BRYTE'S ASCENT (Arucadi Series Book 8) Read online

  BRYTE’S ASCENT

  ARUCADI, BOOK 8

  E. ROSE SABIN

  ARUCADI ENTERPRISES, LLC

  ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

  2020

  BRYTE’S ASCENT

  E. Rose Sabin

  © 2010

  Arucadi Enterprises, LLC

  http://www.arucadienterprises.erosesabin.com/

  All Rights Reserved

  COVER ART BY IGOR DEŠIĆ, ©2018

  https://igordesic.artstation.com/

  Frontispiece by Anna Luther

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Tirbat

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE: STRANGERS

  CHAPTER TWO: THIRD TIER

  CHAPTER THREE: THE FLATS AGAIN

  CHAPTER FOUR: TROUBLE

  CHAPTER FIVE: POWER

  CHAPTER SIX: GIFTED

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

  CHAPTER EIGHT: FIFTH TIER

  CHAPTER NINE: THE TEMPLE OF MIBOR

  CHAPTER TEN: CHAINS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: UNEXPECTED HELP

  CHAPTER TWELVE: A DISASTROUS DESCENT

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CHASE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: BACK TO THE FLATS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE DIRE REALMS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: KANRA EXPLAINS

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE ABDUCTION

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: PEPPET AND PEPPINE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: SIXTH TIER

  CHAPTER TWENTY: LORD INVER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: LORD HALLOMER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE DIRE LORD

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: BENEATH BURNING SUNS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: DECISIONS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: FROM THE SEVENTH TIER TO …?

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY E. ROSE SABIN

  CHAPTER ONE

  STRANGERS

  It was already late afternoon, and Bryte had to visit Master Onigon before he closed his shop.

  Two male voices, bargaining over the price of a hat, came loudly from a shop Bryte was passing. She tuned out the sound. A woman from a balcony overhead called across the lane to another woman hanging clothes on a line strung from one balcony railing to another. Bryte ignored their gossipy banter and, wrinkling her nose, stepped carefully around the garbage tossed into the street, its smell strengthened by a recent rain.

  A shopkeeper two doors down told his assistant to cut back on the amount of wheat he was pouring into cloth bags. Bryte stored away that bit of information. It might be something she could use later. Not today.

  She focused her hearing, listening to the people on the lane: vendors, beggars, workers dragging home after a long day. No one seemed interested in her, and she heard no sound of footsteps sneaking up on her. Nothing but idle chatter. Confidently she entered the moneylender’s shop.

  She stepped over the large tabby cat snoozing in the doorway. It opened one eye, recognized her as a frequent visitor, closed the eye and went back to sleep.

  Another cat, a thin white tailless animal, greeted her in the shop, rubbing against her legs and mewing hopefully. She leaned down and scratched its ears until Master Onigon shooed it away.

  “Come in, Bryte, and welcome.” The heavy-bearded, bushy-browed moneylender smiled and rose from his chair. “Have a good day?”

  “Good enough,” she said with an answering smile.

  Master Onigon ushered her into his back room, brushing two more cats out of the way. She handed into his keeping the coins she’d gathered: a generous handful of coppers of assorted sizes and one silver coin.

  “A trium, eh?” Master Onigon held the coin close to his face and peered at it with his right eye; a black patch covered the left eye. “Was someone that generous or did you lift it?”

  “I earned it,” she said, grinning. “I earn all my money. Hurry up, now. Give me my accounting.”

  “Have patience,” the moneylender grumbled. “Let me get this into the safe.”

  He disappeared behind a curtain, and she listened to the sound of tumblers turning, a metal door clicking open, coins being stacked one on another. The metal door snicked shut, and Master Onigon reappeared, went to his desk, and took out a ledger, a sheet of lined paper, and a pen. The pen scratched against paper as he inscribed numbers into the ledger and copied those numbers onto the lined sheet. After blotting the sheet, he handed it to Bryte.

  “It’s getting to be a goodly sum. Not bad at all for a twelve-year-old girl,” he said.

  A voice called from the outer room, “Hey, Master One-Eye-Gone, you here?”

  “Be there in a minute,” Master Onigon shouted back, ignoring the nickname all the locals used for him.

  All but Bryte. She’d learned that despite the patch that hid what she assumed was an empty socket, Master Onigon saw more than most people. He was one of the very few people she trusted, and for that reason she placed into his care the money she earned each day begging, stealing, guiding tourists around the city, or selling cheap trinkets.

  “I don’t want to be seen here,” she whispered.

  He motioned her to a back door, unlocked it, and let her slip out. She smiled to hear the lock snap shut behind her.

  She hurried away from Master Onigon’s shop, the paper he’d given her folded small and hidden in her closed hand. The beggar children who hung around the shop were ever curious, and although they could not read words, they read numbers well enough. It would not do to let them know the size of the sum she’d deposited with the moneylender.

  She walked rapidly to the spot where she could safely open her hand, unfold the paper, and read the neat column of numbers. Most people avoided this low, bare mound sandwiched between ramshackle buildings because it gave off a sense of horror and menace that grew stronger as night approached.

  Bryte’s curiosity had first attracted her to the mound. She’d overcome her fear of the place, and here at this hour she felt reasonably safe from attack by marauding gangs or a lone opportunist. Now her daily visits were so routine that she scarcely noticed the feeling of dread that deterred others.

  The mound was not far from the thick stone wall surrounding Tirbat’s first tier, and its top was almost on a level with the top of that wall. Unlike the walls supporting the higher tiers, invisible behind flowering vines, the first tier’s retaining wall was unadorned except for an occasional scrawny weed that had taken root in a chink between stones. Most of the buildings on the first tier had no more than one or two stories, and Bryte could easily see above their roofs to the city’s upper tiers.

  Her view extended all the way to the crowning tier, the seventh, where a single tall palace of white marble gleamed in the late afternoon sun. In that building the Triumvirate that ruled all of Arucadi held its councils and its three members had their offices. From that tier Bryte’s gaze traveled down to the tier directly below it, on which imposing white-colonnaded buildings held the offices and council chambers of the principal governing agencies that served under the Triumvirate. Interspersed with those buildings were massive monuments to outstanding leaders of the past. Those two highest tiers formed the very heart of Arucadi—not the geographical center but the center of government for the vast continent-spanning nation.

  Somewhere in that imposing sixth tier her father, Stavros Hallomer, Minister of Commerce, had his office, from which he issued regulations, imposed restrictions, or dispensed advice and assistance that made or destroyed businesses throughout the nation. She had no idea where that office
was—in which building or even in what segment of the circle of buildings—so her gaze did not linger on that tier but shifted to the fifth.

  On the edge of the fifth tier she could spot a fine home with a balcony from which the residents could look down over the four lower tiers. In that house lived her father and Ileta, the sister she’d never met, the sister who, unlike her, had been granted her father’s name and a share in his wealth and social position.

  Bryte’s mother had been wed to Lord Hallomer shortly after the death of his first wife, mother of Ileta, but the marriage had not lasted. For reasons Bryte did not understand, Lord Hallomer had sent his young wife away shortly before Bryte’s birth. Her father must know of Bryte’s existence, but he’d never given any indication of caring. Bryte had heard that he’d married a third time, but of that marriage she knew only that it, too, had not lasted long.

  Ileta, Lord Hallomer’s only acknowledged heir, enjoyed all the privileges that Bryte had been denied.

  Sometimes she spied a small figure on the high balcony. It was too far to make out any distinguishing features, but Bryte liked to believe it was her fortunate half-sister. The balcony was empty this evening, but still Bryte followed her daily routine.

  “Today I earned nineteen copper coins: eleven midis, six minis, and two great coppers. Plus, I earned a single silver trium,” she whispered, imagining her sister listening. “That brings my total to 13 triums, 48 mini-coppers, 18 midis, and 11 greats. That may not seem much to you, Ileta, but there’s more every day. I’ll soon have enough to start a business. And one day, not too far from now, I’ll be as rich as you. Then you’ll know who I am, and you’ll envy me the way I’ve envied you.”

  It was the same promise, the same vow she’d made every evening since her mother died and she’d been forced to make her own way in the world. Her ritual finished, she refolded the paper, placed it carefully in a pocket of the tunic she wore over baggy trousers, and after a last look at the house on the fifth tier, she descended the mound. She headed for the shelter she’d fashioned of mud and sticks under the Sarun Bridge to avoid spending her precious savings on housing.

  The sun had not yet set, but the shadows of the surrounding buildings had fallen over the mound. Even Bryte could not abide the site when darkness claimed it. She hurried to the lane where she should turn left to take the route to the bridge. At that point, although she heard no one behind her, hands grasped her shoulders and turned her to the right.

  A glance behind her confirmed that no one was there. More curious than afraid, she continued in the direction in which she’d been turned.

  The lane wound back toward Master Onigon’s place of business, but she did not go that far. When she would have crossed a wider, straighter street, again a ghostly grip pointed her to the right and sent her up the street. She thought she heard a low chuckle followed by the distant sound of a melody played on pipes.

  The noise of traffic swallowed the sound—the clip clop of horses pulling carriages, the dinging of bicycle bells, even the occasional roar of a motorcar.

  The rumble of a more powerful engine and a heavy odor of exhaust fumes warned her of a bus coming into the station toward which her path was taking her. The late bus from Kannia swung into the bus bay. Faces peered through its windows, people coming home or visiting friends or perhaps seeking their fortunes in the nation’s capital.

  The bus’s arrival explained the heavy traffic. Cabs and carriages had gathered to take the travelers to homes or hotels on upper levels. The large buses could not negotiate the steep and narrow ramp leading to the first tier, so they discharged their passengers in a station built on the flats. Peace Officers guarded the station, and porters hurried the passengers to a carriage or hailed a cab to take them above the flats as quickly as possible.

  As Bryte stood watching, a young couple emerged from the station and looked around. No porter was in attendance, nor were they carrying any luggage other than a single leather bag too small to hold more than cosmetics or a shaving kit. They were both dressed entirely in black, which marked them as first-time visitors to Tirbat. Here in southern Arucadi the heat and humidity led people, residents and visitors alike, to favor bright colors and more casual fashions than would be acceptable in the large cities of the north.

  These two seemed unbothered by the summer heat. Their proud carriage and their long, steady strides spoke of determination and confidence. Bryte fell into position behind them, not close enough to alert them to her presence but close enough to allow her to hear their conversation.

  The girl was speaking. “I’m tired of sitting. I don’t care if it is a long walk to the first tier. I need to stretch my legs.”

  “So do I, but not that far. It’s almost dark and this section isn’t well lighted.”

  The girl laughed, a low, musical laugh. “You aren’t afraid, are you?”

  “No, just prudent.”

  She laughed harder at that. “When have you ever been prudent, Oryon Brew?”

  He laughed, too, and Bryte liked his laugh. Light and cheery, it made Bryte eager to see his face and that of his companion.

  She was edging around to pass them and turn back to get a good look at them, when the young man spoke. His words stopped Bryte and made her fall back again.

  “I’ve been more prudent than you, Lina,” he said, then added, lowering his voice, “And it isn’t as though we can’t afford a carriage.”

  “This has nothing to do with money, as you well know,” she retorted, keeping her voice low, too, though Bryte easily heard every word. “You can take a carriage if you want. I prefer to walk. And I can go faster on my own.”

  The young man, Oryon, stopped so abruptly that Bryte nearly bumped into him. He turned toward the girl, enough that Bryte could see his profile—dark eye, straight nose, square chin. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said, his voice suddenly hard and angry. “In a strange city? It wouldn’t be safe.”

  The girl he’d called Lina tossed her head and laughed. “Safe for whom?” And then, more appeasingly, “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  Bryte had to know what they were talking about. And the money—she wanted to know more about that, also. She drifted closer until she was directly behind the young man. The outline of his wallet showed clearly in his back pocket; it would be simple to ease it out and melt back into the crowd.

  Except that there was no crowd. Bryte had been so intent on the couple and their fascinating conversation that she had not realized how far from the bus station they’d come. All the others who’d arrived on the bus had apparently taken their carriages or cabs and gone on their way. They were still on the wide street that led to the ramp to the first tier, but now there was little traffic and the few pedestrians were widely scattered. Although she was walking very softly, her own footsteps sounded like drumbeats to her ears.

  She should slow to let them get farther from her, but this main street was still in the flats and not a safe place to be alone after dark. But that fat wallet was too tempting to resist. She reached toward it.

  The young man whirled around and clamped his hand around her wrist. She tried to twist loose, but his grip was powerful.

  “Who are you and why have you been following us?” he demanded.

  She could see both eyes now, dark and piercing and full of menace.

  “I meant no harm, sir, ma’am.” The last she added hastily, for the young woman had also turned and was glaring at her with a look even fiercer than his. “I thought you might need a guide. I can lead you to a fine hotel or show you other sights.”

  “At this hour?” The young woman’s scornful laugh sent chills crawling up Bryte’s spine. How could she have been so careless as to be caught in this way?

  “You were after my wallet,” the young man accused.

  “I ... No, I was only reaching out to touch your arm, to get your attention. I wanted to offer my services. It’s night, and this isn’t a safe part of town.”

  She was talking too fast, and th
eir expressions said plainly that her lie was not believed. But she had considered offering them her services as a guide, so it was not truly a lie.

  “How old are you?” the girl called Lina asked sharply.

  “Thirteen.” That wasn’t a lie, either—at least, not much of one. She would be thirteen in another month. “I’m a good guide. I have lots of experience, and my service is reasonable,” she went on, a bit too recklessly. “I’ll even give you a special rate.”

  “Indeed,” Lina’s voice became a dangerous purr. “I should think you would. In fact, I think you might pay us not to hurt you. We can, you know.”

  Her companion frowned, but Bryte did not for a moment doubt that she spoke the truth.

  The two looked at each other. “What shall we do with her, Oryon?” Lina asked. “I’m not inclined to just let her go.”

  “We could use a guide. I think we should accept her services,” he said. “Her pay will be that we will release her unharmed when she’s taken us safely to our destination.”

  With a wicked smile Lina nodded and turned to Bryte, “You shall find us a hotel. A good one, mind. Not too expensive, but decent, not a dump. One that’s clean, offers good service—”

  “And has a restaurant that stays open late,” Oryon broke in. “I’m hungry.”

  Bryte looked up the street. “I can find one, but not here in the flats and not even on the first tier if you want a restaurant that’ll be open late. We’ll have to go at least to the second tier. It’s too far to walk, and it’ll be hard now to find a carriage.”

  “Ah, but you’re an excellent guide, didn’t you say?” Lina’s lips quirked into a smile.

  They’re enjoying this. The girl, especially. She’s like a cat toying with a mouse. Bryte was angry. After all, she hadn’t actually done anything.

  “I’ll take you where you want to go. But by the time we reach the kind of hotel you want it’ll be too late and too dangerous for me to come back here alone, and I have no money for a cab. If you expect me to take you, you’ll have to hire a carriage to bring me back.”