Chapter Twenty Eight

  Attack

  Isleview was far smaller than Freya had expected. No larger than the core fishing village in Caire. Freya, Lorin, and Molly split off from the rest as they entered the small town.

  Despite the messily cut forest outside, the town itself felt oddly comfortable. Children played in the streets, and most of the adults had a bounce to their step. Was this life under Sulivar’s rule?

  Freya pushed the thought away. No time for second guessing now. The three of them strolled through the streets as if they belonged. Roman had dispersed some counterfeit papers that should satisfy anyone that stopped them. Though they shouldn’t have worried, there were hardly any guards in sight.

  The few Freya did see still left a pit in her gut. Each red-cloaked warrior sent her back to that night in the woods. The lethal intent on the soldier’s faces. The shock and despair in the eyes of the young mother she cut down. The rage in their comrades’ eyes upon seeing what Freya had done.

  Freya bit her tongue, hard. Stop it.

  Nobody paid them any mind, which was a little surprising because they had to look suspicious as hell. Freya was absolutely buzzing, she hadn’t felt this jittery since Ben bet her she couldn’t pound four red bulls in a row. That night she earned twenty bucks and a trip to the Emergency room.

  Lorin’ gleaming white armor and cloak didn’t make for great stealth. The obstinate man had refused to take any of it off. That made her realize she had never actually seen Lorin outside of his armor. Even that night they spent in the tower, he slept in the armor.

  Lots of people wore their battle-gear most of the time, despite hardly ever needing it. But they did take it off. She had seen every other member of the Unbound outside of their typical getup. His determination to keep his gear on had to have something to do with his guild.

  Black Knights, guilds for basically every Dungeons and Dragons class, at least three different groups of Alchemists who based their powers on different interpretations in literature and television. There were so many possibilities. What group would Freya have joined if she wasn’t sucked into all this crap with Sulivar?

  A sharp elbow to the ribs snapped Freya back to reality.

  “Get into position,” Molly said through gritted teeth.

  They had arrived at Isleview’s town hall. It was thrice the height of any of the other modest homes and shops in town. Freya shook her head and took a few breaths. She couldn’t be zoning out going on internal tangents like that. There was work to be done.

  As previously arranged Freya leaned against a lantern pole in front of the hall and took out The Lord of Deliana. Lorin crossed his hands and stood at attention beside Molly who sat on a bench just a stone’s throw down the road. She pulled out one of those fancy 1920’s long cigarette lighter things and started smoking. She had a problem.

  Just moments after they all settled in, an explosion rocked the entire town. Freya’s ears popped, the world muffled. Athena’s fiery dragon rose into the air and crashed down on something Freya couldn’t see.

  As expected a flood of soldiers ran from the town hall just as the screaming started. Mothers and fathers grabbed up their children and took off in the opposite direction. Freya felt the ever present pit in her stomach deepen. I’m sorry. She thought.

  Freya dove into the surprisingly clean alley beside the town hall. Half-way through was a small wooden door which should have been the servant’s entrance according to Roman’s map. It was propped open. She smiled, that just made her life way easier. Lorin and Molly were coming up behind her, she swung open the door and ran into the dimly lit hall.

  The Servant’s quarter of the town hall didn’t seem as if it belonged in Isleview at all, let alone in the town hall. The floor was cracked and stained a dark brown. Likely from some kind of oil. On the poorly finished wood walls were simple candles that smelled of beef fat. The servants were lasered in on their current tasks and didn’t even notice Freya or the hulking man beside her. They were dressed finely in black and white silk tunics and ran between several doors carrying dishes and linens.

  Perhaps her earlier assessment of the town had been wrong. All these people had a hollowness to their eyes. Some of them seemed just about ready to drop dead. She breathed a sigh of relief. She shouldn’t need to hurt any of these people today.

  “Left, left, then a right. It’s the small door fourth from the corner.” It sounded as if Molly was speaking to her through a door. Freya could make out the words, but it was muffled. They really should have warned her about the noise.

  “I’ve got it. Let me focus.”

  After the first two lefts, they entered a far more pristine section of the town hall. The floors were of polished black stone instead of simple white tiles. The lighting improved dramatically, with proper iron lanterns hanging every few feet on the finely engraved wooden walls.

  Freya pulled her new sword, Serenity, from its sheath. She wished she had more chance to practice. But she would have to make do. Freya tensed, Serenity left her hand and danced in the air around her. The toy soldiers snapped away from her chest and followed the rapier’s lead. Lastly, she pulled the thin fencing sword the Gardener had given her on her first days in the Harbor. The handle slicked from her too-sweaty palm.

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  Lorin followed her lead and readied his weapon. Molly though climbed onto the ceiling like a shitty horror movie version of Spider-man and took off on her own mission. She was supposed to retrieve…something. Roman had insisted they keep their own parts of the mission mostly secret from each other lest any of them be captured. It made sense, but it annoyed her to no end.

  The growing light of Lorin’s armor made the lanterns seem like dying glowsticks in comparison. “Let’s destroy some evil.”

  The logic of Lorin’s paladin philosophy was far beyond Freya’s understanding. He was allowed to steal and kill these town guards, but on any other day he would crack her across the head for doing the same thing. When she had asked him about it a few days prior he only mumbled vaguely about destroying evil.

  “Hey!” A voice with a thick accent called from behind them.

  Freya sighed, she had been praying they wouldn’t meet any resistance. The guard, a man wearing simple leathers and the signature cloak of Sulivar’s army charged them. It would take just a flick of the wrist to eliminate the threat. To murder a man.

  Who would mourn for this one? A son? A sister? A father?

  A heavy hand fell upon her shoulder. Lorin, he was smiling sadly at her. She turned away, a shout followed by a wet crunch threatened to upset her lunch. Lorin put a gentle hand on her back and guided her away from the mess he left behind them. The axe hanging from his back dripped with gore.

  “You can’t save me from this,” She said.

  Lorin met her gaze. In his eyes was all the answer he intended to give. He was unyielding. For the first time, she felt like she had a true partner. They would weather this together.

  The sound of battle outside grew louder and more chaotic. Another explosion rocked the building, sending cracks throughout the otherwise pristine walls and floors. What in the name of Christ were they doing out there? They were supposed to crack the prison like an egg and run.

  Freya sincerely doubted any of the prisoners had the pages to use any meaningful magic. Maybe this was part of the plan that Roman and Zora were purposefully withholding.

  Whatever they were doing was working. It would have been nice to know the details. They didn’t run across a single guard all the way to the treasurer’s office. The door, which looked to be sized for an eight year old child, was cracked open. Freya stooped to get through, Lorin actually had to get on his hands and knees.

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you chucklefucks to use the other…” The Treasurer, a halfling that was missing his entire body below his belly button, went slackjawed at the sight of Freya and Lorin. “Hel-”

  The creature’s cry for help was cutoff with a slap from Freya. He tumbled off the floating platform his stump was slotted into. Freya leapt on top of him. She clamped her hand over his mouth.

  “The safe, how do we get in?”

  Freya removed her hand from his mouth. “Help! Guards-“ She punched him in the mouth, harder than she intended. Blood sprayed the floor.

  The treasurer held up his hands. “I can’t.”

  “Lorin, please introduce our new friend to your old friend.”

  Lorin pulled the bloody axe from its magnetic holder on his back. The Paladin put on a wild-eyed look that gave Freya a chill, with a flick of the wrist he sprayed the drying gore from the axe across the table. “Been a long time since baby’s had halfling, or do you prefer quarterling?”

  “Oh gods, oh please, fuck keep him away from me.” The halfling tried scuttling back but Freya’s weight kept him pinned in place.

  “Spill, or my friend is going to spill your innards all over this floor.” The words felt foreign in her mouth. So much had changed in such a short time.

  “I’ll lose everything.” The Treasurer’s tone was panicked, and Freya could tell it wasn’t just from the threat against his life.

  “Have it your way.”

  Just as Freya stood, Lorin threw the axe, it sliced the treasurer across the temple. It was a shallow wound, but the blood poured from his head as if his skull had been rent open. Blood ran over his eye, he shrieked. The axe whizzed through the air back into Lorin’s hand. He held the axe up and licked the fresh blood from the edge.

  “Like that baby? Just a taste of what daddy has waiting for you.”

  The shrieking stopped dead. The treasurer just looked at Lorin with silent horror. Freya found herself completely pulled out of the good cop, bad cop routine. This time she was almost certain she was going to be sick.

  “You need some help.”

  Lorin shrugged.

  “I’ll tell, please, just get him out of here.” The treasurer was hyperventilating. His tone made Freya cringe.

  “Uh, right. Tell us and we’ll go.”

  “There’s a secret compartment on the underside of the desk.” Freya urged him on. The treasurer fruitlessly wiped the blood from his face and banged under the desk. A little drawer holding a small scroll popped out. “The instructions are scrambled and then double reversed. You will do the first instruction, then the last, then the second, then the second to last and so on.”

  The trembling halfling handed Freya the paper. The instructions would have been a complete disaster without his additional clarification. She stuffed the instructions into her pocket, then bound up the treasurer with rope and a makeshift gag. They stuffed him under the desk and slid a large file cabinet in front of the opening, trapping him down there.

  They peeked out the front door of the office into the large hall where the vault should be. It was comically large, the door was floor to ceiling and took up the entire width of the wall. The whole thing was reminiscent of one of those fire rated gun safes. Thankfully there were no guards out in the hall, in fact, there was nobody out there at all. That gave Freya pause.

  “I don’t know about this,” Freya said.

  “Too easy?”

  “Exactly.”

  Before they could pin down a way to flush out any traps, Molly dropped from the twelve foot ceiling. Freya groaned. That was the end of their element of surprise. Molly had a smear of blood across her face. She was back for sooner than Freya thought she would be. That only made her more curious about what Molly’s task was.

  “Get moving,” Molly said, not making any effort to stay quiet. “Athena and Zora won’t be able to keep the chaos going for much longer. Every guard is out of this place.”

  With their cover thoroughly blown, Freya ran from the treasurer’s office straight to the large safe at the end of the hall. She flipped open her paper and started following the instructions as the treasurer had given them. Flip the lever on the lower right hand side, set the combination lock to sixty eight. Press the button just above the lock, flip the first lever down and then set the combination to twenty-four. It went on like that in the halfling’s cramped and only barely legible handwriting for both sides of the paper. When Freya was finished she promised herself she would head back in and crack that halfling in the head again.

  Without any fanfare, Freya turned the enormous wheel, unlatching the door. For how heavy it had to be, it swung open quite easily. The safe lead to a large barely lit room filled to the brim with gold, silver, and all manner of artifacts. Most interesting and horrifying of all though, was the dark haired woman sitting atop a large chest that was overflowing with gold.

  Oh shit.

  “Took you long enough.”