Chapter 24: Friends of Ours

Frankie

Nobody applauded.

I was grateful for that.

I had just told them their employer had spent weeks improving the population so a dead king could eat it efficiently.

Brannik asked the first useful question.

“Where was the heartglass connected?”

I drew what I remembered while Liora asked about the threads. Mara asked about the boundary wards. Benny spread his old map beside mine.

Hobb asked whether the lich had knees.

“Probably.”

“Good.”

At least one of us had a plan.

I opened the cash box and pushed it to the middle of the table.

“Before we start making plans. Nobody owes me this.”

They looked up.

“Wages through the end of the month. Whatever else you need for the road. If we find a way out, anybody who wants it goes.”

“And you?” Benny asked.

“I got work here.”

“We all have work here,” Brannik said.

“Different kind.”

He leaned back.

“You don’t get to decide that for me either.”

Fair enough.

* * *

The boundary wards held every road out of the valley.

Dren sent men to look. They returned with the same answer from every crossing.

We would have to stop the rite from inside.

Two hired guards said they would stay with their families at the church. I paid what we owed them and told Dren they were off duty. Della went to help Rosella prepare the sickroom.

The others came back to the table.

I asked them separately and gave each one time to think.

The crew stayed.

Brannik put the machinery drawings in front of me.

“We go through these together,” he said. “Every release. Every safety. Nothing changes after we agree.”

I nodded.

He waited.

“I lied to you last time,” I said. “You get to inspect it all.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Then he sat down to work.

Liora stayed because somebody had designed a ritual that turned people into material, and she understood the construction well enough to help take it apart.

Hobb looked at the map for a long time.

“This time,” he said, “I want to be where the support gives way.”

I knew what he meant.

I also knew I would have to keep an eye on him.

Benny sharpened his knives. Rosella wrapped clean linen around little packets of herbs and muttered that men always remembered weapons before bandages.

“Benny, you could stay with her at the church.”

Rosella looked at the room they had spent forty years keeping alive.

“We already tried living after we left everyone else behind.”

Benny tested an edge against his thumb.

“Didn’t agree with us.”

* * *

I found Mara packing a satchel.

She had maps, lists of names, spare laces, and the little knife Benny had taught her to use.

“Stay with Rosella,” I said. “The church will need good hands.”

Mara stopped folding.

“And who will guide you through the fortress?”

“Benny’s got a map.”

“Forty years old.”

“We’ll manage.”

She laid her own map beside his and pointed out a passage that had been walled up, then a stair that now ended at a guardroom.

“The kitchen women know me. The laundress is expecting me. They won’t open the doors for six armed strangers.”

I knew all that. Didn’t have to like it.

“You get hurt in there—”

“You cannot fight him and watch every doorway. Let me see to the work I know.”

She said it quietly, which made it harder.

I picked up the little knife.

“You stay behind me when the fighting starts. If I tell you to get down, you get down. We can argue afterward.”

“I will have plenty to say afterward.”

“I’m counting on it.”

I checked the sheath and put it in her satchel.

“Hobb stays with you and the others at the machinery. Al and I handle the Boss.”

She nodded.

“Those shoes won’t do,” I said.

“I have boots downstairs.”

“Wear ’em.”

I fastened her cloak. The clasp was small, and my fingers wouldn’t keep still.

She put her hand over mine.

“Bring us home, Frankie.”

I bent and kissed her forehead.

“That’s the plan.”

Somebody called from downstairs.

I held her a moment longer before we went.

* * *

Aldric was in the church courtyard.

He saw my throat and stood.

“Your parole is over,” I said.

I gave him the paper with my signature across the release.

“No conditions?” He read the paper. “Even if I decline to fight for you?”

“Even then.”

He folded the release and put it inside his coat.

“What happened?”

I told him.

He listened without saying he had warned me.

I might have liked him for the rest of my life on the strength of that alone.

“We need a rebellion,” I said when I finished.

“Yes.”

“You’re the fellow who came to organize one.”

“Yes.”

“So I thought—”

He looked past me. Mara was sending messengers down two different streets while Dren opened the church gate for supplies. Hobb and Brannik carried a covered piece of machinery between them.

“You have one,” he said.

“I got a lot of people about to do something dangerous.”

“That is usually how it begins.”

“Al. I’m asking you to lead.”

He shook his head.

“You know the stores, the guards, the roads, and the people. You know who can be persuaded and who must be stopped. They have chosen to stand with you.”

“You got the sword.”

“Then tell me where you need it.”

I looked toward the side aisle where Garran’s coffin had stood.

Al followed my eyes.

“This doesn’t settle that,” he said.

“I know.”

“But these people need us now.”

He picked up his shield.

* * *

We planned in the church cellar.

The tavern was watched. Giving the magic jewelry back hadn’t stopped the Boss paying a man to stand outside a window.

Mara’s messengers carried different pieces of the work. Bakers prepared deliveries large enough to hide tools. Carters arranged stalled wagons where patrols would need to turn. Dren named guards whose families lived under the markers and guards who thought that made the families useful hostages.

One list we could talk to.

The other went to Hobb.

Brannik marked the maintenance channel beneath the fortress. Liora traced the flow toward the heartglass. Breaking it while the town remained connected might tear the life out of everyone attached.

First we cut the draw.

Then we broke the glass.

Simple enough to say.

Benny showed us where the old service passage met the kitchens. Mara corrected the route. A laundry storeroom had become a guard post; a pantry had become a disused corridor after rats damaged the grain.

“Useful rats?” I asked.

“For once.”

Hobb laughed.

It was the first decent sound in the room all night.

* * *

Liora brought the suit before dawn.

I’d brought the Thompson down from my room, cleaned it, and worked the action. Brannik had supplied enough cartridges to make the bag beside it heavy, and I meant to stop saving the thing for a more convenient apocalypse.

Aldric watched me lay the ammunition out.

“Will those stop the dead?” he asked.

“Break enough of anything, it stops. Trouble is the dead don’t take the hint when you put a hole through ’em.”

“Leave them there.”

He set his sword beside the gun.

I looked at the two weapons. Last time Al had seen that much ammunition in front of me, most of it had been intended for him.

He held out his hand.

“May I?”

I put a cartridge in his palm.

There was still a mark where his gauntlet had cut him at the weighing house.

He closed his fingers around the round and bowed his head.

“Lord, let these hands defend the living. Let these weapons break the bonds laid upon the dead. Give us strength to finish what we have undertaken together.”

Light showed between his fingers.

He opened his hand. The cartridge looked ordinary until I turned it. Then a faint white line moved along the brass.

“Still work in the gun?” I asked.

“I should hope so.”

“Thought I’d check before I met God over a misunderstanding.”

He smiled and put both hands above the ammunition.

The light passed across it, touching each row in turn. It caught the shells I’d set aside for the Colt and the loose rounds beside the Thompson’s drum.

“Only these,” he said when it faded. “Your next box will still be an ordinary box.”

“And when these hit?”

“They will hurt what animates the dead, as well as the body it moves.”

I began loading. He took the other side of the table, and I showed him how to hold the rounds while I worked them into the drum.

His knuckles brushed mine as he steadied it. I kept loading.

When it was full, he passed it to me.

“Together,” he said.

“Yeah, Al.”

I fitted it to the gun.

“Together.”

Then I put the suit on behind a curtain while Brannik explained its limits for the fourth time.

It could run out. It could burn. Get under something heavy enough, they’d be burying me in a very nice suit.

And apparently I wasn’t allowed to stand in front of a crossbow just to see what happened.

“So basically avoid being murdered.”

“An excellent summary,” Liora said.

When I stepped out, Mara straightened my tie.

Aldric watched with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“What?”

“You warned him,” he said, “that desperate people eventually found a knight.”

“Yeah.”

He looked at the suit.

“Apparently they found an oddly dressed one.”

“Keep talking. I’ll make you wear a tie.”

He smiled without trying to hide it this time.

I looked from my crew to the stairs leading up to everyone else.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go explain the new arrangements.”