Commandment (35 page)

As she closed the door behind her, Lakif froze. She patted her cloak to make certain she hadn’t forgotten her only item of value, the Rare Earth Stone. Its importance outweighed everything else.

“Hurry!” Bael urged.

“Wait! I’ll meet you in the common room. I have to get Torkoth!”

“We don’t have time!” Bael warned. “They are on the inn’s threshold!”

“We need him!” Lakif shouted as she ran down the hall. “Wait for us in the common room!”

Owing to the early hour, the hallway was deserted, and there were no witnesses to the dramatic exchange. Within seconds, Lakif screeched to a halt at the Half-man’s door. She pounded with such force that she feared the doors all along the hall would open in response. After a moment, Torkoth answered. His red hair cascaded before his face, which he pulled back like vines.

Lakif was surprised to see him once again completely naked. He had dashed to answer the call without even donning a sheet! Again, Torkoth defied the bone-chilling cold. How could he sleep nude, Lakif wondered? She normally would have felt a bit awkward addressing a naked man, but the circumstances drove her tongue.

She pressed him with the sudden need to leave and offered only a cursory explanation as to why. Although sparse on words, the urgency of her tone hammered home the message. Fortunately, the Half-man didn’t pester her with questions. He appreciated the gravity of the situation and complied by quickly throwing on his pants, tossing his leather armor into his backpack and strapping his short sword across his shoulder.

Scarcely a minute after Lakif’s untimely arrival, the two were hustling toward the stairs. The Acaanan’s thoughts raced much ahead of her steps. Already she brainstormed about how they could escape the inn. Hopefully, they would unite with Bael and slip out the front gates before the troops arrived.

Both jogged lightly in an effort not to wake up the entire hall with drumming footfalls. Lakif cared little about waking a disgruntled patron. But if Bael was correct and the Seekers were actually bound for the inn, they would certainly interrogate the Acaanan’s neighbors. If their exit was so loud as to awaken them, that would only provide the Seekers with more information.

Their caution was well-advised. As they neared a bend in the corridor, a scraping sound speared her ear. It was grating metal, and Lakif imagined an axe was being dragged over stone. With each breath it grew louder and more distinct, coalescing into a metallic chorus like chinking spurs. Warning bells clanged in her head—the Seekers were already here! They were just around the bend and she was stranded in the middle of the hall. An avalanche of panic overcame the Acaanan; a violent premonition of doom speared her core.

Torkoth pointed to a door to their left. Its mundane appearance suggested that it was not the entrance to a guest chamber but instead to a storage closet. In fact, Lakif recalled once seeing an ostler emerging from a similar door. Perhaps it was the same door.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Torkoth leapt through the portal, which was, as expected, unlocked. Lakif was right on his heels, as if sucked in by the vacuum of his wake.

The closet was crammed with cleaning goods. There was bucket of dirty water. The wooden handle of a mop leaned into the corner. The Acaanan spun to close the door, but in the commotion of the move, the bucket was jostled and the mop handle slid down the wall. It fell into the doorway, preventing the portal from closing completely.

Lakif nearly shrieked in alarm. She reached out to extricate the offending handle. As she began throttling it, a scaly hand closed over her own. Another hand covered her mouth.

A heartbeat later, the chinking sound resonated just beyond the door. Through the crack, she could see an oblique sliver of the hallway. She sucked in her breath.

A figure donned in violet marched by. The garb was not a regal vestment but a frayed riding cloak. Its cowl was drawn up, but its features weren’t completely hidden. The distinctive metallic glint of a visor shined dully. A gauntlet armored its right hand, which clutched a lead scepter. The Seeker brandished the rod as one would a sword, despite actually having a sheathed sword at his belt. Each step was accompanied by the same scraping sound, although Lakif couldn’t descry any spurs or other metal lining the boots.

The Acaanan held her breath as the priest panned before them. With luck, he would either not notice the wooden handle jutting from the door frame or pay it no heed. Fortunately, the Seeker passed by, only to be followed by several more, all heading in the direction of their quarters. Their superimposed footfalls echoed down the hall like swords being sharpened.

The two remained frozen in the dimness of the closet until the scrapings ebbed. Lakif exhaled with relief, having held her breath the whole time.

The Acaanan quietly opened the door, and a scaled hand caught the freed mop before it fell to the floor with a bang. Thankfully, Lakif’s chambers lay around a bend in the hall and the Seekers were out of sight.

On reaching the top of the stairs they encountered Bael. He too had narrowly found a hiding space to avoid the train of Seekers rising from below. The Kulthean’s expression was one of sheer dismay.

“A score are camped in the common room!” He moaned.

“We’re trapped! They’ll turn the inn upside down to find us!” Lakif trembled. Heinous visions swarmed her mind, visions of her burning at the stake in the center of a circle of the sinister priests—the auto-da-fe promised to suspected warlocks. She could almost smell her sizzling flesh.

“We must find another way out,” Bael prompted.

“There’s only the front gate!” Lakif fretted. She cursed herself for not having taken advantage of her leisure time to explore alternate exits from the Goblin Knight. All her former knowledge of the inn’s layout deserted her before the threat of the Seekers, only to be replaced by panic.

“The mouth isn’t the sole portal,” Torkoth interjected. “There’s an anus.”

To their perplexed looks, the Half-man elaborated. “There is another exit through the base of the central tower.”

Before Lakif could object, Torkoth ushered them down a side hall. As they wound through corridors and doors, Lakif was at a loss to follow their flexuous course. As had unfolded in Ebon Myre, all she could do was blindly follow the Half-man and pray he wasn’t leading them into a dead end.

They passed no one in the halls, which was in itself alarming. There was always an isolated ostler stirring or a stray patron returning from the latrine. To the Acaanan, the place suddenly felt deserted. Was everyone cowering in their own chambers? Or had the entire inn been corralled into a special room, a detention center, while the Seekers scoured the place for the two rebels?

At one point, they reached a flight of stairs that both ascended and descended. To the Acaanan’s surprise, Torkoth chose the former route. The stairs rose to a platform, and then skewed off at a right angle to another platform. This motif continued for several flights. Lakif was beginning to wonder if indeed Torkoth was privy to some secret exit or merely stalling for time, hoping to stumble upon something.

At length, the stairs ended at a door. Lakif noted that black scorch marks dotted its surface. She wondered if this was the grim chamber where the warlocks were incinerated. She cringed as Torkoth burst through.

A platform jutted out into a cylindrical tower. Above, a gigantic metallic grid spanned the entire ceiling. Below, the hollow tower dropped into blackness. A thick chain dangled from a hole in the overhead grid and descended into the tower. Another chain was attached to a large pulley on their platform and rose up into the belfry via another port.

Lakif regarded the chain in horror, feeling that the Half-man suggested they shimmy down it. It dropped down the middle of the tower, well out from the platform. Even if they could reach it with a leap, she had no confidence that any of them could successfully descend its daunting length.

But a wave of relief washed over her when their guide pointed out a stair off to the side. It narrowly hugged the wall as it spiraled down the length of the tower.

Despite the certain death promised should she fall, Lakif acquitted herself well with the stairs. They were wide enough for a man to walk without danger of slipping but she navigated each step with her back glued to the wall.

During the descent, Torkoth briefly explained the tower’s function. The nightly fires that endowed the Goblin Knight with fame required substantial fuel. This fuel was delivered to the inn via an accessory portal at the base of this tower. There, it was loaded into a metallic bin and lifted into the heights. The pulley system was used each morning to hoist several loads into the belfry located above the grating. There, it awaited its nightly immolation. Listening to the details, Lakif could only speculate as to the source of Torkoth’s knowledge.

Minutes later, they reached the base of the tower. True to Torkoth’s prediction, the chain ended at a banged up bin. It was large enough to hold a few men. The ground was brick and carpeted by soot. Lakif suspected they were right above the Cauldrons of the Goblin Knight. A reinforced door greeted them; a simple crossbeam barred opening from the outside.

Lakif noticed the soot cleaving to her sleeves. The mess was acquired as she hugged the chimney during their climb down. She could only imagine how black her back was.

Beyond the portal lay a quiet cloistered space. Torkoth had led them through a hitherto unknown postern gate of the inn. Soot mingled with snow sprinkled the flagstones here as well.

While Lakif peeked around for signs of trouble, Torkoth took the opportunity to fully clothe himself. He had only been wearing pants and was even barefoot from the hastiness of their exit; a scantily clad Half-man would be a red flag to Seeker scouts.

Afterward, they passed through an arch covered with creeping ivy. As they parted the tendrils, Lakif closed her eyes with relief at their escape.

L
AKIF DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THEIR WHEREABOUTS.
I
T WASN’T PART OF THE OLD
City, as she initially thought, but a seldom visited rear avenue to the inn from Grimpkin proper. With no small amount of haste, the three hurried from the tower.

No sooner had they slipped into an adjoining avenue than a wail of hoots rose up. All around them, a school of imps played. Some jumped up and down on broken stonework; others swung by their tails from the arches. Alone, imps were skittish creatures, but en masse they were emboldened. All manner of hollers, burps, jeers, and spit rained down on the trio. In fact, the ruckus so fractured the early morning quiet that Lakif was certain an armored visor would appear in a window above.

Waving his cane, Bael charged down the alley, sending the small devils leaping for safety. The two Inhumans followed closely as he blazed a path out of the gallery and into the city.

The morning came in a sullen guise. A forlorn sky presaged another bleak day.

“Eurus’ breath is scant. This bodes poorly for our venture,” Bael commented. Lakif knew he was referring to the east wind, which popularly blew in times of fortune.

The three kept their flight to the protection offered by terraces, balconies, and colonnades lest a Seeker patrol spot them. It was early enough that the avenues were largely deserted. So early, in fact, that Prime hadn’t tolled! Lakif wondered how the Seekers gained entry to the inn before Prime. Had they managed to make it to the common room, their exit would have been barred by the closed gates, and they would have been trapped rats.

With each brisk step, she was further assured of their successful escape. When they reached a safe buffering distance from the inn, they dared broach a main avenue.

As their destination lay to the south, the triad was not afforded use of the Leviathan. Even if they had the option, Lakif for one would have refused. The Third Circle Station was far too conspicuous. A Half-man, Kulthean, and Acaanan in cahoots stuck out like sore thumbs. They had been extraordinarily lucky this morning, but they couldn’t press that luck.

A wide promenade presented itself, lancing directly to the south. Businessmen were filing out with their indispensable umbrellas. Flurries began to swirl in the avenue, tumbled by a bracing breeze.

The untimely arrival of the Seekers disturbed the Acaanan to no end. Her disquietude seemed to be shared by the Kulthean as well. How had the priests located them? It seemed hard to believe they had homed in on the Acaanan’s trail. She had bounced around for weeks on end. But she had made the Goblin Knight her unofficial base of operations lately, and word could have leaked out. Perhaps this was how the Seekers had caught wind of her. Although, the fact that the Seekers arrived mere days after Bael’s sudden appearance hinted that they had been tracking the Kulthean. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Lucretia’s hand was at play. The witch had made such a dramatic spectacle of the Seekers’ wrath toward warlocks that Lakif felt she was somehow to blame. In any event, the involvement of the police–priests was an ominous sign, upping the stakes considerably.

On the other hand, one troubling doubt had been settled. Lakif smiled with gratitude to the Half-man. Over the previous days, she had heaped no small amount of distrust on the guard. Now, any misgivings she had of the fellow were wiped out. Torkoth could have easily led them into the enemy’s hands if he so wished, and he probably would have been handsomely rewarded for surrendering up enemies of the state. Without his key intervention, they both would have fallen to the Seekers’ grasp and been snuffed out mercilessly.

By abetting the two, Torkoth had truly thrown his lot in with the fugitives. If ever the Acaanan applauded her decision to remain allied with him, it was now. The fighter, now properly donned in armor and cloak, was dutifully outfitted as a veteran-at-arms and calmed her with his confidence.

At one point, they passed a vendor stationed at a crosswalk. Within her basket were several bouquets of white, star-shaped flowers. She hailed them and quickly burst into a sales pitch. She claimed that the snow lilies uniquely bloomed in the winter. Such a flower, worn over the heart like a broach, offered the bearer its inherent protection from the cold, such that he, or she, may too flourish in these frosty days. She wore one as well and attested to its warmth; although her hat was rimmed with snow, she demonstrated no sign of discomfort at the inhospitable weather. Lakif and Bael bought into the billing and purchased one. As Lakif pinned it to her own chest, she noticed her hand was spotted with snowflakes. The contrast to her black skin created the illusion of ash on a burnt log. As for Torkoth, he passed, citing a mild appreciation for the weather.