Page 11 of The Fury She Holds
Carrick and Talwyn locked eyes then. Any hope the mages had left dissolved in an instant. Her whole world began crashing down. She couldn’t ignore the coincidences and cursed herself for not investigating the prior disappearances further. But Sybil hadn’t seen anything to suspect a connection to the mages that attacked her homeland. Why would they venture this far north? What would they want with the common folk? Could all of those missing have magic?
“Where were you when they took her? Which way did they go?” Talwyn formed a plan in her mind. She just needed to know where to look, and she could get the boy’s sister back.
“We were in the alley behind the bakery. That’s why the baker came out. He heard us screaming.” Silent tears streaked down his face, but his voice stayed even.
Talwyn nodded. “Good. Did you see which way they took her?”
His face crumpled. “They threw her in a cart with the street rubbish. I think they’re taking her to the incinerator.” Janin sobbed, and Egan came around the table to put an arm around the boy.
Talwyn and Carrick were on their feet, walking swiftly in the direction of the twins’ corridors. The entire kingdom once sent their rubbish to the incinerator to be burned and then dumped into the Taralin River, but it had been abandoned long ago.
“Why would they go there? It’s a dead end,” Carrick spoke more to himself than to Talwyn.
If the mages took the girl to the incinerator, it meant only one thing. “Because they have no plans of taking her out of the docks.”
“What in the hells is going on? It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and it’s all going to shit. Murdering children? Do you really think they’re capable of that?”
“We don’t know anything about them beyond what the twins saw years ago. And you can bet your ass they’re powerful enough to instill fear in more than just some dockside thug like Pochette.” They split at the end of the tunnel. Talwyn tore the ragged blanket from the entrance to Sybil’s room.
“I heard. What’s the plan?” Sybil stood with her foot resting on the chair similar to the one in Egan’s room. An assortment of knives, daggers, and other weapons lay on the table as Sybil strapped each one to a hidden sheath on her body.
“The incinerator. We need a way in and a way out.”
Sybil nodded. “On it.”
4
Talwyn found Carrick and Rainier down the tunnel going over the known details.
“There’s a series of rooms like our Kiln where they burned rubbish. If they are holding her anywhere, alive,” Rainier paused, “they’ll have her there. The main incinerator is outside. It’s too public. Anyone nearby would hear her screams.”
He didn’t need to say it, but Talwyn knew he expected they would be torturing the girl.Damn Rainier, she thought. They needed to get going.
They convened in Egan’s room briefly. He would stay with the boy, while the rest went after his sister. There wasn’t time for good-byes or assurances. Talwyn gave Egan a nod and headed back through the tunnels.
Sybil joined the remaining three in step and motioned where to go. “There’s an open sewer under the building that leads to the river. We should be able to access the inside through there.”
Talwyn nodded and adjusted her course through the tunnels. They would reach the facility quickest by sticking to the waterways.
Noises fell flat as they ran. The river swallowed echoes, wrapping a blanket of unease around them. Evidence of other underground dwellers littered the ground, but their progress was unimpeded. No curious eyes tracked their movements; no street urchins scrounged for scraps. No one dared venture out now, and an eerie sense of foreboding settled over Tal. Their journey to the incinerator passed without obstacle, and their quickened pace calmed her nerves. She needed to keep her head clear if she hoped to get the girl out alive, to get all of them out alive. They planned as they ran.
Sybil couldn’t see outcomes without knowing the location, and she’d never been inside the building. They would be entering blind, with only split-second warnings from the seer if they even had that kind of time.
Talwyn readied herself, keeping her breath steady and searching for her fury within. She would need to conserve her magic until absolutely necessary. One mage would be difficult enough to manage. They knew of at least two who took the girl. If they found more, their fates were left to the gods.
Despite being abandoned long ago, the smell of rotten refuse permeated every inch of the structure. Her eyes watered as she waited for direction, wondering how the stench could be worse than their tunnels.
Unsurprisingly, Rainier knew the layout. With his palm, he directed them where to go once they got into the facility. Sybil’s predictions were spot on, as usual. No one waited for them at the sewage entrance, and they found a loose grate to climb into the heart of the building. Once in, they stayed close together, daggers and knives out, Carrick at the front, Talwyn and Rainier flanking him, and Sybil at the back. A single word from her guided them on which way to turn. Apprehension alone filled the silence filtering through the corridors. Sybil would warn them of any traps. She would know that much at least.
A man yelled incoherently up ahead, and their progress stopped. Talwyn eyed Sybil. “I don’t know.” She shook her head.
A green flash illuminated everything, and more shouts echoed down the corridor. Torches along every wall erupted in flames of the same emerald color. Metal clashed, followed by a child’s scream.
As one, they turned right, and the chaos came into full view. Faceless men wearing deep green from head to toe crowded the corridor. Some lay on the ground unconscious or bleeding. Others were locked in a swordfight with someone out of view. One figure’s hood remained down. As he turned, his blank face came into view. Where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been sat only a blurred picture of mottled skin, like trying to remember a face, but not quite recalling it. Apparitions overwhelmed every space, the deep forest of their cloaks punctuated by the gray of the floor or the occasional flash of red.
The group sprinted together, jumping into the fray.
Talwyn fought with barely contained fury, throwing her whole body into the brawl. “Where is the girl?” she cried out after stabbing one enemy through the spine. She screamed, aimed for the most painful blows, tore her knives through flesh, and allowed the apparition to get close enough to nick the skin so she could stab them in the heart.
