POV: Arthur

  “Nobody Expects the Branish Inquisition!”

  “Fulvio? Claudette?” Alice’s eyes went to the smoking fern. “This stuff must be stronger than what I’m used to.”

  “Alice, I think they’re real.” Arthur’s hand rested on his sword hilt.

  Elyas was already on his feet, rapier drawn. Arthur hadn’t even seen him move.

  He recognized the two inquisitors from yesterday, still in their ridiculous robes, but the woman was new. Middle-aged and stern-faced, with red hair falling over her shoulders in braids. The crystal atop her glass staff glowed a hot white. A wizard’s focus.

  “What do we have here?” said the woman—or Claudette, as Alice called her—noticing Alice for the first time.

  “Hey, man, ever heard of knocking?” Charlie said.

  Fulvio broke his death glare on Arthur and turned to Alice. “Look at that. We were digging for copper and found… a bunny.” The edges of his lips creased upward.

  “All according to Greg’s plan,” Claudette said.

  “If you guys wanted to join in, you should have said so.” Charlie started dealing three more sets of cards.

  Elyas, without breaking stance, spoke in a low tone, “Alice. Charlie. When I say ‘run’. I want you to run. Don’t look back.”

  Alice rose, knees trembling.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Claudette swirled her staff at Alice, and the thin, wispy smoke throughout the room coalesced into thick strips. She pointed the staff at Alice, and the smoke coiled around her like chains, her arms snapping together.

  “Let her go!” Arthur rose and drew his sword in the same motion.

  Claudette raised her finger at Arthur. “Not so fast, little boy.”

  The staff crystal glowed, and the binds tightened like a boa constrictor. Alice squirmed against the restraints.

  “No sudden movements,” Claudette said, “or she pops like a party balloon.”

  The sword shook in Arthur’s hands. Elyas remained motionless like a gargoyle. And Shaggy… was nowhere to be found.

  Charlie still sat clueless. Then his eyes widened. “You guys are the coppers!” He pointed at the smoking drugs. “I swear, man, that isn’t mine, I don’t know how it got there.”

  Everybody ignored him.

  “Let me spell out how this will go,” Claudette said. “You, Alice darling, are coming with us. And the rest of you are not to make a peep.”

  “But Claudette—” Fulvio started.

  “Shut it. It was your antics that got us into this mess in the first place. And by some miracle, nothing less than divine intervention, we were somehow led to the girl.”

  Fulvio gripped his shortsword and practically salivated at Arthur. “It’ll just be a second.”

  “Enough. Let the templars deal with them.” Claudette’s head turned for a split second, and she called to someone outside. “Ellis. Get over—”

  Shaggy sprang from under the table and snatched Claudette’s staff in his jaws. Alice’s binds dissipated into thin smoke.

  “Run,” Elyas said.

  Alice didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed Charlie by the arm and hauled him to the back door.

  Arthur watched their backs, but almost regretted it. He only barely dodged Fulvio’s slash. Not one to give up, Fulvio got his bearings and swung again.

  The other guy was about to go for Arthur as well, but Claudette interrupted him with an arm. “Not him, you imbecile, get my staff!”

  Too late. Elyas took the staff from Shaggy’s jaws and snapped it in half on his knee.

  Her face flushed red. “You’ll pay for that.” She raised her hand at Elyas, and a little streak of fire bolted from her palm.

  If Arthur remembered right, wizards could still cast spells without their focus. Only cantrips, though.

  Elyas dodged the bolt, but the bald man was on top of him in an instant.

  Claudette was about to fire again, but Shaggy growled and chased her out the door.

  Arthur focused on his own battle. His trouble wasn’t so much in downing Fulvio as it was disabling him. Arthur blocked and parried yet hesitated to swing back. Instead, he looked for an opening to knock him out.

  There. Fulvio swung his blade in a long arc, overextending himself. Arthur swerved and brought his sword down at the sickle’s hilt. Fulvio dropped the weapon. An elbow to the forehead finished the job.

  Arthur looked up.

  Elyas was standing in a pool of blood over the other inquisitor.

  “You killed him,” said Arthur.

  “He was trying to kill me,” Elyas said.

  “But he’s dead.”

  “That’s the point of killing him.”

  Shaggy burst back into the room, panicked voices and a dozen marching boot steps behind him.

  “Okay, kid, time to go.” Elyas flipped the table over and barred the door with it. “There’ll be time to freak out later.” He and Shaggy were out the back door in a flash.

  Arthur shook himself from his trance and ran after them.

  Outdoors, Arthur found a terrible sight. Several windows were shattered, and a few of the stores were burning up. Distraught civilians flooded the streets, carrying what worldly possessions they could. Lightning coursed through Arthur’s nerves. He gripped his sword until the veins on his fist throbbed. How dare they…

  “Looks like the girl went north,” said Elyas, “and she took a small platoon with her, too.”

  Arthur turned in the direction Elyas indicated. In the distance, a stampede of silver and red chased after the vague figures of Alice and Charlie.

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  “She could use some help. Show her the way to the hideout,” Elyas said to Shaggy.

  Shaggy darted after Alice like an arrow loosed from a bow

  “We need to follow her,” Arthur said.

  “Can’t catch up now. We’ll circle round the south.”

  “But—”

  A crash came from Charlie’s living room as something rammed against the jammed door.

  Arthur followed Elyas down an alley.

  Alice

  The templars were gaining ground. The nearest of them was fifty feet away and catching up.

  Charlie stumbled behind Alice. He was not the most athletic person. “Wait. I left my stash.”

  “No time for that,” said Alice.

  Charlie looked over his shoulder and seemed to finally realize what was happening. “Leave me, I’m only slowing you down.”

  “Never.” Every word out of her mouth took exertion.

  A javelin whirred past her right ear and clanged on the ground. Alice chanced a glance behind her. One of the templars smacked his comrade across the head and imparted some angry words, one of which was ‘alive’.

  So they wanted her alive. That was good to know.

  “Fly, you fool,” said Charlie, “I’ll hold them off.”

  “What? No!” Wait. If they were only after her, then she was endangering Charlie by bringing him along. Luckily, there was an intersection up ahead. “Charlie, listen, let’s split up. *pant* You go left, I’ll go right. We can cover more ground that way.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  The time came and they went their separate ways. As she predicted, the templars ignored Charlie and followed after her, which meant she didn’t have to slow down anymore.

  Unfortunately, the path she chose turned uphill into a market district during rush hour. All that could play to her advantage, however. She side-stepped the market goers, leapt over crates, and dodged horse-drawn carts.

  “Pardon. Excuse me. Coming through,” said Alice as she squeezed through the crowd. She accidentally knocked over a merchant’s cabbage pile and nearly stomped on a chicken. She muttered a hasty apology to the merchant, who screamed after her.

  The templars didn’t fare much better. In fact, they were like bumbling buffoons compared to her. She had always been quick and agile, owing perhaps to her elven ancestry.

  And now for the coup de grace. She deliberately knocked over a stack of barrels, and the barrels rolled down the incline at the fumbling templars. They fell over each other trying to dodge the debris, the merchants yelling at them all the way.

  She reached the other side of the market unscathed and with a healthy lead. All she needed now was to pick a blind alley and lose them.

  She turned a corner. A trio of templars where interrogating a merchant, one of them holding up a poster with Alice’s face on it. They hadn’t noticed her yet.

  Alice backed away. Step. by. Step. A twig snapped under her boot, and one of the templars turned her way. He looked from the poster to her. She turned and sprinted the other way, the three hot on her tail.

  Her heart pounded. She ran so fast the sweat flew off the sides of her face. This looked to be a residential district, one devoid of bystanders, but even though she was faster than them, her endurance wouldn’t last forever. They would eventually catch up to her in an open road situation. She was running out of options.

  A black blur streaked by before she had the chance to decide. She nearly had a heart attack, but the blur turned out to be Shaggy. A wave of relief coursed through her.

  The wolf slowed down a hair so Alice could catch up. He sped up again and took a blind turn down a side alley. He wanted her to follow him, she realized.

  She bounded after Shaggy down the twisting and turning back alleys. He darted around corners like a gale wind, and even Alice could barely keep up. The templars were now out of sight, but never too far off. Their footfalls and raised voices carried over the buildings to where she was. They needed to get out of here, quick.

  She rounded one more bend and found that Shaggy had stopped in front of a wall.

  “What is it, boy?” she said.

  He looked at Alice and then stared at the roof’s edge, one story from the ground.

  “Oh, you brilliant dog, you.”

  She backed up a little bit to get a running start, then dashed toward the wall. At the last moment, she leaped off one foot onto the back of the massive wolf and jumped off two feet at the same moment that Shaggy applied a strong upward force. The jump sent her over the gutters and tumbling onto the rooftop.

  The wolf vaulted right after her in one bound. He didn’t stop to catch his breath. Alice ran after him. She was keeping pace with Shaggy, and before she knew it, she was leaping across gaps and making jumps she couldn’t imagine attempting on any other day. Together, they flew across Belmont’s rooftops, and little by little, the sounds of the templars faded.

  In the distance, multiple tendrils of dark smoke rose in the direction of Charlie’s place. When she and Charlie burst out of the back of his hut, they found a whole squadron of the bastards turning the district inside out. How many buildings did they burn? It dawned on Alice that she had left Arthur and Elyas to fend for themselves against a small army.

  She jumped over another gap, and instead of landing on her feet, she crashed straight through the roof. Her stomach pushed up into her chest as she plummeted 15 feet onto a hard mattress, knocking the wind right out of her lungs. The ceiling collapsed above her. Thick dust choked the air. Shaggy peeked into the hole in the ceiling and dropped down to her side.

  Alice groaned. If she hadn’t yet known pain in her life, then she did now. Shaggy licked the wounds on her face.

  The door flew open, and a short, grey-haired woman stepped through. “Who in Greg’s name are you?!”

  A pack of small children peeked through the door.

  Alice waved a bloody hand at the kids. “Hi.” Blood sputtered out of her mouth.

  A girl looked out the hole in the ceiling. “Are you an angel?” she said.

  The world faded to black before Alice could answer.

  Arthur

  Arthur and Elyas ducked into an alley just as the house’s back door burst open. Arthur was tempted to take a peek around the corner, but Elyas pulled him behind a dumpster. Arthur landed face down into a pile of trash bags. Something sharp poked at his sides, and a sticky substance clung to his face. He dared not move or make a sound.

  “Fan out, men,” said the voice of Claudette. “Leave no building unturned, no peasant unquestioned.” The air practically buzzed with her rage. Or maybe that was the flies buzzing in Arthur’s ear.

  “No, I don’t care about your lunch break,” Claudette said, “None of you are getting lunch or dinner until I see their heads on pikes!”

  Their marching became a little more agitated after that. The ground rumbled under the stomping of a dozen boots. Then silence. They must have been searching inside the houses. It wouldn’t be long until they thought of searching between them.

  A light tap on his shoulder brought Arthur’s attention away from the ground. Elyas held a finger to his lips and crept down the alley. Arthur did his best to follow along, but that was easier said than done. With every footstep, his chain mail clinked and rattled.

  Elyas rounded on Arthur. His eyes widened, squinted, and widened again with an emphatically raised eyebrow.

  Arthur got the gist of it. He continued on tiptoes and moved his limbs as if he were neck-deep in mud.

  Elyas rolled his eyes and pointed at the roof.

  Yeah, good idea.

  With a little boost from Elyas, Arthur pulled himself over the gutter and rolled onto the rooftop. His gear clanged like a kitchen in an earthquake. Elyas was up there with him in an instant and landed on catlike feet. Arthur was definitely going to ask Elyas to teach him how to do that someday.

  Elyas sighed. “This is why I go for light armor.”

  “You won’t be thinking that when someone comes at you with a bastard sword.”

  “Oh? Like how you were thinking back there when someone came at you with something pointy.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Arthur. You killed him. There was blood everywhere. There’s blood on you right now. That was what Arthur wanted to say. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “So, where do we go next?”

  “I know a place uptown. Shaggy and the girl should be there by now.”

  “But what about the atti — I mean, your base of operations?”

  “Can’t. It must be swarming with these Children of the Greg by now.” Elyas teetered over the edge of the rooftop and scanned the skyline.

  Arthur got to his feet and dusted himself off.

  Tendrils of smoke rose from the vicinity of Elyas’s place. Of course. Those preachy pricks wouldn’t be able to amble through the district without having a seizure. Arthur had just gotten his heart to calm down, and already it was starting back up again.

  “The Cockpit,” mumbled Arthur, “and… and the bookstore.” He shook his head in his hands. This was all his fault. If he had done things differently yesterday…

  “Stop that,” Elyas said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop having an internal crisis.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Kid, everyone within two blocks can hear what’s going on in that noggin of yours.” Elyas turned away from the smoke and made a start in a different direction. “There’ll be time for that later. Come along now.”

  “But we can’t just do nothing,” Arthur said, wiping the muck from his face.

  Elyas looked back and cocked an eyebrow. “And what exactly do you intend to do?”

  “Well, I… I’m gonna… We’re going to stop them.”

  Elyas pointed at Arthur’s longsword. “You mean with that?”

  “Presumably.”

  “You don’t know how to use it.”

  “I know plenty how to use it. You know that.”

  “No, you don’t.” Elyas held an arm out. “Hand it over.”

  “What?” Arthur’s hand went to the sword’s hilt.

  “If you don’t know how to use it, then you shouldn’t have it. Hand it over.”

  “No. It’s mine.” It was his father’s, the last thing his hands touched.

  “Then shut the fuck up and do what I say,” said Elyas.

  Arthur opened his mouth to protest, but the words caught in his throat. For a moment, nothing existed except the space between him and Elyas, until finally, Arthur broke eye contact and let out a breath. His grip on the hilt loosened, then released.

  “Good. Now let’s see if Shaggy and the girl made it,” Elyas said, “?Vamos!”