Ch. 29: Hold On and Ch. 30: Twenty-Four Minutes

Chapter 29: Hold On

The second resin smelled faintly of lamp oil.

Marielle put it down.

Aurrel looked offended. “Oil is not in the blend.”

“In the storage?”

“The jars were transported with a lamp-oil consignment.”

“That is an unfortunate arrangement.”

“The seals remained intact.”

“Then the resin will be pleased to demonstrate that.”

Aurrel brought a third jar.

Marielle checked its mark, uncorked it, and lifted it with her right hand.

Her left arm pulled.

It wasn’t painful, not at first.

A tightening beneath the dressing, as though something had caught the tissue from the wrong side.

Her grip changed before she meant it to.

The jar tilted.

She caught it against the counter. Mostly.

Amber resin ran down the side and onto her fingers.

Aurrel reached for a cloth. “That is expensive.”

Marielle set the jar down.

“It happened again,” she said.

Mael turned at once. “The pulling?”

“Yes.”

Corren remained at the entrance, but his head shifted toward her.

Marielle looked down at her sleeve. The sensation had already eased.

Then returned. Harder.

Her breath caught.

Mael came closer. “My lady?”

“I need to sit.”

No argument this time.

He pulled the stool from beneath the counter.

Corren’s attention went back to the street.

Then there was a sharp sound.

The front window burst inward.

Mael put himself between Marielle and the rear aisle.

Corren drew before the glass reached the floor.

Marielle saw that clearly.

A dark figure crossed the broken window frame.

Corren met him. The blow rang through the shop, hard enough to knock a jar from the nearest shelf.

He drove the attacker away from the counter.

A second impact came behind Marielle.

The rear window.

Mael turned without moving far enough to leave her exposed.

Two men came through. One with a blade. The other’s hands were empty, but something dark wound around his wrist.

Mael struck the first before he found his footing.

The man hit a shelf.

Wood cracked.

Marielle reached for the jar.

Then heard a different sound at the entrance.

Not ringing steel.

Something softer.

Corren had caught the front attacker’s sword. His own blade held it away.

The attacker’s other hand moved.

Corren’s body stopped.

For half a heartbeat, Marielle did not understand.

He had been standing.

He was still standing.

But the dark point beneath his coat was wrong.

The man pulled his knife free.

Corren tried to turn with him.

The second cut took his throat.

Marielle’s hand remained on the resin jar.

She could not make the image arrange itself into anything sensible.

Corren went down beside the doorway.

No.

Aurrel screamed.

The attacker turned.

A scar beneath one eye.

Thin. Pale.

Where Marielle’s gear had struck him at First Sun.

She knew his face. Then his knife. Then the awful fact that knowing either had not helped Corren.

Marielle threw the jar.

It struck the man’s shoulder and burst across his coat, splashing his cheek.

He recoiled.

Mael shouted her name.

The man he had driven into the shelf was back on his feet. The other had moved beside the rear window.

His fingers closed over the dark winding at his wrist.

Marielle’s wound pulled again.

Her knees struck the floor. Suddenly her movements ceased to belong entirely to her.

Mael caught the blade coming toward him, turned it, and drove the attacker back. “Under the counter!”

Marielle pushed herself toward it.

Aurrel was already behind the far end, reaching for a heavy metal tool.

The scarred man caught Marielle’s coat.

She twisted out of his first grip.

Her right hand found the brass sample case.

She swung it and the corner struck his face.

He swore.

Marielle swung again.

He caught her wrist this time.

The case fell.

She kicked his knee.

It wasn’t enough.

Then he seized her injured arm.

Pain tore white through the room.

Marielle screamed.

Mael turned at the sound. Only enough to look.

The man fighting him took the opening and a dagger drove into Mael’s side.

He staggered, but did not fall.

Instead, he slammed his forehead into the attacker’s face and shoved him backward into the damaged shelf.

Then brought the rack down.

Jars broke. Glass and amber resin spread across the floor.

The third man stepped clear, still working with the dark cord at his wrist.

Mael kept his sword up.

Blood ran down his coat.

“No,” Marielle said.

She did not know which part she was refusing.

All of it.

Outside, a whistle sounded.

Close.

A man appeared beyond the doorway, blade in one hand, the other raised. “Watch! Clear the—”

White haze rolled across the entrance.

He vanished behind it.

Not went away. Vanished.

Marielle could still hear his boots.

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He struck something with his shoulder and swore.

Through a shifting gap, she glimpsed a woman near the mouth of the lane.

One hand open.

Dust blowing from it.

Then the shopfront looked whole.

For an instant, the broken window was not broken at all.

Marielle blinked.

Glass remained beneath her knees.

The window could not be whole.

Another whistle answered the first.

The scarred man hauled her away from the counter.

She dragged her heel through the resin.

A line.

Something a person could see afterward.

He noticed and pulled harder.

Her hand caught the edge of Aurrel’s ledger.

It fell open. Pages tore beneath her fingers.

The man released her wrist to wrench her upright by the coat.

She drove her head into his nose.

He hit her.

The shop disappeared for a moment.

When it returned, her cheek was against the floor.

It was sticky. And cold.

Corren lay by the entrance.

Mael remained standing beside the collapsed shelf.

One hand pressed briefly to his side.

Then back to his sword.

Marielle tried to rise.

The scarred man crouched over her. “Enough.”

She knew that voice too.

First Sun. Orders shouted across the square.

He took her left arm again.

She could not stop the sound that followed.

Under the loosened sleeve, something dark flickered along the wound.

Not blood.

The third man spoke.

She did not understand the words, but her arm answered.

A stronger pull.

She looked at him.

Then at the marks beginning to spread over the floor.

Green-black lines beneath spilled resin.

He had dropped a small folded strip beside the rear aisle.

Now one corner had opened.

The markings continued beyond it, joining one another beneath her.

Marielle understood patterns. She did not understand this one.

She pushed backward with her heels.

The scarred man held her.

Mael threw a broken shelf bracket at his head.

His grip loosened as it connected.

She rolled.

Mael came toward her, limping now, sword still between them and the other attacker.

“My lady. Here.”

She reached.

Their hands met.

His grip was slick with blood.

Mael pulled her toward the counter. For two paces, she went with him.

Then the lines beneath her brightened.

Her left arm jerked.

The pulling spread through her shoulder, her ribs, the center of her body.

Mael’s hand tightened around her right wrist.

Marielle tried to hold him back.

Not to pull him into it.

To stay.

The man beside the rear window lifted his hand.

The light gathered.

Someone outside struck the doorway again. A shape crossed it.

This time the Watch officer’s arm came through, his blade scraping wood.

Real wood.

But not where the opening should have ended.

The haze shifted.

He shouted to someone Marielle could not see.

They were close. So close.

Mael braced a foot against the counter.

His face had gone pale beneath the blood. “Hold on.”

Marielle tried. She truly did.

The scarred man was standing again.

He looked toward the doorway.

Then toward the mage.

One word.

An order.

The other attacker came out from behind the fallen rack.

Mael tried to turn his sword.

Too late.

A boot struck his wounded side.

He cried out and his knee folded.

But his hand stayed around Marielle’s wrist for one more moment.

She could feel each finger.

Could see the strain in his arm.

“Mael.”

His name came out badly.

He tried to rise.

The attacker struck him again.

His grip slipped.

Marielle caught at his sleeve.

Cloth tore.

The floor dropped away without moving.

The counter stretched.

Aurrel’s face appeared above it, white with shock, the tool lifted uselessly in one hand.

Corren remained by the door.

Mael lay beside the torn page of the ledger.

Moving.

One hand reaching.

Marielle reached back.

The mage stepped into the light.

So did the scarred man.

The other attacker followed.

The Watch officer broke through the haze at the entrance.

Marielle saw him see them.

Saw him move.

The green-black lines tightened.

The shop folded out of sight.

Chapter 30: Twenty-Four Minutes

Daravan reached Aurrel’s shop thirteen minutes after the report reached him.

Two to the stable, then eleven across Myrae.

The messenger had already spent minutes carrying words Daravan could not make happen more quickly by hearing them again.

Palace escort attacked.

One guard down.

Lady Marielle missing.

The messenger had not known which guard.

The horse had barely stopped when Daravan swung down.

Watch officers held the mouth of the lane. Civilians pressed against dye-stained walls. Broken glass glittered beneath boots, and amber resin ran from the shop threshold in slow, sticky streams.

Harrek stood beside the doorway.

Already there. Good.

A healer’s satchel lay open inside. Better.

Neither fact improved the space where Marielle should have been.

“Mael is alive,” Harrek said before Daravan could ask. “Healer has him.”

“Corren?”

Harrek’s expression answered first. “Dead.”

Daravan entered.

Corren lay beside the doorway, his sword still in his hand.

The grey-streaked beard had blood in it. One boot rested against a jar that had somehow survived everything around it.

Daravan had trusted him because he did not mistake quiet work for safe work.

He looked at the wounds.

Then moved toward Mael.

Grief was a task for later.

Later had not yet been earned.

Mael lay near the counter, coat cut open. A Watch healer pressed one hand beside the wound in his side. Light spread beneath her fingers.

The shopkeeper held a folded cloth where she directed.

Mael’s eyes found Daravan. “Captain.”

He tried to move.

Daravan crouched beside him. “Stay there.”

“I can report.”

The healer looked at Daravan.

“Briefly,” she said. “He is not sitting up.”

“Understood.”

Mael swallowed.

“Three inside. One through the front window. Two through the back.”

“Corren engaged the front?”

“Yes.”

His eyes moved toward the doorway.

Daravan moved in front of his line of sight. “Continue.”

“One fought me. Another worked magic. The front attacker went for Lady Marielle after—”

He stopped.

The healer adjusted her hand.

Mael’s breath tightened.

Daravan waited.

“After Corren fell,” he finished.

“Did you recognize anyone?”

“No. She did, I think. The front attacker. She looked at his face.”

Daravan stored it.

“Her arm started pulling before the glass broke,” Mael said. “She told us. Asked to sit.”

“What happened afterward?”

“It reacted when the mage worked. Light beneath her sleeve. The floor lit too.”

“You saw him cast?”

“Yes. I cannot tell you what.”

“That is enough.”

Mael’s right hand shifted against the floor. A strip of his cuff had been torn away.

Daravan looked at it.

Mael saw him look. “I reached her.”

Daravan did not speak.

“Caught her wrist. She was moving toward me.”

His fingers curled. “Then the spell pulled.”

The room became very quiet.

Not actually. Daravan could still hear the healer, people outside, Harrek speaking to someone behind him.

None of it seemed close.

“I had her,” Mael said.

“I know.”

“I had her wrist, Captain. I—”

His voice broke.

Daravan put a hand on his shoulder.

Carefully.

“You held.”

Mael shook his head.

“You were wounded. You kept fighting. You held until they forced your hand open.”

“She tried to stay.”

Daravan kept his hand where it was.

Mael’s eyes filled.

The healer said, “That is enough for now.”

Daravan nodded.

As he stood, Mael caught at his sleeve.

“Captain.”

He stopped.

“She hit him.”

“With what?”

“The brass case. Resin. Her head.”

For one terrible second, something in Daravan’s chest remembered how to laugh.

It came nowhere near his mouth.

“Of course she did.”

Mael let go.

Daravan left the healer room to work.

The plainclothes officer waited beside Harrek.

Resin marked one boot. His sleeve had torn at the shoulder.

“Vale,” Harrek said. “He saw the disappearance.”

Daravan turned toward him. “From where?”

“The front entrance, Captain. After I got through the concealment.”

Harrek drew the officer’s attention back to him. “Begin with the interference.”

Vale nodded. “A woman at the mouth of the lane. Opened something in her hand. Dust, then light. The shopfront changed.”

“In what way?”

“Looked intact after the window broke. The doorway shifted. Not the building itself. What we could see of it.”

Daravan looked toward the entrance.

Real wood.

A narrow passage.

Seconds spent striking a frame while someone died inside.

“My partner signaled,” Vale continued. “I moved toward the shop. Could hear steel and shouting. Could not find the entrance where it should have been.”

“Did the woman attack you?” Harrek asked.

“She threw another prepared effect across the lane. I could not see her clearly after that.”

“Description?”

Vale gave what he had; coat, hair, height.

It wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing.

“Did she favor a leg?” Daravan asked.

“I did not see enough to say.”

He disliked how much effort it required to accept the answer.

“Support came from the post,” Vale said. “My partner directed them. I kept working toward the doorway.”

“And reached it,” Harrek said.

“Yes. The concealment broke as I got through.”

Vale looked past Daravan toward the scorched floor.

“Lady Marielle was on the ground. Three men with her. One still had hold of her. Another had his hand raised.”

“Mael?”

“Beside the counter. Reaching toward her.”

Daravan’s jaw tightened once.

“The light closed around the group,” Vale said. “Then they were gone.”

“All four?”

“Lady Marielle and the three men. Yes.”

“Anyone leave through a door?”

“No, Captain. I was looking directly at them.”

Harrek nodded to the clerk taking the statement. “Record that separately from the outside observations.”

Vale stood very straight. “We were close.”

Daravan looked at him.

Resin on his boot, blood that might not be his, and a torn shoulder from trying to force his way through.

“Yes,” Daravan said. “You were.”

Harrek sent him to have the shoulder checked and to give the clerk the rest of his account.

The officer went.

Daravan remained facing the floor.

Three inside.

A woman outside.

Four operatives.

Not an identification.

A count consistent with the problem they had been pursuing for weeks.

The shopkeeper, Aurrel, supplied an account of the minutes before the attack.

Marielle had arrived at the expected time. The guards had checked the shop. No one had entered to speak to her or inspect the goods.

“She was examining resin,” Aurrel said. “Then her arm pulled. She told the younger guard.”

“Before the noise outside?” Harrek asked.

“Yes.”

“And after?”

“The front window broke. They went directly for her. The guards stopped them.”

Harrek let her describe what she had seen.

Not what she thought it meant.

Daravan stood beside the ruined counter.

The glass case remained there.

Wrapped.

Untouched.

Marielle had selected those blanks herself.

The work that had required the errand lay safely on the counter.

Aurrel’s voice caught and Harrek gave her a moment.

Daravan looked toward the spell marks. Green-black lines had burned through spilled resin. A folded strip lay near the rear aisle.

He did not touch it.

Harrek noticed his glance.

“Scene stays preserved,” he said. “Separate records for the outside effects and the transport spell.”

Harrek looked towards the spell marks. “Do you think her wound is related to the spellwork?”

“We don’t know enough yet to say.”

The answer cost him.

He wanted something he could act on without waiting for another person to finish a sentence.

“She felt it at the wall,” he said. “Twice. Lia examined her afterward, but has still not found the cause.”

“And now it reacted during the spell.”

“According to two witnesses.”

“A connection to examine,” Harrek said.

“Yes. Serali needs to see this.”

“And Lia.”

Daravan looked at the line where Marielle’s heel had dragged through the resin. Yesterday they had argued over escorts and routes. He had said he would protect her.

He had failed.

Two Watch officers approached Corren with a stretcher.

They moved carefully.

Not because it would help him. Because it mattered.

Daravan watched them lift the man he had assigned.

Then he turned toward the palace guard who had accompanied him.

“Return to the duty officer. Confirm Corren’s death, Mael’s injury and Lady Marielle’s abduction. Three men removed her by magic. A fourth person obstructed the observers.”

The guard nodded.

“Her Majesty is informed through the royal security office. Request Lady Serali and Mistress Lia here, with their escorts. The existing palace posts remain.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Use those words. No explanation of the spell we cannot support.”

The guard left.

Harrek was already directing the district officers.

Accounts from both ends of the lane. The woman’s route. The prepared effects. Witnesses questioned separately.

Departure inspections tightened at the gates and harbor.

The city work belonged to him.

Daravan turned back to the shop.

On the counter lay the procurement list.

Marielle’s handwriting with his additions beneath it.

Route. Escort. Check-in.

He did not pick it up.

“Preserve that with the shop records,” he said.

The clerk nodded.

Beyond it, Aurrel had begun answering another question.

Mael argued weakly with the healer about whether he needed a stretcher.

He was alive. That mattered.

Marielle had been alive when they took her.

That mattered too.

Daravan took those facts and held to them.

Harrek came back from the doorway. “I have people moving.”

“So do I.”

For a moment, neither spoke.

While they waited for Lia and Serali, a district officer brought the alarm record.

Harrek compared it with Aurrel’s clock and the messenger’s departure time.

The nearest Watch post had received the signal within two minutes of the window breaking. A messenger had gone to the palace immediately.

Seven minutes to the gate.

Two to reach Daravan.

Then the thirteen he knew.

Twenty-four.

The fight and disappearance had occupied only a small part of that.

Everything else was distance.

Daravan looked at the clock.

Harrek saw it happen. “Do not.”

“I need the timeline.”

“You need it once.”

Daravan said nothing.

Twenty-four minutes.

He could do the math as many times as he wanted, but it would not put her back beside the counter.

“I should have gone with her.”

Harrek looked at him. “You do not know that would have changed it.”

“I would have been there.”

“Yes. And right now you are here. I need you here.”

Daravan kept his eyes on the floor.

“She had two of your men and two of mine,” Harrek continued. “We need to establish how they prepared for that. Not pretend the plan consisted of you being absent.”

Daravan looked up.

Harrek held his gaze. “What did the palace messenger know?” he asked.

“An attack. A missing councilor. Unconfirmed casualties.”

“The Queen has the immediate facts,” Harrek said. “She will need a full account. Put the statements together; what we know, what remains unconfirmed, and what we need Lady Serali and Mistress Lia to establish.”

A task.

Daravan drew a breath. “Yes.”

Harrek nodded once.

No consolation.

Good.

Daravan could work.