A Country Falls (Greatest Thief 3) - Chapter 30: Chapter 30

I felt like a proper spy as I climbed down the wall in the dark. The multitude of tapestries and paintings made some parts of the climb tricky, but I made it down pretty quietly, all things considered. Not that it mattered.
She had seen me right from the start and watched my whole descent.
Kassia lounged on the throne, legs carelessly draped over the right armrest. Her left arm rested on the other armrest, holding a large glass of golden liquid that looked like the ovaisi I had once served Queen Navire. Her clothes were stained brown with dried blood, but I doubted any of it was hers.
On the steps near the throne, Vali sat with his head buried in his arms. Despite all the death around the throne room, he looked untouched. Exhausted and frightened, but not harmed.
Kassia tutted as I stepped up onto the first stair. "Finagale." She stressed every syllable in my name. "I would say I was surprised, but that would be a lie. The gods favour you." She held up her glass, somehow making the action look mocking. "Praise to—who do you worship? It doesn't matter." She muttered a prayer in Deoran, then lowered the glass to her lips to take a sip. "Where's Lord West Draulin?"
"What?"
"Don't play dumb. You're wearing new clothes and you look less ragged. You obviously escaped and came back. With your lord and knights in tow, I expect. And for what? To kill Kalvahi? Well, you're too late."
"He's dead?" Hope and relief bubbled up inside me.
Kassia laughed. "Dead? That would have been noble. No, he fled. The moment the king died. Like a coward. And so nobody's here to run Deorun. Or to care about it."
The hope and relief deflated, but only for a moment. Kalvahi scared me more than Kassia, and she was the one sitting on Deorun's throne. "What about you?"
"Ah." She sipped more of her drink. "Three problems with that. One." She held up a single finger. "I'm not Deoran. Two." A second finger. "I'm not part of the royal family. And three." A third. "I'm a woman. Even if I was a princess, even if I had married Kalvahi, it wouldn't matter. Not in Deorun."
Over the course of her list, her voice had changed subtly. It was like the moment in Zianna when she had dropped her Zian accent to reveal her Deorun one. But even that had been fake. It felt like I was finally hearing her true voice.
"Who else is there?" Without looking, I gestured towards the bodies behind me. "It doesn't seem like there are many people left. Why are you still here if you aren't going to take charge?"
Her gaze flickered to Vali's back, then back to me. "You mean why didn't I run away like a coward?"
"No." Whether intentional or not, her glance had given me the answer I needed. She was here because Vali wouldn't have been able to keep up with her. She wasn't going to leave him to take the fall. Not like she had left me in Zianna two years ago. "You're not a coward, that's why you didn't run away. For all your talk of how bad ties are, you do care about people."
"Hmm."
"You were going to save me from Kalvahi's torture."
"I was going to kill you," she snapped.
I nodded. "Exactly. You care. I think you're still here because you still want to protect Deorun."
Kassia shrugged carelessly. "Is Deorun going to exist? Once you report back and your armies break through the gate, what happens to Deorun?"
"I don't know."
"What's going to happen to the people?"
"I don't know," I repeated, but I had been in enough meetings to have some sort of answer for her. "Queen Navire talked about joining the war to help free Navire's desert brothers from cruel leaders. Tandrin wants to avoid more bloodshed on both sides. They have good intentions."
"Good intentions," Kassia scoffed. "The Teltans sweeping through, suppressing Deorans the way they did your people. And in another four hundred years, people will think that's just the way it has always been. Queen Navire was wrong to side with Zianna."
"Deorun started this."
"King Idavari started this."
"You helped him," I said. "You tried to kill King Edarius, and you killed Tannix's father. King Deorun couldn't have started the war without you."
"Yes, I'm the villain in all of this, aren't I?" Kassia sipped more of her drink. "I assassinated Lord Tandrael West Draulin. You assassinated King Deorun—at least, the scheme was yours, even if you didn't administer the poison yourself. Does that make you so much better than me?"
Her words pierced deep, and I searched for anything that made the situations different. "I did it to survive, and to end the war, and save lives."
"And coming back to kill Kalvahi?"
"That's not why we're here."
"No?"
"No," I said firmly. "We're here to rescue Lady Mayah. And Vali, if he wants to join us."
She tilted her head quizzically. "You want to get him out? As a prisoner?"
"He helped me escape. I want to return the favour," I said. "You want him to be safe, don't you? That's why you killed all those people?" It was a guess, but I thought it was a fairly safe one.
Kassia blinked slowly. "Not all of them."
Her dry tone sent chills up my back. "Kassia. We can help keep him safe. Please tell me where we can find Mayah, and Vali can come with us. Then you can get out on your own, without worrying about him. No ties. Isn't that what you want?"
Instead of answering me, Kassia spoke in Deoran. Vali, who I reminded myself could speak decent Teltish and had likely understood our whole conversation, lifted his head and replied listlessly. Neither of them paid me any attention for a while, just talking back and forth.
I flinched when Kassia's glass shattered against the stones. She swung her legs over the armrest and got to her feet. "Let's go. I'll take you to Lady Mayah."
We had to go back to the knights first, I had left them long enough. Kassia let me lead the way. She had a knife in each hand, but I wasn't afraid of her. For whatever reason, she wanted Vali out of the city. She hadn't managed to get him out herself, or maybe she just didn't know what to do with him once they were outside. Either way, I believed that she knew we were his best chance. Also, she had always seemed to like Mayah.
I slipped into the room first. The knights were waiting in the dark, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see them standing in a tense circle, weapons drawn.
"Did you find her?" Jalor spoke first.
"I found—"
"Lady Mayah." Kassia stepped into the room behind me. If she was nervous at all, she didn't show it. "Is—"
There was an immediate reaction. Tannix took a step forward, Acen moved to catch him, the twins drew arrows, Mandell clamped his injured hand on Jalor's shoulder. I stepped in front of Kassia, hands up like I could ward them all back.
"Wait. Just... listen," I said.
"As I was saying," Kassia continued dryly, "Lady Mayah is safely locked away. I thought that would be the best place for her to wait for your armies to charge in and take the city."
"Where?" Jalor snarled.
"I'll take you to her, in exchange for you taking him." She gestured at Vali, who the knights hadn't even acknowledged. "He helped Finn escape. And if that's not enough motivation, I'd say he more than earned your protection when he killed King Deorun."
Tannix pushed past Acen's hand. I became the only obstacle between him and Kassia. He paused the moment my hand touched his chest, but his gaze didn't waver and he glared at her over my shoulder.
"If this is some sort of trap—"
Kassia tutted. "Don't you trust Finn?"
"He's judged you wrong before," Tannix said. "And that was before you killed my father."
"All that aside, in this moment, I have a very transparent goal," Kassia said. "I want you and your men to take him out of the city. And, to be entirely candid, I want Lady Mayah out of Deorun, too. Before someone remembers that she's here. Maybe you haven't noticed, Lord West Draulin, but this castle has become a dangerous place. Every moment you stand there, brimming with anger, is a moment we might be discovered by rogue soldiers."
"I don't trust you."
"No, you shouldn't," Kassia agreed. "But right now, Finn does. And I trust you. Not in any personal, emotional way. I just trust that you're going to do what's best for your men and Lady Mayah. Which right now involves following my lead. So. Do we have an understanding?"
Tannix's gaze flickered to meet mine. He wasn't happy, but there really wasn't any other choice. When he turned back to Kassia, it was with a firm, but reluctant, nod.
"We have an understanding."
We would have never found Mayah without Kassia. She walked up front, with me and Tannix close behind. The knights spread out behind us, keeping Vali somewhere in the middle where he could both be protected and carefully watched.
I quickly started to realize how lucky we had been to not come across any soldiers earlier. As we moved through the castle, we kept having to duck out of sight as groups of Deorans went by, at one point even backtracking and taking another route when our path was blocked by what looked like a makeshift camp. We passed more signs of wreckage, more dead bodies—most of which appeared to be nobles. It was hard to imagine that all of the destruction had happened in the few days since the king's death.
Our caution paid off, and we were getting close when Kassia, just a step ahead of me, froze and swore. I threw out an arm to stop Tannix. We were still hidden around the corner.
Someone down the hall spoke in Deoran. Kassia answered. I tried to read her tone and her body language. She sounded at ease, but her fingers were tight around the handles of her knives. I didn't know if we should back up and hide or get ready to fight.
Then Vali crept up between me and Tannix. "She is saying to them that they should leave the castle. It is dangerous." He paused, and we could hear laughing from down the hall. "They are saying she is a woman alone, they can make her safe. But they mean..."
We could guess what they meant, judging from the way Kassia bristled. When she replied, there was a fake lightness to her voice.
"What should we do?" Tannix whispered.
It was Kassia who answered, in Teltish. "Lord West Draulin, I might need some assistance."
Before we could really understand what she had said, two men stepped into view. Even without understanding their words, there was no mistaking their intent. They snickered at whatever Kassia was harshly saying, and replied with condescending tones. Then one of them reached towards her.
And Kassia stabbed her knife through his hand.
He stumbled back, and the second man started to draw his sword, only to freeze with a pained grunt as Tannix's sword sliced into his back. The first man had recovered enough to pull out a knife, and he slashed uselessly at Tannix.
For a moment, it didn't seem like they were enemies. Tannix sidestepped and Kassia smoothly stepped into his place to deal with the Deoran. There were angry shouts as other men further down the hall realized what was going on and ran to join the fight. Tannix met them head on with his sword while Kassia effortlessly moved around him with her knives. If I hadn't known better, I would have assumed it was something they practiced. None of the knights even moved to help. They were probably as mesmerized as I was.
When the fight was over, Kassia flashed Tannix a grin. "You are quite the swordsman, Lord West Draulin."
"We're not allies," he replied gruffly. "Keep walking."
"Hmm. But it's a shame, isn't it? We'd be excellent allies." She wiped her knives on one of the bodies, then stepped over it to continue down the hall. "We're almost there," she called over her shoulder.
Tannix grumbled something and followed. I rushed to catch up, and the knights took up their line behind me once again. It was only a few more turns before Kassia stopped in front of a solid metal door. She reached under the collar of her tunic and pulled out a key.
Tannix immediately plucked it from her hand. "Mayah is in this room?"
"Unless she's managed an incredible escape," Kassia said lightly. "But I doubt it, given that Finn is right here."
"Watch her." Tannix said it to no one in particular, but Acen took a step closer to Kassia. She smiled at him, entirely unconcerned by his proximity.
The hall felt eerily silent as Tannix slipped the key into the lock. It turned with a satisfying click, and Tannix tentatively pushed the door open to reveal a dark room. His fingers tightened around his sword as he took a careful step forward.
There was movement in the dark. Tannix stumbled backwards, his left hand thrown up over his face. The men moved—Acen slammed Kassia back against the wall, Joen yanked Tannix back a step while Evrik and Jalor stepped in front of him, weapons drawn.
Tannix dropped his left hand, and I caught a glimpse of his blood-stained palm.
"Tannix?" I tried to step closer, but Kor had an arm around my waist, and I hadn't even noticed being grabbed.
"I'm fine." Tannix shot me a glance. There was a cut across his forehead, and the skin around his left eye was red and already looked a little puffy. But if the whole thing had been some sort of trap, it wasn't a very effective one.
"I'm so sorry!" a familiar voice said, and we all turned to look at the darkness.