The Vengekeep Prophecies

by Brian Farrey

  Coming down, I heard a mighty crack. Not only had the strut come undone but the leg of the tower had snapped in two. I hugged what remained of the leg as I felt the entire structure teeter and sway. My teeth hurt as the sound of grinding metal and snapping wood filled the air. The tower groaned and finally fell forward.

  I braced myself as the support beams collapsed around me, pelting my body with the tower’s remains. I fell twice my height and, before I disappeared under the rubble, I saw the great wooden drum hit the cobblestones and splinter into a thousand pieces. A huge wave of water flooded the Promenade. As the water met the lava, a roaring hiss of steam perforated the air. Within seconds, the advancing lava men froze as the molten rock hardened into obsidian.

  Silence. I peeked out from under the tower wreckage. Miraculously, as the tower had fallen away from me, I’d escaped any major damage. I was sore all over but, apart from a few scrapes, unharmed. The next thing I knew, Da was throwing bits of the tower aside to pull me out. Once I was free of the debris, he carried me toward the Promenade perimeter. We hugged each other for a long time. A moment later, the rest of the family emerged from where they’d been waiting, unable to get to us against the flood of departing masses. They joined in the embrace as Da and I gasped for air.

  Slowly, the people of Vengekeep returned to the Promenade. They stared in horror at the shattered water tower and the slick sheet of obsidian that marred the once perfectly spaced cobblestones. People looked from us to the destruction and I’m sure the same image was in everyone’s minds. I know because it’s the image that my entire family was picturing.

  The flaming men in the tapestry. The bogus tapestry that my mother made. The tapestry that shouldn’t have been able to predict a daily sunrise let alone a full-fledged attack by fiery creatures from the earth.

  At first, I thought I heard a whip crack. The snap was followed by another. Then another. We looked around and realized that it was applause. The people returning to the square were applauding us, the Grimjinxes … fulfillers of prophecy, saviors of Vengekeep.

  But we couldn’t enjoy it, this moment when we were being made to feel truly welcome. We could only stare blankly at one another. Finally, amid the tumult of cheers, it was Ma who whispered what was on all our minds.

  “What the zoc just happened?”

  5

  Fateskein

  “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you die in your sleep like the dog you are.”

  —Andion Grimjinx, alleged cofounder of the Shadowhands

  So, of course, they arrested us.

  When it was all over, there were a hundred people in the Promenade and any one of them could have been responsible for the destruction evident everywhere. Did anyone else get so much as questioned? No. Ignoring the cheers of the crowd, which continued to hail what I had done, Aronas and his stateguards stormed on the scene, took one look at the devastation, and went right for the family of presumed felons, taking us all into custody.

  It hardly seemed fair.

  Crammed with the rest of us into a small, windowless cell, Nanni was the first to note that this was an occasion. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “we’ve each of us spent time here over the years, but this is the first time we’ve been incarcerated as a family.” We took a moment to burn this special event into our memories.

  Ironically, we hadn’t done anything to deserve it this time.

  Da paced restlessly down the middle of the cell, gnawing at his knuckle as he did whenever he was upset. Very little upset Da. He took most things in stride, including the threat of a lifetime prison sentence. To see him like this was rare and somewhat unsettling. Ma, by contrast, sat near the bars on a stool, the very picture of calm. Her dark blue eyes stared into space, a sign she was deep in thought.

  “That didn’t just happen, right?” Da muttered, his gnawed-on knuckle looking quite red and raw. “I mean, we didn’t just see a completely falsified and fictitious prophecy come to life. We didn’t, did we?”

  “We did,” Ma said softly.

  “Maybe you’ve got a bit of seer in you, Da,” I said, lying back on a haystack so Aubrin could rest her head on my lap.

  “This was a fluke,” Da declared. “Has to be. A complete coincidence.”

  “A coincidence,” Ma drawled, “that imaginary creatures, never before seen in nature, sprang to life based solely on a con we played? That’s some coincidence.”

  Da stopped pacing long enough to lean against the bars. He breathed out loudly through his nose. “By the Seven, Allia … you don’t think it’s going to happen again, do you? With … you know … the rest of the ‘prophecies.’”

  Ma said nothing. She reached out and took Da’s hand, giving it a reassuring pat. But Da’s point was well taken. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what other terrors the fake tapestry had foretold.

  The gaol door opened. Castellan Jorn himself entered, followed closely by Aronas, and at Aronas’s heel, Maloch. My former friend looked at me with malice. I pushed my glasses all the way up the bridge of my nose and glared right back.

  “You’re free to go,” Jorn grumbled as Aronas unlocked the cell door.

  “But we were just starting to settle in,” Da protested. He pointed around the cell. “We were going to put a table there, maybe paint that wall—”

  Jorn brandished a piece of parchment. “I’ve got scores of witnesses claiming that you lot saved the day with … whatever happened out there. Ullin Lek himself swears that you were”—he squinted, consulting the parchment—“‘solely responsible for saving the Promenade from the lava men.’ What the zok are lava men?”

  Ma shrugged. “Guess you had to be there.”

  “In fact,” I added under my breath, “I wish you had been there.”

  Da emerged from the cell to find Aronas in his path. The captain’s eyes became slits. “I still say it’s a trick, Castellan. Something the Grimjinxes did to make it appear they were the heroes. I’d bet they instigated the whole lava mess just so they could swoop in and live up to what the tapestry predicted.”

  I folded my arms. “I’m sorry, Captain Aronas, but wouldn’t your men be able to verify that? You did have them following us, didn’t you? Can’t they speak to what happened?” I shot a look at Maloch. “Or did they go running away with the rest of the crowd when all the trouble started?”

  Maloch looked down as Ma’s eyebrow arched. “Abandoning their posts in a crisis, Captain? Isn’t dereliction of duty punishable by, and I’m no expert on the law, a year in gaol?”

  Before the Captain could respond, Jorn cleared his throat, knowing that we had a point. With a grunt, Aronas and Maloch stepped aside, allowing us all to move out. As she passed Jorn, Nanni gave the Castellan a wallop.

  “I’m eighty!” she hollered. “You’re incarcerating an octogenarian.”

  Aronas rolled his eyes. “You said before you were seventy.”

  Not one to be called a liar, Nanni lashed out and slapped Aronas as well. “Respect your elders!” She made to whack Maloch, too, but he flinched, ducking behind his mentor.

  As we left the gaol, the looks we got from people were odder than ever. News of our first official actions as the town-state’s saviors had spread like wildfire. When one girl blew me a kiss, I tripped on my foot and did a face plant into the road.

  Ma picked me up. “And just when did you become so nimble?” she asked. “Climbing up that water tower.”

  I smirked. “You saw that?”

  “You couldn’t hear me screaming over the crowd? ‘Jaxter Grimjinx, you get down from there before you slip and break your neck!’”

  We laughed, but Da stared at us with complete seriousness.

  “So, none of us thinks this is a coincidence, right?” he asked. “And if none of us thinks it’s a coincidence, what should we do?”

  “We wait,” Nanni suggested. “We wait and see what happens. It might have been an isolated incident.”

  Da’s lips curled. “We could do th
at. But I was thinking about something a mite more preemptive. Something that doesn’t involve waiting around for those winged creatures Allia dreamed up.”

  I’d forgotten about those.

  “And that would be?” I asked.

  Da stopped on the street corner and looked across the square at the town-state hall. “We need another look at that tapestry.”

  Lightning split the night sky as rain blanketed Vengekeep. I’d miraculously managed to stay dry during the collapse of the water tower but now, crawling along the roof of the town-state hall in the middle of the night, I was soaked to the bone.

  Nearby, I could hear Da fidgeting with the lock to the skylight over the Viewing Room while Ma secured the rigging of ropes and pulleys that would lower us to the tapestry. As the lock clicked and Da raised the glass on the skylight, I fastened the harness across my chest to Ma’s rigging, and the three of us slowly descended on the ropes we’d lowered into the room. The room was pitch-black and as it swallowed us, I lost my bearings.

  I slowed my descent and whispered, “Should I light a candle so—?”

  “No!” Ma and Da said, a little too quickly and firmly.

  I flashed on an image of the Castellan’s burned house, a reminder of the last time I tried to light a candle, and fell silent.

  I heard both my parents touch down lightly, and, thinking I was close, released my hold on the rope. And fell flat on my back with a thud. As Da helped me to my feet, Ma lit candles and handed one to each of us. We all leaned in close to the tapestry and reviewed the images and words Ma had woven.

  “When you’re good, you’re good,” I told Ma. “But I think, for once, you were too good.”

  Da reached out and felt the tapestry, pinching sections of it between his fingers. He ran his palm against the length of the weaving, up and down, side to side. Then he glanced over at Ma, who took the pack from her shoulder. Opening it up, she withdrew the Spider.

  Ma had invented the Spider years ago to help her with the intricate detail in her forgeries. The Spider was a thick leather helmet with eight hinged legs attached to the front, each with a magnifying glass on its end. Da slid the Spider over his brow as I moved in close with my candle to give him proper light.

  He pulled two Spider legs down, positioning one lens in front of each eye. His head moved back and forth, his eyes staring intently at the tapestry. He pushed those lenses out of his way and pulled down two more, this time both in front of his right eye. Still nothing. He did this several more times until he’d used each lens at least once. Sighing, he shook his head.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’re up against.” He held out his hand to Ma, who slid her fingers into a small pouch on the side of her backpack. From within, she pulled a red-tinted monocle in a thin brass frame. The one enchanted item we owned, it offered amazing magnification with the added bonus of being able to see hidden magic. We didn’t use it much. We kept it hidden for special occasions, seeing as it wasn’t exactly legal for anyone but a mage to possess a rubyeye. That’s why we had to sneak in to study the tapestry.

  Da removed a lens from one of the Spider’s legs and replaced it with the rubyeye. Breathing deeply, he pulled the red lens over his eye and peered closely at the tapestry.

  “Zoc!” he cursed, a mite too loudly. Wide-eyed, he turned to Ma and me. “It’s fateskein!”

  Ma’s hand went to her mouth. Without realizing, I took a step back from the tapestry, suddenly nervous. Our family had our code and we stuck to it. We never preyed on the weak or poor. We never filched from other thieves when their backs were turned. And we never, ever dealt in illegal, dangerous goods. There’s decent money to be made in selling muskmoss, but we don’t touch it because selling it’s a direct ticket to Umbramore Tower, the High Laird’s prison. And of all the prohibited substances in the Five Provinces, fateskein was the most dangerous. Possession of fateskein was the only crime, apart from treason, that was punishable by death.

  Disbelieving, Ma pulled the red monocle toward her, looking through it at the tapestry. She gasped. “No … no, it can’t be.”

  “How did you get fateskein?” Da asked, slipping the Spider from his head.

  “I don’t know!” Ma insisted. “You don’t think I’d be so stupid as to do this on purpose?”

  I took the Spider from Da and used the monocle to study the tapestry myself. Through the tinted glass, the deep-brown fibers looked like massive strands of blood-colored rope. Fine golden strings wove in and out of the red fibers, binding them together. The gold strings seemed to pulsate. Looking again at the fabric with my naked eye, I saw only the brown, woven designs. But peering through the red lens, it became very clear to all of us what had happened.

  As its name implies, fateskein, once woven, has the power to influence fate. Whatever images it depicts come true. That’s all I really knew about it, as its illegal nature made it taboo to even discuss. Centuries ago, during the Great Uprisings, the reigning High Laird had narrowly evaded a bloody coup when a rogue mage attempted to use fateskein to make himself supreme ruler. The High Laird prevailed, the mage was executed, and fateskein had been illegal to make, possess, and use ever since.

  And my mother had used it unknowingly to craft for our family a fate where we were supposed to save the town from a series of unthinkable disasters.

  “We have to tell the Castellan,” Ma insisted.

  You knew the Grimjinxes were in a corner when they considered turning to the authorities for help.

  Ma continued. “Explain to him at once—”

  “That you used fateskein?” Da asked. “Even if he believes it was an accident, we’ll all be hanging from the gallows by morning if we tell him we destroyed the original tapestry and replaced it with a fake.”

  “Can’t we just stop this?” I asked. “Destroy this tapestry. Shouldn’t that break the—”

  Before I’d even finished my suggestion, Da drew a small dagger from a sheath concealed on his wrist. The blade flashed in the candlelight as he brought it up and down in an arc, slashing at the tapestry. But the instant the blade touched the fabric, the magical light that had only been visible through the monocle flickered into brighter evidence, rippling across the tapestry like tiny bolts of golden lightning, and the steel dagger shattered like glass.

  To confirm what we were beginning to suspect, I held my candle directly to the cloth and the flame immediately went out. There would be no destroying the fateskein tapestry. Not through regular means, anyway.

  Da began his nervous pacing again as the thunderstorm outside raged on. “Okay, Allia, think. Can we trace this back? Do you remember where you got it? Maybe whoever sold it to you can tell us how to undo this.”

  Ma’s licked her lips nervously. “Of course I remember where I got it. We talked about it when we came up with this scheme, remember? I told you I couldn’t just walk into Brassbell Promenade and ask for yarn the exact color of the tapestries. So we agreed I’d have to look—”

  “At Graywillow Market,” Da finished with Ma. He cupped his face in his hands and groaned.

  Graywillow Market was an unofficial market upriver from Vengekeep. It sprang up every weekend, tents erected across a small clearing on the riverbank. The average person who came upon the impromptu bazaar might just assume they’d stumbled on a group of local merchants selling their wares to the countryfolk who lived outside the town-states.

  But, in reality, Graywillow Market was known in thieving circles as a great place to unload stolen merchandise to unsuspecting customers, swap with fellow thieves, and make other unfortunate acquisitions go away.

  A picture formed in my mind. Some two-bit vagabond accidentally found himself in possession of fateskein and, desperate to pawn it off on someone before the authorities closed in, set up shop in Graywillow Market. It just happened that my mother became the mark. There was no way to trace the fateskein back to its source.

  Ma pointed at the tapestry. “Those predictions are going to keep coming true.”


  I said, “And everyone in Vengekeep is going to look to us to keep them safe. What are we going to do?”

  Da pulled himself up to his full height and stuck out his chin defiantly. “What we do is what Grimjinxes have done for generations when faced with insurmountable odds. A time-honored family tradition for con artists.”

  We all nodded.

  “Run.”

  6

  No Escape

  “Triumph is the reward of a shrewdly timed exit.”

  —The Lymmaris Creed

  Look, we just weren’t the hero types. It’s not like we wanted to see Vengekeep attacked by giant flying skeletons. Or overrun by hordes of killer vessapedes. If we stayed, it was only going to end with a bunch of dead Grimjinxes to clean up. Really, it just made sense to leave the defense of Vengekeep to the likes of Aronas and the stateguard. Fateskein or no, the Grimjinxes knew how to save only one thing: ourselves.

  We spent the next day quietly packing the house. Da brought our covered wagon around to the front door. Long ago, Ma and Da had converted the interior of the wagon into a miniature home: chairs, storage, hammocks for beds. “Just in case,” they said. Which meant “just in case we ever have to leave in a hurry.” Like tonight.

  We tried to be discreet as we packed it with all our possessions. Once night fell, Ma made for the livery stable to “borrow” a couple mangs to pull the wagon. As Da, Nanni, and Aubrin finished packing, I kept watch on the street corner for Maloch or any of the other stateguards assigned to watch us.

  “Oya, Jaxter!”

  I jumped. Callie turned the corner, dressed in black breeches and a dark gray tunic.

  “A mite late to be out, Callie,” I said, my heart hammering in my chest.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Could say the same for you.”

  “What’s up?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, I dunno. I’m feeling a bit restless tonight. I thought we could maybe start my lock-picking lessons. The town-state mage’s house is empty until Talian gets back from the Trials—”