The Quarrygate Gambit, page 18
“I don’t think we can or should count on that.”
“Or Asti will come for us.”
Saints, Julien seemed downright broken.
“We’re going to play it calm and easy, sure,” Verci said. “I did get to talk to a Justice Advocate, and he’s looking into our situation.”
“See, it’ll work out.”
“But we also need to keep our options open. That means we stay alert, look for opportunities.”
“I dunno,” Julien said. “I’m not cut out for that.”
“Well, watch my back, and I’ll stay alert, deal?”
“Deal,” Julien said.
Verci stuck by Julien as they were led along through the washroom, then to the dining hall for breakfast, which was lukewarm porridge with preserves of unidentifiable origins. Verci could not determine what fruit it had ever been, and whatever it was now was barely palatable. Still, Verci ate, as he was ravenous. Like he told Jules, eyes open, look for opportunities. He couldn’t do that if he was also fainting.
The fellow next to Verci nudged him. “Looks like the chomie is gonna get knockaround.”
“What?” Verci asked, and looked where the guy was pointing to see several fellows—all marked with the same tattoo on their neck—start to move around Kennith at his table. And, notably, the guards weren’t doing a damn thing about them being near the wrong table.
“Oh, blazes, no,” Verci said, starting to get up.
Julien grabbed him and pulled him back onto the bench.
“No, Verci.”
Verci glared at Julie’s meaty hand wrapped around his arm. “Ken’s going to—”
It started. One of the tattooed boys wailed on the back of Kennith’s head with a tray, and when he went down, the others all started kicking.
“Julie, we have to—”
“If we do we’ll be just as bad off,” he said. “We can’t do anything for Kennith.”
“That’s not—”
“It’ll be done in a moment.”
And then there were some whistles, and the guards halfheartedly pulled the tattoo boys away. Verci wrenched his way of Julien’s grip and jumped over to Ken.
“You all right, can you breathe?” he asked. The poor man’s face was a mangled mess, blood pouring out his nose, one eye swollen.
“Ver . . .” Kennith mumbled, but then some folks pulled Verci away as the guards tossed Kennith on a stretcher and took him out.
“How can they—what the blazes,” Verci muttered.
“Easy,” Vellun said—he was who had pulled Verci away. “We make trouble or noise, it’ll be worse for him, and . . .” He nodded over to Pilsen, who looked even more drawn and pale than ever before. He stumbled over to Verci.
“Kelsi, dear boy, this rehearsal is abysmal, and everything about this show is a mess. I have to resign the part.”
“It’s Verci, Pilsen,” he urged. “And this isn’t a show.”
“I’d say. Those fellows know nothing of how to fake a hit, and I think they really did some damage to the dark fellow. Which is a shame, because there aren’t enough of those in the trade. We need a good one to play Cartherat if do The Sauric Shore this season.”
“Pilsen, we’re in Quarrygate.”
“Is that one of the new ones? Cobbe or Swanson?”
“Break it up and finish eating, loverboys,” a guard said, shoving Pilsen back to the table.
Verci glanced at Vellun. “That bad?”
“Worse,” Vellun whispered. “Please, Verci, you have to get us out of here, soon.”
The guard grabbed Verci and dragged him over. “And you stay in your place if you don’t want the box again.” He was shoved back down next to Julien.
“I told you,” Julien said. “We gotta be smart, not make trouble. Only way we’ll make it.”
Verci shook his head. “We can’t let anything like that happen again.”
If it kept up this way, if he didn’t get them all out soon, they weren’t going to make it at all.
* * *
Verci had been put on laundry duty, and either the guards or his fellow prisoners had plans to punish him, as he was given a pile of clothes encrusted with filth, mold, blood, sewage, and saints even knew what else. He put on the best smile he could force his face to make, and got to work, even whistling while he did it. Soap and water and board, scrubbing like he was happy to do it.
Show no sign they were even close to breaking him.
Which they weren’t. Since coming out of the box, his resolve was strong, he knew he could handle whatever they tried here. He was confident he’d find a way. The dream of the cloistress had renewed him, and the encounter with Mister Cheever would hopefully bear fruit.
And if it didn’t, he needed to prepare for that as well.
Part of preparing was a matter of determining resources. Who was he in here with, and what could he get his hands on. Fortunately, he was very good at getting his hands on things. He’d been out of practice, but when he was a kid, Pop had made sure he could slide a coin from a man’s pocket without any suspicion, and hide it from sight if questioned. Hands never forget those things. He had already managed to slip away a few spoons from the dining hall, a few spring clips from laundry, a couple keys from guards, and a few other bits and bobs from here and there. He had no idea what he was going to do with these treasures, but he was certain it was better to have them and find a use for them later.
And the massive pile of absolutely vile clothing and linens gave him the perfect hiding place that no one would search.
“Hey, Tacklin!” a guard shouted. “Tacklin!”
It took Verci a moment to remember that was him. “Washing as fast as I can, friend.”
“Cut out from that. You got a lawyer meeting.”
That was very interesting. He had hoped that Cheever would come through, but this was faster than he expected. No complaints about that, then. He might not need his stash of scraps.
He washed off his hands and followed the guard up through the ward, down hallways, and past a set of double-gated portals. Verci kept his eye on the mechanisms as they went through, designed to be impossible to open both gates at once, and opening the outer gate had to be done from the other side. No one could get through—at least in theory—without someone out letting them out. These seemed to be the only way into the administrative parts of the prison, which is how guards, lawyers, and other visitors came and went each day.
Verci filed the whole route here, the labels on each door, and the details of each gate, in the back of his memory. Hopefully he wouldn’t need it, but at this point, he wasn’t going to let any opportunity slip away.
He was put in a small room with an actual barred window, so he could see outside. While waiting he walked over and chanced a glance at the street below. Three stories down, and a walled courtyard between the building and the street. Manned guardposts.
“So, Mister Tacklin,” Cheever said as he came in the room. “Would you sit?”
Verci sat at the table across from Cheever. “I’m glad you came back so quickly. Can you help?”
“I don’t think I’m in a position to, Mister Tacklin—”
“I told you, my name is Verci Rynax, I live in North Seleth . . .”
“Verci Rynax, according to the records I found, died in a fire on Maritan the 28th,” Cheever said. “As did his brother and family.”
Maritan the 28th. The night of the Holver Alley fire.
“No,” Verci said. “That . . . that’s not true at all.”
“That’s what I found when I put in an inquiry.”
“Sir, the Rynax Gadgeterium opened two months ago. It’s been in the neighborhood. My wife runs the Junk Avenue Bakery.”
“I went by there, it looks abandoned and shut down. Papered over, like it hadn’t been open in months.”
How was that possible? Where was Raych? If she wasn’t there, what was happening out there? He needed to get out of this place.
“I’m telling you, you’ve been tricked. Did you . . . did you read that pamphlet last month? The Champions of Maradaine one? Big seller, all over the city?”
“I don’t waste time with fanciful fiction.”
“Listen to me—”
“Mister Tacklin, I am a rational man. I serve to ensure the best possible justice, I serve to challenge prosecution and judges, to act as watchdog to those institutions. I have seen miscarriage of justice, and I have seen people insist on their innocence despite overwhelming evidence. But I’ve never seen anything such as this.”
“My name is Verci Rynax, my brother Asti, and I most definitely did not die in that fire, nor did my wife and son!”
“Don’t shout at me.”
Where could she be? Hal and Lian, of course.
“Hal and Lian Elman, my wife’s sister and husband, they live on—”
“Listen,” Cheever said calmly. “You’re either the victim of a very insidious plot, or you are a very charming, dangerous and capable liar. Which would I believe?”
“It’s the plot.”
“Except,” Cheever said, holding up a folder. “Indlen Tacklin, reported to have been behind several incidents of unrest and dissent in Abernar, Kyst, and Maskill. In every case, he uses lies, manipulation, and alternate identities to deceive innocent people to carry out his vicious schemes. He and his brother are among the most dangerous men in Sauriya.”
“If you believed that, would you be alone in this room with me?”
“It’s not what I believe!” Cheever said. “Saints, Mister Tacklin—”
“Rynax!”
“It’s what can be proven! There is nothing on paper to help you. Besides . . .” He shook his head.
“Besides, what?”
“You are charged with High Treason Against the Archduchy. It’s not even within the jurisdiction of my office to aide you, even if I was inclined.”
“You aren’t inclined?”
“With this evidence?”
“You said yourself, Mister Cheever. You serve as watchdog. Allow the possibility this is a plot. If so—”
“It’s absurd.”
“If so, Mister Cheever, then you would have to admit that allowing me to face those charges would be the grossest miscarriage of justice imaginable.”
Cheever bowed his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that is true.”
“So help me. Even if I am Indlen Tacklin, I deserve legal counsel, no?”
“I don’t have the authority,” Cheever said. “But I will write to the right people in Kyst. Because, yes, even if you are the most dangerous man in Sauriya, you deserve a lawyer.”
Verci pushed down his rage. The last thing he needed was to further alienate the one possibly ally he had to reach the outside world.
“Thank you,” Verci said.
“Now, I must bid you good day,” Cheever said. “There’s nothing more I can do. My schedule is already overwhelmed, and this . . . but I will write those letters.”
“I do appreciate that, Mister Cheever.”
Cheever knocked on the door, and the guards came for Verci.
“Wait,” Cheever said as they were taking Verci out. “Hal and Lian Elman, where do they live?”
“61 Colt,” Verci said.
Cheever nodded, and waved the guards, who dragged Verci out and took him back through the series of hallways and gates to the laundry room.
Verci let himself be taken in silence, keeping his eyes and ears open. Though at the last set of double gates, he noted the infirmary. Kennith was there. So that would be where he’d go tonight.
There was no legal option for them, that was clear. Just like Cheever said, an insidious plot was against them. It would take every ounce of Verci’s cunning to find a way out, and by every saint he knew, he’d use it all to do it.
* * *
Verci had abandoned caution. At least when it came to his own consequences right now. If the guards caught him threw him in the box again, it didn’t matter. Right now he was here in the prison, responsible for four of his friends, and they were all pieces in someone’s scheme.
So there was no further consequence to him that mattered, because anything he faced to get out, get home, make things right, they were necessary.
He slipped out of his cell in the night, mouse quiet, moving his way down the hallways to the infirmary. Even though the guards were more alert at night, getting around them was child’s play. Truly, he could have done this when he was seven.
Blazes, back then he could have slid between the bars.
The infirmary door was latched, but a simple one that he was easily able to slide open. He found the doctor there asleep on a cot—not alone, it seemed. Someone that Verci presumed was a prisoner from the women’s wards was with him, also asleep.
Patients in cots behind flimsy screens. Only a couple of those bunks filled. Finding the one he wanted was easy.
“Ken,” he whispered, waking the man up. “You all right?”
“Do I look rutting all right to you?”
“Not remotely,” Verci said.
“There’s your answer. You best get out before more trouble is visited on you.”
“We’re already in all the trouble.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“That whatever this scheme is, the player in it is someone way above us. Someone who can make official paperwork that said Asti and I died in the fire.”
Ken raised an eyebrow as much as he could with his bruised face. “Like whoever was behind the fire?”
“The thought occurred to me.”
“Then we are rutting screwed.”
“I’m still going to fight this.”
“Fight?” Kennith’s voice went a little too loud on that, and Verci glanced around the corner to make sure neither the sew-up or his companion reacted to that. Ken lowered his voice. “What kind of fight are you talking about? You already see what happened to me? To Jules?”
“And what it’s doing to Pilsen. Still, we’ve got to do something.”
“Define ‘something,’ because if it involves any more beatings, I’m going to pass.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Verci said. “I just came here to make sure you know I’m going to get us all out of here.”
Kennith looked at him strangely—in as much as Ken could with one eye swollen up. “I think your time in that box broke your head worse than Asti’s.”
“Maybe. But I’m telling you right now, Ken,” Verci said, taking his friend’s hand. “I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to get all of you out of here, as soon as possible. No matter what it costs me.”
“How the blazes you think you’re going to do that?” Kennith asked. “Sorry, man, but you don’t have your gear, you don’t have your tools.”
“That’s far from all I am,” Verci said.
“And you’re stuck with the worst of us. I’m just a driver, and look at me. Julien is essentially a child. Pilsen too, at this point, and Vellun certainly isn’t cut out for this.”
“I will make a plan,” Verci said.
“I just don’t see how you can do it. This sort of thing, sorry to say, it just isn’t a Verci Rynax job.”
Verci thought about that, and Kennith had a point. Verci Rynax wasn’t the man for this gig, not by any chance. And no one was coming to save them.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, getting to his feet. “But as far as this prison is concerned, they don’t have Verci Rynax. They’re holding Indlen Tacklin.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Indlen Tacklin is a revolutionary, a terrorist. One of the most dangerous men in Druthal.” Verci noticed some of the sew-up’s instruments and chemicals, foolishly left out in the open. A plan formed in his head. “I think I’m going to show them what it’s like to have that man locked up in here.”
Chapter 18
VERCI DIDN’T SLEEP, BUT HE did make sure to get back to his bunk before the sun was up, after spending the night working out a plan to make good on his promise to Kennith. Fortunately, he was able to hole up in the laundry to work out details, draw out a map, and cobble together a couple surprises to put to use.
There might be heightened security in place in the prison, they might be paying more attention, but he was still his father’s son. Still able to slip through hallways mouse quiet. Still able to find a shadow or niche when he heard someone coming. If he had the time and the inclination, he could learn every secret in this prison, and be ruling it in a month.
He had neither the time nor the inclination.
What he had was a plan.
It was a crazy plan, one that Asti would never approve of. But Asti wasn’t here. Verci couldn’t worry about what he’d want or do right now. He had to get his friends out of here, he had to get himself out of here. There was no more waiting.
And it was a plan with an enormous, glaring flaw. The only way he could make it work, he’d have to be in two places at the same time.
He lay in the bunk as the sky started to lighten outside, trying to figure out the way around that problem.
Part of that challenge stemmed from how his plan had to work. One thing had been abundantly clear, as he double-checked all his possible exit routes, went over his options to get everyone out: because there was more security, there was no way he could come up with to sneak his friends out. At least, not without weeks of planning.
Kennith didn’t have weeks. Nor did Pilsen. Or Vellun and Julien. And Raych, she couldn’t wait weeks.
So his plan was loud and hard and fast. Exactly the sort of ugly plan that Asti hated. He hated it as well, but he didn’t see any other way.
Loud and hard and fast. Very fast. He had to light the taper today. He had stolen supplies from the infirmary, the laundry, the cleaning closet. They would be noticed soon.
Today. And he’d have to be two place at once.
No, he’d have to trust one job to someone else.
“Get up, maggots!” a guard shouted. “Stand at doors for counting!”
