Chapter Ninety-Two
The Darkness Before Dawn
Before they’d been allowed to turn in that night, Archie, Lain, Willem, and Avery were all greeted by Amekot with an unenviable task of building a gallows. According to Amekot, the assignment was obligatory and they needed to have it done before dawn.
They set to work by dismantling the pop-up stage and reusing its planks and beams. After an hour of deconstruction, and hour planning, an hour of set up, and three hours of construction, the steps of the forum were occupied by the new hanging station. It had a single set of steps leading to its platform, big enough to hold a dozen people, but bore a single crossbeam arm, for a single hanging. It had a drop-floor and a lever to release it.
All in all, it was menacingly simple and the fact that it only took so much time to put together was a haunting factor indeed.
Amekot had impressed upon them how efficiently it needed to be handled. They all nodded and worked at speed. But it had naught to do with his demands, and everything to do with the wish to have it over with.
The hanging station sat before the keep where the headcount-desk and chair had been a few hours before. It was unpolished but it was strong. Archie almost instinctively began sanding down its edges but grew revolted at the thought of putting such care into a device so dreadful.
Once they finished, the four craftsfolk sat on a dark bench of a dining table, looking at the rope as it swayed in the pre-dawn wind. They’d found some ale that Syliva had forgotten to pack away and sipped it quietly.
Avery raised their cup to their mouth and asked, “Are you lot staying for the fight then?”
All three of them nodded and Lain glanced back at the young noble. “You?”
“Nothin’ better to do.”
Willem sat, thoughtfully tapping his fingers until he cast a glance at Avery and signed, You really think Jacobs should hang?
Lain young woman translated and Avery sat thoughtfully for a moment.
“Part of me thinks no. Another part of me thinks yes.”
Lain frowned and shook her head. “Feels needless. Throw him in a cell. Let him rot.”
Avery shrugged and cast a glance over their shoulder to the main gates. “Won’t matter soon enough. You all armed up?”
Lain tapped the broadsword strapped to her back as Willem thumbed the hammers in his belt.
Avery looked to the freckled redhead and said, “Archibald?”
Archie nodded. “I just don’t wear it.”
When he’d first arrived at Fort Guardian, Archie’s father had wanted him to focus on being a craftsman and that was all. But he’d read too many stories, and heard too many tales, and once Amekot had threatened to banish him, he decided to spend the next week making the perfect sword. It was a single-edged, forward-curving blade with an ornate handle and a very subtle guard. It was heavy in-hand and often abused the momentum of its user, but it was difficult and dangerous to anyone unlucky enough to face it.
Eventually, three of the blacksmiths went their separate ways, and Archie was left on the dining table alone, drinking a hot cup of coffee just to spite his insomnia. He drank every last drop, and casually looked about the empty courtyard, assuring no one was around before he stepped up to the gallows. His footsteps echoed into the night as he walked up the steps. He took out a small serrated knife and stuck it into the simple gears of the hangman’s lever. He sawed one particular mechanism within the machine until he heard a snapping crick. He stowed his tool away. Archie stepped down from the gallows and made his way quietly to bed.
It’s all you can do, he thought to himself. It’s all you can do.
*****
Amekot tidied away several days’ worth of mess that slowly accumulated in his office, whistling as he did so. He closed one last drawer and straightened out the stack of parchment from the headcount.
A hard knock came to the door before it was twisted open and Jack stormed in, panic stricken and pale.
“Mister McKennedy, how nice of you to barge in at Rising’s Lead.”
“Michael’s missing,” Jack said outright.
Amekot pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. “What?”
“He was investigating the situation regarding Oliver and I haven’t seen or heard from him since last night.”
The Fortmaster sighed and walked around to Jack’s side of the table, looking over his steel armour. “Do you ever take that off?”
“Hillborn!”
Amekot smiled easily and picked a richly red bottle of wine off a shelf by one of his many ornate windows. He poured two glasses and handed one to Jack. “I’m sure he’s off having some kind of adventure with his friends. He tends to wander.”
Jack set the drink down, sloshing much of it onto the desk as he shook his head. “He went to double check the documented Arcancies in the fortress, and if he didn’t find anything, he would’ve told me.”
Amekot sipped his glass and looked quietly at Jack. “Where did he look?”
Jack’s panic nearly got the better of him, but his natural scepticism halted his words, and he wasn’t too sure why. “I sent him to the General Archives,” he lied.
Amekot clicked his tongue regretfully and said, “If he truly believed to find something, and didn’t, he may simply be walking off the disappointment. He’ll turn up, Jack.”
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Jack stayed quiet for a long moment, carefully watching the captain’s face. “You seem relaxed.”
Amekot smiled warmly and took his place back behind his grand desk. “We’ve rooted out our traitor. Our defensive plan is substantial. And our headcount is being completed as we speak. I am relaxed.”
You have a missing person. A potentially innocent man about to be hung. And probably a good number of those people are planning to leave. “Well, I’m glad, and I just wanted to inform you. So, if you’ll excuse me, commander.”
Jack made his way to the door and then slowed as he reached for the handle.
“Hillborn, would you mind me taking a look at the Priority Archives? Just to double-check he hasn’t gone scrambling around down there and hurt himself?”
Amekot sighed, perfectly regretfully and said, “Any other day I’d say ‘absolutely’, however Jacobs’ stunt seemed to damage the mechanism. It won’t lower again, and while that’s frustrating, luckily it means Williams won’t be in there. I was planning to have Lain take a look in the morning.”
Jack nodded, altogether too easily and smiled. “Of course, well, no harm in asking. Goodnight.”
Within a minute or so, Rose’s bed-rune flashed yellow and she cursed into her pillow as she rolled over, swatting it off. She banished the privacy shade and sat up, combing her hair back as she glanced down at Sarah, idly stirring in her sleep beside her. Rose gently stroked her head before climbing out of bed and stepping over to the door.
As soon as she pulled it open, she was thrust into quiet shock. “Jack, what’s wrong?”
The maceman was stood pale-faced on the other side of the door, waving her hastily into the hall.
Rose rubbed her eyes groggily as she stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind her. “What is it?”
“Oliver might be innocent. Michael might be in danger. And I think Hillborn might be responsible,” Jack said, more calmly than he felt.
Rose’s face became a tapestry of confusion and distress as Jack waved his hands angrily and whispered, “We don’t have time for all that! Michael thinks Oliver may have been bewitched so I sent him to the Priority Archives to look for any records of Legacies with Dark Tongue and I haven’t heard from him since.”
Rose went paler and paler with every word and frantically seethed, “Why haven’t you tried to go in after him? And why-” Rose smacked his armour “-did you wait so long to tell me?”
Jack hushed her, looking anxiously up and down the corridor. “I went after him- it was the first thing I tried, but I don’t know how to get through the hidden passage without breaking down the door, and frankly, if I do that, I’ll end up in a cell next to Oliver. And I didn’t want to drag you into this because I think Amekot is looking for any excuse to lock the rest of your company up. But I think we’ve got bigger worries, now.”
Rose’s face became oddly sombre as she took a long breath and said, “How can you be sure you’re on the right track?”
Jack’s face became a knot of uncertainty.
“I want to believe you, but Sarah is in my room right now, finally asleep, and I’m not prepared to rip open that wound again if we’re wrong. I won’t do that to her.”
Jack took her gently by the shoulders and said, “If we’re right, then Michael has been missing for nearly ten hours, Hillborn is rampantly using his Dark Tongue to bewitch Legacies, and I haven’t seen the assassin since he called her into his office about the same time Michael went missing.”
Rose felt a sickness roll in her stomach. “She wouldn’t.”
“The same way Oliver wouldn’t? That doesn’t matter if Hillborn would.”
Rose nodded and turned back to her room only to find Sarah standing in the doorway, already dressed and wearing her sword. Rose looked at her and it was clear she’d been listening.
They stared at each other for a beat before Rose wordlessly stepped back inside, changed, grabbed her bow staff, and they met with Jack back in the corridor.
As Rose transformed her bow-staff into a wand she said, “We’re going to need a good-sized distraction if you want us to break into the archives. That’s not a quiet job. It might even be rigged with spell-work alarms to warn Hillborn.”
Sarah looked at Jack, trying to keep her desperation off her face. “ I know a good sized distraction… There is a master lever to the Murk, isn’t there?”
Jack’s face changed. His black eye seemed to glower, “We are not opening the cages. People could die-”
Sarah threw her hands and barely kept herself from shouting, “People could already be dead! I’m not saying we set the bastards loose on the unsuspecting guards, but look… You convince them to leave, then lock down the Arena, then set them loose. By the time they break out, no one will be caught off-balance.”
Jack stood there shaking his head as plainly as possible.
Sarah pressed on, “By the time there’s a problem, the entire fort will be awake to deal with them, and we’ll have time to find Michael without giving Amekot the chance to pin anything on us. Every alarm will be going off so he won’t think anything about the Archives.”
Jack was breathing hard, like the thought of all his worst nightmares had danced before his eyes. He imagined them ripping through the doors of the Arena and pulling down the keep, stone by stone. The curdling screams mixed in with the rampaging march of monsters ticked through his head in a series of flashes. “We can’t. What if someone else dies? We-”
Rose stepped forward and grabbed his hand. “We have to. Hillborn said Oliver would hang before sunrise, and if he catches on, gods know he’ll try to speed up the execution. Come on, Jack! Tell me three hundred Legacies couldn’t handle whatever’s in there.”
Jack swore under his breath as he bitterly pulled on his Javen-helm. “Fuck. Fine. Go find Michael and don’t waste any time. The Priority Archive is behind the central bookshelf on the back wall. Tear it down once you hear me make a racket.”
Sarah ran alongside Rose and Jack as they made their way to the end of the main hallway. “How do you plan on persuading Francis and her guard to leave?” Sarah asked.
They opened the keep doors and Jack sighed. “I’ll sort something,” he said, pulling out a scrap of paper.
The two Archangels took his word for it and broke off toward the library.
As they ran, Rose gripped her wand tight and cast a look to Sarah. Her face was stern and unyielding as Rose asked, “Are you okay?”
Sarah grabbed her sword to stop it shifting as they ran and merely shook her head. “If he gets hung, it’s my fault.”
“That’s not true,” Rose said sharply, as they bolted up the steps to the library door. “But it doesn’t matter, because we won’t let it happen.”
Rose grabbed the handle of the library and pulled but the door didn’t budge.
Without so much preamble as clearing her throat, Sarah’s entire right-leg lit up with blue flame and she put her boot-heel through the panel like it was wet tissue. She then pulled out her foot and bent her arm through the hole, twisting the lock with a click.
Rose cast a wary glance around, hoping no one had heard it, and they quickly filed inside to see the near pitch-black library. She peered into the dark and made her way over to Dolores’ desk where a small hand-lamp sat unused beside a sparking stone. Rose quickly lit the lamp and saw Sarah pulling armloads of books down from the shelf.
Rose listened carefully as she helped, and by the time they’d set nearly all the books and tomes in various spaces on the floor, a great clamor of yelling could be heard in the distance.
It was a mixture of voices and iron clanging sounds, and shortly after, they both heard an ungodly chorus of screeches and roars.
Arcancy tore from Sarah’s shoulders to the fingertips of her right hand and she said, “I think that’s our cue.” She bared her chest, raised her striking hand and drove it downward through the dozen or so shelves with a cry of pain, splitting the entire bookshelf in two splintered halves as it toppled to either side of them.
At the same time as the strike, the bells of Fort Guardian tolled and covered up the horrific sound of groaning wood.
Rose glanced back to the front door to see no one obvious approaching the library or coming to investigate the noise and she said a quick prayer to luck itself. She turned and watched Sarah suppress her Arcancy again, but the rage was far deeper in her eyes than Rose had realised as they stepped into the small nook with the hidden trapdoor.
The mage pulled open the trapdoor and held the hand-lamp over the dark passage as monsters shrieked in the distance.