Call of the Colossus: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles Book 2)

by K. C. May

  Once Jora got out of the Legion building unseen, she headed to Arc’s shop. Though she knew Elder Devarla and Justice Captain Milad were probably in a near panic by then, not knowing where she was, she had to get this matter with Captain Kyear taken care of before she could relax. She put one hand atop her head to keep the hat in place as she alternated running and walking up to the market district and to Tipping Street. Except that when she knocked and pounded on the door, Arc didn’t answer. She didn’t hear him moving around inside.

  Challenger’s fists. She set off toward the next street to the south and scanned the shop signs for the barbery. The door had no window in it, and no window in the front of the shop. She took a breath and opened the door.

  Arc was sitting in one of the chairs, his face half lathered. A barber was bent over him, shaving his face and chatting like they were old friends. Without a customer, the other barber was sitting in his own chair, watching the exchange.

  “…little Noossmor boy was a mischievous little devil, let me tell you. His sister, on the other hand–”

  “There she is,” Arc said, catching Jora’s eye.

  The barber straightened and turned around. “Ah, you must be Nora. Mark was telling me about your most recent trip to Noossmor to meet your new in-laws. Congratulations, by the way. Let’s hope for a boy.”

  She gave Arc a look of disbelief. What on Aerta has he told them?

  “She doth not favor the long hair,” Arc said. “’Tis the popular style for men in Noossmor.”

  The barber laughed and smiled at her before bending back to continue his work. “I’m sure she’ll get used to it in time, but if you decide to cut it, we could make it into a wig.”

  “A wig, eh?” Arc said. He winked at Jora, no doubt entertaining the notion of her wearing his hair.

  “We’re expected at Cacie’s house soon,” Jora said. Her sister’s name was the first to pop into her mind. “Are you going to be much longer?”

  “Five more minutes,” the barber said.

  She sat down to wait, tapping her foot anxiously, while Arc spun some tale about his fictitious wife, Nora, and his non-existent parents. He did a decent job disguising his normal speech pattern, though he slipped in a few -eths on the verbs. She stopped listening to the exchange to turn her thoughts back to the smuggling. Captain Kyear would have brought the coins by now, and Behrendt would be there any minute to collect them. She and Arc shouldn’t be there when he arrived, or King Yaphet would find out she wasn’t being as secretive as he’d needed her to be.

  She stood. “I’ll wait outside. There’s a boutique on Tipping I wanted to visit.”

  “All right, my darling,” Arc said. His eyes twinkled with amusement.

  She slipped out of the barbery, checking the street in both directions before hurrying off in the direction of Arc’s empty shop. If Behrendt walked in while Arc was having a shave, he might be surprised but not alarmed. Only her presence, she realized, would worry him.

  She hid out of sight, peeking around the corner now and then for a sign of either the carriage Behrendt took to the barbery, or Arc. When she saw him, tall and cleanly shaven, she waved him over.

  “Mark and Nora?” she asked.

  Arc shrugged his massive shoulders. “What hast you accomplished whilst I was shaven’d?” He unlocked the shop’s door, and the two went inside. Despite the room having a table and two chairs, it was depressingly stark. She couldn’t imagine him living here permanently. At some point, she was going to have to come up with an alternative—a real home for him.

  “I went to the Legion headquarters to talk to the captain,” she said. “He’s the one who receives the money from the smugglers by way of a sergeant under his command. Usually, he delivers it to the barbery.”

  He sat in one of the two chairs at the table and gestured to the other. “None entered erewhile.”

  Jora was too excited to sit, so she paced the floor, clomping across the bare wood. “Good.” That meant Behrendt hadn’t seen him either.

  “Wherefore–”

  “Say why, not wherefore.”

  “Why then didst thou—you go thither?”

  She sighed. “I confronted him about his role in the smuggling. He’s indisposed at the moment, but he’s going to be discovered soon.”

  “Didst you slay him?”

  “No! He’s a statue. I want to hide him for a while. We need to sneak into the building and up to his office, and then I need you to carry him out the same way.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “To what end?”

  “As long as he’s a statue, he can’t tell anyone I was there. If he tells anyone about our conversation, it’ll get back to the king.”

  “And why dost the king care anent what ye two spake?”

  Jora took the time to give Arc a short summary of the events that had led up to her meeting with Captain Kyear. He listened with raised brows, but he didn’t interrupt, not even to ask questions. When she finished, he nodded slowly.

  “Most important, you want nie that the captain should speak anent thy conversation. The better way to ensure that he keep silent is to kill him.” Arc drew his forefinger across his throat.

  “I don’t want to kill him.”

  “Then ’twas an ill-advised visit.”

  “You’re probably right, but I needed answers.”

  “You must slay him.”

  “No,” she asked, aghast.

  “Dead men talk nie.”

  “They talk to Truth Sayers,” she said, remembering how she Observed her friend Gilon after Elder Sonnis had sent a disciple to murder him. “The elders could find out who he talked to and who killed him. The only way to hide that conversation is to statuize him and keep him that way until we’re ready. That way, he can’t be Observed.”

  “Nor his yesterdays?”

  “Right. Being a statue is somewhat like having that tattoo on your forearm. It keeps you—and him—out of their eye, as if you don’t exist.”

  He made an impatient face. “’Twas ill-advised even so.”

  “There’s nothing to be done about it now but to make sure the statue isn’t discovered. I’m the only one who can statuize people, and if anyone sees it, they’ll know I was there.” She briefly considered the sergeant. Once he returned to his post near the Isle, it would be a week before the question arose again. The only issue in the meantime was accounting for Kyear’s absence.

  They debated bringing the statue to the shop versus hiding it somewhere in the Legion building. Being too heavy to carry meant Kyear would have to be returned to the flesh and slept for the short time it would take to remove him from the building and get him to the shop. If anyone had reason to Observe Kyear during that time, she could be discovered.

  Arc wanted to delay the decision until he got a sense of how heavy the statue was. He seemed to think he was strong enough to carry a six-foot-tall statue of solid stone. Jora simply shrugged. He would see when they arrived, and she could sleep Kyear in order to transport him.

  “The only way to enter the building unseen,” she said, “is to leave the realm of perception. It means you won’t be able to perceive anything at all, not even your own body. You’ll be blind and deaf. You won’t feel the floor under your feet or my hand grasping your wrist.”

  “How then will we move aboute?”

  “I watch myself in the Mindstream. I can see where my body is and guide myself. It’s hard to explain, but as long as you keep walking, we’ll be fine.”

  For a few minutes, they practiced walking through the ’twixt, back and forth through the shop. Arc’s longer strides made keeping up with him difficult, especially when she had to turn him around or get through the doorway between the shop’s main room and the storage room. Stopping him before he hit the wall meant turning him at the last second, which set him off in a new direction.

  “Nay,” Arc said, pulling his wrist out of her grasp. He dropped out of the ’twixt, returning to the realm of perception. “I can nie ab
ide this. I can nie climb stairs wythout feeling my legs. We must find another way. Why are we nie traveling the Meanders?”

  “What are Meanders?” Jora asked.

  “The tunnels under the city. You wist—knowed nie?”

  She shook her head. “Knew. No, I didn’t.” She’d never heard of such a thing. “If there is an underground tunnel leading to the Legion headquarters, it’s surely blocked off.”

  “Then I propound you use thy tree-freond,” he said. “After we do walk into the structure, thine ally shall run ahead to put to sleep e’ryone ere they see us. He shall wake them after we have safely passed.”

  Jora smiled. “That’s a grand idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You are nie a warrior.”

  Until then, she’d thought of warriors as men who used their weapons more than their brains, whose primary task was killing and not planning. She studied him, seeing intelligence in his sea-green eyes that she’d initially mistaken for bloodlust and fervor. Her concept of a warrior was evolving, thanks to Archesilaus.

  He scrunched his brow as he gazed upward. “A better idea strikes me. When is the building locked for the night?”

  “Give me a minute to find out.” Jora used the Mindstream to find the desk clerk’s thread and explored it backward to the previous evening. “At about sunset, the desk clerk checks the upper floor for anyone still in their office, then he locks the main door behind him.”

  “Then shall we wait for the sun to set.”

  Jora put her robe back on and removed the hat when she neared the Justice Bureau, thinking the wisest course would be to fetch her book and go read in the library where she would be seen by her peers in the event someone inquired about Captain Kyear’s disappearance. When she opened the door to her room, Korlan’s presence there surprised her until she remembered leaving him behind. Had he waited there the entire time?

  “Where the hell have you been?” he asked. “You know I caught hell for your disappearance, don’t you? Milad jumped all over my ass.”

  “I’m sorry, Kor,” she said. “I was trying to keep you from getting into trouble.”

  “You made things worse. Milad knows about Arc.”

  “You told him?”

  “He asked about the missing Colossus statue. I couldn’t lie and pretend I knew nothing about it.”

  “Of course not,” she said, though some part of her harbored an irrational annoyance that he hadn’t made an effort to protect Arc. “I have to study. Follow me to the library, if you must.”

  He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and bowed. “After you. You’re my only assignment now.”

  Once they reached the reading room, she sat at a table and pretended to read, flipping pages now and then to keep up appearances while she thought about Captain Kyear and who might have entered his office since she’d left him there. To keep him from waking up, she’d had Sonnis help her stuff him completely under the desk and had Po Teng statuize him there. Only someone who went around the desk and sat in his chair would have seen him. She’d extinguished all the lamps before leaving, in the hopes that people would think he’d left for the day.

  Korlan sat across the table from her and dozed with his chin on his chest. The first supper bell rang, and the two adepts in the library picked up their belongings and left. Through the windows, Jora could easily see the waning sunlight through the windows and the shadows of the nearby trees growing longer. Sunset was approaching. She’d already missed lunch and would be expected at supper. In fact, she’d promised Adriel they would eat together. If Jora and Arc arrived too late at the Legion headquarters, they wouldn’t be able to get in until the following morning.

  She ate a distracted supper surrounded by her friends. They were Adriel’s friends, really, men and women enamored of the notion of being friends with the Gatekeeper. At first they were enraptured, hanging on her every word, but once the novelty wore off, they talked over her and generally ignored her, even while saving a seat at their table specifically for her. She occasionally caught her friends Emelia and Lorense watching wistfully from another table, and she longed to leave the loud-mouths and join them. At least those two seemed to genuinely enjoy her company.

  As she placed her dirty bowl, spoon, and tray in their respective places, Emelia hurried over with her own. “You’re welcome to join us when you get tired of that crowd,” she said. “It breaks my heart to see the way you sit there, smiling politely while they blather on and on.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow morning I will,” Jora replied. “If I don’t sleep through the bell like I did today.”

  Korlan fell into step with her as she headed to her room. “You didn’t wake me.”

  “Sorry,” she said. They began to climb the stairs. “You looked tired. I was only coming to supper anyway, as you can see.”

  “I didn’t realize I was so tired.”

  “Then you should be glad I let you sleep. The third bell’s about to ring. You should go down and get in line.”

  “Are you in a hurry to get rid of me?” he asked.

  “I want to go visit Arc and be back before lock-up, so either you hurry and eat or I go without you.”

  He reached the door in three long strides. “I’ll be back before the last ring fades.”

  “Meet me by the gate,” she said. “And don’t dawdle.”

  Of course, she had no intention of bringing him along to the Legion building, but he didn’t need to know that.

  As promised, Korlan met her near the side gate within a few minutes of the third bell. He was still chewing his food when he got there, and even shoved a handful of food into his mouth after he swallowed.

  “You didn’t need to go that far,” she said. “I waited for you, as you can see.”

  “I know,” he said, his mouth still full. He chewed a few more times. “I didn’t want you to get impatient.” He slapped his hands off, then wiped them on the legs of his trousers. “Why so eager to see your new friend? Are you falling for him?”

  “What? No. Where did that come from?”

  He shrugged. “You did save him from a prison of sorts. It’d surprise me if he didn’t feel like he owes you. Maybe he’s falling for you a little.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Arc and I have a professional relationship.”

  “What, like master–guard dog?”

  “That was rude.”

  He grinned, not looking apologetic in the least. “Sorry.”

  He was jealous, she realized. She’d saved him, he felt like he owed her. Perhaps he was falling for her.

  Arc was visibly surprised to see Korlan when they arrived at his shop that evening. He invited them in and shut the door.

  “Why did you nie—not come earlier?” he asked.

  Jora’s eyes widened when she realized he was referring to her last visit—the one without Korlan. She tried to shake her head surreptitiously to signal to Arc that he should drop the matter, but he was looking at Korlan. “We would have,” she said, “but I had a lot of reading to catch up on today. I spent the last several hours in the library.”

  He looked at her askance. “You hast abandon’d me here to waste the time alone, wythout a soul to talk to.”

  “Sorry, Arc,” she said, patting his arm. “I offered to statuize you to help the time pass more quickly, but you declined, remember?”

  “Have you e’er been a statue?” he asked Korlan.

  Korlan shook his head in reply.

  “You should still him,” Arc said.

  Jora shrugged, trying to look casual. “If he wants, sure.” She opened the Mindstream and summoned Po Teng.

  Korlan shuffled back a step, watching Po Teng with a wary eye. “Why would I want to be a statue?”

  “Statuize Korlan,” she whispered to her ally.

  “Remember what he ask’d,” Arc said. “If you answer the question whenas you release him, he shall suspect nothing.”

  Jora nodded as she shrugged out of her red robe and put on the hat. “
Ready to go?”

  As they walked through the streets, people stared, not at her but at the giant looming above everyone, with his long, brown hair trailing behind him. She watched him walk, each shoulder dipping with every long stride, and realized he didn’t feel as out of place as he looked. Maybe he was used to towering over everyone, but people didn’t grow so tall in Serocia anymore. It was hard to believe that people his size were once commonplace.

  “Did many people reach your height in your time?” she asked.

  “No, only Colossus.”

  “Are you big because you’re Colossus, or are you Colossus because you’re big?”

  He smiled down at her. “The former. Children are tested in their youth for reflex, attention to detail, and perseverance. The chosen ones drink Blood of Hibsar e’ry day.”

  “What is Blood of Hibsar?”

  “You hast godfruit to give you two deaths. We have Blood of Hibsar to grow giants o’normal citizens. My natural siblings and parents are nie ful tall.”

  “Oh. So that statue Ludo—he isn’t your natural brother?”

  “Nay, he and I were o’the same age, chosen at the same time, raised together, trained together. He is my bro’er in the ways that matter.”

  Ahead, the black face of the Legion building reflected the orange glow of the sun setting behind them. Jora and Arc circled a nearby chandler’s shop and waited, angled so they could see the front door. It opened again, and two men exited and headed around the building toward the stable.

  A stable hand came around the corner of the building leading a pair of saddled horses. Three more uniformed men exited the building and bid each other a good evening. One left on foot, and the other two mounted the horses and went their separate ways. The stable hand disappeared around the corner.

  “His horse,” Jora said. “I forgot about his horse. The stable master will know something’s amiss if Kyear doesn’t retrieve it.”

  Arc raised his brows and gave her an I-told-you-so expression.