The Last Lies of Ardor Benn Read online

  Flames! His escape route was cut off by the sudden arrival of two more thugs—women who were clearly on Dalfa Rhed’s side. If he wanted to get to an open pathway out of Oriar’s Square, he’d have to sprint through a maelstrom of Roller balls.

  Ard’s glance turned to the ruins of the Old Palace Steps. Just over four years ago, he’d saved all of humankind on those steps. Maybe they’d show him some kindness now.

  He leapt the chain that cordoned off the historic site. His robe caught and he fell flat on his face, another gun ball missing him, perhaps thanks to his clumsiness. Maybe these robes were good for something!

  He scampered forward, getting his feet under him as he ascended the stone steps. Was this the stair where he’d become a Paladin Visitant, crouched in shadow while Grotenisk the Destroyer breathed centuries-old fire to fertilize the bull dragon egg?

  There wasn’t much time for sentimentality now. Ard had no plan. He was simply trying to gain the high ground. That was always the tactical advantage, right?

  Whatever he was doing, it seemed to be working. Halfway up the steps, his enemies stopped shooting at him. Dalfa Rhed was reckless to open fire in the Char, but her team wasn’t foolish enough to put divots into a historical monument like the Old Palace Steps.

  Ard was far from safe, though. One of the women and two of the men were stepping over the cordon chain, thin swords brandished. If only there was some way off this ruined stairway to nowhere…

  A rope!

  Almost like a gift from the Homeland, Ard saw a rope dangling from the tall oak that framed the steps to the right. Glancing up, he saw that it was Raek’s original escape rope, conveniently severed so the cut end draped across the crumbling landing at the top of the stairs.

  Perfect! A way out, and still a chance to look undeniably heroic. Ard holstered both Rollers and sprinted the final steps, catching the limp rope in both hands and leaping from the landing. He swung in a wide arc, his momentum and the significant length of his rope looping him around the side of the Old Palace Steps.

  He was spinning in a madly dizzying fashion, but he still managed to glimpse the looks on the faces of his pursuers. They stared in obvious awe at his reckless acrobatics, swords gripped loosely.

  Now, if only he knew how to get down.

  Just then, the knot in the tree must have failed, dropping him to the stone pavers just yards from Dalfa. He didn’t land gracefully, his Islehood robes tearing as he rolled painfully across the ground. Dalfa opened fire, but the ball from her Roller pinged harmlessly off a transparent Barrier cloud that had suddenly formed between them.

  A rough hand seized Ard by the back of the neck and yanked him to his feet.

  “Why can’t you just escape like a normal person?” Raekon Dorrel asked, pointing his crossbow into the Square and sending a bolt through the leg of Dalfa’s nearest man.

  “How do normal people escape?” Ard asked, starting down the open path through the Char.

  “On foot,” Raek replied, reloading as he followed. “Not swinging across Oriar’s Square like a windblown sailor.”

  “That was improvising,” Ard said. “I was supposed to fly up on that paver.”

  “See? Not normal.”

  “Tricorn hat?” Ard spit. “That stone looked more like a croissant.”

  “I didn’t think of a croissant,” said Raek. “That’s good.”

  “Not helpful now.” Ard glanced over his shoulder to see that Dalfa and her thugs had not been slowed by Raek’s Barrier cloud. Seven of them. Following at a dead sprint.

  “If you’re going to be so picky about the shape of the rock, you should have come with me when I was setting things up last night,” Raek said.

  “I had a man in my Cove pouring his heart out,” said Ard. “I couldn’t ask him to wrap it up so I could set up for tomorrow’s showdown. I trusted you to take care of it.”

  “Well, I had my doubts about the flying-paver-plan from the beginning,” Raek said. “Running was always a better idea.”

  Although winded from his sprint, Ard found enough breath to scoff. “Not nearly exciting enough. Cowards run. Reformed-ruse-artists-turned-Holy-Isles fly out of a conflict on a flat rock.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you actually hear the words that come out of your mouth.”

  “Your rope didn’t hold, by the way,” said Ard. “I’m questioning your knots.”

  “The rope didn’t hold because I untied it when I saw you flailing helplessly ten feet above the ground,” said Raek.

  “I mean before that,” Ard said. “The other end must’ve come untied because I found it draped across the landing at the top of the steps.”

  “Yeah,” Raek said. “You’re welcome for that, too.”

  Ard slowed, pointing ahead. The path was clear of citizens—they knew how to scurry when trouble erupted in the Char—but a handful of blue uniformed Regulators were making directly for them. “About time they showed up!”

  At his side, Raek cursed. “Since when are we happy to see Reggies coming toward us?”

  “Dalfa started this trouble,” Ard said. “She and her crew won’t stick around to answer questions.” He glanced back. “See?” Sure enough, their enemies were darting off the path into the lush foliage of the Char.

  When he turned back, Raek had moved over to one of the historical ruins on the side of the pathway. It was one of the better-preserved structures from Old Beripent. There was a crumbled second story, but the first floor looked well intact.

  “Lose the robe!” Raek called as he ripped open the mossy wooden door of the ruined building.

  “What?” Ard cried.

  “Trust me,” said Raek. “You’re going to want deniability.”

  Ard grimaced. Dalfa hadn’t made up the law about concealing firearms beneath an Islehood robe. He stepped off the path and pulled the dirty sea-green fabric over his head. Ditching it under some ferns, he stepped back onto the path, heart pounding to see how close the Reggies were.

  “Come on!” Raek shouted, peeking his head out from the doorway of the ruins. It seemed like a terrible idea to corner themselves in a run-down building while the Regulators could clearly see them enter. But he couldn’t leave Raek.

  Sprinting across the path, Ard ducked through the doorway and his partner slammed the old wooden door shut.

  “Trespassing on historic ruins in the Char is punishable with jail time, and a fine,” Ard hissed through the sudden darkness. The building was windowless, but sunshine leaked through the worn doorframe, casting thin lines of light filled with dancing particles of dust.

  “Tell that to the guy who just jumped off the Old Palace Steps.” Raek took a Grit pot from his belt and threw it against the door. The Slagstone sparked when the clay shattered and a dome of Barrier Grit effectively sealed off the door.

  “This is a bad idea.” Ard glanced around. The room was bigger than he’d expected. Maybe fifty feet long, but only half as wide. “I could have talked my way out of it. We’re the good guys now. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Now it was Raek’s turn to scoff. “I’m literally hiding so much in my pack right now,” he said, shrugging out of it.

  Ard held his breath, then decided to ask it. “Heg?” He knew his friend had been using it again—detonating Compounded Health Grit directly into that pipe in his chest. Since their confrontation on Pekal two years ago, Ard couldn’t count how many times his friend had gone clean.

  Or how many times he’d relapsed.

  “I’ve got vials of liquid Grit in here that the Greater Chain doesn’t even know exists,” Raek said, artfully dodging the question.

  The rickety wooden door thundered under the pounding of fists. “Open up!” cried a Regulator’s voice. “In the name of the crusader monarch! Open this door at once and surrender yourselves!”

  “They’re just going to blow their way in,” Ard whispered.

  Raek shook his head. “And destroy one of the Char’s historic buildings?”

  Ard til
ted his head to catch a woman’s voice making a report. “We’ve swept the building, sir. This door is the only way in or out.”

  “Very well,” came the reply. “They’re not going anywhere. We’ll station ourselves here and starve them out if we have to.”

  Ard turned to Raek, exhaling sharply. “Bury your pack,” he whispered. “I’ll go out there and—”

  “One crime,” Raek cut him off. “All they have to do is find us guilty of one crime.”

  Ard understood the stakes. If he violated the terms of agreement with Queen Abeth, she would revoke the pardon and it would be back to his old lifestyle.

  “We can’t risk it yet,” Raek said. “Not until you get what we need from the Islehood.”

  Right. Finding out where the Islehood stored its growing collection of dragon shell fragments was the entire point of this plan. With the little bull dragon finally mature enough to fertilize the eggs, there had been a huge influx of shell. In keeping with tradition, the Islehood had complete control over it, safeguarding the broken fragments until they could be processed into Visitant Grit.

  It actually hadn’t been hard to figure out where the Islehood was storing it. Ard had learned the location two cycles ago.

  The hard part was deciding not to tell Raek.

  “And when we do lose the queen’s pardon—hopefully soon,” Raek went on, “I expect to be doing something a lot more impressive than trespassing.”

  “How do we get out of here, then?” Ard whispered. “They said they could starve us out. And I’m already hungry!”

  “Relax.” Raek dug into his pack. “We don’t have to go out the door.”

  “Blast Grit?” Ard said hesitantly. “You’re going to blow a hole in the wall—”

  “That could bring the whole place down on our heads,” Raek cut him off, holding up a pair of thick, elbow-length gloves. A grin split his scarred face. “I think it’s time to give these another try.”

  “The gauntlets. Are you serious?” Ard retorted. “Didn’t you break every one of your fingers last time?”

  “Only nine,” said Raek. “My left pinky was spared. And anyway, I’ve made some improvements.” He pulled another Grit pot from his belt and tossed it to Ard. “Detonate this against the far wall, will you?”

  Ard glanced at the clay ball, a white spot painted on one side. “What is it?”

  “Silence Grit,” Raek replied, tugging on one of the bulky gauntlets.

  Ard crossed to the back of the long room and pitched the pot against the stone wall. He was standing within the radius when the cloud formed and everything went absolutely silent. He breathed in the quiet for a brief moment, trying to feel the Urgings from the Homeland that he’d spent the last year preaching about.

  There was nothing. He felt no guidance beyond the cleverness of his own intellect. And he had felt nothing since the night of Gloristar’s marvelous transfiguration. She had claimed to be the Homeland. And if that were true, perhaps it explained why Ard had felt nothing since. He had seen the Homeland with his own eyes. He had seen her fall from the Old Post Lighthouse, swallowed into the depths of the sea.

  And in the two years since her death, he had felt no Urgings.

  Ard turned to find Raek fully geared up. In each gloved hand he held an iron rod about a foot long. Both ends of the rods had been flattened like the head of a nail.

  “That’s your improvement?” Ard asked, stepping out of the Silence cloud.

  “And I sewed the rods to the palms of the gloves so they won’t slip,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. The other side of his lips were busy clenching two small blue vials like cigars. As Ard watched, Raek carefully spit a vial into each of his palms, the glass clinking as it rested against the iron bars.

  “I see how convenient these would be in a hurry,” Ard said sarcastically.

  “They’re a work in progress,” replied Raek. “Ready?”

  Without waiting for Ard’s affirmation, Raek closed both of his fists, shattering the vials against the metal rods. Two spherical Grit clouds sprang up, encompassing Raek’s hands entirely, closing tightly around his padded forearms. They shimmered. Vaporous, transparent. Both no larger than his head.

  Grunting in satisfaction, Raek bumped his fists together. The impenetrable Containment cloud was one of the late Portsend Wal’s creations—as durable as a Barrier cloud, but lightweight and movable.

  The hard shell of the Containment clouds had formed around the bars Raek was holding, giving him a convenient handle through the center of the detonation.

  “The newly flattened ends should keep the rods in place,” Raek explained. That had been the problem last time. His handlebars had shifted sideways so they were no longer supported through the center of the clouds. When he had punched, his fist had slid forward inside the sphere, slamming his knuckles against the inside of the Containment shell.

  Raek bellowed, dashing a few steps to pound both protected fists against the Barrier cloud that sealed the door. The force rattled the hinges, and the old wood trembled.

  “Umm…” Ard said. “Did I detonate that Silence Grit in the wrong place?”

  “Nah,” said Raek, turning away from the Barrier cloud. He lowered his voice. “I just needed to make a little ruckus at the front door so they think we’re focused on getting out that way. With a little bit of luck, we won’t have anyone stationed around back.”

  Ard followed his large friend to the Silence cloud on the other side of the building.

  “You might want to shield your eyes.” Raek said loudly, now that no one could overhear them. He drew back his arm and punched the wall with his armored fist. The huge muscles on his bare arm rippled, and Ard saw the mortar crack all the way around the big stone he’d struck. Loose bits chipped and flew, and Ard was grateful that he’d raised his hand to protect his face.

  Well, a couple more blows like that and they’d have a genuine hole!

  Raek punched again, this time lower on the block. Then he delivered three more hits in rapid succession with alternating fists. The large stone block was more than halfway free, ready to tumble outside with just a few more strikes. Its vacancy would leave a hole large enough for the two men to climb through.

  Raek grinned, drawing back his fist once more, but Ard caught his arm. Something had fallen to the floor at Raek’s feet, dislodged from the wall and lying amid the loose debris.

  A folded piece of parchment.

  Ard stooped and picked it up, shaking off the dust. Raek shrugged in disinterest and punched the stone block again. Unfolding the parchment, Ard felt his breath sucked away by its simple message.

  Ardor Benn—Tofar’s Salts. 8th of 3rd. Noon. Ask to see the Be’Igoth.

  Ard looked up sharply, half expecting to see someone lurking in the shadows of the old room. His pulse was racing every bit as fast as when he’d been swinging through Oriar’s Square. A note addressed to him. Here? And the eighth day of the Third Cycle… That was only three days from now. How was this even possible?

  “Raek,” Ard whispered, but his friend didn’t pause, slugging the wall a final time. The big stone block finally sloughed outward, a square beam of light cutting through the dim room.

  “Someone might have heard that,” Raek said, since the block had fallen outside the radius of their Silence cloud. “Ard?”

  He was a statue, staring at the paper in his hands, turning it over in the new light as if additional words might appear.

  “Ard!” Raek snapped. “Let’s go.”

  He swallowed against the cryptic message he’d just read, wadding the parchment in his hand and climbing through the hole in the wall. Raek followed, blowing on his gauntlets as if they were smoking from the action.

  “Raek.” Ard tried to show him the piece of parchment. “This fell out of the wall—”

  “Save it,” Raek cut him off, holding up a Grit-covered fist, a worried look on his face. Just then, Ard saw one of the Regulators moving along the side of the ruins. At the sight of
them, he let out a shrill cry.

  “It’s time to escape like a normal person,” Raek muttered, clapping Ard on the back with his orb fist. “Run!”

  You deserve the truth, so I’ll do my best to lay it all out for you. Consider this my glass mind. No tricks. No lies. All my barest intentions made plain even to the simplest of human minds.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The body in the handcart was heavy, but that wasn’t what caused Quarrah to stop for another break. Fear was what was slowing her down. Fear that the Moonsick figure sealed inside the long wooden box might leap up at any moment and start tearing into the arrogant Talumonian citizens that strutted these streets.

  Ugh. Talumon was such a haughty island. Quarrah didn’t particularly enjoy being here, but it was nice to have employment options on all the islands, now that the war had ended. She’d done some of her best work on Talumon in the past. Jobs seemed to line themselves up, clustered together like the endless towns and cities that populated this island.

  But she definitely preferred Beripent to this self-important place. There was a dirty hardiness to Beripent’s streets, where the cramped neighborhoods encouraged people to keep their heads down and mind their own business.

  Quarrah continued forward, mindful of the storm clouds overhead and the wind that whipped her sand-colored hair. Good. The rain would give her an excuse to stay at Lord Dulith’s manor and find out what kind of “cure” he was talking about.

  “Best find shelter, young lady,” called an old man, checking the knots on the canopy covering his front porch.

  See… much too nosy for Quarrah Khai’s liking. She didn’t reply, knowing that if she engaged him, the next thing out of his mouth would probably be, “What’s in the box?”

  She’d already answered that half a dozen times after smuggling it past harbor security—“Delivery for Lord Dulith.” But the shape of the box was a telltale coffin, and the Talumonians were gossipy enough that she’d had to offer some explanation. She’d settled on a shipment of Fielders, and the lie seemed to satisfy the passive curiosity around her.