The Path Of Peace (The Cremelino Prophecy Book 3) (15 page)

RAPP

R
app moved deep into the Guild of Thieves’
territory. Even though they tried to influence the entire city, there were
places that were solely under their control. The governor’s Merchants’ Guild
had been growing in strength, and the Thieves’ Guild was having a harder time
finding corrupt people to deal with.

Luckily for him, once again most
people tended to ignore a small-looking boy wandering around. He had left his
hair messy, which wasn’t much different from his normal style, and his clothes
were ragged and torn. Though educated in the governor’s household, he could
without much thought revert back to the language of the slums.

Begging for pieces of bread
earned him a hard glare from a guild guard, so he moved on. He had been
searching for the last week for the mysterious Berlain that Kelln wanted to
find for Alessandra, the same woman whose father tried to kill them the prior
week. He didn’t always understand why nobles or government officials did what
they did, but he was up for the challenge.

Bits and snippets of information
he had gleaned were starting to come together. There indeed had been a lady
named Berlain who’d been born in Mar but had left to Belor as the wife of the
man now known as Mr. El’Lan or the Preacher. At one point, she had left him and
their young daughter to return to Mar for reasons unexplained. Rapp, having met
the Preacher a few times firsthand, could surmise why she left. He did not seem
like a very nice person.

“Hey, get out of my way, boy,” a
man yelled at Rapp as he exited the back door of an old building. Rapp feigned
to move away, but as he did so, he stuck a small piece of wood between the door
and the frame, stopping it from closing all the way and locking.

Once the man disappeared around a
corner, no longer concerned with the apparent street urchin, Rapp opened the
door, removed the wood, and let himself in to a large dark room. Lights in the
distance down a hallway sent eerie shadows along the walls. He wound his way
carefully down the hallway until he heard voices. Trying the knob to a door, he
slipped inside another room. It was full of boxes of parchment and scrolls,
labeled by year and month. A small dirty window in the room gave enough light
for Rapp to read. The find was astounding.

Rapp had found records and proof
of the guild’s dealings for years. This would be invaluable to the governor to
legally shut down the Guild of Thieves for good, but he closed the lid and
moved back to listen at the door. The records were not why he was there that
day.

The voices receded, and Rapp went
out into the hallway again. The halls and doors began to be cleaner and nicer.
He rounded a corner and found himself entering the back of the kitchen. His
stomach growled just to be around the potential meal. A growing boy, he had a
hard time not constantly being hungry. Peeking around the room, he stepped out
and reached for an apple sitting in a bowl.

“Hey, what are you doing?” An
older lady in an apron came around a corner and caught Rapp red-handed. “How
did you get in here anyway?”

A quick solution raced through
Rapp’s mind, and he put on his childish slum accent. “Just one of the runners,
ma’am.” The Guild of Thieves had young boys run errands like any other guild.

The woman relaxed. “Well, if you
don’t have anything else to do but to grab some fruit, why don’t you run an
errand for me? The guildmaster is meeting with some men, and they are hungry.
You can help me bring them the food.”

Rapp couldn’t believe his luck.
Of course, he hoped the guildmaster or any of the men he was meeting with
wouldn't recognize him.

“Can I clean up a bit first?” he
asked.

The woman smiled. “Want to make a
good impression on the old man, huh?”

“Yeah. I want him to notice me. I
wanna work for him as a thief someday.” Rapp put on his best smile to cover his
lies.

The cook laughed. “Well, you
better do better than trying to steal some apples from under my nose. Go wash
up. There is a room at the side of the kitchen with some decent clothes.”

Rapp took a few minutes to clean
his face and change clothes. Now he looked more like a young servant. Servants
were ignored almost as much as street urchins. He took the platter of food from
the cook and headed down the hall. Not knowing where to go, he followed some
faint voices until he came to a partially opened doorway.

His contacts had told him that
the guildmaster’s headquarters were here. It was said that the man used to have
a daughter named Berlain. Rapp was hoping it was the same Berlain that the
ambassador had asked him to find.

He glimpsed inside and tried to
keep from being seen. A lady stood with her back to him, middle-aged and
dressed in fashionable attire. She blocked the face of the man who sat in a
chair in front of her.

“Father, you wanted to see me?”
the lady said.

“A dangerous man is here in town.
I think you need to leave and go into hiding again.”

“We have been through this
before. I am done hiding. I have a right to be your heir and to earn respect in
the trade before you die.”

“You realize I have protected you
all these years. You will take my place, hopefully still a long way off,
though.” The man chuckled and then started coughing in violent bursts.

“What is the danger?” the lady
said.

“Your ex-husband has been asking
around about you, Berlain.”

Rapp watched the woman move over
to the man. His nerves almost made him drop his tray. It was the Guild of
Thieves’ guildmaster himself, and by their conversation, he spoke to his
daughter.

“What is he doing here?”

“From what I have heard, his plans
in Belor didn’t work out, and now he comes to sow discontent in Mar. He was
never one to leave trouble alone.” The guildmaster raised his voice. “He is
trying to form his own guild by amassing the smaller ones. He is ruthless and
has hidden agendas.”

“I am not afraid of him anymore,
Father.”

The man smoothed the wrinkles out
of his pants and then looked back up, as if trying to think of what to say.
“His daughter is here with him.”

“His daughter?” The woman turned
to the side, and Rapp recognized someone who had aged well. She still wore her
dark hair down, though most likely dyed to keep the gray out, yet her face was
marred only by a few wrinkles. She looked familiar. “You mean our daughter?”

“You gave her up when you left
him,” the guildmaster said cruelly.

Berlain gasped. “I left her with
her father. That was the best for her at the time.”

“I have spoken to her, but she
did not know who I was.”

Berlain gasped and fell into a
nearby chair. “You did not tell her where I was, did you?”

“No. No. I pretended I had heard
your name long ago. It seems she and her father have come to some kind of
agreement. She will try and steer the ambassador and governor away from the
guilds if she is able to meet you.”

“She wants to meet me . . . after
all these years?” Berlain spoke to herself then went into silent thought for a
moment. . “Did she look well?”

“Berlain, you cannot be thinking
of meeting her.” The guildmaster’s voice boomed. “You must leave as I told you
to.”

“Maybe just once.” Berlain
paused. “It would be nice to get the attention of the ambassador and the
governor away from us.”

The guildmaster sat in silence.
Rapp took the opportunity to walk into the room as if he hadn’t been standing
there listening. The old man motioned for Rapp to put the food on a table in
front of his chair. As Rapp had thought, the man didn’t pay much attention to
him.

He glanced at the woman,
memorizing her features, a plan forming in his mind. He needed to get back to
Kelln. Voices behind him indicated more people arriving. Berlain stood up as if
to go.

“We will talk later, Berlain,”
the guildmaster said to his daughter.

Rapp looked over his shoulder for
a moment, then turned back to his task. One of the men entering the room had
been the one trying to talk to the ambassador when Rapp had first intervened
with Tali at the dress stall in the market. He didn’t know if the man would
recognize him or not.

Quickly, he finished setting out
the food then backed away toward the door, trying to keep his face hidden. Just
as he was to the door, the old man called for him.

“Boy, bring us some wine.”

Rapp glanced up at them out of
habit. “Yes, sir.”

The other men looked at him and
continued seating themselves. Then the man he had recognized whipped his head
around. “I have seen you before.”

Rapp shook his head. His heart
pounded. He would have a hard time outrunning these men without a diversion. He
was thick in the Guild of Thieves’ headquarters. He would be lucky to get out
alive.

“Your mop of hair.” The man
appeared deep in thought, as if trying to remember. All of a sudden, his eyes
cleared. “The ambassador.”

That was all it took for Rapp to
decide it was time to leave. He threw the empty platter of dishes and food,
causing a moment of chaos. He turned, slammed the door shut, and ran down the
hall, the same way he had come from the kitchen. He only had a few seconds’
head start.

He ran through the kitchen, the
cook trying to stop him, but he sped past, zig-zagging through the halls to the
back door. Multiple sets of feet pursued him close behind.

Opening the door to the outside,
he continued running. Just as the men came out of the building, he ran into the
back of another one. Not knowing where he was, he almost fell into a pool of
water. It was a bathhouse. And not just any bathhouse, but a women’s one. His
eyes opened wide as women stood and sat around two pools of water. He looked
down quickly, cheeks turning red, and ran as quick as he could through the
room. He heard loud laughter behind him.

Running out to the front room, he
found clothes hanging on a peg. He grabbed a robe and slipped it on, pulling a
hood around his head. He sat in a chair and turned it toward the wall. He hoped
his crude disguise would work. The men raced into the room. All they found was
a young woman sitting in a corner with a hood and robe.

“Did you see a boy run through
here?” one of the men asked.

Rapp, in his best girl voice,
said, “No.”

He could feel the man’s eyes on
the back of his head and heard him take a few steps toward him.

“You men are not allowed in here,”
a woman said, coming into the room. “Get out.”

The men tried to tell her what
they were looking for, but the woman took no excuses. They were shooed out
without any further explanation.

Rapp breathed in a deep breath of
air.

The woman came over to Rapp and
turned him around. Hands on her hips she frowned at him. “Now what are you
doing here? Not sneaking in to see the girls are you?”

Rapp blushed profusely. Gross! He
didn’t want to see any naked women. “No, ma’am.”

He didn’t know if the woman
believed him, but she scolded him, took off the robe he had been using, and
shooed him out. By then, the men had gone farther down the street, and Rapp was
able to slip off in the other direction.

An hour later, he informed Kelln
he had in fact found Berlain and that she was the Guild of Thieves’
guildmaster’s daughter. Kelln couldn’t believe it.

Kelln told Rapp he had a plan to
get Alessandra to see her mother, but it would require keeping the guildmaster
himself busy at the time so as not to interfere. They also needed to keep the
Preacher away from his daughter for a time.

They decided to meet that night
with Tali and her father and discuss the plans.

* * *

Christine tried to eat, but she
had no appetite. She was bloated and sick every morning now. Her clothes were
already becoming tighter on her. Finally, the general had called in a doctor to
examine her. He couldn’t very well negotiate with a dead or sickly queen.

The doctor was a lady, which was
unusual for Christine. In the Realm, all doctors were men. Christine watched
her walk into the room. She seemed to be her mother’s age, but the eyes said
she was older. A thin-boned woman, she was shorter than Christine with graying
dark hair and a light brown face. She greeted Christine with a smile.

“Oh my. Aren’t you a lovely
girl?” the woman said in the language of the Realm but with a slight accent.
“The general said I needed to see you. Something about not eating properly and
getting sick. Your face is pale. Come and sit down on this chair next to me.”

Christine smiled and almost
laughed for the first time in a week. This lady liked to talk. Maybe she could
get some information out of her. She already knew what the doctor would find.
She just hoped she could keep it secret from the general a while longer.

“So nice to have someone else
visit me,” Christine said. “What is your name? Mine is Christine.”

The woman frowned. “Oh, I don’t
want to know your name, young miss. The general swore me to secrecy, and I
don’t want to disappoint him. You can guess what happens to people that
disappoint the general.” The woman didn’t stop for an answer. “They disappear.
Bad thing, I say. Now let’s take a look at you.”

The lady ran her hands over
Christine’s body. A power from the lady tingled over her body. “You’re a
wizard?”

“Of course I’m a wizard. All
doctors in Gildan are wizards. Where are you from, anyway, that you wouldn’t
know that?” Again, she didn’t stop for an answer. “Oh, I can see by your blonde
hair that you are not from around here. Where are you from? No, don’t tell me.
I can’t know those things.”

The woman smiled, told Christine
to stand up, and ran her hands over her belly. “Well my dear, there is nothing
wrong with you.”