Found (15 page)
Authors: Sarah Prineas
T
he guards took me to their commons room. One of them jerked my hands behind my back while the other fetched manacles, then put them on my wrists. Then they shoved me down on a bench to wait.
I sat, my thoughts whirling. This couldn’t happen. Rowan had told me about the order of execution, but I hadn’t believed they’d actually
do
it. I had to do something. I jumped to my feet, and the guard shoved me down again.
I gulped down a sudden surge of fright. Benet had tried to get me out of the hearing room. Where was Nevery? In a cell, or escaped into the city, hiding?
They were being stupid! If they hanged me, how would Wellmet defend itself against Arhionvar?
The door opened, and Kerrn strode in but didn’t look at me.
“You can’t do this, Kerrn,” I said, getting to my feet.
The guard shoved me down onto the bench.
“They are ready,” Kerrn said to the guard.
Rowan. She could help me. “Kerrn, can I talk to the duchess?” Once she heard about the dragons and Arhionvar, and Rowan told her I was telling the truth, she’d have to change her mind about the execution.
“The duchess is too ill to see anyone,” Kerrn said, still not looking at me.
Oh. So that’s where Rowan was.
“Now,” Kerrn ordered.
The guards hauled me to my feet and, pulling on my arms, dragged me out the door, through the hallways of the palace, and out to the wide front steps.
In the middle of the Dawn Palace courtyard a gallows tree had been built out of wood, a high platform with steps leading up and a noose hanging down from a beam.
They must’ve been working on it all night. The hearing hadn’t been a hearing at all; they’d already decided what they were going to do with me.
A crowd had gathered, thousands of people turning to stare as they saw the guards, with me, coming out of the Dawn Palace. More guards surrounded us and I was pulled down the stairs. They pushed through the silent crowd to the steps leading up to the gallows.
Nimble was there. “Has he been searched?” he asked, looking me over.
“Yes, he has,” Kerrn said shortly, from behind me.
No I hadn’t. I glanced quickly at her as she stepped up beside me, but her face stayed blank, like chiseled stone.
“Very well,” Nimble said, adjusting the cuffs of his robe. “Take him up.”
The two guards took me by the arms and, with another guard following, marched me up the wooden steps to the platform where the noose was hanging, with a wooden box below it for standing on.
At the top of the stairs I stopped, and the guards dragged me to the box and lifted me onto it. I tried to climb down, and the guards stepped to the side and held my arms so I couldn’t move.
As I struggled against their holding hands, the third guard reached up and grabbed the thick-roped noose. “Lift your chin,” he said. The two guards kept their grip on my arms.
I put my chin down.
One of the guards grabbed my hair and jerked my head up. I saw the sky, white and blank as a piece of paper, with smudges of cloud ink on it. Then the rope came down over my head, resting heavy around my neck.
I caught my breath and scanned the courtyard. The air was cold. I’d been away so long, winter had settled in over the city. Frost lined the black branches of the trees near the front gates of the Dawn Palace. A cluster of black birds sat in the trees and perched on the iron spikes on the walls around the courtyard, looking cold and bedraggled.
My locus stone called with a low thrumming in my bones; Pip wasn’t far away. Maybe the dragon was hiding in a tree with the birds.
I heard footsteps on the wooden stairs, and Kerrn, holding a folded piece of paper, joined us on the platform. “Get on with it,” she said gruffly.
The guard snugged the thick-roped noose ’round my neck, turning the knot so it rested just below my ear. The guards let go of my arms and stepped away.
I looked out over the crowd filling the courtyard. The people stood silently, watching. A group of scowling minions stood at the back. Along the front, sitting in a row of comfortable chairs, were the magisters and the duchess’s council, but no Rowan, that I could see. At the edge of the crowd I saw a gutterboy waiting for his chance to pick a pocket. If he was smart, he’d wait until the guards pulled away the box I was standing on and people were distracted.
My breath came short. This was happening too fast. They weren’t really going to do it, were they? Nevery would be furious if I let them hang me.
Kerrn stepped up to the front of the gallows platform and unfolded the list of my crimes; the crackle of the paper sounded loud in the silence. She started to read the words.
She hadn’t searched me for lockpick wires. She had to know I had them on me. Twice before I’d used lockpicks to escape from the jail cells below the Dawn Palace. If I got the manacles off, I might be able to get down from the gallows and escape into the crowd.
It was a chance. Carefully, trying not to jingle the manacles, I felt up my shirt sleeve for the lockpick wire sewn into the seam.
“…and for willful flaunting of the city’s laws proscribing the deployment of pyrotechnic magic…,” Kerrn’s flat voice said.
I pulled at the lockpick wire, the stitches holding it in place gave way, and it dropped into my hand, a thin strip of metal. The manacles were made with a simple twist plunger lock. With my fingers I bent the wire into the right shape.
“…and wanton destruction of property both private and public…,” Kerrn went on, her voice starting to shake, still reading my list of crimes. But she was reading very slowly, giving me time.
I gripped the lockpick wire.
Quick hands.
Steady hands.
With the wire, I probed the lock. There, the plunger. I slotted the wire into place and gripped it tightly to flick it open.
As I turned the wire, a sudden cold weight settled into me. My fingers slowed, stiffened. The lockpick wire dropped from the lock, falling to the box I was standing on.
I gasped. At the sound, Kerrn whirled around, then glanced down to see the lockpick wire at my feet. She muttered a curse under her breath.
“Kerrn, it’s here,” I whispered.
She stared at me, her hand on her sword.
“Captain, you must proceed,” Nimble called from the row of chairs in front of the gallows.
I looked up at the sky. It was flatter and whiter than before, like the lid of a pot pressing down. The air was completely still. I turned to Kerrn, my heart pounding. “Arhionvar is here,” I said, louder this time.
Kerrn stood still as stone, her mouth half open, about to give the order. A guard bent down and took the corners of the box, ready to pull it away. The rope wrapped tight ’round my neck like a snake.
Kerrn raised her hand. The guard paused.
Way off in the distance I heard a faint roaring sound. A wind coming.
Kerrn cocked her head, listening.
The roaring got louder. The banners on the corners of the Dawn Palace started flapping, flowing in the wind like slithering snakes. The tops of the trees outside the gate stirred. In the crowd, people looked up, or off to the east where the roaring sound was coming from. A few hats blew off in the growing wind.
“Hang him, Captain!” Nimble shrieked from the row of chairs.
Kerrn pointed at the guardsman. “Do not touch that box.”
“Yes, Captain,” the guard said.
In the crowd, somebody screamed. I heard another scream that came from the front of the Dawn Palace; it sounded like Rowan. A prickle of dread ran up my neck like cold fingers.
From where I was standing, I had the best view.
Behind the Dawn Palace, a wall of roiling black clouds, surging, flashing with lightning, boiled up out of the east. The wind rose, whistling through the spires on the Dawn Palace roof.
The whirl of wind and cloud widened along the eastern edge of the city; the air darkened. Nimble, his robe flapping in the wind, stepped up the gallows stairs.
I felt a tug at my hands. I looked over my shoulder.
Kerrn, putting the key into the manacles.
“Hurry,” I said.
She gave a quick nod.
The black clouds rose higher, looming over the city, cresting, about to break, to drown us all. Then it did crest, and a black wave of dread crashed down, washing through the courtyard. People screamed and started to flee. At the base of the gallows, the magisters cowered and clung to their locus stones. They didn’t know any spells that could stop Arhionvar. The dread gripped me
so tightly that I couldn’t move.
It was too late. We weren’t ready. The city would be lost.
Then the Wellmet magic fought back. From the direction of the Twilight a burst of sparkling starlight and blackest night fountained up from the Dusk House pit, surging across the river, arcing across the white sky in bolts of silver and midnight to crash against the boiling clouds of Arhionvar. The dread magic flinched back. Thunder rolled out, shaking the ground.
The manacles dropped to the floor. I reached up, trying to get the noose off my neck. Too tight. “I can’t get the—”
Kerrn pushed my hands out of the way and loosened the knot, then jerked the rope over my head. “Go!” she shouted.
I jumped off the box, my legs shaky.
Nimble reached the top of the stairs. “Captain Kerrn!” he panted, pointing at me.
Kerrn drew her sword. “Go!” she said to me
again, and she swung the sword around until it was pointing at Nimble’s chest. “You fool!” she shouted at him. “Do you not see he was right? The dread magic has come. You are a wizard! Do your duty!”
I stumbled, then ducked past Nimble and darted down the stairs. People were still running out of the courtyard. The wind howled. Dread pressed down from overhead. I joined the crowds, fleeing as a blanket of blackest night and dread fell over the city.
Rowan Forestal
I stepped out of my mother’s room for a breath of air. Two guards were there, and Argent, who looked frightened. The guards wouldn’t let him in, he said. He told me Conn had been put on trial for returning from exile and sentenced to death by hanging, and that the sentence was being carried out right then.
They’d acted too fast—I wasn’t ready.
I dashed to my room to get my sword, then ran through the palace to the front doors. When I got there, I saw, over the heads of the crowd, Conn on the gallows, facing away from me. They’d stood him on a box and put a noose around his neck. He was standing very straight and still, and he looked so alone. I screamed at Captain Kerrn to stop—she was too far away to hear—and started pushing my way through the crowd. I had my sword; if a guard had tried to stop me I would have killed him. I feared I would be too late.
Then Arhionvar arrived. I tried to get back into
the Dawn Palace to save my mother, but Argent grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and we were caught up in the fleeing crowds. The city’s magisters were fleeing with them.
I must find Magister Nevery, and find out whether my mother is still in the Dawn Palace, and I must be sure Conn got down safely from the gallows.
T
he darkness of Arhionvar’s arrival in the city lasted all the rest of the day and into a heavy, black night without stars or moon. The magics battled at the edge of the river, Arhionvar pushing into the Twilight, the Wellmet magic surging up to push it back over the Sunrise,
but not strong enough to push it out of the city altogether.
As night fell, Arhionvar attacked with tendrils of blackest dread that snaked up the Twilight streets, and with fiery rocks that smashed down out of the sky and burned whatever they touched. From outside I heard people screaming, and the howling of wind, and deep rolls of thunder.
I crouched against a wall in a cellar in the Twilight, the cold dread of Arhionvar pressing down on me. The other wizards of the city must feel it, too. No wonder the magisters had run away; they hadn’t believed this kind of magic was real. Arhionvar was searching for me. It wanted to use me, as it’d used Jaggus, the sorcerer-king, to finish taking over the city.
During the darkest part of the night, I heard a
tk-tk-tk
on the stone stairs leading down into the cellar. Pip. As the dragon got closer, I felt better, stronger.
“
Lothfalas
,” I whispered. My voice sounded hoarse and thin.
At the bottom of the stairs a soft greeny-gold
light glowed—my locus magicalicus inside Pip—and then Pip opened its mouth and breathed out green sparks that spun in a tiny whirlwind up to the low ceiling.
I caught my breath. Near the floor, easing away from Pip’s light, hung a snarl of misery eels, twining around each other like ribbons of black smoke. They faded back into a dark corner, not moving. Waiting.
I shivered. If I’d fallen asleep, the misery eels would’ve had me.
Pip eyed the corner full of eels like a cat eyeing a mouse. Its tail twitched. It crouched, then, breathing out another puff of sparks, it leaped into the middle of the nest of eels. They scattered from Pip, flowing up the walls, oozing into cracks and corners. Pip scrabbled after one of them, crawling straight up the wall, trapping the eel in a corner, where it thrashed. Pip crept closer.
The light was getting dim. “
Lothfalas
,” I said again.
Breathing out light, Pip leaped. A spark caught.
Flaming, the misery eel fell from the corner to the floor, twisting and fizzling like a bit of paper flaring up, then burning down to a blackened strip of ash.
Pip hopped down from the corner and stalked along the wall. Looking for more eels, I guessed.
“Thanks, Pip,” I said.
It ignored me. After a while it flew up the stairs, away.
I closed my eyes and tried not to feel the heavy dread of Arhionvar or the empty echo of my stomach, and waited for morning.
After a long time, the sound of the wind died, the dread lifted, and gray light seeped into the cellar.
The coming of the light meant that it was time to do something. I uncurled myself from my dark corner. My stomach growled.
I climbed out of the cellar, blinking at the light. I was in an alley off of a street called Needles and Pins in the Deeps, the part of the Twilight not far from the mudflats. Pip was somewhere nearby, tied
to me by the string of my locus magicalicus.
I went to the end of the alley and peered out from the shadows. Needles and Pins Street led uphill from the Night Bridge, and it was more crowded than usual, people walking in groups of two and three, leading crying children, carrying sacks and packing cases, and throwing frightened looks over their shoulders.
Overhead, the sky was flat white, as it’d been the day before, and the air was cold. I looked toward the east and saw a line in the sky where a black bank of clouds hung over the Sunrise, ending just at the edge of the river. Arhionvar. Wellmet had fought off the dread magic, but Arhionvar was gathering its strength. It’d go back on the attack as soon as night fell. Then it’d come for me. It needed a wizard, and it wanted me because I had a connection to the Wellmet magic, and it could use me to do even worse things to the city.
I looked toward the north, where the factories lined the river. No clouds of sooty smoke; the
factories were closed. Bricks and shards of glass and broken shutters, torn off houses by the wind during the night, were scattered in the street. A pale sun hung behind the clouds, shedding a greenish-gray light. The air was still, no wind, but it tingled like a storm about to break.
Right. I had a locus magicalicus and I knew where the Wellmet magic was, gathering its strength, I hoped. I’d been needing to talk to the magic since the very first time I’d done a pyrotechnic experiment, and now I could. I headed up the hill, toward the Dusk House pit.
I paused in an alley, looking out at Sark Square. Here the crowds were thicker. People were filling the square; they’d fled with everything they could carry on their backs, or stuff into a carriage, or pay a drover with a wagon to carry for them. Sunrise people. Most of them had never been to the Twilight before. The Twilight people stood in doorways or, like me, lurked in alleyways, watching them come.
I wasn’t sure what the Twilight people would do. If I’d still been a gutterboy, I might’ve been working the crowds, picking pockets or stealing things off the back of a wagon to sell to a swagshop. But the city was under attack, and the Sunrise people needed help, not thievery.
I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white slinking into an alleyway. I followed.
There, hovering in the shadows beside a pile of rags and garbage. A cat, sleek and white, with a flat head and raked-back, sharp ears. Seeing me, it crouched, its tail lashing, and snarled.
Predator-cat. I’d seen a cat like that one before. The sorcerer-king had kept one as a pet. It was a watcher for Arhionvar, just like the black birds were for the Wellmet magic.
With a screech, a black bird plunged out of the sky, landing on the cat. It hissed and swiped a needle-clawed paw at the bird, which fluttered, pecking at the cat’s narrow eyes.
I could help; I knew a flame spell from the book Nevery’d given me. Pip—I needed Pip. I glanced wildly around and caught a glimpse of greeny-gold wings, Pip flying up to perch on the edge of a roof.
As I opened my mouth to call Pip, a heavy hand came down on my shoulder and spun me around. The minion Fist.
Drats. I didn’t have time for threats and sacks over my head.
“Little blackbird,” Fist said. His partner, Hand, loomed up behind him.
“Fist, I have to get to the pit where Dusk House used to be,” I said. And get that cat away from the bird.
“You have to get where we’re taking you, is what,” Fist said, grabbing me by the scruff of my neck.
The black bird and the white cat were still fighting when they dragged me away.