Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

A gang of the rebels had rushed Jacrys’ position, killing or maiming several of his men and effectively cutting them off. The lieutenant ordered a charge through the enraged revellers to rejoin the remainder of their platoon, and with a shout, the handful of Malakasian soldiers had brandished their weapons and charged.

Less than a third of the way through the crowd, Jacrys had realised that he and his lieutenant were alone, the soldiers with them were missing, killed or injured. Knowing he was about to die, the young master sergeant had grown furious at the notion of dying under the boots of a band of drunken students, and the weight of his anger lent weight to his arms: Jacrys, swearing like the proverbial trooper, cut a swathe through the crowd, pulling his lieutenant with him – until the man had stumbled, felled by a sword stroke below the knee, and crashed to the ground. Jacrys hadn’t hesitated: he rushed to the lieutenant’s side, threw himself over the man and summoned one of the spells he had learned from the fennaroot addict in the whorehouse basement, praying this one would work.

Jacrys knew their lives had been saved when the mob’s collective attention shifted away from the two forms huddled quietly in the dirt. Jacrys once again thanked the dead sorcerer for teaching him the simplest of magic, for it had taken only a moment to utter the curious, ancient words, then the mob eddied and swelled around the two men. His little suggestive spell had them convinced that he and the lieutenant were already dead.

Much later, Prince Malagon’s magicians had helped Jacrys refine this spell; he used it to keep from being detected even by the great Gilmour, the Larion Senator, who had periodically searched for him, casting his gaze back over the partisans’ trail with irritating unpredictability.

Returning to save his lieutenant’s life – only Jacrys knew it had been an act of rage rather than compassion – earned him the respect of the officers and the ambitious master sergeant took advantage of his elevated status in Prince Malagon’s army, however temporary, to secure himself a transfer to the Eastlands and a chance to train with a covert corps of Malagon’s personal spies and information specialists. One hundred and sixty Twinmoons later, Jacrys was a master of intelligence and espionage.

The prince himself called upon Jacrys for some of his most nefarious plans, and the spy had never disappointed – not until now. He dipped the last of the bread and pushed aside the empty mug. There was work to be done today – although he was not looking forward to another five avens roaming through Orindale searching for Steven Taylor, the foreigner with the stone key Malagon wanted so badly. With Gilmour dead and the bowman, Garec, badly injured, Jacrys thought it would be relatively easy to retrieve the key from Steven – if only he could track the partisans down. He was fairly certain he had not killed Garec, so they must have gone underground.

It had been days since he had seen any sign of them and he was beginning to grow frustrated with his lack of progress, particularly as this group was about broken: their leader was dead; Sallax, the traitor with an axe to grind, was either missing, found out, or killed, and Garec had at least a few cracked ribs, maybe even a punctured lung.

He muttered a curse, recalling the night he had been forced to choose between Garec and Steven. Jacrys had been huddled in the shadows behind the warehouse for over an aven waiting for the two so-called freedom fighters to return. Then when they came, their cloaks had been pulled closed and their hoods lifted to cover their heads. There had been rats, lots of the ugly little demons, scratching about at his feet – ironically, it had been the rodents that had given him the answer: the boots. Steven Taylor’s boots looked like nothing Jacrys had ever seen; it was easy to spot them, heavy with leather and silly crisscrossing bits of twine holding them together.

But the horsecock archer had been wearing them.

For days Jacrys had wondered why the two men had exchanged boots – were they a disguise? Or were the two men softies, sneaking away to exchange who knew what else? Yet again he felt anger welling at his wretched luck. If only he had chosen right, he could have killed the staff-wielding foreigner, then retrieving the stone would have been so much easier.

Now they were all missing and he had to brace himself for another futile day of asking questions and paying off Orindale whores, barmen and criminals for any information leading to the Ronans’ hiding place. He didn’t know how they had managed to make their way into the city, given the array of forces blockading Orindale from Falkan and Rona, but Jacrys was certain they had managed to spirit themselves past the Malakasian picket lines and that they were still in the city. With Garec injured, they would not have risked a retreat through enemy lines; it would have been too dangerous. They had to be inside city limits, and Jacrys would continue searching until he found them.

The one piece of good news was that the dark prince hadn’t appeared, even after the explosion at the old imperial palace and the unexpected sinking of the Prince Marek in Orindale Harbour. His carriage hadn’t been moved and there was no talk of anyone coming or going from the Falkan ancestral residence. The army remained entrenched and no one moved in or out of the city without attracting Malakasian scrutiny. Without Prince Malagon seeking him, Jacrys was free to move through Orindale as he pleased.

These things, considered together, gave Jacrys hope. ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ he said quietly. ‘I will get that key and the dark prince will owe me – well, whatever I wish.’ He chuckled, stood up and tossed a coin on the table, then stepped out into the brilliant morning sunlight.

He didn’t notice the young woman, white as a corpse, pay her own tab at the bar and unobtrusively follow him out.

Freezing cold and sodden through, Steven broke into Howard Griffin’s house for the second time that day. He took a change of clothes and grimaced at how the older man’s jeans hung about his narrow hips for a moment before falling off like a collapsing circus tent. ‘This won’t do,’ he said, looking to find a pair that came within four inches of his waist size.

In the end, he decided it was quicker and easier to dry his own clothes and, stripping to his boxers, tumbled everything he had bought or stolen in the past three days, including Garec’s borrowed boots, into Howard’s clothes dryer and set the timer. Returning to the kitchen, he made two roast beef sandwiches, careful – despite his harrowing morning – to smell both the meat and the mayonnaise. With his mouth full, Steven gingerly slid aside the curtains of Howard’s kitchen window and waited for Nerak to show himself again.

Outside, Idaho Springs had come to a sudden, unexpected halt. Except for the intermittent wail of fire alarms, ambulances and police sirens, the town was silent. From Howard’s kitchen Steven could see Miner Street, and in the first fifteen minutes, he saw three police cruisers, two fire trucks, their lights ablaze, and the red pick-up their town fire marshal used when making inspections or running back and forth between Idaho Springs and the surrounding observation towers. All of the emergency vehicles had been going dangerously fast, as if the fire might somehow burn itself out if help didn’t arrive as quickly as possible. From somewhere east of Howard’s home, a hollow voice with too much reverb warbled out half-comprehensible instructions through twenty-five-year-old speakers mounted on lamp-posts and rooftops throughout the city.

That was it; no civilian vehicles passed. He spotted no SUVs loaded with school children, no tourist cars ornamented with three thousand dollars-worth of ski equipment, no big yellow buses hauling the middle school basketball team to Georgetown or Golden. He wasn’t really surprised; he knew what everyone in town would be doing. The fire fighters would either be battling the flames near the high school and the few homes and businesses on the south side of the creek, or they would be hustling to make their way across town to assist those who had been at the firehouse, gearing up for another Friday night of poker and college basketball.