Zane Halloway: Omnibus Edition

by P. T. Hylton

  Calond drew a deep breath. “Lily, I’m sorry. I don’t think that is possible tonight.”

  She touched his arm, and Calond tensed in obvious discomfort. A crying woman touching him. A true nightmare for a Cragsman.

  “Please.” She had only one more gambit, one more possible play. “Listen, you don’t have glides in the Crags, right? Send someone with me. I need to work with my hands, but I’m happy to instruct as I work. I’ll build a glide, and in doing so I’ll teach one of your abditus to do the same.”

  He licked his lips, his demeanor different now. “You’d teach a Crags abditus to build a glide. Is that legal?”

  She looked up at him, tears rolling down her face. “Calond, give me the workspace and an abditus. Let me worry about Opelean law.”

  After a long moment, he said, “I’ll get Marcus. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Zane was sitting in his cell on the bare wooden bench that served as a bed when he heard footsteps approaching.

  A deep voice said, “This is it.”

  He heard the rattle of keys, and a thin wooden panel in the door slid aside.

  Another voice spoke. This one familiar. “You’re not leaving?”

  “Orders from the top,” the guard said. “You aren’t to be left alone with the prisoner.”

  Zane leaped to his feet and ran to the door. The small opening was at eye level. He looked out and saw Lily. A large, burly guard stood next to her.

  No. What was she doing here? Didn’t she know all she could do was endanger herself? She should be staying as far away from him as possible, denying she even knew him. She’d always been impulsive. He’d hoped she’d outgrown that, but apparently she hadn’t. Now it was going to get her killed.

  Lily’s big, brown eyes were full of pain. Zane wished he could do something to help, but it was far too late. If he’d really wanted to ease her pain, he would have refused to initiate her into the world of the ferox. A world that was nothing but pain.

  “Lily,” he said.

  She stopped him with a raised hand. “Don’t bother. I don’t want to hear explanations. I don’t care what put you here. If we’re being honest with each other, we have to admit this is just the inevitable conclusion to a path you’ve been on for years.”

  Her head moved ever-so-slightly in the direction of the guard. She needn’t have made the gesture. He understood.

  Zane realized maybe there was something he could do for her. Maybe he could finally be the mentor she deserved. Maybe some good could come of her visit down here. He’d do his best to protect her one more time.

  He forced a smile onto his face. “So, that’s how it is. I taught you everything you know, and this is how you repay me. You come here to kick me while I lay on the ground?”

  Her eyes flashed with surprise, but she quickly recovered. “That’s not why I’m here. It’s just an added benefit.”

  “Then why are you?”

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a long time. I should have come to you, I suppose. But the things you did to me, the people you forced me to kill, I couldn’t stand to look you in the face.”

  “You always were a coward,” Zane said. “You act tough, but inside you’re a broken little girl.”

  He glanced at the guard, who was clearly enjoying the show.

  Lily ignored Zane’s comment. “Perhaps I should have felt more confident after I’d learned the skills of an abditus. But I remembered that you had trained as an abditus, too, before abandoning it for a darker path. Perhaps you still remembered how to use magical devices as well as I did. Perhaps you remembered how to use complicated thorns. Maybe you even remembered how to use glides.”

  She stopped, as if waiting for a response. Zane wasn’t sure exactly where she was going with this, but he understood the question.

  “Aye. You were wise not to make a move against me. I studied under a master thornswoman, and I’ll never forget her lessons. I was never a master of glides, but I could use one in a pinch. I would have taken your magical devices and shoved them down your throat.” That was about as far as he could push that particular thread without arousing too much suspicion from the guard. “But I’m safely in a cell now. I can’t hurt you. So be a brave little girl and tell me what you want to say.”

  “What I want to say,” she said, “is that I’ll never become the thing you tried to turn me into. You remember that job when you killed that old abditus?”

  She could only mean the Irving Farns job. “I do,” he said.

  “When you came back from that job, you gave me the worst beating of my life.”

  He struggled to keep his face expressionless. He hadn’t beaten her, but he had given her something. A thorn.

  “The wounds healed,” she continued, “but I still carry what happened that day with me. I carry it with me even now. Tomorrow, when you’re lying in that pit and the people of Sicar are gathered to take your life, I will be the first one in line. I’m going to give you back what you gave me. Threefold. Understand?”

  He waited a long moment before replying. He wanted to make sure his voice wouldn’t shake. Not because what she was saying hurt him. Quite the opposite. He’d never been more proud of anyone than he was of her in that moment.

  Her plan was insane, and it absolutely wouldn’t work. But it was everything he’d ever taught her. She might never be a ferox in name, but she would always be one in spirit.

  Zane wished he could tell her that now.

  “I understand,” he said. “I understand that you took all the training I gave you and used it to betray me.”

  She smiled. “Good. Hold onto that thought. Hold on to it when you’re in that hole and the stones are piling on top of you. Hold it for as long as you possibly can.”

  “Aye, Lily Rhodes,” he said. “I’ll do just that.”

  Lily looked at the guard and said, “I’m finished.”

  She turned and walked away without waiting for the guard or saying goodbye to her old mentor.

  Zane listened as her footsteps echoed down the hall and faded into the distance.

  ***

  Six guards came to Zane’s cell mid-morning. They made him remove his clothing and put on a coarse brown wool tunic. It was similar to what the people in the underneath wore, Zane realized. He supposed it was just another part of the tradition of the pressing. Then they shackled his wrists and ankles.

  They brought him out of his cell and loaded him onto a cart pulled by a horse. Four of the guards got in the back with him, and two drove. They started along the windy road down the mountain.

  Zane felt like his stomach was filled with ice water. Lily’s crazy, half-formed plan aside, he knew he was going to die today. As frightening as it was, he forced himself to look for something, anything, positive about the situation, simply to keep from going insane, from attacking the guards or screaming and crying for mercy.

  First, as terrible as the pressing sounded, it would be over fairly quickly. Yes, it would be an unpleasant death. But what death was pleasant? It wasn’t like he would be trapped alive in the ground until he died of thirst. He was going to be crushed with rock. Which, granted, was not ideal, but he wouldn’t be suffering for days. The weight of the rocks would crush his rib cage and he would die. Or would he suffocate first? He pushed the question aside. Better to think of more positive things.

  As they rolled along the switchbacks down the mountain, they passed many Cragspeople, most of them also making their way down the mountain. He’d seen a few public executions in his day, and the crowds at each of them had been filled with a disturbing atmosphere of glee. The people relished seeing the bad man punished. Maybe it proved to them that there was justice in this world, or maybe it satisfied something else, something primal within them. A detached part of Zane noticed that the mood of the people heading down the mountain was different. They were somber. Perhaps having to participate in the execution quieted that animal instinct.

  It too
k a long time to reach their destination, and the further down the mountain they went, the worse the conditions of the road became. Before too long, the cart was bouncing and jostling to the point where Zane wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole thing had toppled over onto its side. He briefly entertained a fantasy of escaping after the cart capsized, but he quickly pushed the notion aside. The Crags guards were a grim lot. If the wagon were hanging off the edge of a cliff, their first thought would probably be to hold a sword to his neck before climbing to safety.

  The cart rolled to a stop near the bottom of the mountain, and the guards roughly pushed him across the road toward an open field.

  Throughout the field, Zane saw dozens of X-shaped patterns of stones. Grave markers, Zane realized. Not the type he was used to seeing in Opel, but the spacing made them undeniable. As did the piles of stones in front of each one.

  This was where all the pressings took place. Each one of the piles of stones indicated a place where someone had been executed, Zane realized.

  They walked him to an open pit. No. An open grave. One of the guards punched him hard in the stomach, driving the air from his lungs. While he was still bent over, gasping for air, the guards shoved him into the hole. By the time he thought of resisting, it was already too late. Two of the guards hopped in after him and forced him down onto his back. They secured the shackles on his wrists and ankles to metal eyelets sticking out of the dirt below him.

  Their job complete, the two guards climbed out of the grave, leaving Zane alone with nothing but the open sky above him.

  He waited what seemed like hours at the bottom of that pit. He heard the sounds of a gathering crowd. He felt the earth around him rumble with footsteps as more and more people arrived. From the chatter up there, it seemed like thousands were waiting to see him die. Still, no one peeked into the grave. Not yet. They would have their chances soon enough. His view of the blue sky was unobstructed.

  Finally, the crowd noise tapered off, and Zane knew it was beginning.

  A low voice filled the air. “Ferox Zane Halloway of the city of Barnes in the nation of Opel, for the crime of attempted regicide against the great and holy High Prince Gullins Sanporia, you are sentenced to death by pressing. Your grave will be marked only by a pile of stones. Your name will be struck from all records. If God remembers you on the last day, it will be in spite of the best efforts of the people of the Crags. You will now be pressed into the dust from whence we all came. May you be forgotten.” There was a long pause, during which Zane could hear only the wind howling above and the thumping of his own heart. Then the deep voice said, “It begins.”

  Then Zane saw the first face he’d seen since the guards had climbed out of his grave. Prince Christopher.

  The Prince looked down at him and said, “You have shamed your nation. As a prince of Opel, I hereby renounce your citizenship.”

  Christopher raised his hand, and Zane saw a gray stone clutched in the Prince’s fist. He opened his hand and the stone fell, landing on Zane’s stomach.

  It didn’t hurt badly, but, with it, Zane felt the anticipation of the hundreds of stones about to be dropped onto him. Perhaps at some point he would long for them to hurt, simply so he could tell he was still alive.

  Another face appeared, one of the Prince’s advisors this time, a man named Peter, and another stone fell. The procession continued. The next ten were all Opeleans. Some of them Zane knew. Some of them he didn’t. Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they did not. Either way, the stones fell, and within a few minutes, Zane had ten more stones on top of him.

  And then, Lily leaned over the edge of the grave. Her eyes were large and sad.

  “You were my mentor.” She spoke the words loudly and with confidence. “I hope my stone is the one that does the most damage.”

  She dropped her stone, and it fell directly onto his chained right hand.

  Lily gave him the smallest of smiles, and disappeared.

  Frantically, before the next executioner appeared, he grabbed Lily’s rock, feeling around it. Yes, there was something attached to it with some sort of adhesive, just as he’d hoped there would be.

  No, he realized. It wasn’t one thing. It was three.

  He remembered her words to him in the jail cell. I’ll pay you back threefold.

  He’d given her a thorn called the Nettle when he’d returned from killing Irving Farns. He’d meant it as a show of trust. And now she was paying him back. She was giving him the tools he needed to survive this, and she was trusting him to know how to use them.

  He quickly identified the Nettle by feel and set it aside. That one was for later. He removed the second and third. Both were small objects, shaped like rings. He could tell by feeling them that one was a glide and one was a thorn, but without being able to see them, he wasn’t sure of much more than that.

  Then he felt something else attached to the stone. A lock pick.

  Thank God.

  As the next few executioners, all Opeleans, dropped their stones, he worked to free his right hand. It was not easy, but eventually he managed it. He quickly unlocked his left hand as well. When the next person dropped their stone and disappeared from view, he risked a look at the glide and the thorn.

  God bless Lily. They were both simple enough devices to use. He’d been a little worried. Even though he’d told Lily he remembered how to use glides, it had been a very long time.

  He slipped the glide on his finger and activated it.

  And, suddenly, the rocks around him levitated. Not a lot. Just enough. Just a few inches. And the rocks people dropped didn’t hit him. They all stopped a few inches above him. Zane was terrified someone would notice, but no one did.

  It went on for an hour. Once the twenty or so Opeleans in the diplomatic party dropped their stones, the Cragsmen and Cragswomen began. These people had less to say, but many spit on him. Zane didn’t care. Lily’s wonderful glide stopped the spit before it hit him, same as the stones.

  Then Gullins came. And the abditus who’d sent the wind blast that had stopped his escape. And, strangely, Nicholas, Jacob’s shimmer hanging from the chain around his neck.

  Just before the stones covered him and completely blocked out the light, someone else familiar appeared above his grave. He couldn’t see well enough to be sure, but he was almost certain the last person he saw drop a stone was Caleb Longstrain. Somehow the man’s words carried down to him: “For my father.”

  The hardest part was the waiting after the stones stopped falling. Lily wanted him to use the ring-shaped thorn to escape. That much was clear. He didn’t know what it would do, but he knew it was his only chance at getting out of here. So he had to be patient and wait until the last of the executioners was gone.

  He waited for what must have been hours. Then he waited that long again. And then a third time. He was sure it was night. It had to be.

  Finally, when he couldn’t wait anymore, when he was certain he would go insane if he had to stay under the hovering rocks for another moment, Zane activated the thorn.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After Lily dropped her stone, she joined Prince Christopher and the other Opeleans. They watched in silence as the people of the Crags filed past, and her friend and mentor was slowly buried alive.

  Lily did her best to appear somber, but inside she was a tangle of emotions. She hoped Zane had understood her cryptic message. She hoped he kept his head enough to work the glide. More importantly, she hoped he’d wait long enough to use the thorn.

  But what then? If Zane managed to live through this, his escape wouldn’t exactly be subtle. And Marcus would quickly discover she’d stolen a thorn right off his finger while they were working together the previous night. Best case scenario, Lily would be put to death. Worst case…she didn’t want to think about it. Still, what was she supposed to do? Let her friend die? He would have done the same for her, no matter the cost.

  “What the hell is this?” Prince Christopher whispered. His face was suddenl
y pale. A parade of four carriages pulled to a stop in front of the pressing site. Two men and two women climbed out of the first carriage. Lily didn’t recognize them, but they certainly weren’t Cragsmen and Cragswomen. Their style of dress was closer to what she usually saw in Opel.

  The Prince turned to the diplomatic party. He spoke softly but sternly. “Say nothing. Take no action. Remember we are already on the razor’s edge here. We’ll deal with this later.”

  Lily wasn’t sure what this was, but the other Opeleans did not look happy.

  Three people stepped out of the second carriage. Then four from the third. When the last person stepped out of the fourth carriage, Lily gritted her teeth. It was Caleb.

  “They’ve been keeping us separate,” Prince Christopher said, his voice thick with anger. “That’s why they’ve restricted us to the eastern wing. That’s why Gullins keeps leaving our negotiations. To go to theirs.”

  Suddenly Lily got it. This was a diplomatic party from Tavel. High Prince Gullins was negotiating with Tavel at the same time he was negotiating with Opel. And Caleb was part of the Tavel diplomatic party. He wasn’t working in secret; he was openly assisting Tavel in it’s negotiations.

  But why? Wouldn’t he have been able to do more damage on the battlefield? What was he trying to accomplish here?

  Caleb was the first to walk to the grave and drop his stone. The Tavellers followed.

  She noticed Caleb was pointedly not looking in her direction.

  When the last stone had been dropped, High Prince Gullins approached the Opeleans.

  “Let’s return to the palace,” he said. “We have much to discuss.”