“No.”
“Oh, come on! What could it possibly hurt?”
“It’s why I’m in jail!”
“Right, but you’re already here.”
“You could be a Chantry spy.”
“Oh, did the mask give it away?” I rebounded wryly as Raesh glared at me through the cell bars.
It was day three of us being cordoned next to one another, conversing half the time and spending another half the time with our backs determinedly set to one another’s cells so that we could have the slightest resemblance of privacy. It was one day after I had managed to finagle the conversation in such a way that I could let her know that I knew Ehud, that Ehud was going to tell me the information she shared with him about the kidnappings. She still didn’t seem particularly keen on sharing.
I didn’t exactly blame her, but it was starting to get a little frustrating, particularly since I wasn’t sure exactly when Hector was planning to get me out, whether I had the information or not. A week at the longest, but what if things went poorly with his negotiations and he ended up doing it sooner?
“You could just tell me what happened,” I told her, a little softer. “We’re both probably slated to die anyone. That’s why we’re all the way back here.”
Raesh clenched her jaw. “I’m not going to let them kill me.” A flash of white was in her eyes, and I recognized the sign of a Surge, but she slumped back down anyway. I noted not for the first time the shackles on her wrists that weren't on mine. They’d keep her from the movements she needed to channel her power.
She sighed heavily and leaned her head, covered with a black, scarf-like covering, back against the wall. “I didn’t get to the city all that long ago. Didn’t come North all that long ago. It doesn’t matter why,” she said, sending a glare in my direction as my mouth opened. I shut it without a word, and she went back to staring into the darkness ahead of her.
“Point is, I got here, and I started to make my way around the slums. They’re surprisingly not even that bad here. Made some acquaintances, heard about Ehud through a few of them, though they failed to mention he was friends with a badge.” She glared at me.
I shrugged innocently.
“Made another one too, name of Rickard. Next thing I knew, he was missing, and no one seemed to know how or why. Best I could get was that he’d gone to that bloody Chantry food handout, never came back.”
I blinked. “We couldn’t ever get that kind of direct connection confirmed.”
“Did you even know about Rickard? He wasn’t exactly one of the upstanding citizens just down on his luck.”
She had a point; peacekeeper records weren’t particularly meticulous about including criminals in their victim reports.
Raesh continued. “Anyway, I started poking around a little. Never really been one to trust the Chantry, for obvious reasons. Next thing I know, I’m being attacked by a squad of four men in black, trying to inject me with something. They didn’t know I was a Surgebinder though.” She smiled with grim satisfaction at the memory. “They didn’t make it. One of them ended up injected with his own syringe, passed out pretty much instantly.
“I searched the bodies while I waited for him to wake up and found a list of names and faces in a letter sealed with the Chantry seal. Not only that, but I recognized one of them from the outreach programs. The outreach missions were to collect targets; these guys were the acquisition agents.
“When the last one woke up, I questioned him, obviously. He was pretty tightlipped, willing to die before he gave anything up, but I got a little bit out of him. I didn’t know how they were moving the bodies, but he said something about experiments in some kind of basement or dungeon. And then he told me the High Inquisitor was coming to reward them, and that he would take care of me.”
We were both silent for a moment as she finished speaking, our breathing suddenly seeming loud in the darkness.
“Experiments?” I finally questioned.
“No idea,” Raesh said.
“Where do you think the dungeon is?”
“How should I know? That’s your department; you’ve been here a lot longer.”
I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, too. “Under the Chantry building.”
“Does it have a basement?” Raesh arched an eyebrow at me. “I wasn’t aware that was part of their blueprints.”
“It’s not, but a lot of places up here in the North are built over catacombs from before the Purge. I know it was utilized here to make a secret route out of the Highlord’s Manor in case of siege or something like that. The Chantry could have done something similar under the Cathedral. And I know that’s where the tanks were going.”
“The tanks?”
“Terrance Ennis runs the Transportation Guild, and he has a number of tanks that serve as supply wagons in the outer ring. We figured out that the kidnappers were smuggling coffins containing victims into the Inner City using shipments meant for renovations at the Cathedral.”
“Huh. You actually did something useful. Impressive for a badge.”
“We’re not all awful,” I said wryly.
“The only reason I would give that statement the time of day is because you’re apparently friends with Ehud.”
“What did the Peacekeepers ever do to you?”
“Killed my friends, why?”
I paused, turning to look at her.
Raesh shrugged. “I came from the West. You should know what that means.”
The West had basically become almost fully the Akuma Empire after the Akuma-Nyorai War a couple of years ago. “It’s getting that bad?”
“Getting there?” Raesh said blankly. “Did you come North before the war?”
“No, but immediately after it.”
Raesh scoffed. “It was always that bad. There are only three kinds of people in the Empire– the ones keeping their heads down, living on tiny amounts of rations, struggling to survive, the theocrats, living lush off of the suffering of others, and the Orders, the only place left where you can voice dissent to the Empire.”
“The Surge Orders? The Ascendant Cults?”
She shot me a dark look. “That’s not what they are.”
I held my hands up slightly. “Alright. Then enlighten me.”
Raesh paused, sighed. “That’s not what they are in the Empire,” she clarified. “Yes, the official stated goal of the Surge Orders is to return to the Age of the Ascendants, when they ruled before the Purge. But Akuma has banned all religion except for the worship of himself. The Turyn were already practically gone from Akuma, the Chantry too after what they did during the war, so the Orders were the only ones left. They’re the only ones still fighting for anything there.”
“I take it that you were actually a member then.”
“Yes. I was recruited before the war, but afterwards we split off into a smaller subset.” She smiled faintly in recollection. “Did some damage to the Empire.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Raesh glared at me again but seemed to realize there was little point considering she had already started talking and telling me about it. “I had a disagreement with the leader of the smaller faction. A very pointed disagreement that didn’t end particularly well. There was nothing left for me in the West.”
“You don’t seem particularly keen on the North though.”
“I’m not keen on governments. Ildanach is smaller than Akuma; that doesn’t make it better. The Chantry has a far tighter grip up here, too. My options seem to be a totalitarian regime where I can’t worship, speak, or practice my Surge as I please or a Church-run oligarchy where I can’t worship, speak, or practice my Surge as I please.”
“At least we have enough food here?” I offered wryly. “Did you think about trying one of the non-Akuma Houslends in the West? Surely some of them would be slightly closer to what you’re looking for.”
“I’m not sure what it matters now considering my odds of getting out of this prison seems fairly low, much less making it to the Pass,” Raesh pointed out, “but also I…. I needed to get out of the West. It was a very non-amicable parting.”
“I know how that goes,” I said softly. “Had a similar reason for leaving myself.”
We simply sat in silence for a few long moments.
I pivoted and squinted into the darkness behind me, as had become my wont, looking further into the prisons as far as I could see, straining my ears. Hector told me my team had been arrested. This is where I had found them so long ago. I didn’t expect them to be near to me, but the fact that I could see no sign of them at all despite the layout of the dungeon had put a pit of worry in my stomach. Where else could they be?
Raesh claimed she hadn’t seen them brought in, but she admitted that before my arrival she had spent much of her time sleeping away the boredom.
After all, where else could they have been? Their arrests had been ordered by the Highlord; they were on record. They couldn’t just be made to disappear.
None of those thoughts helped to calm my nerves.
Now that I had what we had wanted from Raesh, I saw no reason to be here any longer. With that in mind, I stood up and looked over at her. “If I break you out of here, will you help us get to the bottom of this with the Chantry?”
Raesh also stood, tilting her head at me. “Just like that? How exactly do you intend on doing that?”
“Does it matter? Either I’m full of it and you won’t owe me anything, or it’s a legitimate bargain that I’m offering.”
She shrugged. “Alright. Yeah, I’ll help. Got nothing better to do, and if you can actually pull something like that off, then I figure you might be good to have around.”
“One last term.”
Raesh narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“You don’t tell anyone how I did this.”
She blinked a few times. “Sure?”
“Fantastic.” And then I reached out to Teris. You’re back in the city by now, right?
He had informed me yesterday that the Turyn had made it safely across the border to Morrigan, so at least all of this had been worth something. Yes. Enjoying the fresh air.
The reminder of how much I felt like I was suffocating at any given moment wasn’t appreciated, and I took a moment to make sure he understood that. Get down here.
I had a few capabilities when it came to making use of my borrowed Rift power– using it on my swords, making a thin shield, increasing those abilities to a set amount, which I had been allowed to break during my last encounter due to extenuating circumstances. Still, using that energy on objects outside of myself was another matter entirely, and I needed Teris.
The raven winked into existence in front of me, and Raesh recoiled.
“What in the void?” Raesh whispered, recoiling. “What is that?”
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“He’s a raven,” I said, almost insulted, and then turned back to Teris. I would like to be not here anymore.
Oh, would you? Teris noted with a bit of annoyance.
What, do you want me to say please?
It would be nice, yeah.
I smiled faintly. Will you give me a hand? Please?
And then Teris’ eyes changed from brown to glowing violet, the voice and individual to whom I was speaking changing also. Since you asked so nicely.
The raven melted into shadow, extending and distorting into a slightly humanoid shape made of black smoke, still with those glowing violet eyes. It smiled, revealing impossibly sharp and pointed white teeth, and then the shadow hand touched the metal of the door, melting through it and sending dripping metal onto the ground with a loud sizzling sound and the smell of burning. Raesh’s door melted simultaneously with my own, despite the shadow never touching it, but she seemed too frozen in shock to even notice.
“You’ve been asking for my help a lot lately,” the shade hissed, forcing broken words through an immaterial mouth.
I shrugged, going to step past it and into the hallway, pushing open the half-melted door. “I’ve been in a bit more trouble than normal lately.”
Growing suddenly larger and slightly more corporeal, the shade grabbed me as I walked past and slammed me into one of the nearby cage’s wall.
I tensed, but I couldn’t fight it. It wasn’t a person; wasn’t made of anything I could hurt. “Something wrong?” I asked it tightly.
“Do not forget our bargain. Keep asking for more, and we may need to revisit it.”
“Was now really the best time to have this conversation?”
The shade growled down at me before releasing me. “This is your warning.” It smiled with its overly sharp teeth. “Any more favors will need to be repaid in kind, and you didn’t like that very much last time.”
The shade vanished, turning back into formless smoke, to immaterial shadow, and then resolidifying into a raven.
I took a short breath. “Your boss has mood swings.”
Tell me about it.
I turned to Raesh as I went over to yank open her similarly demolished door. “I’ll have to wait until I get my lockpicks back to handle the chains,” I gestured to her arms, “but–”
“That was a demon.”
I paused and then shrugged. “Yes.”
“You’ve somehow… made a deal… with a Riftling Demonspawn of Khane.”
“He has nothing to do with Khane, but yes.”
“How?”
I looked at her for a long moment and then shrugged again. “I was dying. I was young, and I didn’t want to die. Now I can’t.”
“You clearly– this clearly isn’t common knowledge.”
“No.”
“Why would you tell me? Why would you show me?”
“I mean, you were right there. I couldn’t really get out without you knowing.”
“I would kill me.”
I looked at her for a moment. “If you don’t keep your word, I might have to,” I said evenly, “but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
Raesh started at me for a long moment. “Ten minutes ago I would have called you a moron for that, but now I’m slightly uncomfortable doing that.”
“You should get over it.”
“Oh, thanks, I’ll get right on that,” she drawled.
I chuckled. “I’m going to go search the rest of the cells real quick. Be ready to leave with me when I get back.”
“What if I run off while you’re gone?”
“I will be very disappointed in you, considering you agreed to help me.”
“Am I supposed to care if you’re disappointed in me?”
“I would hope that you’d also be disappointed in yourself.”
“You are a confounding person sometimes.”
“Thanks! I try.” With a wink, I jogged off further into the dungeon.
I checked every single cell, individually, one at a time, even though I could still feel the walls closing in on me, my lungs aching for a breath of fresh air. Empty, empty, empty, on and on it went with not a soul to be found. Towards the back end of the dungeon, the cells were dusty and unused, the prison bigger than the city needed, but despite no sign of disturbances so far back in months or maybe years, I stopped at each dark cell, peering into the darkness, looking for any trace that my team had been here.
When I reached the stone wall at the end of the twisting hallway that finally marked the end, I searched it for some kind of contraption, a hidden lever, a secret door, anything that would open up into an area I knew did not exist, anything that meant my people were here.
They’d stayed because I promised them I would come back. If I had said otherwise, would they have done the smart thing and left?
The air was getting even staler, even damper, and my chest was tightening. I needed to get out of here. The truth was, they weren’t here. They hadn’t been here for years, not since the last time I had bargained for their freedom.
Were they dead already? Just quietly executed as criminals the Highlord didn’t want to deal with any longer? Surely Hector would have known if that were the case. Or were they elsewhere, buried under the Cathedral, being used for whatever experiments the Chantry seemed to be running? Or none of the above? A small part of me hoped perhaps they had somehow already escaped.
Perhaps Death had been kind yet again.
I took a deep breath– and nearly started coughing from the dust and staleness- and then headed back to where I had left Raesh.
She had exited her cell but not gone much further, pacing the hallway.
“You ready to go?” I asked her.
“They took my things. I want them back.”
I nodded. “I know where the storage room is for things like that. We’ll make a stop.”
“Did you really think I wouldn’t run?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Care to share this all-knowing wisdom of yours?”
I breathed a laugh. “These people killed your friend and tried to kidnap you, not to mention you hate them anyway. You want revenge, and I seem like I can help you get it. Besides, what else do you have to do?”
Raesh blinked at me and then breathed a laugh. “I’m not really sure what to think of you, Kazere.”
“Think whatever you like, but do it while you move,” I said, beckoning her forward as I started heading for the door.
The couple drunks in the first cells mostly just looked at us dazed as I opened the unlocked door back to the log room.
“It’s not even locked?”
“Believe it or not, the lock broke a few months ago and just never got replaced,” I said wryly.
Raesh shook her head in exasperation, and we exited into the currently empty log room; Keeper Ialdi had better things to do than to be down here constantly– we all did. It wasn’t a full-time position. The storage room with prisoner’s personal effects, a closet behind the log desk, was locked, but now I had access to a desk and all the office supplies that came with it. I made myself some makeshift lockpicks and freed her from the chains first before breaking into the storage room.
“Tada,” I proclaimed as it clicked open.
Raesh rolled her eyes as she walked past me into the room. “Did you want applause?”
“I don’t think it would have been entirely out of line.”
“I could have picked that with my eyes closed.” She walked over to one of the little boxes and collected her things– a pair of long, curved daggers, still sheathed on a belt which she placed on her waist, lifting the folds of her black shawl-like “coat” to secure them.
Now that we were a bit more in the light, I examined her clothes with slightly more interest; it had been some time since I had seen design like that, and it wasn’t the same as the long black robes worn by the more traditional women in the West. No, Raesh was wearing very tight and relatively thin black pants and, similarly, a simple black shirt underneath the folds of the shawl– hardly modest or traditional–, but it was the strange coat that interested me.
It wrapped around her shoulders and upper body like a scarf or a shawl, yet it had long strands of fabric that fell down across her body like oversized tassels, the strips probably a half-cubit across a piece. It protected her modesty and gave her full arm movement as well as concealing her blades very effectively. Furthermore, the pure, matching black of every piece of her outfit made it almost look to be one single piece of clothing– why I had nearly thought it was a robe while we had been in the darker cells.
She had tall leather boots also that came up to just below her knees, and into those she slid lockpicks of her own from the box as well as a few throwing knives.
I was reminded of my own habits and smiled.
“If you’re done ogling me,” she said mildly, straightening after putting the last knife in her right boot.
“It’s a clever coat,” I commented.
“What, you want one?” she asked wryly.
“I do have my own, but I appreciate the offer.”
Raesh moved out of the way, “You need to get at one of these boxes then?”
“No, I left my things with a friend. Kind of had a small warning that I was going to be arrested.”
“And you didn’t run?”
I paused. “I have some friends who were supposed to also be here. I was concerned they would be killed.”
She considered that for a moment. “You think they might be already?”
“I don’t know.” I took a breath. “But it’s not worth contemplation until I see bodies. I’ve come back plenty from situations that looked dire.”
“Yeah, you’re that Lion of Ildanach or whatever, right? Their knight in shining armor? Can’t wait to hear the story of how you ended up here.”
“The short version? I didn’t bow to the oligarchy.”
Raesh shook her head slightly, adjusting the scarf over her hair which I realized now was a collar and hood connected to her shawl. “Deadly mistake.”
“Always is for someone. After you?”
She exited the room, walking past me again as I closed the storage room– and then we heard the main door, the exit in the ceiling at the top of a staircase leading out, rattling.
“Why did you close the door?” Raesh hissed at me.
“I was kind of hoping we could stay unnoticed,” I admitted, and then the door opened, moonlight flooding in from the sky along with a breath of fresh air that felt like a rush of life itself to me.
Two figures started to descend, and Raesh’s hand went to her blade.
“Leon?”
I immediately stepped out in front of Raseh. “Hector!” I frowned at the second figure. “Sryes.”
“She’s been helpful; stop glaring,” Hector said, rolling his eyes as he approached. “And your friend is?”
“Hector Wolfe, Raesh Erendi.”
“He’s a Peacekeeper,” Raesh said, not taking her hand off her knife.
“So am I,” I said easily.
Raesh gave me a disgusted look.
“She’s a Surgebinder?” Hector asked, looking nearly as unhappy about that as Raesh was about him.
“Yes! Get over yourselves,” I said, perhaps a bit abruptly. “My team isn’t down here. Where are they?”
“The dungeons under the Cathedral,” Jesne said almost immediately.
“Being experimented on?” I snapped at her, covering fear with anger.
“Not necessarily. We do just have a general prison area. Unused, but I was down there earlier. Nothing suspect was happening.”
“But they’re in line to be experimented on.”
Jesne didn’t answer, looking away.
“You–” I said, approaching her.
Hector put his hand on my shoulder as I approached. “She’s not the problem here. And you know that. Come on, Ennis has provided us a place we can lay low. We need to move.”
I bit back any response, knowing he was right, and we all exited the dungeons, quietly slipping into back alleyways to avoid being seen. Hector appeared to have an entire escape route mapped out, so we simply followed behind.
I felt better as soon as the fresh night air hit my lungs, as soon as the walls were no longer closing in on me, as soon as every footstep echoing in the dark hallways no longer reminded me of far worse days.
It took a few hours, through a winding and twisting path, to reach the small house not quite in the outer ring, but against the outside wall on the middle sector. Hector had a key and opened the small door, revealing it to be surprisingly reinforced on the inside. It was dark, and once we were all within the four walls, Hector lit an old fashioned lamp on a table set up in the middle of the area. There was basically no furniture, though there was a small kitchen area tucked against the back wall next to the washroom, the only other room in the area.
“Ennis just had this place all ready to go?” I asked Hector, surprised.
Hector nodded. “I think he has quite a few. Man is surprisingly well prepared to be on the wrong side of the official government, considering his status.”
I smiled faintly. “Good man.”
“Can’t ever trust those,” Raesh commented, tapping her nails against the wall. “Is the plan just to stay here? Because I’ve pretty much had it with being locked in small enclosed areas.”
I felt the same, but I looked to Hector. “This is your show.”
Hector took a breath. “Right. Well. You two might be done with being cooped up, and I get that, but I don’t think Jes or I have slept in the last week.”
“We’ll keep watch then,” I said, though it pained me to do so. “Get a little rest. Then we’ll share what we’ve learned.”
“This is your plan?” Raesh demanded.
“Rushing into things isn’t going to help,” I said wearily. “Get some rest.”
And even though Raesh looked unhappy with the decision, she also ended up lying down in one of the bedrolls and getting some rest while I stared out the window, waiting for dawn.