Fractured Loyalties

Chapter 2, The Spy:

Chapter 2, The Spy:

Muffled cries of pain and the smell of smoke were the first sensations that came to the Spy’s brain. The rough grain of the platform scraped against his right cheek, and splinters gouged his body in more places than he wished to count. He cracked open his eyes and looked square into the lifeless gaze of the woman who he’d been speaking to moments earlier. Something was wrong with his vision, he decided, as the blood from a wound flowed into his left eye. His view was akimbo, slightly off-kilter.

His head throbbed, but he forced himself to take a quick inventory of his body to find out what would work. Beginning with the extremities, he moved each section until he found out what he controlled, but the more he moved, the more he slipped. That was when he realized his head lay lower than his feet by a good fifteen to twenty degrees.

He remembered speaking to the dead woman next to him while the platform lowered, then something happened, he couldn’t quite remember what. But he pushed himself up with his arms and found the lift platform precarious, dangerous, not somewhere he wanted to be. It didn’t take long for him to realize it had been knocked off the rails and hung by three of the four lift cables.

Fires burned around him. He didn’t want to be suspended on a platform over the ground if the climbing flames reached the remaining lift cables. Spinning his body so his head pointed uphill, he used the holes that were blown into the platform by shrapnel as hand- and footholds.

Every move made the platform shudder. He wasn’t the only one that survived the calamity but the only one currently moving. A few others still breathed as he crawled past, but he saw no way to save them. If he reached safety, he might devise a way to pull a few others off the tilting deathtrap. This was a time that he wished he wore his leathers instead of the linen robes. He found climbing in the long dressing extremely difficult.

The platform dropped a foot. The Spy nearly lost his footing. The dead woman with the vacant eyes slipped through a hole and fell with a thud below. He didn’t have time to count how long it took her to land, but he estimated he hung at least one hundred feet in the air. More than enough to break his body like a swatted fly if he fell to the ground below.

He reached the platform safety rail and found it mostly intact, but the metal guide rail beyond had warped from the stress of holding the platform at such a steep angle. With the help of the safety rail, he stood nearly upright and inspected the pillar of granite just out of reach. It didn’t take him long to decide no escape lay that way. But not far away to his left stood a column and a lintel carved into the granite for one of the most expensive homes in this neighborhood.

The distance he needed to leap was farther than he could possibly make. Inspecting the makeup of the dangling platform, he came up with a plan. He reached for his dagger before he remembered he hadn’t brought any weapons to the wedding. He knew they would’ve been confiscated before he reached the summit, and he would’ve found himself in a cell for the festivities.

He needed something sharp enough to cut one of the lift ropes to escape the situation. Off to his right, he found a guard struggling to climb the safety rails to join him at the apex of the platform. He watched in horror as the platform shuddered again, and his deliverance in the guise of a guard lost his grip and nearly plummeted to his death. With the agility of a cat burglar, he swung his way down to where the guard struggled to regain his footing.

“Let me help you with this,” the Spy said before reaching down and stealing the man’s sword from its scabbard.

The sentry reached for the Spy’s leg out of desperation. With one swift kick, the man’s grasp was kicked away with enough force to dislodge him from his precarious perch. The guard’s scream cut short when he bounced off the debris below the platform.

Sword now in hand, the Spy scanned above and for the first time noticed he hung directly under the platform that held the oxen that provided the strength to raise and lower the lift. The platform above looked intact, but he did not want to wait to find out if the oxen above still lived or not.

Holding tight with his left hand, he sliced the stolen sword at the lift line next to him. The added weight caused the severed line to shoot into the air like a bolt from a crossbow. Any unconscious survivors were pitched into the void and fell to their deaths below. The platform immediately swung in the direction the Spy needed to travel to remove himself from such a perilous position. He hung on for his life, while the platform bucked under him and spun like a crazed animal trying to dislodge him from its back.

Halfway through his direction of travel, the man decided this may not have been the best course of action given the circumstances he found himself in. He couldn’t determine which would be the worst way to go: falling to his death with the platform or being crushed like a bug between where he dangled and the wall of granite he sped into.

In desperation, he let go of the crashing wreckage, dropping the ten feet to the front landing of the house, well below the lintel he recently struggled to reach. Hitting the ground and rolling, he didn’t take time to judge the direction but instead allowed the momentum of the drop to propel him away from the crashing platform and to safety. Three somersaults later and his body careened off the solid granite wall that served as the front entrance and into a rather luxurious hallway.

The noise of massive crashes reverberated through the stone walls as more and more of the lift platform mechanism came thundering down the cliffside. Suddenly all fell silent, except for the cries that rose from below the home he landed in. For the moment he felt the safety of the stone walls cocoon him in shade.

His first impulse was to head deeper into the home and the perceived safety it offered. What happened? he thought. Plenty of time to worry about that later. Now that he didn’t have to worry about falling to his death or being crushed by falling oxen, he needed to assess the damage to his body and get to his safe house.

In the dim light, he found his light blue wedding robes covered in blood. Holes peppered his robe, and under each rip he inspected, he found a piece of shrapnel, wood, or some other material. If he had not been in the center of the lift, he would probably be dead now. He found no life-threatening wounds, so it was time to move out of the area. Soon the authorities would begin rounding up witnesses and suspects.

He’d been a guest of Zar’s hospitality before. The time spent in the holding cell after the coup attempt was long enough. He limped the few steps to the doorway. A quick glance above ensured no more of the lift mechanism would rain down on him. Before he went farther, he found most of the front platform for the home missing. The heavy machinery that cascaded down had torn a portion away, but to his right there stood partially intact stairs leading down to the next home.

The wound to his left leg more severe than he first thought, it took a great deal of concentration to get it to work. His adrenaline no longer flooded his veins. The steps became as much an obstacle as escaping the platform.

He wound his way around until he nearly reached the bottom. The path of the stairs took him back over the scene of the c*****e. From above, he clearly spotted the center of the slaughter was the lift to the upper levels. From the blast pattern of destruction, he could see that the target lay under the rubble of the elevator that he helped bring down.

This was no accident. Someone had used a sort of magic to attack the infrastructure of the ruling class. For a fleeting moment he felt remorse for the rescuers that had been trapped under the falling debris he helped to cause, then he shook it off. They would be lionized as fallen heroes, and he still lived to find out who did this and support the rulers of Zar as they exacted their own vengeance.

His original concern about standing out slipped away once he reached the ground. Everywhere he turned, people were covered in blood. At the bottom of the mayor’s lift once stood a temporary market. Stalls of tents and poles were set up and torn down daily, bringing the needed foodstuffs and household articles to the doorsteps of the wealthy. This attack destroyed most of that market. The cloth shelters offered zero protection against the blast. Scattered about the scene lay small pieces of metal, shards of the device—or perhaps the weapon had been laced with objects to make it deadlier.

His hobble helped him fit right in. He joined the line of wounded walking away from the scene. A trail of blood left in their wake. The stabbing pain intensified while he walked, but he had no choice. He needed to reach somewhere safe. Usually, he would take an indirect route to his lair, but he wasn’t sure if he’d make it. Instead he trudged on past both inns where he held a room to a special little place, an unmarked building in the less prosperous part of town. That part of the isthmus that still contained standalone wooden structures.

Unwilling to be seen walking in the front door, he slipped around back and used his remaining strength to climb up to a back balcony. Before he reached his goal, a pair of hands reached for his robes and pulled him to safety.

“Lords in all, what have you gotten into?” The female voice sounded familiar to him. It was his favorite woman in Zar, and her name was Six. He reached the safety of the house where she worked. Now he relaxed and collapsed in her arms.