Chapter 6

His boots splashed against the water logged cobblestones as he made his way through the crowds of people milling about in the lower city.

It was in the early afternoon, yet the sky was gloomy, the sun blocked by the enormous shadow of the upper city. The people walking seemed to be warier, he thought.

A chill hung over the residents of the lower city, and it wasn’t entirely due to the weather.

He’d heard the talks, of course. Talks of boiling tensions in the upper city. The Lord’s murder had sparked a whole new set of issues. Perhaps that had been what his employer had aimed for. Perhaps not.

It was at times like this that he missed his sister. He felt isolated, alone in a sea of uncaring hands that shoved him about to where they wanted him to go. It was maddening, not having anyone close by to just listen to you.

His sister lived here somewhere. He wasn’t certain as to the place, and he never asked his master either. Perhaps that was due to his fear that his master would deny it to him. A fear that after all this time, maybe his sister wasn’t being taken care of. That his sister might be dead. He didn’t know the veracity of his master’s words. And despite his dogged attempts to verify it, it didn’t quite work out as well as he’d hoped. Any information regarding a binding oath would be sequestered safely in some corner of the grand library, a place a commoner like he couldn’t even dream of accessing. Without money, of course.

He took a deep breath, hand clenching inside his coat pockets. Well, he had a job to do.

The lower city had been very impressive when Kaleb had first set foot here. In hell, all you could see were crumbled ruins and dirt houses. Compared to that place, this sure had felt impossibly beautiful to him.

That novelty had worn out after multiple forays, however. And whatever had been left of the vestiges of his awe was thoroughly bashed in the moment he stepped inside the upper city.

That one still gave him chills just looking at it. Made him realise the sheer power and significance of those that lived there. Every. Single. Time.

Now, he just wondered how the people in the lower city could bear to be in the perpetual shadow of the upper one. Some places were dark enough that gas lamps were lit all the time.

Kaleb weaved through the crowd, the sides of the streets lined with stalls selling various merchandise. The market district of the lower city had narrower streets, with clustered buildings and stalls haphazardly arranged. That gave it a sense of busyness at all times of the day.

Past the market district, quite a while deep into the city at its centre were the connectors. Elevators that linked the lower city to the upper floating one.

Again, to call them elevators would be a disservice. The main machine was huge, able to house thousands of people at once, he reckoned. It even had sectioned off places for the nobles and the wealthy. Aside from the main connector, there were subsidiary connectors that were active all day long, transporting cargo and the like.

He walked past the market district into a wealthier area, this one cleaner and the houses spread apart, with larger front lawns. Wealthy merchants and less prominent nobles made their home here, in the myriad of neatly built houses and manors that made up the area.

He stopped to hail a carriage coming along.

“The connectors”, he said to the coachman as he approached, tossing him a coin which the man deftly caught with one hand.

The man nodded as Kaleb climbed inside the carriage. He settled in comfortably as it started to move, and took out a leather bound book from his coat pocket.

He started to read, knowing this would take some time.

***

It in fact, did not take as much time as he would have liked, he was so engrossed in reading about various applications of sorrow when the coachman tapped the wall behind him and made him jolt.

“We’re here”, the man said gruffly, as Kaleb shoved the book back into his pocket and shuffled out.

The connection hub was a beehive of activity, as always. The massive contraptions creaked and groaned as they made their way up and down, held by high tensile cables made of strange materials. The sounds made it seem like it would crash at any time, but the things had been running strong for centuries, if history was to be trusted.

People milled about, most dressed in fancy clothes. It required a certain amount of money to travel between the cities. Quite a lot, in fact.

Unless you were working with the cargo transportation groups. You wouldn’t be able to get past the guarded check point and the tall walls and walk into the upper city proper that way if you were a law abiding citizen, but the method worked well enough for his purposes. And he was far from a law abiding citizen.

He walked over to one of the groups loading up one of the subsidiary connectors with sealed crates, the men grunting with effort and exhaustion. Now these weren’t blue blood, they were common citizens working their backs off for pay.

There were security checkpoints along the way, but he had grown quite proficient in avoiding them with a bit of sorrow. They were too lax anyways, since there hadn’t been any incidents in quite a while. People weren’t mad enough to anger the nobles in the upper city. The angels.

As he got closer to the group, he hid behind one of the crates and started to activate a simple enchantment he had etched on his coat. Relatively simple, that is. It had still been a pain to get it right.

The enchantment made him invisible. Not perfectly so, but good enough for someone with his level of skill. Before the enchantment, he’d had to implant a huge metal slab etched with the array inside a nearby area and activate the array to get inside. That had been extremely troublesome, since he’d had to take a detour every time.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Invisible, he slowly made his way inside the collector, past sweating workers and the overseer, and hid behind a group of crates, in the shadows.

This was another reason he picked this group to infiltrate the upper city. They were careless in their arrangement of crates most of the times, since they did not have much cargo to begin with.

He waited as the machine was loaded up, and finally the overseer climbed on board with a few others, and they settled themselves in after closing the opening.

Then the overseer pressed a button, and waited.

The machine started to shake a bit, and then they were up, going into the upper city.

“Shit’s getting wild up there”, murmured one of the men, after the machine was a good way up into the air.

The others grumbled their agreements. “Just hope it doesn’t affect our jobs.”, said the overseer, looking down. “Things are tough as they are.”

Kaleb winced internally, knowing that he was the one responsible for all of this. Perhaps he was being too hard on himself, but in the end it was he who delivered the final blow. And...the memories never went away.

The machine clunked to a stop, signalling their arrival in the upper city. The men started to move. Kaleb steeled himself. There was work to do.

***

Getting past the check point wasn’t hard. It was quite insultingly easy, now that he considered it. Like the men were there just for ornamentation.

His black coat ruffled against the wind as he walked on sparkling white stone, the streets swept clean of dirt and leaves. Neatly pruned trees were arranged in a picturesque manner along the streets, and all the buildings around him were tall, stately.

Majestic.

He supposed the same could be said for most of its populace, as well. The upper city wasn’t as crowded as the lower one, and the people moving past him on the pavement were dressed neatly, and graceful in their movements. When he’d first arrived here, he’d been terribly out of place. Rigorous training had allowed him to blend in.

The address was branded in his memory. He had to scout out the new location, and prepare it for his work. He did this every time before the main date, it had been a part of his training.

The tall buildings adorning the streets gave way to even taller manors, this part of the city clearly for the wealthier nobles that lived here. The trees along the sides had golden leaves, rustling in the wind. Birds chirped cheerfully, going about their businesses.

After walking for a while longer, he finally reached it.

The manor his target would be in wasn’t particularly bigger than the others around it, but it was clearly a busier site. Servants were rushing around, carrying boxes from wagons as they prepared the house for the arrival of the lord and his family. Guards were a frequent sight, strutting about inside the grounds, as well as standing outside the gate, eyes wary.

They had heard the news, of course. It was inevitable that they’d be nervous.

Kaleb scouted the whole thing from a distance, making sure to not stand out. He’d have to go inside and prepare the place after this, but for now he was just confirming the report’s accuracy.

The manor had tall walls in front, with tall fences covering the rest of its sides. There were a few side gates, he noticed, but they were guarded too. Inside, he could see a maze of tall hedges, with a straight path cutting through it into the mansion proper. There were neat gardens and a small fountain outside as well. The whole area reeked of noble prosperity.

Well, it was time to get inside.

The guards posed no problem to his invisibility and superior stealth skills. He landed as lightly as he could on the ground and hid behind a hedge. He was invisible, but it didn’t sit right with him to just be out in the open.

After checking out the area he was currently at, and finding no problems, he took a moment to ready himself, then started his preparation.

His preparation included setting up many covert sorrow arrays he could use to turn the field to his advantage. This included many basic ones, like sound reduction, decoy arrays and the like. He had learned them so thoroughly he could inscribe the arrays in the mud with barely a conscious thought.

Finishing this one, he moved slowly to the hedge maze, avoiding the eyesight of the guards.

The hedge maze would be a problem, but also an opportunity. That place had so many clever places one could hide. It also meant that he had to be on the lookout, however.

The hedges were slightly wet, dew drops shining in the light. It made for a beautiful sight. He moved slowly through the maze, setting up arrays as he went.

In the end, it didn’t take a lot of time to complete his preparations. He’d almost run into a few of the servants working outside the manor but his invisibility had helped him escape notice. It also stood to reason that his ability to go invisible had been exactly why he’d decided to prepare the manor grounds at such a busy time. The enchantment meant he could be just a little lazy.

His work done, he crawled up to a nearby fence, intending to get out of there as soon as he could.

“Do we really have to carry this?”, asked a voice.

Kaleb whirled around, before realising that whomever it had been wouldn’t have been speaking to him. He was invisible.

He saw two servants carrying a wooden crate between them. It was filled with wooden stuff.

“The young miss sure loves her dolls”, said the other one, and Kaleb realised that the crate was full of toys.

“Spoiled brat”, murmured the first one.

“Don’t let the lord hear you”.

Chuckling, they both shuffled away, lugging the crate along.

Huh. So they did have a daughter.

***

“Hey, shireholm”, said the big boy. It was delivered with so much contempt that it was honestly impressive.

“Y-Yeah?”, responded another boy, this one smaller, clearly nervous. It was clear that his day wasn’t going according to plan.

The bigger one lunged forward and shoved the smaller one onto the wall of the building behind him.

Kaleb watched the whole thing unfold.

He didn’t know how he’d ended up here, standing in front of a kid being bullied. He’d wandered around the upper city a bit after staying well away from the target area, and had eventually come to this relatively deserted place.

And lo and behold, some poor kid was having it rough inside some shadowy alley tucked away between two buildings. Nobles, huh? Not so different after all.

“What’s wrong Shireholm? No father to hide behind?”, snarled the big one leaning over the gasping shorter one.

It was at that point that it hit him. Shireholm. Of course.

He’d killed the boy’s father.

Young Shireholm stood up shakily, and glared at the big one. “Fuck off, William.”

The fist came slow. Kaleb could have dodged that in his sleep.

But it connected anyway.

Shireholm junior was knocked off his feet and crashed against the ground.

Kaleb was again reminded of how novel this was for him.

“Did your brain die with your father, Shireholm?”. William spat on him. “Fucking pathetic. Get up.”

The boy went up to Shireholm Jr and roughly hoisted him up. Then he punched him in the guts, hard. Shireholm Jr doubled over, spilling his half digested lunch all over the ground.

Kaleb eyed his surroundings. There were people, but they were ignoring the spectacle. None of them moved.

Two nobles fighting each other. One with a powerful backing. Another with a dead father and a declining family.

Kaleb felt an irrational anger rise within him. These people, angels, were just content with letting this happen. It didn’t matter to them, not when all they saw was a fallen noble kid getting beaten up by another powerful one.

And it wasn’t his business, not technically.

He tried to just move past it, but for some reason his legs wouldn’t respond. The anger was boiling now, threatening to burst out.

He knew deep down that this wasn’t going to end up well. Looking in the alley, he could see Shireholm curled up on the ground, covering his head while he got kicked. The kid was injured now, enough to be concerning. But the other one just wouldn't stop.

He saw the big one’s fist move up slowly, all curled up and tensed. He saw it make its way to Shireholm’s fallen form at a snail’s pace, inching forward.

He didn’t know it when he moved.

A surge of power. A burst of wind. A startled cry.

And he was looking down at the frightened form of a noble boy, already regretting what he’d done.