Zane Halloway: Omnibus Edition

by P. T. Hylton

  Once he realized he wasn’t bleeding, he said, “Lily, I’m very glad to see you.”

  That disturbed her, mostly because of the truth thorn sticking out of his side.

  The second thing he said was, “I’m impressed with the way you dealt with the ferox behind the Blue Wall. Zane isn’t worthy of your potential.”

  She tried to clear her mind. “What do you intend to do with the contract between Zane and Beth Farns?”

  She could have tried to discuss this with him civilly before bringing out the thorn, but she didn’t have the patience. Not today.

  The words came quickly and without thought from Jacob. She could tell by the look on his face that his own words surprised him. “I intend to coerce him into my service. The king is already fond of him because of the Charles Danum job. I can manipulate him into sending Zane on more jobs. Dangerous jobs. Then I’ll use the contract to control the way Zane does the jobs. I’ll put him in more and more dangerous and stressful situations until he breaks. Then I’ll reveal to the king that Danum is still alive and that Zane allowed for his escape. Then he’ll die the traitor’s death.”

  Lily’s blood went cold. “Why? Why in the hell would you do something like that?”

  Jacob looked at her strangely, as if he didn’t understand the question. “Because I want him to suffer, of course.”

  Lily’s hand clutched the knife. “I’m going to kill you. How’s that sound?”

  Jacob chuckled softly. “Like a very bad idea, indeed. If I die, I’ve left instructions for Zane’s broken contract to be released to the authorities. He’ll hang. But the more immediate concern for you is my ring.” He held up his left hand, showing her the large ring on his pinkie finger. “This is a tangle. I activated it a few moments ago. It has alerted the King’s Guard that there’s an intruder is in this room. If I don’t emerge and call them off in the next few minutes, they will burst in here and kill you. So you’d better convince me to talk them out of it. I’m all ears.”

  Lily’s heart was racing. She thought for a long moment. “Why do you hate Zane so much?”

  Jacob actually paused for a moment before answering. She wondered how he did that with the knife in his side. “He took something from me. The most important thing. I was a man of rising importance in the Abditus Society. And I was in love with our former mentor, Rebecca Waters. He turned them all against me with his lies.”

  She nearly burst out in horrified laughter. “That’s all it was? Only love?”

  “If you think love an insignificant motivation, you’ve clearly yet to experience it.” He smiled up at her. “The clock’s ticking, dear. I’m waiting for you to talk me out of letting you die. I hope you do, because I genuinely like you.”

  She thought for another long moment before answering. “He took something from you, right? What if you take something from him?”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Me.”

  His eyes widened.

  “I’ll become your apprentice,” she said. “I won’t even tell him why. I’ll just leave. It’ll break his heart. But you have to promise to leave him alone. And you have to destroy that contract.”

  “No,” he said immediately. “I’ll leave him alone. I won’t contact him, and, if the king wants to use him for a job, I’ll talk him out of it. Zane is safe from me as long as you remain loyal. But I have to keep the contract. For my own safety.” A slight smile played across his face. “To ensure you won’t sneak into my room at night and stab me.” He glanced down at the knife in her hand. “And I want that thorn for the royal armory.”

  She bit her lip, considering whether there was anything else she could do, any other way out of this.

  “Agreed,” she said finally. “I’ll be your apprentice.”

  He smiled and held out his hand, palm up. For a moment, she thought he wanted to shake, but then she got it. She pulled out the knife-shaped thorn and handed it to him.

  He turned it over in his hand, admiring it. “A thing of beauty.”

  Then he stabbed her with it.

  “Will you go with me to the Ferox Society and renounce your membership?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Will you be my good and true apprentice, and put your full effort toward your abditus studies?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll accept no less.” He narrowed his eyes. “Will you seek to do me any harm?”

  She looked him dead in the eyes. “Not as long as you keep your word in regards to Zane Halloway.”

  “Good enough.” He pulled out the knife and smiled. “Now then, there’s work to be done. You’ll have to spend a year or so in the Abditus Academy before you begin your apprenticeship. I’ll be able to get you out of the rest. We can talk later about what you think your focus area might be. I’m hoping you’ll take to shimmers, of course, but it’s your choice in the end.”

  He held out his hand. Lily felt a chill go through her as she shook it.

  “Lily Rhodes, let me unofficially welcome you to the Abditus Society.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Now then, let’s talk to the King’s Guards waiting outside before they break down the door and kill you.”

  The next morning, they made their way to the Ferox Society where Lily renounced her membership, forever forfeiting the possibility of becoming a ferox. Then she began her abditus training.

  ***

  Lily had been missing for almost a week when Zane got the letter. It was a week Zane spent wracked with worry and searching every branch of his network of connections for any clue to her whereabouts. So far he’d come up empty, and he was beginning to think he’d have to expand his search outside of the city of Barnes. But where else would she go? She was to say her vows as a ferox in little more than a week’s time. He couldn’t imagine she’d leave voluntarily.

  He knew he’d pushed her too hard. Making her take the placement exam. Giving her constant talks about all the responsibilities that would fall on her after she spoke her vows. And then, making her kill Beth Farns.

  True, he hadn’t technically ordered her to kill Ms. Farns. But he hadn’t killed Beth Farns himself, thus forcing Lily into that situation. He wondered if somewhere deep down inside he’d known what she’d do. Maybe he wanted to be there when she killed for the first time. He remembered all too well the terribly isolating circumstances of his own first kill.

  The letter came mid-morning. Hand-delivered mail was rare enough that the Eakhart children from next door gathered excitedly around the courier, asking him all sorts of questions.

  Zane took the letter up to his study and sat in his favorite chair, the one he sat in while listening to potential clients’ stories. He set the letter on his lap and looked at it for a long moment.

  She wasn’t dead. That’s what this letter meant. He recognized her handwriting. She wasn’t dead. The relief washed over him in a physical shudder.

  But the sealed envelope raised many other questions, two chief among them. One, why was she sending something as formal as a letter? And, two, how could she afford the cost of a courier to deliver it? A dozen possible reasons went through his mind, including the idea that it could be a suicide note (what if she was dead!?), but he pushed them aside. No need to speculate when the answer was right in front of him.

  He tore open the envelope and unfolded the thick, cream-colored paper. There were only a few paragraphs and a postscript, all written in her neat, practical handwriting.

  To Zane & All Concerned Parties With Which He Wishes To Share This Note,

  I hereby renounce my status as a ferox-in-training and any future ambition to the position of ferox. At the time of this writing, I have already delivered verbal notice to the Ferox Society Great Hall. I have been accepted as a member-in-training of the Abditus Society, and the abditus Jacob Von Ridden has agreed to take me on as his apprentice upon my graduation from the Abditus Academy.

  On a personal note, I wish to express that it was not any negligence on the p
art of my mentor which led me to this decision. Let any who doubt that remember I passed my placement exam years ahead of schedule thanks to his excellent instruction. I have come to realize my destiny lies with the Abditus Society, and none but destiny can be faulted in this decision.

  Let this also serve as notice that I do not wish to be contacted by the Ferox Society or any of its representatives, including Zane Halloway, as I turn my mind to my abditus studies.

  I do, however, still intend to be paid by Zane Halloway for the assassination of Elizabeth Farns. My price is twenty-five thrones, payable in care of Jacob Von Ridden. I still don’t kill for free.

  Respectfully,

  Lilian X. Rhodes

  The postscript was written in a much more hurried hand, as if she’d jotted it on the page a moment before stuffing the letter into the envelope.

  Zane—If you’ve ever had any respect for me, let me do this now and don’t argue.

  He refolded the letter with a shaky hand and put it back in the envelope. Though he didn’t know it, he wouldn’t see Lily again for two years.

  He sat for nearly an hour with the letter of his lap, considering what it could mean and what had led her to make this decision. The facts were still cloudy, but, by the end of the hour, his mind was clear. He’d trust that Lily knew what she was doing. And he would have his revenge on Jacob Von Ridden.

  BOOK FOUR: FLAMES AND WATER

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  Zane huddled in the shadows. He was soaked with rain, shivering, and terrified. But he also felt a bit of something else: giddiness. Because, against all odds, he’d found his query. He’d found the pirate Henry Longstrain.

  He’d taken the job out of desperation. His mentor, old Jo Vernon, had warned him to be patient, to work his way up the ferox ladder slowly. But Zane hadn’t listened. He wanted fame. He wanted recognition. It was partly because he was older than his peers. Zane was twenty-five, and this was already his second career. And after the way his time as an abditus apprentice had gone, he sorely needed a fresh start. So he’d trained as a ferox, apprenticed under a solid, if not exactly innovative, mentor, passed his placement exam, and opened shop in an isolated, northern city called Gippen. And he’d done his duty. He’d served his community by tracking down runaways, recovering stolen merchandise, and—God help him—finding missing pets. When one of the locals had hired him to venture beyond the famed Blue Wall in Barnes to recover an item stolen by elves, Zane had hopped at the chance. Of course, it had turned out that the elves had not, in fact, stolen the farmer’s family property. Zane did eventually track down the perpetrator, but the damage to his reputation had been done. He’d made a novice mistake. His client had blamed elves, and Zane had believed him.

  So when this opportunity had come along, Zane had been faced with a dilemma: take another seemingly impossible job in the hopes of salvaging his reputation in the Ferox Society, or play it safe. If he took the job and failed, it would hurt his standing in the society even more. But, if he somehow succeeded…

  It had seemed impossible two weeks ago, yet here he was. He was at the pirate Longstrain’s hideaway, a place a myriad of other ferox and lawmen in the nation had been unable to locate, and Longstrain was inside.

  Zane would have been ecstatic if he hadn’t been chained to a tree.

  The reason the others hadn’t found Longstrain was they were looking in the wrong places. He was a pirate, so they searched near the sea. They searched the island chain off Opel’s east coast. They searched harbor towns and old, abandoned lighthouses. But they didn’t search here, in the mountains of western Opel, as far from the sea as was possible in the nation.

  Zane’s quest had started two months ago when a man named Collins had approached him with a nearly unbelievable story. According to Collins, his twenty-year-old daughter Melody had run off and married the pirate Longstrain. And he wanted Zane to find her.

  Zane nearly slammed the door in the worried father’s face. Longstrain had such a well-known appetite for nuptials that every young woman who ran away from her parents’ home was rumored to have taken up with him. But in Collins’ case, there was…not proof exactly, but evidence. The family had recently visited the coastal city of Arrow, an upscale harbor town Longstrain was known to frequent. Her father had discovered a letter in her room after she’d left, a note full of sentiments that would have caused the poor farmer to blush even if it hadn’t been addressed to his daughter. The letter was signed Henry.

  Not exactly iron-clad proof. But something about the situation rang true to Zane, even more so after he’d read the letter himself. He decided to take the job. It shocked him how quickly he came to the decision. In accepting the job to go after Longstrain, he was putting more than his reputation on the line. Plenty of ferox had gone after the pirate, many of them with harder evidence in hand. Most of them came up empty; the rest shared the current status of missing in action. There were rumors Longstrain made financial arrangements with pursuers who came too close, that he offered them so much gold it was impossible for them to refuse, but Zane didn’t believe that. He believed every one of those ferox was dead.

  He traveled to Arrow and began his investigation, not searching for Longstrain’s whereabouts, but for Melody’s. The pirate had been at this a long time and he was likely very careful. The young woman, on the other hand, was not only new to clandestine activities, but was also likely nervous and excited about her new life of adventure. That type of thing would inevitably lead to mistakes.

  Zane started at the inn where Melody’s family had stayed, and from there was able to find her favorite shops, and from there her most recent order, placed by post, and the ship it was to be delivered to. From there, he had tailed a pirate ship through choppy waters, followed the disembarking crew, and tailed them for a week through the forests of central Opel and into the mountains. It hadn’t been easy. Far from it. But it had been possible. And that was what surprised Zane.

  He’d attempted a night entry into the house in the mountains, the place he expected Longstrain and Melody were enjoying a honeymoon. He was careful and quiet, using every ounce of skill he’d gained in his short time as a ferox. And still, he was quickly spotted and captured.

  Which was how he’d come to be here, chained to a tree on the side of a mountain and shivering in the rain.

  The one bright spot in the current situation was that Longstrain had made a mistake: he’d left Zane alone. Zane needed to take advantage of however long he had before the pirate returned.

  It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Zane saw the glow of an approaching torch. He did his best not to look directly at the light. The torchbearer’s night vision would be shot, so Zane had to protect his own; it was one of his few advantages.

  When the torchbearer was ten feet away, he stopped and gave a smile so disarming, Zane suddenly understood how he’d managed to get a couple dozen of the nation’s most beautiful women to marry him.

  Henry Longstrain couldn’t have been more than five and a half feet tall. He was wider than Zane, and built of solid muscle. But when he smiled, his overall demeanor changed from frightening to puppy dog.

  He looked at Zane for a long moment before speaking.

  “Well,” he said finally, “you’re a ferox, ain’t you?”

  Zane had a hard time placing that accent. Islander, undoubtedly, but he couldn’t narrow it down any further than that. “I am,” he said, as there was no advantage in denying it.

  “You’re the first one to find me in a while,” Longstrain said. “You must be a clever one.”

  Zane had no comment on that.

  Longstrain’s smile widened. “First one in a while, but far from the first one ever. Some were ferox. Some were jealous fathers. The king’s sent a few of his own Guard after me, if you can believe that. As if he didn’t know piracy is a crucial component of his nation’s economy. Look here.”

  Longstrain strode ten feet to Zane’s right and held up his torch.

&nb
sp; Zane stifled a gasp at what the torchlight revealed. A decomposing corpse chained to a tree.

  Without a word, Longstrain marched to another tree twenty feet to the south. Another corpse chained to another tree. He walked from tree to tree, revealing no less than twelve bodies in varying states of decay, all secured to trees in a manner eerily similar to the way Zane was currently chained.

  Longstrain walked back to his spot ten feet in front of the tree and smiled. “Like I said, you ain’t the first. Not by a pretty mile. And these are just the ones who found this particular hideaway. The ones who thought to try me at sea? Well, it would take a mighty large forest and a good bit of chain to display them all.”

  Zane squeezed his eyes tight and opened them again, trying to regain his focus. What were dead bodies to him? He was a ferox. Granted, he’d only ever killed one person himself, and that at the orders of his mentor, but a few bodies shouldn’t bother him. He just needed to focus and wait for his moment.

  Longstrain scratched at his chin. “It’s an interesting thing. You leave enough bodies lying around, the critters start to take notice. The first man I chained here took a long while to die. I suspect it was thirst that got him, though who’s to say? I ain’t no doctor. The more recent arrivals, though? They didn’t last nearly as long. Come sun-up, the birds found them. You couldn’t hardly see them through the mass of feathers. Hell of a way to go, torn to shreds by a million pecks from a thousand beaks. Hard to think of a more nasty death. If there’s anything to recommend it, at least it’s fairly quick. You’ll be surprised how few hours it takes you to die.”

  He leaned forward and let the smile fall off his face. “You were proud of yourself for finding me, weren’t you? Well, this is your reward.”

  No. This wasn’t his reward, Zane knew. It was his chance. Despite everything that had happened between him and Jacob Von Ridden, Zane still followed one lesson his former friend had taught him: always carry a lock pick.