Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘To get the stone key, the talisman… he told me you were looking for it as well and…’ She hesitated, forcing her gaze back up to his face.

‘You’re lying, Brexan, or whoever you are.’ He pressed the dirk a little harder between two of her ribs. ‘How could you have known who I am?’

Brexan took the risk of her life and prayed it would create enough credible confusion that the spy would spare her. ‘I met you once in Estrad.’

Jacrys paused at that, loosened his grip and even withdrew the dirk’s point. ‘Go on.’

Heartened by this measure of good luck, Brexan said, ‘I met you and after Bronfio was killed – I don’t know if you had heard, but he died in the assault on Riverend Palace, just a few days after you had visited him in our camp-’

Now it was Jacrys’ turn to lie. ‘I hadn’t heard. Pity. He was a promising officer.’

Brexan tasted a sour tang in her throat. ‘Anyway, when he died, I was one of the only ones who knew what you looked like and Oaklen, sorry, General Oaklen sent me to get the stone. He said Prince Malagon wants that stone as soon as possible and that you had failed to-’ She paused in her story for effect, looked down at her boots again and waited.

Jacrys was angry, but he did not return the dirk to her ribs. ‘Failed to do what? Failed to do what? Tell me!’

‘You know – failed to get it back.’

‘That is none of your concern. How did you know where to find me? I came across the Blackstones. It nearly killed me. Did you manage that, Brexan?’

Jacrys was off balance and she decided to confuse things further, hoping to weave such a tangled web of nonsense that the spy would let her go, if only for an instant. She would make a quick dash for the street and disappear into the crowds along the wharf. ‘Oaklen sent me to Strandson. There was a merchant. He never told me his name. But he had one of them, Versil, Versec- something like that. He, the merchant, had Seron with him. They had caught this fellow, Versil and they were bringing him here. It was a schooner, a fast ship. The merchant, the fat man with the mole on his face right here,’ Brexan indicated the side of her nose with one finger, ‘he told me where to start looking for you.’ She held her breath, hoping to the gods of the Northern Forest that the Malakasian spy had worked with the Falkan merchant. This was it; this was the moment – there’d been just enough accurate information to be believable, but if Jacrys had never met the fat traitor, Brexan was about to die.

Jacrys relaxed his stranglehold on the young woman and muttered, ‘Carpello, I am going to kill you.’

Carpello! That’s his name. Thank you, Jacrys. And no, I am going to kill him.

The spy looked back at her. ‘Well, my darling. I must say you aren’t much for espionage, are you? And although I believe you are telling me the truth, I cannot have you meddling in my affairs, Oaklen or no Oaklen.’ He raised the dirk to her throat. ‘Goodbye, Brexan.’

‘No! Wait!’ she pleaded. ‘I know where they are, where they’re hiding.’ Brexan assumed he’d been looking for the Ronan partisans; it was them he had followed north from Estrad. Gabriel O’Reilly had told them about the wraith army descending on the Ronans in the Blackstone forest, but the ghost had known nothing more. She took another risk. ‘The Ronans,’ she said finally. ‘I know where they are.’

She was about to name them, hoping it would add more credibility to her claim, when she caught herself – if any of them had been killed and Jacrys knew it, she would be caught.

‘No you don’t. It was a good try, though,’ Jacrys said.

‘But I do,’ she answered. Keep him talking. Keep him talking.

‘Then why did you follow me all day?’

‘Because I don’t believe they have the stone.’ What are you saying, Brexan? Think of something else, anything else. What if he knows the stone is back in Colorado?

‘Really? And why is that?’ He was getting bored, she could tell.

‘Because if they had it, Gilmour would have taken it to Sandcliff Palace, right?’

Jacrys, in control now, prepared his bait. ‘Why don’t you tell me where they are?’

‘Take your knife away from my throat and perhaps I will,’ she said firmly. Despite the cold, Brexan could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. ‘I saw them just the other day, two days ago – no, three days ago.’

‘Really? Gilmour and the others?’ The master spy set the hook. ‘You saw Gilmour and the Ronan partisans, here in Orindale?’

‘Yes,’ Brexan sighed, ‘Gilmour and the others. They are south of the imperial palace, hiding in an old wine shop. It looks closed, as if the merchant is only there for the warm season.’

Jacrys moved in close. Brexan could feel his breath on her face, the warm, damp feel of Estrad. Had it all begun in Estrad? Had she really come this far, only to be killed by the man who had started her on this journey?

Pressing his cheek against hers, the spy renewed his grip around her throat. ‘Gilmour is dead, my dear. I killed him last Twinmoon. Goodbye.’

With Jacrys’ cheek caressing hers, Brexan remembered Versen, lashed to the bulkhead in the schooner’s hold, and how he had manipulated his bonds so that he could lie flat on his back. When she did the same, their cheeks had touched in the darkness. Brexan thought it was the most intimate thing she had ever done with another person. Waiting to feel the sharp pain of the blade pierce her ribs, she tried with all her might to remember every detail of Versen’s stubbly cheek coming to a gentle rest against hers. Goodbye, Versen, she thought and waited to feel her life drain away.

Then there was someone else with them. Mercurial-quick, the cloaked intruder dropped down on them from above. He must have been on the roof, Brexan thought in the instant before Jacrys, as startled as she, was pulled away from her and tugged roughly down the alley. Brexan didn’t wait to see what happened; she took to her heels and ran into the street, about to escape into the anonymous throngs moving along the wharf, when she stopped. ‘Sallax!’

She almost knocked over an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand along the pier and she reversed direction, shouting, ‘Sallax!’ as she ran back towards the alleyway.

‘I can’t open it until five o’clock.’ Steven suppressed his irritation. Jennifer Sorenson was upset, and even he had to admit his story didn’t sound especially convincing.

‘Five o’clock, because that’s when your roommate will lay out his charred, egg-stained rug, and you’ll land right in his lap?’ Her scepticism was salt rubbed in his wounds – wounds that Hannah’s mother was responsible for; he felt as though he had been in a car accident. His ribs and abdomen throbbed furiously from her kicks and his head was about to break open. He felt certain the roadmap of cuts and bruises across his head would never heal.

They sat together in front of the television, watching the coverage of the unprecedented winter firestorm that had already claimed eight square miles along Chicago Creek Road. Between interviews with townspeople and firefighters, the square-jawed anchorman spoke to a helicopter pilot who was monitoring the damage from above. The arrhythmic jouncing of the picture as the helicopter navigated the tricky thermals along Clear Creek Canyon made Steven feel even more nauseous.

It was 4.10 p.m. and it had taken two hours to recount his tale. He left out the part about being able to work magic with the hickory staff. If there was a slim chance that Jennifer Sorenson didn’t already believe he was insane; that, he was quite sure, would have her calling the local psychiatric hospital. She had stopped him several times, throwing up her hands and shouting, ‘That’s enough, Steven, I’m calling the police.’ So far he had persuaded her to let him continue, begging her to wait until five o’clock, when he could prove he was telling the truth.