“What now?” Leon repeated as he met Justin’s startled gaze. “Now, we get out of this city.”
Justin’s blue eyes flitted to Tion Bey’s corpse in the corner, then turned back to Leon, disbelief and rising anger coming quickly. “How?!” he hissed.
“He brought his arks,” Leon said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder and toward the four carriage arks still parked in the safehouse’s driveway. “We’ll take them. Then ride them to where we need to go.”
Numbly, Justin walked over to Tion Bey and knelt at his side. “You make it sound so easy. I was hoping for more details.”
Leon scoffed. “I have details. We just need to work through them a little. But we don’t have much time now, if he was telling the truth and set something up in case he died.”
Justin spared Leon a glare, but he kept quiet as Leon kept going.
“We don’t bother any of your remaining contacts. Save them for later, if need be. And after what Kamran did out there, I’d bet they’re looking to keep their heads down. Instead… I have two thoughts. The first… we disguise ourselves as Tion Bey and his guards, using his arks. Then, we leave through one of the gates. He’s highly-ranked enough to pull that off, right?”
“No,” Justin immediately replied.
“Not even close,” Maemon added weakly, his face pale as he steadfastly refused to meet Leon’s golden gaze. “And you’d never get past the watchmen if the city is as locked down as it seems to be. Only Kamran himself or one of his vassal Lords would get through.”
“Gate’s a bit too obvious and easily secured,” Daryun agreed.
“But the audacity might be enough to win the day,” Alcander responded with a bold grin.
“We’ve been audacious enough,” Justin whispered as he laid a hand on Tion Bey’s shoulder. He closed his eyes and fell silent.
“My second thought,” Leon pressed on after sparing Justin only a single searching look, “is to still take his arks, but instead of heading to a gatehouse, we try and seize a Lumenite platform.” He could almost feel Justin’s despair as he floated an option even more audacious than the last.
“Lumenite?” Maemon asked, his voice wavering. “The strand platforms are heavily secured, and there won’t be enough available Lumenite to go anywhere even if you seize a platform.”
“I brought plenty,” Leon said. “Enough to get back to Basileus Gerhard’s land, and from there… anywhere we need to go.”
Maemon faced him fully, and after summoning up whatever mettle he could, he asked, “Who even are you?”
Leon met his gaze. The bureaucrat shivered, and Leon didn’t answer.
“If we get to a Lumenite platform,” Leon continued as he glanced over at Nestor, “can we activate it?”
The dead man’s motionless frame remained still, but Nestor whispered, “I can’t. But you can.”
“Can I?” Leon replied. “I’ve never done something like that before.”
“The platform should handle it. You just need to specify a destination and supply the Lumenite,” Nestor explained. “Be assured; using the platform won’t be the hard part.”
Zhang finished for the dead man. “It’ll be reaching it and securing it for long enough to escape.”
“Ha!” Alcander boomed. “We’ll hold it easily enough with Kamran hiding in his palace, tail tucked between his legs!”
“I don’t imagine he’ll remain there if he realizes what’s happening,” Cassandra pointed out. “My mother would burn down E—our entire home city to get me back if someone had kidnapped me. At Kamran’s power, he’ll move faster and strike harder. He’ll be anywhere in the city in minutes, if not seconds.”
With a straightened back and a face set into hard lines, Justin rose from beside Tion Bey. “You killed a man I considered to be a friend.”
“He extorted us,” Leon coldly replied, his tone brokering no argument. “He was no friend of yours. Even if he was paid to go away, we would have no guarantee that he would honor such an agreement. A man like that would’ve sold us out the moment he could. Better that he be there, dead by my hand, than in a position to harm us further.” Leon paused, then took a few threatening steps toward Justin. “You know I’m right. Or are you going to insist that he was your friend after all this?”
“Whatever else he did,” Justin said through clenched teeth, “he helped us this far and did not sell us out. If… if we had paid him, then he would’ve—”
“He’s dead,” Leon interjected. “And we’re moving on. Unless you’d like to further risk any friends you have left in this city?” He didn’t wait for Justin to respond before grinning thinly and heading back to the center of the room.
The rest of the room was so quiet a mortal could’ve heard a pin drop. But even amidst that silence, as Leon turned away from Justin, the rest of his people closed ranks with him.
“No,” Justin whispered quietly, his eyes unfocusing as if seeing something no one else could. “I’ve lost too many friends already… I’ll… follow your lead.”
“Good,” Leon replied, his tone light even as he kept a close eye on Justin. He wanted to project confidence, but he wasn’t ignoring Justin’s dour attitude. “Now… we have to deal with that Tion Bey brought with him. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
---
As if it had been carved into stone, a deep scowl marred Khillon’s rugged face. He was a man used to waiting, having joined Torn Sky’s guard many years ago. Most of his job was waiting around for things to happen, and he judged himself as being quite good at his job.
But something about this wait had started feeling off. His commander had been gone long enough that the instructions he’d left with Khillon started to grow heavy. They’d been made in haste, Tion Bey not thinking them particularly necessary. Only Khillon and Numerian, another squad leader who remained at their unit headquarters, were privy to those instructions.
‘Report to the palace: Justin Isynos returned. Guide them to this house.’
Simple and easy to follow. But Khillon couldn’t help but wonder about that very specific instruction. Tion Bey had always been good to him, making sure he always got a cut of whatever job the commander was running on the side, but after the cataclysm in the streets, Khillon was left unsettled.
‘Does he know who attacked us? Is he betraying Lord Kamran?’
A thought sent a shiver down Khillon’s spine. Some roughing up of the locals, getting paid for more ‘active’ protection, a little smuggling when the slavers’ guild didn’t want to pay gatehouse tolls, he didn’t mind any of that. Going as far as committing treason against Lord Kamran, however, was about a thousand steps too far. If whatever scheme Tion Bey had involved himself in this time could bring the wrath of a fifteenth-tier mage down upon him—and his entire unit, by extension—then Khillon would think nothing of leaving him to whatever fate Kamran would pass down.
“Any sign of the commander?” Khillon asked the other two passengers. Both answered in the negative. He inhaled, ready to order them to head back, leaving Tion Bey to whatever he was doing while he reported to the palace, but movement at the door caught his eye.
The door opened, and Tion Bey, looking rather stiff, leaned outside. The interior was dark, too dark for Khillon to see into, and the privacy wards blocked his magic senses. The commander didn’t say anything, but he pointed to each of the carriages in turn, then motioned for all of them to come to him. Then, he turned and went back into the house.
“Is he… does he want us to back him up?” one of the other guards asked.
“He ordered us to stay here unless he called for us,” the other said. “Does that count as being ordered?”
The answer came to Khillon in a moment. “Yes,” he said. “The commander wouldn’t be this furtive unless something was wrong. Prepare to bloody someone’s face.”
The larger guard, with a face only a mother could love, grinned. He was missing teeth, and his nose was crooked from a particularly rough life. He’d often said that his goal was to ascend to the sixth-tier, and the position and accompanying salary that he’d earn at that level would be enough that he could pay to fix his nose and regrow those missing teeth.
Khillon had scoffed at that goal years ago, but the man had reached the fifth-tier from the second in only thirty years. Reaching the sixth was looking like it was only a matter of when, not if.
The other man was much smaller, though he had a cruel streak that concerned Khillon to no end. He’d once seen the man break a suspect’s leg for giving him some mild sass. They’d still brought the suspect in, and under sharp interrogation, he confessed to multiple murders, aiding slaves in escaping their bounds, and half a dozen other crimes they hadn’t even asked him about. The way the guard had laughed as the suspect was beheaded still sent shivers down Khillon’s spine, and he was no soft man.
‘I should retire sooner rather than later,’ he thought as he opened the door of the carriage ark. The other two followed him. As his seventh-tier strength billowed out as he stepped into the light of the Origin Spark, the other three arks opened, disgorging four more guards apiece. With a few quick hand signals, Khillon ordered them to fall in behind him and to prepare for trouble. Then, he led the way into the house.
The interior was much lighter once he entered the house and passed into the wards. As Khillon and the other men crowded in, they found their commander standing in the center of a fairly large room, alone, his back to them. He looked a little strange, almost too tall and too energetic. Khillon had served under Tion Bey long enough to know the man’s physical mannerisms, and he immediately felt that something wasn’t right.
And then the smell hit him: the iron stench of blood, and a glance around showed the red stain in one of the corners.
“Commander…?” Khillon whispered cautiously. “What’s happening here?”
Tion Bey turned around, his eyes turning gold as his features twisted into those of a much younger-seeming man. Khillon barely had the time to widen his eyes before a sword was put through his throat. He barely even registered the end of his life, let alone the death rattles of the rest of the squad as nightmares appeared out of thin air and cut them down.
One stab, and he was gone.
---
“An entire squad dead…” Maemon whispered, his voice carrying the dark notes of terror.
“Pick one of them,” Leon ordered the room, though his eyes focused on Maemon for just long enough to deeply unsettle him. “Or don’t. We only really need Tion Bey’s face.”
“You’ll need to disguise yourself somehow,” Justin said with a stiff jaw. He flicked blood off of his sword with a burst of element-less power. “Unless you don’t care if Kamran knows what you’ve done. That’s where I’m at, personally.”
“He’ll know soon that I aided you, if he doesn’t already,” Maemon whispered. “No point, now.”
Leon grunted noncommittally. He then turned to Cassandra, putting Maemon out of mind for the moment. “See if the other two are ready,” he whispered.
She smiled, the expression looking particularly strange with the fake face she wore. “She’s had long enough to convince Ariana. Let’s see if she had any success…” She vanished into one of the safehouse’s hallways, and Leon focused on the task at hand.
“You two,” he said, indicating Zhang and Daryun, remaining careful not to say their names in front of Maemon just in case, “pick your new faces, then check on those transports. Make sure no one stayed behind other than the drivers.”
The Paladins acknowledged his order and set about fulfilling it.
“Justin,” Leon said, drawing the man’s attention, “it’s time. Which Lumenite platform are we going for?”
Justin sighed, visibly summoning his patience and strength. The Lumenite platforms available for more usual use were located outside of the city walls. The only ones within the city’s walls were those that connected the palace to the city on the ground. To use a Lumenite platform to escape was to infiltrate or assault a fortified location almost literally at Kamran’s feet.
Eventually, Justin gathered his courage and said, “The closest. They’re all identical, mostly. Might as well go for the closest to get away as soon as we can.”
“There will be checkpoints between us and it,” Maemon said uncertainly.
“I’m sure those manning those checkpoints will let their own through,” Leon said as he began reactivating the disguise enchantment. He’d been a bit overzealous in trying to kill Tion Bey’s men quickly and quietly, and his burst of power had disturbed the enchantment. He’d need a few minutes to fix it. Until then, his face was bare before Maemon, and Leon was trying not to worry too much about that given his other precautions. He comforted himself with the thought that Maemon could be handled however he wished once they escaped.
‘If we escape,’ he cynically reminded himself.
Before anyone could say anything more, Cassandra returned. Behind her came Ariana, walking so gracefully that she practically glided across the floor. She glared imperiously at everyone in the room and wrinkled her nose at the stench of blood, but didn’t otherwise blink at the death that filled the safehouse.
Stepping out from behind her came Valeria, who walked right over to Leon and briefly hugged him. Leon reveled in her embrace, but he was intensely aware of Ariana’s eyes boring holes into him the whole time.
When they separated, Ariana said, “You have stolen me from my home. You have acted as a common brigand, and I your prize. Should I now expect a chain around my neck?” She turned her heavy gaze upon Justin, who almost flinched. “This is no match for the fantasies we had when young. We are not the same people who once dreamed of such things in quiet corners, stealing kisses when the rare opportunity presented itself.”
“You speak as if those moments no longer move you,” Justin said, his tone low and dreadful.
“Lord Kamran taught me the errors of those days.”
“Love is never an error!” Justin insisted.
“I… wish you were right,” she said.
“I have loved you for most of my life,” Justin quietly said. “Our marriage was one of the happiest days of my life, despite the secrecy of it. It came second only to the birth of our daughter, despite all the other circumstances surrounding it.” He smiled at Valeria, who smiled back, though with markedly less certainty than he did.
Turning back to Ariana, Justin continued, “I took you from those halls because I had thought you were being imprisoned. Because I loved you and wanted you with me, but Kamran had sent me into exile, hoping I would die on my own. I wanted us to be the family that we always spoke of in those stolen moments, away from Kamran and his court. But I have no intention of placing a chain upon you. Now that we’re here, that we can speak frankly, as a man and a woman… if you do not wish to come with us, then I will not argue. If you want to stay, then stay. But I hope you decide to come with us.”
Valeria stiffened beside Leon, and he could practically feel the dread radiating off of her. Ariana herself went just as quiet, and Leon couldn’t even begin to guess as to what was going through her head. She and Justin had so much to work through, and he’d rather they did if only for Valeria’s sake. His wife had wanted this for so long that it felt cruel of the universe to dash her hopes now that her mother was finally here, before her, physical and alive and a person, no longer just an idea in her head.
The air was tense as the entire safehouse waited for Ariana’s answer. The city outside felt just as tense and still, as the only people still on the streets were guardsmen patrolling or moving between checkpoints. Without even considering any measures Tion Bey left behind in case of his death, the city was still in the process of being locked down, and for that reason alone, the sooner they left, the better chances they’d have of successfully getting away.
“Our time grows short,” he finally said, cutting through the tension like a freshly sharpened sword through spider silk. “Though I’d prefer to give you more time, we need your answer now.” He straightened up and let the gravity of the moment fall around them. Finally, he asked the most important question. “Ariana… are you leaving with us? Or are you staying?”
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