Chapter Twelve
The crowds in the high street were shoulder to shoulder. No one was moving, despite the influx of refugees, and now that the gates were shut there was nowhere for anyone to go. The businesses that lined the street were shut, their doors locked and shutters drawn. An impromptu barricade cut off the far end of the street, protecting the city core from the influx of recent arrivals, as well as preparing a second line of defense, should the walls of the Bastion succumb to Chaos.
“Lotta folks are going to die out there,” La said glumly. “Killed by Dwehlling’s brutes, if not by the demons.”
“Not our problem,” Mahk said. “Long as those walls hold, we’re as safe as can be.”
“But they can’t just leave them out there!” La insisted. “Surely the justicars will—”
“Justicars will do what’s in their interest: protect the Bastion, and beg for relief from Fulcrum. And you can bet the passenger manifests of any windship making it out are going to go in order of wealth.” Mahk cracked his knuckles and looked around the crowded street. “They’ll keep us penned in here until the rich scrubs are out and then, maybe, they’ll drop those barricades. But not a second earlier.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” La said.
“Fair’s nothing to do with it.”
“Guys, shut up,” Rae said, finally recovering his voice. “He’s here. The killer’s here.”
They both snapped to attention. Mahk began scanning the crowd while Lalette stared at her brother.
“What do you mean, he’s here? You saw him?” she asked.
“On the ramparts,” Rae said, nodding. “He’s the one who let us in.”
“You’re sure? Because it could have been—”
“It was him,” Rae insisted. “Unless there are two high mages walking around in identical isolation suits.”
“A high mage?” one of the other refugees said. She turned to her husband, embracing him. “Praise Order! I knew Fulcrum wouldn’t abandon us!”
Rae ignored her. “We can’t stay here. We’re sitting ducks in this crowd.”
“Not like we’re going back over that wall,” Mahk said. “Even if we wanted to, they’re not opening the gate for anyone.” An enfilade of musket fire from above emphasized his point. The Bastion’s defenders were engaging the mob from Dwehlling. “Especially now.”
A bell rang hollow through the air, followed by scattered screams from outside. Rae stared in wonder at a column of dust rising up from outside the wall. It took him a long moment to realize what he was seeing. Cannon fire from the Dwehlling crowd, ringing against the Bastion’s steel walls.
“What the hell are they thinking?” Rae snapped. “If they rupture the wards, the Bastion won’t do anyone any good! We’ll all die!”
Another shot whizzed overhead. It nearly clipped the spinning sigils of the Order ward as it sailed past. The shot landed somewhere in the city core, crashing through brick and wood and sending a plume of debris into the air. Somewhere, a siren started to sound.
“That’s exactly what they’re thinking,” La said. “Demonstrating their ability to ruin the Bastion if they’re not let inside.”
“But that’s madness!”
“Madness and desperation are close friends,” Mahk said. “We have to do something quick. If that high mage is in here, it won’t matter if all the guns in Dwehlling come through that gate within the hour.”
“Maybe we push through the barricade? It’s not going to take much to panic this crowd, and if we . . . La?” Rae craned his neck to try to get a look at his sister, and saw her disappear through the crowd. “La, where are you going?”
“To solve our problem!” she called back. “Stay close.”
“Easy to say, hard to do,” Mahk answered. He put an arm around Rae and started muscling his way through the crowd. This earned them a lot of hard stares and mumbled complaints, but one look at Mahk silenced most of them. For once, Rae was glad to be on this side of Mahk’s intimidating looks.
By the time they caught up with Lalette, she was bent over the locked door of a ceramics shop. The shop’s windows were shuttered tight. Lalette peered into the gold-trimmed keyhole, tongue stuck out in concentration.
“Hoping to win a staring contest with the tumblers?” Rae asked. Mahk shouldered aside a farmer who was leaning against the door, then put a massive hand on the frame.
“I could probably break this,” he said. “Take a few tries. Someone might notice.”
“Someone most definitely would notice,” La said. She fished in her belt and produced a pick and some wire. “Give me some cover, will you?”
“Hey, you can’t go in there,” the farmer said. “Don’t make me call the guards!”
Mahk straightened up and punched the man full in the chin, almost casually. The farmer went down like a toppled chimney. The surrounding refugees panicked, stuck between holding the man up and trying to get away from Mahk.
“That’s not what I meant!” La yelled. “Ah! Boys!”
“You do crime your way, I’ll do it mine,” Mahk said. “Though it’s nice to see the lady has a devious bent to her. I was beginning to think Raelle here was the tricky one.”
The crowd shoved against them, only to break against Mahk’s chest. Rae shielded his sister, bracing himself against the doorframe as she worked the pick.
“This needs to happen fast, La!” Rae shouted. “Sure as hell we’ve drawn unwanted attention by now.”
“Only . . . attention . . . that matters is . . .” La held her breath for a long second as she explored the lock’s innards. There was a satisfying click. She tried the handle, but it didn’t budge, drawing a look of frustration across her face. “Is our friend the high mage. I can’t figure out why that didn’t open.”
“Are we back to—” Mahk paused to shove a pair of farmboys back into the crowd. “Are we back to breaking open doors?”
“No, no, there must be some trick to it.” La tapped at the lock again, feeling around with the delicate pick, rolling the wire across the tumblers. “It should be open.”
Rae flinched, feeling the rumble of drawn spirits thrum through his soul. Looking around, he caught sight of spiritbinders on the ramparts, pulling their elementals into the mundane world. Their blades were sharp lines of light against the stormy sky, humming with the gathered power of the arcane realms. A column of smoke wrapped around one of them, laced with cinder and spitting flames. With the storm mote humming through his soul, Rae was able to see the connections between ’binder and spirit, the fetters that bound them together, and the fissures that tore open as the infernal entered the material plane. The sight of it burned his eyes. Rae tore his gaze away, blinking to clear his vision. The bronze face of the high mage was the first thing he saw clearly. Their parents’ murderer was on the far edge of the crowd, searching for them. Rae ducked.
“No time!” Rae shouted. “He’s reached the street. We need to go right now!”
“I almost . . . almost . . .” La muttered.
His eyes still twined with the spiritual plane, Rae was able to see something in the lock, hidden from mundane eyes. Overlaying the brass tumblers was another lock, drawn in light and shimmering through the steel.
“It’s spiritlocked,” Rae said. “Move over.”
La slid to the side, giving Rae access to the lock. He pressed his palm flat against the keyhole and drew the mote of storm from his soul. A spiritlock was one of the more commonplace uses of spiritbinding. A portion of the lock was anchored to one of the other planes, requiring a key that was also attuned to that plane to open it. While Rae didn’t have the attuned key, he did have an elemental, letting him reach through the material plane and manipulate the lock directly. Or at least, that’s what he hoped.
Rae could feel the spiritlocked tumblers sliding under the attention of his elemental. They must have been locked to the plane of Earth, because his storm mote couldn’t quite interact with them. There were moments of hope, followed by moments of frustration, all while the crowd around them got rowdier, and the masked high mage drew closer. He had to hurry. But how? He was barely a spiritbinder at all. How was he supposed to manage this?
The storm mote whined and buzzed inside the lock. Sparks flew from the metal, charring the wooden door and sending La rocking back on her heels. The smell of burning wood filled Rae’s nose. Strange that I don’t feel that, he thought, as the electricity played across his fingers. One more mystery, I suppose.
As the storm mote poured out of him, Rae felt another thread teasing free from his soul. It was the same feeling he had when his sister had saved him in Dwehlling, when the soulslave had attacked him. This time, instead of shying away from the outpouring of power, Rae leaned into it. The spiritlock solidified under his hands. He felt the tumblers grow cold, until he was sure they would burn his fingers, but slowly, slowly, he was able to manipulate them. One by one they clicked into place. He turned and nodded to his sister. La tried the door again. It opened.
He and Lalette tumbled through the open door. Rae wasn’t aware he had been leaning so heavily on the door until it was gone. They fell face-first into the foyer of the ceramic shop. Mahk reacted quickly, backing into the store and slamming the door shut. There was a loud banging sound from outside, as the agitated crowd tried to follow them in, but Rae heard the sound of the lock clicking shut once again, and somehow felt the spiritbound tumblers slide home.
“Well, then,” Mahk said. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Rae sat up. With the door closed and the windows shuttered, there was very little light in the room. His eyes were still entwined with the spirit world, so he saw something, but he couldn’t really tell what it was. Drifting lines of smoke and glowing light wafted like incense through the room, swirling toward the spinning wards on the wall above. He blinked and the lines disappeared, plunging him into darkness. All that he could see was the bare outline of a door at the back of the shop, illuminated from beyond.
“Hold still,” Rae said. “I can see some light in the back of the room. I’m going to try to find the door.”
“Best hurry,” Mahk whispered. “That lot wants us pretty bad.”
The pounding on the outer door was getting worse. A gong resounded through the air, shaking the shutters and sending the counter ashiver. Ceramic goods clattered around them. The cannon, again. The people of Dwehlling were determined.
Rae slid along the counter, feeling his way step by step, until he reached a hinged swing-top in the surface. He lifted it and stepped behind the counter. Unfortunately, the swing-top wasn’t clear. Rae heard something slide down the counter, bounce, and hit the floor with a tremendous crash. He froze in place.
“Who is that?” The voice came from the back of the shop. Before Rae could answer, the door he had been trying to work toward swung open. A burly man entered the room, carrying a lantern in one hand and a cudgel in the other. He took one look at Rae and scowled. “Not enough going on without thieves taking advantage? You should be ashamed!”
“I’m not thieving!” Rae said. “We just need to get through.”
“Bloody likely,” the proprietor answered, and stepped forward, cudgel raised.
Mahk barreled past Rae, grabbing the cudgel and snatching it from the man’s hand. He was about to follow up with a heavy punch to the shopkeep’s gut when La vaulted the counter and got between them.
“There’s been enough of that, Mahk,” she snapped. “If you’re going to stay with us, you’re going to have to stop punching everyone you meet.”
“If I’m going to stay with you?” Mahk answered, wonder in his voice. “I thought you were following me around?”
“If we were, then we’d all be stuck outside still, mixing it up with the locals.” La put a hand on Mahk’s drawn fist and slowly eased it back to his waist. “Now, enough talk. We have to keep moving.”
The storage room backed onto an alleyway that ran perpendicular to the outer wall of the Bastion. The trio piled into the narrow space and slammed the door.
“Again, I think that went a lot smoother than it could have,” Rae said.
“No thanks to you. What did you do to that lock?” La asked.
“Not sure. Opened it. I swear, this isn’t half as hard as Dad made it out to be,” Rae said. “I’m starting to think I just have a natural talent for this stuff.”
“Natural talent for breaking things,” Mahk muttered. “Where now?”
Lalette looked down the length of the alleyway. The sound of fighting filled the air, along with the stink of burning firelocks, and the hiss of cannonballs passing overhead.
“Away from the wall,” she said. They agreed, and hurried down the alley, Mahk in the lead, with La behind and Rae bringing up the rear. The sound of chanting crowds was growing louder, though whether that was people trapped outside trying to get in, or the mob stuck just inside the gates, trying to get out, it was impossible to tell.
As they reached the next intersection, Rae ventured a glance back, to see if the shopkeep was following them. The alley stretched behind him in deep shadows, hidden from the sun and drenched in centuries of murk and gloom. He could have sworn he saw a figure moving through the shadows, dressed in grays and blacks, but when he blinked the image was gone. It could have been anything. It could have been nothing.
“Rae, quit dawdling!” La shouted. He turned and saw that they had moved a considerable distance away, as though he had been standing and staring for several minutes. He glanced back, and a shiver of cold air went through his bones.
He turned and ran after his sister and their lumbering companion. Behind him, the shadows moved, like waves on the surface of a lake, disturbed by the passage of something large and silent in the depths.