Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (22 page)

Thank the gods…
she thought, her smile brittle as she screwed her eyes shut, fighting back the tears that threatened to leak out. But she didn’t go over to him, not yet. This was their victory, and she wanted to let them have it.

It was a few more minutes before Mazik lifted his head and looked for her. By then Gavi and Raedren were already asleep, their faces peaceful despite the injures covering them.

Mazik grinned as Kalenia sat down beside him. “I’m back. We did it.”

“You did,” Kalenia agreed with a soft smile. Mazik swung his body around until his head was resting on her lap. They talked for a while, their words hushed so the others wouldn’t wake up, but soon Kalenia put a finger on Mazik’s lips and told him to rest. She leaned down for a kiss, and soon after he was asleep, his chest rising and falling peacefully as he slumbered.

Kalenia brushed hair away from Mazik’s temple and smiled.

*      *      *

Out past the outskirts of town, somewhere deep in the great Houk forest, two figures met in a clearing hidden from the moonlight.

Both figures wore robes like those of the cultists Mazik and the others fought that very night, though there were differences. One had added only an armband the color of congealed blood around his right arm, while the other was so decked out he put even the Head Cultist to shame. Sparkling gems, runic symbols, and giant raven’s feathers were worked into his robes, and a waist-length gray beard emerged from the supernatural darkness within his hood. In one hand was a small walking stick, which he was leaning on; in the other was a simple knife, unadorned save for the blood on its edge.

The cultist with the crimson armband knelt in silent respect. The bearded cultist grunted and motioned for the man to rise. “So?” asked the bearded cultist as he stroked the gems woven into his beard. “What did you find?”

“Lord, the others are … gone,” said the cultist with the crimson armband.

Silence, just the chirp of bugs and the creak of distant water. “And the knife?”

“Gone as well,” said the cultist with the crimson armband, lowering his head. “We couldn’t find out who took it, though I don’t think the city guard has it, or if they do it’s not widely known. The guards we spoke to had no recollection of it.”

“I hope you did more than speak to them,” said the bearded cultist.

A nod. “Yes, my Lord. Significantly more.”

The bearded cultist looked up, his unseen eyes staring into the unnatural darkness above. He sighed.

“We risk much in the service of our God,” said the bearded cultist, his voice disappointed and heavy, yet strangely pleased.

“Yes,” said the cultist with the crimson armband evenly.

The bearded cultist looked down at his companion. “We will have to risk more.”

“As you say, my Lord,” said the cultist with the crimson armband, bowing low.

The bearded cultist turned and looked toward distant Houk. He shuffled to the edge of the clearing, lanyards of beads, bones, and human hair dragging through the dirt as he moved.

“Assemble everyone,” said the bearded cultist. “Alert everyone inside and outside the city, and anyone who can get here quickly. We must take back the knife, even if we have to risk everything to do it.” He stabbed the ground with his walking stick. “We must not fail!”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the cultist with the crimson armband. “And what should we do once we reclaim it?”

“Why, we’ll finish what we started,” said the bearded cultist. He laughed, his rich, warm chuckle belying the dark visions that swirled in his mind’s eye. “We’d better get the stage for our ceremony set up as soon as possible. We may have to move quickly, and the Dark One shouldn’t be kept waiting.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the cultist with the crimson armband, bowing. He rose to his feet and, in a vortex of black and indigo mana, disappeared. The bearded cultist was left alone, alone with his thoughts, and the visions he saw—of conquest, of victory, of glory, and of death.

He smiled.

Adventure Three
Houk Street Havoc

It was still early in the day, but the entire city was already abuzz with the news. From the government district in the middle to the ramshackle buildings that huddled against—and frequently, spilled over—the city walls on the edges, it was what everyone was talking about. The kidnappers had been caught! And by nobodies too, brand new, no-name adventurers who had never completed a quest before yesterday. They didn’t even belong to a guild! No one had expected that, least of all the cultists now languishing in jail.

That’s what they were talking about at Subsgate too, but quickly, because anyone who stopped for idle chitchat at Subsgate was liable to get trampled. Like all the gates leading into Houk, Subsgate was left wide open, Houk’s leaders having long since realized that most of their enemies wouldn’t be stopped by walls or gates, and that there was no use in scaring away customers anyway.

Inside the old guard hut right inside the gates, three copper-clothed guards watched the steady stream of carts entering the city in a way that could only be called attentive in the presence of qualifiers like “not” or “the opposite of”. In fact, two of them weren’t even paying attention at all—they were focused on their card game, while the third lounged with his feet propped up on the windowsill and his belly thrust high into the air. He eyed the passing traffic with the minimum required amount of suspicion, not even pretending to care.

“Personally, I thought it was hilarious,” said one of the card players, a man with thin lips, bushy eyebrows, and skin the color of dark marble. “How long has it been since a bunch of nobodies pulled a job like that out from under the big guilds’ noses, eh?”

“A while,” said his opponent, a bored woman sporting a wicked sunburn that had turned her skin an angry shade of pink. She laid down a card. “Your turn.”

The man hissed. “That’s not good.” His bushy eyebrows knit together like epileptic caterpillars.

“No, it is not,” said a voice from the doorway. The two card players jumped, while the man at the window slowly turned and grimaced.

“Good morning gentleladies, gentlemen,” said the tall, cold woman who stalked into the hut, her hips and shoulders swaying like the ends of an elastic hourglass. By a trick of biology she looked nearly identical to the woman playing cards, though she lacked the sunburn and had a lot more emotion on her face, even if it was currently dominated by barely restrained annoyance.

“Ser!” said the three guards, each of them getting to their feet with varying degrees of non-urgency.

The sergeant walked over to the table. “Who was winning?” she asked as she picked up one of the discards up and examined it.

The sunburned woman raised her hand. “I was, ser.”

The sergeant sifted through the coins sitting in the middle of the table, then pushed the whole pile toward the sunburned woman. “There, now you’ve finished winning.” She pointed at the door. “Now get out of here. Go out there and do your jobs before I decide to punish you.”

The three coppers scrambled outside, the portly man who had been sitting by the window exiting last. He bowed and carefully closed the door behind him.

The sergeant let out a long sigh and sat down. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the coins she pinched from the pile and rolled them between her fingers.

Outside, Bushy Eyebrows wiped his brow theatrically. “That was close.”

“Yeah well, we’d better get to work before she changes her mind,” said the sunburned woman, wearing the same blank, bored expression as before. She waved for a cart to pull over next to them. Once it had stopped, she leaned over to the driver. “All right. What’s your business in Houk today?”

Not long after, there was the following interaction:

Bushy Eyebrows waved at a covered cart that was just rattling over the rut where the gate only rarely rested. Nodding to him, the driver hauled at the reins and veered toward them. He stopped in front of the three guards, his horses sniffing and stomping their hooves before finally growing quiet.

“State your business in Houk today,” said the sunburned woman.

“Coach, coming from Crunl,” said the driver.

“Ah. Nice place.”

“Not really,” said the coach driver in the disinterested voice of someone who has seen many places and been impressed by none of them.

The portly man chuckled, his belly rippling like a sack of grease and old beer, which was largely true. “True. That place is a total shithole.”

“Hold on, just need to check with your passengers,” said Bushy Eyebrows, moving to the back of the coach. He pulled aside the flap and peered inside. “Mornin’. Can ya all state yer business, please?”

One was a blacksmith looking for work, another a young woman visiting her family, another a traveling merchant who had fallen on hard times. Bushy Eyebrows nodded sympathetically at the last one. “And you?” he asked, pointing at a passenger in the back who had not spoken yet.

“I’m a caster,” said the man, his long gray beard protruding from the hood of his plain brown robes. “I’m coming to lecture at the university here. The coach driver was nice enough to give me free passage, in exchange for protection from any trouble along the road.”

“Was there any?” asked Bushy Eyebrows, just a hint of hope in his voice.

“A little, but nothing I couldn’t handle,” said the old robed man.

“Mmm, that’s good,” said Bushy Eyebrows. He craned his neck. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to see anything inside the old man’s hood. It was like the darkness clung to his face, in defiance to the bright morning sun that was shining in through the raised flap.

“What university did you say you were going to be lecturing at?” asked Bushy Eyebrows.

“All of them, hopefully,” said the old robed man. There was a hint of a smile in his voice.

Finally, Bushy Eyebrows shrugged. “Everything looks good back here. You all have a good stay. Good luck with yer grannie Mis, and yer troubles Mas.” Bushy Eyebrows tipped the hat he was not wearing to the passengers. “Good’un.”

“You too, sir,” said the old man as the flap fell shut.

The sunburned woman looked at bushy eyebrows as he returned. He nodded.

“All right, looks like you’re good to go,” she said to the driver, waving him through. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem. Have a good one,” said the driver, tipping the wide-brimmed hat he actually was wearing. He cracked the reins, and the cart moved away. Bushy Eyebrows watched it go for several seconds, and then turned back as the next cart rolled up. The previous cart was forgotten soon after.

Throughout the city, carts made their way through the gates as they always did, but in a select few cases, by the time they were three or four blocks inside the city walls, somebody disappeared. It was always someone quiet who had hopped onboard not far out of the city, usually after paying slightly too much, and they were always carrying a small satchel or rucksack that couldn’t have carried more than a few days’ worth of clothing, or perhaps a pair of thick black robes and a weapon or two. Few noticed they were ever there, and even fewer noticed when they were gone. They were just there one minute, and the next they weren’t, and then several minutes later they were somewhere else, emerging from an alley and walking casually down the busy Houkian streets, just like everybody else.

Inside the cart, the bearded man held a hand up to his ear and, somewhere deep within the darkness clinging to his hood, smiled. It was not a very nice smile.

*      *      *

Though it wasn’t even yet lunchtime, The Joker was in a rambunctious state. If word spread fast through the rest of the city about Mazik, Gavi, and Raedren’s deeds, it had done so doubly fast here. The bar swam with a carnival-like atmosphere—it felt like part of their family had just done something amazing, and everyone wanted to be there to congratulate them. Also, people kept buying rounds of drinks, which was sure to make anyone feel like celebrating, at least until they pass out.

So it was that, just shy of eleven o’clock, with two more hours until noon
⁴⁰
, there were already beer bottles broken, chairs shattered, and bits of colored paper on The Joker’s floor. There were also at least three drunk people and one pair of women’s underwear among the grubby sawdust, as well as a pair of men’s underwear, though nobody was quite sure how those got there, nor were they in a hurry to find out.

“Another round for the conquering heroes!” said Scraggly, one foot hooked under the stool that was usually Mazik’s. A cheer went up, loud and happy and greased with alcohol in massive quantities.

To Derana and the wait staff, this was like the starting gun that begins the race. And they’re off! They exploded into motion, scurrying around the bar and dispensing drinks with nary a care as to who they went to. The money would come, they knew. It was that kind of day.

And in the middle of all this commotion sat Mazik, Raedren, and Gavi, grinning, fidgeting, and blushing respectively. Rather than their normal seats, upon entering—and after the first cheers, great big heaving
HURRAH
s that had cleared the wax out of everyone’s ears and nearly made their eyes water, had died down—they had been guided over to another, much grander location, a large table smack dab in the middle of the room. Compared to most of The Joker’s tables, its surface was only mostly scratched and its chairs still had a bit of cushioning on them. It was quite the honor.