Zane Halloway: Omnibus Edition

by P. T. Hylton

  Zane nodded curtly, his eyes still glued to the heavy-set man.

  Von Ridden. Where had Lily heard that name before?

  “It’s been a while, Zane,” Von Ridden said.

  “Hello, Jacob.”

  Jacob Von Ridden. Of course. It came back to Lily then. She’d seen the name on a ledger in the hall of public records. It was a list of abditus apprentices. Von Ridden’s name was just next to Zane’s on the list. That was where she’d learned Zane had studied to be an abditus before becoming a ferox.

  The king leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. It was strange, seeing the man who was the very embodiment of the state, a man who always looked so formal and regal in his portraits, relaxing.

  “I’m bringing you two into my confidence,” the king said. “I hope you understand the gravity of that situation.”

  “We do, Your Majesty,” Zane said.

  The king went on as if he hadn’t heard. “When most people think of state business, they think of the throne room upstairs. But that’s not where the real work gets done. It happens down here. Very few even know this room exists, but make no mistake: every important decision of my reign has been made in this room. And what we’re going to discuss today is even more important than most. The only people who know will ever know what we’re doing today are me, you two, my Sword—” He waved toward Faraday. “—and my Shadow.” He motioned toward Von Ridden.

  Zane looked as if he’d been slapped. Lily realized he didn’t know his old colleague was the King’s Shadow. Whatever had happened between Zane and Jacob Von Ridden, Lily had the feeling it wasn’t pleasant.

  The Sword and the Shadow. There were so many stories, so many legends. It was difficult to separate fact from fiction. The Sword was the king’s greatest warrior, the person assigned with protecting the king’s honor, and his representative in combat. The Shadow was the king’s personal abditus, the only person with access to the royal treasury of magical devices, said to be the greatest and most dangerous collection of its kind in the world.

  Together the Sword and the Shadow were the king’s two closest and most important advisors.

  “I’ve called you here to offer you a job,” the king said to Zane. “And like all jobs, you have the option of turning it down. I won’t force you. And you’ll be paid twice your normal fee.”

  Zane paused for a moment before answering. “What’s the job, Your Majesty?”

  The king smiled. “That’s where this differs from most assignments. You don’t get to know. Not until you accept.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “I can tell you it’s dangerous. And it’s a challenge like you’ve never faced before. And—” his smile widened, “—that you won’t like it. Not initially, anyway. The question is do you trust your king enough to accept the job without knowing what it is?”

  Zane’s eyes flickered to Lily and his gaze touched hers. She saw the truth in those eyes. Zane treasured two things above all others: his anonymity and his independence. This job put both of those at risk. But the king wasn’t being one-hundred-percent genuine. There was no turning down this job.

  “I accept,” Zane said. “But I have a condition.”

  The king tilted his head at Zane, clearly surprised. And perhaps a little impressed. “Go on.”

  “Ms. Rhodes isn’t part of the job. She goes home and waits for me. She’s an apprentice. You don’t need her for this.”

  Lily wanted to protest, but she couldn’t find her voice.

  The king rubbed his chin for a moment before answering. “No, I don’t think so. She’s seen too much already. Faraday had the option of leaving her out of it if he didn’t think she was ready. He told me he likes the way you work together. He watched from a balcony when you were fighting those pirates at the tavern. So it’s a package deal. You both accept or you both decline.”

  Zane met Lily’s eyes one more time, and she saw his sadness. She gave him a little nod.

  “Then we accept, Your Majesty,” he said.

  King Edward banged a hand on the table. “Wonderful. Von Ridden said I could count on you. He said if I was looking for a top-level ferox who could be trusted, you were my man.”

  Zane’s eyes fired to life at that, but he said nothing.

  “Give them the basics, Faraday?” the King asked.

  Faraday nodded. “A little over a year ago, we caught a woman leaving across the border into Tavel. She was carrying an unusual number of weapons on her person, so the border patrol checked her out. Turns out she was a ferox. We questioned her, of course, but she said she wasn’t on the job. We took her at her word, and let her go.

  “A few months later, we discovered another ferox crossing into Tavel, again heavily armed. So we started paying closer attention. It turns out an unexplainable number of ferox have been visiting Tavel on a regular basis.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” Von Ridden said. His voice was deep, and the furniture in the room seemed to rattle with each word. “There is an explanation. Only one.”

  The king said, “The Ferox Society is taking jobs in Tavel.”

  Silence hung in the room. Lily found it difficult to get her breath. The Ferox Society, like all the royally sanctioned societies, was required to operate only in the kingdom of Opel. It was a rule that had been drilled into her head from her first day of ferox studies. She also knew it was a rule that was occasionally ignored by the more enterprising and less scrupulous ferox in the society. But it was never spoken of. And it sounded like this was more than the usual skirting of the law.

  “Our relationship with Tavel is tenuous at best,” the king continued. “Diplomatic relations have been less than diplomatic of late. Things are perched on the razor’s edge. Last week we received word that one of our ferox was captured in Tavel.”

  Zane frowned. “Your Majesty, are you asking us to go to Tavel to rescue the ferox?”

  The king waved the idea away. “Of course not. He broke the law, and he’ll pay the price under the laws of Tavel. Nothing we can do about that. But a response is required, and quickly. King Richard is furious, and I don’t blame him. We have ferox operating in his country. We have to do everything possible to convince him the Opel crown had nothing to do with this.”

  Lily felt her skin grow cold. Suddenly she suspected she knew what the king was going to ask of them.

  “Your Majesty,” Zane said, “what’s the job?”

  The king looked Zane in the eye. “Charles Danum has to die.” He watched Zane for a moment, then said, “See? I said you wouldn’t like it.”

  Zane took a deep breath. “You’re asking Lily and I to kill the head of our own society?”

  “Not alone. You’ll have Faraday and Von Ridden with you. It seems like a four person job to us.”

  Zane licked his lips before answering. “Your Majesty, why bring us in at all? Surely your Sword and Shadow could handle this.”

  “Perhaps,” the king said. “But the Ferox Society headquarters is known for its…difficult access. It would be nice to have someone along who’d actually been inside it.”

  Zane nodded. “It’ll take time to plan. And it won’t be cheap.”

  The king stood up. “You have three days. Let me know when it’s done.”

  He turned and walked out of the room.

  Jacob Von Ridden smiled. “Shall we get started?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I’m beginning to ask myself what you two are bringing to this assignment,” Zane said. “Why are you even involved?”

  Faraday glanced at Von Ridden, a perplexed smile on his face. Clearly the King’s Sword and Shadow weren’t used to being challenged so bluntly.

  Good. Zane needed them back on their heels a bit. To see how they’d react if nothing else.

  “We are here,” Faraday said, leaning forward, his elbows on the table, “because our king—your king—asked us to be.”

  Zane nodded. “Fair enough. So, to recap, I get us access to the Ferox Great Hall, I locate Danum
’s quarters, and mine is the hand that slays him. Correct?”

  Von Ridden grimaced. “You ferox pride yourselves on your skills as warriors, no?”

  Zane nodded curtly.

  “Then might it be fair to assume some of these fierce warriors could move to defend their leader?”

  Zane nodded again.

  “We can’t afford large numbers,” Von Ridden said. “So we have to bring the best. I have certain thorns that could come in handy against ferox. Glides that will make our passage to Danum’s quarters easier. Shimmers that will make it likely we won’t be seen at all. And Faraday? As good as you think you and your ferox friends are, he’s better. By half.”

  Faraday didn’t say anything to support the claim, but he didn’t deny it, either. Zane shot Lily a quick glance, warning her with his eyes not to dispute what Von Ridden had said.

  “More importantly, we bring legitimacy,” Faraday said. “Without us, it’s murder. With us, it’s an act of royal will.”

  Von Ridden nodded in agreement. “Zane, you have to be the one to plan our infiltration route because you’re the only one of us who will be allowed access to the Hall. And you have to be the one to do the killing because a non-society member killing Danum would cause even more trouble than a ferox doing the deed.”

  Zane guarded his tongue, a skill that came easily to him on most occasions. This was different. Von Ridden brought out his worst nature. Always had.

  “We have three days,” Zane said. “I suggest Lily and I spend tomorrow at the Ferox Great Hall getting the lay of the place, looking for weaknesses in their defenses. Then we’ll come up with a more concrete plan. Any objections?”

  There were none.

  Zane and Lily were shown to their quarters, a pair of small rooms off the labyrinthine hallway. Zane figured they were probably unoccupied guard’s quarters.

  When they were alone, the stoic look fell from Lily’s face for the first time since the king had walked into the council room an hour before.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she asked. “They think we’ll actually kill Danum?”

  Zane said, “It’s not a simple thing to ask. But when forced to choose between guild and nation, I choose nation every time.”

  He made a tiny motion with his hand and hoped she caught it. It was all he dared risk. They were almost certainly being listened to, but there was a chance they were also being observed. It wouldn’t be difficult with these stone walls to carve out a hole and use some sort of optical illusion to make it difficult to detect. Exactly the type of thing Jacob Von Ridden loved to do. Before he had been an apprentice abditus, he’d been a passable stage illusionist. And that wasn’t even taking into account the treasure trove of outlawed and long-forgotten magical devices he now had sole access to as the King’s Shadow. For all Zane knew, Von Ridden might have been listening to his private conversations for years.

  Von Ridden was arguably the second most powerful man in the nation. The thought made Zane shudder. It made him remember that night so many years ago when Zane had investigated Von Ridden’s workshop. The night Von Ridden had shown Zane his true nature for the first time.

  Lily squeezed her lips together in a thin line. She got the message.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “It was just unexpected.” She glanced around for a moment, perhaps wondering what it was Zane saw that she didn’t. “What do we do now?”

  He stretched and feigned a yawn. “We get some rest. Tomorrow we visit the Hall.”

  It wasn’t until the next morning, out of the castle and on the road toward the Ferox Great Hall, that Zane finally felt comfortable talking openly.

  “You had the night,” he said to Lily, leaning toward her so she could hear him over the din of the city street. “What’s your assessment?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, which was good. He had been afraid she might just shout at him and tell him to shove his question. But her not answering right away meant his ploy—treating this as if it were a training exercise—was working.

  “It’s bad,” Lily said finally.

  Zane waited, letting her decide how to continue, letting the obvious statement pass without comment.

  He felt pain in his right leg at every step as they walked. It wasn’t better than the day before, but it wasn’t worse, either. That meant the poison wasn’t spreading. They’d stopped it. Lily had stopped it.

  After a moment, she continued. “We can’t say no, not to the king. But carrying out the act causes all sorts of other trouble. Putting aside the moral issues of killing the head of your own society, we’d be outcasts. No ferox would ever trust us again. We’d never be referred to another client.”

  He watched her as she talked. She was looking up, glancing from one side of the street to the other. Buildings were taller and closer together than back home. But he could tell from the careful way she glanced back and forth this wasn’t just some country girl gazing at the sights of the big city. Lily saw those buildings as possible angles of attack and she was searching for signs of danger. Despite everything that was happening, it made Zane’s heart proud.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” Lily said, “is the plan of succession. So they kill Charles Danum to make Tavel happy. What then? They’ve got two hundred angry ferox who suddenly hate King Edward.”

  She was getting it now. Or almost getting it. He resisted the urge to take the final few steps for her.

  She looked at Zane suddenly. “They have someone in the society. Someone else. Someone who can take charge.”

  Zane nodded. “I concur.” She was almost there.

  She bit her lip, deep in thought, but her eyes still scanned the upper story windows and roofs for movement. “But to put things right in with Ferox Society…” Her face suddenly went pale. “We’re the scapegoats. The king will deny having anything to do with this. And the new head of the society, the inside man, will back the king. And we…what will happen? We’ll swing! No, worse. We’ll get the traitor’s death.”

  Her breathing was fast now.

  Zane put a steadying hand on her arm. “Not us. Me.”

  She let out a sharp laugh. “You think they’ll just let me walk? After everything I’ve seen? That’s why they wouldn’t let me go last night. I’d heard too much already.”

  “Listen to me, I have a plan.”

  Lily relaxed visibly, her shoulders dropping. “Thank God. Tell me.”

  They were less than a block from the Ferox Great Hall now, so Zane paused, trying to time this out so she wouldn’t be able to ask questions.

  “I’ve figured out how we can keep you away from the actual killing.”

  “Just me?” Lily asked. Her voice suddenly sounded more aggressive than it had so far today, more like the normal Lily. “What about you?”

  “Hear me out. We can’t save us both. But we can save you. In a way the king will go along with. And, if I’m right, a way he’ll reward. You’ll have a long career after this. Maybe not as a ferox, not officially anyway, but the king will find a good use for someone with your skills, whatever your title.”

  “Tell me,” she said in a breathy voice Zane could barely hear over the street noise.

  “You are going to take your placement exam.”

  Her eyes went wide, but just as Zane had planned, they’d reached the doors of the Ferox Great Hall.

  Zane went inside before she could respond.

  ***

  The Ferox Great Hall, according to popular legend, had been designed to keep its highly skilled members from entering via any method other than the front door. The walls were smooth and sloped slightly outwards, and the first four levels had no windows. The area around the building was clear of shrubbery and trees. It was said guards were stationed on the roof of the building, and they kept constant watch over the grounds.

  Zane didn’t buy into the myth. There were other ways in. There were always other ways. But finding such ways would take time, a luxury he did not have. He’d deci
ded almost immediately that whatever plan they made would need to include a legitimate reason for walking through the front door.

  Today, Zane entered with confidence, taking long strides, his gaze straight in front of him. Appearances were always important, but here—where every person in the building had received advanced training in detecting deception—it was even more essential.

  In Zane’s experience, a confident demeanor wasn’t the product of overthinking. One must set his mind, steel his spine, and proceed as if he were the king himself.

  So, Zane didn’t look around to see who else was in the lobby. He didn’t glance back to see if Lily was following him. He strode to the clerk’s desk at the edge of the lobby with confidence, bravado, and just a sprinkling of impatience.

  The young man sitting behind the desk could have been a clerk at any of the dozen of great halls throughout the city. He had a long, thin face unspeckled with whiskers. The look of a man just starting out in the world. An up-and-comer. This being the Great Hall of the Ferox Society, this man was undoubtedly a trained ferox. The fact that he was so young conveyed that he must be a quick study in the hidden arts.

  Zane suddenly wished he’d worn his society ring, a simple gold band with innocent-looking engravings that revealed his status within the society and his tenure to those who knew how to read it. He almost never wore the thing—some more worldly people might be able to mark him as a ferox by that ring even if they couldn’t decipher all its markings—but today should have been an exception. It might have changed the look on the clerk’s face from mild annoyance to one of respect.

  He greeted Zane with a slight nod and the merest suggestion of a polite smile.

  Zane felt Lily at his shoulder and saw by her shadow she was already fidgeting. He couldn’t blame her. He’d been a bit fidgety himself on his first visit to the Great Hall, though that had been under very different circumstances.

  The clerk wasn’t going to lower himself to speak to Zane apparently, not until Zane identified himself as someone who belonged here and was worthy of attention. Zane felt a twinge of annoyance. The politics. The stringent adherence to traditions. This was why he avoided this hall.