Jash lay awake, with his eyes tightly closed. The howling wind traced the contours of the inn. He could see it clearly, the inn, the cistern, and the aqueduct above it. Before he had lain down, he had taken a rag and wet the floor in the hallway, and all through the room he shared with Thrad. The knight snored, one hand dangling towards the floor. The other clutched his sword.
The water soaked into the wood, and when Marri stepped down the hall Jash felt it. Her footsteps were like ripples in a pond. She stopped, just outside the door. Jash shifted his focus. His heart thumped, it glowed brightly, seemed to float outside his chest. Thrad cast a fainter light, deep in sleep. A spot outside the door brightened, Marri’s blood betrayed her contour, like fire licking through her veins.
The door opened, just a crack, and Marri peered in. Jash did not move, he was sound asleep. Marri stepped silently into the room. Jash felt every touch of her bare feet against the floor. She stopped by the bed stand and opened the top drawer. The cold spot in her hand, that must be the purse. She lowered it half way into the drawer, then stopped and looked at it. She worked her fingers between the laces. Jash dared to peek.
Suddenly her hands blazed. Jash nearly leapt off his cot, his hands clentched on the sides to hold himself down. The fire raced up her arms. Jash could almost feel the heat leaping from her, and then it was replaced as quickly by cold. Marri shivered. She grabbed a coin from the top of the purse, and closed and dropped it in one motion, and fled from the room. She had the presence of mind to not slam the door.
Jash slipped off his cot and padded to the door. Marri remained clear in his mind. He waited until she vanished down the kitchen stairs then followed. Marri paused to pull on slippers then left the inn.
Salt hung heavy in the night air. Marri vanished from Jash’s senses as he let the distance between them lengthen. He focused instead on the coin clutched in her first. A gold Karpaneken crown. He would have Thrad change them for the local currency, if they planned on staying longer. Once he found it, it shone like a torch in his mind. He rubbed every coin they had, so he could track them. Not that he tuned to it, he could see everything he had touched. A glowing path led down the street, the same path he had ridden that morning.
He had not been in South Port long, so there was not much to distract him from the coin. Somewhere out at sea a faint spot glowed. It moved closer, sailing into the bay, Jash thought.
Marri stopped moving. Jash paused around the corner from her and peeked around it. She stood in front of a stall. The merchant’s good still sat on the counter, didn’t he sleep? Jash crept closer, avoiding the pockets of light cast by the street lamps.
Marri banged on the counter. Finally, the merchant responded. Jash could not yet hear them. The merchant grumped something, and lit a pipe. Marri brandished the coin at him.
“Well,” the merchant said. “Never let it be said Cromger doesn’t keep his word.”
Marri exchanged the coin for a little statue and a few copper pieces. Her fingers glowed when she touched it.
Jash followed her back to the inn. He had never seen a reaction so strong. First, when she touched the purse, again with the statue. He watched her hide it behind a panel in the kitchen, and after she went upstairs, presumably to bed, he pushed the panel aside. The statue sat among other artifacts of Marri’s childhood, off the floor in the corner of two beams.
Jash ran his fingers over it, but felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was just a piece of wood, as far as he could tell. If he reached deep enough, he could feel the person who carved it, but he could already tell that date was so far removed as to be irrelevant. Jash placed the statue back in Marri’s stash. He glanced up, past it, through the panel in the inn’s kitchen, at the cistern’s wall.
Jash brushed his fingers down Thrad’s arm. The knight was immediately awake, Jash saw his eyes move suddenly under their lids, and his knuckles tighten on his sword, but Thrad did nothing else to betray himself.
“There’s no danger, get up,” Jash said. He pulled items out of the saddle bags. Linen and charcoal, he put them in a pouch and tied it around his belly, under his shirt. A dirk he strapped to his thigh.
Thrad sat up and allowed himself the luxury of a stretch.
“I think I’ve found my way into the Basilica.”
Thrad grunted and rose. He picked up his sword belt.
“No, bring the hammer instead.”
Jash led the way downstairs, into the kitchen. He opened the panel, and crawled in. Thrad handed in his hammer, and squeezed through behind him.
A long curved hall waited for them on the other side. Support beams crossed it at irregular heights, forcing them to duck and twist through it. The chimneys from the inn’s kitchen took a chunk out of the space.
“When they built the cistern, they needed a way to get inside,” Jash said. “The ducts it drains into are too small. If they were any bigger there wouldn’t be enough water pressure.”
“What’s that have to do with crawling around behind walls?”
“They sealed these access holes up, obviously. And then they built things right up against it.”
“Except this inn, which was built four feet away.”
“Exactly,” Jash said. “Maybe they had to make repairs at one point, and the inn building here paid the price. When they rebuilt, they made sure there was access to the cistern.”
They came to a gap in the curving stone wall, where the stones didn’t match. Tar covered their joints. Extra support beams, angled into the ground, supported the wall all around the patch.
Thrad rested his hammer against the ground and rubbed his hands together, then positioned his grip on it. “This is going to flood the inn.”
“It’s built off the ground. The street, maybe. Worry about waking them first.”
Thrad hefted the hammer. “Stand back.” He swung, the hammer smacked against the stones and rang like a bell. The tar hid any damage. Thrad swung again, and water seeped around the stone he had hit. On the third swing, a jet of water shot across the space and struck the far wall.
Thrad’s fourth strike crumbled the wall on contact. Water poured out in a deafening torrent and surged around their feet, sweeping away the dust and rat droppings.
Jash climbed through the hall and splashed into the knee deep water on the other side. He looked up at the end of the aqueduct, now only a few feet above his head instead of twenty feet under the water. It curved suddenly before it joined the cistern. The pipe came in near the top, then dropped straight down, before bending again to flow into the cistern. Presumably to keep someone from doing what he was about to.
Green slime clung to the walls and panicked frogs darted around in the suddenly shallow water.
“Wait for me at the north gate,” Jash said. “We’ll have to leave quickly. And go by the docks and pick up the tablet.”
Thrad leaned through the hole and looked around. “The ship arrived?”
“It’s docking now.” Jash leapt and grabbed the edge of the pipe and pulled himself into it. He could crawl in it, but his back touched the top. “And get another pony.”
“For who?”
“The inn keeper’s daughter.”
“The little one or the red one?”
“Red. I’ve never felt a power that strong, and she was repressing it. I can’t imagine what she would be if she let it out. You can manage that, right? Just try and get her to come peacefully before you kidnap her.”
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Thrad grunted. He vanished into the passage between the cistern and the inn.
“Laterns out!” Jamear shouted from the stern.
Shen jumped. He had positioned himself by the bow, knowing that order would come. But then he nearly fell asleep, and instead of his lantern going out first it went out last. He rubbed at the dent the ship’s railing left in his cheek as darkness swept over the little ship.
The eight-man crew scurried around the ship, pulling down some sails and raising others with only starlight to guide them. Shen stayed out of their way, Jamear got right in among them. On a ship so small, the captain did as much work as any other crewman, and then some.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted.
Shen darted forward. His father walked a bit of a line. He was the captain, he couldn’t treat Shen different than any other crewman. But in the dark, with this crew of men that had sailed and fought together for years, Shen only got in the way.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted. “Up!” He pointed up the high mast, at the crow’s nest swaying over the deck.
Shen scrambled up the rope ladder. On the surface, the ship barely swayed at all. Up here, Shen whipped from side to side. He wrapped one arm tight around the mast and planted his feet wide on the platform. Shen hung far out over the ocean at each end of the arc.
The lighthouse on the end of Cape Kwal, invisible from the deck, shone over the waves. Shen pointed towards it, and held his arm stiff. His father would use his arm to steer. Sure enough the boat shifted and aimed to the right of the lighthouse. They had to cut close to avoid the chain of rocky islands that guarded the bay, but not so close that the ship struck the cape itself.
“Oars!” Jamear shouted.
Shen spared a moment to glance down, at the oars sliding out through the gun ports. The sailors sang to keep their rhythm.
The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll dance with the kraken and like it too,
I’ve got a wife in every port,
and a bunch of mates with the same tattoo.
The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll go on land for wine and girls,
But if I have to die I’d rather have
the sea than a girl between my knees.
The lighthouse slid past on their left, and the crew hushed. The oars cut through the water with barely a whisper. Jamear braced himself against the wheel. Now they passed from the rough sea into the churning between the cape and the rocks.
“All silent,” Jamear said. His voice, just a whisper, carried easily over the ship. They were in the most danger of discovery during these moments. The ship lurched in the twisted waves. Shen wrapped both arms around the mast as it shook him back and forth.
And just as quickly, it was over. The lighthouse receded behind them, and now Shen could see, with the blaring light gone, the city of South Port stretched around the bay. It shone like someone had taken the stars out of the sky and scattered them across the ground.
Shen scanned the docks. Each dock had a lantern on it’s end, and he could make out the ships by the lanterns on their sterns. He glanced down, and was aware of Jamear staring up at him. As they got closer, the water got smoother, and Jamear would be able to see for himself, but by then it would be much more difficult to change their course without being seen.
Shen found an empty dock and pointed, careful to keep his arm aimed straight towards it no matter how the ship twisted. The water turned smooth as a pond on a stagnant summer day. Two crewmen left their oars to lower the last of the sails, and the ship glided across the water with only the soft splash of the oars to betray it.
They hit the dock, just barely. It scraped down half the length of the hull before the sailors pushed the Marrigold off with their oars. Then Shen was the first onto the dock, sliding down a rope from the crow’s nest. He slung his rope around a pylon and pulled it tight before another man landed beside him.
The pipe closed around Jash. The bottom was slick, but the slope was negligible. A tiny ball of witch light floated in front of him and filled the pipe with a faint green hue, but there wasn’t anything for Jash to see. He let his senses float out around him, until Thrad burned in his consciousness. The faint spot from the sea, now sitting on a dock, converged with Thrad and both moved towards the inn.
From these references, he could tell where he was. The wind defined the Basilica, Thrad marked the level of the ground. Jash crawled for hours, though it could not have been more than half of one. The pipe ended abruptly in a sharp turn, three feet of vertical pipe, and open air. Jash snuffed the witch light between his fingers. It shattered into a thousand tiny stars that drifted down into the slime. Jash squirmed out of the pipe and onto the Basilican roof.
The roof sloped gently at the edges, then shot up in a dome. Stained glass panels in the dome glittered in the morning sun. A wood framed walkway surrounded the building, tucked behind stone battlements. Jash emerged half way between two towers. He picked one and darted towards it, frightening a group of gulls that wheeled away, screaming, into the air.
The tower door had no lock. Jash grabbed the door by the iron ring set level with his eyes and pulled it open just far enough to peer inside. Darkness, and a tiny streak of light, cast through an arrow slit. He found a dead torch, stuck in a bracket on the wall, and summoned a touch of fire to light it. Jash carried it into the bowels of the Basilica.
Jash had expected more resistance, but it seemed the Basilica was more palace than fortress now. The few guards he saw walking the halls were easily avoided. Jash stuck to the servant’s halls. He paid attention to the floor. He saw where scuffs vanished under walls, and he found the hidden doors the servants used to come and go so quickly. He abandoned the torch. Once he left the tower, the halls were well lit.
Jash stuck his head into a hallway. Two guards stood flanking a doorway. Gold lamps stood opposite them, atop a procession of polished marble stands. The guards wore full plate armor with gold trim, heavy and useless. Jash slipped silently into the hall and shut the hidden door behind himself. He pressed against the wall and wrapped light around himself. Just enough power, applied just the right way, to render him invisible if he didn’t move too fast. So long as the guards didn’t look straight at him.
They didn’t. The closest guard noticed him when Jash bumped against his elbow, but by then it was too late to stop Jash’s dirk from stabbing upward through his throat. The guard gurgled and blood filled his mouth and leaked between his lips. The second guard drew his sword, but all he saw was a blur killing his companion. He didn’t know where to strike and never did. Jash jabbed him between the joint of his armor at his groin, the cut of his scream by cutting his throat.
Jash pushed the doors they guarded open. This room had windows, tall stained glass windows that depicted a sword battle. Jash smirked when he recognized the figures. Mimora and Deyja, but Mimora never used a sword. A curtained bed squatted between the windows bathing in the morning sun. The figure silhouetted against the curtains shifted.
“So you’ve come to kill me at last,” the figure said.
“On the contrary,” Jash said. He stepped up to the bed and opened the curtains. The king of Lochway, Valan, lay before him, shrunken and decrepit, his body eaten by disease. “It is vitally important that you live.”
Valan laughed, then coughed.
“You’ve not lived up to your name very well, Valiant Valan.”
“If this is a ploy, boy, it has already failed. So long as my blood lives no Delfaran will be welcome in Lochway.”
“No ploy.” Jash leaned over Valan and touched his forehead, then felt his pulse. “Your daughter must not be Queen. She will reign over the unmaking of this world.”
“So kill us both.”
Jash summoned fire and laced it through Valan. Valan writhed and tangled his sheets, spittle flew from his mouth in fans. Finally he lay still, his chest heaved.
“You will live,” Jash said. “A little longer now than you would have.”
“What do you want, Magi?”
“From you?”
Valan grabbed Jash’s collar with his reinvigorated hand. “Magi don’t give gifts.”
Jash grabbed Valan’s arm. The old man pulled him closer. “I want the tablet,” Jash said. “The tome of Deyja, that your ancestors removed from his tomb.”
Valan released Jash and sagged back to his bed, all his energy expended in that brief burst. “He looks over me still.”
Jash lurched back away from the bed. His eyes darted around the room, until he spotted it. Words adorned the keystone of the arch above the door. The language of the ancients, the language of Delfara. Jash snatched his parchment from under his shirt. He yanked a dresser to the door with air, heedless of the glassware that scattered, tinkling, across the floor. Jash climbed the dresser and pressed the parchment against the stone, and passed his nugget of charcoal across it until he had a complete impression of the characters.
Then he felt the power. An outpouring of fire, somewhere within the city. And something else. Another element, but not one he recognized. Valan swung his legs from his bed. Already, his frame looked fuller. Jash could almost feel the heat on his skin. In that same moment, the Basilica bells began to ring. So loud in the city, they were deafening inside the Basilica itself.
