat. While the boy and Porter dove into the meal, Tom ignored it.
He removed the rolled parchment from his belt and opened his father’s map. In the fading twilight, the purples, blues, and greens blurred together like blossoming bruises. He rubbed his fingers over the map’s worn edges, hoping to feel some connection to a father he’d never known. Nothing. Nor did the map as it came alive thrill him the way it had in Professor Lost’s office. Instead, a heaviness settled in his chest as his fingers traced the Five Kingdoms. Slave shippers in Aquat. Forced labor camps in the ice mines of Ventus. Public executions in Divino. And those were just the horrors he’d learned of today.
“Keegan rules all the Five Kingdoms?” he asked.
Porter shrugged. “Generally, yes. His minions run each kingdom in his stead. Warlords, mostly, no better than Keegan himself.”
Tom silently absorbed that, then turned his attention to the section of the map marked The Beyond. It was there that the sword had shown itself. A no-man’s-land, marked only by signs of
death and despair.
“This sword we’re looking for … it’s not just an ordinary sword, is it?”
Porter arched one blond brow. He took a deep drink, then wiped the creamy white foam from his lip. “Please don’t tell me you’ve only just figured that out.”
“It’s the Sword of Five Kingdoms,” the boy put in. He leaned toward Tom, his eyes glistening with excitement. “It has more power, more magic, than any weapon the world’s ever seen.”
“Magic?” Tom repeated, aghast. “A magic sword?”
“Of course.” The boy blinked.
Tom let out a harsh laugh and shook his head, groping for words. He brushed his fingers over the parchment document he’d been toying with. “Where I come from, things like this … monsters, magic, maps that come alive … none of it exists. None of it can exist. No one believes any of that’s real.”
Porter studied him for a long moment in silence. “Then you were raised among fools.”
Tom’s dark brown eyes met and held Porter’s icy blue ones. Tension flared between them, then Porter looked away. He bit into a biscuit, asking around a mouthful of food, “What about you, boy? Do you have a name?”
“People call me Mudge.”
“Mudge? What kind of name is Mudge?”
“Dunno.” He fished in his pocket and retrieved an oval-shaped piece of metal roughly the size of his palm, then passed it to Tom. The letters STH, finely etched but worn with age, were carved upon the metal surface. “My father said never to lose that, for that’s who I am. I suppose those are my initials. Don’t know how people came to call me Mudge.” He thought for a moment, considering the alternatives. “Guess I don’t mind it, really.”
Tom handed the metal piece to Porter. “What is it?”
His brother gave it a cursory glance and lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Old,” he answered shortly. “Not worth much. Probably a plate to identify a saddle or a trunk.” He tossed it back to the boy. “Where’s your father now?”
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