Chapter 19: The Night of Bells

Rook lent him the money on Wednesday, at twenty percent interest.

"Monthly." Rook didn’t look up from his book. "Taken out of your ten percent before you ever see it. If the east bank has a bad month, you have a bad month." He turned a page. "Welcome to business, stone-seller."

Aren signed. Twelve gold crowns went into his pocket, then into Old Mag’s hand, and then, as a small glass jar of grey crystals that smelled faintly of thunder, into the healer house in the lower city. The nurse dissolved the first spoonful in warm water that evening. Nell drank it, made a face, and complained loudly that it tasted like licking a cold coin.

That night, for the first time since the Academy infirmary, Aren slept six hours straight.

On Thursday night, the bells woke him.

Not one bell. All of them.

He sat up on his mattress in the dark and listened, and it took him a moment to understand fully. The deep alarm bells of the lower city churches were ringing. So were the ones across the river on the east bank, and in the merchant quarter, and the high silver bells of the great cathedral in the Upper Ring where the noble houses kept their city mansions. Under all of them, slow and heavy, the great bell in the city guard’s tower was booming over and over, a sound Aren had heard maybe twice in his whole life.

He went to the window.

Highcrest lay spread out far below the Academy hill, a dark map of roofs and towers under a cloudy sky. And all over it, in different places, there were red lights. Shimmering, tearing lights, like heat over a summer road.

He counted. One by the docks. One on the east bank, near the tanneries. One in the merchant quarter, by the great market. Two in the Upper Ring, one of them right beside the cathedral and much bigger and brighter than the rest. One in the old city outside the north wall. And one far off to the west, near the river gate.

Seven Rifts. In one night. In the capital of the kingdom.

He had lived eighteen years in this city and never heard of more than one Rift opening in a single month.

[Warning: Multiple Rifts detected.][Estimated ranks: F, E, E, E, E, E, D.]

He looked at the D, the one in the Upper Ring beside the cathedral, the biggest light of all.

’Not my business, not my rank, not my district!’ For once, he even believed it.

Professor Crane was waiting at the bottom of the stairs in the scholarship dormitory, fully dressed, a lamp in his hand and his thin face very calm.

"Back to your rooms." The students of Class D were crowding the stairs in their nightclothes, frightened, asking questions. Crane never once raised his voice. "By order of the Headmaster, all first-years will remain in their dormitories until morning. The city guard, the Royal Knights and the Academy’s instructors are responding. You’re Rank F. You’ll be in the way."

"My family lives by the docks," someone said. "Professor, my mother..."

"The city guard is responding." It was exactly the same voice. "Back to your rooms."

Mira was near the top of the stairs, her face white. She lived in the lower city too, two streets from the healer house, and her parents were still down there. She looked at Aren, and he knew exactly what she was thinking because he was thinking it too.

"Stay here." He said it quietly as he passed her.

"Aren..."

"They’re right. We’d only be in the way." He held her eyes. "I’ll be in my room. Stay here."

She nodded slowly and went back upstairs, and he felt genuinely bad about it for about three seconds. Then he went into his room, shut the door, opened the window and climbed out.

He went down through the city on the roofs, where nobody would see him, and on the way he saw more of how Highcrest defended itself than he’d ever seen in his life.

In the merchant quarter, the Rift by the great market was already completely surrounded. The Hunters’ Guild had turned out in force: twenty men and women in mismatched armor, mercenaries and monster hunters who lived off Rift cores, led by a big red-haired woman who moved with the heavy, easy power of a Rank C. They’d made a ring of spears and shields around the tear, and nothing that crawled out of it lived three steps.

Around the great cathedral in the Upper Ring there was light everywhere: the white and gold banners of the Royal Knights, fifty of them at least, on horseback. The air around the cathedral flickered and flashed with skills he couldn’t even name. Something huge was roaring inside the D-rank Rift, and something on this side was roaring back even louder. He could feel the pressure from three streets away, like standing near a waterfall.

’Rank B. Maybe more than one. The King’s knights don’t play around.’

The Academy had sent people too. He saw a group of instructors and upper-years running toward the west gate, among them the old scar-faced knight who taught swordwork in the east tower and the quiet woman from the observatory, glowing faintly silver.

Then he reached the lower city, and it was very different.

Nobody had surrounded the Rift at the fish market.

It was small, an F-rank tear the size of a door, spitting out grey winged fish the length of a man’s arm. Eight city guards held the edge of the square grimly. At their front stood a broad, bald sergeant with a short spear and a round shield, and every time something came at the line, he killed it with one quick thrust and stepped back into place, like a man who had done it a hundred times.

[City Guard Sergeant. Rank D: Bone.]

The sergeant clearly had it handled. He didn’t need help, and he definitely didn’t need a Rank E boy with bandages on his face getting in the way.

On the river side, Rook’s men had come out to guard the warehouses again, crossbows ready, with nothing to shoot. They stood around smoking and complaining.

Aren went up Salt Lane on the roofs and looked down at the healer house. The door was shut and barred, and there was light in the windows. Through one of them he saw the tired nurse moving between beds, and in the bed by the far window, a small shape under two blankets, sitting up and watching the red glow in the sky.

She was fine. Everyone on the street was fine.

He sat down heavily against a chimney and let out a long breath. He had run all the way down from the Academy ready to do something stupid, and there was nothing stupid to do. In the stories he used to read, the hero always arrived just in time. In real life, apparently, the city mostly took care of itself and the hero sat on a roof feeling like an idiot.

He was about to head back when he heard the guards talking.

Two young ones stood at the bottom of the lane while the sergeant held the square. They weren’t watching the Rift. They were watching the east bank across the river, where the seventh red light glowed near the tanneries.

"That one’s nothing." "Captain says it’s barely an E. Opened in the cellar of that dye house that burned last spring. Whole place is underwater. Nothing’s come out of it."

"So nobody’s going?"

"Why would they? It’s a flooded cellar on Rook’s side of the river. The Hunters’ Guild will clear it in the morning, once they’re done with the market. Captain roped it off and left it." He spat. "Waste of time, a Rift that small. You’d be lucky to get ten cores out of it."

Aren stopped breathing for a second.

’Ten cores. Rank E cores. In a Rift nobody’s touching until morning.’

He had spent two weeks risking his neck in the Old Quarry for one Quarry Brute at a time. Every E-rank core was worth a third of a level to him and nearly a gold crown at Old Mag’s. And across the river, a whole fresh E-rank Rift sat in a flooded cellar, roped off and ignored, because to the city guard and the Hunters’ Guild, ten cores weren’t worth a night’s sleep.

He got up and went across the roofs toward the river.

The burned dye house stood at the end of a dead-end street on the east bank, in the part of the city that always smelled of chemicals and wet leather. Half of it had fallen in during the fire. The other half leaned tiredly against its neighbor like a drunk. A rope had been tied across the doorway, with a wooden sign hanging from it: RIFT. DO NOT ENTER. BY ORDER OF THE CITY GUARD.

Nobody was there, because Rook’s men were at the warehouses and the guard was busy at the market.

Aren ducked under the rope.

Inside, the floor had collapsed into the cellar, and the cellar was full of black water. In the middle of it, half submerged, the Rift glowed a faint red, small and steady, no taller than a man. The water around it was perfectly flat, and nothing was coming out.

He looked at it from the edge of the broken floor and made his list. ’I don’t know what’s inside. I don’t know how deep it goes. Nobody knows I’m here. If something goes wrong, nobody’s coming.’

It was a bad plan, and it was the only one he had.

He tightened the bandages around his face, checked his sword and his knife, and stepped down into the black water.

It was colder than ice and came up to his chest. He waded toward the red light with his sword held over his head, and the water closed over his shoulders, and then the light closed over everything.