Errant, p.42
Errant, page 42
His lechery was a blessing, really. She pressed against him and he was too distracted by her ass to notice her fingers slipping into his pocket. Thank the Queen of the Mists the world was full of horny assholes who made themselves easy to rob.
“If I’d known you’d betray her for gold, I’d have offered you some a long time ago,” Pike said. He removed the knife from her neck. He knew and understood greed, and that had made him trust her just a little bit more. Good.
Charm hummed and slipped the key into her skirts. “A pity for both of us, then. You can make it up to me with that ring on your desk. It looks plenty shiny.”
It also had the Hanging Scale’s emblem on it and was likely enchanted to open Integrity’s vault, but Aspen would be smart enough to guess that.
Pike let go of her to reach across his desk and slip the ring onto his finger. “This? No, this is mine.”
He could do whatever he liked with that hand, including grab her ass again, as long as he didn’t reach into his pocket and realize what she’d taken.
“Fine then, keep your ring,” Charm said. “I’ll buy my own after you show me this vault of yours.”
Aspen stopped pacing her cell as soon as she heard Pike’s hurried steps and Charm’s softer shuffled gait. Even though worry and anxiety were crawling up Aspen’s throat, she couldn’t show any weakness in front of Pike.
Charm’s performance was supposed to be believable. Aspen only wished Charm wasn’t quite so good as to plant a seed of doubt in Aspen’s mind. The plan was for Charm to swipe the cell key from Pike and break Aspen out. Everything else was flair and dramatics.
The torch lit up the stairs before Aspen saw Pike and Charm. Pike gripped the torch with one hand and hauled Charm along with his other. Aspen stepped up the bars of her cell as if there was something she could do about Pike’s rough handling.
Charm kept up with Pike the best she could. Her dress swished out with each step and between the moving fabric and the dim lighting, Charm stepped on an uneven spot on the floor and pitched forward.
As soon as Charm began to fall, Pike let her go so he wasn’t pulled down with her. Charm threw her hands out to brace herself. One of her palms slapped hard against the stone floor. The other landed in a puddle of something Aspen had been doing her best not to think too deeply about. Charm was close enough for Aspen to be splashed, and she couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose.
“Ugh,” Charm said. “Would it kill you to clean down here every once in a while?” She stood and shook out her skirts. One of her hands fussed with the top of her dress. As soon as Pike’s gaze was drawn there, she slipped her other hand into her pocket.
Charm turned so her back was to Aspen and she was blocking Aspen and the cell from Pike’s gaze. She held the key behind her. Aspen slid it into her pocket, out of sight.
“You’re not quite right.” Pike stepped forward. He tugged on Charm’s dress to adjust it, and even though Aspen couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, she could see the way he patted Charm’s ass as he stepped back. “There.”
Charm shook a finger at him. Aspen longed to be out of this rotten cell so she could brandish a sword at Pike.
“I told you you’d have to pay for that,” Charm said. She laughed lightly as if she wasn’t alone and unarmed in front of the most dangerous man she’d ever met.
It took all of Aspen’s self-control to watch the scene unfold rather than unlock her cell. She had to be patient and wait for Charm to create a distraction or else Pike would draw the sword from the sheath at his waist and kill them both.
“Let’s see if you can afford me.” Charm winked and then sauntered over to the smooth stone wall around the vault door. Charm ran her hands over the surface as if she was looking for a secret latch or handle.
“So much for your secret methods. You think I haven’t been over every inch of that? It’s locked with magic,” Pike said. He fiddled with the ring on his finger. He glanced at Aspen as he did it, calculating the risk of hauling Aspen out of her cell to see if she was the chosen heir.
If he decided it was worth it, he would learn very quickly that he no longer had the key to her cell. Aspen didn’t do anything as obvious as gasp or look over at Charm, but her heart began beating faster and sweat gathered under her arms.
“Oh, Pike,” Charm said, exasperated but fond. She tossed him a smile over her shoulder. “Don’t discount my methods just yet.”
And then she shimmered and disappeared.
Even though Aspen had seen it before, Charm turning into Mist still alarmed and fascinated her. It shouldn’t be possible for someone as solid and vivid and real as Charm to just… vanish. Aspen had touched her. Held her. She didn’t like to think of Charm disintegrating, even for an instant.
But it was beautiful, too. Down here in the dungeon, there was only the flicker of Pike’s torch, but Charm’s magic caught all the light in the room and made sparks of every color.
And her transformation allowed Aspen to take smug pleasure in Pike’s shock. Charm would want that, she was sure.
Pike aimed a hard stare at the vault door. Not speaking to Aspen, exactly, but merely to the room, he said, “I thought all the People of the Mist were dead.”
Aspen had heard legends about the wandering People of the Mist before Charm had revealed her own sad history, but she’d assumed they were only tales. But Pike knew—and he knew they’d been slaughtered. He was too young to have participated in the destruction of Charm’s village, but someone must have told him about it. Perhaps he’d savored the story.
“Hope she was worth the sting of this betrayal,” Pike said, turning to Aspen. “I can’t wait to take her from you, too.”
Aspen couldn’t wait to shove the key into the lock and her sword into Pike. She bared her teeth and then gestured at the vault door. “In my experience, it’s hard to take Charm anywhere she doesn’t want to go.”
“She wants it,” Pike said. “She was practically pawing at me in my study.”
Picking your pocket. “It’s also very hard to stop her from getting what she wants,” Aspen agreed.
Pike was armed and she wasn’t, but she might have a single instant of surprise to work with. Hand to hand, they’d be evenly matched. If she got her hands on his sword, it’d be over. She just had to keep him talking until the right moment came.
Aspen saw it before Pike did, the first glimmer of Charm’s reappearance. She reached through the grate and twisted the key in the lock, not by any means in silence.
Luckily, Charm timed her emergence to go with a loud complaint. “What a waste of time. There’s no gold in there, just a bunch of old papers. That won’t buy me anything shiny.”
“What old papers?” Pike demanded.
The grate hinges shrieked as Aspen surged out of the cell to tackle him.
He went down hard under her, his torch sent flying from his hand. It landed in a puddle and guttered out. The hard casing of Pike’s sword sheath cracked against the stone floor and his head cracked against the metal hilt. It must be painful, the sheath pressing into his spine like that. Aspen couldn’t get to it, but neither could he.
Pike struggled beneath her, trying to buck her off. She bore down on him with her full weight. The slick, sharp stones cut into her knees.
She socked Pike in the temple. His head lolled back in unconsciousness.
Aspen grunted. She’d been hoping for more of a fight.
“Would this be useful?” Charm said. She laid a hand—reassuringly whole and solid—on Aspen’s shoulder. Dangling from her other hand was a length of rope.
Aspen nodded her thanks and accepted it. Tying Pike’s hands was the smart move, no matter how much she was still spoiling for a fight. She wanted Pike to wake up so she could hit him again. So she could fling him across the dungeon.
“I could go for some fresh air,” Charm said, offering Aspen a hand up. “Care to take a turn around the ballroom?”
In the beat of silence that followed, Aspen could hear it echoing faintly in the stairwell: the clanging, thudding, screaming chaos of battle.
7
Charm had never considered herself a particularly brave person. Adventurous, yes. Risk taker, also yes. But the kind of person who charged headfirst into a fight? Not until she met Aspen.
She’d never seen anything like what was happening in the entrance hall—dozens of people slashing at each other with swords or grappling hand-to-hand, grunting and sweating and bleeding, as Strength’s people and volunteers from the Harstead Players fought the Scale. Prone bodies littered the floor. She hoped they were only unconscious. Failing that, she hoped they were all Pike’s lackeys.
Aspen had bound Pike’s wrists, hobbled his ankles, and prodded him out of the dungeon at the tip of his own sword. She’d been swift and fearless in subduing him, but even Aspen hesitated at the threshold of this room.
It was easier if Charm thought of it as a stage. The lower portion of the room was in violent disarray and she’d never get anyone’s attention there. But the grand staircase leading up to the second floor, with a large landing where the stairs angled to the left? That was a tower, a balcony, a place for proclamations.
She caught Aspen’s eye and nodded toward the landing. All they had to do was get there.
If the sight of their leader held captive and at swordpoint troubled any of the Scale members, they were too occupied to notice. Aspen forced Pike to wend his way through the fighting and Charm followed close behind, wary of being taken hostage. One more change to Mist would ruin her for today and several days to come. She had to rely on her other skills for now.
This part of the plan was less precise than the rest, but Charm had a trick up her sleeve, or rather, in the deep pocket of her skirts: an expensive gift from Amity, an acorn-sized glass globe of darkness. These magical items, crafted by chanting Earth witches, were far more expensive than their light-emitting counterparts, so this was one of the Harstead Players’ most valuable treasures. This small size was enough to darken a stage in broad daylight for five minutes. Charm wasn’t sure it would cover the full dimensions of the hall.
“Aspen,” she whispered, dropping the globe to the carpeted stone of the landing. “Step on that.”
Charm’s soft leather-soled slippers were for sneaking, not for crushing glass. Aspen’s wooden boot heel crunched the globe into pieces. Darkness washed over the room in a dizzying reverse of nightfall, swallowing Charm’s feet and legs and then rising above her head.
It bought her a moment of silence.
“Lay down your weapons,” she shouted.
The tiny globe had pitched the entire hall into impenetrable black, but it wouldn’t last five minutes. The darkness was already receding at the edges.
Good. Charm wanted everyone to see this.
Very few people actually laid down their weapons, but they’d all fallen silent, which would have to be enough for now.
“You have been lied to,” Charm began, drawing breath from every available nook and cranny of her lungs to project to the hall. Light from the windows was watering down the darkness. “This man, Honor Huntsman Pike, has told you for years that this woman, Aspen Silverglade, murdered your beloved founder, Integrity Glazier Rennell. It is not true. Pike has told you all that Aspen stole Integrity’s seal, preventing him from opening the locked vault in the dungeon where Integrity kept his treasures. Pike ordered you to hunt her down and bring her back here. She had the seal, he said.”
Charm grabbed one of Pike’s wrists and heaved his bound arms above her head. Or tried to. He resisted. Aspen stepped in and yanked his arms high.
“Do you see this ring?” Charm shouted. “This is Integrity’s seal. It is on Pike’s finger. It has been in Pike’s study for years. Pike murdered Integrity, not Aspen. Pike kept the seal for himself. He can’t open the vault because it’s spelled—only Integrity’s chosen successor, wearing his ring, can open it. Integrity never intended for Pike to lead you.”
“You could have put that ring on him,” someone yelled.
“I could have,” Charm agreed. “But you know I’m telling the truth about the spell on the vault door.”
A murmur ran through the room.
“Here is what I propose,” Charm said. “Five of you will accompany us down to the vault to bear witness—”
“Charm,” Aspen said, low and urgent. “Charm, we don’t know if I’m the one—”
“—and we will see who Integrity chose as his successor,” Charm finished.
The murmur rose to a roar. Some of Pike’s people chanted his name, but not many. Eventually a single shout broke through. “And what then?”
“You’ll know the truth,” Charm said. “You can choose to follow Pike or Aspen or no one at all, but you’ll do it with your eyes open. Five of you come with us. The rest stay here.”
Improvisation had never been Aspen’s strong suit. There was too much risk involved. But Charm had set the stage for this dramatic reveal at the vault. Aspen reassured herself thinking that the worst that could happen was neither she nor Pike were Integrity’s heir. She already knew he wasn’t. If she wasn’t, it didn’t matter. She’d never considered it before now, so it wasn’t as though she’d lose something she’d been wanting for years.
Only… she did want it.
It was Integrity who’d found her at the lowest point of her life, and instead of shoving her down, he’d held out a hand to her. When she didn’t have a home to return to, he’d opened his to her. When she didn’t have a family to rely on, he’d helped her create one. He’d given her a purpose when she was floundering and support when she needed it. The thought that he’d chosen her to carry on his legacy stole her breath. It was the greatest compliment she could imagine.
The whole group of them stopped in front of the vault. Aspen led Pike, his hands still securely tied so he couldn’t cause any trouble. Charm had come, as the orchestrator of this moment, as well as Strength and Joy. Pike had his promised five Scale members, and Aspen didn’t like the odds. The five Scale members in theory were loyal to the Scale, not Pike. If Pike was revealed as a fake, would they defect or would they try to seize power for themselves?
Aspen had her sword back, and its weight was a comfort. Knowing Strength and Joy would fight by her side was another comfort. Putting Charm in danger wasn’t. And, even though Aspen wasn’t a prisoner this time, being back in the dungeon made her skin prickle. The open cell where she’d been held drew her attention.
She didn’t want to be trapped there again. She didn’t want to be trapped anywhere. Wasn’t that what Integrity has truly promised her when he’d found her in the aftermath of her husband’s murder? He’d promised her a life of freedom, of choice. He’d put a sword in her hands and told her no one would hold her back ever again. And, if she learned well, he would teach her to help others.
Pike had taken the legacy of a good man and ruined it. Suddenly, Aspen wanted Pike to try to open the vault. She wanted to see the door refuse to open for him. She wanted the proof that he wasn’t Integrity’s successor. Pike’s vision of the Scale was wrong, and in a moment, everyone in this crowded, damp space would know it.
Aspen untied the rope around Pike’s hands. She then took a step back instead of forcing him to the vault. She was sure he’d tried to open it already. He knew he wasn’t the one. But she wanted to see him try again.
“Go on,” Aspen said.
Pike glared at her, but he lifted his hands. He shuffled toward the vault, his ankles still hobbled by the rope around them. He had barely made any progress when he coiled his leg muscles and then launched himself at Aspen.
Joy and Strength sprung into action at the same time, having guessed what Pike intended to do. They grabbed him by the arms and hauled him back before he could attack Aspen. Aspen drew her sword and instinctively used her free hand to usher Charm behind her.
“He didn’t even try,” Charm said. Her voice echoed off the walls, as if it could carry all the way upstairs to where the rest of the Scale was waiting to hear who was able to open the vault.
“I made the Scale profitable,” Pike shouted. He strained against Strength and Joy’s hold on him, but he couldn’t break free. “Integrity’s vision would have seen his precious order finished within the year. It lives because of me!”
“You killed him?” The Scale member who asked wasn’t nearly as young as he sounded. Aspen recognized him, Tenacity, one of the recruits during her final year with the Scale. He had always shown promise, but his guard was weak. He thought fighting was only about offense.
“Of course he killed him,” another one of the Scale members said. The voice spurred a memory. His name was Grace. “And now we’re getting paid.”
“Does that mean Aspen’s the heir?” A third member of Pike’s team spoke up. Aspen didn’t recognize them, but they clearly knew her name. Had they grown up hearing stories about her betrayal?
By her estimation, Tenacity wasn’t fully on Pike’s side. If they could sway even one more away from him, the inevitable fight would go much easier.
“Let’s find out.” Grace reached out to grab her. She brought her sword up and held it out between them.
“You aren’t touching me,” Aspen said.
He unsheathed his sword. “I’m going to use you to open the door, and then I’m going to kill you.”
Aspen took a step back to give herself space to maneuver. The two remaining Scale members took that as their cue to launch themselves at Strength and Joy. Aspen’s two allies were more than capable of defending themselves, but they had to drop Pike in order to do it.
Tenacity and his friend, the other doubter, both hesitated, unsure which side to join or, perhaps, if they should join any side at all.
