Engines of Chaos, page 46
Her senses felt more heightened than ever as she reached the threshold, slowing, straining her ears for any sound that would give away the woman’s hiding place. It was almost pitch-black inside, but her eyes easily adjusted to the gloom. She reached out with her powers, trying to locate the source of pyrestone set in that woman’s blades. There was a dull thrum of energy, but it was indistinct within the walls of the building.
“You should give yourself up, Tyreta,” said a voice, echoing through the run-down house. “I admire your loyalty to the Hawkspurs, but there’s no way you’ll defeat the Ministry.”
There… just up the stairs. The woman was on the upper floor, and Tyreta made her way up, moving on all fours, stalking her like a beast in the forest. On the landing she paused, glaring through the dark, sensing that source of energy. At the end of the corridor was a wall, and through it she could see one blue and one yellow pyrestone winking in the dark. The webwainer’s daggers.
Tyreta ran, feeling the unfettered power in her limbs, every muscle and sinew straining as the growl in her throat grew to a roar. She smashed into the wall, plaster shattering, wood splintering as she burst through, ready to rend with tooth and claw.
There was no one there—just two pyrestones sitting on top of an abandoned cabinet in a corner of the room.
Movement, swift and precise. Tyreta saw a flash of steel before a blade pressed to her throat. The woman grabbed her hair, wrenching her head back. One cut with purpose, and Tyreta’s neck would be opened to the world.
“You know, you’re pretty predictable,” the woman whispered.
Tyreta felt her rage simmering, but she had to admit that had been a clever move. The woman had taken the stones from her weapons and left them as bait.
“Do it then,” Tyreta snarled, barely recognising her own voice. “Take your victory for the Ministry. The Hallowhills have always been slaves, what difference whether to the Guilds, or to Sanctan Egelrath.”
The woman grasped Tyreta’s hair tighter. A raw nerve perhaps? “I am Keara Hallowhill, and I am no fucking slave.”
“No? And yet you serve the Draconate as faithfully as any Drake.”
Keara’s hand was trembling, that blade poised to strike. All the while, Tyreta closed her eyes and focused on the yellow pyrestone sitting not five feet away on the cabinet.
“The Hallowhills will rise. We will become the greatest power in all Torwyn. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll live long enough to—”
With a surge of effort, Tyreta fuelled every last ounce of energy into the stone and it exploded—filling the room with blinding light, stunning the woman long enough for Tyreta to shake off her grip.
Anger surged up again, her hand striking out before Keara could try to stab her. Razor claws slashed the woman’s cheek and she screamed, staggering back. Tyreta was on her, another swipe of those claws and she’d knocked the dagger from her hand, one more and she’d torn three stripes in the arm of her jacket. A sharp kick and Keara fell back, head slamming against the wall.
As she lay dazed, Tyreta picked up the fallen dagger. It was beautifully worked, made by a craftsman for a deadly purpose. Standing over that woman it was all she could do to stop herself putting it to use.
Keara looked up, a gallows’ smile on her bloody face. She was beaten and she knew it.
“Go on then, Hawkspur. Let’s get this over with.”
Tyreta should have done it. One quick strike, just like the one that had ended Crenn. Every fibre of her being screamed for her to do it. She was the victor, and this was her right. The law of the wild.
But Tyreta Hawkspur was no animal.
She drove the blade deep into the wall, noting the look of relief on Keara’s face before she slammed her foot down. Keara’s head cracked into the wood floor and she was still. Tyreta made her way back down the stairs and out into the night to be greeted by the sight of Crenn lying on the other side of the street, Nicosse still cowering nearby.
“Get up,” she said. “We need to—”
He looked terrified. Gripping his knees and shaking like a leaf. Tyreta didn’t even hear the brute move in on her, barely felt the first blow. Her teeth clacked together as the gauntleted fist struck her jaw. She fell, tasting the blood on her tongue, trying to rise, but all the energy had been sapped from her body with that single punch.
Other figures moved from the shadows, splintbows trained right at her. There were perhaps a dozen of them, phoenixes emblazoned on their armour. As Tyreta’s blurred vision began to focus, a woman walked into the light. This one wore a blue robe—a High Legate—and she gazed down at Tyreta with what could have been sympathy.
“An admirable attempt to escape, girl,” she said, before all the sympathy melted away. “But you cannot escape fate.”
Sanctan must have thought Tyreta a particular danger if he’d sent such a loyal servant to stop her. But stop her he had.
ANSELL
The cloak was drawn tight, hiding his face from the sorry gathering that surrounded him. Beggars hunkered together all along the street, desperate to ward off the encroaching cold. They had regarded him warily when he first joined them, wondering who this giant was and how he had fallen so low. Within an hour it was as though he were one of them—just another forgotten drifter left to the vagaries of the streets. Now he sat on the cold cobbles, hidden in the shadows, one more vagabond waiting for alms.
Olstrum had kept his promise—a simple piece of parchment left in Ansell’s chamber. A street name, a house number. Of course it was in the Burrows, that had come as no surprise. He always knew he’d have to pursue these heretics to the least salubrious end of the city to find Grace.
He had not questioned Olstrum’s information, but neither did he trust it completely, and so he waited here in the dark, among the sorry wastrels of the Anvil. His backside was almost numb, but as night had begun to fall he grew certain this was the place.
Cloaked and furtive figures came and went from the house all day. Ansell had seen them waiting at the door, glancing about nervously, looking to see if they were being spied upon, with no idea that one of those beggars might be watching their every move. Then they had knocked, that same knock every time—three, then one, then two. The hatch in the centre of the door would snap open and, after showing their faces, those cloaked figures had been allowed inside. If this was not the place he was looking for, then it was most certainly used for some other illicit purpose.
The old man sitting beside him shuffled uncomfortably, mumbling some lament as his grog-stinking breath steamed in the cold night. Not for the first time Ansell began to question why he was here, and the consequences he might face if he was discovered.
Just by investigating the place he was defying the explicit instruction of the Archlegate—heresy in itself, but his mind was made. Ansell Beckenrike was no man’s puppet, not any longer. He had come here for Grace. To liberate an innocent child used as a pawn in other men’s games.
And the reason? Was it to wash away his previous sins? Would this one act redress all the evil he had perpetuated in the name of the Draconate? He had murdered an Archlegate so that Sanctan might rise. Had slain an emperor to protect the man he now disobeyed. Would saving this girl from her fate put him back in the graces of the Great Wyrms?
Did any of that even matter now?
Surely he had been punished enough for his sins. His chin itched maddeningly, the scabs from whatever spell Assenah Neskhon had cursed him with refusing to heal. The stab wound he had suffered mere days before ached, worsened by the cold, the stitches barely holding the laceration closed. The various wounds inflicted by Lancelin Jagdor were still a reminder of the ignominy he had suffered at the swordwright’s hands. Perhaps that humiliation was the worst wound of all. The deepest cut that could never be stitched.
A cart rumbled toward them along the cobbles. Ansell pulled the hood lower over his face as it trundled past, the man in the driver’s seat glaring at the row of beggars with disdain. He hawked and spat, narrowly missing Ansell’s foot.
The driver’s callous gesture angered him more than it should. If not for a twist of fortune, it might have been him sitting in the dirt. He was spitting at his own people, albeit the forgotten and waylaid. Surely they should have been helping one another, and yet the Guilds had made them selfish. Made them think only of their own betterment.
Ansell had seen good people in the short time he had sat here—acts of benevolence as the poor spared what few coins they could. It had heartened him somewhat, but he was not here to lament the struggles of the poor, nor think on the goodness in people’s souls. He was here to punish evil.
A cloaked man hurried along the street, stopping outside the door, a quick look to left and right before he knocked—three, one, two. He shuffled impatiently as he waited, turning to see if he was being watched, the moonlight illuminating his face. Ansell recognised him immediately. The cook. Patris. If there had been any doubt this was the right place, it was expelled in that instant of recognition.
The hatch in the door opened, before Patris was allowed inside. No sooner had the door closed than Ansell rose to his feet, stretching his numb legs. He paused, quelling all doubt. There was no use in waiting any longer, it would gain him nothing. He had no weapon at his side to loosen in its scabbard, nor even a knife. He would face this trial unarmed, and learn, one way or another, whether the Wyrms were truly watching over him.
The beggars murmured behind as he crossed the cobbled street. There was no more traffic, no rumbling carts, no one to see but the vagrants wallowing in their misery. In the distance to left and right, lanterns burned on their stanchions. No pyrestone light winked in the Burrows lest it be cracked open and the precious stones within stolen.
At the door he was bathed in shadow. One last pause. One last chance to abandon this folly. To return to the Mount and forget his disobedience.
He clenched a fist and knocked. Three. One. Two.
Muffled voices beyond the door. Footsteps approaching. The hatch slid open and a frowning face peered out through the gap. Ansell thrust his hand inside, grasping the man’s throat. He didn’t even have time to give an awkward squawk before Ansell’s fist tightened. The man struggled, grasping Ansell’s wrist with both hands, trying to loosen that iron grip, but it would never work. He kicked at the door in his panic, but that only urged Ansell to greater effort and he squeezed all the tighter.
The man went limp, falling from Ansell’s grip, and he took a step back, raising a foot, smashing it against the lock. With a resonant ping, the door flew open, halted by the fallen body. Ansell braced a shoulder against it, shoving it open, striding inside.
A shout of anger to his left, a feral cry of rage. Ansell braced himself as the man raced along the corridor, a sword already raised. His attack was easy to read, and Ansell stepped aside as the blade missed him by an inch, before he grasped the man by the neck. Aided by the impetus of his charge, Ansell thrust his attacker’s head into the wall, the sword falling from his hand. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he smashed that head into the wall again and again and again until the body went limp in his hands.
The clap of a splintbow. Ansell turned, raising that ragged body as a shield, feeling the impact as it was riddled with half a dozen bolts. Once the clip emptied, he dropped the corpse, seeing a hawk-nosed man atop the staircase desperately fumbling more ammunition into the stock. Ansell was already moving, taking the stairs three at a time, just as the man slid the clip into place. He levelled the splintbow, but Ansell managed to grasp the stock, turning it away as the weapon fired wildly, peppering the ceiling with bolts.
With a grunt, he wrenched the bow from the man’s grip, flinging it down the stairs. As the man went for the knife at his belt, Ansell clamped a hand over it before butting him in the bridge of that big nose. The man sagged against the wall. Ansell punched him full in the face, wood panel cracking as the back of his head smashed into it. Again he struck, the panel giving way. Once more and that head disappeared into the splintered hole.
Ansell was breathing heavily now, stepping away from the body in time to feel the sharp sting of a blade in his shoulder. He reacted on instinct, grasping the hand still holding tight to the knife, its blade still sunk in his flesh. A woman screamed in his face, trying to wrench her weapon free, but Ansell was stronger, slowly pulling it from his shoulder. She carried on screaming, rage and hate in her eyes, spitting phlegm in his face. Ansell shoved the knife deep into her throat, seeing her hate turn to surprise as she choked on the steel.
It didn’t take long for her to spit her last, coughing blood all over him, before he let go and she collapsed at the top of the stairs. Blood was pouring from his shoulder as he staggered the rest of the way up and leaned against the wall of a corridor. The stitches had torn again in his side, and he could feel the warm sensation of yet more blood beneath his shirt. One of his sleeves hung ragged from the fight and he tore it free, wrapping it around the fresh wound in his shoulder and tying off the knot with his teeth.
The house was quiet now. Nothing but the sound of his own breathing. He took a step along the corridor, with doors all along its left-hand side. Gently he pushed one open to find an empty room—just a bed and a piss-pot, but no one waiting to kill him.
“Grace?” he called.
No answer. Perhaps she was not even here. Perhaps he had killed those people for nothing. Then movement at the end of the corridor, a shadow flickering in the candlelight before Patris moved into view. In front of him was Grace, his hand clamped over her mouth, a knife in his hand, poised at her throat.
“Don’t come any closer,” the cook said. A tremble in his voice. Normally fear would be Ansell’s friend, but not now. Patris was holding a blade to Grace’s neck, and fear might encourage him to open it up as readily as make him surrender.
“Let her go,” Ansell replied as gently as he could manage.
Grace was staring at him, not making a sound, no sign that she was even scared.
“I’m not stupid,” Patris spat. “As soon as I let her go you’ll fucking kill me.”
He was right about that.
“Give her to me and you won’t be harmed.”
Patris shook his head. “You’re lying. I know you people. I’ve toiled at the Mount for years, and I see you. All your self-righteous horseshit. Even your Archlegate stands behind a pulpit of lies. And here is the evidence.” He pressed the knife to Grace’s neck. “He pretends to be so pious and yet he lays with whores.”
“Just let her go. I won’t hurt you.”
“Liar! You have to swear it. Swear it on your fucking gods.”
As much as Ansell yearned for his reckoning, he knew there was no choice about it. He had already given an oath to Olstrum so he could find this place, what difference to do it one more time?
“All right. I swear by the five Great Wyrms that if you give the girl to me, I will not harm you.”
Patris glared, his eye twitching as he considered the words. Ansell thought perhaps it would not be enough, that Patris would be too scared, that he would kill the girl anyway out of spite. Then, ever so slowly, he lowered the knife and took his hand from Grace’s mouth.
Ansell beckoned to her, and she walked forward, not rushing, not panicking, taking everything in her stride as she came to stand before him. He knelt.
“Hello, Ansell,” she said.
“Are you all right?” he replied, looking over her little body but seeing no sign she had been harmed.
“Yes.”
He wanted to grab her, hold her close, make her feel safe, but there were still things to be resolved.
“Wait for me outside,” he said.
With a nod she walked past him, and Ansell struggled to his feet, feeling the ache in his side and in his shoulder. Blood still trickled from his wounds and he would need attention from the apothecaries again, but there was time enough for that later. He walked toward Patris who, to his credit, stood his ground despite his obvious fear.
“We didn’t hurt her,” said Patris, still holding tight to that knife. “We were never gonna do her any harm.”
“And yet you took her anyway.”
“You swore,” said Patris, holding up the knife. “You said—”
Ansell snatched his wrist, turning it, twisting it so the knife fell from his fingers. His other hand grasped Patris’s throat before he could mewl any more excuses.
“I am the divine hand of the Wyrms,” Ansell snarled, tightening his grip. “It does not matter if I offer mercy, for they will grant you none. Ravenothrax comes for you this day. Can you see him? Do you feel those black wings embracing you?”
Patris made no sound as his eyes bulged, his pallor turning dark. His mouth was open, but with his throat so constricted he could plead for mercy no more. That fat tongue lolled as Ansell tensed every muscle, feeling his wounds cry but ignoring their pleas until Patris sagged in his grip.
He dropped yet another body to the floor before turning, staggering, holding out a hand to steady himself against the wall. Slowly he worked his way back through the house, now a charnel pit of corpses. He spared no pity for these people. Their intentions had perhaps been high minded, but they would be judged in the Lairs just the same.
At the bottom of the stairs he took a cloak that still hung from a hook, before making his way outside. The cold air filled his lungs and he breathed it in for a moment, seeing Grace waiting just as he had asked. Kneeling, he wrapped the cloak about her shoulders.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yes. I’m hungry though.”
Ansell could only marvel at her resilience, at how unaffected she was by this whole experience. Gently he picked her up, feeling the twinge in his side and shoulder more keenly than ever, before walking back through the Burrows toward the Mount.
Grace leaned her head on his shoulder. Glancing down at her, Ansell realised for the first time how much she resembled Sanctan. Those eyes were the same, but also her seeming disregard for the violence that had just taken place. She had walked through a house of corpses and made no mention of it. If any of those abductors had shown her an ounce of affection, she most certainly didn’t reciprocate. But then she was a child. Ansell knew well that despite their vulnerability, children could also demonstrate remarkable resilience.
