Master Triden gave a weary smile.
“Go back to the palace with the others. I will be along shortly.” Andreus turned his mount and headed back toward the wall, followed by several members of the guard. Andreus had always thought his father’s guards were a sign of how powerful and important he was. He had never imagined that one or more of them could pose a threat. Now, Andreus couldn’t help but wonder if the six men currently riding with him were truly sworn to serve him or if they served another.
He shivered and pulled his cloak tighter to ward off the chill of the night. He was looking forward to finishing this task and returning to his rooms, where a roaring fire and hot tea would await him.
Andreus climbed off his horse outside a narrow alley and left it with four of the guards, who he ordered to stand watch at the opening. Then, with the other two unmounted men, Andreus walked down the dark, narrow path between a glassblower’s establishment and a weaver’s shop that led to the portion of the wall he needed to study. When he turned the corner, he nodded at the two apprentices, who jumped to their feet and hastily bowed.
“One of you come with me to the top. The other stay here,” he ordered the two members of the guard, who walked with him toward the metal rungs on one section of the wall. One snapped to attention. The other waited for Andreus to start climbing before following behind him.
He took the rungs slowly on his way up the wall. Here the stone barrier stood over three times his own height. Madame Jillian had been pleased this morning to see that her new salve had finally beat back the infection that had been keeping the Xhelozi claw marks from healing, but the leg was still raw and unsteady. The last thing he wanted to do was fall to the cobblestones or onto the apprentices below.
His breath was coming hard and fast as he reached the top of the rungs. He pulled himself onto the rim of the thick stone barrier. Carys always said the walls represented a double-edged sword. The founders of Eden built the kingdom near the mountains to harness the wind’s power, never believing the threat in the mountains could, one day, overcome their precautions and lay ruin to all that had been built.
Ruling, his sister had observed, was also a double-edged sword, where a decision that solved one problem inevitably caused another.
Hauling himself up to the top, Andreus rubbed his aching leg. His twin might have been right, he thought as he climbed to his feet and waited for the guard to join him.
“Make sure no one comes up the ladder,” Andreus ordered. “I’ll be right back.”
As the guard drew his sword and stood at attention in front of the ladder, Andreus squinted into the blinding beams and carefully made his way past the narrow, illuminated cylinders. They stood several lengths tall and were placed every few paces along the wall to make sure no section was left in shadow. Each main connector controlled eight lights. Four on each side. It was a configuration Andreus had suggested to improve the distribution of power. The lights dimmed slightly and flared to life again as he reached the connector. He squatted down and pried open the stone that covered the lines.
Strange . . .
One of the wires had been loosened from the bolt, and then placed so that it was touching the conductor, but it was no longer secured. He wasn’t imagining anything. The light was flickering, and this was the cause.
Andreus sat back on his heels so as to not cast a shadow on the connections and studied the problem. The bolt had clearly been worked away with a prying tool of some kind. He could see the fresh scrape marks on the metal bolt and the casing around it. The Masters and apprentices all had tools that allowed them to loosen and tighten the bolts easily. Even if they had forgotten to fasten the wire after finishing the adjustment, they would never have done it in the method he observed here. No, whoever had caused this had to have done it after the Masters and the rest of the Guild of Light finished their alterations. Otherwise even the newest apprentice would have noticed the problem and alerted the Masters to correct it.
Pulling his own tools out of a pouch on his belt, Andreus flipped the switch that cut off the power and the light, rendering it safe to work. Quickly, he fixed the wire and tightened the bolt so the lights would not malfunction again and flipped the switch. He smiled with satisfaction as the lights flared, then placed the stone cover back atop the connector box. Pushing to his feet, he studied the brightly lit wall stretching around the city. He could see the outline of several guardsmen as they watched the lands beyond the wall for signs of the Xhelozi. None of the lights flickered. Everything appeared as it should.
Still, instead of turning to head back toward the guard he could see standing still as stone near the rungs Andreus had used, he limped down the wall to check the next connection. Just in case something similar had happened.
The connection in the next series of lights was fine. No pry marks. No wires waiting to malfunction and cast the wall in darkness. Whoever had sabotaged the one connection had done so in a way that made the lights not dependable, but still operational. That had to have been intentional. But why? What good was making the lights flicker for a few seconds? Why create a problem that would cause a set of lights to lose power at an unexpected time instead of when someone wanted darkness to obscure their actions?
It made no strategic sense.
He heard a thudding sound and turned to look down the wall in the direction from which he had come. The guard who had been waiting at the end of the wall just a moment before was no longer there.
Andreus started to call out, then spotted the guard’s body lying motionless at the top of the wall. The guard was either unconscious or dead. No doubt the one stationed below was as well.
The flickering light had been a trap, and Andreus had climbed right into it. Whoever had laid it had removed his guards and would be waiting for him in the direction that he had come from.
He slid the stone panel back into place, crawled to the edge of the wall, and peered down. Only a handful of places in the wall had rungs to aid someone in climbing up to the top. This wasn’t one of them. He would have to walk past another ten connection points atop the wall before he reached the next set of iron rungs. His still-injured leg wasn’t going to travel that distance very fast.
“Do you see him?” he heard a voice call.
In the distance, Andreus saw a man’s head crest the top of the wall not far from the guard’s body. “I’m almost to the top,” a different voice hissed, the sound carrying on the quiet of the night. “He couldn’t be far.”
Hopefully he was far enough to avoid suffering the same fate as his guards.
Andreus glanced down. He spied a small tree, low bushes, and several open-top barrels of rainwater in the courtyard next to this section of the wall. At twenty feet above the ground, Andreus wasn’t dumb enough to jump. Twenty feet was too far for both his leg and his neck to survive. If he was going to take an alternate route to the ground, he’d have to find a better option and he’d have to move fast. The first man had already climbed atop the wall and had turned in Andreus’s direction. The lights would blind him for at least a minute or two. Andreus had to make that time count.
Studying the ground below, Andreus scrambled along the wall looking for a way down. There. He spotted a cart loaded with several rolls of hay sitting next to the wall. “King Andreus,” a voice called. He looked up and saw a small, narrow shadow flying toward him just in time to flatten himself to the stone as an arrow zipped over his head.
He was too easy a target up here. He had to get off the wall.
Andreus slithered toward the edge, and shifted position. He dug his fingers into the cursedly smooth stone and eased himself over the edge. If he could dangle above the cart first before letting go, it would make the drop less . . .
His fingers slipped and he crashed onto the hay cart, his shoulder cracking hard against the wood rails. Chickens squawked and flapped, and a horse whinnied. His head rang. Gasping for air, he ignored the pain shooting down his arm and rolled toward the edge of the cart. Footsteps so
unded above him high atop the stone wall. Whispers and shouts inquired as to where he could have gone.
He listened hard to the voices, trying to place whether they were familiar, as he flung himself off the cart. The voices were too deep for any of the Master’s apprentices and they sounded too gruff to be counted among the younger members of the guard. As much as he wanted to know the identities of the traitors, he wasn’t about to lose his life. With his leg in its current condition, he wasn’t up to fighting off more than one skilled swordsman at a time. But his leg wouldn’t be injured for much longer. Once it was healed, he would track them down and make them pay for the murder of his guards.
For now, Andreus grabbed the trace poles on the wagon like he was a horse and wheeled the cart several lengths away from the wall. He then dropped the traces and limped as quickly as he could toward the side of the nearest buildings. Then he headed for the street beyond them.
Everything ached.
His heart raced.
Chickens clucked from the nearby pen giving whoever was on top of the wall clear directions as to where he had come down.
Andreus reached the buildings, plunged into the pathway between them and was blinded by the dark. He blinked several times, hoping to adjust his sight to the shadows as he carefully limped along the building, feeling in front of him with his hands to keep from running into anything.
The sound of the chickens faded, and the rest of the sounds of the city came to life—laughing, horse hooves against cobblestone, the clang of metal, and the slamming of doors. His eyes adjusted as he hurried around the building, pushed open the gate, and reached the street.
Now what?
He looked in both directions, trying to decide where he was.
Working with the Masters of Light, he’d spent time in parts of the city in which most members of the court would never dare to tread, but with only a few flickering torches posted here and there outside doorways, he was having trouble deciding if he had been in this section of Garden City before, or where this particular road led. The only thing he was certain of was that he was a long way from the Palace of Winds and that his leg throbbed. He doubted he was going to be able to walk all the way to the Palace of Winds on it before the Council and the King’s Guard were alerted to his disappearance.
He heard the chickens squawk again and headed down the street he hoped led to where he’d climbed up the wall.
Gods it was cold. His throat was dry. The stone road was uneven. His head and his leg ached. And his chest was getting tighter with every breath.
Listening hard to the night behind him, he reached under his cloak and felt for the small vial in his pants pocket. Relieved to find it hadn’t shattered when he cracked his hip against the edge of the cart, Andreus pulled the vial out of his pocket and yanked out the cork.
After having taken at least one dose of the strong herbal concotion for each day of the past three weeks, he should have been used to the remedy his mother had had the castle healer concoct. But the acrid, bitter taste of the brew still made him grimace, which he took to be a good sign. Years ago, his mother had related a warning the healers had given to Oben, who they had been told was the holder of the affliction they were treating. They said that using the brew too often would render it less and less useful until there would be no stopping the symptoms when they stole his breath, and his heart strained hard enough to explode. Andreus would have to limit his use of the remedy once the threat to Eden was over. Until then, he would take his chances.
Hand on the hilt of his sword, and keeping to the shadows, Andreus hurried as fast as his leg would allow along the stone street. He took the turn to the left when another road intersected it. Then he ducked into the shadows and waited for several long moments for any sounds that might indicate the men who had been on the wall with him were following. Yet the fiddle and flute and tambourine playing coming from a nearby tavern made it hard to hear anything. All Andreus could do was keep going and try to stay a step ahead of the men who had set the trap for him.
Even though he was careful to avoid the areas with the most torchlight, Andreus still drew notice. Several men watched him from a doorway. Boys just older than Max raced down the street as a man walking down the street yelled, “Get inside, before the King’s Guard gets ahold of you.”
“They don’t care about us,” one of the boys shouted back.
“And they can’t arrest us if they can’t see us,” another said, laughing.
The King’s Guards. He couldn’t be sure which among them were compromised, but if he could find them in a group, odds were there would be enough of them with true fealty to the crown to keep him safe on the return trip to the palace.
Raising the hood of his cloak, Andreus made his way down several narrow streets. He approached a gray-haired merchant dressed in a cloak decorated with the symbol for the Silversmith Guild, and quietly asked, “Excuse me, Goodman. Could you tell me if there are members of the King’s Guard nearby, and if so, where I might find them?”
The silversmith’s hand hovered over the sword at his side and his eyes narrowed. “You want to find the King’s Guard?”
Andreus nodded, careful to keep his face turned from the torches, making it harder for the man to recognize him. “I heard there were several members of the guard in this area after the King and the Council of Elders finished their tour of the wall.”
The silversmith cocked his head to the side and leaned toward Andreus. “Very few people actively seek out the King’s Guard who aren’t looking to cause trouble for others. The last thing we need in this city is more trouble. We have trouble enough as it is.”
“No trouble,” Andreus said quickly. The man thought he was looking to turn someone in. Andreus’s father and the Council under his rule had been known to reward those who helped ferret out unrest in the city and the rest of the kingdom. His father said throwing those who were looking to act against the crown in the North Tower discouraged others from doing the same. Treason had to be rooted out. Considering that any treason committed would now be against him, Andreus understood the sentiment. But he had noticed that more than once a man who was thrown in jail just happened to have a young wife who suddenly was comforted by the man who was behind the report.
Andreus shifted his feet and shook his head as he searched for an excuse that would not give his identity away. “I was hoping maybe I could show them my skill with a sword. I thought I could join their ranks. My family is struggling and I thought—”
The man nodded. “Follow this street to the end and turn left. If they are still there, you will find them at the end of that road, but I would encourage you instead to go home. Be ready to guard your family if the lights fail and Garden City falls.”
A cheery thought.
The man glanced up at the palace and the windmills turning far too slowly and started down the street without another word.
Cursing the pain that was worsening with every step, Andreus followed the man’s directions down the narrow, smoke-filled street until he reached the end. He passed a noisy inn. Laughter and music flooded out the door when it opened and several patrons came out onto the street.
Andreus adjusted his hood and continued walking until he reached the two-story stone glassblower’s shop at the end of the road. He was close to where he had climbed up to the top of the wall. The guards who had escorted him to this location had to be near. He listened hard to the sounds of the night, doing his best to filter out the laughter and singing from the inn and the crackle of torches scattered along the street.
There was the clatter of hooves on the stone and the nicker of at least one horse. He thought he heard the murmur of voices, but he couldn’t be sure.
Slowly, he drew his sword, wincing at the hushed hiss the metal made as it freed itself from the sheath. Then, taking a deep breath, he peered around the wall and spotted two of the guards standing about ten lengths away in the center of the road with their backs to him. He was about to alert them of his re
turn when he heard one of them say, “What do you think is going on?”
“How should I know? The others are going up on the wall now to look for the King.”
“They said Nigel must have lost his balance and fell, but that can’t be right. We were told to report if the King did anything unusual or spoke to anyone. What if this is something Elder . . .”
“Keep your voice down! If you want to go sticking your head in a rock wolf’s mouth, you go ahead. Nigel is dead. We were told to hold our position while the others look for King Andreus. I don’t know about you, but an Elder’s coin isn’t worth getting tangled in whatever is happening right now. I want to keep my head attached to my neck.”
The guardsman started to turn and Andreus dove back around the corner and pressed his hand to his stomach. He kept still as stone. Every breath he took sounded loud and harsh in his ears. He waited for footsteps coming his way, yet none materialized.
Slowly, carefully, he straightened, adjusted his hood, and tried to decide what to do next. His leg was trembling more with each step. He steeled himself against the pain and willed himself to keep upright. This was his city—his kingdom. He was not going down without a fight.
The conversation had confirmed that the guard who had followed him up the wall had been killed. And now he knew at least one Elder had guards acting as intelligencers and reporting on him.
But which Elder? And who would have set this kind of trap? Anyone looking to assassinate him surely could have found a better way to isolate him than to hope he saw a flicker in the lights and decided to fix it himself.
Yet the plan had worked and he was isolated and uncertain as to whether the guards he should trust with his life were working for him or for a foe. Suddenly, it seemed the only guard he felt certain he could trust was one who had admitted to spying on him. Unfortunately, Graylem was not here.
He needed to buy himself time and pretend to be unaware of the trap he’d sprung. As long as his enemies thought of him as a rabbit oblivious to the rock wolf stalking, ready to pounce, the element of surprise would be in his favor. Then, the next time they tried to strike, he could catch the perpetrator unaware.