Chapter 27 – An Ultimatum
Zaphyr, Zull, and Vard made their way down one of the main thoroughfares of Veb. Vard held the bag of supplies in one hand, while the twins carried their former apprentice robes, so dirty and worn that they looked like little more than the rags one would use to wash floors. All three were quieter and more withdrawn than usual, shaken from their brief but bloody encounter a few minutes before with yet another of the Master’s assassins. What had started as a relaxing, almost enjoyable excursion, a chance to get away from the tense hunt that had been their reality had all come crashing down. For weeks, they had been desperately trying to survive attack after attack, and now they could add to that list another failed attempt to end their lives. Despite their continued success, the repeated attempts were draining all their will and energy; sooner or later, they knew, the twins and their companions would fall from sheer exhaustion.
“Remind me, the next time that Sir Kyr suggests any kind of holiday for the two of you, to stuff that idea right back down his furred throat,” Vard growled, hands twitching nervously as he did so.
“We aren’t safe anywhere, are we?” Zaphyr said, her expression blank, eyes staring off into the distance, seeing through the people and buildings before her. “Not until we can finally deliver Gerok’s letter.”
“I’m not even sure that we’ll be safe then,” Zull said bitterly. “As long as the Master is out there, and he thinks that we are a threat to his plans, then our lives will be in peril.”
As they walked, Vard kept a careful eye on everyone around them; this had become a habit for all of them by this point. However, he saw to his relief that no one was paying even the slightest attention to them. “That’s a remarkably grim way of looking at it, Zull. Surely, once the Empress is made aware of the Master’s true identity, then he will be hunted down, arrested, and most likely executed. Your troubles will be at an end.”
“Will they?” Zull wondered aloud. “That’s assuming that whatever the Master has planned isn’t sufficiently far along by that point that delivering this news to the Empress is too little to stop him.”
“You have to hold on to hope, Zull,” Vard said, but his doubtful tone betrayed how little hope he held. “If you stop believing the fight can be won, you’ll stop fighting. Hope gives you strength, and you’re going to need every ounce of strength you can get in the coming days.”
“For what? To win more battles like that?” Zull nearly shouted, gesturing back towards the tailor shop they had left behind. When they started to receive puzzled glances from nearby merchants, he quieted down, saying in a softer tone, “this cannot be the rest of our lives. Endlessly wondering when the next half-mad assassin will jump out from behind a stack of fabric, ready to slit our throats?” Zull shook his head, looking down at the cobblestone street beneath his feet, damp with condensation from the nearby river. “Something about that fight still puzzles me. There was something off about that assassin, Vard.”
Vard laughed feebly. “It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that, Zull.”
“But we still don’t know why,” Zull said, biting at his fingertips as he thought. “He begged us to run, then to kill him, yet he continued to attack us anyway. All his movements were stiff and clumsy, like he had never even used his body before. And, he never utilized hemomancy. Unless the Master was truly desperate enough to throw a non-hemomancer at us, he was either holding back until the end for some unfathomable reason, or…”
“Or what?” Vard asked, curious.
“That’s just the problem,” Zull said, clearly frustrated. “There is no other option. Nothing remotely plausible, anyway. It’s as if he was being controlled by another, but there’s no way that could be possible.”
“Could it be done with hemomancy?” Vard speculated aloud.
“Not that I have ever heard of,” Zull said.
“Hmm,” Vard said thoughtfully.
Zaphyr, seeming to finally come out of her trance, sayiong, “You were right about one thing, Zull.”
Both Zull and Vard turned their attention to her, surprised to see her chatting again, as she had been silent since the assassin’s attack. “What are you referring to?” Zull asked.
“Your decision to learn from Sangue,” Zaphyr said. Zull’s expression turned to one of genuine astonishment. “You were right, and I wish I had seen it sooner; to ignore her, when she had so many secrets of hemomancy at her fingertips, was a mistake. That poor man seemed compelled to attack us, and there was nothing we could do about it. We should learn from her everything we can, while we still can. Not just to defend ourselves, but so that we can try and save both her and Sir Kyr, and anyone like them.” Zaphyr turned her face towards the sky, which was growing slowly overcast, clouds rolling in that threatened a rainstorm soon. “Even if we fail, we should try. Like Vard said, we need to hold out hope.” The first drop of water splashed onto her upturned face, making her blink rapidly and reach up a hand to wipe it away, almost as an afterthought.
Her unusually thoughtful and remorseful tone made Zull feel uneasy. Seeing his normally outgoing and exuberant sister so grim haunted him. This journey is taking its toll on all of us, he thought.
“We’re going to need to hurry if we’re going to make it back to the others before the storm hits,” Vard said, pulling the collar of his shirt tighter against his body, as if that would help against the rain. Sure enough, it began to steadily pour onto the street. The crowds around them were thinning, moment by moment, as people found their way into the shelter of one or another nearby building or one of the lucky few stalls covered by an awning, where they would be sheltered from the worst of the storm’s effects. A lonely bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a tremendous, ear-splitting boom of thunder.
“Too late,” Vard grumbled. “We’ll have to shelter somewhere nearby, wait out the storm, then meet back up with the others.”
“Won’t they be worried about us?” Zaphyr wondered.
“They’ll understand that the storm delayed us,” Vard said. “Come on, I don’t want to get any more drenched that I absolutely must.”
The three of them rushed over to a nearby stall, which seemed to have been abandoned by its owner for the duration of the storm, allowing them to shelter beneath its colorful awning, sewn in alternating stripes of blue and red. There were several holes in the awning, most likely from long use, through which the water trickled down in miniature waterfalls, soaking the wooden cart beneath. The merchant’s wares, an array of brightly arranged bouquets of flowers, waited there, abandoned, now soaked and dripping rainwater.
“It seems foolish, to leave his wares alone like this,” Zull noted as they clustered beneath the torn awning, twisting to try and avoid each of the gaps through which the water poured onto them.
Vard yelped as some cold water struck him on the back of the head. “Some people, like me, just cannot stand being out in the rain. Especially not when there’s the risk of getting struck by lightning.”
The deafening chorus of the rain, which was now falling around them in a full downpour, made it difficult to hear each other, and they had to shout to be heard.
“How long do you think this storm will last?” Zull bellowed to Vard.
“I have no idea!” Vard shouted back. “We can only wait it out!”
“Hush!” Zaphyr demanded, holding up a hand commandingly. Both Zull and Vard, curious, waited to see what Zaphyr had asked them to become silent over. “Listen!”
They all strained their ears, trying to hear whatever had stuck out to Zaphyr over the cascade of the river around them. Gradually, they noticed, very softly and faintly, a pathetic mewling sound, coming from beneath the cart.
“What is it?” Zull asked Zaphyr.
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“I don’t know,” she responded, kneeling next to the cart, to peer under it and see what could be seen. Zull joined her, eyes widening in surprise at what he saw. There, hunched beneath the cart to protect itself against the rain, was a scrawny cat, its fur as white as pure snow, its eyes enormous and sapphire blue, staring at them, just as fascinated and confused by their appearance as they were with it.
Zaphyr tilted her head to the side, a smile coming to her face instinctively. “It’s so small and precious,” she whispered tenderly. “Come here!”
The cat obeyed her command, worming it way from out beneath the cart and into her hands, when she stroked it and comforted it as well as she could manage. Unlike the stray cat they had found back in Verun, before their nightmare of a quest had even truly begun, this one appeared healthy, lacking any kind of infection or illness that the twins could see. Nevertheless, it was clearly undernourished and thin, and it shivered as Zaphyr held it tightly against her body.
“Lass…,” Vard began.
Zaphyr looked up at him, her expression resolute. “We’re keeping it.”
“I…I…,” Vard looked to Zull for assistance, but saw none there.
“You won’t be able to win an argument against her on this one,” Zull told the bard simply. “Once Zaphyr has set her sights on helping an animal, she always does, and if she thinks the best way to do so is to take them back with us and feed them until their better, you aren’t taken that cat away from her, except by force.” Secretly, Zull was glad that the animal had come along, regardless of the inconvenience it would represent in the future. He was just glad to see a piece of the old Zaphyr, the happy, cheerful Zaphyr from before this madness, resurface.
Vard, clearly too tired to willingly clash with Zaphyr, simply sighed and said, “Very well, if that’s how you feel about the matter, Zaphyr, we can return with the cat. Of course, once we do so, you will have to convince both Vyle and Sir Kyr if you wish to take it with us to Melkis.”
“I will,” she said, and the confidence in her voice was so great that Vard found himself believing that she would be able to do as she said.
“Wonderful,” Vard said, rubbing his hands together to try and keep some of the chill of the storm away. “Then, I suppose there’s nothing to do except wait for the storm to blow over.”
They did just that, huddling together beneath the damaged tarp beside the stall as the storm gusted and blew, raining down on the city harder than any storm that either of the twins had ever seen. Their hometown of Verun, while often coated in thick fog or mist, rarely bore the brunt of large storms directly. Vard muttered to himself on occasion, grumbling about Sir Kyr or their current predicament. Zaphyr cooed and cuddled with her new pet, which seemed more than satisfied with its sudden shift in fortunes. Zull stared off into the rain, his expression drawn once more into a thoughtful frown, chewing absently on the inside of his cheek as he wrestled with some problem that seemed evident only to him.
Fortunately for all of them, the storm was as short as it was violent, and it spent itself quickly, changing from a tremendous downpour to a lighter rain, to a faint drizzle. Finally, it stopped altogether, leaving a gray pallor across the sky and the large, reflective puddles on the streets as the only reminder that the storm had occurred. Once Vard had stuck his hand out and felt satisfied that the storm had truly ended and would not start up again, the trio stepped out, just as other travelers began going about their own business once more as well. Vard lead the way. thoughtful Zull took the rear, still pondering the mystery of the latest assassin to hunt them. Zaphyr, smiling as she hadn’t since the night Gerok died, walked between them with her newfound pet clutched tightly against her chest. They made their way quickly through the streets of Veb, eventually reaching the city’s outskirts, then traveling beyond that into the farmland beyond, walking between large, fenced-off pastures where sheep roamed, guarded by their sharp-eyes shepherds who were beginning to emerge from shelter after the storm.
They reached the farmstead where the others were hiding, the barn still standing after the storm, a fact which Vard found slightly more surprising than he had thought he would. As they walked over, Zaphyr called out, “Sir Kyr! Vyle! We’ve returned!” as she held out her cat before her, eager to show them what she had retrieved in the city. Zull too seemed noticeably happier, as Zaphyr’s infectious joy was a welcome relief after the grim horror of the battle they had just been in, earlier that day.
“Sir Kyr?” Vard called out. “You and I need to have some words about endangering the twins.”
There was no response.
Their good mood instantly quashed, Vard shot a warning glance in Zull and Zaphyr’s direction, and they nodded once, showing they understood what he was trying to tell them. Vard walked as nonchalantly as he could to the barn, rapping on the closed door with his knuckles. “Sir Kyr? This isn’t a time for jokes. The twins and I have had quite a trying day already, and we’re quite done with this kind of nonsense. Open the door.”
When utter silence answered Vard, he sighed heavily, leaning against the door, before, grumbling to himself as he did so, he shoved the door open.
What awaited them inside was what they had all feared: there was no one to be seen. Sir Kyr, Vyle and his men, even Sangue, had all vanished. There was a large flurry of overlapping footprints in the dust of the barn’s floor, indicating a struggle of some kind had taken place, but aside from a single blood stain on the right wall, there was no evidence of injuries. Additionally, there were no bodies to be seen.
“What happened?” Zaphyr wondered aloud as her cat hissed petulantly. “Did…did Sangue try to break free?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Zull said. “Sangue wanted nothing more than revenge against Vyle. If she had gotten free, there would be bodies here. Vyle and his men would be killed had she succeeded in breaking loose, and she would have died had she failed.”
“Then what happened?” she wondered aloud.
“Someone else came in and took them captive, I would guess,” Zull said.
Zaphyr clutched her cat so tightly it meowed at her to be let go, which she did. It walked around her a couple of times before sitting down next to her, watching her intently. “But why? I thought we were the target of the Master’s wrath.”
“Divide and conquer,” Vard said. “While that bumbling fool with the knife tried to stab us in the tailor’s store, whoever he worked for attacked Sir Kyr, Vyle, and the rest.”
“Do you think it’s the Master himself?” Zaphyr whispered, eyes wide.
“It’s a possibility,” Vard confessed. “And one we shouldn’t ignore.”
“Regardless of if it is or isn’t, whoever was behind that attack this afternoon was much cleverer than we thought,” Zull said. “They’re trying to trick us, draw us out into the open. It won’t work.”
“Won’t it?” Vard wondered aloud. “Do you intend to leave Sir Kyr and the rest in the hands of whoever is behind this?”
“Of course not,” Zull said.
Zaphyr’s eyes were alight with an intense, almost baleful expression. “Never,” she whispered.
“Then I think you can see that it will work, and that we will be drawn out by it,” Vard told them with an apathetic shrug. “Of course, knowing that, we can then prepare in advance how best to counter their inevitable trap.”
“Regardless, I think I have figured out something crucial,” Zull said.
“Oh? What’s that?” Vard asked.
“Why the assassin was acting so oddly this morning. Vard, what you said made me consider the situation from another angle, and I think-”
“There’s something over here,” Zaphyr interrupted, pointing to a stop in the dirt, near where Sangue had been chained up before they left.
The three of them gathered around it, curious. It appeared to be a piece of paper, which someone had left in the dirt. Zull reached down and picked it up, then began reading it aloud.
“If you wish to see any of your friends again, alive, then the three of you will need to come to meet me at the location listed on the opposite side of this card before sundown, tonight,” Zull read. “If you try to flee the city, or alert anyone as to what I have done, I’ll kill them instantly. Believe me, I will know. Signed: M.” He turned the card of paper over, then said, “These directions claim to lead to a house in Veb. Interesting.”
“‘M,’” Zaphyr said as she stared at the piece of paper in her brother’s hands. “Do you think that means…”
“The Master?” Zull said, cutting her off in his excitement. “Most likely.”
Zaphyr scrunched up her face in confusion. “But Prince Grevel isn’t anywhere near Veb. He’s in Melkis, with the Empress.”
“We may have been wrong as to his identity. It happens to everyone, sooner or later,” Vard told her. “If we wanted to know for certain, then the only way to tell would be to open Gerok’s letter.”
Zaphyr looked to her brother, who shook his head emphatically. “We came all this way without breaking our word to not read that letter. We won’t do so now, not when we’re so close.”
“The real question is: what do you want to do about this situation?” Vard asked. “We can ignore this letter and continue to the capital. If we do that, you can fulfill your oath to Gerok and alert the Empress to the extent of the Master’s schemes, as well as his true identity. You might save all Waed. Or, we can go after our friends, and put all of that at risk. I do not mean to sound cruel, but that is the decision we are facing.”
Zaphyr sank to her knees, as her cat brushed up against her, purring happily. “I need time to think,” she told Vard. “All of this, right after the attack this morning, it’s all too much; I can barely think straight.”
“I understand,” the bard said. “I will stand outside, give the two of you the time and space you need to consider this. When you’re ready, come and get me; whatever decision you two reach, I’ll stand by it. Just make sure it’s the one you truly think is right.”
Vard left, and twins sat together on the floor. At first, neither of them said anything, as they silently commiserated with each other over their losses and all that they had suffered through so far to reach this point. After a minute, Zull turned to Zaphyr and said, “We’re going to rescue Sir Kyr and the others, aren’t we?”
“Of course,” Zaphyr said, “There’s no question about it. He has saved our lives more times than I could count. This is the least we can do for him and the others.”
“Agreed,” Zull said. He seemed to be considering something, then he said, “Zaphyr, you said you agreed with me that learning from Sangue was good, correct?”
“Not that it matters now, but yes,” Zaphyr told him. “How I wish I had listened to you earlier.”
Zull nodded once, as this had been what he had expected to hear. “Well, Sangue and I had been working on developing special, very simple blood binding. We made it specifically so that you and I could successfully forge it, even with as little training as we have right now. I think it’s just what we need, if we’re going to save Sir Kyr and the others.”
Zaphyr sat a little straighter, her expression a mixture of curiosity, hope, and eagerness. “Tell me more…”