Lessek's Key

DENVER

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.

Like voyeurs at a fatal traffic accident, the citizens of Idaho Springs were outside, lining the streets and sidewalks to watch, in stunned silence, as the hillside blaze made its way inexorably towards them. As he stared out of Howard’s kitchen window, Garec’s boots clumping and banging inside the clothes dryer, Steven felt a cold sense of dread begin to creep across his naked flesh. Blaming his time in the creek and the burgeoning lump on his head, he took a blanket from the back of the couch, wrapped it around his shoulders and returned to the window to watch as the fire, now several miles across and at least three miles deep, cast a false sunset over Idaho Springs. Deep orange smeared through the sky in broad strokes, seeping into warm violet, as forbidding as it was beautiful. If it had not been for the clouds of black and grey smoke roiling east towards Floyd Hill, Steven might have believed that the sun was setting in the south, somewhere behind the Mt Evans wilderness.

Outside, people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, lining the streets. Some had taken to the rooftops to improve their view; others climbed up into truck beds or onto park benches for a better view of the devastation. They talked in whispers, because speaking in a normal tone was somehow inappropriate in the wake of such a disaster. They were standing silently, reverently watching as the fire claimed the hillside along Chicago Creek Road. It wasn’t the right season for this; the hills were wet with snow and there had not been a significant fire in January for as long as anyone could remember – yet a blaze of epic proportions threatened the canyon, threatened the entire city…

Twelve minutes after pushing the start button on Howard’s old dryer, the spell was broken. It started as a scream, a lone voice piercing the morning with what sounded like Sandy! or Mandy! – then slowly, like a rollercoaster starting down its initial hill, the people of Idaho Springs began to move, as if time had caught up with them, starting now to hurry, in an effort to retrieve the minutes they had lost. It was Friday and school was in session; there were nearly five hundred students at the high school across the river and the citizens of Idaho Springs, slapped awake from their twelve-minute reverie by the sound of someone screaming for Sandy or Mandy, began mobilising to get the children to safety.

Mayhem ensued and Steven decided that, dry or not, he would take advantage of the clamour to get into the bank. He dressed quickly, jammed half a sandwich into his mouth and the leftovers into his pocket next to Lessek’s key. He didn’t worry about the students; the path of the burning avalanche had followed him when he turned east to get across the Clear Creek bridge and although three exit routes would be blocked by the conflagration and cars were most likely exploding in the faculty lot, Steven’s lazy right turn would have left open a path from the school down to the river. Any student who had ever sneaked out of lunch to smoke would be able, like the Pied Smoker of Hamelin, to lead the others to safety through the streambed and north into town.

When he reached the bank, Steven scanned both sides of the street, hoping to spot Howard and Myrna; he looked up to find his old boss standing on the roof of Owen’s Pub. ‘Figures,’ Steven said with a smile. ‘Probably enjoying a beer with the show.’ He shook his head wryly and peeked through the lobby window for some sign of Myrna Kessler. She wasn’t in her usual perch behind the teller window and Steven waited a couple of minutes to ensure she wasn’t going to emerge from one of the rear offices.

It wasn’t like Howard to leave the bank unattended, even on those periodic occasions when everyone would file into the street to chart the progress of a smaller fire somewhere in the hills above town. But this was different; it was January and the fire burning along the canyon wall was an anomaly, a potentially deadly anomaly. Perhaps Howard had asked Myrna to work the window and answer the phones. Instead she’d stepped out to watch from the front step.

Steven leaned back and peered through the front windows to see if she was standing outside, but instead of Myrna, he saw, crisscrossing the bank’s front door, a crooked row of crosses made of yellow police tape.

Alarm bells ringing, Steven turned the corner, ducked beneath the bottom cross and pushed open the front door. He spotted an Idaho Springs police detective standing on the hood of a rusty old Chevrolet Caprice Classic, the town’s answer to an unmarked vehicle, parked across the street – Steven had met the young cop once at the pub and remembered him as a witty guy with a penchant for pistachio nuts and Irish jokes. Like the rest of the city, the officer had fallen prey to the overwhelming urge to watch as the fire, no longer falling down the hillside with unnatural speed, but inching its way ever closer with grim certainty.

The lump had been invisible from the street, but inside it was obviously a large body, probably a man, draped with a white sheet – awaiting the arrival of the Clear Creek County coroner, Steven guessed. He stepped over the corpse, reached through Myrna’s window for her bag and as soon as his fingers closed around her car keys he quickly moved towards the side exit, away from the detective who was still gazing towards Chicago Creek Road.

His hand on the doorknob, Steven hesitated, looked back into the lobby and sighed. He had to know.

He peeked out the glass door: the detective was swapping between hand-held radio and cell phone, apparently unconcerned that he had left a dead body lying on the floor of the town bank while he watched a forest fire consume a high school car park. Steven considered snaking his way across the lobby on his belly, then shrugged. No one was interested in the bank right now. He walked across the floor and crouched beside the corpse. He didn’t recognise the man beneath the sheet – death changed facial features – he did recognise the uniform. This man, D. Mantegna, from his breast plate, must have been one of the officers working at Charleston Airport three days earlier. Steven turned away from D. Mantegna’s sallow, sunken visage and looked down at the man’s left wrist. There, a black circle that looked like a third-degree burn, was Nerak’s calling card, the same entry wound the young mother must have been hiding when she boarded the plane with the baby held in the crook of her arm like a football.

The Idaho Springs Police were not waiting for the county coroner. With a dead body in a Charleston International Airport security uniform turning up in a bank eighteen hundred miles from the scene of an apparent terrorist attack, the detective outside would be waiting for the FBI.

Steven stood up and hurried out the side entrance towards Myrna Kessler’s car.

Twilight fell as the four riders carefully navigated the dirt road between vast fields of potatoes, greenroot, onions, carrots and pepper weed. Hannah tried to make out individual smells, but the onion and pepper weed were too flamboyantly aromatic to separate. She slouched in the saddle, resting her back, and waited for Alen to halt them for the dinner aven.

Pacing them were a brigade of horse and mule-drawn flatbed and slat-sided farm carts, dozens of them, stretching from either side of the road. Teams of harvesters, farmhands and children alike, trudged slowly behind the carts, tossing in vegetables in slow rhythm. The scene looked to Hannah like a sweeping Hollywood epic where, as the sun fades to red, the camera pulls back from one toiling child to capture the masses, stretched out to the horizon…

When the wind died for a moment, she could hear their cries: Potato… ho! Carrot and pea… hee! Onion or greenroot… come harvest with me! At first, she thought the cries were filled with sorrow, suffering, as if these people had been enslaved by some heavy-handed plantation owner with a team of whip-wielding overseers, but after several stanzas, Hannah realised the calls and responses were changing, the words moving through a variety of activities: leisure time, cool beer, sex, the coming winter. After a particularly flirtatious verse about women and men, Hannah heard laughter, scattered giggling at the crudity of the text. It was improvisation; they were making it up, keeping the rhythm steady to match the slow gait of their horses. Leaning in the saddle, she tried to make out another verse, but the breeze returned and drowned them in a swirl of onion and pepper weed. Stillness fell over the fields once again; the riders had moved on ahead. Hannah turned to watch the harvesters until they faded from view.

Churn had been doing relatively well most of the day. His first moments in the saddle had been difficult; Hoyt was nursing a painfully bruised shoulder and a ringing ear, the price for keeping the bigger man aloft long enough for him to experiment with Hannah’s sapling strategy. At first, Churn had gripped his friend hard, as if clinging onto life itself, until Hoyt had shrieked for mercy.

Finally Alen and Hannah calmed Churn enough to try the cane idea, and Churn had released Hoyt only when he had the stick in one muscular paw and the pommel grasped with the other. Wide-eyed with terror, the mute had only released the saddle-horn long enough to berate his companions with economic but vituperative insults.

‘Would you look at that?’ Hoyt teased. ‘Which one is the horse?’

With inhuman quickness, Churn cupped his hand for maximum pain and boxed one side of the smaller man’s head, landing a direct hit over Hoyt’s ear and sending his friend reeling to the ground.

Hoyt rolled over in the dirt and shouted, ‘I told you not too hard, you slack-jawed oaf!’

It took a good three avens, but eventually Churn started to relax in the saddle. He was not yet a horseman, but he had not yet fallen either. He jabbed at the ground with Hannah’s cane, and clung hard to both pommel and bridle. They didn’t make particularly good time, but if it took Churn several days to feel comfortable in the saddle, then that’s what it took. Riding was still quicker than walking.

By the dinner aven, Churn had mastered a three-step survival technique. Feeling the rhythm of his horse’s gait, he would use his powerful legs to lift himself in the saddle, step one. Next, he would await the appropriate moment and release his not inconsiderable bulk back into the saddle, step two. Finally, in the beat between sitting and rising again, he would lift and plant his sapling cane, preserving a tenuous connection with the dusty Pragan road, step three.

It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. With darkness closing in about them, Alen quickened the pace slightly in hopes of reaching the edge of the current vegetable farm and finding a grove of trees or perhaps a forest where they could camp. He didn’t relish the notion of sleeping in one of the fields – though he hadn’t detected Malagon’s magicians in three days, the idea of being so vulnerable, especially at night, was too unsettling.

In time, he guessed, he would overcome his fear of sleeping outside, but like Churn, it would not be tonight. He spotted an indistinct blur on the horizon and said, ‘Is that a grove of trees or just a stand of bushes over there?’

‘Trees,’ Hoyt said. ‘It looks like a good place to spend the night – and there’s plenty of food scattered about as well.’

‘Good,’ Alen said. ‘Churn! We’re about done for the day. Congratulations, my old friend. You survived.’

Churn, busy gripping his pommel and sapling, didn’t answer.

After a dinner of fresh vegetable and venison stew, Churn and Hannah moved through the grove collecting enough wood to keep their fire kindled for the night. Hoyt used a whetstone to polish the thin surgical knife he carried and Alen sipped from a wineskin while scraping stew from dirty trenchers.

‘I hate to be the one to bring up another sore issue,’ Hoyt began.

‘But you will,’ Alen could sense a thorough chastising on the horizon.

‘Someone has to,’ Hoyt said, ‘and I’ve known you longest.’

‘And I need to cut back on the wine, right?’ There was no irritation in Alen’s voice.

‘Think about where we’re going. How much confidence would you have if the person to whom you looked for guidance and leadership was ass-over-hill each night?’

‘You’re right,’ Alen said.

Hoyt went on, And where we’re going – Churn and I might be the only two people in Eldarn willing to tag along on this journey. I mean, Hannah has to go, and you have your- your problems to work out, but if you’re getting kicked in the head every night, it won’t bode well for-’

‘I said, you’re right,’ Alen said, a hint of irritation appearing now. ‘I will cut back – some.’

‘Oh.’ Hoyt was genuinely surprised; he had been expecting a harder fight. ‘Oh, well, uh, good. I’m glad to hear that… and I don’t know that you have to quit entirely.’

‘I should,’ Alen said. ‘It’s the only way to be certain it won’t raise its cadaverous head looking for me, especially when things get difficult later on.’

Hoyt had what he wanted: Alen’s commitment. Now it was up to the former Larion Senator. ‘Well, you can address those details as they – sorry – arise. But either way, I’m glad to hear that and I know Hannah will appreciate seeing less of that kind of behaviour as well.’

‘I’m sure she will.’ In a display of good faith, Alen handed the wineskin over.

Hoyt wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he jostled it back and forth between his hands for a few moments, drank a quick slurp as if to say See? This won’t be awkward at all and then set the skin aside, wishing Hannah and Churn would return. ‘Does it affect your abilities?’ he asked.

‘You mean being drunk? Does it impact my ability to work Larion magic? I should say so; although I’m not entirely sure, because I have used so little magic in the last-’ He stopped and thought for a while. ‘I don’t know how many Twinmoons it’s been. I don’t know how many have passed. Isn’t that funny? One can actually drink enough to lose whole Twinmoons. Pissing demons, but I am a sorry sop.’

‘So, it does,’ Hoyt confirmed.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Will you be able to get us inside?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alen answered honestly. ‘I haven’t been to Welstar Palace. I have seen it in visions, when Nerak’s worked various unholy spells, but I didn’t watch with the eye of one planning a covert assault. And to answer your next question, no, I don’t know if I have enough magic left to keep us safe, especially once we get inside. There was – is – a whole team of magicians looking for me and who knows how many more doing other work for our dark prince. It will be my final test, of that I am confident.’

‘But your house,’ Hoyt said, ‘how did you keep your house hidden for so long?’

‘I cast that spell long before your great grandparents were born, Hoyt. If I hadn’t released it on purpose, it would have stayed that way until I died, maybe even longer.’

‘Didn’t that drain you, keeping it going that long?’

‘Not really. You see, magic is kind of like physics: once something gets going, it actually takes more to stop it than to keep it moving. Look at our twin moons. Those two hunks of rock have been spinning around this world since the beginning of the first Age, longer than that. And they are about perfect, meeting in the northern and southern skies with such predictability that we know the day and time, within an aven, when they will align. It’s amazing. Something got them here; something got them started and even something as huge as our own sun, gigantic in the distance, can’t pull them away from each other and from us.’

‘So, the magic keeping your house hidden-’

‘Except for the occasional flicker when a bird would slam into it and perish right there in the sky – that took some quick explaining – but apart from that, my house would have remained camouflaged, people on the street finding it curious but difficult to recall, possibly for ever.’

Hoyt smiled, but his eyes betrayed his trepidation.

‘You don’t have to come along, Hoyt,’ Alen said. ‘Actually, I don’t know why you’re here at all. What have you got to gain by going into Welstar Palace?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I won’t go in. Maybe just Churn will go with you. He’s wanted to get his hands on Malagon for a long time.’

‘Malagon won’t be there. Of that I am confident.’

Well, anyone, anything, then. Churn has his own ideas for disturbing Prince Malagon’s happy existence,’ Hoyt said.

‘Good. Then he will be welcome to come along – and Hoyt, should you decide to join us, I promise I will keep a clear head and I will use whatever power still remains in this disintegrating old body to see Hannah home, and to see you and Churn safe out again.’

‘Thanks,’ Hoyt said, genuinely relieved. He could ask nothing more. He had the option of abandoning this quest, so it would be his decision, and whatever he decided, Alen would not judge him.

‘Regardless,’ Alen added, ‘we might not make it that far.’

‘Hey, don’t joke. That’s not funny,’ Hoyt said.

‘But it is true.’ Alen pulled a thin scroll from his saddlebag and unrolled a parchment map of northern Praga and the Great Range bordering Malakasia. ‘We have to get through the forest of ghosts, and apart from you leading us, I don’t know how we’ll make it.’

‘Me?’ Hoyt was dubious. ‘Why me?’

‘Because the rest of us have something at stake in this journey. Granted, you hate Prince Malagon and Nerak as much as any freedom fighter, but you participate as you see fit, or as your fortunes guide you. You are a thief, my boy, and I am fiercely proud of you for that. You fight when it’s convenient and sometimes you run. You don’t have to come to Welstar Palace, and perhaps you will decide in the next Twinmoon – or the next aven – that you don’t want to go on, and you won’t. You have no stake in this.’ Alen’s eyes reflecting the firelight gave Hoyt a disconcerting feeling.

‘What does that have to do with the forest of ghosts?’

‘Maybe nothing.’

‘Grand,’ the young healer sighed. ‘Alen, please try to make some sense. If I have to do this and I don’t know how or what to expect, I might lose all of you in there-’

The older man interrupted, And maybe everything.’

‘Go on.’

‘If the forest of ghosts actually works as legends claim, then Hannah, Churn and I will all experience visions. We all have a critical emotional stake in this journey. If the forest targets those who traverse the northern wilderness pursuing their heartfelt dreams, the three of us will be set upon as soon as we breach the first row of trees.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You aren’t on your life’s journey, Hoyt. You are out for a stroll, accompanying friends north to Malakasia. And why? Because there’s nothing more appetising on the Hoyt agenda this Twinmoon. Churn and I are dead set on revenge. We might actually fight each other over who gets to suck the marrow from Malagon’s bones. And Hannah has to get home. If the forest actually assails us – and given the number of travellers who have never made it through those foothills, I believe it will – then Churn, Hannah and I will need you to guide us through.’

‘I don’t know how.’ Hoyt picked up the wineskin again. He wanted something to occupy his hands. ‘I don’t have any magic.’

‘I’m going to try and give you some.’

Hoyt drank deeply and coughed as the bitter tang of a cheap Pragan burned the back of his throat. His mind raced for an alternative to bringing helpless friends into a haunted forest. ‘Maybe we can take one of the western roads. Won’t there be something out that way with a light patrol, something we can handle in a straight fight?’

‘If there was, I would be the first to suggest we go in that direction.’ Alen reached over and took the skin. Corking it, he added, ‘But if even one of those sentries managed to escape, every soldier in southern Malakasia would know in an aven.’

Hoyt nodded disconsolately. ‘You’re right. At least this way, we have an honest shot.’ He sighed. ‘How much time do I have?’

‘At the rate Churn is letting us ride – five or six days before we get there.’

‘All right,’ Hoyt said, determination in his voice overcoming the trepidation, ‘what do I have to do?’

‘Ms Sorenson,’ Steven said, ‘I need your help.’

Jennifer Sorenson’s washing machine churned away downstairs as she browsed the entertainment pages of one of the dozen or more newspapers that had piled up on the steps and lawn in front of her house. She never read headlines since the one had noted, in a good bold font, that the search for her daughter had been postponed until spring due to prohibitively heavy snow in the mountains. So now Jennifer scanned for book and film reviews or even a recipe for those periodic nights when she felt like cooking for one.

When the doorbell rang, she noted her place and went to the door, expecting a mailman burdened with two weeks of letters, bills and junk mail. ‘Just a minute,’ she called and, not bothering to check through the peep hole, she slid the bolt back and opened the door – and there he was, standing face to face with her, the monster who had taken her daughter. It had taken her a moment to recognise him: he had lost weight, and his last shower wasn’t recent – but it was him, Steven Taylor.

‘Ms Sorenson,’ he looked at her expectantly, ‘I need your help.’

Rage flooded through her, warming her skin and numbing her senses, a mother’s fury: she would beat this man to death, ravage him as every mother who had ever lost a child to a kidnapper or a paedophile dreamed of doing.

Jennifer leaped at him with a growl as adrenalin-fuelled hatred flooded into her bloodstream. She kicked, bit and punched all at once, a wild woman with flailing fists, fingernails, booted feet and teeth. She had dreamed of ripping this man apart and painting her face with his blood, of chaining him in her basement and keeping him there, barely alive, for the next thirty years. She had dreamed of beating him to death with a metal pipe until his body was reduced to bone shards and jelly – but each of those scenarios had required some planning. She had never expected him to come to her; yet here he was, Steven Taylor in person, and all the rage she could summon, all the hatred and fear she had felt from the first time she had ever watched Hannah get into a car and drive off with a young man – Edward Coopersmith, in high school – was focused on him now.

‘I am going to kill you,’ she screamed and managed to get a handful of his hair and the Gore-tex collar of his coat.

‘No – wait – Ms Sorenson, please,’ Steven cried, backing away and bringing his hands up in self defence, ‘I can take-’

Jennifer held onto Steven’s hair as if it were her only link to Hannah, a greasy, wiry hank that would somehow bring her daughter home if only she pulled hard enough. ‘I knew you weren’t on that hill, you fucker. Where did you take her?’ Not waiting for an answer, Jennifer spun around; Steven fell to his right as she, her hand still entangled in his hair, stumbled to her left and brought her elbow around in a wide arc that took the young kidnapper squarely beneath the chin, snapping his head back. Stunned, Steven fell down the concrete steps. Jennifer leaped down beside him and landed several brutal kicks to his ribs and stomach, hoping to hear his last breath, his death rattle – until she suddenly realised what he had been trying to say. She’s alive…

The last kick was little more than a token, then she crouched down beside him.

‘She’s alive, she’s okay… I know where-’ Steven’s voice was a rattle, wet and hoarse, she could barely hear it above the noise of the traffic.

But Jennifer had been listening for him to beg, to cry out that he was dying. ‘Where is she? Where? Did you bury her body, you bastard?’ She forced down the glimmer of hope; rage would comfort her until Hannah was home or until Steven Taylor was dead. She bounced the back of his head off the concrete and watched as his eyes rolled back. ‘Speak up, young man – where is she?’

Jennifer realised she was panting, barely sucking in enough air to keep her vision in focus. Steven interrupted with a whisper. ‘Praga.’

‘Prague? Did you say Prague?’ She needed him conscious now, and shook him roughly. ‘Shitty guess; her passport is upstairs.’

‘Not Prague.’ Steven looked like a cadaver, his cheeks sunk in and his eyes staring at points in the distance. ‘Praga – I have been trying for two months to get to her – I need your help.’

Jennifer began to soften as the hope, locked in her mind in an iron strongbox, began clawing its way out. Her hands shaking with adrenalin, she gripped Steven’s collar and heaved the young man’s face up until it was inches from her own. Shaking all over now, she warned him, ‘If you are lying to me, I promise you months of unholy agony before you die, Steven Taylor.’

‘We have three hours,’ Steven said, his eyes finally focusing on hers with surprising clarity.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Three hours and I’ll go get her.’

Brexan stumbled, toppling a stack of wooden crates with a clatter she was certain could be heard over the Blackstones. ‘Mother of a cloven-hoofed whore-’ Her curses would have embarrassed a docker, but she cut herself short as she lost sight of Jacrys. She was tired, dehydrated, and quite unable to keep up with the indefatigable Malakasian spy. ‘Drank too rutting much last night, you fool,’ she said softly. ‘What were you thinking?’

Brexan had been chiding herself all day for the embarrassing lack of control, not just the drinking, but the casual, if unmemorable, sex. She was still dehydrated after vomiting up her breakfast, and it was making her joints ache and her head feel as though it had been cracked by a passing blacksmith. Several times she had been convinced the spy had detected her as she tracked his circuitous path through the city, but Jacrys had continued on his way, talking with locals and peering into windows. He had eaten some fruit and a piece of dried meat with another small loaf of bread during the midday aven. Brexan, still unable to eat, had taken advantage of the break to guzzle a beer and a mug of water in a tavern across the street.

An aven later, that had been a mistake. The alcohol had made her sleepy and nearly bursting with a need to relieve herself. When Jacrys had stopped to engage in an animated discussion with a stevedore, Brexan had sneaked behind a row of juniper bushes, hastily hiked her new skirt above her thighs and pissed. She ignored the puddle of acrid fluid with a sigh and an embarrassed shake of her head.

She needed rest, food and then more rest, and unless Jacrys stopped soon for the night, she would be forced to abandon her surveillance and attempt to find the traitorous murderer the following day. ‘Why don’t you go back to your inn?’ she muttered. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to take a break for food? It’s well past the dinner aven now. Don’t you want to sit for a while? Maybe a day or two?’

Two small boys with dirty faces, soiled tunics and irretrievably black fingernails passed her, carrying an old chainball between them, but they stopped long enough to take a wide-eyed look at the odd woman talking aloud to no one.

‘There’s nobody there, lady,’ one of the youngsters said in a small but amused voice.

Brexan whirled on them. ‘Yes, you wretched little rutters. I am a full-gone lunatic with a cracking nasty headache and a tendency to talk out loud to phantoms right before I kidnap, kill, cook and eat annoying little boys!’

The two children screamed and ran, their chainball forgotten, as fast as they could to get away from the homicidal woman with the drawn face and the deathly-pale skin.

Brexan winced at their cries, whispering, ‘Yes. That’s grand. Alert the entire city.’

Hustling along the side street, she was careful not to make any additional noise but assumed, for the fourth or fifth time that day, that she had already created such a clamour that Jacrys would be waiting for her at the next corner, knife drawn and ready to pierce her ribs – but when she reached the main thoroughfare, the well-dressed man was working his way along the river towards a tavern near the waterfront, apparently oblivious to the racket. Jacrys paused at the tavern door and looked left then right, as though the person or people for whom he had been searching all day would somehow appear, then gave up and entered the inn with a dismissive shrug.

‘Thank the gods,’ Brexan said. ‘Have five courses, six if you want them. I’ll pay. Just give me a few moments to catch my breath and get some water.’ There was an alehouse conveniently across the way; with any luck she could get a table near the window so she could keep a close watch on the main boulevard while choking down a hasty dinner and drinking an ocean of cold water.

She crossed the street, pausing to allow a mule-drawn wagon to pass, then fell in behind the cart before stepping onto the plank walkway lining the muddy road that wound its way to the northern wharf. She stopped long enough to stomp the mud from her boots and checked angles of sight from the various windows in the alehouse; she didn’t want to lose Jacrys if he were only visiting the tavern to ask more questions. Worried he might slip past her in the darkness, Brexan decided to look around for a better place to sit, one without an obstructed view of the waterfront.

She rounded the corner and disappeared into the darkness of the alley, but she had not taken five steps before she sensed another presence: someone backed against the wall to her left. Something was wrong. She took one or two awkward, lunging steps back towards the main street before feeling a hand clamp down on her shoulder and then around her throat. Brexan strained against the grip until she lost her balance and then the stranger heaved her off her feet and slammed her into the alehouse wall.

The force of the blow knocked the air from her lungs and Brexan, too weak to fight back now, gasped for air and looked longingly towards the relative safety of the waterfront boulevard. The grip on her throat made regaining her breath all the more difficult. Light streaming through the alehouse windows was only a few paces away, but it might as well have been a Moon’s ride, for the alley darkness had swallowed them.

‘Tell me who you are and do not lie. I have some respect for spies, even hideously inadequate spies like you, but I have no patience for liars. So be quick about it and don’t lie, because I will know.’ The man’s voice was difficult to hear over the rushing blood and raspy inhalations echoing in Brexan’s head, but she knew who it was. Well, you knew you had been too rutting noisy, you stupid fool, she thought, disgusted with herself.

Her vision tunnelled as consciousness closed in, then she regained control. Her vision was blurry, but she could see the cut of his cloak, the broad shoulders, the frilly edge sewn onto his hood and the white lace collar. He was a good dresser. ‘I’m-’ Brexan coughed and spat in an effort to draw breath, but the spy didn’t seem to care that her spittle dribbled across her chin and dripped onto his wrist.

‘You’re…?’ he prompted, loosening his grip just enough for Brexan to wheeze audibly.

‘My name-’ She took quick breaths; they were coming somewhat easier now. She forced herself to make eye contact with the Malakasian killer, knowing if she looked him in the face, he would be prone to believe what she said. ‘My name is Brexan. I was sent here by General Oaklen to-’

‘To what?’ Jacrys asked, his dirk drawn now and pressed against her ribs. Brexan could feel its tip against the bruise where the scarred Seron had elbowed her.

To what? To what? To what, you idiot, a Malakasian general sent you here to do what?

‘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.