Chapter 34 River
River
River returned to consciousness in the corner of a squat room, surrounded by four guild members playing an informal game of
stackjack.
Her head throbbed as her mind tried to unspool what had led to this. She’d spent so much time being tortured by Dougal, she
wondered if perhaps she’d never escaped. Maybe Vandra’s rescue and all the subsequent action had been a dream.
She’d competed in Vestriya Now, after all.
But no, the smell told her it was real. Musty, earthy. Subterranean, yet not in the holding cell anymore. To her relief, she
found there were no magical ropes on her wrists.
Enough of this, then.
She squeezed her eyes to teleport.
It didn’t work.
Worse, the little grunt of disapproval she let out made the guild members aware that she’d awoken.
“Aww, she’s wincing,” said one, mockingly, tossing down a stack of coins and yelling, “All aboard!” the signal in stackjack
that you were betting everything you had.
“You lose!” said another man with a row of golden teeth bright enough for River to make out even through her disorientation.
River strained to open her eyes all the way. It hurt too much.
The guild member who’d lost the game of stackjack shoved his chair back in frustration, rising and heading for River. Even through her blurred vision, she could make out the forming of his fist, preparing to knock her unconscious once more.
“Wait, wait,” she forced out. “I’m one of you.” She was pretty sure her words were slurred, but she pushed on. “I gave you
Thessia. I followed orders. What’s the problem?”
“Tabitha doesn’t know if she can trust you yet,” said the man.
Tabitha.
The leader of the Deathrose Guild was . . . Thessia’s body double? River had only seen her for a moment before Tabitha had
knocked her out cold, but she knew her face. She knew it because it was Thessia’s face, more or less, with that damned shimmer
effect.
It was all coming back now, the surreal events that had led to this moment.
Forget the scribesheets; this could be a plot in a shadow play, River thought, her mind searching for a comfortable distraction.
Because this was not gossip or make-believe. It was real. And without teleportation, she was once again trapped underground
with no escape.
“Of course Tabitha can trust me,” River assured the man. “I gave up everything to help her.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been spending all your time with Thessia,” said Golden Teeth. “We don’t know if you’re going to be calm
when we kill her.”
“You should definitely kill Thessia.” River’s tongue felt swollen, like her own body was trying to choke her for even saying
these words. “But . . . why, exactly? Won’t killing the queen be . . . um . . . pretty bad?”
As her vision began to clear, she realized she did not know the guild members watching over her.
These were the very top assassins, she figured, if they were allowed to be around Tabitha.
Or perhaps they were the newest. The most ignorant.
Because only a fool would let themselves get so close to someone as dangerous as Tabitha was, a woman wearing the face of the queen while actively stoking the flames of evil across two realms.
Either way, it didn’t really matter. River could not show her true hand to them.
“So Tabby can take her place, of course,” said Stackjack Loser. “From the throne, she can do anything.”
“Sure, sure,” River said, nodding. She wanted to vomit. Or scream. Perhaps both. “She can’t already do that now?”
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who claims to be on our side.” Stackjack Loser’s face turned red again. He was quick
to anger, dangerous in an unpredictable way. Definitely not the kind of assassin the guild would’ve once wanted. But that
guild no longer existed. Maybe it never had. Maybe everything had always been a lie.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m not at my sharpest.” River gestured to her aching head. “I’m loving everything you’re saying, I really
am.” This was over-the-top, but these men were not bright. For one, they didn’t have River secured. She could fight them if
she wanted. Jump on their stackjack table and shove coins into their throats until they choked.
They weren’t trained assassins. They couldn’t be.
They had to be mindless henchmen, chosen because they would do Tabitha’s bidding without question or complaint.
“You guys are just so clever,” River continued, playing it up way too much, watching as all four of them cracked smiles. “I
want to be sure I’m doing everything by the new honor code, you know? Which I assume you’re all a part of creating.”
They exchanged quick looks that told River they did not, in fact, have any part in developing the guild’s new honor code.
She pretended not to notice.
“I only want to know the Deathrose Guild’s new goals, that’s all,” she said. “So I can reach them.”
“You’re probably not old enough to remember the good days, but we used to be a proper realm full of bad guys,” said Golden Teeth.
“There was so Ghosts-damned much guild business back then,” said the man who wore, for some reason, a red neck scarf. “So
many people to kill.”
“Todrick van Thorn went about it all wrong,” said Stackjack Loser. “Sorry, do you know who that is?”
River was tired of this. Dougal had done it to her, too, assumed she didn’t know details about the most famous evil organization
in all of Mythria. The Fraternal Order’s initial reign of terror was in full swing when River joined the guild over a decade
ago. Of course she knew who Todrick van Thorn was—the Fraternal Order’s leader. River had actually killed some of his low-level
colleagues on her very first assignments with the guild.
But these men wanted her to seem young. Naive. She had to let them explain a history she’d lived through up close like it
was their story to tell, not hers.
“I think I’ve heard of him,” she said, nodding.
“He was way too showy,” chimed in a third man with a braided beard. His first words since River awoke. “He understood we needed
more villains to keep the realm in motion, but he didn’t understand the most important part about it.”
“Which is what?” River asked. She didn’t have to pretend to be riveted. She was. Just not in the way they thought.
“We need the villains to look like our heroes,” said Braided Beard. “That way, when they fall from grace, it stokes even more
fear. Even the good guys can be bad. Maybe everyone is bad. The system feeds itself that way.”
“With Tabitha ruling over the queendom as Thessia, we will never run out of work to do. People to kill. Chaos to chase,” Stackjack
Loser said.
“We’ll become infinite,” explained Red Scarf, grinning.
Outraged, River rose up to fight, but she was so lightheaded, she slumped down again, woozy. The guild wasn’t fighting villains;
they were creating them. All of this was nothing more than a sick game, designed to stoke flames of power and greed. River had played into it.
Not anymore.
The door flew open. Tabitha herself stormed into the room. A nasty gash across her face dripped blood onto the floor as she
moved. “Thessia escaped!” she said, seething with rage. She picked up the stackjack table and threw it against the wall, narrowly missing River’s
head.
“How?” the henchmen asked in unison.
“She spat on me. Then she used the tiara to cut me! And the ropes to free herself! All because of you!”
River bit back her grin. Thessia, the queen of Mythria, had spat? On the leader of the Deathrose Guild?
She expected Tabitha’s ire would be directed at her. But no, Tabitha was pointing a charmed fingernail at one of her henchmen,
waving it toward his face, then moving on to the next one.
Each man backed away, genuinely afraid of her touch.
“I will silence all of your powers right now,” Tabitha told the men. “And I’ll do it as often as I please, until you’ve all learned your lesson!”
That was Tabitha’s gift, then. She could touch people and take their magic from them. When she’d knocked River out, she’d
taken her gift of teleportation.
The ropes, River realized. When River was being held captive, Dougal had said he was using magical ropes that had been a collaboration
between Myke Lycroft and the new leader of the guild. It was Tabitha’s magic inside them. And it was her magic that had rendered
Galwell and Mona powerless.
The door flew open again. River knew that, despite her throbbing head and wobbly disposition, it was time to do her best to fight. Because this would surely be her end.
But more henchmen did not pour into the room.
Galwell and Mona did.
“Thessia sent us,” said Galwell, the wind from the opened door wooshing through his hair, as it so often did.
He threw a punch at Red Scarf, and River’s heart squeezed in relief. With Galwell’s strength, taking out four henchmen would
be child’s play. She didn’t need to do anything more than stay out of his way. But his punch turned out to be so pathetic—so
shockingly weak and misplaced—that Red Scarf actually laughed.
Galwell’s power was still silenced.
Mona followed up Galwell’s failed punch with a roundhouse kick that had slightly more effect, knocking Red Scarf back a few
steps.
“Mona the Merciless, here to join us?” asked Tabitha. She hadn’t bothered to assume a fighting posture. In fact, she stood
with her arms crossed and one eyebrow arched, so unlike the real Thessia, even while sharing her face and all her clothing.
Mona shoved Tabitha as hard as she could. “In your dreams.”
River was surprised to find tears spring to her eyes. Galwell and Mona were both fighting. For River. Still standing by her
side even though, for all they knew, she’d betrayed them.
It was very heroic. Perhaps the most heroic anyone could ever be.
Forget the wooziness. She had to join them.
Using an empty chair as a launch pad, she leapt up to reach for the pipes overhead, grabbing one with both hands and swinging
like it was a playground bar. She caught Red Scarf’s weapon sheath with her feet, one boot on either side of the dagger that
poked out from his right hip.