by Travis Bughi
“But beyond your brother, you still have other family, don’t you?” Heliena said and then smiled when Emily went still. “Yes, you remember them now don’t you? Take me at my word on this one. You don’t come tomorrow willing to die, and something very bad will happen to them. I guarantee it.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Adelpha yelled, spitting blood.
The amazon hit the ground a moment later when another clenched ogre fist connected with the side of her head. She toppled and Emily heard the heavy smack of flesh against stone. Heliena never looked away, though, and neither did Emily. They continued to bore into each other’s eyes, Heliena’s fire to Emily’s ice.
Emily was cracking, though, and Heliena could see it.
“Take my sister,” Heliena commanded. “Leave these two alone.”
Two of the ogres grabbed Adelpha and started to drag her off. Adelpha kicked one in the leg as he reached for her, and she received yet another hit to the stomach that left her gasping for air. The four humans started walking off down the alley, as well, including the one with the brown satchel. Only Takeo stayed, his eyes burning down onto Emily.
“Leave her,” Heliena repeated, this time to the samurai alone. “And don’t worry. You’ll get your chance.”
Takeo hesitated a moment and then relented. He walked by Emily, who was still bound and lying on the ground, and stopped at Heliena’s side.
“You should wiggle free of that rope in a few hours,” she said. “You have until tomorrow evening to bring the stolen coins to the angels’ tower. If you don’t, I’ll gouge out Adelpha’s eyes next to an open window. If you’re still in Lucifan by then, I do hope you’re a heavy sleeper.”
Then they left, and in the silence that followed, Emily’s ice finally shattered.
And she wept.
It felt weak of her to do so, but she couldn’t stop it. Hot tears poured from her eyes, slipped down her cheek, and dripped onto the cold stone beneath her. She took a deep breath, trying to stem the tide, but her emotions crashed forward in a pitiful whimper. In a matter of seconds, everything she’d hoped for had been taken from her. Before they could even form a plan, their enemy had been ready for them. Like a child, she’d underestimated the task before her, and now she was being punished for it. Here she was tied up next to her unconscious brother in a dark and empty alley, and Adelpha was a prisoner.
Emily’s sorrow turned to anger, and she cursed herself for her carelessness. Somewhere, sometime, they’d been seen, either while standing at the basin’s ridge, visiting the colossi, or approaching the city. Heliena had too many allies, too many eyes, and no moral code. Like fools, they’d mistaken their luck for supremacy, and now they were going to pay for it. The burden of her failure flooded over her, and she remembered how much her failure had already cost, even before tonight.
Chara’s death had been her fault. Emily alone had possessed the tools to stop it, and she had failed. Now Adelpha was taken. She’d already lost her grandmother, and now she was going to lose her sister. It seemed like at every turn Emily was losing those closest to her. Quartus had sacrificed himself for her, her father and brother had been injured for her, and now still more were going to pay. Why did those around her have to die? Why couldn’t she save them? Why was it that every time she failed, someone else paid the price for it? Why, why, why?
Suddenly, a yellow light washed over Emily, and her quiet tears came to a halt. She looked up and was shocked to see an old man holding a lantern. She hadn’t heard him coming, and that alone scared her. Had she been that distraught? She looked upon his face, gaunt with age and cast in shadows from the light of the lantern. His clothes were dirty where they weren’t torn, and his shoes looked a few sizes too big. He held the lantern up with one hand, shedding light over Emily and her brother, and held a thin brown cloak wrapped around him in the other. He appeared almost as worried as Emily.
“Are you alright, Miss?” he asked.
His mouth was missing several teeth, and those he had left ranged in color anywhere from yellow to black. At first, Emily said nothing. She was too stunned for thought.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” Emily responded meekly, finding her voice.
The man shuffled forward to close the remaining distance between them, favoring his right leg as he did so. He leaned down behind her, and Emily heard the lantern’s metal cage clink upon the cobbled stone. The light cast an outline of her prone figure upon a nearby wall, and she watched the dancing shadow of the old man kneeling over her. The shadow bent down, and a moment later she felt rough, wrinkled hands on her wrists as he began to work on the knots.
“Thank you,” Emily whispered.
“You’re welcome,” he responded.
“Who are you?”
“Just an old man with nothing left to lose.”
True to her word, the knots Heliena left had not been too tight. The old man finished untying them and tugged the rope free. Emily sat up, rubbing her wrists, still surprised at what was happening. Everything around her seemed beyond reality, and she looked up into the old man’s face with confusion.
“Thank you,” she repeated.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and then he rose up to leave. “May I keep this?”
He waved the rope in front of her as he picked up the lantern. Emily stared back, still stunned, but managed a slight nod that satisfied the man. He slipped the rope into his ragged clothes and then turned away.
As he hobbled a few steps, taking the yellowish glow of the lantern with him, Emily crawled over to Abe and put a hand to his chest. She felt it rise and fall and sighed in relief. Her brother was fine. She touched a tender hand to his bruised forehead. That’s going to leave a mark, she thought.
The light began to fade, and Emily looked up to see the old man was just about to turn the corner. She called out to him.
“Sir?”
“Yes?” he asked, turning back to look at her.
“I. . .” She hesitated. “It’s just, this is the third time I’ve been ambushed in these alleys, and no one has ever come to my rescue before. I just, I don’t know what to say.”
The old man showed surprise at her observation, then embarrassment at what it implied. He looked away as if searching for the right words.
“Scuffles outside one’s home are not uncommon in Lucifan,” he said. “People have trouble enough these days without purposely looking for it. Were my wife still alive, I’d have stayed in my bed as well.”
He looked down, ashamed of what his honesty revealed. A moment of silence passed between them with only the light connecting them.
“Can I have your name?” Emily asked.
The man’s eyes cocked open with apprehension, but then he seemed to decide there was no harm in answering.
“Derrick Grimlock.” He nodded. “Tailor by profession. Well, at least I was.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you.” She nodded back. “Emily Stout.”
Derrick looked at her expectantly, and she realized he was waiting for her to finish her introduction.
“Amazon,” she stated.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Miss Emily,” the old man said, giving a shallow bow and then turning to leave. “Good luck to you, and remember that not all the good in this city left with the angels. We citizens must rely on each other more than ever, especially now that the knights are gone.”
Derrick said that last part almost in passing, like a casual comment, but it made Emily’s heart leap to her throat.
“Gone?” Emily gasped. “The knights are gone? Where’d they go?”
Derrick’s eyes fluttered in surprise. He looked around as if the answers were plainly obvious, but then a look of understanding swept over his face.
“Haven’t heard, have you?” He bowed his head. “I suppose it’s still recent news. A few days ago, a leprechaun bank was robbed by knights. Not that I or anyone else give a damn about them, but laws are laws. The Order
took that as a sign that without the angels here anymore, the knights could no longer be trusted to remain honorable. No divine deity; no divine order. I guess that makes sense, you know?”
“So where’d they go?” Emily asked, bringing Grimlock back to the question.
“Nowhere,” he responded. “The knighthood has been abolished.”
“Abolished?” Emily gasped.
“Yes. Leprechauns and ogres rule this city, now.”
Chapter 18
Dead.
Dead was a good description. Emily felt dead the following morning.
Her fingers, though they worked just fine, felt numb as she wrapped them around the wooden cup she’d found in the orphanage’s kitchen. The chair beneath her, though it supported her weight well, barely seemed real enough to exist at all. Her eyes projected images, but everything seemed so very distant. Not even her ears were working, as evidenced by the barely heard drone of Abe’s remorseful words.
“Again,” he croaked. “Again, I was the first to go down without a fight. Not even a struggle, Emily. I was . . . I was just a liability.”
It’s all my fault, she thought. It was her idea to rob the bank. She’d thought it the perfect way to get back at the leprechauns, and yet, like a fool, she’d vastly underestimated the weight of her decisions. Now the angels’ own warriors, dating back to when Lucifan was first created, were gone forever, struck from this world with one careless action by a little girl who never should have been alive in the first place.
“Oh, Quartus,” Emily whispered, a tear in her eye. “I’m so sorry.”
“The samurai had his sword at my throat the moment I drew,” Abe continued to himself, looking intensely at his breakfast of broken bread. “How could he be so fast? If I hadn’t—if only. You two could have done something were it not for me. I could have done something, if I hadn’t . . . hadn’t, damn it! Why didn’t I pull my weapons sooner? It’s like I was. . .”
He couldn’t say it, though. He couldn’t say that Adelpha’s sister had been too beautiful, and he’d fumbled. The woman he loved was now captured, because the fiery hand of lust—lust for the very enemy he was fighting—had slowed his movements.
The worst part was that he still believed Adelpha could be saved.
“I can’t.” He clenched his fist and set it on the table. “No, I won’t! I won’t let this happen again.”
But he would. He didn’t know it yet, but Emily knew it. He would let it happen again. He would because he’d have to. Heliena had told Emily the truth to kill any chance of heroics, and it had worked marvelously. The knights were gone, Adelpha was captured, and Abe was now both unarmed and unemployed. Even if he made it out alive, his dream of being a gunslinger was gone. Emily’s allies were no more, her enemies were too many, and she was only just beginning to realize that her failure was not due to some misplaced step along a difficult path.
The truth was that she’d never really stood a chance to begin with.
“What are we going to do?” Abe muttered to himself. “The money is with Mark, and we only have until tonight to get to the tower. Count Drowin will be there, Heliena will be there, I can only assume so will that samurai, plenty of ogres, and who knows what else. And they have Adelpha. What do we do? What can we do?”
Emily blinked, and the tear in her eye ran down her cheek. She sniffed back the next one and blinked again.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing.”
Abe finally looked up from his plate. He looked at his sister with disbelief, almost scorn. Emily saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she did not lift her head to meet the gaze. She continued to look for answers, or an escape, within the bottom of her cup.
“What did you say?” he asked. “Who are you? You’re not my sister.”
“Stop it, Abe,” she replied. “Just stop. Listen, okay? It’s over.”
“No, you stop!” he yelled suddenly, standing up. “And you listen! I’m not giving up. Adelpha would not give up! The hero never gives up! You fight, Emily. We fight! That’s how you do it; you fight until you’ve got nothing left. We charge up there, we kill those monsters, and we rescue Adelpha, or we die trying. There is no other option! First, we find the knights, and then we find Talvorn. We gather our forces, and we bash those dirty ogres, greedy leprechauns, and that villainous vampire out of this world for good. Tonight, we save Lucifan! The angels didn’t pick you for no reason, Emily. They knew what they were doing. Their judgment built this city, and Quartus didn’t—”
“QUARTUS WAS WRONG!” Emily yelled back, standing up so fast that her chair was flung back.
The wooden seat clattered to the ground and brought their short argument to a close. Its sharp noise echoed off the bare walls around them, and in the silence that followed, Emily finally met her brother’s gaze. Abe saw the stoic stubbornness of a girl who’d met defeat before and knew when she would meet it again. Emily, in turn, saw the bright light of hope, the willingness to believe, and the idiotic bravery required to accomplish both.
They infected each other. A whole life spent together in the solitary confinement of the Great Plains meant that one look said more than words ever could. Instantly, Abe accepted reality. They were hopelessly outmatched, numerically inferior, and in no place to bargain. Count Drowin was in control of this city now, and they were no longer heroes. They were outlaws. Instantly, Emily realized she was being selfish, and cruelly so. Adelpha’s life, Abe’s life, and the lives of others were resting on her shoulders now, and she was casting them aside because it was easier to give up than it was to hope. She had wronged those who counted on her, and she had been a moment away from leaving this world without even attempting to fix it.
As their faces softened, Abe took a seat, and Emily grabbed her chair off the ground so she could join him. When she did so, she noticed a gnome with wide hips watching them from the hallway with unabashed curiosity.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Madam Sweeney said.
“No,” Emily replied. “At least, not anything worth continuing.”
“Sorry if we were a little loud,” Abe started. “It’s just, well, we’re under a lot of stress right now.”
“So I heard,” the gnome said, raising her voice just a hair and giving them an inquisitive stare.
“You’re not going to turn us in, are you?” Emily asked.
“For what? Wanting to start a rebellion? Ha!” Madam Sweeney chuckled as she scooped up their breakfast utensils, including Emily’s cup. “I’d be right there with you, to be honest. And I’m sure most of Lucifan would join you. I got nothing personal against Sir Mark, angels alone know how much stress the man is going through, but taking advice from a banker on how to run our government isn’t going to end well at all. Lucifan is a city, not a business.”
The gnome put emotion to her words by thrusting the wooden plates into the sink. Emily watched her cup disappear from sight and was glad for it.
“Just imagine if I ran this orphanage like that, hm?” the gnome continued. “Why, most of the kids would be full on starving, rather than the half-starved they are now. I’d be selling them into slavery, renting them out for cheap, and then charging them rent. It’d be downright terrible; I can tell you that much. No way, my dear, no way would that work out well for anyone. I tell you that much, right now!”
“Well, thank you,” Emily said, cutting the rant short. “Your kindness, as always, is beyond generous.”
Madam Sweeney waved the compliment off, having worked herself too quickly into an angry mood to be her normally buoyant self. She focused her attention on the sink where she rinsed and cleaned the barely dirty plates in a bucket of water. This would have been considered wasteful in Emily’s home on the Great Plains, but water was not a scarcity when one lived in a bay city.
“Can I ask a favor of you, Madam Sweeney?” Emily pressed.
“What is it?” she replied, turning her head back.
“Do you know where Gavin is?”
�
�Ah yes.” She nodded, turning back to put away Emily’s cup. “Way ahead of you on that one, dear. I’ve already sent Krunk to the knights’ barracks. I’m not sure where Gavin is, but if anyone does, it’ll be one of the few knights still left at their post.”
“Krunk?” Abe asked nervously. “The ogre child?”
Madam Sweeney turned her head and gave Abe a sidelong glance. He blinked and looked away, realizing quickly that he had been careless with his tone.
“Yes, the ogre child,” she replied with a bit of mocking. “He has a good heart. Trust me, you’ll be safe. Ogres aren’t like family to each other. They don’t hold strong bonds with their own kind. Theirs is a mercenary culture, as you so stereotypically assumed. They sell to the highest bidder and will gladly fight each other for the enjoyment of it. Krunk is different though. I found him as a baby, thrown away in a trash heap. He grew up here, not in that environment of hate, greed, and violence. He’s different, and he won’t betray you.”
Abe frowned. Emily could tell he was not fully convinced, but he knew well enough now that this was a sensitive subject for Madam Sweeney. She’d defended Krunk against more than one inquisitive glance or comment before.
“Well,” Abe pressed onwards, ignoring his gut, “my question is, why send him at all? Why not one of the older kids?”
“Because parentless children are not invisible in Lucifan,” Madam Sweeney answered without hesitation. “Some people, authorities for example, take notice of human children wandering the streets and ask them questions. Ogre children though? Krunk will never get a second glance, assuming he gets a first one at all.”
Abe nodded, satisfied enough to let the argument go. Madam Sweeney finished what chores she was attending to and stepped down off her stool, brushing her wet hands against her apron. Just as she did so, a loud knock from the front door sounded down the hall, heavy and purposeful.
