The Ritual (2 page)

Someone else snorted in contempt. “Can’t have been his soul, elve
s don’t have one! Nah, they say it was some keepsake from his youth.”

“And someone
stole it? From the palace?”

I could understand
the disbelief. The palace was crammed to the hilt with security, and boasted enough sorcerers for everything to be warded as well as locked.

“Like a ghost, he was
. No locks damaged, no wards broken,” the knowing man asserted to everyone. “Kingy’s furious, as you can see.”

“And that’s all he
stole? No gold, no jewels?” the first speaker asked.

“Nope. Just that one thing, whatever it was. Seems daft to me, to risk that much for nothing useful, but then it wasn’t me what stole it.” The man laughed, a rich guffaw that had a few others chortling along.

The exchange had taken place while I was still deciphering the script, and by the time I reached the end Shani was already tugging at my sleeve. She was a better and faster reader than I, and understood sooner that we had to leave, and quickly. Yet I still stood, aghast at this curt, cold announcement that could mean death for the two of us if we simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which could be now. “You’d better run, luvvie,” an old lady next to me muttered. I stared at her, and she pointed towards the other side of the square.

I followed her gesture, and a cold hand clamped around my heart as I recognised the vivid blue and green tabards of the royal guards. There were five of them, standing out boldly on their gigantic Tizarian steeds, and they towered over everyone else present, their eyes scanning the crowd.

“Thanks,” I mutter
ed, finally giving in to Shani’s incessant tugging and ducking away from the people at the board. Not everyone would be as sympathetic as the old lady, certainly not this close to the royal court in Arlis, though there were also few people who would outright hand us in – Sovander wasn’t popular among humans either.

We moved away from the guards, past the last few market vendors, and after a last glance at the blue and green figures in the distance I swiftly darted between two stalls to make my exit.

At least, that was my intention. Rather than the smooth manoeuvre I had planned I collided with a solid body clad in sturdy dark clothes. My subconscious registered the subtleties of a thief’s outfit, but as I steadied myself, muttered an apology and glanced at the face of the man I had bumped into, all my thoughts were washed away. For several moments that felt like an eternity, all I could see were his eyes – the deepest, darkest eyes I had ever seen. They were black as velvet, impossible to read, and I could have drowned in them had he not drawn back a little and nodded his head to me.

“My
lady,” he murmured, brushing the creases from my sleeves, his voice polite but with a hint of mockery. It was subtle, but like knows like, and the slightly upturned corner of his mouth was an expression I had worn all too often myself: thinly veiled arrogance and contempt.

It was annoying to have such a look aimed at me, but not surprising, since he was a half-elf too. Many of our kind had been forced to develop survival techniques, and a forbidding mask of arrogance often staved off unwanted questions. No, w
hat really annoyed me was my instant attraction to this man. His hair was as dark as his eyes, haphazardly cut and brushing his shoulders, and it framed a strong, angular face with a straight nose and lush black eyebrows. The combination was fiendishly sexy, and far too disconcerting for my comfort. I muttered another platitude before turning around to get away from his unsettling presence, only to bump once again into a man in dark clothing.

The déjà vu was so strong that for a moment I was paralysed in stark and utter terror. Once more there were blackest eyes, a mocking mouth, black shaggy hair, and my confused mind could not comprehend how this could happen twice in a row, in opposite directions. Only when I turned my head and saw the original man still behind me, his grin now more pronounced, did I understand: twins!

For a few moments more I stared back and forth between them, wondering at the coincidence of one identical twin running into another, but then I remembered the guards, and Shani.

I spotted
her a few feet behind the first man, her eyes sending frantic messages to me. This time I did not bother saying anything, I merely ducked around him and rushed to my sister.

“What happened there?” she asked, frowning at me and trying to pull me along and away. I shook my head, unable to explain and distracted by a nagging feeling that something was wrong. When I turned around once more to look back at the twins the feeling clicked: one of them grinned at me and waved a purse.
My
purse.

I cursed and started b
ack, closely followed by Shani, but the men did not wait for me. Cocky they may have been, but they weren’t stupid.

Had I not been an experienced pickpocket myself, they would have lost me within moments. As it was, I knew the tricks they would play, because they were my own tricks. I knew how they would try to melt into the crowd, which direction they were most like
ly to take, and although Shani was no thief, she and I had been together long enough for her to follow me without problems. Even so, I quickly recognised the mastery we were up against. Any moves of mine which should have anticipated theirs turned out to be a moment too late. I had trouble keeping pace, and realised with growing despair that catching them would be impossible.

It made me furious.
I
was the thief,
I
held the money; Shani trusted me with it. Being robbed by a master was no excuse; thieves did not get robbed. So when I saw their dark heads move back in the direction of the royal guards, I acted on impulse. If we could not have that money, neither could they.

“Thieves! Over there,
half-elf thieves!” I shouted, pointing. People turned their heads and craned their necks, and I called again for good measure: “Filthy black-haired thieves!”

The guards perked up and the crowd closed in, their attention too riveted on the two men to notice that my sister and I were half-elves too. I caught a glimpse of two dark, struggling figures between bright blue and green, and with a satisfied gr
in I ducked down, yanked Shani with me and disappeared down a side street.

It wasn’t until we stopped in a q
uiet alley somewhere and Shani turned her accusing gaze on me that I fully realised what I had just done. Remorse hit immediately, further enforced by her words.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” she hissed, and I lowered my eyes in shame. She waited, but when I offered no explanati
on she continued, “What in Eternity got into you? Yes, they stole our money, but they’ll get executed now, Rin.
Executed.
They were half-elves! How
could
you?”

“We’ll… We’ll spring them out,” I stammered, unable to think of another solution. “They won’t hang them until they have twenty, so we should have time. It’ll be hard, but you’re right, I shouldn’t have done that. I was…” I hesitated, trying to make sense of myself in my mind, and had to admit that I had simply been too annoyed at my instant attraction to the first man to think straight. “I don’t know what
came over me,” I finished, too embarrassed to voice the truth, even to Shani.

She gave me a pensive,
puzzled look. “You mean it? We’ll get them out?” When I nodded she grinned and pulled me into a hug, and I knew I was forgiven. We retreated to a hiding spot and began our preparations for what I knew would be the hardest task of my life so far.

*   *   *   *   *

Whatever thoughts I had had about the difficulty of that night’s rescue mission – and I had not been optimistic – the reality proved three times worse. We had carefully scouted out the local prison and had found it disturbingly well guarded and fortified. It was part of Mazar’s court house and guard station, a large, complex building which would have a labyrinth of rooms and corridors inside. The guards looked alert and well-armed, and neither of us dared to use the seduction trick we often performed on tavern visitors – right now all it was likely to accomplish would be our own arrest to be added to the half-elf tally for execution.

It wasn’t until two measures after sunset that we were finally rewarded with a small
side door which only had one guard. Shani worked her quiet magic, sending him to sleep, and I spent a quarter measure sweating over the lock before it finally succumbed.

Things didn’t improve much after that. There were a lot of doors, most of them locked, and all of them were as hard as the first one. On top of that virtually
every corridor required Shani’s intervention; either an illusion to distract a guard, or another sleep spell to take them out altogether. I avoided her eyes as we worked, unwilling to see my own worry echoed. My lockpicking was getting us in, and her spells were keeping us going, but we were both tiring fast.

It happened when we got to the seventh locked door.
I was tired beyond belief and losing concentration, my fingers almost too slippery to work the delicate lockpicks, but I stubbornly refused to admit defeat. I had just selected a pick and inserted it into the keyhole when the door suddenly opened inward, neatly wrenching the metal tool out of my fingers. Only years of training to be silent while at work stopped me from shrieking, but in that first instant of terror I was convinced that we had been caught and everything had been in vain. Then I looked up, drowned once again in a velvety black gaze, and my heart galloped away in a different kind of panic.

He
stood there, stock still with his own picks still raised, and for several heartbeats his expression held total and utter astonishment, his gaze locked to mine. Then his eyes flickered with something I could not recognise, and he pulled himself together and moulded his face back into its mask of mocking arrogance. Only then could I tear my eyes away to acknowledge his brother behind him. His face too was set in that same expression, but although they looked more alike than even Shani and I ever had, I knew in that instant that I would never mix them up. They were both equally handsome, but that immediate, infuriating tug of attraction only happened when I looked at the thief, not at the other.

“We came to rescue you,
” Shani said softly, breaking the frozen scene. I winced at how loud it sounded, and so did the twin at the back, but the man in front of me curled his lips into a contemptuous smile, never taking his eyes off me.

“Cute, Little Firelocks, but as you can see also wholly unnecessary.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but it was as velvety as his eyes, and I had to suppress a shiver at the unwanted sensations it provoked. I felt stupid for not realising that a master thief – like I had already assessed him to be – would need no
help in escaping from a prison, and inadequate for being dead on my feet after picking only six locks, while he looked as fresh as if he had just emerged from an invigorating bath.

I was still contemplating my own failures when the first twin tapped two fingers against his head in a mocking salute and said, still only just above a whisper, “Well
, ladies, it has been a pleasure, but I’m afraid we cannot stay to chat.” With that he brushed past me, his brother close behind him.

In that instant my temper came flaring back and I yanked my lockpick out of the door before whirling around and grabbing the thief’s arm. “That’s
it?
” I hissed. “We risk our own lives to get you out and that’s
all
you have to say?”

He stopped and turned his head, raising an eyebrow. “I seem to recall it was you who
got us here in the first place?”

I blushed, but stood my ground and did not let go. “I seem to recall it was
you
who broke the thieves’ code and stole my purse,” I snapped.

For a heartbeat I thought that barb had hit home: his expression showed a quick flash of something close to admiration, but then the mask was back and the sneering grin returned. “Oh, you’re a thief? I hadn’t noticed.”

Behind me, Shani sucked in a hissing breath, and my fury tripled. I think I was about to do something supremely stupid when the other twin raised his hand and put it on his brother’s shoulder. “Zash,” was all he said, but that one word held a myriad of messages. Impatience, annoyance, appeasement and a warning – it was all there, and after a breath or two the first twin gave a grudging nod.

“Fine, I suppose I shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered. It appeared that that wa
s all I was going to get though; he smoothly took my hand, pressed a kiss on my fingers and gave a quick, sarcastic bow before turning away and saying, “We still can’t stay to chat though. Really must dash.”

As he darted down the corridor his brother glanced at us and made an almost imperceptible head gesture to follow them. Not that I needed that encouragement; my feet had already started moving, a
nd within two heartbeats Shani and I had caught up with them.

“Wait,” I whispered, once again yanking a dark
sleeve. This time when his head whipped back his eyes showed plain and unchecked fury.