The Gods of Amyrantha (63 page)

His forbearance had bought a meeting with the Patriarch without being beaten to a pulp first.

Under the Patriarch's sharp and probing interrogation, Declan quite openly admitted Dodgy had been arrested to get the old man's attention. He also explained that Stellan Desean would never be free if anybody thought he lived. Therefore, he had to die.

A fire at the prison which left unidentifiable remains would do the trick. Dodgy Peet would be free (Declan had arranged a pardon in advance, forging the king's signature on the document with no qualms whatsoever), and everyone would believe the former duke was no more.

The Patriarch had seemed rather taken with the idea. Not only would burning down Herino Prison free his nephew, but a great many other members of his fraternity, too, not to mention slowing down the whole process of incarcerating his colleagues in the first place.

A deal had been struck, oaths exchanged, and the details agreed upon days ago.

The Patriarch's men would start a controlled fire, they decided, the only effective way to terrify a well-trained feline into abandoning her post. With the majority of the prison guards in Herino coming from the king's own stables, they had little chance of scaring them off any other way, and no hope of surviving if they tried taking them on directly. While he was freeing

Desean, the Patriarch's men would create a diversion by freeing as many other prisoners as possible.

It was Declan's job to get Desean out and away from the prison. He had plans — which he'd not shared with the Patriarch — to send him to Tilly's house first, and from there arrange to send him to Hidden Valley, once the fuss died down.

With Chikita taking care of his alibi, Declan hurried to the prison to find they'd started without him.

Two streets away Declan realised there was trouble. He could smell the smoke and a crowd had already begun to gather in the streets surrounding the prison. He bullied his way through the throng, only to discover the building well alight by the time he got there.

Declan had been hoping for a bit of confusion to cover his tracks. He was greeted with total chaos. The felines who'd been guarding the gaol were panicked, irrationally afraid of the flames hungrily devouring the wooden structures within the stone prison walls. There was nothing even remotely like an organised evacuation going on, nor had anybody thought to organise a bucket line.

He grabbed the arm of a feline he recognised, wearing a warder's tabard, and a belt on which she carried a truncheon and a large ring of keys. He turned her to face him. The tabby's fur was singed, her eyes wide with fear, her tail standing almost straight up.

'What happened?'

'Some ... some of the prisoners started to riot,' she said. He could feel her trembling beneath his hand. She was barely holding on. 'They set ... set ... fire to the place.'

That wasn't the plan Declan had agreed to, but now was not the time to quibble about it. 'Have the prisoners been freed?'

She shook her head. 'Lockdown ...'

'What?'
Declan demanded, afraid he'd misheard

her.

'When they started to riot ... we locked everyone in their cells ...'

Declan swore viciously and let her go. 'Give me your keys.'

'But...'

'Give me your keys, Sharisha, or go back there and open the cells yourself.'

The feline's fear of fire clearly outweighed her fear of retribution for letting the prisoners escape. She unhooked the ring of keys from her belt; her hands trembling so hard the keys rattled.

She handed them to Declan. 'Our orders ... we're not supposed to let them escape, Master Hawkes,' she reminded him.

'That doesn't include letting men burn to death,' he replied, snatching the keys from her paw. 'Now, instead of just standing about here doing nothing, get a bucket line organised. If this fire spreads, it'll take out half the city.'

The feline glanced up. 'But it should rain again, soon, and —'

'Do it!' Declan yelled in her face, so close he made her jump, and then he turned and ran toward the flaming prison and the broken gate that some of the Herino residents had already battered their way through, in an attempt to free the men trapped inside.

There was even more panic in the courtyard.

Some of the prisoners had been freed and some of the others Declan recognised as the Patriarch's men. One of them, a rangy, red-headed man Declan knew only as Splinter, ran to him as soon as he saw the spymaster, his face sooty, his breathing short and raspy. Smoke trapped in the central courtyard made it hard to make out what was happening, but there were

at least two dead felines Declan could see, men pawing over them to find the keys they carried.

Splinter grinned as he bounded over a burning beam from the gateway. 'Some diversion, huh?'

Declan glared at him. 'You'll kill every man here and burn half the city at this rate, you flanking fools.'

Splinter shrugged. 'Just so long as it's the high-born half, what do I care? The Patriarch said you know where they're keeping Dodgy?'

Declan nodded and coughed, squinting through the smoke. He pointed at the north tower, the one closest to the lake. The tower was already well ablaze, the flaming rooftop lighting the night.

Tides,
he thought.
We may already be too late.

'Come with me.'

Declan didn't wait to see if Splinter was following him. He sprinted across the courtyard to the north tower, kicked his way through the narrow door. The fire must have spread to the tower from a stray spark setting the wooden shingles alight, he realised. It was burning from the top down. The lower floors, although choked with acrid smoke, were still relatively free of fire.

He pounded up the wooden stairs, taking them two at a time, the sound of Splinter behind him, his wheezy breath unnaturally loud in the narrow stairwell. Above them they could hear shouting, although it was hard to tell how many men remained trapped in here. It might well be only Stellan Desean and Dodgy Peet, if they were lucky. Stellan was incarcerated in the cell on the fourth floor, in the cell reserved for high-born prisoners, and Dodgy Peet was in the cell directly beneath him on the third floor on Declan's express orders.

A quick glance at the cells on the second floor had Declan cursing. There were three men locked in them and a very nervous ginger feline pacing in front of the bars, too panicked by the flames to think rationally, or do anything to save either herself or her charges.

'Get out of here!' Declan yelled.

The prisoners began yelling frantically when they spied him. Cursing, Declan shoved the feline aside and ran to the cells, unlocking each cell as he went.

'Go!' he cried, as he released the men. 'Get out!'

He returned to the stairs at a run, following Splinter, who was ahead of him now, up to the next floor. Dodgy Peet was alone in the cells, standing at the bars, a torn piece of his shirt wrapped around his face.

He seemed unsurprised, by either the fire, or that one of his uncle's men had come to rescue him.

'Told you I wouldn't be here long, Hawkes,' he said with a smug look, as Declan unlocked his cell.

'Yeah, you're a regular prophet, Dodgy.' Declan threw the door open, stepped back to let Dodgy out, and then turned to Splinter. 'You right to get him out of here?'

Splinter shrugged and then looked up at the ceiling. Smoke and the occasional lick of flame were already visible through the boards. 'We'll be fine.
You'd
better hurry, though, my friend, or you won't have anything left to rescue up there.'

Declan nodded, and headed back to the stairs. By now the smoke was so thick in the narrow stairwell, he could barely see. Every breath he took was painful. He thought he could hear Desean calling for help, which was a good thing. It meant he was still alive, at least.

The door to the outer room on the fourth floor was already ablaze when Declan reached it. He kicked it clear of the charred doorframe and stepped into an inferno. The floor above was burning fiercely. Like Dodgy on the floor below, Desean had had the wit to cover his face, and he was crouched on the floor to get below the smoke. The metal bars of his cell were glowing red at the top, where they were in contact with the burning ceiling.

There were no felines left guarding him. Declan wasn't surprised. This fire would have been too much for the staunchest creature.

'Hawkes?'
Stellan coughed in surprise, when he looked up and realised rescue was at hand.

Declan didn't waste any precious breath replying. With his eyes watering from the smoke, he ran to the cell door, shoving the key in the lock, hoping the heated bars hadn't melted the locking mechanism. The floor above creaked and groaned alarmingly. His throat was burning from the stinging smoke as he turned the key, which was growing warm in his hand already. The lock was stiff, but it worked. He stepped back and kicked the door open, aware that touching that superheated metal would have taken his hands off.

'Come on!'

Desean needed no other encouragement. He crawled on his hands and knees through the cell door and then climbed to his feet, still crouching to keep below the smoke. The ceiling was making loud popping sounds now, the other side of the room and the location of the stairwell totally obscured by the smoke and the flames.

And then a crack sounded and the floor above them gave way.

Declan had the presence of mind to shove Desean back into his cell, as the ceiling caved in.

After that it was as if the world had slowed down to ensure Declan was able to register each minute detail.

He heard another series of cracks splintering the timber overhead. Looking up, the air searing his lungs, he raised his arm to shield himself from the fountain of cascading sparks as the ceiling gave way. He heard Desean yell something but couldn't make out the words; could barely make
him
out through the wall of smoke and flame. The fire had completely devoured the massive central beam supporting the upper floor. It was no longer able to support its own weight, let alone the weight of the structure above. Declan raised his

other arm, too — a desperate, useless attempt to ward off the falling beam; knowing it was futile, wondering why it seemed to be taking so long to fall.

He had time, as the blazing beam crashed down, to realise his cover was blown. Too many people had seen him at the prison for his alibi to pass even the most casual scrutiny.
Finding my body here won't do much for the cause, either,
he thought, a little surprised he had the time to find humour in the prospect of his own death.

Still, Chikita's a smart little kitten. No doubt she'll be able to talk her way out of trouble.

The irony of being killed in the process of rescuing Arkady's husband — a task at which he had failed dismally — wasn't lost on him either ...

When the blow came, it happened too fast for Declan to feel much pain. He registered the crushing weight, heard screams as the flames licked at his clothes, not sure if he was the one doing the screaming ...

He couldn't breathe, could barely think. Acrid smoke filled his airways, blistering his lungs as surely as the roaring flames were blistering his skin. After what seemed an eternity of intense, scorching agony, the darkness reached for him.

When the end came, it was blissful by comparison. He understood now, why people referred to death as paradise.

Declan's last thought, however, wasn't peaceful. It was filled with regret.

I'm so sorry, Arkady. I've let you down again.

CHAPTER 64

The abbot seemed unsurprised when Arkady returned to the Abbey of the Way of the Tide later that afternoon with the young man posing as a monk. It was clear to Arkady, as they entered the abbey gates, that the abbot must have known who this man really was. And that the immortal, Brynden, the head of his order, was the one who'd been masterminding everything from behind the scenes, from the moment she first appeared with her letter from Kinta and her foolish declaration that she sought to pass on a message from Cayal.

Two of the younger acolytes had opened the gates as they approached, and left the gates open after they entered the abbey's small courtyard. Her camel turned a nervous circle in the confined yard and she noticed, through the gate, in the far distance, the caravan Tiji had been watching from the ridge making its way across the sand toward the abbey.

The older man dismissed the acolytes with a wave of his hand, leaving the three of them alone. He bowed respectfully to Brynden — who looked a good thirty years younger than the abbot — and then bowed to Arkady as Terailia knelt down to let her dismount.

'Your meeting went as planned, my lord?'

'It did.'

'Welcome back, my lady.'

The abbot seemed surprised neither by her return, nor the identity of the monk. She glanced at Brynden and then the abbot, shaking her head at her own

foolishness. 'You knew all along who he was, didn't you?'

The abbot shrugged, holding his hands out in a gesture of helplessness.