Chapter Eight

MY PETTY REVENGE

‘Fuck is right, Dwellin!' Yver whispered in my ear. Her knuckles were deep in my back, but not as deep as the trouble we were in.

‘Any bright ideas?’

‘Shut up, for one,’ I breathed. Only a crack between the hinges gave me any kind of view, and all it showed me was a thin sliver of fireplace. ‘I’ll get us out of this.’

All we could do was listen, and it didn’t take long for the footsteps to burst through the door. A voice was complaining, clear enough through two doors. I heard the creak of the study’s entrance, and saw the intimidating bulk of Wrekham wade into the room. I had forgotten how intimidating he was up close. It withered the fire inside me.

‘I don’t care what those casks are, remove them or use them, Pitius! And bring Haltweather up, while you’re at it. I want a show of force,’ Wrekham was saying. His tone was fraught, inconvenienced. ‘And get this fireplace lit, damn it! The wind’s cold tonight.’

I pressed my eye closer to the gap, much to Yver’s discontent. She poked my ribs and I elbowed her in the tit in return.

‘Watcher!’ Wrekham cursed as Pitius fumbled with the flint, oil, and tinder. ‘Why they couldn’t wait is beyond me. There I bloody was, enjoyin’ a fine show, and they couldn’t wait an hour more to see me.’

I hoped Yver could see my glare in the dark. Take it from me: whose fault it is for a burglary gone wrong is a very important matter to set in stone. I was just proven innocent.

‘Think I’ll charge them another ten thousand,’ Wrekham mused. ‘Make it worth my while and show these Bashkar upstarts how Canarva does business.’

‘A fine idea, Baron,’ said Pitius in his usual fawning tone. ‘A fine idea indeed.

Wrekham moved past my view and began fiddling with the locks of his trunk. All I could see was his ample arse shifting as he worked the keys and lid.

‘There you are, my pretty,’ I heard him say to his treasures. I craned to see what he spoke to, putting a cramp in my neck, but it was useless. When the baron strode back into view, he was sliding round bullets into the muzzle of an ornate silver pistol. Six, he loaded; the holy number. With a crank of a gear on the pistol’s backside, its blightcore began to glow a fierce amber.

Wrekham flourished it with a spin around his finger. ‘You can wipe that look off your face, Pitius. This is a precaution and that’s all. Just in case these Bashkar types want to play by the old-fashioned rules of business,’ the baron growled. He took a moment to peer out of the window. ‘They have the cheek to rush me out of the amphitheatre and now they bloody dawdle. Pour me some of that damn rum while I wait, Pitius. Now.’

Baron Wrekham thrust the pistol between his hip and the orange silk sash that wrapped about his body several times. He came perilously close to the cupboard, and I thought my life was over there and then, but he merely came to flick a sputtering candle. To my utter relief, the baron wheeled away and swaggered into the other room with Pitius at heel like the obsequious wretch he was.

The door slammed behind them, and the cupboard was abruptly breezy with everybody exhaling at the same time.

‘We have to move quick as we can,’ I whispered, tiptoeing over the carpet towards the trunk. I prayed it was still unlocked. True to my kind of luck, my prayers went unanswered.

Yver pulled at her red locks. ‘We need to leave, Dwellin. I didn’t agree to putting my neck in a noose.’

‘And how do you think we’ll do that with only one way out, and Wrekham in the next room?’ I murmured fiercely. ‘Barricade that door with Midge. Lock it quietly. Ganner—‘

‘On it,’ he hissed, skidding to his knees and tools glinting. Midge braced himself against the door. Yver quietly turned the key. The precious moments crawled by. We were frozen, ears torn between Wrekham’s muffled voice and Ganner’s efforts.

‘It’s no use, Dwellin!’ Ganner strained through his teeth.

I clutched at my pocket and at the vials of blightpowder that hid there; the gift from the old crone of the sewers. It was my turn. I could do this.

‘Get out of the way,’ I ordered. ‘Help with the door.’

Ganner stumbled backwards, knocking a skinny and frankly ugly table over. He managed to catch it an inch from the floor, and I wiped the sweat from my eyes as I tackled the caps of the vials.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Magic, Yver, now shut up.’

A little sprinkle of blue dusted the locks. Another dab of yellow went on top, but a carefully measured amount. I snatched up a nearby candle and held it near the mixture. With a spark and a hiss, the powders fused into their lava-like sludge and began to eat into the polished metal.

‘Come on, come on,’ I urged the magic.

Deciding that was enough time, and with drips of molten metal beginning to scorch the carpet and cause a stink, I heaved at the lid.

The powders had worked too well: the locks had melted into the seam. One side lifted, but the other protested with a groan.

‘Midge!’ I whispered. The boy came lumbering from the door, far too loud on the floorboards. With a wrench and a metallic snap, the lid came loose.

At long last, I looked down upon the wooden box that had spent weeks occupying my yearning mind. Ensconced in a pillow of red velvet, I lifted it free and dared a moment to undo its tiny iron clasp. The inside felt cold, like opening a door to a cellar. Beneath its dark-veined wood, the box was lined with what looked like lead, and at its centre was nestled a shard of gold metal, no bigger than my thumb. Its polished surface was pitted with intricate lines and dents, and it was safe to say I had no clue what in the Realms I had just stolen.

It was then that the doorknob rattled loudly. I snapped the box shut. Yver seized the key to keep it in place. Ganner leaned against the wood.

‘Did you lock this door, Pitius, you twat?’ came Wrekham’s shout, swiftly followed by a hefty barge against the door.

It had all gone horribly wrong. Let’s face it. I wasn’t about to lie to myself. Hiding was the only option, swiftly followed by hoping with all our might Wrekham didn’t pry, and we could sneak—

Ganner shoved Yver to the floor and set his hands on the doorknob.

‘What are you doing, Ganner?!’ I hissed.

‘You should have chosen better, Dwellin,’ he answered with that grin that was too wide and too white. The heat of dread burned my cheeks and forehead. With a twist of his hands I was powerless to stop, he opened the door, and the imposing shape of Wrekham filled its frame.

Yver tried to scamper away, presumably heading for nothing but a corner. Wrekham aimed his pistol and fired. Splinters cascaded as two concussive blasts deafened us. The first blew apart a table. The second struck Yver in the back and sent her sprawling against the wall at a disturbing angle. Blood began to pool around her chest. I cried out in shock.

‘Yver!’

‘Move a hair and you’ll get a bullet just like her!’ came the booming order. Midge and I followed it, forced to listen to Yver’s ragged, bubbling breaths.

Baron Wrekham muscled into the room through blightpowder smoke, pistol levelled at the rest of us. He loomed like the Great Watcher himself. Haltweather stood at the baron’s gun hand. Ganner on his other side. Pitius bobbed behind them, trying to see over his master’s shoulders.

‘You did well, boy,’ Wrekham announced, patting Ganner heftily on the back. ‘She came back to rob me, just like you said she would. And here I was suspecting you to be a liar, just like the rest of you snivellin’ peasants.’

My breath came quick and short. ‘You feckless bastard, Ganner,’ I gasped. I had been conned. Duped. Betrayed. Every pat on the back I had given myself that past week all came to mean nothing. I might as well have been shoving myself towards the gallows. ‘You sold us out?’

‘That I did!’ Ganner crowed, looking mightily impressed with himself. ‘I saw my chance to do something right and I took it.’

‘Something profitable, I reckon,’ I spat. I thought I’d reached my limit of hatred when it came to Wrekham. Ganner proved me wrong.

‘Baron Wrekham deserved to know the truth. Stealing’s wrong, Dwellin,’ Ganner smirked.

I almost braved a bullet to strangle the utter prick right there and then, but my feet wouldn’t move. I was rooted to the carpet, my knees a-quiver, and Yver’s death rattle in my ears.

‘Your wise friend here was good enough to warn me about your little plot, Dwellin Dorr,’ Wrekham informed me. My name sounded foul in his mouth: too much spit and blubbery lips. ‘That kind of service and loyalty to your betters should be rewarded. This particular gutter rat will go far, unlike you, girl.’

I stared right down the barrel of his pistol as those lips withdrew over yellow teeth in a smile. The glistening look in his eyes was one of a victory I loathed.

‘So poisoning me wasn’t enough for you, was it, wretch?’ Wrekham chuckled. His cronies followed suit. ‘You should have learned to keep your nose out of my business the last time, but now look where you are. Right back in my chambers. I should’ve known you lied to me before; just some waif’s excuse to worm out of trouble. Ma Mattox was livid when she heard you put the blame on her. She’s itchin’ to skin you alive for betraying her, but she’ll have to wait her turn. I’ve got promises owed to the prosecutors.’

I couldn’t answer him. My mouth couldn’t find the spit for speaking. My eyes felt hot with brimming tears. I looked again to Yver as her body shivered for the last time. Her death. My fault. That combination sought to crush me. I fell into a stunned trance.

‘I should be impressed, really,’ Wrekham was opining. ‘Best attempt to rob me I’ve seen yet. Stolen tabards. Tunnels. You even convinced my own guards to let you in.’ Wrekham paused to waggle a sausage-finger at Haltweather. ‘And that reminds me, have that moron you left in charge flogged raw before you fire him.’

‘Aye, Baron,’ replied the lackey of a captain.

Wrekham’s now narrowed eyes slipped from my face down to the box in my hands. ‘And you even managed to break into my trunk. That was made by Tempest lock-makers, I’ll ’ave you know. How did you do that, I wonder?’

‘Riveno’s been teaching her tricks, Baron,’ Ganner answered.

‘Has he now? Alchemagic, is it? Well, looks like that old bastard has interfered for the last time!’ guffawed the baron, his jowls wobbling. ‘Harbouring two criminals, lying to prosecutors, toying with magic, and now orchestratin’ a burglary. The Venerance will be pleased. He’ll go to the gallows right alongside you, I reckon, and about bloody time. The devoter should’ve slit his throat for his mutiny a long time ago.’

‘This is nothing to do with Riveno,’ I snapped from my trance, voice breaking. ‘He has no idea we’re here.’

‘And I’m supposed to believe that? Hah!’ Wrekham snapped. ‘I’ve heard some shite in my time, but that—’

‘It’s the truth! Neither did Midge.’

‘This lump? He looks big enough to make his own terrible decisions,’ Wrekham said, having some cheek. With such a simple shift of his hand, he levelled death at Midge, aiming his pistol for his stomach. Midge winced, eyes screwed up, expecting death.

‘And where is that scrawny brother of yours? I’d expected to snag you both.’

Ganner spoke up. ‘Back at Riveno’s, Baron.’

That was a nerve that did not like to be touched in the slightest. Even with a pistol in my face, I found my voice and my anger. ‘He had no part in this!’

‘That much is true,’ Ganner added, as if it would redeem him in my eyes. I wanted to slit his throat even more. With the shadow of death lingering in the room, any normal person would have wanted less. I was not normal, and I found I wanted more.

‘He’s guilty just by having half the blood of this one,’ Wrekham said, bringing the pistol back to me. ‘You know, maybe the gallows ain’t good enough for the likes of you, girl. I think it’ll be the Hotdeath for you, if the Venerance have their way.’

There were few words in Canarva that summoned dread like Hotdeath. If we humans are truly accomplished at anything, it is finding new and interesting ways to kill each other. When hanging became too tedious for the nobles and the Venerance, they turned to the Ashlands’ own creations: the lava pools, mud flows, and hotlakes that peppered our blackened landscape. Whether you were boiled or consumed by molten rock, you were in for a slow and painful death. It made the snap of the hanging rope seemed merciful. Only heretics and murderers many times over saw the Hotdeath.

I caught Midge’s wide and tear-brimmed stare and felt more than the weight of my own failure on my shoulders. Even then, I thought of Aberan, and imagined the disapproval in his face for me as he slipped beneath a pool of bubbling lava.

In my highly educated opinion, desperation was perhaps the finest motivator in the Holy Realms and beyond. You can be a lot of things: hungry, lovesick, vengeful. But desperation is what pushes you to lengths you didn’t think possible. It is only when you become desperate do you understand how far you’ll go.

It was safe to say I knew desperation in that moment. Desperate to be anywhere else, desperate to turn back the sands of the hourglass, desperate to show Wrekham anything but victory over me even if it meant my own demise. But above all, desperate to keep Aberan from the fallout of my failure.

I thumbed the vial of sulphurous blightpowder still clutched in my fist against the coveted box. I heard Riveno’s harsh warnings in my head, and how yellow powder and fire should be mixed carefully. A flitting of my eyes showed me the fireplace, now roaring thanks to Pitius. It was dangerous, deadly, maybe, but so was Wrekham and the Venerance.

I took a step towards Midge, forcing Haltweather and Wrekham to close in until they stood before the fireplace. All eyes were on the box clutched in my hands.

‘Give me the baron’s treasure, gutter bitch,’ Haltweather addressed me, drawing a curved knife for me. ‘No games, now!’

Another step, and I was in front of Midge, so close, I could feel his panicked breath on my nape.

‘There ain’t no escape for you,’ Wrekham reminded me, cocking his pistol.

Perhaps there wasn’t, but petty revenge would do just nicely.

With a beastly snarl, I threw the blightpowder vial into the fireplace with all the strength my skinny arms could muster. My aim was true, and the vial smashed against the logs.

According to Riveno, most blightpowder pistols and cannonry worked on a simple principle. A spark ignited yellow powder and that in turn exploded behind a bullet. Fire. Force. Fatality. That was how Riveno put it, and his words were realised in blistering reality in that moment.

With the crash of the glass, the blightpowder immediately and violently reacted with the fire. An explosion ripped outwards from the brick sconce, hammering straight into Baron Wrekham, Haltweather, and Pitius. They were blasted from left to right by a cloud of flames and bricks. Their bodies crashed into the furniture and the wall on the far side of the room. Flames spewed like spilled custard. Dust and smoke filled the study, thick as ashfall. Stone and charcoal blasted across the room like bullets.

The shockwave punched me deep in the innards, throwing Midge and I back against a cupboard. One brick skimmed my forehead. Another punctured Midge in the leg. My ears rang like Venerance bells calling me to prayer. I couldn’t hear my own shouting, and I had no idea what words spilled from me in my panic. All I felt was a throbbing in my skull. With trembling and bloody hands, I seized Midge and tried to haul his bulk up. For a moment, my addled brain thought I had gained some inexplicable strength until the lad collapsed back down on his injured leg.

‘Come on, Midge!’ I yelled, almost hearing myself this time. ‘We need to go!’

The fire was spreading, gradually cutting a wall between the two halves of the room. The roof beams were already aflame. A hole had been blasted into the chamber above. The heat already scorched my face. I stared to the immobile bulk of Wrekham, half covering Yver’s corpse. A broken table-leg was buried in his shoulder. Haltweather had crashed into the wall, creating a hole to bury his head. Blood dripped down the wall to his knees. Pitius was the only one awake, and he was screaming like a strangled drake at the mangled remains of his severed hand. Ganner had sadly stayed by the door, and the flames had only scorched him. Enough to turn half his face and neck raw, I might add, and send him screeching to the other room, but not enough for his betrayal.

I stared longer than I should have at the first lives I had ever taken. In my peripheries, the hungry fire consumed the room. Our chance at escape was closing.

‘Midge!’ I yelled, and with a burst of strength the lad came with me. I kept one hand on his back to steer him and another tightly around the box.

We jumped the baron’s prostrate legs, singeing our clothes, and were halfway to the door when the guards came to swarm us. Only quick thinking saved our skins.

‘The baron’s hurt! He needs help!’ I yelled in the face of their swords. Our mustard tabards bought us moments only. Two guards crammed the doorway that was our exit. In the confusion, Midge and I limped for the spiralling staircase in the corner of the study instead, leading up to the baron’s bedchambers.

‘Dwellin!’ came a roar from the baron. I whirled around to see Wrekham still alive behind the wall of fire, pushing himself up on his knees while he aimed his weapon. The thunder of a pistol chased us. Splinters rained as everybody dove for cover.

‘Stop that fuckin’ thief!’

Panicked heads turned to face us. Another bullet punched a hole above our heads as we climbed the stairs as fast was we could.

‘Get them, you idiots!’

Kicking a door open, I was once more in the broad bedchambers of the baron, where Aberan and I had sat bound only a little while ago. The fire was already hard at work consuming the room. The floor had a bonfire burning through it, fed from the flames below. Other fires were cropping up all over the adorned room. One wall, just as I remembered, was all glass. Canarva glowed beyond. The city’s torches lit the silver belly of the reverent’s cruiser, hovering over the temple spire. At any other time, the view would have entranced me, but I was more interested in the patch of fire that blocked us from the window.

‘There’s no way out, Dwellin!’ Midge hissed at me, shoving a cabinet against the door. A bullet crashed through the door and the furniture, smashing a vase on the far end of the room. Midge crawled away as the door began to buck under hammering from the other side.

‘There always is!’ I said, with absolutely no proof to back that up. ‘Come on!’

Holding my breath, I vaulted the fire and crashed down onto the carpet, hearing the floorboards creak. The floor felt hot beneath my hands. Midge was not so able to jump, and I surged to help him pat out the flames on his legs.

I saw a heavy stone bowl, bearing some kind of ornamental and metal fruit. That would do, I decided, and I proceeded to hurl it at the glass. Ashland granite did us proud, and a hole was punched in the window. The bowl sailed out into the night. Cracks spread across the pane like a spider’s web.

A crash of wood came behind us as the door broke in half. Wrekham’s bloody face appeared, burning red in the light of the fire blocking his way. ‘Dwellin!’

They say the world slows down in situations where death looms its ugly head, as if time gets bogged in a marsh momentarily. Let me tell you: time does precisely that. Perhaps death and time fell out eons ago. Perhaps it is all in the mind, but the truth in tales like mine is a simple one: everything looks better in slower motion.

Baron Wrekham brought his pistol to bear. He cared not for Midge, but for me. I could see a vendetta in the clenched teeth and the veins of his forehead. Before his finger could squeeze the trigger, the fire below us reached the rum casks we had left strewn below. Wrekham had good taste in his rum. And if you know anything about Gruber’s Golden Rum, you should know you could lift a balloon with how well it burned.

The secondary explosions broke the spine of the floor, right beneath Wrekham’s feet. To the screaming of guards, the floorboards broke inwards with a cloud of cinders. Wrekham stared at me as he fell, slow like a tree. His face was a mask of thwarted fury. The last shot of his pistol never fired, and I held his stare until he disappeared into the fire.

I felt a hand seize me in panic, almost breaking my wrist.

‘Dwellin!’ Midge bellowed in my ear.

‘Shall we?’ I gasped.

Midge caught the meaning of my wide eyes and nodded. With a gulp of breath and with the floorboards crumbling beneath us, we charged for the windows as the fire nipped at our heels. The glass scraped my scalp and shoulders, but the wounds were small prices to pay for escaping the inferno.

The pull of the earth seized us moments into the air and brought us crashing onto a slate roof far too sheer to stop us from falling. Skidding on our backsides, hearts in our mouths, Midge and I careened towards the ground. Another roof broke our fall, but only barely. Cartwheeling, we hit a manicured lawn hard.

I put my hands in brittle grass and wheezed as roof tiles crashed beside us. The box lay beneath my chest, and I had no doubt it had broken one of my ribs. Seizing it tight, I pushed myself upwards. Midge struggled, but he joined me nonetheless, and hobbled as fast as he could across the grounds. A feverish glance over my shoulder showed me the fire had reached the roof and was quickly burning through the mansion. Guards ran about in panic, spilling buckets of water as they fell about. Servants streamed from the lower doors. I saw Cook Bunt running with a cask of something clutched to himself, clearly not willing to leave empty-handed.

We sprinted in the opposite direction of everyone else, towards the rear gate of the mansion. The guards had left their posts to either bolt or help fight the flames, and with gravel flying underfoot, we managed to crash through the heavy wooden doors and sprawl on the cobbles.

A voice speared my heart with fright.

‘Dwellin!’

Face scraping against stone, I saw Aberan standing before us, his aghast stare torn between the sight of us and the blaze now consuming the baron’s home. The fire painted his face orange.

‘What by the Watcher have you done, little sister?’ he breathed. ‘Where’s Yver? Ganner?’

I couldn’t begin to answer him. My mind still swirled around one singular word: escape. I seized his hand in mine and with the other, clutched Wrekham’s box to my chest. I held his stare as I regained my breath enough to speak. It was then that I noticed the shadows standing at the edge of the street, cloaked and hooded.

Aberan saw the look in my eyes, felt the grip of my fingers. He whirled to stare at our watchers. Wrekham had been right about one thing: the wind was chill that night, and I felt it run its hand through my hair as I shivered, and my sweat fell cold.

Fifty yards across the cobbles, the Reverent Lectra regarded us with a calm smile. By her side, stood the swordsaint Orzona, and even she looked short in Lectra’s presence. The reverent was a spire of a woman, with a shock of hair creeping from her hood as blue as the western skies. Her face was an axehead, all nose and sharp chin, and her eyes a dark green to match her southern skin. They seemed hooked into mine, and I had trouble ripping my gaze from her.

‘Go!’ I hissed.

‘Go where?’ Aberan snapped.

Midge gave me no such complaint, and was already hobbling away from the reverent at full speed.

I pulled Aberan with me. ‘Don’t argue, just trust me and run!’

Before we escaped down a side street, I threw a look over my shoulder, and saw the reverent was still staring. The swordsaint was nowhere to be seen.

I did not think, I only ran.