Outside Influences

Bel quietly closed the door behind them. Then she deadbolted it forcefully enough to create a loud and satisfying clunk. She trailed after her brother and they paused at the first pair of doors. James swept his hand out, inviting her to go first, so Bel chose to head into the room on the left while he went into the one on the right. She felt like the fool walking into the villain’s lair in one of James’ stories, but she couldn’t restrain her pulse from quickening with excitement. There were probably terrible things in Technis’ temple, but maybe there were wonderful things as well. Treasures and secrets and clear explanations for exactly who she was, where she came from, and why Technis had her locked away.

She didn’t think it likely that they would find something about her past or the priests’ plans, but the small chance – just the tiniest sliver of a hope – still made her fingers twitch with anticipation.

The first door on the left opened with a soft whine of its hinges and – in defiance of her expectations – revealed an exceedingly boring room. Bel realized that the hallway was not, in fact, hiding chambers filled with treasures or torture chambers or storage rooms with jars of eyeballs and other organs. Disappointment filled her as she strode through a messy room filled with papers and old, musty robes and curtains. She had found a very boring and not at all sinister storage room.

Bel blew a raspberry and left the first room, hoping that the second would be more interesting. The second door opened to reveal a room that was filled with papers. They were piled in messy stacks on a desk, crammed into – and overflowing from – cubby holes on the walls, and teetering in Bel-height stacks on the ground. Bel retreated to grab a lit candle from the hallway so she could read them. There was a chance that some of the papers held the secrets that she yearned for.

A few minutes of reading revealed no answers, only frustration. There were stacks and stacks of boring reports on congregation counts, accounting of some repairs to the roof, the purchase of additional fish for a festival, and more endless, mindless, and tedious details. Bel almost screamed when she found an audit of all the drapes stored in the previous storage room.

There was nothing about underground torture chambers, the Old World, or why Technis’ High Temple would perform strange experiments upon people and animals. Nothing about why they had imprisoned Bel and James in their basement. No mention of their enforcers or the secret inquisitions that were the stuff of her nightmares. The most dangerous thing about the papers was the tripping hazard they presented.

“Hey, come look at this!”

Bel eagerly abandoned her current search and moved back to the door at her brother’s shout. She gleefully tossed her procured candle into a pile of hateful reports on livestock on the way out. Perhaps all of their records will burn to a crisp and someone will get fired, she thought. Such petty revenge wouldn’t satisfy her, but at least it was something.

“Bel! Over here! I’ve found something good!”

Bel exited the paper room and crossed the hall to see what had gotten her brother so excited. His room looked similar to the one she had just left, although instead of papers it was filled with dusty paintings, vases, wooden carvings, and other seemingly random items.

Her grinning brother held a fistful of small, glimmering stones aloft triumphantly. “These should be enough for your–”

His eyes widened as he looked past her shoulder. Bel spun to see a man in leather armor entering the room, his hand on his half-unsheathed sword. Bel didn’t hesitate to hurl herself at the guard.

Bel thought that she’d be run through immediately, but a prodigious stack of old robes came to her rescue by catching the pommel of the man’s weapon as he fully withdrew it from the sheath. Before the guard could interpose his weapon into her path, Bel slammed her shoulder into his unprotected body.

Unprotected except for his leather armor and a faint blue sheen that covered him. Of course he has a barrier ability, he’s one of Technis’ followers, she thought angrily.

She didn’t even think he’d be winded by her assault. Her only chance was to keep him too off-balance to fight back. Beth’s harsh training kicked in and Bel wrapped her arms around her opponent’s invulnerable torso, pinning his sword between their bodies. She planted her feet on the dusty ground and shoved him back through the doorway.

She shifted him like a wrestler forcing a ring out, keeping him off-balance as he struggled to break her grip. As they passed through the doorway on the opposite side of the hallway he released his sword to grab onto the door frame. In a move that Beth had endlessly drilled into her, Bel’s leg snapped out between his and blocked the heel of his trailing leg. She shoved him with all of her strength and his hold on the door frame slipped. Bel felt a moment of elation as she saw the man toppling backwards, but the guard’s hand found the front of her cloak – and Bel suddenly found herself spinning through the air as the guard planted a foot and redirected their momentum.

Stars spun in her vision as her back struck the hard stone floor. Bel belatedly realized that a guard would obviously be a better fighter than her.

She tried to focus as the blurry form of the guard dragged a long knife from a sheath at his side. Her body moved instinctively, but a wave of weakness made her slip. She slumped back to the cold stone floor, helpless. She looked up to her impending doom, but before the guard could stab downwards there was a sharp sound of ringing metal.

The guard’s head snapped to the side and he staggered, barely keeping his feet. James struck the guard with a heavy candelabra a second time, then a third, continuing his brutal assault until the guard’s blue barrier failed him and his helmed dented inward. James didn’t drop his weapon until the guard’s body fell to the ground.

Bel stared numbly at the rapidly expanding pool of blood coming from the dead man’s head. The deep crimson fluid rushed along the cracks in the stone floor before filling in the spaces in between.

James was breathing heavily and the candelabra shook loose from his trembling hand. Bel wanted to offer him help, but she was still struggling to stand. James had never become accustomed to death the same way that she had, and he swore off violence every time he saw the aftermath of Beth’s brutal fights. Bel finally got her feet under her and got to her feet. She patted his shoulder soothingly as she leaned against him for support.

“Go and check the hallway to make sure there isn’t another one,” she mumbled at him. It was an excuse to get him to stop staring at the body more than anything useful. If there was a second guard then they would have already showed up.

Bel tried to get herself moving, but her body was wrung out. She struggled to regain control of her breathing while she inspected herself for injuries. Her cloak was cut up from where she’d pinned the guard’s sword, and there was blood over her stomach and chest, but she didn’t see anything too deep. She was beginning to drip a small trail of blood, though.

She glanced at the corpse where the glazed eyes of the dead man stared back at her accusingly. “You or us,” she muttered.

It was something Beth often said when she stabbed someone. Bel had found the words to be true, even if she didn’t understand why Technis had it out for her.

Of course, this particular fight was one that we started, she thought. Beth would probably be proud.

James leaned back into the room. His eyes twitched towards the corpse, but he blocked his vision with a hand and focused on her. “The hallway looks clear, Bel. I found a door at the end that leads out into an alley. It’s full of trash and stuff, but it’s empty.”

He glanced up and down, taking in the dark liquid soaking into the front of her cloak. “Are you okay to move? Shit, are you bleeding out?”

“It’s not that bad,” she reassured him. “Just give me some help.”

She held up an arm and James ducked down so she would put it around his shoulders. Then he wrapped his arm around her started guiding her forward.

As they stumbled down the hallway, Bel remembered that James had been trying to get her attention. “What did you find?” she asked.

“Oh.” James reached into his pocket and fished out a large essence stone–at least twice as large as what Beth told them to fetch for the ritual. “Three of these. So at least we don’t have to go shopping.”

Beth chuckled.

James grinned back at her, but then he paused and sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”

Beth winced as a laugh moved the flesh around her cuts. “Yeah. I may have started a small fire.”

James’ eyes widened. “Bel! I didn’t know you were an arsonist!”

“It turns out that I hate paperwork.”

Beth stared at them as they finished recounting their harrowing adventure.

“So you sacked the temple.”

“Whoah, Beth, sacked is a strong word,” James objected.

“You killed the guard, stole their stuff, and left it on fire. I think the term ‘visit’ wouldn’t quite cover it, don’t you think?”

Beth clicked her tongue and dabbed at another one of Bel’s cuts with a stinging liquid that also made Bel’s eyes water.

Bel idly pulled at one of her dead snakes, looking into its lifeless eyes while James tried to make nice with their sister.

“You know Beth, it all happened so fast. And it really was the best way to avoid the inquisitor.”

Beth’s eyebrows went up. “Really? Sacking their temple was the best way? Didn’t I tell you to avoid attention?”

“Well…at least we got these nice essence stones. Can’t you use them for Bel’s ritual?”

Beth sighed and glanced at the glimmering rocks.

“Yeah. But first we need to get out of here. Grab your panic bags, we’ve got to go.”

Bel frowned. “Beth, I don’t–”

“No arguing. James can carry your stuff. And speaking of carrying stuff, give me those stones.”

Beth held out her hand impatiently. “They’re very fragile.”

Bel shoved her bloody shirt back over her wounds. “I can carry my own stuff,” she insisted.

She stood up and swayed in place for a moment before leaning on Beth. “Okay, I can carry a little bit of my stuff.”

Beth lowered her back onto the rock that she’d been using as a seat. “Just wait here for a minute Bel. It’s not like we’ve got much to carry. Drink and eat, carrying something in your stomach is just as good as carrying it on your back.”

Beth, who had more strength than Bel and James combined, rushed through their campsite cramming things into an enormous bag. She was right that they didn’t have much: just a few bed rolls, some tarp for cover when it rained, a few spare sets of clothes, a pot for cooking, a small supply of dried food, and, of course, Beth’s extensive collection of knives and daggers.

Beth checked over the weaponry that she’d strapped to her body before looking at her siblings.

“You two good?” Beth paused just long enough to look at Bel and James before she pushed them out of the little clearing that they’d been calling home for the last week. “Let’s get going then. I hear that central Satrap is nice in the spring. We’ll head over to one of the delvers’ tunnels and take a shortcut through the hills.”

Bel and James groaned. Beth had dragged them through one of the Delvers’ tunnels shortly after they escaped from the High Temple. Things hadn’t gone well.

The tunnels had been dark and hazardous, and Bel had twisted her ankle at least five times. There were also essence corrupted creatures, crawling bugs and skittering things turned unnaturally large from the energy of the world. Bel hadn’t been able to sleep without enclosing herself in a protective cocoon of blankets for a week afterwards.

Compared to James though, she had handled them well. At least she didn’t scream as loudly as him when the first one had scuttled out of the darkness.

“You know, going over the hills doesn’t sound so bad,” James suggested. “The air in those tunnels is probably bad for us anyway.”

Beth snorted. “Don’t worry, I’ll see if I can hire a delver or two this time. I’ve been saving up, and you saved all that money by stealing the essence stones instead of buying them.” Beth patted one of her pockets, eliciting the jangle of money.

James looked at her, wordlessly asking for help. Bel shrugged back. What could she say to change Beth’s mind?

James huffed, clearly assigning some of the blame to her. “What about going to the Points? Isn’t North Point just down the coast? We could take a boat and, you know, not walk.”

Beth clicked her tongue. “Yeah, I dunno about that. I’ve been hearing that this is a bad time to go visit.” Beth fiddled with one of her bracelets and pursed her lips. “There’s some… unrest. Especially at sea. Lots of unrest there.”

James narrowed his eyes. “Does this have something to do with why we had to be out of Baytown by noon? And what you were up to in the morning? Were you just lecturing us about setting a little fire at a temple when you were out doing something worse? Maybe burning down the docks?”

“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” Beth denied. “And the docks aren’t on fire.”

James’ eyes narrowed. “So you admit that you were there.”

Bel grinned. “You know, James has a point. Why do you yell at us for getting into a little bit of trouble when you go out and do way worse?”

Beth held up a finger. “First, I get out of the trouble that I get into without getting all cut up.” Beth gestured at Bel’s bandaged midsection.

“And second, I don’t let trouble follow me. Speaking of which…” Beth spun and looked them in the eyes.

“Do you know what helps me listen for sounds of pursuit, kids? The pursuit that is most certainly following the trail that you left?”

Bel and James looked at one another guiltily. They had been too worried about getting out of Baytown quickly to worry about what would come next.

The assassin smiled warmly at them. “Quiet. That’s what’ll help me listen for pursuit. Absolute quiet.” She nodded happily and gestured for them to follow along as she resumed their rapid hike. Lips pressed shut, they followed along behind.