Once Called Thief Read online

  “Hey!” Junn whined.

  “I’ll match that bet. I’ll go for some noble brat sent here by his daddy to learn some respect,” Roon-Kotke said.

  “Or some bitter Caster-Sergeant who’s been passed over for promotion?” Junn-Kri said.

  “Do you have two crowns, boy?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “Stop teasing him, Han.”

  “Perhaps it’ll be someone who finally appreciates the extraordinary and vital work of a combat-tech,” Lor-Qui chimed in.

  “Know what,” Roon-Kotke said. “I’ll just settle for someone who can shoot straight and doesn’t talk back. Someone who’s not going to cause me any trouble.”

  ***

  Roon-Kotke traced his fingertips along the edge of the red cross painted on the gate’s metal seal. “That, my Mulai friend, is the story of gate seventeen. It’s not been opened since.”

  Ember Cobb rubbed his bearded chin. The spider-infested gate was dormant, the portal collapsed to a pinprick-sized hole and protected by a heavy metal seal with a trio of combination locks. Nothing was getting through it, yet he took a step back anyway. Since he’d come to Refu Ruka, he’d learnt to expect the worst.

  “And then you showed up, one-eye.” Roon-Kotke patted Ember’s breastplate, a crude picture of an eye painted over its overlapping metal plates. “We already know you can shoot straight. We know you’re not much of a talker. But I also wanted a caster who wouldn’t cause me any trouble.”

  The Caster-Corporal looked Ember in the eye, frowning.

  “You’re not going to cause me any trouble are you, Cobb?”

  Ember adjusted his eyepatch. The two of them stood in an underground fortress built by the Kajjon, a race of magicians presumed long dead (apart from the one Ember had met in gate nineteen…) The Terminus was the heart of the hidden facility, two curving brick caverns with thirty oconic gates between them, each one a black metal door frame arching like the ribs of some long-dead beast. Technicians clustered around one of the gates up ahead of them. Gate twenty-one. Who knew where that one would take them. Or what horrors they would encounter when they stepped through it. It was all a far cry from his old life…

  “Cobb?” Roon-Kotke nudged him.

  “What?”

  “Got any secrets you want to share before our next adventure?”

  “Me?” Other than Ember Cobb isn’t my real name and I’m probably the most wanted man in the Mulai Empire? “Nope,” he said. “Not a thing.”

  2. HARD AS STONE

  THE BAILIFFS OF OLD OCOS stalked the streets like wraiths, clad in grey coats long and tattered, wrapped in rattling chains.

  Lini-Lat Kotkedhan watched for them every night, peering down through the cracked window of her shabby room, hoping they would never find her. She watched into the small hours, fighting sleep, fearing the sound of footsteps on the cobbles, heart hammering at every knock on the front door three floors below. Of course, sleep always took her. Every morning, she’d wake in a panic, cursing herself for not staying awake, thanking the old gods for keeping them safe. Then she’d slump back in the hard wooden chair and let out a sigh, tears in her eyes, realising everything was still in its place, everything still right where it should be.

  Nobody had come to take her away.

  She had rented the lodgings with the last of her money, a top-floor room in a grubby boarding house not far from the Temple of the Ocamor. It had seen better days. The walls were smoke-yellowed, cracked plaster blooming with mould. Cold air wheezed through gaps in the old wooden floorboards and a strong smell of damp tainted the air. She watched from the only window, framed by thin red curtains that didn't quite meet in the middle. Behind her, an old bell-pull hung over a cold fireplace, an empty oconic heater wedged into its redundant coals. Relics of a once handsome house.

  Back towards the only door, on a wrought iron bed covered with two bottle green blankets, her son soundly slept.

  Her dear, sweet boy.

  For eleven nights, she’d watched and waited, slept and cursed.

  For eleven nights, she’d kept them both safe, even daring to hope that the whole terrible business with Fowley might have been forgotten, his attention lured towards easier, more profitable targets.

  No such luck.

  They came for her on the twelfth night. Two Justices walking down the alleyway, trailed by a bailiff in his tattered grey coat, a thick chain worn about him like a legion sash. They peered at the house numbers in the gloom, not certain they were in the right place. Lini moved back from the window, heart suddenly thumping, her breathing short and quick, fighting a rising sense of dread.

  They’ve found us. Oh gods…

  Two doors and three flights of stairs separated her from them.

  She didn’t have much time.

  Lini had an escape plan. Of sorts. Wake her son, push the old bed in front of the door, open the window and clamber out onto the roof. The boy first, then her following after. Fast as they could, treading carefully as the roof tiles could be slick and slippery. Up and over the ridge, slide down the other side and out of sight. Then away over the rooftops. Where? Anywhere. Deeper into the slum perhaps, down where the oca was weak, to stinking streets and those dark, wretched houses near the river Eene, built from half-baked bricks and rotten timber.

  She grabbed her son’s coat from the back of the chair and stumbled across to the bed, kicking a small toy soldier, its painted sky-blue uniform dirty at the edges, breastplate scuffed. Her son still slumbered quietly, blankets pulled up to his chin, flame-coloured hair a tousled mess. She reached out, placing her hand upon his shoulder.

  “Wake up,” she whispered. “They’ve found us, little one.”

  The boy stirred and tried to turn away from her.

  “No,” Lini said, her hand shaking him gently. A loud banging sounded somewhere below. She shook harder. “You need to get up. We’ve got to run!”

  “Mama?” The boy struggled to open his eyes. Lini pulled back the blanket and started to roll it up.

  “Up, I said. Quickly now.”

  “What is it?” The boy mumbled. “What’s going on?”

  Someone shouting. Muffled voices in the street.

  “The bad men are coming, little one. The ones I told you about. We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go now!”

  Her son sat up. Since they’d been on the run, they’d both slept in their day clothes — Lini in her charcoal cotton dress (the only garment she currently owned) paired with an old blue shawl; her son in dark brown shorts, long enough to cover his knees, and a grey cotton shirt, patched at one elbow, buttoned up to his neck.

  The boy scowled, fixing her with tired eyes. “I’m sleepy.”

  “I know,” she said softly, hand cupping his cheek. “I’m sorry. But we don’t have a choice. No time to argue. Hurry now. Up you get.”

  Lini held her arms open and the boy snuggled into her.

  “What do they want, mama?”

  “Money, little one. Always money. The one thing we don’t have.”

  She picked up her son and lifted him out of bed, setting him down on the floor. He was getting heavy, growing up fast. Even now, he looked taller. She could almost see the man he would become. “Put on your coat,” she said, forcing a smile. “It’s cold out.”

  She heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “Come on,” Lini said, taking her son’s hand, hoping that he couldn’t feel her own hand shaking. “We haven’t much time. Tonight I need you to be tough. I need you to be...”

  “Hard as stone.” The boy finished the sentence for her. “I know.”

  They moved towards the window and Lini opened it, shivering as the chill night air blew in. She helped her son up onto the window sill, sitting him on the edge. “You first,” she said, still holding his hand. She felt him squeeze it tightly. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “My legionnaire!” The boy stopped, one leg stuck out of the window. He pointed back towards the bed. “There!”
r />   “I’ll get it. Now go.”

  “No,” the boy whined. “I can’t leave it.”

  A gift from his father, her husband. A comforter. A reminder of happier times. Before the lying, cheating, good-for-nothing bastard had abandoned them to this gods-awful mess, a pit of debt and despair.

  Lini let go of her son’s hand. She turned to look for the toy soldier, spotting it against the once white wall. She bent down to pick it up.

  There was a knock at the door.

  She froze at the sound of it.

  “Lini-Lat Kotkedhan?” A gruff voice with a hard edge.

  Lini grabbed the blue-coated toy in her hand and backed slowly towards the window, trying not to make any noise.

  The old floorboards betrayed her.

  Another knock. “Open the door in the name of the Empire,” the voice announced. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

  She turned to her son, still balanced on the window sill. “Go!” she hissed at him, thrusting out the soldier in her hand. The boy grabbed the toy, his face pale, eyes wide. He edged slowly out onto the roof. She wanted to rush him, but couldn’t for fear he might fall.

  Behind her, the door burst open, old wood splintering. Lini looked back to see one of the black-clad Justices lose his balance in the open doorway, tripping over a broken board and pitching forward onto the floor.

  “Mama!” Her boy cried out and her heart broke to hear it.

  “Stop right there!” another Justice yelled.

  “Go!” She screamed at her son.

  He disappeared from sight as blue fingers of lightning crackled across the room, striking her in the back. She stiffened, muscles contracting, the Ampa charge coursing through her body. For a moment, the world stopped, her heart beating loud like a legion drum in an empty parade square, her body burning, tingling from head to toe. She wanted to climb through the window. It was so close. But her body wouldn’t respond. She simply stared at her outstretched arm, unable to move it, watching it twitch, remembering her son’s last touch lest she never felt it again.

  3. GIVE THE SENTRY A WAVE

  “DID WE GET IT?” said Roon-Kotke. “Is it dead?”

  Ember Cobb had no bloody idea. He sat enveloped in thick smoke, his back against a low stone wall that, until recently, had been a floor-to-ceiling stone wall with a thick wooden door in it. The remains of said door now lay strewn about the room, blasted to splinters and shards, the very definition of ‘smithereens’. As for the wall, plate-sized holes marked where scorching Fura blasts had punched through the stone. Like the rest of Roon-Kotke’s squad, Ember had assumed stone didn't burn. The flames dancing on the shattered wall suggested otherwise.

  Whatever ‘it’ was, it had them pinned down.

  “Cobb?” Roon-Kotke’s voice again, somewhere to his left in the smoke. “Can you see anything?”

  Cobb. Wearing his old friend’s name still felt strange. Sounded strange. But it remained a necessary disguise. To everyone at Refu Ruka, he needed to be the grouchy Mulai merc who fought for coin, not clan. The truth of it was slightly more complicated. Needless to say, the Ocosconans couldn’t know who he really was. Or what he had done. Safer for everyone if his real identity remained a secret, hidden behind his fake eyepatch, thick black beard and grubby headscarf. Only Rahi-Khun Ghandhan knew the truth; knew the reason why he’d left his old life behind for a dangerous posting at a half-forgotten fortress in the Empire’s bleak northern Wilds. And she wasn’t telling.

  “Cobb?” Roon-Kotke sounded concerned. “You still with us?”

  “I’m here,” Ember croaked, his throat and mouth thick with grit. He straightened his helmet and gripped his bow tightly. Not a standard issue weapon. Not oconic. Neither was the sword on his hip. But in an age of magic, you never knew when a couple of arrows and an old cavalry blade might come in handy.

  “Did we get it?” the Caster-Corporal asked again.

  “Uh, I don’t know,” Ember said with a cough. He peered around the edge of the ruined wall. Couldn’t see much. The smoke swirled and shifted, obscuring his view of the chamber ahead. Fine stone dust hung in the air like a chill spring mist, albeit one a man might slowly gag on. “There’s too much damn smoke,” he complained.

  “Han?” the Caster-Corporal called out.

  “Can’t see shit, chief,” grumbled the gruff-voiced Sergeant, somewhere to Ember’s right. “Best be wary.”

  “It’s stopped firing. I think we killed it!” Junn-Kri this time, excitable and ever the optimist. The boy sat behind the same ruined wall he did, barely two paces over. Even so, he appeared as a little more than a shadow in the smoke.

  “I’m not sure it can be killed,” he heard Lor-Qui say, injecting a sour note of realism into the discussion. “So I suggest that nobody moves.”

  “Fine by me,” said Ember, happy to stay out of the firing line. At least until they knew what they were dealing with.

  “What the Hells is it?” he asked.

  “If I had to guess,” Lor-Qui called out, “I’d say it was an old oconic sentry.”

  “A what?”

  “An Ocara conjuring. Zero-class from what I can tell. No arms or legs, but some serious extra smarts. It’s an incredible feat of oconic engineering. Way beyond anything we can currently get an Ocara to do. It seems to have the ability to sense targets and to track their movement. It’s tracking us. Hunting us. The coding for that must run to thousands of lines, take hours to cast. Add the Fura capability and you’ve got a formidable defensive...”

  “Yes, yes,” interrupted Roon-Kotke, frustration obvious in his voice. “You’re impressed. I get it. But my question remains. Is it dead?”

  “I’d have to say, no,” said Lor-Qui, sullenly.

  “I know a way we can find out,” Hannar-Ghan called out. “Hey, Junn! Stand up and give the sentry a wave.”

  “You stand up,” the boy countered. “You'll make a much meatier target.”

  Ember raised an eyebrow at the boy’s retort; couldn’t help but crack a smile at the cheek of it. The kid was growing in confidence.

  Roon-Kotke sighed. “Nobody is going to be standing up. Nobody’s going to be a hero. Come on. Let’s think this through…”

  A week after gate nineteen, where they'd found themselves trapped in a flooded facility and hunted by a pack of monstrous oconic water spouts, Roon-Kotke was still dealing with his squad’s petty bickering. While it obviously annoyed the red-haired Caster-Corporal, Ember had grown to like it. He’d grown to like them. Even Hannar-Ghan, the grumpy Caster-Sergeant who had made no secret of his dislike for Ember’s clan, the Mulai. His social skills were sorely lacking. But there was no denying his fighting prowess or his bravery.

  Up until this point, their mission into gate twenty-one had proved pleasingly uneventful. The portal had opened into another dim tunnel, typical of a Kajjon stronghold. Longlamps lit, they'd followed the only passageway to a spiral staircase carved into the steel-grey rock, descending further into the gloom, past empty rooms and cleared out storage areas, floor-to-ceiling metal racks stripped bare.

  For whatever reason, the Kajjon had closed down their numerous strongholds and retreated from the world of men. Roon-Kotke and his squad were tasked with salvaging what they’d left behind — Witching Jars, oca-filled capacitors, old scrolls or books. Each trip through a gate at Refu Ruka was a treasure hunt, a chance to discover the ultimate prize — one of the seven Great Weapons. A device to rival the one the Sentinel kept at the top of the Hourglass in the Mulai capital; a device that could burn with the power of a thousand lances; a device that was capable of destroying armies and wiping out cities with a single cataclysmic blast.

  There were thirty oconic gates in the Terminus at Refu Ruka. The Captain had told him that a second Great Weapon lay hidden through one of them. If it turned out to be this one, the oconic sentry was standing in their way.

  Ember could see it again as the smoke started to thin. A barrel-sized conjuring of cotton-white light, squeezed to
gether top and bottom by fat metal domes. Like the huge gauntlets of a giant knight holding a jar of moonbeams.

  “Can we dispel it?” asked Roon-Kotke.

  “Of course. If you’re happy to walk right up close, prod it with your lance and speak the correct Kajjon deactivation phrase.” Lor-Qui gestured towards the sentry ahead. “Be my guest.”

  Roon-Kotke frowned. “I’m guessing we don’t know the deactivation phrase?”

  “We do not,” said Lor-Qui.

  “It’s still not doing anything,” said Junn. “Maybe we did kill it?”

  Hannar-Ghan popped up from his hiding place to loose another Fura, ducking down again as the sentry whined in the smoke and loosed one back. The searing bolt slammed into the wall, splintering the old stone with a loud crack.

  “Nope, it ain’t dead,” the big caster grumbled.

  “Maybe we can wait it out?” Junn-Kri suggested from behind the wall. “The oconic charge can't last forever. Every time it shoots at one of us, it’s using up oca, right?”

  “True,” said Lor-Qui, thumbing through the pages of his notebook. “But we don’t know what it’s hooked up to. Its charge could last for months. Years if we’re really unlucky… It all depends on the size of the oconic source.”

  “Doesn’t matter what it’s hooked up to. We don’t have time to wait around.” Roon-Kotke banged his lance on the floor. “The Captain needs these gates cleared.”

  “Although the kid might be onto something,” Ember said. “Instead of waiting, why don’t we set up a Wall, return to the Terminus and get some technicians out here to study this thing? Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Retreat?” The Caster-Corporal seemed to bristle at the suggestion. “No. I’m not going back to Refu Ruka empty-handed. Not again. This sentry must be protecting something important. Else why is it here? No. We go back and we admit defeat. The Captain will think I’m… He’ll think we’re not up to the task. He’ll send Rahi next time in our place, thinking she’ll do better. And she probably will. So we’re not giving her the chance. We’re not running. Not again.”