Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (14 page)

Shel gave them each a pointed look before she answered. “I was looking for the gang,” she explained. “Thought I’d check the fortress first, in case you lot hadn’t split the second you got wind of what happened. Leaving was the sensible thing, so I wouldn’t blame you, but I had a feeling without Rez and Maul or Kal around, nobody else would think of it.”

Alban gave no sign of recognizing the thinly veiled insult, but Rori’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Watch it,” said the redhead. She licked her lips, betraying the nerves she tried to hide behind her strident tone and fierce glaring. “Just exactly what did‘happen’that we're supposed to've got wind of?”

“It was a trap,” said Shel with a shrug. “Thorne knew we were coming, and he was ready for us. Rez and I were captured. I didn’t see any of the others after that. I don’t know if any got away.”

“Some did,” said Alban. His voice was angry, and the way he looked at Shel left no doubt where he placed the blame.

“Who?” demanded Shel, eyes wide. “Tell me!”

“Kal, for one,” said Rori. “She told us how it went down, got us on the move.”

“Thank Dunmir for that,” breathed Shel, relaxing. Her breath caught, and she looked back up at Rori. “Maul? Sanook?”

Alban’s face turned murderous, but Rori just shook her head sadly. Shel deflated visibly, sagging forward where she sat on the ground behind the bush. Her lips pulled down in a miserable slouch, and her brow furrowed. She had only known Maul a short time, but she liked the taciturn giant. She had thought of him as a friend, or at least someone who would be her friend eventually. She was sorry to hear he was dead. And Sanook…if she had been close to anyone in the gang, it was the mysterious Shadowman. Without him, she could never have learned to control her power.

“I had so much left to learn…” she said, so quietly the others couldn’t make out the words. Shel looked down at the ground and the tears spilled from her eyes, hot and stinging. “Oh, merciful Dunmir.”

It wasn’t just her weaving. Right now, Shel didn’t care about that. Sanook had most definitely been her friend. He was stern and hard on her in their training sessions, but he was otherwise kind and understanding.

She remembered what he had told her about his people. He had told her also a little about Aemond, his dead clansman whose soul she carried even now. Without Sanook, she might never have known Aemond at all…she wouldn’t have been able to understand the memories and abilities he had bestowed her either.

Then there were the marks. Beneath the mask he was never without, Shel knew his skin was marked with dozens – perhaps hundreds – of small tattoo-like birthmarks. Diamonds and squiggles and stars and esoteric symbols Shel couldn’t comprehend. She might not understand them, but she had seen them before. They were the same as the marks around her hips, the irregular belt of dermal markings she’d borne all her life.

With Aemond gone, nothing but a vague reflection within herself, and now Sanook killed…Shel knew she would never learn the full truth about those marks. She had her suspicions, but only a Shadowman could tell her for sure.

“Why did the emperor kill the Shadowmen?” she suddenly wondered aloud. She had never given it much thought, even after meeting Sanook and learning the Shadowmen were more than spooky, half-mythical bogeymen made up to scare the kids.

Rori and Alban traded confused glances. “What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Shel said, shaking her head. She knew this pair had no answers for her, and so no reason to repeat her question. But she would find her answer, she promised herself. There was so much she didn’t know – about Sanook and the Shadowmen and even herself, about Rez and his true goals, even about the empire she had called home. She didn’t know where she’d get her answers, but she was determined that nothing would stop her from finding them.

Shel stood up, dusting off her legs as she rose. Alban took a hurried step back, and both he and Rori lifted their crossbows threateningly.

“Enough, already,” said Shel, annoyed. She took a deep breath. “Take me to Kal. She and I need to have a talk. And I've got some very bad news for her.”

Rori’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How do we know you're not working for the archon?”

Shel’s answering expression was one of withering scorn. “Archon Thorne,” she said, cutting her out words bitterly, “is a monster. He isn’t a man with monstrous qualities. He is a beast that walks upright, and one day I will kill him.”

Shel squared her shoulders, daring Rori to have a problem with what she said next. “And if you ever think about suggesting I’d be in league with such a vile creature, remember this.”

As she spoke, Shel ripped the crossbows out of their hands with invisible claws. She flung them high in the air and incinerated them with twin fireballs. She did it all without moving a muscle. Alban and Rori both fell back, slackjawed and frightened.

“I'm not your prisoner,” Shel told them. “I'll never be anyone’s prisoner again. Now let’s go.”

The camp was hidden in a thick copse of trees, two dozen low-roofed tents staked out in a tight cluster near the densest undergrowth. Thieves bustled about, finishing up the tasks of setting camp before the last of the sun’s light disappeared beyond the horizon.

Kal strode out of the smallest of the tents, set at the exact center of the arrangement. With her hands on her hips, she looked around at the activity and nodded approval. Then she saw the three figures emerge from the deeper woods and set a course straight for her position. She frowned, recognizing Rori and Alban – two of the gang’s most junior recruits – and Shel.

Kal gasped and stared. The younger woman had clearly been through a nasty experience, but she was alive. In a flash, Kal considered the possibilities and decided that she and Shel would need to talk in private. She started forward to meet them.

“Shel,” said Kal when she reached the young woman and her escorts. “I'm glad to see you alive. Come with me.”

Alban and Rori exchanged a guarded look, and Kal’s frown deepened. “You two are supposed to be covering our backtrail,” she said.

“Our watch is almost over,” Alban said. “We passed Rodrik and Peele. They headed out early, so…”

“So we'll have four members watching for any pursuit,” Kal finished for him, ignoring the burly man’s expression of surprise and disappointment. “Get back out there. Now.”

Without waiting to see that they obeyed, Kal took Shel by the arm, turned, and headed back for her tent. She needed to know what had happened, but – perhaps more importantly – she needed to find out how much Shel knew.

It hadn’t proved easy, but Kal had managed to get the gang on the move. Those who had remained behind – close to forty thieves – had been reluctant in agreeing to even a temporary relocation. Kal had counted on their loyalty to and faith in Rez convincing the others to follow her, his only remaining lieutenant. But it was that same faith in the leader that proved her biggest obstacle: no one had believed Rez would ever betray the location of the secret lair, even under torture.

Fortunately, Rez had long ago issued his approval to a contingency plan in case of his own capture. The plan had been cooked up by Sanook and Maul, at Kal’s urging. Everybody knew about the plan, though the details had been restricted to the four lieutenants. No one else – especially not Rez – knew the fallback location, but everybody knew there was one. That had helped Kal’s case.

It still left the not insignificant problems of feeding this mob and keeping them all otherwise supplied. They kept gold at the fort, of course, but Kal had found the funds severely depleted. She had no idea how Rez had always kept them replenished. She had brought what there was, but it wouldn’t last long.

As for food, there was more than they could carry. Sadly, what they could carry was less than what they could eat. They hunted on the move, which helped. Once they reached the fallback lair, they’d be able to set snares and the like, but Kal intended to keep the lowest profile possible. That meant restricting hunting parties to a bare minimum. Their food might not last.

And now, on top of all these headaches, here came Shel – without Rez.

Kal lifted aside the tent flap and ushered Shel hurriedly inside. She was anxious to know where the leader was. Before she followed Shel in, Kal looked around the encampment. Activity was winding down, except where the cooks were busy building up their fires and preparing their ingredients. They tried to conceal their interest, but everyone in sight was sending surreptitious glances their way. She wasn’t the only one who wanted to know. Kal scowled and ducked into the tent.

“What happened?” she asked briskly, closing and securing the entry flap before joining Shel in the middle of the enclosed space. Shel had immediately collapsed on one of the large, overstuffed cushions that served as combination chairs and bedding in the tent. She cast a miserable glance upward at Kal.

While Shel told her story, Kal listened with half an ear. Her thoughts were racing. When the girl told her about Rez, her heart sank even though she had more than half expected it. So that was it, then. First Aemond, then Sanook and Maul. Now Rez was gone too. She was the only one left. Kal wasn’t sure how much longer the gang would follow her, especially without knowing the truth. She had delayed telling them anything, but now that Shel was back the questions would start firing again.

“Kal,” said Shel, looking at her with wide, very serious eyes. “There’s something else you need to know.”

The girl’s tone snapped Kal’s attention fully back to the moment. “What’s that?”

“This might sound crazy.” Shel hesitated, biting her bottom lip and peering speculatively at Kal. Then she blurted it out all at once: “Rez wasn’t really interested in stealing souls just because they're really expensive. The whole thing was just a front for a secret rebellion against the empire. I didn’t believe it at first but he admitted it, Kal. Rez admitted it was true.”

She spilled the words in a breathless rush, and at the end she sucked in a huge lungful of air and sat back on her cushion as if exhausted.

Kal just smiled sadly.

“I know,” she told the girl. “Relax, Shel. I know all about it. All of…the lieutenants knew.” Kal dropped her eyes mentioning the others, covering a slight hitch in her voice and wiping one hand at her eyes.

“Thank Dunmir,” said Shel, surprising the honey-haired, reluctant leader. “I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. Does everybody know about it? Was I the only one kept in the dark?”

Kal pursed her lips, considering how to answer. There didn’t seem to be any point in lying about it now. “No, Shel. Only the five of us knew. Four by the time you came to us. I think Rez had his eye on you to replace Aemond in the group eventually.” Kal trailed off, glancing away at the side of the tent without really seeing it. “I guess we'll never know.”

“Will the others stay if we tell them?” asked Shel.

That was a question Kal had been asking herself for the last four days. She still hadn’t found an answer. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Right now, they're all following my orders out of habit and the belief that Rez will come back to us. He always has before. When they find out he’s dead…I just don’t know.”

“Then we can’t tell them,” Shel said. Seeming surprised by her own decision, she looked hastily at Kal to gauge the other woman’s reaction.

“How do you propose to keep it a secret…especially now that you're back?”

“We'll say Rez is still a prisoner. We'll say Thorne didn’t need me, didn’t think I was important. I was able to escape, but I couldn’t get close enough to Rez to free him.”

“But it’s a lie…” said Kal.

“So was that story about being thieves,” countered Shel. “Kal, you're the leader of a rebellion and none of your soldiers know they're rebels. They all believed that the gang stole souls to sell on the black market. They'll believe this, too. They'll want to believe it. And besides, you and I are going to keep them busy.”

“Busy?” echoed Kal.

“We've got to get started planning the next heist,” Shel said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Keep everybody busy and they won’t have too much time to think about things.”

“I don’t know, Shel…”

“Of course, they'll want to rescue Rez. And we'll let them believe that’s our ultimate goal. Thorne will go to the Conclave. We'll say he took Rez with him. How long do these things last, anyway?”

“The last Conclave attended the emperor for a month,” Kal answered, then shook her head.

“Then we’d better get started,” said Shel.

“Shel, you're not serious. You want to plan an assault on the imperial palace itself? To rescue a man who’s not even there, a man you saw die? Even if the Suncloaks didn’t slaughter us all – which they will – it won’t bring Rez back.”

“I know that,” said Shel. “I'm not a child. Listen to me, Kal. Rez wanted to overthrow the emperor, didn’t he?”

“You know that he did.”

“So what do you think he’d want us to do now that he’s gone?” Shel crossed her arms over her chest. “He’d want us to finish what he started, wouldn’t he?”

***

Three hours later, Shel was asleep. The lamp-wicks had been lowered, dimming the flickering light. Shel was curled up atop the same cushion she’d been sitting on earlier. Kal sat across from her on another cushion, marveling at the change which had come over the girl.

Better stop thinking of her as a “girl,” Kal chuckled at herself. It was no secret Shel hated to be treated as a child. Well, she’d certainly proved she wasn’t one. Escaping from Thorne, making her way back here…

Not to mention the way she seemed perfectly poised to take command. Kal shook her head silently, still amazed.

She’d had food brought in for the pair of them, and sent the news spreading through the camp. Rez, their much-loved leader, was a captive. He was being taken to the imperial palace, not far from Solstice, there to answer for his crimes. A rescue was being planned. She thought that would satisfy them for the moment, but it wouldn’t be long before the band of thieves wanted details.

Shel had filled in most of those, however. She ate voraciously when the food came, half-starved after her ordeal. Between bites, though, she had never fallen silent. After the meal was finished, Shel kept talking. She’d talked herself to sleep, in fact, but the things she said made perfect sense. Kal was frankly amazed.