Hero of Arcadia

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  “Run along, Lady Jonelise of Arcadia, and think not of me,” the haggard man called out, his voice ringing from the stones and carrying loudly across the still air. “But beware the long shadow of a momentous day, as all things fall and nothing is what it seems! Claws claw at the brink for years, and no one ever gets what they want!”

  Looking back, Jone saw the fevered gleam in his eyes and shuddered, suddenly uneasy. She didn’t resist further as The Drake pulled her quickly away, leading her through the maze-like passages seemingly by memory.

  It felt like hours passed in the underground dungeons, but as Rote was all too quick to remind her, Jone was a poor judge of many things, including the passage of time. Save for the spirit in her head, they were quiet, dodging patrols in the darkness, both of them with only a mortal enemy for company.

  The tunnels they trod twisted and turned, crumbling into disuse the further they traveled from Jone’s cell. Finally, they turned a corner and Jone nearly cried out.

  She saw slanted rays of golden sunlight streaming through a grate set into the ceiling and realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the open sky.

  Then she held back as a guardsman’s shadow passed over the grate, slicing a chunk from the pool of liquid sun.

  “A guard,” she hissed at The Drake’s back when his footfalls didn’t slow.

  He turned, offering Jone a dangerous smile as he tugged the mask from his face. “I know,” The Drake replied. “I own them.” He gestured at the ladder leading upward. “Shall we?”

  5

  Treason

  Jone stared at Sir Francis Drake from across the table.

  She hated the man, possibly more than was reasonable, always driven by that gnawing desire to avenge her own death.

  But she also wasn’t going to turn down free food.

  “They’ll be here soon,” he commented, watching her eat with a combination of amusement and mild disbelief written across his face. “This is the beginning of the final act, Jonelise. You’ll have to help me convince them.”

  Jone shoved aside another emptied stew bowl, stacking it neatly with the other three, and glared at him. “No.”

  The Drake sighed, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, and signaled to the middle-aged proprietor to bring Jone more food. “Please, Jonelise. Despite our differences, despite your stubbornness, I truly have always respected you.”

  “He’s had a funny way of showing it.”

  “Can you not put things aside until this is over?” The Drake continued. “This is our chance. Yours and mine alike. For once, our goals are unified.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rote’s smoky figure ruffled with distrust in the back of Jone’s mind.

  “It’s not that,” Jone finally replied. She smiled her thanks as the proprietor thumped down another bowl of stew and a moderately hard loaf of daybread in front of her, then glared at her as he trudged away.

  “Then what is it?” the old soldier replied, leaning an elbow on the table, his stormy eyes tired.

  Jone looked around. Through the glassless windows, she could feel the wafts of open air, fresh from the Elizabethian sky, its scent stained with hints of industry and steam. Airships of myriad sizes flitted occasionally past her view; the run-down wooden tavern The Drake had led them to was far from the more civilized core of Elizabethia proper, instead sitting toward the far end of an old, re-purposed pier covered with clustered, near-condemned buildings.

  The Arcadian was pretty certain that her nemesis had planted them squarely in the middle of what passed for an Elizabethian slum, though even the poorest of Queen Elizabeth’s subjects seemed frightfully well off by her standards.

  “I’m not convincing anyone of anything until you explain what happened after the fall of the Revenge, and after I was captured.” Jone dug into the stew, sopping her bread in the meaty juices, but she kept her eyes always on The Drake. “And until you explain what you meant back in the dungeons. About getting Elizabeth to let you go.”

  “Well, that first one is easy, at least.” The Drake knitted his fingers together and leaned forward. “As you now no doubt realize, the Queen’s Revenge and the three brothers Leszczynski, were decoys.” He smiled thinly. “Of course, it was no mere feint, as per my design. Had you chosen to ignore the Revenge, it would simply have pounded Arcadia to dust, much as you feared it would.”

  Jone frowned. “And the news about you being recalled to the Queen’s side and punished for your failures against me?”

  Drake shrugged. “It was effective misinformation, wasn’t it? Though I won’t say I wasn’t berated most harshly. She’s not accustomed to my failure.”

  “There’s still time.”

  The Arcadian moved to flip her long, wheat-golden braid away from her soup out of habit—only to remember belatedly that it was gone, her beautiful length of golden blond hair shorn to nearly nothing by her jailers. Her frown deepened. Sometimes you didn’t know how fond you were of something until it was taken from you. “So you threw the three Leszczynskis’ lives away, just to deceive us? That’s disgusting.”

  Jone’s once-severed arm tingled, the flesh growing warm. “Not to mention all of my people enslaved aboard that ship. And captured in their attempt to find your body. If we hadn’t set them all free…”

  Drake snorted, motioning to the proprietor. “Oh, please, Jonelise. You’re a military commander, too. You’ve never sent your people on suicide missions?” He shook his head when Jone remained silent. “Exactly as I thought. Though, I have to admit it was rather convenient politically, as well. Their family had become...troublesome.”

  Jone was quiet as the portly tavernkeep dropped off a tall bottle of wine for The Drake, popping the cork and giving the Elizabethian Admiral a respectful nod before glaring at Jone once more as he departed.

  “So you and your friends and allies fell into the trap, pulled too far out of position to recover before the first wave of the assault commenced. You started off behind, and we never allowed you to catch up—though I’ll be the first to admit that Arcadia fought valiantly indeed.” The Drake shrugged and took several long swallows from the thick-bottomed wine bottle without resorting to a wine glass. “Using the Hand against me, though...forcing me to sink her after all we’ve been through together… That was rather cruel, Jonelise. Well done.”

  Jone said nothing. Instead, she studied her old adversary. When she’d first met in him battle more than two full centuries ago, she dimly remembered him being younger, more vital, quicker to go on the offensive...but in many ways, the gray-streaked, weathered Drake she sat across from now seemed to have hardly changed at all.

  And for all the times, both then and now, that they’d crossed blades, that they’d tried to kill one another, she found she didn’t really know Drake the man. Only Drake the foe.

  But with that gnawing hunger to avenge her own death grinding away, she found it hard to make herself care.

  “As for what I said back in the dungeons…” He lowered his voice as he continued. “I’m her slave.”

  Jone stared at him flatly with irritation. “You truly expect me to believe that? You, who command her armies, who command power in this world second only to Elizabeth herself? The richest, most feared man in the Seven Skies?” The Arcadian shook her head in disgust. “You should stick to your typical lies.”

  Drake smiled, a tired smile that barely reflected in his eyes. “A gilded cage is still a cage, Jonelise.” He sighed. “The truth is that my success is my prison. Queen Elizabeth will keep me alive and drawing blade in her name until the end of time if need be. Or until I’m useless, at which point she will discard me. I have no choice. After nearly three hundred years, I grow tired of lacking self-determination, Jonelise. So I have spent decades planning for an opportunity just like this one, the chance to break my chains. By any means.”

  “By any means?” Jone tapped the gladius at her waist and eyed his chest.

  The Elizabethian soldier threw back his hea
d and laughed. “Are we back to that, then? I can’t blame you for wanting your revenge—I would do the same, and I don’t even suffer from the same...condition that you do.”

  The Drake punctuated the comment with a nod toward the amulet hidden under her ill-fitting garments, and Jone felt it grow heavy and flush with cold at the scrutiny. Her hand rose toward it out of habit, but she forcibly ignored the icy spot on her flesh and went back to eating instead.

  “No Jonelise, I’ll be honest with you.” The Drake knitted his fingers together, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands. “I think you deserve that. But the truth is that after three hundred years, I really don’t want to die.” He met her eyes calmly, unashamed, but revealing a note of fear lurking, much deeper within. “After all, not all of us have conquered death as thoroughly as you have. But if the only way to be free is to die...so be it. That, I believe, is something that the Maid of Arcadia can relate to.” Drake smiled. “Though I’d prefer to save it as a last resort, if you please.”

  “Weee caaaaan’t truuust hiiiim,” Rote sang. “Every time you do that you end up with a blade in your chest. In our chest.”

  Jone’s heart twitched at the memories. Then she jumped in her chair as the insistent banging of a mailed fist on weathered sky-oak echoed loudly up the stairs from the tavern’s basement entrance.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Jonelise.” Drake’s chair scraped across the battered floorboards as he rose. “Work with me, and together, you’ll get the thing you’ve always wanted: my Queen defeated. And at the end of it, there’s a ship waiting to take you to your freedom, as well.” He held out a hand.

  Gulping down the last of her thick soup broth, Jone finally nodded. But she didn’t take his hand.

  “You can’t be serious. This is the man that killed you. At least twice. Even you aren’t naïve enough to trust him again, right? ...Right?”

  I’ve got it under control, Jone replied silently. I hope. This is an opportunity we may never have again. Why would he do this if he weren’t in some way serious? Besides, you realize that if we turned him down now, we’ll never leave Elizabethia alive. Finally, the spirit in her head relented, though in Jone’s mind her onyx eyes were hesitant and highly skeptical.

  The Drake dropped his hand as the tavernkeep unbarred the downstairs door and it swept open, instead raising it to greet the group of cloaked and hooded individuals that pushed their way inside, some still adjusting the decorative masks they wore. Jone counted eleven: Rat, Raven, Owl, Bear, Boar, and Garm, among other, more fanciful faces she had no name for.

  She shifted in her seat. The sudden masquerade made her feel uneasy, unsafe, as if she’d stumbled into a cult dedicated to Gatekeeper Jones himself.

  Of course, since this was a gathering of traitors, safe wasn’t something she expected.

  Jone let the dregs of her final soup sit as The Drake greeted each conspirator, though none by name. One by one, each set of eyes turned to her, studying, weighing, measuring.

  With a deep breath, Jone rose and stood beside her nemesis. Slowly, the conspirators spread out, until Jone found herself surrounded by hoods and robes with animal faces, watching her every breath, her every twitch, with cynical, critical human eyes.

  “So this is her,” Garm said, a tall, strong woman with a few golden curls spilling out from underneath the dark gray hood. “The legend. Back from the dead. The one who would assassinate our Queen for us. She doesn't look like much.”

  “I am no one’s assassin,” Jone retorted, squaring her shoulders. I don’t know these people. “I am a Knight of the Iron Shield, and Elizabeth is my enemy.” I don’t know what they want, or how to convince them of anything. “Whoever you are, either you are with me, and our purposes align for now, or we are enemies, and you should leave.” All I can really do is be myself.

  At the back of the circle, Bear turned on heel and walked away, shouldered his way through the door, and slammed it as he left.

  Some of the group exchanged glances, but Jone could read little through the colorful masks. A glance at The Drake, rubbing his face thoughtfully, revealed just as little.

  “Well, weeding out the uncommitted is a good start,” said Raven in an elderly, intelligent feminine voice.

  “And it is...interesting...to meet someone of legend,” commented Owl, tilting her head like her violet-feathered namesake. “A supposed demon from our country’s history, yet in the flesh, standing before us.”

  Jone didn’t feel like a legend; she felt like she was on display, and she didn’t like it in the least.

  “Perhaps I stand alone,” rumbled Boar in a deep, bass voice. “But I consider it an honor.” He held out a hand, and after a moment’s consideration, Jone took it and clasped it firmly.

  “By all means,” Rote sighed, “Keep touching the people that want to kill you. I’m sure nothing bad will happen.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Drake finally spoke up. “Years of plotting and planning, and it comes down to this. To tonight. Time to commit, to act.” He shifted his gaze, stormy clouds and steel, from individual to individual, and few matched it for long.

  “I think it will take more than a specter from the past to make me risk my honor and my family’s lives,” replied Garm, meeting The Drake’s gaze solidly and not backing down. In the wake of her words came a whisper of agreement. “Her skill, both historically and recent, may be impressive. Her will may be strong. She may even have returned from the dead, as they say.” Her gaze shifted to Jone, bearing down heavily on the much shorter woman. “But she has spent months in the dungeons, underfed, beaten, and tortured. Without her followers, she is weaker than any of us and nothing compared to our Queen.”

  Anxiety flitted through Jone’s half-full stomach, and she glanced toward The Drake.

  He returned the look with a shrug. “Well, what say you, Lady Jonelise?”

  Jone took one step forward and lifted Garm easily by the throat, smoke trailing faintly from her fingers as her skin grew warm and tingled with borrowed power. “Almost a year ago, I nearly killed Sir Francis Drake with naught but my own wits and a greatsword. With but a handful of followers, I liberated Arcadia itself and drove his strike fleet from its shores.” At the first choking sound, Jone dropped Garm back onto her iron-heeled boots and released her hold on Rote’s smoldering core of power before the pain could mount further. “Through two supposed deaths I have persisted, as have those who believe in me.” She eyed Drake, then swept her hard gaze around the circle of masks. “If your intentions are truly to give me the chance to strike at Elizabeth, then I will succeed. Not for you, but for Arcadia, and for all those your Queen has subjugated.”

  “Well, I’m convinced,” Raven croaked cheerily, elbowing Garm in the ribs.

  Garm rubbed at her throat. “I’m not, but I’m not certain I could be. What makes one ready to topple a God, directly or indirectly?” The canine head stared at the floor for a long moment before looking back up, eyes flashing like bared steel. The mask’s toothy grin suddenly seemed all too fitting. “But my forces are already in place at the Tower and the Palace. I suppose it would be a shame to call them off now.”

  “All in,” said Boar, a current of excitement running through his rumbling voice. “My part is ready as well. Now is the time for action, for revolution!”

  “Tower?” Jone glanced at The Drake.

  The old soldier nodded. “The Tower of Dover. Phase one; hopefully you’re ready. The plan is to—”

  The tavern’s front door burst open with a deafening roar and a plume of swelling smoke. Jone dropped low as an explosion shook the floorboards, and Drake pushed her even lower as the thunder of steamlock muskets filled the room.

  Someone screamed. Boar’s body crashed down in front of her, gasping for air, crimson blooming across his fine garments from the gaping holes in his shoulder and ribs.

  “This way!” The Drake snapped, grabbing her elbow once more, this time dragging her toward the basement door.


  “I can’t just—” Jone looked back over her shoulder. Lightning and freezing rain billowed from Raven’s hands, stalling the influx of Elizabethian guards while Garm set her feet and readied a whirring, steam-powered autogun, a cluster of short, rapidly revolving barrels as thick as Jone’s thigh.

  “You can and will,” The Drake snapped. His eyes flickered as he called on threads of his magic, lending him strength enough to turn his grip to steel and haul her down the stairs and into a passage hidden deep in the shadows of the basement’s back corner. “Our goal now is to make the Tower, not to die fighting an endless wave of my own Abyssal men.”

  “Friendly reminder: you don’t owe those people half a handful of garm shit,” Rote rippled in the back of her mind, coiled with tension. “Ten minutes ago, you didn’t know they existed. Ten months ago, you would have happily murdered each other.”

  And that doesn't make it right to abandon them to their fates, Jone replied. But she let her resistance fade as Drake dragged her away, finally letting go of her arm as she committed to following him.

  “Oh, don’t worry about those two,” Owl commented, falling quietly into step beside Jone out of nowhere. “They’ll probably survive.” Her dark gray eyes flickered with grim amusement as behind them, Garm’s autogun roared to life, bellowing defiance in the form of a storm of deadly lead, backed by the howl of evoked storm winds.

  “If you want to help them, or anyone for that matter, finish your task,” Drake added, uncovering his face once more as he led them swiftly through the winding back alleys, past crooked buildings and sagging three-story overhangs. “If there is no Queen to punish them for treason, the survivors will ultimately be fine.”

  “That too, I guess. I did like that raven mask.”

  “What now, then?” Jone looked between the man and woman flanking her. I don’t like being led by the nose like this. I don’t even understand the plan. “Why this tower, instead of directly to the Great Palace?”

  “Because as acerbic as Garm is, she has a point,” replied Owl. “How do you expect to defeat Elizabeth if you have next to nothing to call on?”