A splash of cold water woke Klane with a start. The night sky presented itself as a dark vastness of mottled purples and scarlets, pinprick points of white starlight twinkling across it like a sheer veil of jewels. Through the bristling treetops, a crimson moon hung low, lurking like an expectant hunter.
“There he is.” Rolnar’s voice made for a welcome sound. The immediate fear of the unknown subsided slightly.
Klane lay still, staring at the sky, until Klemens leaned into view. Whatever he lay upon lurched beneath him. Clattering wagon wheels crunching into dry, compacted dirt squeaked, axles groaned. They rode in a cart, a rickety, wooden cart.
Klane sat up. He didn’t feel lightheaded, just confused about what exactly was happening.
His fingers curled into crinkled fabric. A wool tarp covered whatever the cart was hauling. The bulky items beneath felt like barrels, if Klane had to venture a guess. By the way the cart groaned and labored, the load was heavy.
“I was starting to worry that you wouldn’t wake,” Klemens barked with a hint of a laugh.
“Where are we?” Klane asked.
He was pleased to feel the familiar weight of Pride at his side, along with his belt of supplies and backpack. He shuffled through the various pockets and pouches. Everything seemed to be in place.
The looming tunnel ahead answered his question. An ornate, marble archway cut open a large portal through familiar, saw-toothed mountains. Battlements and watchtowers lined the ridges, glowing with faint light for miles as far as one could see each way.
“Outside Red Reef?” he asked.
“Aye.” Rolnar sat on a lip at the rear of the cart, feet dangling as he took in the sights. His cheery demeanor hadn’t faded despite being knocked unconscious, kidnapped, and involuntarily brought into whatever scheme this cult had cooking.
“Day two of your time ashore, hope you’re enjoying it,” Klemens said wryly.
A stone bastion, windows lighted against the night air, rose directly above the archway. He saw a massive portcullis, complete with two fortified baileys, where hawkish ballistae stood ready. Each ballista cradled a bolt large enough to fell a giant in a single blow.
The draft horses slowed to a stop behind a small merchant train lined up in front of a guard post. A pair of grizzled guards lazily prodded about the supplies. Off to their wagon’s right, a much larger train of four wagons idled—bulky steam engine apparatuses trembling in a standby state—while laborers unloaded hefty crates onto a line of rail cars. A pair of wide, iron railings snaked off into a pass between a crag in the mountainside.
* * *
“What’re you haulin’?”
“Shipment of blasting powder for Clockwork Mining Company.” Klemens, seated at the front of the wagon, slapped a hand on the tarp, eliciting a satisfactory thump.
He seemed so different out of his sailing uniform and cloak, Klane thought. A hardworking man of industry, appearing sharp yet rugged in the burned-orange coveralls that buttoned up to his neck. “Just headin’ up to headquarters now and showing the ship captain’s first mate around the city. A polite courtesy for the curious-minded.”
“Don’t they usually come through the port?” The guard lifted the loose edges of the tarp, not corded down, with the tip of his spear.
“How’m I to know, I just go where my boss says.” Klemens shrugged. “And my boss sends us where his captain says. You know how it is.” He nodded at Rolnar, rolling his eyes with exaggerated annoyance. Rolnar grunted an agreement, regarding the guard with a similar expression.
“Not quite sure how you Bramble Coast sailors survive in such flashy livery.” The guard inspected Rolnar. They hadn’t been able to find a Clockwork Mining uniform large enough for a proper fit.
“Get used to it,” Rolnar said.
“I didn’t sign up for cart-haulin’ when I joined Clockwork. It’s pointless to try and understand why the big bosses do what they do.” Klemens threw his hands in the air.
“Too right.” The guard laughed, and stepped away as his laughter died into a sigh.
“What’s with him?” The guard raised an eyebrow at Klane. “He a dwarf or somethin’?”
“Gnome,” Klane snapped, a little more irritably than he probably should have.
“Odd-lookin’ thing, ain’t he? Head’s a bit—” The guard winced, comparing Klane’s head to his body with a quick finger measurement, he chuckled. “now I can say I’ve seen a gnome m’self.”
“He’s with me,” Rolnar smiled. The guard nodded.
“You need a ledger?” Klemens asked, beginning to rummage through a pile of junk, which Klane assumed didn’t actually hold a ledger, or any other kind of manifest.
“You folk are fine. Welcome to Red Reef.” The guard scratched a signature onto a pass he pulled from his own pouch, and dripped wax into a small glob near the top right corner of the paper before stamping it with a Red Reef seal.
Klemens gave the guard and his partner a nod, egging the draft horses forward with a jostle of the reins. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Klane entered the biggest port city he’d ever seen.
* * *
Klane watched as the wagon rattled into the passage hewn beneath the mountain. Nebulous skies overhead were replaced with a terracotta ceiling reinforced with thick, iron banding. Heavy fishing nets were suspended between the iron bands, either as decoration or to catch falling debris.
The crunch of compacted earth beneath the wagon wheels became a bone-clattering rattle across cobblestone. The sounds of transit by hundreds of travelers were amplified a hundred-fold in the confines. A stuffy coziness rebuffed the cold air, imparted by the flickering torches on the wall and the subtle warmth they radiated.
The passage itself was a wide, double-lane thoroughfare allowing for easy passage both in and out of Red Reef. A railway cut down its center, an unmanned train of flatbed railcars rolling slowly forward.
Guard posts jutted slightly from the walls every few hundred feet. Small windows with a vigilant guard in each, overlooked the travelers, a blatant deterrent to banditry and other threats to safety. Their bleached goatees lent an angularity to their face which, from a distance, made it seem they were carved, wooden statues.
Perhaps some are? Klane considered. You wouldn’t have to pay a wooden statue to sit at a booth.
Narrow passageways ascended around the guard posts, winding deeper into the mountain, and presumably to the portcullis and other fortifications above.
“So, what exactly is our plan here?”
“Get to Clockwork Mining Co.” Klemens guided the draft horses along the passage as it bent slightly to the right.
A cacophony of pickaxes, shattering rocks, and heavy drills overpowered the murmurs of conversation and rumble of carts as, around the corner, a crew of workmen set to create a new wing of the tunnel. The offshoot was an equally wide passage, judging by the skeletal frames of scaffolding and heavy machinery. The machinery looked like distant cousins of the same kind of equipment Klane had seen on the platforms at the abandoned mining site. The machines lurched, and set metal teeth against rock to bore out a new space. The whining and squealing of the drills sounded like a symphony of banshees and bleating livestock. The entire area smelled like oils and blasting powder.
The ceiling with its iron banding and netting abruptly vanished, becoming a hazy shadow overhead that seemed to rise limitlessly. The passage walls bowed out to their left, forming a small cove lined with galleries, which overlooked the dark, shimmering waters of a small reservoir.
“And?” Klane pressed. “Get to the mining company headquarters and …?”
“Calm yourself.” Klemens pointed a gnarled finger authoritatively at Klane. The cuff of his sleeve slipped down to reveal a shoddily drawn, black tattoo of the Spirits of the Crumbled on his wrist. “We’re going to take your journal there and offer the contents to Andrew, in exchange for him getting us into the closed compounds of the Clockwork Mining Company’s administrative and executive offices.”
He cleared his throat and brought the wagon to a stop. Traffic ahead was halted for a procession of miners heading to the dig site.
Klemens glanced back at Rolnar. “Ol’ Rol’ over there is our muscle. He’s goin’ to get these barrels into position around the buildings. I’ll string them all together, then—” Klemens pantomimed an explosion, bringing his hands up and outward quickly like a growing cloud of force.
They were going to bribe Andrew. Klane chewed on the thought. How could he hold information about the fate of this kid’s father over his head like that? It’s cruel.
He stared ahead. The transit had resumed, slowly but steadily. An archway framing the black sky and city lights ahead signaled the end of the passage beneath the mountains as it came into sight around a second bend.
Klane got up and scampered over the covered crates and barrels. Knowing their explosive contents, he probably moved a little more recklessly than he should have, but his small stature and light weight counted for something in reducing the likelihood of an accident. He hopped onto the back lip of the wagon where Rolnar sat. Standing, he was the perfect height to whisper into the ear of the giant man.
“Are you fine with this?” Klane whispered excitedly.
“We need to get out of this alive, reckon I gotta’ be.”
“We can always just run.” Klane paused as Klemens cleared his throat again, glancing back at them for a moment. “We don’t need to blow up or kill anyone or anything.”
“It’s night, doubt any sizable number of people’ll be there. Clockwork is big ‘nough to eat the cost.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Klane clutched a handful of Rolnar’s sleeve.
The Bramble man regarded the gesture irritably. “Not much we can do about that though, now can we?” Rolnar set a hand on Klane’s shoulder and pushed him a few steps back with the ease of a child moving a paper doll.
Klane grunted and scrambled back over the wagon to where Klemens sat. The warm, cozy air of the passage faded as they emerged into the city. The two-lane thoroughfare broke into five roads.
They were about midway up the mountainside. Over half of Red Reef, with its shadowed viaducts, crisscrossing railways, and teetering structures rising into the air like feral grasses, still towered above them.
The other half of the city, with its large harbor, swept low for a few miles to their left. The smoldering remains of the tavern made a black mark clearly visible in the district below the slums. The charred husk of The Reliant had been dragged out into the middle of the port. A few small fires still glowed as it died a slow death, far away from the wooden structures of the waterfront.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“You can’t back out, you know,” Klemens grunted. His voice sunk low, like a parent admonishing a disobedient child. “If you waver or try to run, I’ll kill you both. I put my life on the line for both of you, by vouching for you, because neither of you deserve an unwarranted death.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me regret it.” Klemens took his eyes off the branching roads for a second to glower at Klane in a way that ended all discussion, and all hopes of working any other way out of the mess he was in. “Don’t. If you two try to kill me, you’ll be found and killed in kind. Don’t be a fool, just do this and then leave.”
“How can you be okay with this?” Klane shrank in his seat, his voice barely above a whisper, sounding as weak as he felt.
“You don’t know what they’ve done. You don’t know how they live. Once you see, you’ll begin to understand why you shouldn’t feel any pity for them. They built their fate.”
“They also built this city, I’m sure.”
“You’re not wrong.”
They followed the road farthest to the right. It was cut into the mountainside, sheltered by the mountain above and enclosed by a thick, ornamented colonnade. The quality of the structures, and the beauty of the upper district they were entering, stood in striking contrast to the rest of the city, when Klane thought of the harbor below.
Couples strolled along raised walkways on the opposite side of the colonnade, treated to an unbroken view of the port. They were obviously well-off, most wearing fitted suits or flowing gowns, pastel-colored parasols in hand. A few were flanked by servants of some sort, tasked with carrying packs or personal belongings like a mule.
A column of guards marched past, halberds clutched dutifully against their shoulders as they stepped in time, a heightened show of security in the wake of the previous day’s events. Then the road ended, and Klane witnessed the most beautiful city-sights he’d ever seen.
* * *
The mountainside road ended at a gate between two pristine, white walls capped with lush, green shrubbery, which tumbled over the top like fine, curly locks.
After a quick inspection of the pass Klemens had been granted at the city’s entryway, one of the five guards stationed at the gate waved them through. The uniforms of these men, adorned with braids and decorative shoulder pads, were fancier than the ones Klane had seen throughout the rest of the city.
They rolled onto white, marble streets flecked with blossoms of gold. Gardens bursting with vibrant color rustled in a faint breeze, joined by the light hiccupping of bubbling fountains. Along with the gardens, they lined the inner walls that separated this heavenly district from the dirt and grime of the laborers and lesser districts.
Even the air smelled better up here, perfumed with sweet, floral scents that Klane thought came as much from minuscule, copper nozzles hidden beneath the eaves of marble structures as it did from the actual gardens around them.
Bejeweled sconces burning with a white light caught Klane’s eye. If he could just take one of those sconces, the jewels within would ensure he wouldn’t have to work for the rest of his life. They are so pretty.
You don’t have enough room in your pack, he realized, frowning as he thought about the possibilities.
Klane didn’t feel worthy of being in this area. He was shamefully underdressed compared to the specimens of beauty who roamed about. The expression of Rolnar’s face, a mix of awestruck curiosity and off-put horror, told him that the Bramble man probably felt the same. The glares of those around them cut a piercing path through Klane’s emotional barrier as easily as the drills and saws of the miners cut through the hardened mountainside.
Maybe Klemens had a point.
“Why would they let you through here? What’d the missive say?” Klane scanned the area for any other merchants or traders hauling goods. Sure enough, their wagon was the only one within this slice of seeming paradise. They stuck out like, well, as much as Klane probably did being the only gnome in the area. Perhaps the only gnome these people had ever seen.
“It wasn’t what the paper said.” Klemens twisted his right arm palm-upward, letting the cuff of his sleeve drop just enough to reveal the tattooed, phantom-like symbol on his wrist. His cult’s sigil.
Klane quickly glanced back toward the guard post. The guard who’d waved them past wasn’t in sight. Could they really be in cahoots?
The idea that the Spirits of the Crumbled could’ve permeated the security of Red Reef wasn’t far-fetched. Klemens seemed to have an infinite wealth of knowledge and intelligence on things Klane wouldn’t have ever guessed, namely Andrew and the Clockwork Mining Company. But it stood to reason that any loose ends or leverage that could be attained over the target would be sought out and primed for use.
“How far does it spread?” Klane asked.
“Does what spread?”
“Your …” Klane tapped two fingers against his own wrist, as if saying the name of the cult would summon Highborn Father Hass, or someone equally dreadful.
“Far enough.” Klemens nodded toward the raised foundation of a building along their right. A small gutter ran at its base, between the structure and a manicured patch of grass. A small stream ran the course of the gutter, pouring between a thick, iron-grated gutter. Klane couldn’t tell for sure, but for a moment it seemed that the ambient light reflected the ghostly sigil of the cult.
That was all he needed to see. Or not see?
The cart rattled onward, past small manors and walled villas, beneath an onslaught of spiteful gazes as residents investigated who would cause a ruckus on their avenues of marble and grass.
Klane weaseled open his backpack, checking to make sure the journal was still inside, along with his other precious belongings. He pulled out one of the small biscuits Trici had made before leaving, less than a week ago. The food was stale, definitely past its prime. The garlic glaze had dried to a brittle finish. But it was Trici. If she’d excelled at one thing more than all else, baking was it. Her aroma and that of a fresh-baked loaf of bread were one and the same, and if they weren’t, something was wrong. Perhaps a rare occasion when she accidentally burned a batch. He would never be able to separate the smell of baked goods from his love, and as much as it hurt, it brought him joy as well.
Maybe a bit of comfort, if he was truly being honest.
The shard of red casting stone in the backpack faintly glowed, casting a garnet light on the belongings within. It hadn’t glowed before, had it?
Come to think of it, he didn’t remember placing the stone in the backpack, separate from the journal.
Klemens, or one of his cultist brethren. Klane glowered.
“What’re you going to do with that?” Klemens raised an eyebrow.
Klane startled, realizing the red glow slipped out in precious little beams, painting a flurry of motes in the air of the same red tint, and undoubtedly reflecting off his cheeks and the contours of his face. He cinched the bag shut, cutting off the supply of light and trapping it within. It would never escape again if he could help it. “Nothing.” The expression on Klemens’s face conveyed his disbelief.
“I’m, uh.” Klane smirked awkwardly and shrugged. “I was going to, uh, see if I could get the stone cut and fitted into Pride, my sword.” Lying to his once fellow-sailor, and now captor, was probably pointless now.
“Ah, so you know what it is then.”
“Of course, I know what it is!” Klane snapped. “I didn’t just leave the hovel yesterday.”
“No, that was three days past.” Klemens smirked. “Do you know how it works?”
“Well, no. But red is for fire, I know that much.”
They came to a viaduct spanning a gorge that separated two plateaus, which jutted out from the surrounding wall of mountains. It linked the walled district of hundreds of villas and manors, which they cut through, to another walled compound of almost equal size. Over this Klane could see the tops of large buildings, and in the far off opposite corner of the district, a large observation telescope pointed skyward.
“Red is definitely fire,” He said.
Gray stone balustrades, lined with lamps, lit the bridge. Klane glanced hesitantly over one of the rails that separated their cart from a plummeting fate.
Shanties and hovels lined the gorge below, buildings of varying sizes, which faded to obscurity the farther down one squinted. The very blackest parts of the gorge’s depths appeared like a reflection of the night sky above, completely dark except for thousands of twinkling flames of light below.
Black forms drifted over the lights. Small boats, slightly smaller than the skiffs that had responded to the tavern fire, within the span of the chasm.
How many hundreds of thousands of citizens live in the noxious darkness below? Klane wondered. In the grime and dirt.
The squeal and squelch of rails, along with the hiss of steam, called to them like a distant, unseen stranger. Faint drifts of dissipating steam served as the only other sign of its presence.
“Fire.” Klemens sighed. “You’re correct in that, my little friend.”
Klemens’s laugh was like a rasping hiss, which died as they came within earshot of another guard post, at the gate into the district ahead. Unlike the previous gates, this one had a series of thick, stone columns erected the entire way across. The spaces between each column were so narrow that even Klane couldn’t slip between them.
A sign posted along the wall read Red Reef Administrative Quarter. They appeared to be entering through a back gate of the district, judging by the nonexistent traffic and the road’s narrowness. Two guards stepped out from a chamber built into the wall.
“Where is he?” Klemens grunted.
“Where’s who?” Klane asked.
Unlike the more ceremonially dressed soldiers and guards who’d paraded down the mountain roads and within the passage, these men wore heavy leather. Lacquered, caramel-colored cuirasses and helmets lent a bulky shape to their forms. Large, rectangular spaulders extended to protect the sides of their necks. The lower halves of their faces, from the bridge of their noses and rounding below their eyes, were obscured by white, ceramic masks molded into the shapes of snarling beasts, maybe lions, or dragons of some sort. A pair of metal pipes extended past the shoulders of one guard, but not the other. They flickered with small tongues of flame.
Klane’s eyes widened as he took note of the embedded crimson stones in the man’s gauntlets and his claymore’s hilt. Casting stones like mine, Klane realized. Fire. That explains the spouts of flame over the man’s shoulders.
As the guard turned, it became apparent that the flaming pipes joined together at the top of a bulbous, glass orb strapped to his back, filled with fuel to keep the flames alight. His casting stones glowered faintly as he raised a hand, and coaxed flame from the pipe as a warning to the approaching cart. The draft horses slowed and shied away, scraping the ground with a hoof and tossing its head.
The other guard’s gauntlets were embedded with emerald-green stones. Klane wasn’t sure what those ones were for. Earth, probably.
Klemens stopped the wagon and whistled sharply to Rolnar. The Bramble man flinched as if startled from a nap, and hopped down from the wagon. Klemens joined him, approaching the pair of guards, who stood waiting. Klane hopped down and scrambled after the pair.
“State your business.” The voice of the green-stoned guard on their right echoed within his mask.
“Delivery.” Klemens unrolled the missive he’d stuffed in his belt. Holding it out for the guard, he and Rolnar stopped before them. Even with the armor, Rolnar still stood a head taller and significantly wider than them. The guard on the left shifted with his claymore uneasily, his dark eyes not leaving Rolnar.
“Why’d you come up this way?”
“It beats the traffic and hubbub down in the city,” Klemens said. “All I want is to get this done and hit the tavern.”
The guard stared at Klemens for a moment. His eyebrows crunched in a grimace a second later. “You won’t have any luck with the tavern tonight, hauler.” He turned and nodded down toward the harbor, miles down the mountain but still visible in the clear night. “Goddamn cults and insurrectionists find ways to take even the simplest joys from my life. Go ahead.” He raised a hand toward the barricade of pillars.
The emerald stones on the back of his gloves flared to life for a second. The earth groaned and gave thunderous objection as the stone pillars receded into the ground.
Earth, Klane confirmed. He suddenly envied the guard for his green casting stones. He would have to find some. Fire seemed a lot less practical now.
“Go on.” The guard dropped his hand.
“Thank you, sir,” Klemens grunted, scrunching the missive into his belt.
The guard on the left seized Klemens by the hand and wrenched it up, to reveal the tattoo on the underside of his wrist. The guard shoved him away, and the wiry man crashed backward into Klane, tripping over him like a pesky root or fallen log.
The guard brought his claymore to a readied position, a wreath of flame encasing the steel blade as the two kindling flames above his shoulders flared with brilliant light.
Klemens was already back on his feet, hunched like a cornered rat, ready to spring into action. He snapped his fingers and snarled at the claymore-wielding guard. “Rolnar!” Then he threw his shoulder into the guard who’d checked his missive.
Rolnar let out a guttural shout and threw himself recklessly toward the guard like a berserk rhino. The sudden motion from the giant caught the guard by surprise. He yelped as he shifted, too slowly, away from Klemens to the real threat.
Klane stood and watched, creeping a bit farther into the wagon’s shadow.
The fire-casting guard could do little to stop Rolnar. He fumbled and drew back half a step, not having had the time needed to compose a proper response.
Rolnar smashed the claymore to the ground, sending it clattering across stone, and tore the guard’s gauntlets free. He threw them over his shoulder and they clattered near the wagon, glow fading from the embedded stones. Then he snagged the flame-pipes and bent them at odd angles.
Klane moved toward the gloves. With a bit of effort, he could tailor them to fit himself decently. One less thing he’d have to find an armorer for.
Rolnar lifted the guard in a giant bear hug from the front and ambled toward the balustrade.
“Rolnar!” Klane dropped the gloves and leapt from hiding. “Don’t!”
The Bramble man stopped and studied him. The guard continued to squirm and struggle uselessly in his grip. The partial face mask that had made him appear so fierce and mysterious had fallen away, revealing a sweaty, terrified, middle-aged man. Rolnar peeked back toward Klemens, who had weaseled his way behind the other guard and was choking him unconscious with a garrote of some sort, then back at Klane.
“He didn’t do anything to deserve to be killed,” Klane said. “Just strip him and tie him up, out of the way so no one will notice. You’re not a murderer.” his words came in exasperated gasps, but the last few seemed to profoundly resonate with Rolnar.
He dropped the guard, who collapsed on all fours, seized him by the collar, and effortlessly tore the fuel-orb off his back to hurl it off the bridge. The glass shattered in a rocky crag a few dozen feet below them. “Surrender,” Rolnar growled.
What had happened to the lovable galley cook I first met? Klane wondered.
The guard nodded vigorously, working to catch his breath, but otherwise didn’t move.
Klane cut the small knuckle-plates, used to protect the back of the wearer’s hand, free of the gauntlets. He didn’t need, nor could he possibly carry, everything. He just needed the embedded stones.
Klemens eased the unconscious guard onto his back. “Get the rope from the back of the wagon, Klane. It is on the right, under the tarp, in a little coil.”
Klane nodded, glancing at the man’s emerald-encrusted gloves. “C-can I have those too?” He wasn’t sure if combining casting stones was possible, but at least he would have a choice.
“The gloves?” Klemens looked up from the guard’s body. “Sure.”
With a bit more skip in his step than was probably appropriate, Klane hopped to the back of the wagon and found the requested rope. This little jaunt to return a journal to a dead man’s son had become far more violent and exciting than Klane could’ve hoped for.
At least now they were in.
