PART THREE — THE NECROMANCER AND THE HANGMAN

It didn't matter how much Holsley struggled; the rope around his chest and wrist was wrapped tight. He'd been tied to a chair, he knew that much. Where that chair was, though, he couldn't hazard a guess. It was dark, though that might've just been because of the bag on his head. It was cold too, and damp. Every scuffle he made echoed loudly off the walls.

'I just want to say this is the worst rescue ever.' He continued to squirm. 'We didn't even get a proper introduction.'

'They're the Whispers.' Roland's voice came through loud and clear behind him. They must be sitting back-to-back. 'I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say they're after me. Oh, that wasn't an invitation to stab me in the back. Just so we're clear.'

'Was going to say, poor choice of words mate,' added Holsley.

The young bard had never been short on questions regarding Roland's past, but even back when they were kids, the rogue had been reluctant to share. Holsley did know a few things, however. The Whispers of Tressa had brought Roland up and trained him to be a thief. That was a given. They had also dealt the near-fatal stab wound that Roland had been sporting when he'd found him over three years ago.

Of course, beyond Roland's ties to this criminal organisation, Holsley also knew about the Whispers themselves. It was hard not to as a resident of Tressa. They were the thieves' guild. If you ever found your pocket pilfered, you could usually blame them, along with pretty much every other great theft in the city's history.

Holsley squinted against the sudden light. The blindfold ripped away. It came from a torch being carried by one of three cloaked strangers gathered around them. He looked around. They appeared to have been squirrelled away into a small, damp room with a single window that had been boarded up with rotting wood.

Cold eyes examined him from beneath the cowls of the first two strangers. The next stranger made him squirm even more. She was unhooded, instead covering her face with a mask. A demonic-looking mask that had been unnaturally contorted into a frown. It made him uneasy. She paced around Holsley and Roland.

'Wait!' Holsley barked suddenly. He struggled against the restraints. 'Where's my lute!?'

'Holly, calm down,' Roland said. 'Panicking doesn't get us anywhere.'

'Panicking has literally got me everywhere,' replied Holsley, groaning with the effort. 'I'm not a big fan of being tied up.'

The woman wearing the mask came to a stop and knelt down to him, so that they were eye level with one another. Holsley stopped struggling. For a moment, he thought he saw the glint of a dagger and braced himself, but no sudden attack was forthcoming. Instead, she focussed her eyes on his, and he suddenly found something familiar in them.

They were a vivid purple.

Holsley let out a gasp. 'It's you! You're that guard, the one who helped me escape the dungeons!'

Although he couldn't see her face beneath the mask, he could sense that she was smiling.

'Hello again, Tyla,' said Roland. 'It's been a while.'

'Not long enough.' Tyla straightened back up and continued pacing around them.

'You know each other?' Holsley tried to peer around at Roland but couldn't get his head back far enough. 'What's going on here?'

'She's a thief, like me,' replied Roland. 'We grew up together.'

'Oh, Roland. She wants a word with you,' Tyla cut in, her voice echoey behind the mask. 'Especially now that you have the ruby in your possession.'

'I should have guessed,' Roland muttered. 'Of course. Why else would the Whispers, of all people, help me escape? After everything I've done for them.'

'Everything you've done?' Tyla crossed her arms and chuckled. 'You've got some real nerve, Roland. It's because of everything you've done that you're in this mess to begin with.'

'I'm sensing some tension here,' said Holsley.

'Shut up,' Roland and Tyla said in unison.

'You were the one that—' Tyla let out an exasperated grunt. 'Forget it. It's nothing I didn't say years ago. You're lucky that I can do as I'm told when it comes to Her. That's the only reason you're not on a slow march to the gallows right now.'

'Sorry. Who's Her?' asked Holsley. 'Also, just wanted to check in. Do you guys, uh, have the lute? Kind of important to me. The cat, too, though less so.'

'That's why you were keeping an eye on me in the dungeons,' said Roland. 'On behalf of Her?'

'If I free you from those bonds, are you going to come willingly?' Tyla leaned towards Roland.

'I'm not making any promises,' replied Roland stubbornly.

'Yeah, I kind of figured you'd say that.' Tyla let out a whistle, and her colleagues jumped into action. One of them stepped forward with a leather satchel, which she took and teased in front of Roland's face. The other held up a howling bag of fury, which contained none other than Tiacat. 'If you want all of your stuff, including that rapier and that ruby, you're going to be a good boy and do as you're told. If not, I'm going to throw this into a bottomless pit, and you can go after it yourself.'

'Even the cat?' Holsley asked.

'You can't do that!' Roland protested. 'It's against the rules to steal from another thief?'

'You're not another thief, though. Are you Roland?' Tyla half-laughed. 'You're barely even a freelancer.'

Her colleagues rounded on the pair with daggers and cut their bonds loose. Holsley stretched out what felt like hours of sitting, while Roland looked like he was preparing to pounce. Holsley didn't know much, but he knew that was a bad idea. The young bard placed a hand on his friend's shoulder and gave him a quick shake of the head to deter him.

Roland gave him a curt nod back.

'So, uh, where is the rapier, and the ruby, and the redrose lute?' asked Holsley. 'Wow. A lot of our valuables start with the letter R. How have I never noticed that before?'

'They're in the bag,' replied Tyla, shaking the satchel again.

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'No, but really.'

'They're in the bag,' Roland reiterated. 'It's bigger on the inside.'

'Ah, magic.' Holsley snapped his fingers. 'Gotcha.'

Tyla then looked from one to the other. She was a little taller than Holsley, but a little shorter than Roland. Standing somewhere in the middle. Apart from her height, Holsley could guess her age as being around the same as Roland's, but beyond that, he didn't know much else about her. There was a little bit of blue hair showing from around her mask, and he assumed that meant her hair was all the same colour.

'You two are quite the pair.' Tyla led them away from their chairs and into the next corridor, which was as dank and damp and dark as their interrogation chamber. Her lackeys followed, illuminating the way with their flaming torches. 'I've personally been following you across the city, and I've got to say, I've never seen such a mess.'

'Thanks,' said Holsley proudly, then deflated. 'What do you mean by following us?'

'It means she was placed in the dungeons by the Whispers to keep an eye on me.' Roland stared squarely at the back of Tyla's head. 'Then, when I escaped the noose, you followed me to make sure I didn't stray from sight.'

'Got to say, I really enjoyed your chase with the giant cat,' said Tyla with a chuckle. 'That was entertaining.'

'Not for me,' Holsley whispered. 'I don't understand why? Roland's done with the Whispers, isn't he? Why would they care if he was being hanged?'

'You haven't told him,' Tyla said, turning the next corner. A door stood at the end of the corridor. 'Why am I not surprised?'

'Told me what?' asked Holsley, looking from her to Roland.

Roland growled.

'We call it the Thief's Debt,' Tyla started. 'You see, the Whispers don't just take in people for free, Holsley. When they commit to raising you, feeding you, and training you, you go into debt with them for fifty thousand gold crowns. It's an investment. You can't leave the guild or the city until the debt is paid off.'

'What?' Holsley looked back towards Roland. 'Roland was kicked out of the Whispers. Wasn't he?'

'I was,' replied Roland. 'I still had to pay off that debt, though. I couldn't leave the city. Otherwise, they'd finish me off.'

Things suddenly clicked in Holsley's head. Things he hadn't even noticed until that very moment. The pair had done a lot of thieving in their youth, but they never seemed to have any money. Roland had continued paying off his debts to the Whispers. That's why he never left. Holsley had stupidly thought the rogue had stuck around for him.

'Why didn't you tell me?' Holsley asked.

Roland turned to him and shrugged. 'You didn't ask.'

'That's a poor reason and you know it.' Holsley wondered then what other secrets Roland could be keeping from him. 'We're supposed to be best friends. You know everything about me.'

'No, I don't.' Roland straightened. 'What happened between you and the lute? You used to actually be able to play it. Now, you just struggle through it.'

'Whoa.' Holsley backed off a little. 'I tried…I mean, in Donathal, the elves tried to…it's neither here nor there, Roland!'

'Same here,' Roland snapped back.

'We're here.' Tyla came to an abrupt stop at the stone door. It was about the only thing in this hardy place that didn't bear any cracks or damage. The two cloaked figures pulled it back with some effort. It revealed a set of stone stairs leading down into forever, barely lit by fiery sconces spaced about fifteen feet apart.

She went in first, then Roland followed.

Holsley was about to step in when a big, fluffy orange cat shot out of the opening and scurried down the hallway. Holsley watched it for a moment before he was given a push to encourage him onto the stairs.

'We're in for a long walk,' Tyla called back to them. 'Probably longer than you remember, Roland.'

'Oh, I remember,' he muttered.

Holsley looked down in a mixture of awe and terror at the sight of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of steps leading down as far as his eyes could reach. Each step was cracked, practically crumbling, and looked like a potential death sentence. He wondered how long the stairs went on for.

Soon, he was wondering when they would end.

***

The first half an hour passed at a snail's pace. The second was even slower.

The stairs really did go on forever. Just as Holsley was sure they were about to end, they would arrive at another switchback, and it would feel like they were starting from scratch again. His feet howled with the constant movement, and soon he was grumbling and groaning with the aches in his heels.

The only thing that broke the monotony of constant walking was the cats. The felines lingered on the steps, some snoozing, others lounging, and a few playing. Sometimes, he'd catch one carrying a rat in its mouth. Holsley quickly made a small game out of counting each kind he encountered. Orange tabbies were the highest, followed closely by calicos.

The five of them, two boys, one stranger from the past, and two unnamed figures, took the occasional break, which had clearly been anticipated by the architects of the stairs. At lengthy intervals, there were hollowed-out reliefs just big enough for a few people to sit inside and catch their breath. There, they drank a bit of water provided by the Whispers and kept conversation to an absolute minimum.

Tyla would continue to make comments about them, mostly relating to how dysfunctional the boys were.

Eventually, the marching order changed, and instead of Tyla leading the way, the other two stepped up. Holsley knew that she had done this on purpose. A moment later, she was striding behind him while Roland was far enough down on the stairs that he wouldn't be able to hear their conversation.

'Uh, thanks for saving me in the dungeon,' Holsley said over his shoulder. 'There's no way I would've made it out without that guard's uniform.'

'You intrigue me, Holsley,' she said casually. 'Only one person came to Roland's aid out of everyone who knew him. Why was it you?'

'He's my friend.' Holsley shrugged. 'He'd do the same for me.'

'Do you really think he would?'

Holsley let out an annoyed sigh. 'I'm getting a little tired of people asking me questions like that. Yes. I trust him. Of course, I do.'

'That's even more intriguing.' Tyla giggled. 'You've been very loyal to him. I should know, I've seen everything you two have done together in the city. What I don't get, however, is what he's done to earn that loyalty?'

'It comes from our childhood,' replied Holsley, kicking a small pebble and watching it tumble down the stairs. 'I saved his life, and we became good friends.'

'Saved his life?' Tyla repeated, sounding impressed. 'Tell me more.'

'Yeah. I helped him after the Whispers stabbed him in the back with a dagger,' said Holsley with a start. 'Now we're being marched by that same group to who knows where, and I don't even have the redrose lute.'

'Have you ever wondered why we stabbed him?' Tyla pulled the satchel around and dove into it. Holsley watched in awe, amazed at how her arm went in up to the shoulder. A second later, she pulled the redrose lute from it and handed it over to him. 'Here, if it makes you feel better. I know you can't do anything with it anyway.'

'Thanks.' Holsley took it gratefully, then narrowed his eyes at her. 'Why did you guys stab him then?'

She stared back for a moment, and he could tell that she was wondering whether or not the story was hers to tell.

'In the Whispers, you have to abide by the rules,' she started. 'If we do not follow the rules, we get kicked out. It's as simple as that and the same as anywhere. Except here, you do not only get cut off from the guild's resources and protection, you get stabbed in the back. I think it's supposed to be poetic. Whatever. Most of the rules are easy to follow, but there's one Roland always had trouble with.'

'What was it?' Holsley turned to stare at the back of Roland's head.

'Stealing from others,' Tyla sighed. 'Roland had a bit of a reputation as a thief of thieves. Despite warnings, he would keep doing it. Then, he did it to the wrong person and She couldn't ignore it anymore.'

'What happened?'

'Roland stole something very valuable from another thief of the guild. I won't say what, but it was the last straw.' Tyla took a deep breath. 'It ended with the thief imprisoned, so Roland was kicked out of the Whispers. He was stabbed in the back with the dagger of the member he had betrayed. Like I said, poetic.'

A silence came over them until Holsley finally broke it. 'That was Fox, wasn't it?'

Tyla nodded. 'You've put that together then?'

'Fox mentioned something about it,' he said. 'A lot of people have it out for Roland.'

'Well, Fox has a good reason. Fortunately for Roland, he managed to get out of the city by being conscripted into the navy. The Whispers couldn't get him there, especially after he disappeared,' said Tyla. 'Fox never forgot about it, though. Now he just wants Roland dead.'

'Are you trying to convince me not to trust him?'

'Is it working?'

'No.'

'You seem like a nice kid, Holsley.' Tyla placed a hand on his shoulder, bringing him to a stop, before coming down to Holsley's level. 'I like you from what I've seen. That's why I helped you get out of the dungeon. It's fair to give you a warning, though. If a lot of people are telling you the same thing, then it might be worth listening to them.'

Holsley thought about that for a moment.

'I won't,' he replied finally. 'Maybe he's only like that because a lot of people are saying the same thing about him. He's never betrayed me. He was my best friend growing up, and not once did he ever take the opportunity to throw me under a cart.'

She sighed and brushed past him. 'Maybe he was just waiting for the right opportunity?'

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