Rogue Legacy, Jeffrey L. Kohanek [best pdf reader for ebooks .txt] 📗
- Author: Jeffrey L. Kohanek
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“No, please,” her father sobbed. “I’ll give you gold. I’ll give you anything.”
“Listen, you weak-willed snake. You made a promise, a promise to Berrilon and to The Hand.” Two thumps of fists hitting flesh preceded a whimper. “We don’t want your gold. We want you to keep your word.”
The sound of a blade sliding from its sheath caused Lyra’s eyes to widen. She stepped from her room and crept down the stairwell. Peeking around the wall at the landing, she saw two men holding her father against a wall. One of the men had a knife held to her father’s throat.
“Last chance, Tascalli,” the man with the knife said between clenched teeth.
Frightened and concerned, Lyra felt helpless as she stared at her father. His eyes flicked about the room, seeking salvation. When her father’s gaze shifted toward the stairwell, it locked onto Lyra. Tears tracked down her face as his expression shifted from terror…to realization…to resolve.
Her father turned toward his attacker. “You can take my life, but that will get you nothing,” he said calmly. “Perhaps I can assist The Hand in another way, but my honor still exists, and I’ll not be a party to treason.”
The man with the knife frowned and stepped back. His frown became a grimace, and he thrust the knife into her father’s midsection. The other man released his grip on her father as the man named Rainer yanked the knife free and used it to gash her father’s neck. Dark red blood spurted from the wound, his hand going to his throat as he slid down the wall and fell to the floor.
“No!” Lyra screamed, descending a few steps before she realized what she had done.
Both men turned toward her, and she got her first good look at them. One stood a bit over six feet tall, his bulky frame capped by a head of curly, dark Vinacci hair. The one her father had called Rainer was a bit shorter, with brown hair and a trimmed goatee in the style of Kalimar royalty. However, it was his eyes that she would always remember – steel gray and piercing. The man’s intense gaze sent a chill down her spine.
“Get her!”
Lyra scrambled up the stairs, ran to the end of the hall, and pulled the door to her father’s room closed. She then slipped into her own room and hid behind her open door. The rumble of footsteps grew louder as the men ascended the stairs, ran past her room, and ripped the door to her father’s room open.
“Look out the window,” Rainer demanded as he tore the room apart.
Lyra slipped out her bedroom door and crept down the stairs, watching the dark doorway to her father’s room as she made her descent. When she reached the bottom, Lyra found her father on the floor, his head tilted to the side, his empty gaze staring into space. She bit her lip as tears clouded her vision. The realization of his loss caused an involuntary whimper.
The thumping of rapid footsteps came from upstairs. She scrambled backward and bumped into the table. The candle tipped on its side, rolled to the table’s edge, and fell to the floor. Loud footsteps ran down the stairs, causing Lyra to panic. She bolted toward the door as the candle settled below the curtain that framed the front window.
A shout came from behind her. “The girl saw me. Don’t let her get away.”
Lyra leapt into the street and ran downhill before darting into a gap between neighboring houses. She crept down the narrow corridor, toward the steep hillside behind the houses, pausing in the deep shadows when she heard the two men run past. There she remained, her heart racing as she held back sobs of sorrow.
Lyra wiped her eyes again, unable to stop the tears that continued to emerge. She lay on a second story rooftop, one turn of the zigzagging hillside road above where her house was located. The scene below appeared surreal as angry orange flames emitted thick black smoke.
Men shouted in the night as they handed buckets of water to the next in line. As each bucket reached the big man at the end, he would launch the water toward the house next door to Lyra’s. Realizing that her house was lost, they focused on preventing the fire from spreading to neighboring homes. The logical side of Lyra understood, but she found herself hating them for not saving her home, for not saving her father.
Flames illuminated the area, enabling her to spot the two men who had chased her as they walked past again, searching the area as they passed the bucket line. Rather than doubling back as they had before, the men continued uphill, and eventually passed below Lyra’s perch. A mixture of fear and hatred stirred within her as they walked past. She imagined leaping from the rooftop with her knife in hand, landing on one man before stabbing the other. When her reverie broke, the two men had disappeared into the darkness.
Lyra looked down at her burning home again and felt a hollowness inside. Her father was dead. Her home was gone. Two men in town were searching for her, intending to send her to La-Mordai in the halls of death, where her father now waited.
She had never felt so lost and alone.
Lyra knocked again, slightly louder this time. She glanced both directions, her eyes searching the darkness, her body shaking as she waited for a response. A light appeared, the dull orange glow flickering in the window beside the door. The lock clicked, and she rushed in as the door swung open, startling Roland as he stepped aside.
“Lyra,” he blinked. “Why are you here in the middle of the night?” She turned toward him and his expression softened. “Are you alright?”
She stared at the open door. “Please close the door.”
Roland nodded, closing the door. After the deadbolt clicked shut, she spoke.
“Something happened…My father…” She took a calming breath and closed her eyes, fighting to keep the tears at bay. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Roland put his hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”
Lyra opened her eyes and glanced about his one-room apartment until her gaze settled on the door. “It was two men. They attacked him and then they chased me. I got away, but he’s dead. There was also a fire…” She took a calming breath. “The house burnt down. Everything’s gone. I came to you because I don’t know what else to do, where to go.” The tears returned.
Roland stepped closer, his arms wrapping about her. Her head rested against his shoulder as she sobbed. After a minute, he released her.
“You can stay here tonight,” he said. “Take the bed, and I’ll sleep in the chair.”
With his hand on her back, he guided her to the bed. Stuck in between shock and sorrow, Lyra somehow found herself lying on the bed as he pulled a blanket over her shaking body.
Roland grabbed another blanket from the foot of the bed. “You get some sleep, and we’ll figure out a plan in the morning.”
He snuffed the candle and shuffled to the chair, making noise as he settled in. Emotionally and physically exhausted, Lyra closed her eyes and drifted to sleep.
A noise woke Lyra, and her eyes flickered open to the sound of metal sliding in and out of the lock. She sat up, her heart thumping loudly as she stared toward the door. Slipping out of bed, she tapped Roland on the arm, barely visible in the darkness.
“What?” he said, sitting upright.
“Shh,” she hushed him. “I think someone’s trying to break in.”
Roland turned toward the door, clearly hearing the same noise. He turned toward her. “Be ready to climb out the back window.”
Nodding, she turned to the window above the bed. After flipping the latch open, she put one leg through the opening. The other leg followed, and she lowered herself until her forearms rested on the
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