Chapter Four
"Capurna—the perfect winter getaway for the rich and famous.
Its income came from the many tourists from other parts of the realm,
those not shown on regular maps.
The shipmasters knew the way only by memory,
and would never tell where the people really came from.
They passed through the area known as ‘death sphere’,
but nearly always returned.
But, the people that came through there called our lands the ‘triangle’,
which was a name I could never understand …"
--The Pasegean Scrolls
Capurna was a town rich with tourists. It was also rich with thieves. This was not a problem for the corrupt mayors and other law officers––unless the thieves got caught. Yet, even then, a suitable bribe would more than likely tide them over until the next capture.
Lokath Carrel was one of them.
Shadowy and silent was their house prey for the night. The inhabitants were away in Sonaro, and the thieves guild had decided that a new member, Mattai, would be trialed tonight.
Lokath was bored. He turned and whispered to Wane. "Why do we always have to test out the newbies? We don’t get nothing for it."
"What do you think we do it fer? If we didn’t, the chief’d kick us out fer sure."
Lokath snorted loudly, and Mattai looked at him nervously. "Sorry, kid. But you’re boring me to death. It don’t take five minutes for you to pick that kind of lock. Give it here." He reached for the pick in the boy’s hand. Mattai jerked it away.
"No! That would be cheating, and I’m an honest boy." Both Lokath and Wane began to laugh, and Mattai looked at them tersely. "Would you please be quiet?"
Lokath knew for certain that this guy wasn’t made for thieving. So he told him straight off. "Look, why don’t you go work in the general store or something, kid? I’m sure you’d be much happier there."
Mattai was infuriated. "My father was a thief, and I am following in his footsteps," here he paused, "He died when I was very young. He was hung for breaking into the palace of Sonaro. He was part of an uprising in the government, and was killed for sedition."
Embarrassed, Lokath looked away. "Sorry, kid."
"Don’t worry. You weren’t to know."
Wane decided to butt into this conversation. "Look, I know it’s sad, but I tink that we need to finish this job."
The others agreed, and Mattai finally got the door opened. "What now?" he said to Lokath nervously.
"Now we loot the place. Mattai, part o’ya task is to take the golden locket o’ Hartnett. Search the entire house. Wane, you wait outside. Whistle if someone comes."
Wane nodded and headed outside. Lokath sighed and followed Mattai towards the cabinet in the corner. Mattai turned his head towards the older thief, looking for some approval. Lokath, tiring of the boy, nodded and proceeded upstairs into the bedrooms.
Noticing one bedroom door seemed slightly ajar, like it had been left in a hurry, he decided to peruse inside. "Aha!" he thought when he saw the open wardrobe and jewellery box with the key still inside the lock. "Didn’t anyone ever teach you to clean up after yourselves before going out to the theatre? It just isn’t safe."
Sarcasm was Lokath’s high skill, even higher than his ability to sneak and loot. However, his ears were not in the best condition. After being caught out on the Capurnan moors during a horrible flood, his hearing had been severely damaged. Delirious and half-dead, he had been carried back by his father to the small village of Granion, and treated there. He had never fully recovered, and when his nerves really got to him, he tended to fall to the ground, and shudder until it passed. It rarely occurred, but when it did, it wasn’t good for anything—his dignity or his situation.
So, that was why he didn’t hear the soft, yet audible sounds of footsteps trotting up the stairs. Those footsteps brought many things. He was grasped from behind, and he gasped for air. "Speak and it will be used against you in the local diet."
The voice was hard, strong, but with a certain wavering quality that showed this man (or woman, Lokath couldn’t be sure) hadn’t been a guard for very long. The words were formed with difficulty, as if her nerves were as rattled as Lokath’s. He was sure of the sex now. It was a female, built like a male, judging from the muscles, but the feminine aspects included the height difference, the way she spoke, and hair length.
She tied his hands tightly with rope. It bit into his flesh, and he knew that by the time his hands were untied, they would be virtually unusable for several days. This had happened to him before, with this carelessness and hearing defects combined, it created a perfect trap.
Of course. It was so obvious to him now. It had all been a set-up. It was too easy, the way that the Chief had only briefed him that morning. These things were always planned ahead. And the difficulty of the deadbolt had not been planned. Lokath could have kicked himself. "The jewellery box!" His thoughts were filled with exasperation at his ignorance.
The woman shoved him in the direction of the door, then down the stairs. The room below was filled with Capurnan’s, their turquoise plumes an eyesore from the golden helms atop their heads.
Some of them laughed at his entrance. Others whispered, each telling their own opinion on the matter—whether his death would be immediate or if he would get a fair trial—if you could call it that to begin with.
Lokath gulped as he surveyed the rest of his surroundings. The silence of the night had become bright and boisterous as, for the first time, he noticed all the candles and lamps lit around him.
His heart plummeted when he noticed two familiar faces in the room. One was bound just as he was, if not a bit tighter. Wane always struggled. Lokath never felt any need to. When the game was up, it wasn’t going to come down in a hurry.
Mattai’s triumphant smile was more dazzling that any light could ever be. "Father? What was I thinking?! Of course he made it up … I’m so stupid!" Lokath had always been a little too trusting—for a thief, anyway. But he couldn’t help it. It was him.
He realised that some aqua-plumed men were marching Wane out the door. His woman captor prodded him in the back with the truncheon held in her hand. The female warriors, not felt fit to equip a sword, carried such objects as clubs, copper-tipped boots and Januli daggers. However, the woman, muscled to the extreme, nearly pushed him down the stairs with this slight tap.
He was lead out the door, and half-pushed, half-pulled onto the cart that awaited him. Mattai followed them outside, and, as the cart pulled away, horses hooves clacking on the worn cobblestones shouted: "That’s for my father, you rotten thugs!"
"Now, Mr. Carrel, I’ve told you a million times if I’ve told you once; you have only two choices: die the day after tomorrow, hung like a coward so to entertain the tourists which you have stolen from many times, or take the better way out. The more honourable way out. Join up with the Tusheban army as it traverses through our fair city. They shall arrive tomorrow. The choice is up to you.
"I advise the army, as at least the death shall be a virtuous one! I will come and see you again on the morrow, and ask you of your decision. Good day … Lokath."
Bishop Arghunst left the small prison cell in which Lokath had been living in for three weeks. At least that was what he thought. It had been the 18th of Fybrunus when he was put in here, and three weeks equalled …
Lokath threw his cup across the room, anger swelling in his veins that he couldn’t work out as simple an equation as that.
A purple-plume peeked into the cell, and spoke with ferocity unknown to Lokath before this time. "One more time, thief idiot, and you shall have no choice at all, and shall die on Trinuysr." As he spoke, he spat at Lokath, but it went not within two metres of the man. "If I was a law-maker, I should change this system."
He seemed to want to continue his speech, but the return of Arghunst brought him to his knees. But the bishop paid no heed to his feeble prayers. "Tusheban armies have arrived! You must choose now …"
"I always hated uniforms," he thought as he stood at the front of the regiment. "Front-line too … obvious they dislike thieves, these Tusheban wretches. Still, I shouldn’t knock what’s saving my life, I guess."
Two men and a woman walked past Lokath, an air of superiority surrounding them. He turned to the man next to him, and asked him who they were. The soldier snorted and replied:
"They are Baronet Conner of Tusheba, General Jareth Caverton of Alentio, and that woman" —pointing to the one with the auburn hair— "that is Commander Catrin Moore of Menilan. They’re the leaders of this group. Don’t draw any attention to yourself whilst they’re around—it could be dangerous."
Lokath nearly laughed. How stupid was this, this boy (he was as naïve) to think that any man could rule over another. That wasn’t how Lokath worked. He was a one-man band—no one would ever rule over him!
They marched onwards. Days past them by, and Lokath spoke little, residing more in his own thoughts than in the world around him.
Despite the man’s warnings, Lokath drew attention to himself on the last day of their trek to Syriana—saving the army and their ‘surprise’ attack.
His regiment was leading, leap-frogging their way along the worn road—the only road to Syriana. That was when he saw them.
Maybe his hearing wasn’t the best, but his eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s. He saw the bandits a mile away, their camouflage barely hiding three of them, much less twenty. He pulled his colonel to the side, who didn’t believe him for a second. They went onwards, Lokath dreading the moment when they would spring upon the group finally.
They pounced, daggers drawn, and attacked the party.
Stabbing their way through the crowd of soldiers, he saw her.
Her face was like coffee-cream, perfectly sweet in its own right, yet you could see the slight imperfections. Her deep brown eyes stared back at him, and Lokath was lost inside her steely gaze.
She was graceful as she killed, like a tiger, springing upon its prey and tearing it open. But she showed compassion as she noticed one man suffering, and plunged the knife into his heart, killing him instantly.
Lokath stood there, swinging his sword automatically at the brigands surrounding him, concentrating on the movements she made, the contortions in her face as she hated every deep plunge into flesh and the hard retraction of the blade.
Pain filled his side. She screamed as she saw him tumble. Blackness coupled with memories of other pains—pains of peacetime.
His mother’s death filled his eyes with tears, her slow suffering which showed him the really meaning of the word agony, as she lay there, upon the bed, her dead baby beside her, life draining with every heave of her chest, every heartbeat brought her closer to the end.
The hillside moors where his father had left him as ‘punishment’, then left him there during the thunderstorm which claimed most of his hearing—and part of his sanity.
Even his dog, Simeon, had an untimely death. He ate some of Mrs. Teesdale’s ‘gift’ to him—poisoned meat. His anguish was almost as bad as his mothers, but not quite.
All these thoughts came to him as he waited for death’s hateful arms to embrace him with misery. Instead, deathly calm. Vision became less difficult. Male and female faces looking at him—his parents, his brother, his baby sister who had died within three hours of her birth; they all came to him now.
Focussed. They were not relatives, but they were familiar. Two men looked over him, one with blonde hair, another brown. It clashed terribly with the bedclothes. Lokath’s thoughts were jumbled as he wondered at his reasoning.
Women. That same one with the reddish-brown wave in her hair. C … something. Cat’s were involved. But he could not remember.
She. Her hair was braided now. She spoke, but he shook his head when she pointed to her ears.
Leaning closer, he finally understood her. "Syrah," was all he heard before his comatose state re-greeted him for a short while.
Copyright 2000 M. Lees
