Chapter 41: The Honor of Rogues, Part 3

Tien Ro was having a rough week. It started on Oneday, when he caught his boyfriend of six months in bed with his ex. He'd immediately gone to drown his sorrows at the Diamond in the Rift, drastically overdone it, and woke up the next morning in a fountain, sans his pants and wallet. By the time he put himself together, he was hours late for work as a peacekeeper for the city, and his boss read him the riot act before sticking him with overnight detail. And just when he was bored out his mind, the sky exploded, and now the whole city was a panicked mess, and his job was that much harder.

Undead had been coming out of the woodwork, as if whatever had happened stirred every corpse in the city. Word from the city headman was that it was only things that had died the same night as the explosion, but Lochmire was a big city. A surprising number of people and animals could die in one night, and now they were all up and moving.

Churches were being overwhelmed with demands for answers and protection, along with every mage, and every person suspected of being a mage. In some districts there were urks and elites in the streets just to prevent rioting.

It was exhausting. He just wanted to get home, take off his uniform, and collapse face first into his bed. One night. By the night, he just needed one night of real rest, where nothing else went wrong and he didn't have anything else to worry about.

It was dark by the time he got to the doorstep of his home, a tenant building he shared with twelve others. He was just going through his keys when somebody behind him cleared their throat.

Tien turned around to see a young man with a tan complexion and messy brown hair dressed in earth-tone leathers.

"I'm really sorry about this," the boy said.

Tien saw the small bronze shield an instant too late, and it crashed against his face. 

Of course. Because this was just the kind of week he was having.

---

The Whispered Harvest trained its initiates in many skills. Climbing. Lockpicking. Archery. Close combat with a dozen different weapons. How to move without making a sound, disappear in a crowd or an empty room, lie and know when you were being lied to. 

In time, members of the sect developed their own specialties and tactics. They used poisons to reach their marks without ever entering the same building. Some employed mind control and intimidation techniques to get other people to do their dirty work. There were people in the sect who could get in and out of secure locations leaving no more of a trace than a flicker of a candle's flame.

Kaleb walked into the Lochmire Keep dungeon through the front door.

He was at least wearing a peacekeeper's uniform when he did it, but the navy coat and pants with red trim were too small on him, and he hadn't been able to latch the uniform's breastplate at all. The disguise wouldn't pass any kind of inspection, which is why Kaleb didn't give it the chance to.

Doing his best to avoid eye contact with anyone, he walked straight through past the other peacekeepers, operating out of some shred of hope that if he didn't look at anyone, they wouldn't look at him.

Most of the peacekeepers were stationed at the front, in the upper levels as a bulwark against forced entry or escape, but past that, their presence thinned. As soon as he saw a peacekeeper by himself, he approached them.

"Hey, do you have the keys to the cells?" Kaleb asked.

The peacekeeper looked at Kaleb like he'd grown a third arm. "No, they're in the—what happened to you?"

The peacekeeper had noticed the terrible fit of Kaleb's uniform, which meant he was one, maybe two connections away from realizing Kaleb wasn't a peacekeeper.

Kaleb kicked him as hard as he could to knock the air from his lungs, then grabbed him by the head and drove his knee into his face. Before he could even stumble back into a wall, Kaleb had his arms around him, and in another second had him in a chokehold tight as stone.

The peacekeeper gurgled, pawing limply at Kaleb's arms until he passed out seconds later. He'd never gotten a chance to make a sound.

Kaleb set him on the ground as gently as he could, both to avoid noise and prevent any further injury to the man. 

The keys weren't on anybody's person, but in a specific place. Probably an office or security checkpoint. Kaleb could work with that.

He just had to work fast.

---

Xigbar stared at the quicksilver manacles keeping him trapped. With a bit of contortion work, he'd managed bring his arms around in front of him, but that was as much progress as he'd made. Even with his thumbs now straight up broken, he couldn't slip free. It didn't matter how fast or slow he tried it, they always constricted just enough to keep him trapped.

He was actually worried that if he kept this up, he'd end up severing his hands. Even then, he wasn't convinced the cuffs wouldn't find a way to stay on.

Most of the pain from his injuries had receded to the back of his mind as the background noise for his generally bitter mood.

This was it. This was how he was going to spend his last days. In pain, bored out of his mind, chained up in a stone box to await execution. He was going to hang, the guild was going to watch, and Arty was probably going to get off on it.

Xigbar didn't actually know what the worst part of this mess was, but the fact that Arthur Master was probably feeling impossibly smug right now was definitely in contention.

And why wouldn't he feel smug? He won.

Xigbar wished Arthur had been the one to visit him instead of Larian. Not only would he have had to actually open the door to get in, lacking Larian's ability to shadow blink, but then Xigbar could have spat venom into his eye.

And then Arty probably would have beat him to death.

At least he wouldn't have had to wait for it like he was now.

"Court above, just take me already," Xigbar muttered.

His body went rigid as he heard the lock in his cell door click. He took it back. He wasn't ready to die. He wanted to live, kill several assholes who had it coming, make an ungodly amount of money and retire somewhere tropical with a beautiful woman.

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The cell door opened, and Xigbar prepared to fight for his life with one good eye and a cracked rib.

Kaleb stood in the doorway, the sleeves of his ill-fitting uniform ripped at the shoulders, his breastplate missing, and somebody else's blood on his fists. Xigbar's resolve was quickly replaced with confusion.

"Hi," Kaleb greeted, glancing over his shoulder. "We don't really have a lot of time, so I'm going to have to give the short version. I need your help to break into the Chosen's Keep, and I can get you out of here if you say yes. Are you in?"

Xigbar blinked, unsure if he was still conscious. "What?"

There were shouts from the hallway, and Kaleb grimaced. "You know what, we can talk later."

Before Xigbar could ask what he was doing Kaleb grabbed the chain connecting Xigbar's shackles to the wall, braced his leg, and started pulling.

Xigbar was about to joke that he'd already tried that when there was a crack, and the entire bracket holding the chain broke away from the wall, taking a bit of stone with it. Xigbar gaped at the fresh divot in the wall, and then down at the chain, then finally at his rescuer.

Kaleb didn't even look winded.

"Lead the way."

With Kaleb's help, and a considerable amount of wincing, Xigbar got to his feet. Walking was uncomfortable to say the least, and peacekeepers were already rushing the hall. Two seconds into freedom, and Xigbar could already feel the door of his cell shutting on him again.

"What's the plan now?" Xigbar asked.

"Stay behind me," Kaleb said.

The peacekeepers had clubs out and ready to swing as they rushed forward in a wall of navy and red. Xigbar counted at least four of them. Kaleb positioned himself in between them and Xigbar, and balled his hands into fists.

He blocked the first club strike on his arm, missing his shield as pain lanced through him, but he still answered by driving his fist into his attacker's throat. 

Two more clubs hit him, and another  peacekeeper grabbed him from behind. Kaleb pulled his legs up and kicked, knocking one peacekeeper back while driving himself and the man holding him into a wall. When that didn't dislodge the one on his back, Kaleb rotated into a hip toss to throw them off.

It cost him time, and he paid it in more clubs to the face and back, but he powered through, grabbing one guard by the scruff of her neck and driving her headfirst into her friend.

Xigbar saw one peacekeeper trying to get up, and swung his chain and chunk of wall like a flail, dropping them for a second time. Even that much made his ribs scream in protest, and he made the tactical decision to listen to Kaleb, and stay back.

Kaleb stomped on a fallen peacekeeper's shin until he heard a crack, broke another's nose, and caught the swing of the last peacekeeper standing by the wrist before wrenching their weapon free from their hand and beating them over the head with it.

When it was over, he was breathing heavy, his lip was split near the corner, and he was bleeding from a small wound on his forehead, but he and Xigbar were the only ones in the hallway still standing.

"How many more of them are there?" Xigbar asked.

Kaleb gave him a lopsided grin. "At this point? Not enough."

---

The door to the dungeon's roof burst open as a peacekeeper was flung bodily through the doorway, and Kaleb and Xigbar limped out after them. Kaleb kicked the door shut behind them, drew a knife from his belt, and jammed it into the doorframe to at least make it more difficult for anyone to follow them.

Given he'd been unconscious when he first came here, this was Xigbar's first look at the outside of the Lochmire Keep dungeon. From the windowless stone room and the sheer amount of stairs he and Kaleb had fought their way up, he expected a squat building near the Chosen's Keep, sitting on top of a nest of underground chambers.

Instead, he found himself at the top of a twelve story tower in the middle of the city.

"Why is everything in this city so tall?" he muttered.

"Not sure. But at the moment, I can't complain," Kaleb said.

He withdrew a two foot long, narrow device from a pouch on his belt the size of a fist, and Xigbar did a double take. Bottomless pockets. His liberator had bottomless pockets. Even the Pavers only had bottomless bags, which were handy, but also big and distinct enough to be easily spotted.

New possibilities entered Xigbar's mind about walking away from this mess with more than just his freedom.

Kaleb kept drawing out pieces and components of something from the same pocket, putting them together as he did. In just under a minute, he'd assembled a large crossbow-like weapon with a spool of silvery cord near the base of the stock and fed into space where a bolt would usually go.

Kaleb aimed it at the floor and loose, shooting a length of what had to be quicksilver cord straight into the ground. Then he aimed out into the night air over the city of Lochmire Keep, at another building far, far away from the tower of the dungeon, and loosed again.

Just like that, they had a zipline, with the device Kaleb had used to create the line still attached to it and ready to be used to ride down.

"Ready to go?" Kaleb asked.

That settled it for Xigbar. Once he and his new friend got clear of this place, Xigbar was going to rob him.

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