Tanzik and Allena rode as far from the burning city as they could, trying to keep their distance from Imperial forces. Allena recognized the city as Kulle. She had never been there, but had heard it was a warm and peaceful town.
“We need to get this information to King Hárkast as soon as possible,” Tanzik said.
Allena took long, deep breaths to calm herself. After what happened to Lura in Stormhall, she wasn’t eager to return, or for Tanzik to find out what she did. “What about Violet Shoals?” She asked.
Tanzik clenched his jaw and looked to the northwest where the small fishing village was. “Allena, I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
“If the Empire is this far east, they could be at Violet Shoals already. They could even have destroyed it!”
Tanzik made a thoughtful grunt and shifted his weight on his horse. “I… I don’t think so. I figured they’d be spreading out, but with as far east as they’ve come, I think they’re making a push straight for the capital. Not as fast as they would’ve if Serevar surrendered, but faster than I’d like. There’s no strategic points north of Violet Shoals, so if they’re going straight for Stormhall, there’d be no reason for them to attack there.”
“I have to know.”
“I’m sorry, Allena, but I need to get this news to the king.”
“What if I did? What if you checked on Violet Shoals and I delivered the news to King Hárkast? I’m a faster rider and you’re a better fighter.”
Tanzik frowned. “It’s pretty far out of the way just for news. I wouldn’t be back in Stormhall for at least a couple weeks.”
“But…”
“Allena, I know this is important, but I can’t be any use up there. You’re free to go if you’d like, though, I know how much the people there mean to you.”
She nodded hesitantly. “No, you’re right, this is more important. I’ll go later.” They rode east toward Stormhall. They arrived a few days later and rode through the city toward the castle. A group of stonemasons worked on making some repairs to the infrastructure. Allena noticed they didn’t wear a guild insignia which meant Lura’s plan must’ve worked. Her hands gripped the reins tighter and beads of sweat formed on her forehead despite the cold.
Guards escorted them to the throne room where King Hárkast sat, leaning back comfortably. “Welcome back,” he said. Tanzik and Allena began to bow but he waved his hand. “No time to stand on ceremony, what news do you have?”
“The couriers your daughter sent have been killed and their message destroyed,” Tanzik said.
The king sighed. “That’s too bad, I was hoping they could be reasoned with.”
A pang of guilt shot through Tanzik’s heart and despair crept darkly into his thoughts as he realized he never even considered the possibility that they might have surrendered.
“That’s not all, Your Grace,” Allena said, sensing Tanzik’s unease. The Empire has made it as far east as Kulle.”
The king raised his eyebrows in surprise and his mouth dropped open for a second. He quickly composed himself and rested his chin on steepled fingers. “That is hard news indeed. I’ll convene an emergency war council immediately to meet this threat. We’ll push them back from our home, have no doubt. As for your reward, see my steward Förval in the room to the left of the entrance. Thirty crowns apiece for your work. The Empire’s forces may be marching toward us, but they’ll be slower without a message of surrender. This gives us enough time to mobilize and meet them on a ground of our choosing.” He smiled grimly. “They won’t stand a chance.”
Tanzik remembered Väskr from Violet Shoals said Hárkast would take any chance to fight the Empire, and he saw the independent spirit blazing in his eyes. He bowed. “That’s very generous, Your Grace.” Thirty crowns was roughly a month’s wages for a day laborer, much more than he expected.
Allena bowed as well. “Thank you, King Hárkast. I can’t speak for my friend, but if there’s anything else I can do, I’m at your service.”
Hárkast nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. I could always use scouts and saboteurs to slow the Empire down, I’ll have you called on if I require your services. You may take your leave now.”
Tanzik and Allena bowed again and turned to leave. “Ah, one more thing,” Hárkast said. They turned back to face him. “May I ask what happened to your third member? Lura, I believe her name was. Did she fall in battle?”
“No, Your Grace,” Tanzik said with a sullen note in his voice. “She never left with us. She went her own way.”
Hárkast frowned. “She seemed eager for the gold.”
“She had a more lucrative opportunity,” Allena said.
Hárkast shrugged. “Tell Förval to give you her share, then. Forty-five crowns apiece.”
Tanzik felt a little uncomfortable but they both thanked him and bowed again before taking their leave. Förval handed them each a coinpurse after adding the additional gold pieces and they left the castle.
Allena felt a little relief that the king didn’t know Lura had been stabbed, but she was filled with a new panic and a sense of unease. Surely if she had died or been taken to a healer, he would know about it. Which meant she was alive. She never meant to kill her, so this wasn’t a bad thing, but she was deeply uncomfortable not knowing where she was. If Lura found her, Allena was sure she’d try to kill her. Allena wasn’t worried about her own chances in a fight, but would be helpless if Lura attacked her in her sleep. And she knew Lura was smart enough to do just that.
“So what’s next?” Allena asked.
“I’m going to wait for King Hárkast’s orders. Even though I’m not sworn to him, I’ll fight to defend Serevar from the Katavy Empire, whatever form that takes. And you?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not a fighter, I don’t think I’m cut out for this type of work. He did say he needs scouts, but that might still be too much excitement for me. Like I said earlier, I’d like to return home, if they’ll have me.”
“And why wouldn’t they?”
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“I… did steal Väskr’s horse, remember?”
“Right. Feels like so long ago.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, with your particular talents, you’d be invaluable to the cause if you wanted to sign up for something less dangerous. But whatever you do, I wish you the best. For now, there’s a nicer tavern nearby I’d like to visit now that we have some coin. Want to join me?”
“I’d like that,” she said. They went in the tavern, the Snowdrift’s Rest, and had some ale and hearty venison stew and talked until the sun went down. They paid for separate rooms and as Tanzik drifted to sleep on the softest bed he’d ever slept on, he felt the cold edge of steel on his throat.
“Tanzik Albard,” he heard a quiet but authoritative voice say, “by order of her Majesty, Empress Ermina of the Katavy Empire, you are under arrest for desertion, treason, and murder.”
***
Lura’s hands shook as she finished a crude drawing of both sides of the now destroyed iron token she had been carrying. It had been a few days since she was told she’d need to find and capture Allena and had recovered enough to sit up, though every inch of her body still ached and hurt.
Yudhi looked it over and nodded silently. She folded the paper and sealed it in an envelope with blood red wax. She placed a bottle of black, viscous liquid on the table beside Lura. “Drink the rest of this today. Tomorrow you will feel better. Still bad, but good enough. Your wound is stitched and you are not bleeding inside. This will help with pain in the work ahead you must do.”
“Don’t suppose we can switch jobs, huh?”
“No.” She tucked the envelope in her coat pocket and walked away. She opened the door and looked back while crossing the threshold. “If you fail, you’ll die. If you succeed, you still might, but the Rooks may show mercy. So do not fail.”
“Got it.” Lura waved as Yudhi left, then picked up the bottle, looking at it with abject disgust. “Gods have mercy.” She popped off the cork and took a swig. It turned her stomach and she clasped her hand firmly over her mouth to keep from throwing it up. She finished by the end of the day and fell into a fitful, nightmare-filled sleep on the cot in the corner of the basement.
The next day, she woke up feverish and exhausted, eyelids heavy with dark circles around them. She slowly got up and made her way up the stairs and out of the small, unassuming building. It sat tucked between several just like it in a cramped alley in the northwest side of the city.
She made her way through a nearby market, stealing a few coins from some oblivious civilians to buy food and drink. She made her way toward the castle to eavesdrop on some chatty guards for news. By the end of the day, she had gleaned from passing conversation that Tanzik and Allena should be returning any day. She spent the night at an inn after picking a drunk’s pocket for a few silver coins.
The next day, she made her way to the park where she, Allena, and Tanzik had met a couple weeks ago. Her fists clenched. She had missed a couple of weeks, but it only felt like a couple days ago when she was betrayed. Her heart burned with anger against Allena and she had to calm herself down to remember that she was kidnapping her for the Rooks, not killing her.
She kept a book in front of her face, but peered over occasionally to watch the crowds. If Tanzik and Allena were going to the castle, she’d see them from her vantage point, hidden by her book and some of the plants in the garden she sat in. While she waited, she thought about how she was going to kidnap someone who could use magic. Knocking her out in her sleep was the only reasonable thing to do, but it’d have to be quiet. And fast.
Toward the end of the day, she saw Tanzik and Allena walk toward the castle, oblivious to Lura spying on them a stone’s throw away. She waited a moment, then followed, keeping out of sight from the city guard. She couldn’t get close enough to hear everything, but as they left she caught a few things. Tanzik was predictably going to wait for Hárkast’s orders to keep fighting the Empire. Allena wanted to go back home despite her stealing the chieftain’s horse. They were going to a nice tavern nearby to spend some crowns.
Lura smiled. There was only one nice tavern nearby, the Snowdrift’s Rest. They had a ladder locked in a shed behind the tavern they used to clean the windows and to keep the paint fresh on the side of the building. She had broken in once or twice before, so she knew it’d be easy.
She stayed outside at a distance, watching through the windows until they went upstairs. She entered the building and was immediately greeted by the smell of freshly cooked meat and vegetables, the warmth of a large crackling hearth, and the sound of overlapping conversations from full tables.
She ordered a beer and sat at the bar thinking. She wasn’t in any condition to do anything dangerous so she knew she’d have to make a distraction to keep the innkeeper away and everyone’s attention elsewhere while she sneaked behind the bar to look at the guest book. But it couldn’t be so distracting that Tanzik or Allena would come down to investigate. She saw a couple in the corner talking in hushed tones.
Lura thumbed the handle on her mug and smiled to herself. She took out one of the silver coins she had stolen early and began to casually flip it. “Excuse me, sir,” she said to the innkeeper, a well-dressed, haughty looking man. He looked up at her with mild curiosity. “The couple in the corner. I definitely overheard them say something about pests here?”
“I can assure you, madam,” he said with cool indifference, “that the Snowdrift’s Rest has not had a pest problem in the twenty years I’ve been the proprietor.”
Lura flipped the coin and shrugged. “Just saying what they said. You might want to have a word with them. If I heard them, someone else did too. Wouldn’t want to tarnish your reputation.”
The man’s lips flattened into an irritated line. “I will see if I can put their minds at ease.” He left the bar and headed toward the corner.
Lura flipped the coin again, but this time tossed it forward so that it bounced and fell behind the counter. She groaned in frustration and looked to the man next to her. “Just gonna grab that real quick,” she said. She got up and quickly walked behind the bar, then bent down to grab the coin. While she was on her knees, she quickly scanned the ledger and found Tanzik and Allena were staying in rooms 18 and 19, respectively. She also noted a page tucked in the ledger that showed where each room number was.
She left as the innkeeper was headed back. “Excuse me!” He said as he hurried toward her.
Lura sheepishly held up her coin. “Dropped it, sorry. Didn’t want to disturb you, so I just ran back there to pick it up.”
“It’s my pleasure to serve,” he said in a voice that implied the obvious. “You’re not allowed back there. And I’ve made a fool of myself to the lovely couple in the corner who said nothing about any pests.”
“Really? I could’ve sworn they said something about seeing a rat. Maybe they said cat?” She grinned and rubbed her arm awkwardly.
“Perhaps they did, now may I get anything else for you?”
Lura ordered some food to avoid further suspicion. It was already late and the cold northern stars were shining against the black sky. She tipped the innkeeper generously and apologized for the trouble, then left. She headed to the back and noticed that the ladder was already placed by one of the windows. After seeing the map, she knew that this was room 18 where Tanzik was, and the one to her left was 19 where Allena was.
She frowned as she noticed that window, made of two panes that opened outward from the middle, was open. Out of curiosity, she climbed up and looked inside. Tanzik wasn’t in there, and in the pale light of the moons, there appeared to be signs of a struggle. Something bad may have happened, but he also could have had a particularly enjoyable evening.
“Can’t worry about it now,” she muttered under her breath. She climbed down the ladder and moved it to Allena’s window as quietly as she could, waiting a moment after placing it in case she had disturbed Allena’s sleep. She climbed up and used her knife to slide through the gap in the windows to undo the latch inside.
Her heart was beating faster as she quietly stepped through. She sneaked up to where Allena was sleeping and reached around her neck to undo the clasp of her necklace that had her key on it. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to use magic. Lura put the knife to Allena’s throat.
Allena’s eyes snapped open and to her horror saw Lura with a smile on her face holding a knife to her throat. She immediately reached for the key around her neck but felt nothing.
“Oh, looking for this?” Lura said, hate dripping from every word as she held up the key with her other hand. “Don’t worry, mage, I’m not going to kill you. Not now. I just wanted to wake you up to see the look on your face.”
“You don’t understand, I had to—” Her words were cut off as a heavy dull pressure crashed against her forehead as Lura slammed the pommel of her dagger into her head.
Lura sighed with relief and sheathed her dagger. “That felt as good as I hoped it did,” she said. She dragged Allena to the window and set her up on the sill. “I said I’d bring you back alive. Not unharmed.” And she pushed her out.