The Skivers turned toward the impact. A single instant passed before they surged as one, like a flock of starved birds, for the reeking black puddle. Shouts rose as they jostled each other. Soon knives flashed in the mob and the shouts turned to screams, then laughter.
A few self-controlled Skivers pushed through the crowd, making their way toward him. Ryle threw a vial at their feet. By the time the third shattered, they had all succumbed to their addiction. Writhing bodies clogged the stairs. He wanted to look away but he couldn’t. Ryle fought another urge to vomit.
“Come on! Let’s get the hell out of here.” Drailey’s words pulled him out of his stupor. Ryle turned to see her legs disappearing into the vent.
It was the best idea he’d heard all night. He pocketed the last vial and scrambled onto the table. Behind him feet pounded on the stairs. Just before he leapt into the vent, he glanced back to see Chel panting at the top of the stairs, his face and chest bloody with metallic pinpoints. The Skiver leader screamed with rage.
Ryle leapt, and tried not to think what would happen if he missed. Thanks to Drailey’s blue light he found the handholds and pulled himself into shaft. Below him glass shattered as Chel stormed into the room.
His aches were back full force, and the blasted bandana clung to his face making breathing difficult. Below, Chel was in a rage. They had only moments before the lunatic climbed in after them. He scurried after Drailey, hoping his blasted cloak wouldn’t snag on something and yank him to his death.
Sweaty, frightening moments passed while Drailey’s blue light kept rising above him. More moments than he’d expected. Just how far in hex did he have to climb to get out of there? He kept glancing down, trying to see if anyone pursued, but only blackness lay back the way he’d come.
About the time his arms were about to give out, Ryle’s fingers found the lip of the shaft. Drailey latched onto his wrist, and with one last effort, he was free. A cool breeze ruffled his hair, and he looked up surprised to see clouds overhead instead of stone. They’d climbed all the way to the surface.
He tore off the bandana and leaned, gasping against the base of the brick chimney they’d emerged from. Around them, the steep incline of a roof plunged back toward the street.
The mad Skivers must’ve tied their vent into a larger chimney system and he and Drailey had climbed all the way to the top. From underground to sky high in brief moments. Felt about right for Del’atre.
All he really wanted to do was breathe in air that didn’t gouge out his lungs, but the chimney shook against his back. He scrambled up in time to find Drailey peering down into the hole.
“You sure you want to come up here?” Drailey said. She was peering down into the shaft.
An unflattering curse echoed up from within. It seemed Chel had followed.
“I left a note in payment. You can take it up with Ogrif.”
This garnered another curse, the words nearly indecipherable beneath thick anger.
Instead of looking terrified, Drailey stooped and then heaved a roofing tile up on to the edge of the chimney. “Suit yourself.” She flipped the tile into the shaft.
It clattered off one side, then struck something soft. Ryle made out a grunt, and then a long pause followed by an echoing crash.
He gripped his sword, bracing for new sounds of pursuit, but only rank fumes rose from the chimney. Both his and Drailey’s shoulders slumped in unison.
She let out a shaky laugh. “Let’s get off this damn roof.”
CHAPTER 26
The quiet, dark streets of Del’atre slid by, block by block. Drailey led him east, away from the factories, and soon Ryle began to see homes again, though all their lights were extinguished. Any warmth he’d sensed from them earlier was now burned out, leaving severe stone facades.
Ryle felt the same. His head and stomach ached. The climb out from the Skivers’ lair had consumed the last of his energy, swallowed any boost Drailey’s brew had provided. He ran a hand across his face for the dozenth time, his fingers trembled. The last dregs of adrenaline were slowly leaving his system. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open as they trudged back into Flats.
Thickening clouds drifted across a sky filled with too much gray light. Morning was coming. He tried not to focus on the impending sense of doom at the thought of a brand new day about to crash down upon his head. Another day on little to no sleep. He’d given up hope of ever sleeping in an actual bed again.
Drailey came to a stop at the intersection of the first real street he’d seen in hours. He guessed they were deep in the heart of Flats now. That meant her shop must be close, and their mission nearly at an end.
She looked south along the street for a long moment, her face pensive and pallid in the flat light.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She blinked slowly, like her eyelids were weighted. One hand remained pressed to her satchel, where it had stayed since they’d left the Skivers behind as if she were protecting the contents, or maybe reassuring herself that it was still there.
Something desperate drove her on, that much was clear, but she hadn’t said a word about it all night. Her focus had been singular and unwavering. He knew it had to be bad though. What else would make her risk Lastrahn, Ogrif, and the Skivers to get the ingredient? Anything that bad would be hard to face alone, and in the near morning light. He didn't think she wanted to.
He knew that feeling. It was the one prodding him between the shoulder blades. The one named Hartvau. The city was huge and Lastrahn’s only lead had come from Drailey. He and the champion needed more help. He’d thought that when they rode into Del’atre and felt the truth of it more strongly now. And she was the only person who could help them. Together they were stronger. Together, maybe they could face these enormous challenges.
“That’s it,” she said.
Ryle’s heart turned over. He saw the lie in her face, saw the unspoken fear. He thought maybe she wanted him to call her on it. To insist he provide further assistance. To give her help he couldn’t offer, because it wasn’t his to give.
“Okay.” He looked away, but from the corner of his eye, he saw her nod to herself, as if she hadn’t expected anything else. He made himself press on. “I hope the nag helps.”
“It will,” she said, voice still grim.
Ryle’s chest hurt more, the pressure increased. He had to escape it or he’d have to stay and help her, and that wasn’t an option. Not with Lastrahn waiting. With his father maybe nearby.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to help,” she said.
Ryle shrugged.
She smiled, then her expression firmed, as if she’d made a decision. “How long have you been with Lastrahn?”
Ryle’s chest tightened, but he wasn’t sure why. “Almost a week.”
She gripped her satchel’s strap. “Has he been acting like that the entire time? Like the way he was in Shelling and at my shop?”
Ryle shrugged, trying to play it off, but the movement felt evasive. Which was she really asking about? Lastrahn? Or their mission? The champion had warned him not to mention Hartvau to her. To not get her involved.
“That’s just Lastrahn,” Ryle said. “He’s intense, focused, driven.” He managed to avoid adding asshole to the list.
Drailey shook her head with each word. “No, he’s not.” Ryle opened his mouth but she held up a finger. “I’ve travelled with him, gone through shit with him many times. Something’s changed. He’s not usually like that.”
Ryle’s hands trembled before he clenched them. “What do you mean?”
She sighed. “Lastrahn is focused when he needs to be, has a temper, sure. But not all the time. Not even close. And not like that. Come on, I’m sure you’ve read the stories. He fought for accolades as much as anything. Celebrated his victories as hard as he fought for them. He was always as charming as he was deadly. Have you seen any of that?”
“What are you saying? Life is like the stories?”
“Don’t be
stupid,” she snapped, then took a breath. “But all stories begin in truth.”
He stared at her, willing her to say more, trying to reconcile her statements against a week of riding with the champion. Nothing lined up, but then she didn’t know the stakes at play. She didn’t know the entire realm hung in the balance. Maybe it was enough, but then she looked away and Ryle saw what she hadn’t been willing to say out loud. What he hadn’t been able to ask, and what he’d been dying to know for a long time. “What happened at Helador?”
Drailey walked away, south along the street. For a moment Ryle thought he’d gone too far and driven her off, but she wasn’t walking fast enough to leave him behind. They were the steps of someone who couldn’t stand to be near what they wanted to say.
He hurried after her. “Please,” Ryle said. “I need to know.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Drailey—”
She sighed and walked a little faster. “I don’t know exactly what happened. I wasn’t there.”
He matched her pace. The pause drew out, but he was rewarded for his patience.
“But I heard things from Jules. She was there.”
Silence welled up again, and she slowed a bit as she searched for the words. Ryle bit his tongue to hold back the tension in his skull.
“Lastrahn, Renault, and many others from the House of Reckoning were there.”
“To keep the peace,” Ryle said.
Her expression said he didn’t know anything. “No, because Elderow and the House of Reckoning pulled the peace summit at Helador together.”
Ryle stumbled. Drailey shook her head. “You really didn’t know? Some say it was Vastroth’s plan, some say the Directorate’s, but Reckoning made it happen. Elderow brought the Seven Cities from the East. Nahra pulled in Del’atre and the western territories.” She hesitated, and Ryle knew what was coming. “Lastrahn brought the Praeters to the table.”
A new weight settled on Ryle’s shoulders as Lastrahn’s motivation became that much clearer. Oh muck. He felt responsible for the disaster. For all those deaths.
“With Vastroth hosting, and every House and the Praeters attending, the possibility for trouble was clear, but everyone thought Reckoning could keep control. And maybe it didn’t matter. The peace summit was such a monumental event that, dangerous or not, people flocked there from all over.
“Jules and her husband went because of her father. He was on the Del’atre council. There had never been such a gathering before, and might never be again. So she wasn’t going to miss out. She figured some new artifacts might turn up that she could acquire.”
“Jules is an artifacter?”
Drailey shot Ryle a look that said he shouldn’t interrupt if he wanted to hear this. Ryle pressed his lips together.
They crossed a street. The yellow and black banners hung on the buildings looked sickly in the gray light.
“Jules ran into Lastrahn near the end of the week. She said Lastrahn was distracted. Acting unusual.”
“Intense?” He ventured.
“No. Happy.”
Ryle frowned.
Drailey took a deep breath, glanced at him, then continued. “She was at a cafe and Lastrahn walked in with someone. A young woman who he introduced as Selendre. She’d never seen him so enamored with anyone. Never seen him smiling so much. She said it was strange, to see him so happy.”
A new possibility crashed down like a millstone. Its impact bore the intensity Ryle had seen in the champion’s gaze. It carried the words he’d spoken in the camp outside Shelling. It’s something she said the first night I met her. I didn’t know what she was talking about until after.
Lastrahn could’ve referred to anyone, but Ryle didn’t think so. It felt too right. It felt too intimate. And then . . . Oh, muck “Then Vastroth happened.”
She nodded. “Thanks to a warning from Lastrahn, Jules fled the city just before Vastroth turned Helador into a frozen wasteland. She and her husband made it out, but her father did not.” Drailey sighed heavily and clutched her bag. “There was no sign of Lastrahn or Renault. Many thought they’d been killed along with everyone else, but we doubted it. Your boss is one tough bastard.”
Lastrahn had survived, but maybe not intact. Not if he’d lost this Selendre. Ryle gripped Casyne’s pendant, and grief filled his heart. He burned it away with anger. So much death and dying, and his bastard of a father used it as a distraction. Once again exploiting the pain of others.
“Listen,” Drailey said, “I know Lastrahn’s up to something. Something big.”
She was fishing for information and right then Ryle badly wanted to tell her exactly why Lastrahn was in Del’atre. She could help, but before he could say anything she stopped and held up a forestalling hand. They stood at another cross street, one Ryle recognized for once. Ferrel’s inn lay a half league to the east.
“I know you can’t tell me anything. He probably made you swear to it,” she said. “I’d expect nothing less from him, so just listen. If this has anything to do with Helador or Vastroth, you’re in for a hard road ahead. Whatever Lastrahn has told you is only a half-truth. I’d bet my eyes he’s out for revenge. And that won’t end well for anyone.” She searched Ryle’s face for a moment while he struggled to keep everything he was feeling inside. Then nodded. “But you can’t leave, can you? Something drives you too.”
Ryle bit his cheek and let his silence answer.
She sighed, bent her lips into a sad smirk. “Typical with all you stoic warrior types. Straight head or die trying.” She squinted at the eastern sky. “It’s time to go. I have somewhere to be, and hell knows you better not keep your boss waiting.” She hitched her satchel higher on her shoulder. “Tell Lastrahn Ogrif’s shop is on Angle Street near Stumps. That’ll get you close enough to spot it.”
“Thanks, Drailey,” Ryle said.
She turned and started back north the way they’d come, then paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “You finished reading that book yet?”
Ryle winced. He’d forgotten the volume she’d given him. “Been a tad busy of late.” What with trying to save the world and all.
“Might be worth it to carve out a few minutes. ‘A myopic truth rarely contains the depth of reality.’” Jehella’s words again. Ones his mother had told him long ago.
“I’ll try,” he said.
Drailey nodded. “It’s all any of us can do. Watch your back, his too.”
CHAPTER 27
The sun initiated a new assault on the canopy of heavy clouds as Ryle trudged back into the Blossom’s common room. He steeled himself against another early appearance from the champion, but Lastrahn was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the room was nearly empty.
A couple men in dusty coats, couriers most likely, sat in one corner shoveling breakfast into their mouths. A trio of businessmen sat in another, peering blearily at stacks of papers; probably delivered by said couriers. A small fire burned in the big fireplace on one side of the room. A yellow-haired serving boy, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, moved about the room, preparing tables and assisting the men as needed.
Would Lastrahn expect to be woken? Would he want breakfast fetched? Both felt stupid as this was an inn, and there were more than enough servants to accomplish either task. The champion had said to be back by dawn, but nothing more.
The smell of baking bread rolled out from the nearby kitchen and sent his stomach to grumbling. After the night he’d had, Lastrahn could wake himself up and wander down here if he wanted breakfast.
Ryle snagged the serving boy’s attention long enough to order whatever was already hot for breakfast and then collapsed on to the nearest bench. It required an effort to keep his aching head from dropping to the worn tabletop.
By the time the boy returned with a slab of ham, diced potatoes, fried eggs and a glass of milk, Ryle had given up and was using the table as a pillow. He had at least extracted himself from the ratty cloak. H
e smelled marginally better, but a dozen rank scents, many new, thanks to the Skivers, had mixed into a terrible hybrid odor. If the boy’s quick retreat from his table was any indication, he needed to eat quickly and find a tub before Lastrahn appeared.
He wolfed down the piping hot food without concern for his mouth’s safety and was finishing the milk when Simeon plopped down across from him.
“How was the Del?” Simeon asked as he looked around the room. At least he didn’t make a face or comment on the smell.
Ryle would’ve normally welcomed his company, but at the moment he didn’t have enough energy to conjure a conversation. He blinked a couple times.
“About right for your first time,” Simeon noted.
Ryle briefly thought it a joke, but Simeon’s carefree expression from the day before was nowhere to be found. The stable hand leaned across the table. “You and your big master looking for trouble?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You two have been busy. Asking questions all over town from what I hear. Making friends. Some with a sort you should avoiding. Like the Skivers.”
How in the screaming hex did he about them already?
Ryle tried to keep his face neutral but Simeon has having none of it. “You shouldn’t screw with that bunch. They’ll slit your throat as quick as look at you.”
That he had noticed. He leaned forward, feeling stupidly conspicuous. “We’re not looking for attention, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then you’re doing a terrible job of it. Word is out. Skivers are hunting for a young Southerner and a young woman in a yellow coat. Another friend of yours?”
“Where the hex did you hear that?”
He gave Ryle a look that said he was dumber than he thought. “This is the Del. News travels faster than the plague.”
Ryle gritted his teeth and looked down at his hands. Had Lastrahn heard yet?
Simeon sighed. “I also take it you’re not friends with the other fellow that’s been following you around and asking questions.”
Gearspire: Advent Page 23
