Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Guts Over Fear

“Death is only the end if you think the story is about you.”

KNIGHT

Cedwyn’s room was nearly identical to the one Jace was staying in. The only difference was the artwork on the doors leading out to the balcony. In Jace’s room, the lower portion of the stained-glass depicted a ship on dangerous seas; here, it showed a towering ziggurat rising high from an endless desert.

“Eat the impossible for breakfast?” Cedwyn said, rubbing a dragon apple against the front of his shirt. “A little hammy, don’t ya think? Even for an omnipresent version of the guy.”

“That whole story,” Jace said, staring out to the sea with his spyglass. Then he handed it over to Relic. “And that’s the part you have a problem with?”

Cedwyn took his first bite of the fruit and shrugged, then picked up his pack and buckled it around his shoulder.

“You just jumped into this ocean.” He held the apple in his mouth for a second so he could slip on his cloak. “Rest of us have been swimming in it for awhile now. The craziness of it slows down eventually, trust me. That said, this whole Artemus Ward betrayal thing is something I definitely didn’t see coming. Nothing to this insane extent, at least.” He came up to Relic’s side. He didn’t have a spyglass of his own, but he could still see the armada with each revolution of the lighthouse. “What do you think? An hour, maybe?”

“A little more if we’re lucky,” Relic said. “But then they’ll have to dock, unload, mobilize ...” He sighed. “Confusing gypsy wagons, encounters with Raven, metaphysical adventures and the like. Arrogant son of a bitch was talking all about the wagon at lunch. I didn’t even ask him how he knew about that. It wasn’t in any official reports, it wasn’t in Bren’s herald, he shouldn’t have known about it, but he did, and it didn’t even raise a red flag in my mind. I just that there. In awe. Like an idiot.”

Cedwyn laid a hand on Relic’s shoulder, never looking away from the ships on the horizon.

“Don’t do that to yourself. I didn’t pick up on it, either, and I’ve been in this game a lot longer than you.” He turned to Jace. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What do you think?”

Jace had moved over to stand next to Isabelle, but now he walked back to join Relic and Cedwyn, closer to the open stained-glass door.

“Well, I don’t think we can just walk out of here,” he said. “They’ll definitely have guards in the lobby.”

“Might be able to shoot our way through,” Cedwyn said. He exchanged a glance with Isabelle, seeking her thoughts, but her expression was impossible to read. “Sneak out to the landing, see how many are down there, and take ’em out?” Relic handed him the spyglass and he used it to look out at the ships for the first time. “Seems as good a plan as any.”

Jace started to respond, but hesitated when the small telescope, in turn, was passed back to him.

“I mean, that might get us out of the building, but they’ll probably have an even larger group guarding the bridge,” he said, distracted. “And the stables. How far would we get without horses?”

“Not far,” Relic said, answering the rhetorical question as he walked away from the doors. “Those bastards are as good as we are.”

“With better weapons,” Isabelle added.

Cedwyn reached into his cloak, withdrawing a leather case and placing the half-eaten dragon apple on the nightstand.

“Alright, fair enough,” he said, producing a cigarette and placing it in his mouth. “But we gotta do something. And fast. For all we know, they’re on their way to kill us as we speak.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jace said, lowering the spyglass and tossing it back to Relic. He was facing the group now. “We’ve already served our purpose. Veil’driel is about to be left unprotected. So if Artemus wanted us dead, he would have ordered it already.”

“Maybe,” Cedwyn admitted, taking a long drag. “But unless I misunderstood your little phantasy, there was this small detail where he tried to kill you and Relic.”

Jace only shrugged.

“Yeah, I don’t know. My gut just tells me he’d have done it by now.”

Cedwyn lowered his head, rolling the cigarette between his fingers and watching it burn.

“Regardless, we can’t just sit here,” Relic said.

Jace crossed his arms and took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Alright. So the main problem is ... even if, by some miracle, we managed to escape Lornda Manor, what then?”

“Ride like hell back to Fairlawn,” Cedwyn said, looking up. “And from there we get word to Telminster. Warn Parliament and Leverette.”

There was a peculiar way in which Cedwyn’s tone did not match his words, as if he were merely playing devil’s advocate to help facilitate whatever line of thinking he sensed developing in his friend.

“Okay, yeah, but would be the point?” Jace asked. “Artemus has already sprung his trap. We just told Aleister there’s no enemy army in Veil’driel, and so thanks to us, the Helix Legions are probably marching to Sindell as we speak. The republic is defenseless. We could ride at full speed, with no rest, and it might cut the time it took to get out here in half. But you’re still talking months.” He nodded over to the doors, towards the ocean and the ships in the night. “We’ll inform First Consul Leverette of that army on its way, and there’ll literally be nothing he can do about it.”

The look in Relic’s eyes spoke for all of them, struck numb in desperate silence.

“We could try to use those communication sapphires Jaden gave us in Sandia? I know we’ve been told they’re not safe to use out here or whatever, but if we manage to get a message through to warn them, who cares if the enemy also hears it?”

“That’s a good idea,” Isabelle said. “Which is why I tried using mine before Jace and I left his room.” She raised her eyebrows and shook her head a little. “They won’t even glow anymore. Might as well be rocks.”

“I’d bet our host has something to do with that,” Cedwyn said.

Jace paused again, the inner workings of his mind seeming to progress more through the silences than the speeches.

“We couldn’t even warn Jaden that Artemus has betrayed her,” he went on. “There’s no communication between Veil’driel and Sindell anymore. Even if it had been temporarily reestablished after she got there ...”

“Artemus will have cut it off by now,” Isabelle said. “After last night.”

“Yeah, well ...” Cedwyn said. “If it’s my time, I’m going down on my feet.”

“Same,” Isabelle agreed.

Relic nodded.

“Yeah.”

Jace plucked the cigarette from Cedwyn’s mouth, placing it in his own.

“Obviously,” he said, then he turned his attention to Relic. “There’s something in the library we need to get to. Section 20-402. You know where that is?”

“More or less.”

“Good,” Jace said, flicking ash to the floor.

“What’s in there?” Isabelle asked.

“Don’t know. I don’t even know if it’ll help us or not, but it’s important.”

“Something else from your vision?” Cedwyn asked.

Jace looked at him seriously.

“Yeah,” he said. “A twenty-something Gabriel Foy told me.”

An expression of surprise came across Relic’s face.

“Hm. At least he didn’t appear as a little kid again.”

Cedwyn sighed, and snatched his cigarette back.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Is it?” Isabelle asked. She wasn’t so convinced. “So we get into the library, to that location. Great, and then what?”

“Find whatever’s there, and if we can, take it with us,” Jace said, slowly surveying the others. “Then we try to get down to that Communion Vault and see if we can contact Aleister. If we do, he could recall the legions and that would actually make a difference.”

“It would also almost certainly end in our deaths,” Relic pointed out. “Assuming we were even lucky enough to figure out how it works.”

Cedwyn crouched down and doused the cigarette out on the floor.

All eyes remained on Jace.

“This is the only thing I can think of. Artemus sent most of his golden riders to Sindell, which means only a small contingent has been left behind. And keep in mind, they think we’re totally in the dark on all this.”

“That’s where Hazel was really going last night,” Relic said, traces of disappointment in his tone. He spoke the words more to himself than anyone else.

“Yeah, she’s one of his captains,” Jace said. He turned and looked at Cedwyn. “And I guess now we know why she seemed so familiar to you.”

Cedwyn nodded gravely.

“Yeah.”

“She still has that necklace you gave her, too. Did you really find it just lying on the Fairlawn Thoroughfare?”

“No.”

“Is that what she used to escape Mirror—”

“I don’t know, Jace. And I appreciate that your mind is racing, but I think we better hold off on all the analyzing for the moment.” He looked over to Isabelle who was now leaning against the wall near the hallway door. “Right now we need to stay focused on getting out of here.”

“Fine. We’ll go with the library slash Communion Vault plan,” Isabelle said. But then, suddenly, she shuddered as a scene came unbidden into her mind: Winged Creatures were attacking Hamon, the undefended capital city of Sindell. The force field was down, and the beasts were just as terrifying as her memory in the Communion Vault, still so frighteningly fresh in her mind.

Then she gasped and was back in the present.

No one seemed to have noticed the episode, except Jace, who she realized was looking right at her when she regained her bearings.

“Are you okay?” he mouthed.

Isabelle nodded.

“Artemus Ward,” Relic was saying with disdain. “If not for those ships out there, I wouldn’t even believe it.”

When Jace finally looked away from Isabelle, he directed his attention to Cedwyn, who was slowly standing up again.

“After we get our message to Aleister, we take what we’ve learned from this place, and then try to shoot our way out of here, like Cedwyn was saying. Ride like hell for home.” He paused, forcing a smile. “Maybe we’ll even be put back in command of our cavalry legions. I bet that Arthur kid misses you, Avery.”

Relic laughed a little.

“Jace. Are you actually trying to convince us we might survive this?”

“Death is only the end if you think the story is about you,” Cedwyn said.

The Outriders, his family, just stared at him with blank expressions.

“This is the only shot we have of saving Veil’driel,” Jace said. “For all we know, Sindell is already lost, but at least we can save your ... our home. I don’t know what else to say.”

They were standing in a circle now, facing each other, and they stood there like that for what felt like a very long time.

Cedwyn was first to break the silence.

“Well, like I said ...” He crossed his arms and looked to the others. “That’s good enough for me.”

Isabelle nodded, in agreement this time.

“Me too,” she said.

Relic withdrew one of his crossbows.

“Yeah,” he agreed, extending his arm and closing one eye to inspect the sights. “Anything’s better than standing still.”

Just then, Jace and Isabelle’s eyes met, but the sound of Cedwyn’s voice brought their attention back to him.

“So how you wanna do this?”

“We need to scout the lobby,” Jace said. “Find out how many are down there.”

Cedwyn nodded, and with no hesitation whatsoever, took his first strides to the door. But then he turned slowly back to Jace, an odd expression on his face as he came to a sudden realization.

“You already know how many are down there, don’t you?” he asked.

Jace smiled.

“Suspect,” he said, and he thought of Constable Thean.

Cedwyn rolled his eyes, but seemed amused.

“Congratulations.” He cracked the door open and finished the thought in a whisper: “You’re officially one of those mysterious figures of intrigue you used to hate.”

And with that, he was off.

Cedwyn hunched over and moved quietly down the hall towards the lobby. Relic was directly beside him. Isabelle and Jace followed quickly behind, but only to the doorway, where they scouted opposite ends of the corridor from the room.

Isabelle was looking left, back in the direction of Jace’s room.

Jace was looking right, following Cedwyn and Relic’s path.

Straight out, across the hall, an oil painting depicted a desolate landscape of dunes, each one running in bands of dark colors. High, rust red cliffs leaned toward one another to create a natural arch, the chasm at the top crisscrossed by the bleached bones of some monstrous animal that had been lashed together by unknown means. The pale net of bone cast its own ominous shadow at the mouth of the Minotaur Lands.

When Jace and Isabelle looked back to check opposite ends of the hall, they found themselves looking at each other, and smiled.

Then Cedwyn and Relic were returning, so they stepped aside to let them back in.

“Four servants roaming around the lobby,” Cedwyn said to Jace. “Charles and three younger guys.” He took a minute to catch his breath. It wasn’t far from his room to the main lobby, but it wasn’t the physical exertion of his reconnaissance so much as he had forgotten to breathe.

“It didn’t look like they were armed, though,” Relic added, moving closer to the bed.

“Good news,” Jace said. “They think we don’t know, like I thought.”

“Then maybe they won’t even stop us from going into the library,” Isabelle said. “Maybe we can walk right past them as long as we don’t try to get out the front door. You said yourself it seems like their goal is just to keep us inside.”

Jace shrugged.

“Maybe. But they’d have to be pretty stupid not to suspect we were fully armed underneath these cloaks, otherwise why would we be wearing them? The element of surprise is the only card we’re holding, and no matter what, we can’t risk it.”

“Plus, even if they let us go into the library, they’d report our activity,” Relic nodded, getting the point.

“So we kill them,” Cedwyn said. “Fine.”

Jace balled his hand into a fist and pressed it against his chin.

Then he sighed.

“Yeah. But even assuming we could get them all before they made it out the door, the sound of the scuffle would alert the golden riders outside. And we’ve already established that if we walk past them, they’ll report our activity just the same.”

“Listen, I’m just throwing this out there," Isabelle spoke up. "But we don’t actually know if there are golden riders out there. Don’t get me wrong, handsome, I trust you, I’m just saying ... we’re placing an extraordinary amount of faith in this vision of yours.”

Cedwyn looked over to Jace, then Isabelle.

“Yeah,” he said. “Based on what I just saw, I’m willing to take that chance.”

Jace started back to the balcony doors, back to the desert and the ziggurat, where he had set down the bottle upon entering the room.

“Okay, so where does that put us?” Relic asked. “Back to square one?”

“No,” Isabelle realized. Until now, she wondered why Jace had taken that bottle with him. Now she let out a shaky breath.

“I know that look in your eye,” Relic said. “And it usually ends with me wishing I’d become a banker like my mother wanted.”

“You have a plan,” Cedwyn said. “Don’t you?”

Holding the bottle flat in his palm, Jace spun it to an orange blur before grabbing it cleanly, halting its momentum.

“I do.”

“A good one?” Isabelle asked.

Jace made his way back to the doorway, then he sighed as he glanced down the hall.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Jace waited patiently in the hallway, watching as Isabelle, Relic, and Cedwyn took positions behind the small wall along the perimeter of the rotunda’s second floor. It was from this spot that Cedwyn had scouted out the men patrolling the lobby below, and it was here that Jace would walk into plain sight of all four of them. As the last to reach the others, Relic fell into a sitting position beside them and signaled with an upward nod that all were ready.

Jace closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then walked with a purpose through the corridor. With the bottle in hand, he transitioned to a stagger when the narrow space opened into the lobby. He reached the wall and leaned over it, with his legs just inches away from his friends.

Those below spotted him immediately.

“Master Dabriel!” Charles greeted him jubilantly, arms spread wide.

Jace had never seen the other three men milling around below, but they stopped when he appeared.

“Hey, Charles! How are you on this pleasant night?” Jace yelled, slurring as he raised the bottle in salute. He was moving again. Careful to feign great effort, he tripped as he came to the staircase.

“Morning,” Charles corrected with a chuckle. “What could you possibly be doing up at this hour?” Jace cocked his head back, opening his mouth before pausing. Then he sighed, as if the question had been beyond his understanding. “Have you even been to sleep tonight?”

“Sleep!” Jace sounded appalled. “Who in the hell needs…” he hesitated, swallowing hard and covering his mouth with the back of the hand. “Sleep is the cousin of death, man!”

“Sir, I recommend you get some rest,” Charles said, and the other men around him were beginning to take on similar expressions of amusement, relieved of the shock from the Outrider’s sudden arrival. “I’m sure the others won’t mind postponing their departure for you.”

Jace shrugged, taking a very generous swig of the very empty bottle.

“Bah,” he blathered. “They’re all planning to sleep in, anyway. Wanted to take advantage of these soft beds, but I told ’em ...” Again, he paused to give the distinct impression he might vomit at any moment. “I told ’em, I said ... I don’t need …”

“The cousin of death,” one of the other men spoke up.

Jace said nothing, only pointed down at him with a goofy smile.

“Hey ... do I know you?” Jace asked, his face twisting with confusion. “I don’t remember seeing you tonight.”

“No,” the man replied. “I haven’t, as yet, had the pleasure. I’m—”

“Woah, hold on a second, you know what?” Jace screamed, cutting the man off before he could give his name. Then he took a few steps closer to the door that led back toward Paladin Hall, bobbing around in an obnoxious display of excitement.

The man who had been interrupted appeared annoyed, but the others, including Charles, could not help laughing at the spectacle. A drunken Outrider, barely able to put full sentences together, was not something one saw everyday.

“No, seriously, I wonder …” Jace said, putting down the bottle and cocking his head to the side. “Yeah, you know what? I think I can.” Taking several long backward strides, so that he was up against the door, he squared himself up with the top of the staircase. “How much you wanna bet I can slide all the way down this railing?”

Concealed behind the wall, the other three Outriders exchanged nervous glances ranging from strong disapproval to concern. Isabelle tilted her head upward against the wall, as if this might improve her vantage.

Charles sounded more worried than entertained now.

“Master Dabriel, I hardly think that’s ... sir, I really don’t think that’s wise. Especially given your condition!” He moved forward past the fountain, patting the air with his hands. “No, I think it would be better ... far better if you would retire to your—”

“Five gold pieces!” the man who had tried to introduce himself said, and this drew a venomous expression from the head servant.

“Ten!” Jace yelled back.

“Done!”

The subtle switch from performer to Outrider was but a glimmer, the work of single breath.

“Alright then,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “What say we get this show on the road?”

Charles could only sigh and relent, and while the other men said nothing, they were eagerly awaiting the attempt.

“He’s gonna kill himself,” one of them muttered through clenched teeth in the guise of a smile.

“Who cares?” answered another.

A silence fell over everything then, with only the steady run of fountain water echoing throughout as Jace sized up the cherry wood railing. From his spot behind the wall, Relic could see his friend narrow his eyes, exactly as he did before riding the gauntlet back home. That familiar fervor of focus flickered through his ashen eyes, and then without the slightest warning, he was off.

Every detail took on the sharpness of a razor’s edge, melting to a sense of slow motion as Jace reached the railing in stride. If he had fallen, it would have certainly meant death. But he slid smooth and true, his goofy expression disappearing in a deadly flash as he whipped back the sides of his cloak and brandished his crossbows.

The men below couldn’t even absorb what was happening before the first shots were off, and Jace had his left arm fully extended, having killed Charles instantly with a bolt to the forehead. With his other crossbow, Jace twisted to dispatch the man who had bet him, and then the other beside him.

He landed on his feet after reaching the end of the railing, but his momentum carried him into a sitting position on the floor — face-to-face with the last surviving guard, who was so stunned, he hadn’t even reached for his weapons. There was a split-second that dragged on for eternity, with Jace and this man just staring at each other. The Outrider was breathing heavily, genuinely astonished by this hesitation that had saved his life.

He did not, however, make the same mistake.

Springing to his feet, Jace took a single step forward as he clicked his crossbows down around his belt, reloading them in the Outrider fashion and aiming both side by side. He pulled the triggers simultaneously, and the last guard was lying next to Charles, dead before he hit the floor.

The rest of the Outriders came bounding down the stairs.

“Call that a diversion, do ya?” Cedwyn asked. He was a little behind Isabelle on their way down. “Crazy son of a bitch.”

Jace shrugged, glancing around at his gruesome handiwork.

“They look pretty diverted to me,” he said, still recovering breath.

Relic passed by without so much as a glance, his sole focus on getting to the door and whatever waited on the other side.

Isabelle, too, paid little attention to Jace, simply punching him in the arm as she passed.

Cedwyn, on the other hand, slowed, and Jace fell in step beside him.

“I sure as hell hope your story was accurate, kid,” he said, Isabelle's earlier concern ringing loud in his memory. “Because we have now officially moved beyond polite house guest.”

Jace smiled, but then suddenly stopped when they reached the door. He turned, ran back to the nearest corpse, and detached the pouch of gold coins from its belt.

Cedwyn’s expression was a mixture of surprise and disapproval. It was nice to see glimmers of his friend’s cocky swagger returning. Just the day before, he had assured him it would. That confidence ... or arrogance ... had been largely absent since Fairlawn.

“What?” Jace said. “A bet’s a bet ...”

But as Cedwyn watched him attach that coin pouch to his belt before following Relic and Isabelle through the open door, he couldn’t shake a feeling of slight distress. He wondered if Jace could actually be enjoying the death, and that made him think the name Dorsey Trent.

Cedwyn’s gaze trailed to the body of Charles for a moment, and he took a deep breath as he turned to leave the macabre lobby behind him.

He crossed the threshold and entered the library.

It was always a good place to start.

STATIC

Chapter Twelve  (E) The Invisible Library #2190594 by Dan Hiestand