Mantle: The Return of the Sha (24 page)

“I’m not sure,” Lizabet said. “You are so large and so noticeable, that I fear you would be caught.”

For the first time since he entered, Pike smiled. “Miss Lizabet, we Lopers are the heart of the castle, true, but we also know the city. There are ways to move without being seen, and it is my job—my
life
even—to know such things.
Please
let me help you—let me help the queen.”

Lizabet thought for a moment, and then sighed with defeat. She could think of no one else that could help them.

Lizabet looked at Dorian with a questioning look and he only shrugged in reply.

“All right,” she said, “but you must watch out for yourself first, before all else. I cannot bear the thought of your capture as a result of helping us. You would be locked up by the guard, for sure.”

Pike’s smile filled his face.

The plan had been simple enough, they thought. Dorian would lay a short fuse leading to an oil pot just behind the Emm’s powder shed. Pike would then arrive later in the night to light the fuse, and when the Emm’s fire powder lit, Lizabet and Dorian would head off to the east on horses that they will have
borrowed
from the stables.

They had decided to use the Time Bells to signal when the operation would begin. The Time Bells were struck every six hours in order to give Fories an accurate time for turning hour glasses. Some hour glasses ran for twelve hours, but most ran at six-hour intervals. The bells were struck so that everyone ran on the same time.

The striking of the bell at midnight would serve as the signal for Pike to set the shed ablaze. When they discussed the plans in the abandoned area of the castle, Pike had looked visibly shaken each time the conversation came around to his part. Both Lizabet and Dorian could easily see that he was frightened, but when Lizabet had offered to free him from the task, he only insisted that he should help. He felt guilty, and no amount of fear would prevent him from making things right in his own heart, even if that meant putting himself in danger.

Putting those feelings into action was not easy for him. After all, Lopers were notoriously sensitive—most would say cowards. But that way of thinking about the Lopers wasn’t entirely fair. Their reputation for being
soft
preceded them, so they were never put in positions that would test their bravery. It was Pike’s curiosity that had brought his test of courage directly to him, and now he felt he must play it out to the end.

****

When Pike saw that the glass was nearing midnight, he quietly left the bunk house that he shared with his brothers and sisters, and made his way to the far side of the city where the Emm’s powder shed stood. He carried an unlit torch, which he would use later in his task, and wore a hooded cloak that offered him peace of mind more than disguise. Standing eight feet tall, it would be obvious to anyone that he was a Loper. Even though they might not know it was him personally, identifying
any
Loper as the perpetrator of the crime would be just as damaging.

He walked toward the shed, and when it came into view, he stepped into the empty narrow space between two large buildings. The alley was solid darkness and his gray skin did its part to camouflage him from anyone walking nearby. Hiding in the shadows was the one aspect of the mission that he had already practiced.

He stood for what seemed to him like a long time, watching the shed with anticipation. The street that he looked onto was empty of people other than the occasional passerby making their way home, no doubt.

As he stood draped in darkness, he was washed over by both dread and eager anticipation.

****

Lizabet and Dorian left the castle earlier than Pike. They had decided not to take horses from the Bannister stables, but instead they would borrow them from the Obengaard stables along the edge of the city. The Obengaard stables were vast, and they could easily sneak into them unnoticed.

When they arrived at the gates of the stables, they could see through the dim light inside silhouettes of guards walking down the rows of horses, occasionally crossing the aisles. They thought themselves lucky, though, that there were fewer guards on duty than they had expected.

Dorian entered first, turning the corner into the darkness. Lizabet followed, and they made their way to an aisle of horse stalls where it seemed darker.

They had both visited the Bannister stables on many occasions, where horses were kept for the king, his advisers, and other officials, but neither of them had ever been inside the Obengaard stables. In the Bannister stables, the horses were tended by individual stable boys, but in the Obengaard stables, there wasn’t such personalized service.

They noticed that on each of the stalls hung the accompanying tack and saddle. These stables kept horses for the Royal Guard (the horses used by the armies were kept elsewhere), and it seemed each man had his own preference of tack and saddle. Both of them thought that the only way to acquire better luck would be if the horses saddled themselves.

They chose the two horses closest to the door that they would leave by. They were two beautiful horses, one brown with white markings and the other white with small light gray marking. Dorian took the bridle from the hook in front of the brown horse and slipped it over his head, carefully adjusting it while stroking the horse on the side of its face below the ear. He didn’t want the horse to start any conversations, so he whispered Animal-speak into its ear.

We would ask your help in finding the queen. Will you help us?

The horse jerked its head up and down.

Yes.

When he had the bridle placed over his horse, he repeated the same question to Lizabet’s horse. She did not have the gift of Animal-speak, so she waited until Dorian had asked the question before placing her bridle. She knew that such things must be agreed to by the horses or they would not cooperate.

Once everything had been settled, they finished saddling the horses and led them by the reins to the door that they would go through. When they reached the door, Dorian opened it slightly to get a view of the street. He saw two guards who had obviously just recently passed the door and were walking away from them. Dorian supposed that they were off duty.

As he was waiting for the men to add distance between them, he heard a scuffle from behind. When he turned around, he saw that the horses had their ears laid back as if they were anxious. His brown horse stomped its foot once and Dorian knew that a guard from inside the stables was approaching. They must make their move now if ever.

He took one more look to the cobbled street, then slid the door open and walked with his horse out into the street. Lizabet followed behind and they immediately mounted their horses and rode down the street toward the east gate.

When they arrived within sight of the gate, they stopped and held back just out of sight. They counted three guards on the ground and saw several on top of the wall. All hope was centered on Pike and they now counted on his distraction to take the guards away from the area and toward the exploding shed.

****

The streets were not cobbled in the part of the city where Pike now stood, and walking on dirt meant that his long and heavy strides would not make so much noise. That also meant, however, that he might not hear someone approaching until it was too late.

Once the Time Bells finally rang, he took a deep breath and stepped from the darkness and into the street. He turned away from the direction of the shed and backtracked to the nearest burning lamp. Once his torch was lit, he hurried to the shed. It took almost no time, given his long strides.

When he reached the shed, his breath was taken from him for a moment and simple urgency was replaced by panic. He didn’t find the fuse leading to the bowl of oil as he had expected. Dorian was to have laid it out for him—they had gone over it many times. Now he stood with his heart racing.

As he frantically searched the side and back of the Emm’s shed, he realized that of all the times they had gone over the plan they had never said which side of the shed the fuse would be hidden. It made sense that Dorian would have come from the castle from a different direction.

He quickly walked around to the other side of the shed and easily found the fuse laying along the side of the shed’s wall. It ran along the side until it disappeared into the darkness at the back of the building.

He was just about to drop his torch onto the fuse when he heard someone behind him.

“What are you doing there, Loper?”

It was a guard who had undoubtedly noticed him lurking in the shadows, examining the soil around the Emm’s powder shed. Pike straightened his posture and turned around to find the guard standing across the street, a good distance from him.

“I’m doing nothing, sir,” Pike responded. He felt himself shaking and hoped that the man would not notice.

“Nothing, you say? Doesn’t look like nothing, Loper,” the guard said with a voice of authority.

Pike stood frozen, not knowing what to do, until suddenly it came to him. He took one slow step backward until he thought he was standing just over the place where the fuse lay. As the guard started walking quickly toward him, he dropped the torch.

It was then that the guard began running toward him. In the silence of the late hour, he could hear the distinct sound of flames chewing through fuse.

****

Dorian and Lizabet had begun to worry that things had gone wrong when the bell rang and minutes passed with no fire to be seen—no explosion. They anxiously waited, sure that Pike had been caught, or simply lost his nerve. They didn’t think the latter, because he had been so determined. But they had no way of knowing.

Just when they had begun to give up hope, they saw the explosion before they heard it. It lit up the sky in a bright white flash before the sky fell into a dark orange. Then the sounds of booms and fizzes filled the air. Some fireworks that had already been crafted, and apparently stored in the shed, shot into the distant sky at all different angles.

To Lizabet and Dorian, it sounded like the whole city was exploding. They knew it wasn’t, though. They knew exactly what it was, but it was more than they had expected. When they had planned for the diversion, they had assumed that the Emm would have no reason to keep large quantities of fire powder in his private shed. They hoped that the fire wouldn’t spread, but they didn’t have time to concern themselves with that now.

The guards on the ground ran toward the fire, and the guards on top of the wall began running in the same direction. The gate now stood across the Eastern Courtyard from them, empty and watched by no one. The diversion had worked.

Once they were sure that the guards were well on their way, Dorian and Lizabet rode to the gate in a quick trot. Dorian jumped from his horse when they came to the gate, and quickly pulled the lever to drop the weight that would pull the gate open.

The deep grinding sound of the gate as it opened was drowned out by the booming of the powder shed in the distance. Lizabet thought that the explosions were beginning to subside, but couldn’t be sure.

When the gate was opened wide enough, they rode through and set their horses into a full run—to the east, away from home and into danger.

****

Once Pike had dropped the torch, he heard the fuse the same as the guard did, and when he looked into the guard’s face in the seconds before he began to run, he saw comprehension—and panic. The guard abruptly stopped running toward him and, at the same time, Pike began running in the opposite direction, away from the guard and the shed.

As a Loper, Pike’s legs were long enough that only a few strides put him a good distance from the shed, but it wasn’t quite far enough. He felt the explosion hit him from behind. A piercing pain ran through his right shoulder and then quickly subsided. The shock of the explosion and his precarious situation thankfully numbed any pain—for the time being anyway. When he turned back, he saw that the explosion was throwing flames between him and the guard, blocking his view of him. But that was of no comfort when, between booms of exploding powder kegs, he could now make out the sounds of guards running directly toward him.

Although he had planned to return to his family in their quarters after he had completed his task, he now found himself unable to return. He had been found out, and would be reported for his crimes. And since Forris was now at war, his charges might include treason. He had considered the possibility of being caught, but he had not brought the subject up with Lizabet and Dorian for fear that Lizabet would change her mind about letting him help.

Now he had no choice but to initiate the plan that he had constructed in case he was found out. It wasn’t an elaborate plan and it would not address what he should do in the long run, but it would get him out of the city, nevertheless. He quickly turned right, running between two buildings until he reached the city wall. He then turned left along the wall until he found what he was looking for—a Loper Door. A Loper Door consisted of two large iron rings bolted to a large iron crossbar. The side of the door inside the city walls would open to a second door halfway through the wall. The second door provided enforcement against entry from outside the city.