The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (19 page)

The other two boys nodded and smirked. Owl was clearly the leader of this band, and now that he could see her in the light, appeared to be about fourteen years old. Goodwyn couldn't be sure, though, as he was terrible at judging the ages of most pale-skinned people.

A gang of three
, he thought. Everything about their strategy was naive. They had placed their prisoners too close together, their bonds had been poorly tied, and the lights had given away enough of the environment to allow prisoners to plot an escape route.
Nothing more than inexperienced kids.

"If you saved us from the bay then why are you holding us prisoner?" Goodwyn asked, having nearly worked his way through the rope around his wrists.

At this, Ferret rolled over the railing, then dropped from the catwalk. He landed with a flourish and a bow.
 

Goodwyn shook his head. If Ferret had been a real prison guard, Goodwyn or Therren would have killed him before he stood up from his bow.

"Because we don't know how much money you're worth," Ferret said. Despite his height, he still carried himself like a boy around Owl's age. His black hair fell in tufts over his eyes and bunched around his ears. Goodwyn guessed the boy's head hadn't come into contact with soap in a long time.
 

"A pair of demons like you, we figure either someone will pay for your death or pay to have you back. We plucked you out of the bay like a pair of fish. Maybe you're goldfish."

Ferret giggled and looked up at his compatriots. "Get it? Goldfish? Because we might get money for them, and we got 'em out of the bay."

"We get it, Ferret." Owl sighed, then fixed her steely gaze on Goodwyn.
 

"I bet the scarabs would pay money for these two demons," Ferret said, strutting back and forth under the catwalk.

"So who are you two, and what were you doing in the freezing water around Findanar?" Owl asked, ignoring Ferret.

Goodwyn glanced over at Therren. With nothing more than that one look, he knew that Therren was also ready to break free of his bonds at Goodwyn's signal. Goodwyn cocked his head twice toward Ferret and Therren acknowledged the signal.

"My name is Goodwyn Stom," Goodwyn said in a barely audible whisper.

"What?" Ferret asked, leaning in closer.
 

This is too easy
, Goodwyn thought. He snapped the rope holding his hands and leapt up from the floor. Ferret had no time to react before Goodwyn had both the boy's wrists in a locking hold behind his back. The boy showed his utter lack of skill when he let out a shrill cry instead of countering the attack.

Therren, too, leapt from his spot on the floor, free of his ropes. Owl and Spider both gasped, but neither of them made a move for a weapon.
 

They're unarmed!

These weren't just amateurs, they'd never seen real combat in their lives. Goodwyn used to find the idea of people who had never trained or seen combat nearly inconceivable. His time in Waldron and brief stay on Aldsdowne had shown him that even though Kestian children are given their first weapon at age five, most people in the world never draw a blade to do anything more dangerous than carve a turkey.

He relaxed his grip on Ferret, letting him stand.

"That hurt," Ferret whined.

"Let's cut the pretense, shall we?" Goodwyn said. "You may be pickpockets, but you are clearly no gang of thieves, and we intend to get some answers from you. However, I would much prefer to interrogate you all with my clothes on."

Owl blushed a little, and Goodwyn caught Therren leering at him. Goodwyn couldn't help but return the admiration for his friend's physique, especially when wearing next to nothing.

"Your clothes are drying by the fire in our living room," Owl said, trying to hide her grin. "They should be dry enough to wear by now. Spider, can you go fetch them?"

Spider disappeared off the catwalk through a door Goodwyn hadn't noticed earlier.

They all stood in awkward silence until Spider returned carrying a mound of clothes, atop of which lay Therren's sword and Goodwyn's coiled suzur. As he fumbled his way blindly down the stairs, his eyes peeking out from behind his dangerous burden, Goodwyn quickly relieved him of the weapons so he wouldn't stab himself.

"Th-th-thank you," Spider stuttered, dropping the pile of clothes in front of the fire.

"There," Owl called from the catwalk. "Just take your things and go. We didn't do anything to you. I mean, we tied you up, but we weren't going to hurt you."

"We know you weren't," Goodwyn said, making his way to the warmth of the fire. Escaping captivity in his underclothes had been a little too awkward for his liking, and he was eager to dress. Under different circumstances the whole situation might have been amusing to him. Today, however, he saw no humor.

"We could have," Ferret added, regaining some of his bravado now that he was out of Goodwyn's reach. "We just didn't want to."

"Of course not," Therren said with a grin while pulling on his pants. Goodwyn quickly donned his own clothes. It felt good to have his clothes back on, nicely warmed—almost as good as it felt to have his suzur back. The truth was he had felt more naked without the suzur than he had without his clothes.

"We're not leaving yet," said Goodwyn. "The fact remains that you tied us up and held us captive."

"And you would have died if we hadn't fished you both out of the bay," Owl said, joining them down by the fire.

"So you think that makes us even then?" Goodwyn scowled, reaching for his suzur.

"Leave it be, Wyn," Therren said softly, placing a calming hand on Goodwyn's shoulder. "We've got more important things to do."

"What could be more important than right here and now, in our lair?" Ferret asked.

Goodwyn bent to lace up his boots. "Nothing that concerns you."

"Is your important business on Findanar?" Owl asked. "Is that why you were in the bay so close to the island?"

"F-f-findanar is haunted," stuttered Spider. "G-g-ghosts."

"We have to find our commander and warn him," Goodwyn said to Therren, ignoring the children. "Then we need to find the head of the watch. I suppose we should inform the garrison here as well."

Owl folded her arms across her chest. "Good luck with that. You're in our lair, remember? You two demons couldn't find your own faces in this city without a guide. Tell us what's so important on Findanar, and we'll get you to your commander."

"I'm not negotiating with a ragtag group of pickpockets," Goodwyn growled.

"Wyn," Therren chided.

"Ragtag?" Owl huffed, hands on her hips. "Who're you calling ragtag?"

"A single Kestian still in diapers could have bested you all," Goodwyn said irritably. He needed to get back outside, find Aegaz, and tell him that they'd found the creatures and much more, much worse.
 

He took a deep breath. "But we do need a guide to find our way back to the inn. So if you tell me who you all are, who you
really
are, and what you're doing holed up in this so-called lair instead of…whatever it is kids do in this city, then we'll tell you about Findanar. We might even see about getting you a reward for saving us. But only after we get to the inn."

"You drive a hard bargain, desert demon," said Owl. "But we'll take it."

Goodwyn grimaced, clutching his suzur. "If one more of you runts call me a demon or a devil, I swear to Ishimani that I will—"

"Wyn, stop, they don't know any better."

Why am I so angry?
he wondered. He had been frustrated that his ability hadn't shown him what was in store for them on Findanar, or helped them defeat the creatures they encountered. Being called a demon annoyed him, but not enough to make him this angry. He had been upset that they had had to flee, but there was something else bothering him, gnawing at him like a bug he couldn't reach to swat.

He took another look around the room, studying the people who had pulled them from the water. That's when it hit him, when he realized the source of his ire.

I couldn't save myself
, he thought.
I had to rely on untrained, unskilled kids to save my life
. He hadn't been able to stay and defeat those creatures. He hadn't stood his ground. He had run, and worse than that, someone had to pluck his near-dead body out of the bay.

It was the first time in his life when he could remember not being enough, not being up to a task. He felt weak, powerless.

"So how did you all end up here?" Therren asked, trying to diffuse some of the tension in the air.

Owl took a step forward, eyeing Goodwyn warily. When she spoke, she turned to Therren. "Ferret and me were in a kids home run by the scarabs. They gave us food and water, and in return we bowed and scraped and prayed to God."

"Until Spider," Ferret said.

Owl nodded and gave Spider a big smile. He smiled back, the first time Goodwyn had seen anything other than fear on the boy's face. "Until Spider came to the home. The scarabs—"

"They didn't like Spider," Ferret interrupted.

"I'm telling the story, Ferret," Owl said, punching Ferret in the shoulder. "Shut it."

"But I like telling it," Ferret said with a pout that looked very strange on someone his size.

"Next time," Owl said. "Anyway, when Spider showed up, the scarabs locked him in a room. They thought his stutter was caused by…" Owl trailed off.

"Demons?" Goodwyn asked.

Owl nodded, finally making eye contact with him. "They beat him and experimented on him. They thought he was broken and they were going to fix him. We couldn't let them treat him that way."

"So one night," Ferret interrupted, pausing to see if Owl was going to punch him again. "One night we broke out of our wing of the kids home. We broke into Spider's room and we escaped."

"Spider wasn't broken," Owl said. "He's just different. He's a genius. He built everything here. The fireplace that puts all our smoke out to someone else's chimney so no one knows we're here, the catwalks, even that thing up there."

"S-s-solar m-m-model," Spider said, gazing up.
 

"It shows where the sun is on the world. You can tell when the sun's going to set before it sets," Owl said, beaming with maternal pride.

Goodwyn studied the contraption again, this time with a new appreciation for it. If the device was accurate, and he remembered where they were on a globe properly, it was almost sundown.

"Our lair isn't even a house," Ferret said with a wide grin. "Spider added walls to an alleyway, bit by bit overnight when people weren't looking. Nobody even noticed, and now we have this huge lair. It runs for nearly three city squares. Everybody thinks the buildings connect, but they don't. We live between 'em!"

"How do you survive alone out here?" Therren asked.

"Owl finds what we need," Ferret said. "I steal what she finds, and Spider builds stuff."

"And your real names?" Goodwyn asked.

Owl grimaced. "We had other names once. Mine was Gladys, but I like Owl better."

"F-f-felix," said Spider.

"Hortense," said Ferret, cringing.

"Isn't Hortense a woman's name?" Therren asked.

"Another reason I stuck with Ferret," he replied.

"If we're going to go, you'll need some heavy cloaks," said Owl. "If you had cloaks when you went into the water, you didn't when we pulled you out."

"Where is your commander?" Ferret asked.

"We are staying at the Maelstrom Inn," offered Therren.

Owl let out an appreciative whistle. "Not just demons, but important, fancy demons."

"Fancy demons with lots of money," Ferret said.

"It's a long walk to the Maelstrom Inn, but we can get you there," Owl said. "Come on, we have some spare cloaks in the storage room."

After a brief stop in the storage room, which easily held a month's worth of food and every shape and size bottle of ale and wine, they made their way through the winding narrows of the lair, eventually stepping out into the cold late-afternoon air.

That morning's light flurry had become a full snow, the fluffy white flakes dropping like slow-motion rain, dampening the sound of everything. If it wasn't so cold, Goodwyn would have found it incredibly beautiful.

He and Therren shrugged deeper into their newly acquired cloaks and made their way down the street, following the kids in the most notorious gang of thieves in the city. Thinking back on their encounter, Goodwyn smiled a little. He found the contradiction of their innocence while masquerading as criminals to be refreshing. It was a nice change to encounter people who weren't trying to kill them.

After walking for a long time, the kids ducked into an alley just before the road terminated in a canal.

"We can't get there from here without a boat," Owl said, once off the main street. "We've got one stashed. Follow me."

Owl led the way again, with Spider and Ferret keeping up the rear. Therren and Goodwyn exchanged a glance, then continued on.

A moment later the alley opened directly onto the canal, nothing more than an accidental gap between two tall stone homes with shops on the ground level.
 

Spider knelt at the edge of the water, detached an iron rod from the stone, and pulled. A submerged canoe bobbed to the surface and then rolled over.

"Best place to hide a boat is
under
water," Owl said with a smirk. "Your ferry, gentlemen."

"I get rudder!" Ferret shouted, but before he could claim his seat at the back of the canoe, Spider had rolled into the boat and clambered to the rear without a word. "No fair!"

"G-got here f-f-first," Spider said, chuckling. "I'm r-rudderm-m-man."

Ferret leaned in close to Goodwyn's ear and whispered, "We always let him win. Some day he'll figure it out and he's going to be very angry."

They pushed off from the stone shore and paddled along the canal until they reached a wide open interchange where four different canal streets met. The tall, dark spires of a stone church loomed over the water.
 

This must be a busier part of the city
, Goodwyn thought, noticing the first crowds of people he had seen since arriving at the Maelstrom Inn. Even the crowds inside the castle had been smaller. People went about their business and paid the group in the boat little heed, though through the afternoon fog and the thickening snow, visibility was limited anyway.