Chapter 23
More than one section of the waterfront road had been damaged in the earthquake, so the peacekeepers turned to walk a block inland, escorting Rylana, Jildarin, and Vormalt along Acorn Street.
The mayor and high priest came along behind two golems that ensured none of the detainees slipped away.
When the group neared the Dragon Diner, Jildarin gazed contemplatively at it.
“Are you thinking of breaking away from our escort so that you can start breakfast preparations?” Rylana guessed.
“They will need to be started soon. We’ve been up all night.
However, I was wondering if your comrade placed the stockpot inside and if the baker might be found and questioned.
I wish to know if we acquired the appropriate aquatic yeast and how to employ it in a bread recipe.
If my clan’s dragon priest is correct and the direness of the curse is escalating... ”
“We should get the sacred bread baked as soon as possible,” Rylana finished.
“Yes. But it takes time to make bread. And yeast must be fermented.”
“Uh. How long does that take?” Rylana hadn’t considered that they might have to wait.
“Hours to days for the strains I’m familiar with. Glowing aquatic yeast…”
“Could be weird.”
“Atypical, at the least.”
“If it glows, it’s weird. Trust me.”
“Come along,” the lieutenant said sternly.
Rylana and Jildarin had slowed their gaits as they talked and drew even with the diner.
“Wait,” Rylana told the peacekeeper. “There’s some evidence inside that your people may want.” She glanced at Vormalt, feeling a little guilty that she kept acting against him, but he’d brought this on himself.
“What evidence?” the lieutenant asked.
Rylana looked at Mayor Sedgewick. “Blackmail plans.”
Not waiting for permission, she jogged into the diner.
The peacekeepers didn’t stop her, but she didn’t doubt that they would come in after her if she took too long, so she hurried for the storeroom, only glancing around for the stockpot.
Nothing was glowing from the shadows. Might Sylin have taken it to the bakery instead? Rylana had asked her to find Mya.
In the storeroom, she grabbed Vormalt’s journal and also paused to eye her weapons.
Her bow, quiver, and sword leaned against the wall, tied with tranquility ribbons.
She didn’t plan to leave town and encounter dragons again—the peacekeepers probably wouldn’t allow her to depart, even if she wished.
Still, she picked up her bow and quiver.
Just in case. As long as the knots remained tied, the gnomes shouldn’t object to her carrying the weapons, but if she ran into more irate dragons, she could untie them.
On the way out of the diner, she checked the office and kitchen, even peeking into the pantry, but she didn’t see the stockpot.
Outside, two familiar people were walking toward the bakery, Sylin with her cloak and hood pulled close and the stout Mya, who peered curiously at the group gathered in the street out front.
Rylana walked the journal toward Sedgewick. In the dim lighting of the intermittent streetlamps, Vormalt must not have recognized it at first. It was in the mayor’s hands before he blurted, “Rylana!” He stepped toward the gnome. “She stole that.”
A golem intercepted him, keeping him from reaching Sedgewick. Squinting at Vormalt, the mayor walked the journal to a streetlamp.
Sylin joined Rylana as Mya yawned loudly, unlocked the bakery, and went inside.
“She’s going to see if she can figure out what to do with your pot of water,” Sylin said. “I left it in her kitchen.”
“Do you have a key to the place now?” Rylana had assumed Sylin had been joking when she’d mentioned asking about lodgings in the attic.
“Key?”
“Never mind.” Rylana reminded herself that assassins were as good at getting into locked buildings as practiced burglars.
“Jildarin, do you want to get the recipe book and work with Mya in the bakery? Maybe you two can figure out how to get that yeast fermenting. Assuming we got some of the right variety.”
That was, Rylana admitted grimly, a big assumption. Who knew how many kinds of glowing organisms lived in the water out there? If they hadn’t gotten a sample, maybe Mya would know which part of the lake they could visit to acquire the right species.
Jildarin looked toward the peacekeepers, but they’d joined the mayor and the high priest under the streetlamp to peer at the journal.
“I will get the cookbook,” he said and strode into the diner.
The distracted gnomes didn’t stop him.
“The evidence is mounting against you, Lord Vormalt,” Sedgewick said. “You might find yourself detained for some time.”
“If you detain me for even an hour, the curse will escalate. I’m the only one who knows how to stop it.” He glanced at the bakery.
“Do you know how to stop it?” Rylana asked him.
“Of course,” Vormalt said. “I never intended for—”
The ground shook again, interrupting him. Unfazed by the tremors, Jildarin walked from the diner to the bakery with the troll recipe book in hand.
The green miasma that they’d been seeing for days wafted out of the nearby stormwater drains, denser than ever. Great clouds billowed into the street, hazing the air and floating past the lamps, turning their yellow light a sickly green.
“Is that Lieutenant Wogmork?” came a call from the intersection.
A group of uniformed peacekeepers jogged around a fountain and toward them, batting their hands at the green vapors.
“That’s your friend, isn’t it?” Rylana asked Sylin, recognizing the officer in the lead.
“Captain Laridon,” Sylin said, “is an acquaintance who occasionally pays me for specific work that I’m qualified for.”
“So you’re very close, then. Can you get him to let Jildarin and me continue our quest to lift the curse instead of detaining us along with Vormalt?”
“Are you detained now? Your dragon is walking about freely, there aren’t handcuffs on your wrists, and you’re carrying your bow and quiver.”
“Well, the gnomes weren’t willing to leave us on Lucky Island.”
“Did you have other business there? I thought it was only the dragon trying to incinerate your rowboat that led you to its banks.”
“For a chance eavesdropping session, yes. If Jildarin’s relatives weren’t such pains in the ass, I would thank them for that. I—”
Vormalt lunged away from the golem, the sudden movement startling Rylana. It startled a couple of the peacekeepers too, and he managed to snatch the wand from the lieutenant.
“What are you—”
Vormalt waved it in the air, then smacked it against the corner of a building. The two golems stomped toward him but paused when a boom came from the southern end of the lake.
Rylana groaned. Worried about how much damage those explosives had done, she ran to the alley beside the coffee shop and climbed the ladder that led to its rooftop.
From that vantage point, she could see past many of the waterfront buildings and to Lucky Island.
She groaned again. Flames now burned on its far side.
“He blew up the temple.”
The gnomes who had been left behind must have been too worried about accidentally detonating the explosives to dig them out from under it.
Rylana shook her head in disbelief. Even if Vormalt truly believed the new god didn’t exist, her mind boggled at the thought of someone she knew wantonly blowing up buildings.
Soldiers had done it during the war, certainly, on both sides, but that had been for strategic purposes and against an enemy.
Why had he done this? Tranquility, however it had been founded, was a city of peace.
“A strange way to ensure one’s blackmail attempt succeeds,” Sylin remarked.
Rylana hadn’t heard or seen her come up but wasn’t surprised by her voice. “Vormalt must have thought the gnomes needed goading into believing he’s serious.”
“He sprinted away as the gnomes were looking that way in surprise.”
Rylana frowned and ran to the other side of the roof. The green haze filled the street now, reducing visibility, and the peacekeepers were just realizing Vormalt had used the distraction to disappear.
“Find him,” the lieutenant barked. “He was responsible for that.”
“He’s the one who should have been handcuffed,” Sylin observed as the uniformed gnomes and golems ran off. “I saw him dart away and could have stopped him, but…” She shrugged. “You seemed a little conflicted on whether you wanted him in custody.”
“Did I? I handed over his journal.”
“True. Maybe I misread your expression.”
Rylana sighed. “When he revealed his motivations, I wasn’t entirely convinced he was wrong to want the gnomes’ secret to come out, and I could understand wanting reparations for stolen land. But the blackmail bit and unleashing this curse… I could never condone any of that.”
Would she have felt any conflict or sympathy toward Vormalt if they hadn’t once had a relationship? She didn’t know. Even if he might have been angling for access to her family’s castle—and the buried troll temple—all along, that didn’t erase the fact that they’d spent intimate time together once.
Rylana walked back across the roof, intending to climb down to the alley, but she jerked to a halt. A blue beam of light now shone upward from Lucky Island. It was similar to the one that had flowed from her castle days earlier.
“That’s not a promising sign.” Sylin pointed not toward Lucky Island but across the lake toward Avandar Castle.
Rylana gaped. Once again, a blue beam of light was shining upward from it as well.
“What in both hells?”
“If the gnomes’ story of the new god is indeed a fabrication,” Sylin said, “there may only be one hell.”
Rylana looked at her with exasperation. This wasn’t the time for a semantics discussion.