Thieves of Islar: Book One of The Heirs of Bormeer (3 page)

W
hen Jaeron heard the clear sound of the ocean ahead, he realized that their time in the Dockpad tunnels had been building a slow, deep discomfort within him. The quiet lap of waves at low tide was a catalyst to a sudden release of tension. He rolled his head on his neck and signaled Chazd that he would take the lead as they made their way to the tunnel exit.

He emerged amidst a rocky tumble near the base of a pier support, along the southern end of the Islar wharfs. The tunnel was hidden from the wooden docks and dockside streets above. The exit would be flooded during high tide. A sudden admiration of his father’s planning struck him. Father took advantage of the Dockpad’s need for careful track of the tidal schedule.

Jaeron finished a scrambling climb up the rocky slope to the side of the pier. Stopping short of hauling himself over the thick rope railing, he turned to help Avrilla and Chazd make their way up behind him and over the rope.

Jaeron could not decide what had made him more uncomfortable, being in the underground tunnels for so long or his confusion what they were doing there. The day before, he had convinced himself that the tenets of Teichmar were being upheld. The deAltos were just returning stolen property to its rightful owner. Upon seeing the jewelry case, he suspected that there was more to the story. Moreover, he felt honest remorse for having to kill the
brek
hounds.

Jaeron felt good about one thing tonight. The night felt like a new beginning. Though Henri was not his biological father, Jaeron could not imagine having a better one. Over the last three years, Jaeron had come to understand how many sacrifices Henri had made for him and his siblings.

Henri had struggled to make ends meet all their lives, taking small thieving jobs just often enough to keep the roof over their heads and a small training area in the spare bedroom of their cramped apartment. He had two or three other rogues that helped him over the years. He kept the group small, out of the way of other guilds, and below the investigative interest of the city’s law. Through that time, he had trained each of them in the way he or she was most skilled or interested. At some point along the way, Jaeron had made a choice to follow his father’s dreams rather than his own aspirations that were more religious in nature. Tonight that dream had been realized.

He wondered if either of his siblings realized they had made a similar decision, or if they had yet to make any decision at all. Chazd seemed so comfortable being able to take one day at a time. In many ways his brother embraced his future life as a thief long before Jaeron himself had. As for Avrilla, Jaeron still could not fully come to terms with seeing her in danger, despite her training. And despite her newly revealed ability.

That thought disturbed him more than a little. Teichmar’s teachings were not explicit, but they warned believers to be wary of those who practiced sorcery. The Scripture of the Chosen was clear in denouncing sorcery as the tool of deceivers and those who would thwart justice. Jaeron knew that there were some factions of his church that had taken these writings to an extreme, having practicing sorcerers excommunicated, exiled, imprisoned, and worse.

Jaeron watched his sister make her way along the pier toward the Islar streets. She seemed so confident and strong. She had used her abilities tonight so that they did not have to kill or seriously injure the Dockpad’s guard.
Could I say that was unjust? Could Teichmar?

But how else had Avrilla been using her magic. And where did it come from?

And just like that, Jaeron’s own feelings of confidence and accomplishment from their completed mission melted into confusion.

His brother’s steps were light as they left the docks and his smile infectious. Once Chazd’s mood caught to Avrilla, Jaeron had no choice but to join in. Together they made the easy walk to Ardo Tabbil’s home behind the Old City Pawn. Once there, they changed and stored their gear in a hidden cache constructed in the bricks at the rear of the old building.

“Let’s go home,” Jaeron whispered.

Chazd grinned and led the way out of the pawnshop’s yard and across the street toward the Ninth Ward.

From the shadows of a fenced yard, a dog barked at their passing. Jaeron and Avrilla sprinted to keep up with Chazd as he ran off, putting distance between them and the noise. The barking was a painful reminder of how the night started. Images of the three
brek
hounds lying in the bloody sand flashed in Jaeron’s thoughts.

~

Avrilla’s stifled laugh broke his dark thoughts as she ran past him. He had to think about what they were running from. The dog’s bark was a rapid yipping, not at all like the low “huff” of a
brek
hound. Jaeron relaxed, shaking off the tension as he followed Chazd back to the familiarity of their own neighborhood.

“Hey, Chazd, Jaeron,” Avrilla whispered, her breath short with exertion.

Jaeron paused, glancing back at her.

“Smoke. Smell it?”

He shook his head, not surprised. His sister had a more sensitive sense of smell than he or Chazd did. Avrilla frowned. He smelled it now. Jaeron slowed their pace to a light jog. Nights continued to be chilly this time of year and an evening fire was common in the ward. But this smoke had a different smell. It was darker, more pungent.

They approached Founders Road, the major lane that bisected the Ninth Ward. In the break this created in the huddle of buildings, he could see the red-orange glow in the skyline. They were headed right toward it.

“It’s close to home,” Chazd said. “Only a couple of blocks.”

“Come on!” Jaeron said and broke into a sprint down the street.

He turned the corner onto Walnut Avenue when he heard the calls of a fire brigade.

“It’s our apartment,” Avrilla said, breathless, the truth of it hitting her first.

Jaeron jumped ahead of the other two, the strides of his longer legs gaining him ground.

“Father!” Jaeron shouted.

A small crowd had gathered at the blaze. A brigade line had already formed, scooping buckets of rainwater out of the collection cistern and passing them, taking their turn to be thrown on the blaze.

“Father! Henri!” Avrilla’s shouts soon joined his, all but drowned out in the crackling of the fire and the noise of the crowd.

Chazd and Avrilla rushed to join the impromptu fire squad, taking their turn at tossing water onto the burning building. Jaeron grabbed two buckets from the line and, rather than using them on the fire, poured them over himself. Having drenched his hair and clothes, he crashed through the side door of the apartment and disappeared into the smoke.

~

Jaeron had not really thought about what he was doing. Now inside, he braced himself against the wave of heat from the left-hand wall of the stairwell. A thin veil of smoke floated in the dim light. The fire brigade was concentrating on the central entry to the apartments and the main stairway, leaving the alley side stairway untended.

The fire had not yet spread that far, but the top of the stairs was a different matter. Smoke hung low and thick in the hallway that ran across the rear of the building’s second floor. Jaeron could hear a snapping overhead and the sinister groan of old roof timbers weakening. The fire had spread to the rafters.

The heat from the outside front walls singed his cheeks, and he ducked low to try to stay below the smoke. He could tell at this point that the fire engulfed the kitchen of both the upstairs and downstairs apartments. Unless the crowd on the streets below doubled in size, they were going to be lucky to save the building.

Jaeron kept to his hands and knees as he moved down the hall. The first door was their apartment’s rear entrance. He cautiously reached up to the door latch, but before he put his hand on it, he could feel the heat radiating from the metal. It may not have been hot enough to burn him, but he decided not to take the chance.

“Father!” Jaeron choked out another ragged shout.

Frantic, he looked around the hall but he did not see anything that could help him. Frustration competed with fear and forgetting his situation for a moment, Jaeron allowed himself a deep breath. The mistake brought on a fit of coughing.

Desperate, he saw no other options. He moved to the far side of the hallway and leading with his shoulder, charged the apartment door.

“Teichmar!”

The cry to his god almost drowned out the sound of the door breaking, but the roar of the fire overcame both. Jaeron’s charge tripped him at the doorway, leaving him sprawled on the floor. The fire surged out, engulfing the doorway behind him, singeing his back.

Steam rose from Jaeron’s wet clothes as he scrambled to his left, rolling a bit to make sure he was not on fire. His eyes burned from the smoke and heat. He blinked hard and wiped his face in the crook of his arm. He looked around the room.
Where in the hells is Father?

Then he saw the blood, a thin red trail leading across the main room into the small storage room near the front of the building. Scuttling forward on his elbows and knees, Jaeron made his way across the apartment.

“Father?” Jaeron knelt low near the crumpled form of Henri deAlto and reached out to grasp his father’s shoulder.

Fearful, and truly expecting that his father was gone, Jaeron almost stumbled back in surprise as Henri rolled off his shoulder and turned his head to look up at his son.

“Jaeron?” he whispered, his normally rumbling voice now thin and weak.

“Father, let’s get you out of here.”

“No,” Henri coughed. The old man nodded in the direction of his stomach and Jaeron took in the severity of the wounds. “Poison…… smoke… too much.”

“What happened?” Jaeron asked, whispering himself now, and fighting back his tears. He tried desperately to keep the swelling in his throat from choking him.

“Another guild… Found out about the necklace…” Henri shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now… forget it, forget job… should have given you this before… you, Chazd, Avrilla… too late…”

Henri’s hands grasped a crumpled parchment and cloth-wrapped package. He pushed them into Jaeron’s hands. The package was tied closed, but the seal on the parchment was cracked and long broken. Both were stained with Henri’s blood.

“What -” Jason began to ask, but Henri interrupted him.

“Take it… hide… They’ll come… let Tabbil worry…” Henri coughed roughly and wheezed in another breath. “Job not important - you’re to… lead… protect-”

Henri deAlto did not get the time to finish. Jaeron froze, then he collapsed over the body of the only father he ever remembered. Dimly, he realized he did not have time to grieve now. The heat had lessened, but the smoke had continued to thicken. He wiped his eyes again and looked around the apartment. The entry from the rear hall was an inferno. The front entry past the bedroom and kitchen was unreachable. That left the windows.

T
he crystal sparkled in the candlelight. The hors d'oeuvres were arranged on the serving trays, appetizing and artistic. The wine, a deep maroon syrah from Pevar, had been decanted and was just now reaching the peak temperature. It was all exactly as Larsettai
n’
Shil knew Mennat liked it.

No, not liked. She guessed that the Prime Minister truly liked very little, or what he did he kept hidden. Rather, it was what he expected.

That fact made Larsetta seethe. She sat forward on her padded leather chair and looked at her Feral board. She plucked one of the playing pieces from its position, a finely carved topaz bat that served as the pawn on the octagonal board. The game brought Mennat to her apartments every week, but Larsetta understood that the meeting was his way of letting her know what piece she played. It was to remind her that of their past dealings and the secrets that they knew about each other, none of it mattered. To Mennat, she was a pawn.

She curbed the impulse to throw the figure across the room. She slapped it back down on the board a bit heavily and the sharp crack of stone against wood resounded through the drawing room. She closed her eyes and took a breath, twisting her head until she felt the relieving pop of her vertebrae at the back of her neck.

Larsetta stood and circled the gaming table. From the far side she picked up the onyx
satyra
. The queen of the board was a sculpture of the mythological beast for which it was named - a voluptuous female form, naked and brazen, with cloven hooves and the head of a goat. Larsetta’s game pieces were exquisite. She had spared no expense on the set, and she smiled knowingly at the malicious intent so obvious in the
satyra’s
face.

This is what I should be.

She set the
satyra
down, much more gently than she had the bat, and looked out over the board. Larsetta had her own pieces, pawns scurrying dutifully under her commands. And more powerful minions that she considered as she looked at the wolf and bear figures. It was time to put them in play.

The bells rang in the foyer. Larsetta drew herself erect and smoothed her silk dress into place. Dark blue and tightly fit, it exposed shapely calves, a hint of her breasts. Enough of Larsetta’s skin to addle her opponent’s gameplay with thoughts of sex.

Not that such distractions work on Mennat.

She checked her face in the wall mirror – blush, eye shadow, lip rouge, and smile. She did not deny herself any advantage. It was time to greet him. Her guest did not expect to be kept waiting.