Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Nineteen: The Job

Someone came at him out of the dark.

Jordan stuttered to a halt halfway to the nearest warehouse, but then he recognised Akiva at the same moment Usk gave him a hard shove to get him moving again. Three guards were already dead, and the other three were grappling with Devils deployed to distract them while the rest of the cohort broke in and made away with the goods. He couldn't see where the screaming had come from.

"They're starting with the furthest away," Akiva muttered, then vanished again as they reached the sheds.

"Get down there, kid," Usk said, and Jordan, throat closing around his fear, forced his feet into motion again.

Usk gave him a leg up onto the roof. Somewhere nearby someone laughed hysterically, yelling at the sky, which meant someone had had to resort to belladonna already – though Jordan wouldn't have been surprised if it was just a Devil greatly enjoying themselves.

He shimmied down a rope that had been left hanging through the ragged hole in the warehouse's metal roof, sliding half the way and blinking away tears as rope burn gouged at the shallow scrapes in his palms from the journey there. He cursed himself for not replacing his gloves as he stepped away to let Usk come down. He tried to calm his pounding heart; he had only ever done climbing like that with a harness and a helmet on, and had only put his feet over the edge this time because none of the crowding thoughts in his head were making a lick of sense. Whatever benefit the blackweed had given him had worn off already.

The warehouse was dim, lit by a single candle, and the walls were writhing with Devils. Crates and sacks of food stretched as far as the eye could see, both upwards and across. So much food Marick had planned to just burn. As Usk's boots hit the floor, a man scurried to the rope and climbed up it hand over hand with enviable ease, especially considering he had a sack of flour strapped to his back.

"You're late." Gelert finally appeared, a blackweed joint going under the bristle of his moustache. "Get grabbing."

Jordan didn't hesitate. He stumbled to the wall and began raiding shelves, weighting down his belt with sacks of grains. He filled his pockets with several jars of pickled vegetables and then turned to look for Usk, who, to a muted cheer from the Devils working around him, hefted a big barrel of something onto one shoulder that looked as though it should have taken two men to carry.

Going up was considerably harder than going down. Grappling with the scrapes on his hands, the added weight on his clothes, and the fact that a few months of training had not made up for over twenty years of laziness, he struggled up the rope clenching his teeth so hard that they squeaked. He smelled smoke and panicked, would have slipped back to the ground if Usk hadn't appeared the gap and grabbed him by the hand.

"Is it starting?" Jordan gasped. He readjusted his clammy grip, and with Usk's help finally hauled himself over the lip of the hole.

"It is. Do your thing."

Jordan spotted Devils on the ground splashing pitch around the base of the warehouse's wooden walls. On the roof of the next one along, figures were still swarming in and out of a gap in the metal and disappearing into the night. Glancing further down, he saw two Devils grab more buckets of pitch and start hauling them to the second warehouse. He paused, focused, made sure no one was at that moment scrambling out of the hole beside them, and then sent a flash of magic across his whole body to signal to Yddris that the burning was about to start.

A moment of breathless silence passed, save for the blood pounding in Jordan's ears and the distant splash of oil arcing from the cans.

Then the barracks blazed with light, and a whole unit of the guard came pouring out rattling with swords and armour. A dark cloaked figure appeared from the doorway afterwards and sneaked across to the castle's kitchen door, visible only to Jordan.