Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

With an audible scoff, whatever captain had led his detail in responded, “We’re city guards, you numbskull. Looking for a heretic who’s running loose in the city and responsible for an attack on Commander Zweiding’s life.”

“I don’t muck about in religion,” was the impeccable innkeeper’s response. “I only know the law, and the law says no weapons in my tavern or I can lose my license, and no barging in on private property without a certified warrant in your hand.”

“You may not “muck about in religion,” but that doesn’t change the privileges extended to the Order when dealing with heretics.” While I pondered how difficult it would be to put my armor on without making too much noise, I drew the unchristened blade and prepared to make battle.

I ought to have had more faith in Sharp, given the rough area where his tavern was situated.

“Privilege is one thing, but law is another. Bring a beadle around with you or get lost for good.”

“I think you need to learn how to speak to—”

A few men gasped beneath the distinct cocking of a dwarvish pistol. Such items were illegal in Skythorn, as I believe I already mentioned: at minimum, he risked a fine and confiscation of the item by brandishing it in our defense. When brandishing at an officer, Sharp most certainly inviting imprisonment. I could only pray he would not see his inn taken from him as a result of this incident. Weltyr bless him, the man the rough around the edges but loyal to those guests whom he was sworn to protect.

“Come back with a beadle and a warrant,” said Sharp in a firm tone, “or don’t come back at all. Sound reasonable?”

“Oh,” answered the captain to the sound of a sword being sheathed, “we’ll certainly be back. Don’t go anywhere.”

With a snarl that his men should remain around the inn and guard the exits in case we tried to leave or someone arrived, the captain stormed from the building. His men filed out after him while Lively and Erdwud relaxed their postures. They turned to us, expressions lined with concern.

“I don’t suppose it’d do any good asking what’s happened this morning,” observed Erdwudwhile the women slung their packs over their shoulders.

I hurried to finish packing my armor and suggested, “The less you know, the less trouble of your own you’re likely to be in.”

Sharp’s footfall upon the stair had me out in the hall again. “You lot need to clear out of here immediately,” he warned us, the flintlock still in his hand, “and I’m thinking I might need to do the same. I got something close to good news for you, though.”

Soon we were downstairs, all of us crouched around a trap door on the floor of the tavern’s cellar. He’d had to push aside a cask of mead to do it, and while Indra sniffed at its contents with a sigh of remorse to leave it untasted, I peered into the darkness below.

“What is this?”

Without so much as a word, Valeria’s blue wisp flame appeared in the darkness and illuminated a gray concrete floor far beneath us.

“This,” said Sharp, with the first bit of genuine pleasure I had seen him exhibit, “is precisely why I bought this place, and why I cater to the kinds of clientele I do.”

“You two really are diametrically opposed,” observed Valeria absently, her pale eyes lingering on the mine cart system of some sort established below the building. Darkness expanded from far off, implying a long tunnel sequence about which I’d heard growing up.

“This was a kind of old transport system,” I explained while Sharp nodded. “These are all over the city, and off-limits…too dangerous. People live down there, too. As you can imagine, they’re not the most savory individuals…then there’s rumors of monsters, but probably nothing more than the average slime.”

Valeria sat up a bit from her investigation of the darkness. “How far does it go?”

“’Round about forty leagues running northwest, southwest, southeast and northeast, bit like a great ‘x’ beneath Skythorn. City must have been very small when it were built for it to have served any use!”

“And where are we on that ‘x’ relative to the airport, friend?”

“We’re over here”—he drew a crooked ‘x’ in the unsavory amount of dust on his cellar floor, pointing with the tip of his finger—“and the airport’s about here, but there’s only a few places you can cross over between these tunnels. Don’t know where precisely they are, since I’ve just gone north and then only a bit. It’s hard to explore. Skythorn guards send patrols through every once in awhile to keep kids from hurtin’ themselves, and them aside, you don’t want no unsavory sort watching your comings and goings with regularity. But if you go south, and just keep trying to follow them tunnels as far south as south can be, you’ll get to the airport. Close to it, anyway—it’s collapsed in parts, and other parts have caved out so you can get to the Old City bits. And that is dangerous, because you go too far you’ll end up in the Nightlands…though I don’t suppose you lot care about that.”

“Depending on where we end up,” Valeria answered, “it could be quite dangerous for us. But thank you, friend, for your advice.”

“And thank you for your patronage…Erdwud? I don’t suppose I can ask you to watch the tavern ’till the heat is off?”

“No problem at all…Lively’s assistant is fixing up the building at home after all that bad business, and I hear we ought to be expecting a few new trainees! I’ll let her break ‘em in.”

While Sharp descended the ladder that extended from the mouth of the trap door to the tunnels blow, I glanced between Lively and her husband.

“Is there any chance”—I addressed the more unassuming of the pair—“you might do us a favor? I’m not convinced that we’re going to be able to make the airport in anything approaching