Heroes' Reward (12 page)

“Your Eminence,”
said Taro. “Her Ladyship would never discuss such important matters with me.”
He smiled wryly. “Everyone knows I don’t have the mind for that kind of thing.”

The Minister
stared at him for a long moment. Then she looked up at the Emperor.

The Emperor gave
her a slight nod.

“Very well,”
said the Minister. “This means, of course, that you can’t attest to Lord
Tarce’s innocence.”

Ah hell. Didn’t
see that coming.

Taro kept all
elements of dismay from his expression and his voice. Good lad. “No, Your
Eminence.”

“You may sit.”

Thank Zaire. The
more questions Taro was asked, the more likely he would be trapped into saying
something damning. For both Tarce and himself.

“It is
unfortunate that Source Karish can’t speak to Lord Tarce’s ignoble actions,”
said the Minister. “But given the crimes committed by Lord Tarce upon his
arrival to Erstwhile, we can only assume he committed the crime of assaulting
Lord Kent as well.”

Of course.

“Council,” said
the Minister. “Is Lord Tarce Yuno Det Keplar culpable for these crimes?”

The man in the
highest and most left of the seats called out, “Culpable on all allegations.”

Of course.

The woman beside
him announced, “Culpable on all allegations.”

As did the woman
beside her. And on it went.

I knew everyone
had already made their minds up before they’d entered the room, that probably
no one really had a choice, that they didn’t dare to disagree with Gifford, but
that didn’t keep me from hoping that at least one person would stand up against
this disgusting subversion of the law.

No one did.

I glared at Lord
Linor. I really wanted to walk over to him and slap the cowardice out of him.

The Minister
announced, “Lord Tarce Yuno Det Keplar, you have been found cupable for all
allegations. You will be executed and your goods shall be repossessed by the
Crown. And thus we demonstrate the justice and stability of our Imperial
Majesty’s reign.”

I closed my
eyes. I couldn’t let this happen. I had no idea how to stop it.

“Thank you all
for the dedicated performance of your duty,” the Minister said to those sitting
in the desks around her. “This trial is closed. The condemned may be removed.”

The Guards were
even rougher with Tarce while dragging him out of the room. Tarce’s face was
frozen, his eyes wide. He was living a nightmare.

What were we
going to do?

Once Tarce was
out of the room, everyone stood as the Emperor and Lady Green left. Then the
Council members were released. It was only once the last had left the room that
the rest of us were allowed to go.

There was no way
we could let Fiona’s brother die, but we didn’t know when he was going to be
executed, or where he was being kept in the meantime. And we didn’t have the
kind of freedom to move around as we’d had in earlier times. We couldn’t hunt
him down unnoticed.

We could think
of nothing to do but go back to our chambers, where I sprawled in a chair and
stared up at the ceiling and Taro paced with his hands in his hair.

There was a
knock on the door. I covered my eyes and groaned. I didn’t want to deal with
anyone.

I heard Taro
open the door, and I uncovered my eyes, straightening in my chair. A stocky middle-aged
woman with thinning silver hair and large brown eyes stood in the hall. She
bowed. “Lord Shintaro.”

He hated it when
people called him that.

“I am Solicitor
Natson.” She looked beyond him to me. “May I speak with Shield Mallorough?”

“Of course. Come
in.”

I held back a
sigh and stood. I was tired. I wanted to be left alone to think. Only I
couldn’t think profitably.

The woman seemed
nervous, shifting her feet, continually adjusting her grip on the thick black
book she was holding. It was a newly constructed book. I could smell the dye of
the leather.

“I’m sorry to
disturb you. And I’m terribly, terribly sorry about Lord Tarce.” She glanced
back at Taro. “I know he is family.”

Taro shrugged.
“That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t face the consequences of his actions.”

It must have
been so difficult to say something so callous without the anger spreading over
his face.

“I hope you will
use your influence over Lady Westsea,” said Natson. “To make sure she doesn’t …
overreact. If she did so, the instability it would create for everyone,
especially here in Erstwhile, would be … catastrophic. Lady Green is very
worried about this.”

The fury that
rose in me at her words was almost overwhelming.

She looked down
at the book, and then she held it out to me. “Lady Green asked … ordered … me
to give this to you. It’s just some … instructions. What’s expected of you. How
you should … get about. That sort of thing.”

The cover of the
book was about a foot square, the paper four fingers thick. The list of rules
was that extensive? Was Green serious?

I took the book,
but Natson clung to it for a moment. “Please be careful with it. Some of the
pages aren’t as well bound as I would like. And it is very easy to burn.”

Now that was a
very odd statement to make. Yes, books could burn. They could also be damaged
by being dropped in water. The pages could be torn out. There were all sorts of
ways to destroy books.

But the only one
she mentioned was burning it.

Which suggested
to me that she wanted us to burn it. But why would she give it to us if she
just wanted us to destroy it?

She released the
book. “Good evening.” She bowed to Taro. “My Lord.”

He closed the
door behind her and frowned at me.

The last thing I
wanted to do, after the day we’d had, was read what was surely a vile and
offensive list of rules. I set the book on the table.

And I heard just
the faintest clunk. Not the sort of noise I associated with a book. I unbuckled
the cover.

The first page
wasn’t bound, and the words on it were handwritten. It was signed by Lady Green.
It looked like a note, a greeting, thanking us for accepting her invitation –
summons – to Erstwhile, and she hoped we had been provided with all we needed
to make a pleasant new home for ourselves.

Home. More like
a prison, though I found it distasteful to use such a melodramatic term, even
in my own head.

There were
several paragraphs dedicated to Lady Green’s expectations concerning the
engagement of our duties, in which she had great faith we would perform with
the highest of professionalism and ability.

The next page,
properly attached and heavy, was the first of five describing protocol, how we
were to behave with pretty much everyone in Erstwhile. How to speak, how much
distance to maintain, how deeply to bow.

These were
followed by a map of the city, covering several pages. Parts of it were
darkened, which I assumed meant those were areas we weren’t supposed to go to.
Did receiving this mean we were finally allowed to leave the grounds?

The next few
pages were dedicated to a floor plan of the palace, each storey. There were
darkened areas there, too.

The next page
was loose. It was a picture – newly drawn – of a building I’d never seen. From
what I could determine, it was in one of the darkened areas in the city. And
from the notations, it appeared to be some kind of prison.

In the past, it
had been claimed that there was no crime in Erstwhile, therefore no prison was
necessary. ‘Confused’ people were taken outside of the city limits and to the
nearest settlement, Patlach, where they were tried and sentenced. The residents
of Patlach were, I was sure, delighted with this custom.

By constructing
a prison, were they discarding the fiction that there was no crime in
Erstwhile?

Turning the next
page revealed a small cube cut out of the rest of the pages of the book, and
crammed into the cube was a ring of iron keys.

I spent a moment
in confusion, unable to think of any reason to create such a book, or any
motive anyone would have to give such a book to me.

And then it hit
me. I was dead sure we had just been given the means to rescue Tarce. I showed
the book to Taro.

It might be a
test of our loyalty. If we made the attempt, we might find ourselves arrested,
forced through a mockery of a trial, and executed. But we didn’t have a choice.
We had to try.

Chapter Fourteen

Of course we
didn’t know what we were doing, and the risk was enormous, but it had to be
done, so there was no point worrying about the negative consequences.

That sort of
thing used to work, telling myself not to worry. No longer.

We waited as
long as we could bear and just had to hope everyone was in bed. In the
meantime, I dug out the necessary ingredients from my casting bag, using only
my fingers to identify them. We’d blown out our candles hours ago and thought
it best not to relight them. I had only the faint moonlight to work with.

Only then was I
surprised that I still had the casting supplies, that no one had even checked
our baggage. Were the Guards at the gate supposed to have done that? Or some
servant along the line who’d forgotten?

I rubbed the
ebony dust, ground glass, and butterfly wings on Taro and myself, whispering
the cast.

Taro disappeared
from my sight.

Unfortunately,
the cast didn’t work on anything we wanted to carry. Besides the keys, we had
my pouch of casting ingredients and the purse of coins Taro insisted on taking
with him in case we needed to bribe someone. If someone were alert enough, they
would see these items floating around. Brilliant.

We could
partially obscure the visibility of items with our own hands. If I wrapped the
keys up in palm and fingers, very little of the iron shone through. This was
disturbing in its own right.

We’d spent all
evening doing our best to memorize the maps. It was then that we noticed tiny
indentations in the paper illustrating, we thought, a path to where Tarce was
being kept.

Why did anyone
want Tarce freed? Why him in particular, and not all of the others who had been
illegitimately convicted? Was this really a test?

The door didn’t
squeak as we slowly opened it. If I were paranoid and didn’t want people moving
about surreptitiously, I would have made sure all the doors in the palace
squeaked.

I would have
made sure everyone was locked in at night, actually, but maybe that was seen as
taking things too far. If you squeezed people too hard, some would decide
risking death was preferable to being strapped down too tightly to breathe.

There was no one
in the hall. For the first week, before Taro had repeated his oaths, there had
always been an Imperial Guard lingering around our door, day and night. Every
time we had left our chambers, there had been someone there to follow us. Since
Taro’s oath, we were given more privacy and freedom. It was my hope that his
oath and the rumour that he wasn’t the sharpest of blades had caused the Emperor
to believe he was harmless.

We’d soon find
out, one way or the other. In the meantime we had work to do.

“Wait,” Taro
whispered. “Where are you?”

Oh. That would
be a problem. “My hand is on the door lever.”

I felt Taro’s
hand cover mine. We would have to hold hands the entire time. That would get
awkward.

Getting through
the palace wasn’t that difficult. There weren’t many doors to get through, or
many servants or Guards to evade. But I had assumed that would be the easy part
of the plan.

We didn’t try to
exit through the grand front entrance, which
would
be locked and
guarded. There was no way we could get through unnoticed, unseeable or not.
Instead, we went downstairs into the largest kitchen I’d ever seen.

The kitchen
wasn’t empty of life. The poor youngest members of the kitchen staff, lowest in
the servant hierarchy, slept in tiny pathetic bundles of ragged blankets,
curled up in whatever out-of-the-way nooks they could find. They would be
exhausted, working the hardest and granted the least amount of sleep. They
didn’t even twitch as we tiptoed through the room.

The door to the
outside was locked. I gave Taro the keys. He had a better chance than I of
figuring out which key would fit into which lock merely by looking at them,
having a better eye for space and how things fit into them.

It was strange
and discomforting to watch the keys being shifted about while hanging in mid
air.

A key entered
the lock, sliding in smoothly, but when Taro turned it, there came a clink and
then a clunk. Someone moaned behind me and I froze, my heart pounding
painfully. I turned, but saw no movement.

Taro returned
the keys to me. We found each others’ hands and silently passed through the
door and up the stairs to the grass.

There were
Guards on patrol, but they were easy to pass and easy to avoid. The real
challenge was going to be the stone wall. We weren’t going to try to get
through the gate. That would be insane. Instead, inspired by Aryne, we were
going to try to scale the wall. Which was also insane, but hopefully a little
less so.

We would be
climbing some distance from the gate, of course. Still, there were Guards
walking around who might hear us.

Only some of
them seemed to be drunk. Some of them spoke so loudly I knew they were coming
long before I saw the light of their lanterns. Not the best of the lot,
perhaps. It made me wonder if this post, wandering the palace grounds at night,
was considered an honour for the best or a meaningless chore thrown on the
least skilled and diligent.

We walked along
the wall, looking for a stretch of it that might be relatively easy to climb.
Only ‘looking’ wasn’t the right word, as we didn’t have any source of light. I
ran my fingertips along the stones over what looked like a repair to the
original wall.

When two stones felt
a little farther apart than the others, I pressed between them.

And the mortar
crumbled.

I pulled on
Taro’s hand to get him to stop, and then I continued to press. More mortar
crumbled. Using my fingernails, I was able to dig it out, so much that I was
inspired to pull on a stone, and it shifted. I pulled the next stone, and it
shifted, too.

So this was what
happened when one chose friends to perform important labour instead of people
who might actually be good at it.

I placed Taro’s
hand on the unstable stone.

We then spent
the time between passes from the patrols digging out more of the mortar. Not
too much, we didn’t want the stones to actually fall out, just enough to
accommodate fingers and toes.

Climbing the
wall wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected. I ripped my fingernails off, though,
and scraped the skin from my palms and the pads of my fingers.

Once we were
over, we found each other with whispers and headed down the street. It was
almost as easy to navigate as had been the palace. Again, we had to avoid
Guards, but the soles of our boots were nearly silent against the flagstones as
we ran, and no one showed any signs of perceiving our presence.

We heard a
racket long before we reached the wall of the prison. Shouts and some other
noise, a sort of pounding that was foreign to my ears.

Then we turned a
corner and saw chaos.

Torches
everywhere. Dozens of people, shouting threats. A group of about ten were
bashing a battering ram against the large wooden door set in the wall around
the prison. It was working. Not only was the wood starting to splinter, but the
stones around the door were shifting apart, some of them falling into the
street.

So the same
people who’d repaired the wall around the palace had built the wall around the
prison. Maybe they’d built the wall around the city, too. That would be handy
for us. Potentially.

Guards had come
running, swords flashing, but members of the mob were picking up the stones
from the street and throwing them. Some of them had fantastic aim.

The door was
torn apart.

When Natson had
come to us that evening, I’d assumed it was because she knew Tarce could be
executed at any time, but I now suspected she had known this assault was going
to happen, because I couldn’t imagine a better distraction.

We ran through
the gap in the wall. It was a challenge avoiding the bodies and flying debris.

Unfortunately,
not every Guard was running to the wall. A group of them were gathered by the
small door that lead into the prison proper. Taro and I weren’t the only ones
charging at them, though. We were surrounded by the members of the mob, who
were armed with stones and pitchforks and swords of their own. They engaged
most of the Guards.

We ran through
the door and found the stairs down to the second level. In the corridor full of
iron doors, we found only one Guard, pacing nervously.

Now what?

I couldn’t see
exactly what Taro did to him, but from the way the Guard just slammed backward
against the wall and then slid to the floor, Taro had tackled him.

The Guard
screamed, and kept screaming. He lashed out with hands and feet, but he clearly
had no idea what to do. He must have felt Taro on him, but he didn’t seem able
to get a hold on any part of Taro and shove him off.

I wondered if
the fear brought on by the riot and the experience of having some unseeable
force work on him was too much for his mind.

With difficulty
– the panicky Guard wouldn’t stay still, damn it – I unbuckled his belt to get
at his keys.

I didn’t know
which cell Tarce was in, but it turned out that the keys opened all of them. I
found Tarce at the third attempt. He was chained to the wall of a tiny stone
room that stank of urine and feces. The only light came from the lanterns in
the hall. He had probably been in darkness the whole time he was there.

He was squinting
in the light.

I knelt before
him. “Tarce.”

He nearly jumped
out of his skin.

“It’s
Mallorough.” I put a hand on his forearm.

He jerked away.
“I’ve gone mad,” he muttered.

I figured the
best way to prove I was really there was to take off his manacles. “I’m using a
cast so people can’t see me. Or Taro. He’s here, too. Browne taught me how to
do this.”

At least the
manacles were in good repair. They were easily opened. Perhaps they were new.
“I’m going to use the cast on you, to prevent others from seeing you. Hopefully
we’ll be able to get through the mess out there without anyone noticing us.”

“What’s going
on?”

“A mob is
attacking the prison. They’re having some success at it.”

“You organized a
riot?”

It was curious
that he thought I had the means to do something like that. “No, it’s just a
lucky coincidence.”

“My luck hasn’t
been too positive lately. How do I know I haven’t gone mad?”

“You’re going to
have to trust me. We don’t have time for you to question me every step of the
way. Stay still.”

I performed the
cast and he disappeared from sight.

We left the
cell. I wanted to free all of the prisoners, but we couldn’t spare the time.

The Guard was
curled up on the floor beside the wall, trembling, eyes wide. We stepped around
him. “I’ve got him,” I said, and I had to assume Taro heard and followed us up
the stairs.

The noise had
risen to deafening and frightening levels. There were a lot of screams, and the
blast of a wailing whistle. The whistle was probably calling all of the Guards
in the city to the prison.

When we reached
the main floor, the room was filled with people fighting. The Guards seemed to
be winning. Everyone was slipping in the blood on the floor, adding another
layer of gruesomeness to the sight.

Hanging on to
each other, Tarce, Taro, and I stuck close to the walls, where it was harder
for the fighters to swing swords and fists. This was the longest I’d maintained
the unseeable cast, and every moment I worried, on top of everything else, that
it would simply cease working.

Then black clouds
appeared out of nowhere, jagged lights within. They wrapped around individuals,
who screamed and writhed in agony.

Gifford’s
casters had shown up.

They were having
problems, though. They weren’t targeting only the rioters. Guards were caught
up in the clouds, too. Was that intentional, or the result of incompetence?

Worry about that
later.

We escaped the
crowds and the mess and finally the prison itself. Guards were running from all
directions, but once we were beyond the wall around the prison, the streets
were almost empty. At that point we felt safe enough to run ourselves.

We sprinted to
the new city wall. There were no Guards at the gate, which I supposed should be
shocking, but I guessed every city enforcer had been sent to the riot.

I pressed a finger
into the mortar of the wall, just to check. Like the other wall, it crumbled.
It would have been handy to climb over it, but I didn’t think Tarce had it in
him to perform such a difficult task.

Maintaining the
precise control he’d acquired at the Arena, Taro disturbed the soil enough to
tear the gate from the wall. For a moment, I wondered if the whole gate would
fall, which would make a racket and might attract attention we couldn’t handle.
Then the gate settled, and there was just enough space for a grown man to
squeeze through.