Errant, p.41
Errant, page 41
“Is that why you killed him?” Pike asked. “Because he stopped listening to your shrill nagging? Or because you realized that I was his favorite? Women are prone to jealous rages, everyone knows that. You killed your husband in one.”
Aspen didn’t know where to start. Pike almost sounded like he believed his own lie about Integrity’s murder. And while he was wrong about her motives for killing her husband, he’d found out about the end of her marriage somehow. That wasn’t something Aspen had shared with many people, even her comrades in the Scale.
All the twisted nonsense he was spouting made her angry, but she quieted her mind and listened for noise. The dungeon walls were thick, but there was a degree of chaos that even stone and earth couldn’t mute.
“And now you’re back,” Pike continued. “I bet you want into Integrity’s vault.”
“I recall being brought here as a captive,” Aspen said.
“We both know you threw that fight,” Pike said. He tipped his head toward the other door in the dungeon. Unlike the iron grate barring Aspen’s cell, the vault door was solid, heavy wood. “Integrity’s legacy is in that vault. He said so all the time. You want it, I know you do.”
“What exactly do you think is in there?” Aspen asked, motivated by genuine curiosity. Integrity had spent his fortune funding the Scale, and they’d never taken payment for their efforts. He’d emptied his pockets by the end. Whatever his legacy was, it wasn’t money.
“Gold, of course,” Pike said. Aspen didn’t roll her eyes at his lack of imagination. “Why else would he spell the lock?”
“It is a vault,” Aspen said. “They’re supposed to be hard to get into.”
“Only his chosen successor can open it,” Pike said. “Using the ring with his seal. The one you stole when you murdered him.”
“Oh, did I?”
“You were never able to get in,” Pike said. “You have the ring, but you need me to open the door. I’m his successor. I’m the one he chose.”
It was like some sort of children’s game where he said everything backward. Pike had the ring. Pike had tried to open the vault door and failed. Integrity hadn’t chosen him. Aspen could have told him that, if he’d cared to hear her opinion.
She didn’t know who Integrity would have chosen—maybe he’d been killed before he’d been able to choose a successor, and that was why the vault couldn’t be opened. But if he’d had time to make a choice, he wouldn’t have chosen Pike.
A gifted recruit, strong and fast with a passion for winning fights, Pike had gotten caught up in his own power somewhere along the way. He’d lost interest in doing what was right. He’d wanted a reward for his efforts in the Scale, and it had galled him that Integrity wasn’t profiting from helping people. Pike thought he was a soft old man, too foolish and naive to do what needed to be done.
So he’d killed Integrity. In her heart, Aspen had always known that. But she’d never found proof.
“What if neither of us can open the vault?” Aspen asked.
Pike scoffed. “That won’t be a problem.”
“And after it’s open? When you see that there’s no gold inside? Integrity wouldn’t have hoarded money like that. You know it.”
“This is why I can’t wait to kill you,” Pike said. “You’ve always been an insufferably self-righteous bitch.”
Aspen supposed that answered her question about what he would do after the vault was open, regardless of what was in it. In the ensuing silence, drumming and shouting from the street above infiltrated the dungeon.
“God of the Sword and Shield, what is that noise?” Pike said.
6
“A toast to our handsome leading man!” Charm shouted over the noise of the crowd, lifted her cup, and took a deep drink. The dozens of people surrounding the wagon all cheered and followed her lead.
Flick, who glittered in the sun, a mix of his blue scales and the body paint he’d put on this morning, fanned himself as if flustered by all the attention.
“And a toast to our lovely leading lady!” Charm raised her cup in Tamarind’s direction. Again, the crowd followed Charm’s cue and they all drank together.
The Harstead Players had begun their little parade at the gates of the city. They would perform parts of their upcoming play, draw a crowd and then keep them by offering food and drink, as they wound their way toward the theater on the far side of the city. And if their path brought this rambunctious ground past Pike’s obnoxious mansion; well, that was good planning on their part.
Charm wasn’t playing the lead in this particular production. The plan hinged on her slipping into the mansion and up to the tower to retrieve the key to Aspen’s cell. Tamarind was doing an excellent job as the young girl in love with a boy her family had forbidden her from seeing.
Charm checked to make sure her mask was firmly in place before she rolled a new barrel of fortified wine to the edge of the wagon. She filled her own cup and then raised it in the air. “Another round for all of us!”
“Huzzah!” The bystanders shouted and then surged forward to get their own refills.
In the chaos, none of them noticed Tamarind disappear from sight. Pike’s mansion was surrounded by a wall meant to keep people out. Even though Charm knew that Strength and Joy had rounded the corner to boost each other and Tamarind over the wall, it still seemed like magic when Tamarind went from being street-side to being mansion-side.
“Oh, my love!” Tamarind cried out, as dramatic as a besotted girl could be. She clung to the delicate ironwork of the gate, boneless with despair. “They mean to keep us apart!”
Flick leapt off the wagon he’d been standing on. He bounded over to the gate and then dropped to his knees to deliver one of the most heartfelt monologues in all of The Feuding Families. When he finished, he kissed Tamarind through the space in the gate.
“I love you,” he told her, his fingers interlaced with hers.
“Don’t let them keep us apart,” Tamarind said. She looked over her shoulder and then, even though the courtyard was empty, she took a step backward. “Please, don’t leave me here on my own. It’s you I want to marry.”
She continued walking backward, and Flick shook the gate as if he could break through it. And then he looked over his shoulder at the drunk crowd behind him. “I can’t lose her!”
“For love!” One crowd member shouted and led the charge. The drunken mob swarmed forward to pound on the stone walls and rattle the gate. They took up the chant of “For love! For love!”
A huge person in leather armor stomped across the courtyard to take Tamarind by the arm. Even with a cloth mask tied over the lower half of his face, Joy was unmistakable by his height and the breadth of his shoulders.
Tamarind struggled in his grasp and shouted, “You cannot keep me from the man I love!”
Joy dragged her closer to the gate and thrust her against it, a taunt for poor lovelorn Flick, who cried out in anguish. Tamarind and Flick called for each other, putting on enough of a show that only the savviest of audience members would notice Joy manipulating the latch on the gate with his free hand.
And not a moment too soon. Pike’s lackeys poured out of the front door, drawn by the commotion. They brandished swords and spears.
Charm took her cue. It was a prime moment to creep into the alley beside the wall. Joy had done his job at the main gate, so Strength had likely done hers at the discreet, little-used servants’ entrance set into the side wall and hidden by an overgrown hedge. Aspen and Strength had both mentioned this exterior door and another, similar door into the house.
Charm set her mask and cloak in one of the troupe’s wagons and slunk through the crowd. Best to be as unencumbered as possible in case the door was still locked and Strength had to haul her over the top like a sack of potatoes.
A wall meant nothing to the People of the Mist, but Charm preferred to save that talent for emergencies.
In the main street, the roar of the crowd mounted. Already riled up and far from sober, they’d assumed Pike’s people were part of the production. The metal gate groaned as the crowd surged through to keep the young lovers together. Charm wished she could see the bewilderment of the Scale members, but the sight that greeted her in the alley was even better: Strength, leaning casually in the open doorway, grinning and gallant despite the sweat and twigs in her hair.
She swept out her arm and offered Charm a bow.
Charm gave her best curtsy and walked through the door.
Pike tilted his head as if trying to listen to something happening in the distance. Aspen, who had a general understanding of the escape plan, knew she couldn’t let Pike leave. If he was at Aspen’s cell, then he couldn’t be in his tower where Charm planned to infiltrate.
“So, the plan is to kill me?” Aspen asked. She affected boredom, as if she was often imprisoned and threatened with death. “Then what?”
“What do you care? You’ll be dead.”
“I wasn’t bothering you,” Aspen said, grasping for something to keep him talking. “I left the Scale, and I didn’t plan to look back. It was you who kept the Scale in my sights, and you who brought me back to finish something I didn’t realize needed to be finished. You could have avoided all this.” Aspen gestured to herself and her cell, as if Pike was the one inconvenienced by her capture.
“I could have?” Pike asked mockingly. “How? You infected everything. Starry-eyed recruits who whined about how they missed you as an instructor, the old guard who preferred your leadership methods to mine. I was the one who killed Integrity! I was the one who took charge, and all they ever wanted was you.”
“And by the time you realized you needed me, you’d already driven me away.” Aspen laughed, even though none of this was funny. Pike’s insecurity and his greed had driven him to murder Integrity and take over the Scale, but those two qualities made him the last person anyone wanted to follow.
Oh, sure, he had a sizable group of mercenaries, but they didn’t follow him. They were here as long as the jobs he found provided enough money to fill their pockets and enough violence to sate their bloodlust.
Pike had taken Integrity’s life, his mansion, and his following, but he didn’t know what to do with it.
“I don’t need you!” Pike stepped up the bars of Aspen’s cell, his hands flexing like he wanted to reach through and wrap them around her neck.
He’d always been easy to knock off-kilter. It was one of the weaknesses she’d noted when they trained together, but he’d never taken her advice on how to fix it. “You do,” Aspen said. “Otherwise, I would already be dead.”
Pike spluttered but before he could form a response, a winded guard rushed down the stairs. Aspen recognized Purpose, who paused to bend over, his hands on his knees as he dragged in gulps of air.
“A better recovery position is standing upright with your hands above your head,” Aspen said. She demonstrated.
He frowned at her and then looked back at Pike. “A mob has breached the front gate.”
“What?” Pike glared at Purpose like he thought the boy was lying. And then he turned to Aspen. Fury twisted his handsome features into something ugly. “Friends of yours?”
“I don’t have friends,” Aspen said. “You chased me from my home, and I’ve been alone and on the run ever since.”
“Then you won’t mind if I go kill the intruders.” Pike pulled his sword from his sheath. Aspen bit back a comment on how he should wait to draw until he was facing his adversaries; otherwise, his sword would only get in the way.
“Someone called the city guard to help,” Purpose added.
Pike grabbed a fistful of the boy’s shirt and hauled him forward. “The city guard is here?”
“They won’t turn a blind eye to your tendency to murder threats to your rule,” Aspen said cheerfully. She leaned against the far wall and made herself as comfortable as she could. “I’ll be here once you sort out what’s happening on your front lawn.”
“I will enjoy killing you,” Pike promised. He pointed the tip of his sword at her and then stormed down the hall.
Purpose stood shaking where Pike had left him. He was joined by a second guard, this one older and far less rattled. The older guard had a scar pattern down the side of their face as if they’d been too close to a fire at one point in their life. Their hair was thinner on that side. They stood at an angle as if they hoped the scarring would intimidate Aspen.
“Is it true?” the scarred guard asked in a raspy, smoke-tinged voice.
“That there’s a mob at the gate?” Aspen shrugged. “I’ve been done here the whole time. I don’t know what’s happening above ground.”
“That Pike killed Integrity.”
“He said he did,” Aspen said.
“He also said you did.”
Fair point. Aspen didn’t have any proof, and while she was trapped in this cell, she didn’t have a lot of leverage. “I didn’t kill Integrity. I know money was running low, and there was talk about how best to supplement it. Some wanted to charge for jobs. Others wanted to reach an understanding with the local crime syndicates. Others wanted to turn the Scale into mercenaries. Pike saw an opportunity.”
“She’s lying,” Purpose said.
“Someone’s lying,” the older guard said. “But she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Let’s deal with the threat at our gates, and then I have some questions for our leader.”
“I could help if you let me out,” Aspen said.
“Pike’s the only one with the key,” the older guard said. They didn’t sound too upset about being unable to free Aspen. She sighed as the two guards hurried away. Hopefully Charm would let her out soon. Her hands itched to wield a sword and help.
Charm lingered at the servant’s entrance to the house just a moment. She wanted to hear the sweet sound of wagon wheels thudding against the courtyard cobblestones. In the din, she almost missed it.
It was not possible to miss the cry of awe and outrage that went up as the sackcloth was snatched from one of the open wagons, revealing what the set designer and every handy troupe member had spent the last day building.
A battering ram.
Charm smiled to herself as it crashed into the main door. The shouts from the melee and the clangs of swords dimmed as she padded up the servant’s stairs, bringing her level with the main hall, but nothing could muffle the booming attack on the front door.
A grand staircase dominated the main hall, she knew from the map Strength had made, but Charm kept to the narrow, dimly lit stairs for servants. It would have been nice to see Strength lead the charge, but she’d settle for hearing the splintering door, pounding boots, and ear-piercing whoops of glee that Strength let out as the chaos of the fight poured into the house.
In all that noise, no one would hear if Charm reached for the pendant at her neck and warmed the shard pair with her fingers. “Aspen, I’m coming.”
Aspen’s response was immediate; she must be alone in her cell. “Be careful.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Charm said.
“Don’t waste breath talking to me. You’re supposed to be sneaking.”
“I can’t believe you’re insulting my sneaking abilities like this. Can’t you hear this fight?” Charm wanted to say more, but Aspen had a point about the risks. Better to be quick about stealing the key so they could talk face to face, and then Charm could say everything she wanted to.
Her heart swelled in her chest, big enough that she could drop to her knees and deliver a monologue like Flick and Tamarind’s little show at the gate, but that was impossible now. Instead Charm kept the shard warm between her fingers, letting Aspen hear her breath as she ascended.
Pike had the key. She’d find it in his study or on his person. Either way, it would be in Charm’s hands soon enough. She passed the third floor servants’ quarters and crept toward the turret, with its narrow spiral staircase leading to Pike’s private sanctuary. Everything was just as Aspen and Strength had said it would be, and nobody had seen Charm yet. A stroke of luck.
Even luckier: the study door was unlocked. Aspen probably heard the tiny murmur of excitement she let out when she tried the handle.
Charm swung the door aside and crossed the threshold with caution, her eyes on Pike’s massive wooden desk. She’d need time to search the whole thing, but maybe the fight would go on long enough to give her the opportunity.
Someone grabbed her from behind and pressed a knife to her throat.
“Aspen’s little actress. I knew that bitch was plotting something.”
It had to be Pike. Shit. Charm should probably stop touching the pendant so she’d have both hands free, but she didn’t want to move—or lose her connection to Aspen.
Pike continued, “She was too fucking smug. Should’ve been begging me for mercy. You can try that, if you like.”
“I’d rather bargain than beg. I hear you have a vault nobody can get into—nobody except me,” Charm said. She kept her voice smooth and confident. No need to mention the knife and worry Aspen. Pike hadn’t noticed the shard pair yet. Maybe he thought she was clutching a religious pendant or some other good-luck trinket.
In a way, she was.
Pike said, “And you’ll open the vault if I let Aspen go? No.”
Charm was too constrained by Pike to toss her hair. She’d simply have to convey the same attitude with her voice. “I don’t care what you do with Aspen. I got what I wanted from her. I’ll open the vault for a share of the gold inside.”
“Why would you be able to open it when nobody else can?” Pike asked. “And if you can open it, why offer me any part of it? Just take it for yourself.”
Damn him for forcing her into this. “As for why I’m making you an offer, you’ll have noticed the knife you’re holding, I assume. And my secrets are not part of the bargain, only this one service.”
“You seem the type to offer a variety of services,” he leered.
Aspen would probably kill Pike honorably in combat, which was a shame, because Charm would like to cut his fingers off. Still, maybe it would really hurt when Aspen stabbed him or slashed him in two or whatever. That was a comforting thought. She needed to comfort herself before she could say, lightly, “I’m not sure if you can afford any of my other services. You’ll have to show me what’s in the vault.”
