Zane Halloway: Omnibus Edition

by P. T. Hylton

  “You asked why we have such a wide variety of devices. Why Irving Farns spent his time on so many different items? The answer is that thornsmen and tanglesmen are in a sort of endless chess match. Every time the thornsmen come up with a new device, the tanglesmen come up with a way to make it ineffective. And every time the tanglesmen develop a new tangle, the thornsmen find a thorn that can get past it.” She paused and saw they were looking at her more seriously now. “The rest, glides, shimmers, and balms, are most often used for convenience or everyday purposes, though they are occasionally used in battle, as you saw with my dagger.”

  “Fascinating,” Marcus, the oldest Cragsman, muttered. Calond shot him a look.

  “Your turn,” Lily said. “You said you don’t use the same types of devices we do?”

  Again, Bernard looked at Calond, and again Calond nodded at him.

  “We are aware of these types of devices,” Bernard said, “and we occasionally use them. I’d imagine balms are as common here as they are in Opel.”

  “And glides,” Lily said. “I saw what you did with the coin.”

  Bernard smiled and tilted his head, like one might when fielding a question from an especially precocious child. “That was not a glide. It was a thorn.” Before she could ask how that could possibly be a thorn, he continued, “As to the other types of devices…the vast majority of our study goes into thorns. Rather than creating dozens of thorns that can each sneak past specific tangles, we prefer to create only a few thorns powerful enough to push through any tangle.”

  Now it was Lily’s turn to smile. “You’ll have to excuse me if I find that a bit difficult to believe.”

  Calond chuckled. “Understandable. Tell me, Lily, as the abditus representative on a diplomatic mission, I assume you brought with you a collection of high-quality magical devices?”

  “I do have a number of items of sufficient quality, yes.” In truth, she had a collection of the best of the best from the royal magical armory, hand-selected by Jacob. She was well-trained in the use of all of them. She’d also brought a few that Jacob didn’t know about, including her enchanted sword and a couple of old favorites.

  Calond clapped his hands together, apparently unable to contain his delight. “Wonderful! Perhaps you would be so kind as to agree to a friendly duel?”

  Lily paused. A magical duel. Once such things had been very common in Opel, but when the number of deaths grew during the magical boom and the time of Irving Farns, dueling fell out of vogue. It was foolishness, showing her abilities and weapons to possible enemies for the sake of a meaningless contest. Still, Lily couldn’t help but be intrigued.

  “Tell me, Calond,” she said. “Will the loser be sent to the underneath?”

  His smiled wavered, and his eyes widened. “You show a surprising understanding of Craggish culture. But, no, as I said, this is to be a friendly duel. No one will be killed or banished. On either side.”

  Lily thought for a moment. They said they favored thorns. Powerful thorns. They’d mentioned fire, water, and air. She had the tangle she’d used to shut down the Cull Flames. That would also work on water. An air thorn could be a problem, but if she could get the jump on her opponent, perhaps that would not be an issue.

  And then there was the idea that she was about to see a Craggish abditus in action. How many Opeleans had ever seen that? The Crags mostly kept to itself, other than to sell spices, and all the fighting they’d done in recent memory had been internal.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m willing to do it.”

  Calond nodded, clearly pleased. He turned to the older abditus. “Marcus, would you mind representing us?”

  “Not in the least.” The elder Cragsman’s voice had a rich, slow quality that made Lily think of molasses. “I came prepared.” He lifted his hands, causing the long sleeves of his green cloak to fall back, revealing his hands for the first time. Each of his long fingers had a ring on it, and they were all thorns.

  There was one small mystery solved.

  Lily reached into the pouch at her belt and pulled out a few rings of her own, as well as a short stick the length of her hand. Her own air thorn. This was the device she hoped would give her the upper hand. She drew her sword.

  “Does the young lady promise not to cut me in half?” Marcus asked. There was a strange, hypnotic quality in the way he spoke.

  “She does,” Lily said.

  “Fine, fine,” Calond said. “Remember not to kill each other. I doubt our noble diplomats would be pleased.” With that, he and Bernard stepped back, allowing the two abditus to face each other.

  “When you’re ready,” Marcus said.

  Lily nodded and flicked her wrist, activating the air thorn in her left hand.

  Marcus’s eyes suddenly widened as he realized he was unable to breathe. The air thorn pulled the air away from him. It wouldn’t last long, that was the downside of this particular thorn. Still, Lily liked using it to put her opponent off guard. By the time he was able to breathe again, she’d have her sword at his throat.

  She lunged toward him, intending to give him a non-lethal strike with the flat of her blade. Her glide-enhanced sword moved quickly, but Marcus had enough time to raise his hand.

  Suddenly, Lily felt a powerful gust of wind slam into her, and she flew backward. She watched in helpless horror as the roof raced beneath her feet, and she went over the edge. She was so shocked, so surprised at this violent assault during this supposedly friendly duel that she barely activated the glide in her ring in time to save herself. She touched the ring on her finger and concentrated on not falling.

  An air thorn. That was what they’d meant by an air thorn. She’d never seen anything quite like it. Her glides changed the way gravity affected a target. This was something else. Using wind as a weapon. She’d never seen it done before, but she could now personally testify to its effectiveness.

  She now understood how the abditus had sent the coin into the air with a thorn. What she’d assumed was a glide had actually been a thorn sending a blast of air upward, and apparently a lot more gently than the gust of wind that had just sent her flying through the air.

  She eventually drifted to a stop, and she tapped the ring again, pushing it to move her forward. She wasn’t positive she would make it; the glide had limited range. She breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped back onto the roof.

  “Marcus!” Calond barked.

  The elder Cragsman looked genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry. I thought her tangle—”

  Calond cut him off. “Have a little care in the force you use.”

  Marcus looked at her, questioning, as if he was unsure how to proceed. Her blood was flowing hot in her veins. Now that she was prepared for the power of his assaults, things would go differently.

  “Shall we continue?” she asked.

  Marcus nodded. He brought up his hand again, sending out another mighty blast of wind. But this time, Lily was expecting it, and she used her glide to shoot upward and to the right, avoiding the attack. She spun in the air and threw her sword, activating the glide so it flew straight and true. It flipped in midair, and the hilt struck him in the stomach. The Cragsman fell backward with an “Oof.”

  She held out her hand and the sword returned to her. With her other hand, she activated another glide, which caused Marcus to skid toward her, as if she were pulling him forward with a rope. She stopped him when he was six feet away. She raised her sword, preparing to deliver another disabling strike, when he looked up and smiled. Apparently he’d recovered more quickly than Lily had anticipated.

  He opened his left hand, and a flame shot out of it.

  The flame died before it reached Lily, but still she was taken aback. She had activated her tangle, the same one she’d used so effectively against the Cull Flames on Amber Longstrain’s ship. A fire thorn shouldn’t be working at all, not at this proximity.

  Before she had time to react, he fired another flame. She actually felt the heat of it before her tangle
made it dissipate.

  He quickly fired again, and this time the fire got even closer, singeing her shirt. She suddenly realized he was testing her. Seeing how much her tangle could handle. If he wasn’t using his thorn at full capacity, she was in real trouble.

  It was time to end this charade. She brought her sword down before he could fire again, swinging it full speed and using the glide to stop it less than an inch from his throat. She felt a shiver of satisfaction at the flash of panic in his wide eyes.

  “I think that is a killing blow,” Lily said, holding the sword in place against his neck in case he got any ideas about using his thorn.

  Marcus bowed his head. “Agreed. The victory goes to you, Abditus Lily Rhodes.”

  Across the roof, Calond and Bernard clapped, real delight on their faces.

  “Well done,” Calond called. “Very well done indeed.”

  As the other two abditus approached, Lily leaned down and whispered to Marcus, “How powerful is that thorn? How much were you holding back?”

  Marcus looked up at her, and for the first time she saw the arrogance behind his polite facade. “If I’d used it at full strength, you’d be nothing but ash and bone.”

  Calond reached them and clapped them both on the back. “Very enlightening, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes,” Lily said. “Indeed it was.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Zane and Lily were back on the same ledge they’d stood on the first night they met in the Crags. The night they’d began their hunt for Caleb.

  They crouched among the rocks, looking down over most of the city, but still under the shadows cast by the light from the palace above them.

  He’d already shared with her the information Nicholas had given him on Caleb. The former King’s Sword had been to the underneath a few times to consult with Nicholas. He’d been seeking information on Craggish culture, and he’d paid well for the information. He’d hired Danum and the other ferox to dig up dirt on two of the more prominent families in Sicar. The information was less helpful than either Zane or Lily had hoped.

  Now the conversation had turned to the job at hand, and Zane was seeing a side of Lily he hadn’t seen since their reunion on Amber Longstrain’s ship: Lily was arguing with him.

  “It’s your pride, that’s what it is,” she said.

  He sighed. “That’s not it at all. It’s mere practicality. I’m thinking of you. You can’t be involved.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she said, “but I don’t need you looking out for me anymore.”

  She wanted to take part in the job to steal the ruby from High Prince Gullins’s chambers. Zane could see it from her perspective. She was living inside the palace, and the staff was used to seeing her. In one sense, it would be easier for her to get around the castle. On the other hand, she was visiting as a diplomat. There was little doubt they kept a close eye on her in the palace. It was a testament to her skills that she was able to sneak out at night to help Zane. But within the palace…Zane had no doubt someone was reporting on her movements, and a report of her going anywhere near Gullins’s chambers would get passed up the chain pretty quickly.

  But she wasn’t hearing his arguments. Her faith in her own skills was absolute, a fact that was sure to do her great harm someday. He decided to take a different approach.

  “Lily, imagine for a moment that the job doesn’t go well. That we get caught. If I’m caught alone, fine. It would be embarrassing for Opel, and I’m sure it wouldn’t help negotiations. Still, at the end of the day, I’m a lone operator. A ferox. You, however, are a member of a diplomatic mission to seek Gullins’s help. Imagine how negotiations would go if you were caught attempting to steal the High Prince’s family heirloom.”

  Lily let out a joyless laugh. “Caught? When have we ever been caught?”

  “Aside from Ewrkind capturing me and forcing you to steal the Farns device for him?”

  Lily frowned. “That was different. We were at his home eating dinner, and he turned on us. That’s hardly the same as being caught sneaking in somewhere.”

  “I seem to remember an elf discovering us that night in the Oasis. You remember that?” He knew that she did. It had been her first encounter with an elf. No one forgot that kind of thing.

  “The point is, it doesn’t happen often!” Lily said. “And I’m better now than I was then.”

  “I’m not,” Zane said quietly. It was something he’d felt for a while now but hadn’t been able to put into words.

  “No,” Lily said. “You’re not.”

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise at that. He’d expected her to disagree with his assertion.

  “I saw it that day on Amber Longstrain’s ship,” she continued. “When Caleb had you at sword point.”

  He waited, wondering what she meant. He wasn’t yet forty, but lately he’d been feeling every year of his age. Ferox assassins were not a long-lived people. He knew deep inside that he was getting slower. Not much, but a little. And against the types of people he’d been facing lately, a little could be the difference between life and death.

  She looked at him for a long moment, as if reading his thoughts. “It wasn’t your skills. You move as well as you ever did. You’re strong. Fast. That wasn’t what I noticed.”

  “Then what was it?”

  She gestured toward his face. “It was there. In your eyes.”

  That surprised him.

  “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve done everything in your power to win,” she said. “Any job you took, you went after it with everything you had. God, you remember Irving Farns? The way you got yourself invited to that dinner at the Abditus Society? The gusto you had in uncovering the truth about Farns? In using the man’s magical device against him?”

  He nodded slowly. Of course he remembered. In some ways, that had been when everything had started to go wrong. If not for the Farns job, he wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Beth, Irving’s daughter. Lily wouldn’t have left him. They wouldn’t be in the Crags right now, unwilling players in yet another political game.

  “You had something in your eyes back then,” Lily said. “A fire. If Caleb would have put a sword to that Zane Halloway’s throat, he would have regretted it. But that day on the ship? It was almost like you gave up.” She paused for a moment, then said, “Look, I get it. You’ve been through a lot these past few years. We both have. But now we’re mixed up in politics, this stuff you always used to avoid…and there’s no reason for you to be here. I mean, I’m glad you are, but no one’s paying you to track down Caleb Longstrain.”

  Zane looked at her for a long moment. “Is there something you want to ask me?”

  She looked him hard in the eyes. “Zane, are you trying to find your way to the warrior’s death?”

  He pressed his lips together, fighting back the fury rising inside him. After a moment, he said, “If I seem like I’ve changed, perhaps I have. And, yes, perhaps my passion for my position has waned. But the reason I’m here, the only reason, is because you and I have the opportunity to prevent the deaths of many of our countrymen. Make no mistake, if Caleb shares what he knows with Tavel, more Opeleans will die. I’ve caused many deaths. Perhaps I can prevent some.”

  From the way she looked at the ground rather than meeting his eyes, he could tell she didn’t believe him. “Fine. I’ll show you how I get in and out of the palace without being seen. Then I’ll leave you to your work.”

  He nodded, the closest he could bring himself to a thank you at the moment. “When you get back to your chambers, make sure you are seen. You’ll want to make sure someone can attest to your whereabouts. Because, in about an hour, all hell is going to break loose in that palace.”

  ***

  One thing Zane had to give people of the Crags: their hierarchical society made traveling unseen much easier. The tunnels of the underneath let Danum and his fellow ferox move freely about Sicar. And here in the palace, the separate servants’ hallways made sneaking about f
ar easier than it should have been.

  The servants’ passages ran parallel to the main hallways, and they were connected by unobtrusive doors every fifty feet. Which meant Zane was able to slip back and forth between the two sets of halls at any time. It was the middle of the night, so the noble hallways were empty. The servants’ halls were quiet too, but the occasional Cragsman or Cragswoman wandered through, probably fulfilling some late night demand from his or her master.

  It bothered Zane that it was so easy to put into motion a series of events that could potentially supplant the monarch of this nation. Or maybe he was still a bit shaken from his conversation with Lily.

  She’d accused him of, what, wanting to die? It was absurd. Perhaps he had simply seen too much to be excited by the types of jobs that used to thrill him. Maybe he’d come to the Crags to test himself against the best, both Caleb Longstrain and the famed Craggish. If he’d wanted to die, he knew of plenty of poisons that could quickly and painlessly do the job. She had it backwards. It wasn’t that he wanted to die; it was that he wanted to live, and to live with the same spark he’d once had. He just didn’t know how.

  Lily had drawn him a fairly detailed map of the interior of the palace. According to what she’d shown him, he was now approaching Gullins’s chambers. Here was where things would get interesting. According to Nicholas, the ruby was prominently displayed on the mantle in the High Prince’s sitting room. There were two entrances to the sitting room, both of them guarded. And the guards stationed here were the top ranked members of their profession.

  Zane paused. He needed to make a choice. After a moment, he decided to go through the nobles’ door. The guard at the servants’ door would be more expectant of possible nighttime arrivals, servants coming to check on the fire in the hearth and the like, and, therefore, would be more alert. Late night arrivals at the nobles’ door would be less common.