The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 49 - Locked & Barred

....in governance, Arkendians are not a rational people. Their kings come to power by and are hated by many they rule. Worse, they are succeeded in power by heredity, not election....even when the eldest offspring is a well-known fool, incompetent, weak, cruel, or insane. This method is sacred, and the people defend it with their lives.

—From Notes on Stilty Governance, written in Kwendi, by Second Ambassador Chombi

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LOCKED & BARRED

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Harric followed Brolli as the Kwendi passed without pause through the complex of upper corridors. Brolli now stuck to the highest level of trellises, which were used by fewer Kwendi, but the passages were nearly abandoned. The few Kwendi he met moved at top speed, faces anxious and set, and did not stop to speak. Periodically the deep booming vibration would sound from somewhere in the complex, growing louder with each repetition. Fortunately for Harric, Brolli was moving slower than he had earlier in the day. Perhaps he had grown weary in his armor. Harric was surely growing weay from carrying Fink.

It soon became clear to Harric that Brolli did not return by the same route back to the upper floors that he had taken to come down. On this new path he passed living quarters with great halls, and several of the corridors they passed breathed cool night air on Harric's perspiring skin. This perplexed him at first, for h ow could there be open windows or doors to the outside if they were under ground? But then it occurred to him that what he had imagined basements or subterranean floors might simply be dug into a mountain or cliff face with windows and balconies looking out from the side of the mountain, over valleys.

But Brolli entered none of these. He followed a path that took him at once higher in the comlex and clearly in one direction. Harric hoped that direction was back to the map room and the Gate back to the forest. As they traveled, the shuddering boom of the alarm continued, and the faces of Kwendi they passed remained bent with concern. They spoke in muted voices, cast each other worried glances.

When they'd risen up several of the step ramps to higher floors—to the point Harric believed they must be very near the floor on which they'd started—a commotion in an adjoining hall or courtyard stopped Brolli short. Fresh night air wafted in from the archway into the courtyard as Brolli peered furtively into the courtyard from his vantage in the trellis. Whatever he saw made him curse and retreat into the trellis. Hanging by one hand, he checked again the sand-glass in his satchel, cursed once again, and turned back the way he'd come.

Harric risked a peek into the courtyard before following on Brolli's heels. Beyond he saw a broad, open courtyard blanketed in trellises beneath the open sky. It looked much like the open space in which he'd seen Brolli delivering a speech to the crowd—perhaps it was the very same courtyard. If that were so, they were very close to the map room indeed.

"Kid! He's getting away!" Fink tugged on Harric's pack straps.

"Keep an eye on him," Harric whispered.

The commotion beyond came from Kwendi merchants packing their wares from the market and hurrying away from three huge white owl-faced Aerie, which had perched upon the trellises like hungry birds of prey. The Aerie perched above a dozen black-armored guards with toad hats, who stood on the ground below, and who Harric had come to associate with the guards of the women's magical domain. The toad-hat guards conversed urgently in Kwendi with three smaller Aerie, which stood beside them under the trellis only thirty paces from Harric's vantage.