Chapter 11 (Part IV): Faith and Trust

Following Jericho in the dim light of a luminous phial, Verax stepped carefully on the slick stonework that ran along the inside of the tunnel. He wasn’t thrilled to be back in the city’s underworks, but he’d decided that being prepared to destroy the dragon with Meingen's weapon was essential. Verax had very high regard for Azraea’s abilities, but her plan was audacious - a lot could go wrong. 
Still, Verax saw the bomb as a last resort, and had certainly wanted something between 'Plan A' and 'Plan Bomb'. If things went pear-shaped, he wanted some opportunity to put them back on track before blowing up the city, and if Verax did have to use the bomb, he wanted to light its proverbial fuse right under her scaly ass. Either of those points meant getting into the castle, and for that, he needed help from the locals. 

Jericho, it turned out, had known of a discrete entrance into the castle from the catacombs – likely used by Caelus IV’s knights after they infiltrated the city from the drainage culvert Verax had used to get in. The catch, however, had been that the secret entrance was more of a secret exit – it required someone inside the castle to open. When Caelus IV had made his attempt, it had been his cousin Flaedin who’d let him in. Jericho could lead Verax to the secret entrance, but he'd need the aid of one of Schroeder’s contacts to open it, and the man seemed very anxious about risking that person’s position to get anyone into the castle. Eventually, though, Verax had persuaded both men that it was necessary. 

The Gnoman agent had discretely approached both of them, cautiously disclosing his own doubts and apprehensions. With the seeds of doubt sewn, Jericho and Schroeder's protectiveness of the young woman had overridden their faith in her abilities, and the two older men had quietly agreed to Verax's plan to infiltrate the castle, despite agreeing to Azraea's plan upfront. It wasn’t the first time Verax had exploited paternal sexism, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. 
They had agreed that once their men could fulfill their duties without further direction, the three of them should infiltrate the castle and position themselves to bail Azraea out of trouble if her plan didn’t go as she hoped it would. The three of them would charge in, grab their friend, and pull her out. Verax, of course, did not mention anything about the deadly burden he carried in his overstuffed backpack, and with the two men focused on a possible damsel-in-distress scenario, it had been easy to deflect their curiosity. If the dragon didn’t leave, or if it returned without being dispatched by Azraea’s friends, Verax was prepared to sacrifice Kingstown just as Meingen had planned.

Of course, while Verax had been competent enough to follow Meingen's very well drafted blueprints to complete the weapon, he wasn't gifted the way Ochsner or even Vicki were. He'd had no way to devise a delayed firing mechanism for the device. In a late night, long distance discussion, Vicki had taught him what she could about fuses and explosives - including new things she'd learned from Ochsner - but this weapon was quite unlike the shells they were loading into the ballistic pipe. Even the 'simple' explosive used to trigger the bigger explosion was something Vicki had struggled to explain to her commander - it's malleable, clay-like composition was entirely different from the volatile explosive powder used in the most advanced Gnoman weaponry. The two of them had both realized - reluctantly - that they had no hope of inventing a tigger mechanism overnight; Verax would have to fire the weapon manually, sacrificing his life to end the dragon’s threat once and for all.

Verax couldn’t think of that as ‘unfortunate’ though. For one thing, it meant there’d be zero potential error – he’d fire it when the time was right, giving the dragon no opportunity for escape. Rationally, that was how he justified his sacrifice. Emotionally, though… even accounting for the evacuation of a large portion of the populace, Verax knew that the weapon would wreak horrific destruction if he used it. Thousands of innocent and valorous Caelians would die. That being the case, it felt right that Verax should have to pay the cost of his own life, if he were to sacrifice so many others.

Still, as selfish as it might be, Verax’s own mortality weighed more heavily on his mind than the deaths of the people living in the city above them. There’d been a time when he could put the thought out of his mind – after he’d parted ways with Thessaly and fully devoted himself to becoming one of the most dedicated Left Hand’s in the empire, he’d adjusted to the idea that his life would likely end sooner than it did for most. But before he’d even entered the formal service he’d met Lucretia, and since they’d been married, moments like this always brought her to the forefront of his mind.

He could risk his life countless ways, but when the thought of making a deliberate choice to end his own life came, it was inevitably followed by thoughts of Lucy. She’d trained to be a Left Hand, too, so it wasn’t that she didn’t understand what might be entailed. His children, Antiope and Serkemon, would be taught that their father was a great hero; Thessaly would certainly see to that. And Verax knew that Lucy wouldn’t be alone for long – he hoped she wouldn’t be, anyway – but she would grieve nonetheless. It didn’t matter what sort of honors or ceremony they memorialized him with, his wife and children would suffer. Perhaps, knowing that his existence was valued by others should have made Verax feel good, but involuntarily imagining the tears rolling down his wife’s face brought them immediately to Verax’s own eyes.

It reflected poor emotional discipline for an agent of his status, so he was thankful for the darkness hiding the warm tears as they cooled and evaporated on his cheeks. If Stone and Schroeder were at all aware of his state at the moment, Verax was sure they would attribute it to the reasonable fear of infiltrating a dragon’s lair.

The tunnel opened into a large chamber with a slick stone staircase winding around the walls. It was somewhat similar to the room Verax had emerged into when he first came into the city, but in the light of the glowing phial Jericho carried, it was impossible to see the top or bottom of the chamber.

“By Golon,” Schroeder said, “What is this place?”

“The under-dungeon,” Jericho said, “The old kings would put people down here when they were done with them.”

“Done with them?” Schroeder asked.

“Ever here the phrase, ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key?’ There used to be steel gibbets hanging in this void. They’d lock you in one of those little birdcages and leave you hanging over this pit until you died of thirst. Even if you could get out of the cage somehow, all you could do was fall and hope you landed in water.”

“Is there water, down there?” Verax leaned over the precipice.

“Sometimes,” Jericho said, “But there’s no way to climb out, so you’d only live as long as you could tread water.” He handed Schroeder the phial, “The stairs are only wide enough for one person, so you ought to go ahead and meet your contact. The door will be pretty obvious from this side.”

Schroeder took the light source and switched places with Stone, trekking up the stairs cautiously but quickly. Verax followed, but soon realized that Stone had dropped out of the range of the light behind them. He paused for a moment, concerned that Jericho must have fallen into the pit or something. Schroeder’s continuous advance up the staircase took the light with him, though, and Verax was quickly left in the dark.

Verax was a wary, fast, and nimble fighter, but he’d allowed himself to become so preoccupied with thoughts of his family that he let his guard down. Something shot out of the darkness and grabbed him by the throat, a tight grip closing around his neck. Verax dropped the hidden blade he kept up his sleeve and plunged it into where he thought his attacker must be.

He felt it strike, but the blade didn’t sink into flesh – it hit hard leather body armor. He could take an armored opponent down easily by targeting gaps in the armor, but that was hard in the dark. Instead he sliced the blade upward, hoping to hit his attacker’s arm. There was a satisfying impact – the rending of soft flesh followed by warm blood – but the grip didn’t loosen. The attacker simply grunted with pain as a red gem stone suddenly glowed to life in the dark, illuminating Jericho’s face from underneath.

Stone swung Verax out over the void, so that the smaller man’s toes were barely keeping him on the stair case. Jericho spoke so quietly that his voice sounded more like the whisperings of Verax’s own mind than like another person in front of him.

“Azraea told me about what happened with your alchemist friend,” he said, “So I’ve got a pretty good guess that’s not lunch you’re hauling in that pack.”

Verax tried to struggle, but Jericho only loosened his grip for an instant – just enough for Verax to feel himself starting to fall backwards into the void.

“Lose the pack,” Jericho said as he grabbed Verax again, “Or we’ll do the rest of this without you.”

Verax stopped struggling. His mind was getting cloudy thanks to Jericho’s tight grip on his neck, and he couldn’t think of a way out of the situation. Reluctantly, he cut the straps on his pack with his blade, and sent the device tumbling into the abyss, with a distant splash.

Jericho grabbed Verax’s arm, pulled him back onto the stairs, and patted him on the back, “We both know you didn’t want to use it anyway.”

Jericho wasn’t wrong. The sense of relief Verax felt didn’t just come from the air flowing back into his lungs. Still, it was annoying that some highway guardsmen had so deftly bested him, “Never try that again.”

“I’m sure I won’t need to. Come-on, we’ve got to catch up now.”

Schroeder was waiting up at the top of the stairs. The door was obvious – it was a metal and wood drawbridge on the other side of a four foot gap. There was a pull-chain, but it didn’t connect to the bridge – it passed through an opening next to it. As Jericho had explained, the pull chain toggled a small plaque on the inside wall which would reverse. For those in the know and observant enough to notice, it would tell them that there was someone waiting on the other side of the concealed door.

Schroeder was clearly getting anxious, probably wondering at all the things that could have gone wrong, and as they waited in the darkness, his anxiety became more obvious. He huffed and shifted his weight with increasing frequency until there was a sudden stirring from the door across the gap, and it swung downward. The person lowering it stopped it just short of hitting the stairs, and slowly lowered it the rest of the way, muting the noise.

A woman just a bit younger than Azraea waited on the other side. Shroeder ran across the bridge and embraced her, “You had me worried baby girl.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, but we need to hurry!” She led them quickly from the secret entrance, through the upper dungeon and up through the wine cellar and storage rooms.

“Your contact was your daughter?” Verax asked Schroeder, “What has she been doing in the castle this entire time?”

“I’m Syliva’s personal aide,” the woman answered matter-of-factly.

“What?!” Verax exclaimed in hushed tones, “How does she… why would she retain the daughter of the rebel guards’ leader as her personal aide?” That sort of gaff would be unthinkable in any court of the empire.

“No one knows who my father is,” the woman shrugged, “Medes doesn’t pay attention to women except for their aesthetic value, and Baryd is too preoccupied with playing the crowd outside the castle to take a close look at the people working inside. And Syliva doesn’t even remember my name. It’s Catherine, by the way.”

“Oh, nice to meet you, Catherine,” Verax said, “but what have you been doing this entire time?”

“Whatever I could while being discrete as possible. I talked Syliva out of destroying Mudville.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Jericho said, “Where are we at now?”

“Your rebellion is at the gate. I ran down here as soon as Syliva went to address the crowd – it’s the only distraction she’s had all day. Hopefully your friend is still monopolizing her attention.”