144: Wrath (25 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Kiff shuffled along behind Polas down the dusty road as they made their way through Cheapside. A dark swirl of smoke rose like a bleak pillar, and a dull orange and red light flickered over the rooftops a few blocks away. Rats scurried past them and hid beneath boxes, behind barrels, and between splits in the wood paneling that formed the row of shanties and shacks that passed for homes in the forgotten edge of Odes'Kan. The Iron Butcher walked a few feet ahead, his quickened speed hindered by his limp. The general's ankle did not bend well, and, Kiff noted, likely caused him to favor his left side in a fight.

 "Come on." Polas turned the corner at the end of the street and picked up his pace despite his limitations.

Kiff stopped for a moment as they entered the open square in front of the old Sigil House. Denizens of Cheapside swarmed over the building, dumping buckets of water on the hungry flames. The poor dregs would have to contain the fire without the aid of the city fire handlers. The city watch would not call on them unless the flames threatened the city wall or any of the valuable sections of the city.

People dashed back and forth, some forming a line, some getting in each other's way. Children cried and grasped at their mothers, a man with a wheelbarrow switched out with a friend after each run to and from an old well, and the flames hissed and spat with each dousing. Kiff took a moment to peer deeper. The rooftops looked clear, and no lurking figures loomed in the dark alleyways. It made him uneasy.

Polas had stepped into the chain line and was passed buckets along with the rest of the rabble. He beckoned to Kiff. "Grab a bucket, boy."

Kiff did as Polas asked but kept his eyes on the shadows. "The building's lost, Polas. We might as well let the fire have it."

"The building is lost, but not these homes." Polas waved a hand toward the hovels that crowded the edges of the square. "I will not have our passing wake destroy so many lives. These people live on nothing, and our carelessness threatens to take away the very roof over their heads."

A bucket reached Kiff, and he moved it along. "I never figured you for such a thinblood. The Iron Butcher isn't supposed to care about anything, especially not poor people. Unless it's to take their children, right?"

"You've got a sharp mouth on you. It's a wonder it hasn't gotten you cut." Polas took another bucket and passed it down the line. "We're not so different, Kiff. Was a time I was a hired blade and a hard man, but I had help from a thinblooded woman who taught me to see past myself. You could use a bit of that yourself. Otherwise it will have to be me that does your thinning, and that won't end well."

"Wait; are you about to give me a 'the hells gates are open' speech? Cause I've heard it before."

"Boy, I can see that you're drowning. You need to take the line that's in front of you or you may never get out." Polas passed Kiff a bucket, sloshing a few drops of water on his boots. "You've got nothing going that's worth anything. Blood is cheap, and there's always a better blade."

Kiff froze, stopping the line's momentum. The Iron Butcher was a craven old man, delusional, and addled by ages of weathering.

The next man in line pulled the bucket from Kiff's grip and got the line moving again. The fire had been contained to a small section of freestanding wall. The rest of the building was lost to ashes and rubble. As Kiff watched, the last wall crumbled and a tuft of cinder and smoke choked the air.

Kiff began to walk away, to lose himself to the crowd and the clean-up efforts, but Polas stayed close beside him.

"Kiff," Polas said.

"What?" Kiff picked up a split section of charred beam and hurtled it into a pile. "The hells do you know about me, Butcher? Don't try to act like some great, holy judge. You're not the Hand of Hope that all these
maroves
with their prophecies think you are. You're a dead man who wants vengeance for your dead wife and your dead family and all those thousands of other idiots you led to their deaths so you can sleep peacefully. And that's it."

Polas was silent for a moment, and Kiff could tell he had played the power card-disk, but for some reason he regretted it.

"You're not wrong," Polas said. "But you're also missing my point. You can betray a thousand people in a thousand ways while you search for whatever you're searching for, but you'll have found it when you find the one person you can't betray. You don't have to be here. You don't have to be part of this. But if you insist on tagging along, just make sure you ask yourself if you're willing to betray her."

"Her?"

Polas limped out of the rubble, and Kiff lost sight of him in the commotion of the crowd. Kiff shook his head and turned his mind back to the clean-up efforts. He helped move bricks and stone into sorted piles for reuse or rubbish and tried to make small talk with the people of Cheapside. By the time most of the denizens had cleared off, Kiff's body ached for a bed, but he knew that sleep would not find him. He had too much war in his soul, and he knew the night was far from over.

A short distance away, Polas stood in the middle of the ruined building. Ash and embers swirled around him in the cold night air. On the ground before him, his statue lay in pieces. He kicked aside fragmented bits of stone and burnt planks of lumber. A few feet away, a trampled flowerbed held the crushed remains of once-bright flowers. Polas knelt down and ran his fingers through the soil. He brushed soot and debris from the petals of a single, white blossom whose stem had broken in the chaos and plucked it from the ground. The flower gave no sweet scent that could be detected over the smell of ash and cinder, but he held it to his nose just the same. He closed his eyes, whispered a silent prayer to ask for another chance, and spun the stem between his fingers. The flower whirled into the air and floated away on the breeze, and Polas turned his mind toward finding a new blade.

Underneath the rubble, he found a few swords and daggers, some of which were still attached to lifeless hands. He picked up a discarded longsword and slipped it through his belt. A few daggers he found to be serviceable. He slipped one into each boot and cast the others into a pile of weaponry a local gentleman had agreed to turn over to authorities.

Polas turned around to see Vor and Xandra approaching with Flint trailing behind them.

Wind swept over the ruins of the Sigil House as Cheapside tenants scavenged through the mess, salvaging what wood, metal, and stone they could. The destruction was just another night in their hard lives, and few of them took noticed of its significance.

Standing on the remains of what was once the guildhall’s entryway, the group of heroes might as well have been raiders or bloodied soldiers or lost souls that had strayed into Cheapside for the night.

"What’s the plan from here, Polas?" Vor asked.

Kiff stood across the wreckage to the side of the debris helping some of the citizens organize reusable debris into piles. He did not seem to notice that the others had arrived.

"Calec, come over here," Polas yelled to the Undlander.

Xandra and Flint exchanged pained glances, but Vor only looked confused.

Polas had not noticed his slip-up and grew impatient with Kiff. He tried to whistle but had to default to Flint. The Faldred placed two fingers in his mouth and got the attention of everyone in the square.

Kiff dropped the bricks he was holding and walked over to join the group.

"What’s the plan, boss?" he asked.

"We will continue to the port at Tovarsh," Polas started.

Flint held up his hand. "The Port of New Thalry."

"Whatever they’re calling it now," Polas said. "Reyce secured passage for two on a ship leaving tomorrow evening. We’ll have to see what we can do about more tickets."

"Right," Kiff said with a laugh. "Because that boat won’t sink as soon as we’re too far from shore to swim back."

"He’s already destroyed, Kiff." Xandra sighed. "You don’t need to attempt to discredit Reyce any further."

"Nobody’s trying to discredit that shift-faced, unholy abomination of un-life. I’m simply telling you that if he arranged a ship for you, it’s going to sink, or explode, or be teleported out from under us while we’re left to the sea drakes."

Flint offered Polas a piece of jerky, and Polas removed his mask to tear a bite from the tough strip of meat. "You seem pretty certain of this."

"Look, I don’t really care if you trust me. So long as you don’t trust that drake-spit either," Kiff said. "I’m telling you, if he set it up, then he set you up in the process."

Flint pulled out a small pouch from his bag and counted its contents. "How much coin do we have between us? Perhaps we could buy passage on a different vessel."

"Or," Kiff said, "we could walk to Waysmale."

"What are you talking about?" Xandra asked.

"When I left earlier, I was checking on a lead I pulled from those assassins on the road. Turns out Exandercrast has been sending emissaries back and forth to the House of Suns through some portal in their main building."

Vor snorted. "Ridiculous. And this arcane path to Waysmale happens to be set up right in the middle of the drakken’s den? You’ve dangled weak bait, assassin."

"You know," Kiff said, "I hear they were gonna set the portal up on Merchants’ Row, but apparently the taxes were too high."

Vor growled, and Xandra turned away to hide her smile.

"Even if such a portal did exist," Flint said, "Master Kas Dorian would not be able to travel through it. And neither could you, from what I can tell."

Kiff looked down at his pants. He pulled a piece of black leather out of his bag along with a needle and thread and began sewing the scrap over a burned patch on his knee. "See, there’s the beauty. The emissary is some
marove
with the same magic resistance as Polas. The portal had to be strong enough to get him through, so Exandercrast made it himself."

Polas winced and began to pace to and from the group, scratching his bandaged chin and weighing the possibilities in his mind.

"It’s a trap, Polas," Vor said. "And not even a clever one. Surely you’re not foolish enough to walk directly into so obvious a net."

Xandra took a small step forward. "If the portal did work, it would save us months of travel," she said.

Kiff nodded to her in thanks of her support. She looked away from him.

"Or we could be killed here in this hope-forsaken town," Vor said.