Lerran’s back hurt. He was hunched, with a lock-pick and a hook, trying to get past the pins in his father’s lock. If he did, the mysterious safe in his father’s office would be his. It was midday, humid, and he was sweating.
“Master Lerran! Master Lerran!” shouted a voice from the hall.
“What do you want?” Lerran asked, standing up from the safe. Stupid thing had kept him busy for two weeks.
It was Isar, who promptly strode into Lerran’s chambers; his face was red and he was breathing heavily. “Something is going on at Worker’s Rise. We—the Family—should do something.”
Worker’s Rise was the home of the Lord Employers, an enormous stone dome that had withstood centuries in the heart of the economic city. “What is happening?” Lerran asked, putting down his lock-picking tools.
“Someone barred the Outer Gates, even the guards can’t get in,” Isar reported, closing the door of the office. “Screaming has been heard inside. This I know from a runner boy, so who knows what truth it holds…”
“Send ten guards,” Lerran ordered. “Batter down the gates if you have to.”
“What if the city guard objects?” Isar asked. “Do we force it?”
“We can,” Lerran muttered, and he turned back to the safe. Isar closed the door behind him again.
After another hour of fiddling with the lock, Lerran got the last pin to click. The safe swung open—Lerran dropped to his knees and gazed inside. A worn-out brass wrist clasp sat on top of a few sheets of parchment, and he pulled it out to look at it. It was just a simple metal armband. He set it on the desk nearby. “I’ll figure that out later,” he muttered. “What are these?”
The documents in the safe were records, lists of information. He couldn’t tell what it meant at first, but he recognized they were financial charts. Most of it pertained to the Lord Employers, men and women who earned their position by public wealth statements. What he realized as he looked at the parchment was that many of the names on the sheet were not current members of the Lord Employers. Lerran opened his desk, and it took him only a moment to find the most recent reports from the Lord Employers. The information from Gharo’s safe clearly showed different numbers for the Lord Employers than the ones that were publicly available.
“They inflated their wealth,” he realized. Not all of the Lord Employers should be in the positions they were in. He searched the new information for a date, and found one on the back. 5th Moon 1477. It was last year’s report; somehow his father had gotten his hands on it.
Lerran peered into the safe once more. The back wall of the small metal container was loose, and he realized it was actually two lockboxes, one on top of the other. Sadly, they were both locked. With a sigh, Lerran picked up his lock-pick again. “Damn paranoid man,” he mumbled.
Isar knocked and stepped inside the office again. He crossed to the window and looked out at Worker’s Rise in the distance. The midday sun lit up the dull grey stone faintly. “Our guards went in, with a troop of the city’s watch too…”
“And?”
“No word yet. There were still sounds of fighting,” Isar said. “I haven’t been myself, but no one is going in.”
“Let’s go for a walk,” Lerran muttered. He’d found some secrets from the safe, but it was still an irritating puzzle. There was a drawer in the desk he could lock, and put his financial findings as well as his father’s clasp into secure holding. He had never seen his father wearing it, he pondered.
The first place they walked was the Emerald Eye tavern. As usual, they were admitted without charge and the innkeeper poured Lerran his drink. He smiled—he hadn’t been planning on getting one. He scooped it off the bar and smiled, “Only the one, for now.” The barkeep smiled at him.
Paksis was sitting at her table again. She looked up as Isar and Lerran approached and smiled sarcastically. “Can’t get some peace around here,” she jested.
“Want to go for another walk?” Lerran asked.
“Alright,” she said, sitting up straight. Before she stood, Lerran was looking at the bar again. He raised his hand at the barkeep and showed him two fingers, then pointed at Paksis. He poured her two drinks. Get her cheerful, Lerran thought.
He set a brisk pace, but not too forced; she sipped her spirits as she walked, and so did Lerran. The streets of Sheld were noisy, and compared many cities, barren. Everything was made out of rock to weather the storms, and money was too valuable to be spent on aesthetics. Today, the streets were fairly empty, and he found a small crowd had gathered in front of the iron fence around Worker’s Rise. The huge dome was silent dome was silent now, and no more than the normal amount of torch smoke was rising. Just a normal day, as far as appearances went.
The only guards around were the city watch that was keeping the gates closed. Lerran could see the damage from the metal ram that his guards had used to break open the locks.
“Where are we going?” Paksis asked.
“A walk,” Lerran replied. “Walking in there.”
“Well, alright then,” Paksis said.
“Wait there, Gharo,” said one of the guards, referring to the green eye brooch sewn into Lerran’s coat. “Your kind already has plenty inside.”
“Do you know who I am?” Lerran asked. Only some of the city knew that the Family had changed hands. Perhaps it was this change in leadership that had caused whatever fighting was unfolding within Worker’s Rise—if Gharo’s financial findings had given blackmail over the Lord Employers, his sudden absence might have caused a change in state.
The guard blinked at him. “I—no…”
Another guard elbowed the first. “That’s Lerran, man, he killed Gharo!”
“That’s right,” Lerran said. It was not. His father was still missing. “Now move out of my way. My friends and I are going to investigate.”
Without a word, the guard stepped back and opened the gate again. None of the city watch accompanied them as they marched across the cobblestones toward the front stairway that ascended the stone curve of the Rise. Behind him, Lerran heard the guards call for someone to fetch their Captain, though it sounded like they had already tried this a few times.
They climbed the stairs until they reached the first doorway, where the ascent split around a gable that admitted passage to the welcome hall in the first storey of the building. There were no servants, and no guards. Just an empty, lavishly decorated, antechamber.
Paksis took a loud sip of her drink, and then set the mug down on a nearby sculpture. “What are you getting me into…?” she muttered.
“I don’t know,” Lerran said. They walked across the room, and their sandals echoed off the stone walls and ceiling. A long corridor led out of the room, toward one of the main meeting chambers of Worker’s Rise, though many adjoining rooms branched off both sides. Lerran spotted something down the hall, a blanket or something, laying on the ground. Perhaps one of the many tapestries had fallen.
They walked toward it, keenly listening for any sounds. But there none. Then Lerran froze. That was no tapestry, nor a person’s blanket. Half of a body lay there, skin scarred and slashed, and blood pooled around.
“Curse me,” Paksis said. “What is going on?”
Lerran drew his sword, and Isar, still quiet, mimicked him.
There was a trail of small blood drops leading to a nearby door, which sat ajar. “Check in there, Isar,” Lerran said.
Isar turned and look at him with wide eyes. “Sir,” he said. He stepped closer, and opened the door. Nothing emerged, but Isar remained frozen in spot. “Don’t—” He caught himself, and looked ready to vomit.
“What do you see?” Lerran asked.
“Curses,” Isar muttered, and he stepped back from the door. “They’re dead…”
Lerran trembled. “Who’s dead?”
Isar looked at him, his face pale. “I don’t know who they were… I can’t tell. Women, children…”
“These are the quarters of the Lord Employers,” Lerran muttered. “Their families… What kind of monster would do this?”
Paksis looked away.
“What do we do?” Isar asked.
The Captain of the city watch would be arriving soon enough, hopefully with more forces. If Paksis’s story was true, she’d be able to handle herself. Lerran hoped. “We go further,” he decided.
Most of the other quarters were the same. The Lord Employers’ families had been decimated; Lerran glimpsed a few rooms, enough to churn his stomach with their paintings in dark red. They continued down the long corridor until they reached the centre of the dome.
Half of an arm rested on the threshold into the meeting room. Covered in leather panels, the armour had done little to stop the annihilation of muscle and bone. The arm’s owner lay in two other pieces—one of his legs had been slashed off. These were Lerran’s guards, at least seven of them, strewn across the meeting table or pinned against the enormous stone pillars. When Lerran recovered, he looked closer at the arm and severed leg… these were sword wounds. The gruesomeness of the massacre resembled the attack of a ferocious animal, like someone had loosed a stormsilder in the midst of the city core.
But this human destruction had been caused by a metal blade.
“None of them live,” Isar said, after they strode a few paces into the carnage.
“Stop!” a voice cried, and Lerran’s sword flew up to protect himself, until he realized how distant the sound had been. A few storeys up, in Worker’s Rise.
Isar led the way again, climbing up the steps in the corner of the room to the second floor. A loud clang echoed down to them, and then a scream. They didn’t reach the source in time, but as they climbed the third flight of stairs, they found the remainder of the guards, as well as some members of the city watch.
And the Lord Employers. They had clearly been set upon first, for their blood was drying into red blisters on the now-tinted stone floor. Limb had been separated from limb, heads had come to rest with little trace of their own body. A man’s torso sat against a nearby post, his hands holding his chest, though he was long dead. One of the few female Lord Employers hung over the side of a table, and Lerran was thankful he could not see her face. Her flesh had been sliced deeply in a dozen places, one of her feet was missing, and her blood still dripped onto the floor.
The Lord Employers were dead.
And, in that nightmare, a small body stirred. The man had first looked like a blood-drenched body sitting in a huddle with his knees held in his hands. His sagging head lifted, and his small eyes opened.
“Paksis,” Lerran said, quietly.
The living man was a dozen paces away, sitting on top of the rent open body of an elderly Lord Employer. His hair was slicked back with blood, his face was smudged with it, and the short sword in his hand was too drenched in gore to reveal its metal constitution. The man stood shakily to his feet; he was wearing only a pair of torn trousers, but his torso was painted red.
“Alive, if possible,” Lerran said, readying his sword.
Then the maniac charged them with a mindless shriek. He was fast, and he did not slip on the innards that adorned his room. Paksis gasped, but Isar reacted like a trained soldier. He stepped forward with a thrust, forcing himself between his friends and the attacker. The man went down on one knee and started to roll forward. His own sword lashed out at Isar from below, and Lerran’s captain stepped backward as quickly as he could, but not quick enough. The slash rent his shirt open from his sleeve to his shoulder, and he cried out.
As the killer rounded the wounded man’s body, he found Paksis stepping right up to him. His small blade jabbed at her, and she caught it.
For a moment, Lerran could only stare. Isar was slipping onto his behind, while the other two stood transfixed. The sword was clutched in Paksis’s palm, and no blood had welled out around it. The instant remained in Lerran’s eyes for hours afterwards, but it only lasted a few seconds.
Then Paksis slammed the back of her palm across the man’s arm and he was floored, instantly. Before he could even cry out. His sword remained in Paksis hand, and she opened her palm to drop the blade down beside him. It seemed like a foolish thing to do, until Lerran looked down at the maniacal killer. His humerus protruded from his bicep, and the rest of his arm hung by bone-punctured flesh. Blood started welling up around the wound, but their attacker lay in complete silence, unconscious.
With that, they were alone in Worker’s Rise. The Lord Employers, their families, and the guards were all dead. The monster behind the deeds was now Lerran’s captive… and the Family’s leader muttered a soft wish for safety under his breath. Sheld had changed forever.