Richard Byers - The Reaver

“And now you have something the waveservants want.”

“Judging from all the sniffing around they and their agents have done of late, they want him quite a lot. Enough, I hope, to guarantee tolerance for the House of the Sun in exchange.”

“You had this in the back of your mind from the start, didn’t you? Why didn’t you tell me before you sent me out to fetch the boy?”

“I didn’t want to take the time lest he disappear before you reached him. And, I confess, I hesitated to burden you with knowledge you’d find distasteful even though I knew the moment would arrive soon enough.”

“ ‘Distasteful’ is a mild word for it.”

“Believe me, I know. But we’ll be sacrificing a single troublemaker for the greater good. For the life of the church to which you and I have both given our lives. Can I count on you to stand by me as I carry it through?”

Niseus took a breath. “I’m your faithful servant, First Sunlord, the same as I’ve always been.”

“You’re my friend, Sir Knight, and for that, I will always be grateful.” Randal picked up a quill. “I’ll send a missive to the shark lovers informing them we have the boy, and then we can open negotiations.”

Anton had asked Dalabrac to procure a new saber for him, and the halfling had delivered a weapon that exceeded his expectations, exceptionally sharp and well balanced and with a subtle glimmer of enchantment in the curved steel of the blade. But wearing a sword on both hips, the saber on one and the cutlass on the other, made it harder to conceal the weapons under his new yellow mantle, or at least he suspected that was the case. He flipped the wings of the garment outward in the hope of eliminating telltale bulges.

Clad in his own sunlord disguise, Dalabrac looked up at him. “You keep doing that. Are you nervous?”

“All but petrified,” Anton answered drily. “Yourself?”

The Fire Knife grinned. “The same. Mind you, I wasn’t quite counting on a crowd of our young prophet’s admirers loitering in front of the temple. But if we collect him without raising a commotion and haul him out the same way we’re going in, it shouldn’t pose a problem.”

“Then let’s get to it,” Anton said. They’d waited long enough that, with any sort of luck at all, most of those who resided in the House of the Sun should already be in bed.

But as he, Dalabrac, and two other similarly disguised Fire Knives emerged from their lurking place behind an adjacent building and headed up an alley toward the rear of the temple, he realized Tymora might not be smiling in his direction tonight. Lightning flared, and the flash illuminated two men-at-arms guarding the unassuming back door.

Thunder boomed as Anton and his companions faltered. When the echoing crash subsided, the pirate said, “You neglected to mention guards.”

“They aren’t usually there,” Dalabrac replied. “The boy must have convinced the sun priests that someone might try to abduct him.”

“How right he was,” Anton said. “Well, I suppose this is where we put our mummery to the test. Everyone, keep moving before it registers on the guards that we balked.”

They did, and made it within several paces of the temple guards before the next blaze of lightning. The warriors, bundled up in their cloaks against the rain, goggled and lifted their maces. Evidently the wavering light had revealed the newcomers’ vestments for the hastily created counterfeits they were.

The man-at-arms on the left shouted, but another peal of thunder drowned out the sound. Anton snatched out his saber, charged, parried a mace strike, and cut down the sentry before the echoes died.

At once, he pivoted to engage the other guard, but there was no need. The warrior already lay crumpled on the ground.

Dalabrac slipped a blowpipe back into his sleeve. “That was unfortunate.”

“Yes,” Anton said. “Tell your tailor I won’t be recommending him to anyone else in need of a disguise.”

Still, the way lay open before them, and if they made haste, perhaps they could finish their business and be gone before anyone came to relieve the two dead sentinels. Anton eased the door open.

The rooms beyond the doorway were nearly as dark as night outside, but a few oil lamps cast pools of wavering yellow light in the gloom. The intruders prowled past a laundry and a kitchen, both deserted at this hour, and then came to a point where they could go left or right.

Dalabrac pointed left. He claimed to have the plans to every major structure in Westgate at his disposal, and Anton could only hope he really did know where the high-ranking sunlords had their personal quarters. They presumably housed honored guests like a boy who professed a special connection to their god in the same area.

The way led up a staircase on the west side of the building and then down a gallery that had doors on one side and on the other overlooked a spacious shrine complete with pews, a white marble altar gleaming beneath a hanging golden sphere aglow with magical light, and statues of Amaunator and the exarchs in his service.

Anton tried the first door. It was unlocked. The space beyond was all one room, with no partition to separate the desk, chairs, table, and bookshelf on one right from the washstand, wardrobe, and cot on the left. But it looked cozy enough to a reaver who’d spent years living in an even smaller cabin aboard a caravel. Snoring rattled from the man in the bed.

Anton crept to the sunlord’s bedside, slipped his cutlass from its scabbard, clamped his hand over the sleeper’s mouth, and set the blade against his throat. The man jerked awake.

“Stay still,” Anton whispered, “and stay quiet. Otherwise, I’ll kill you. Nod if you understand.”

After a moment, the priest did. Anton warily lifted his hand away. The sunlord, a man with a prominent, deeply cleft chin and eyes wide with fear, didn’t attempt to cry out.

“Good,” Anton told him. “Keep doing as you’re told, and you might survive this. Where’s Stedd Whitehorn?”

The cleric had to swallow before he could reply audibly. “On the other side of the temple.”

Anton frowned. “Why not on this one? My friend says this is where all the nice living quarters are.”

“The First Sunlord locked the boy up to keep him from spreading heresy.”

“It grieves me to think a holy man would lie,” Dalabrac said, “but nobody’s proclaimed the lad a heretic.” He turned to Anton. “Kill this fellow, and we’ll wake the one in the next room.”

“I’m telling the truth!” the cleric said. “Would you denounce the boy with that mob gathered outside the temple? Sweetgrove is waiting for everyone to calm down.”

“That does make sense,” Anton said.

The halfling shrugged. “Maybe. I suppose, then, that the lad is in one of the Towers of Enlightenment?”

“Yes,” said the priest.

“Which?” Dalabrac asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been up there to see.”

“Is he under guard?”

“I just told you-”

“You haven’t been up there to see,” Anton said. “So it appears you have nothing more to tell us.” Employing the curved brass guard of the cutlass like a knuckleduster, he drove it into the priest’s temple. The man jerked then lay motionless.

“Not exactly a credit to his faith,” Dalabrac said in his deep croak of a voice. “We barely started scaring him before he babbled everything he knew. You should have cut his throat on general principle.”

“If anyone else looks in here,” Anton replied, “he’ll see a sleeping coward as opposed to a dead one with blood all over his nightclothes.”

The Fire Knife grinned. “There is that. Should we take the time to question anyone else, do you think?”