Happy Wednesday everyone!
Hope you all enjoy this week’s instalment of Alexis and Arslan
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Chapter Nine
Above ground, they passed the old monk, who didn’t look up from his sweeping but wished them a good evening all the same.
By the time they stepped out into the night air and the garden around the church, Alexis was breathing normally again. He was aware of his hands and of the cobblestones under his boots and of the faint pale stars over the domes. He wasn’t crying, which surprised him, but he knew the tears would come later. They always did.
They walked back through the streets towards the water and the boat that would take them across the Horn to Galata. They had only just begun to near the docks when an arrow flew past their heads.
Alexis’s body had been taught by a weapons-master that a magician who couldn’t hear an arrow was going to die. He flung out his arm, caught Arslan in the chest, and shoved him behind a pile of crates before he had fully registered the sound.
“Stay down!” he commanded.
Alexis risked a look around the wooden crates and fishing nets. The arrow had come from the rooftop of a warehouse, which meant whoever had shot at them had known they would come back for their boat.
Another arrow whistled, and Alexis ducked. The arrow struck the crate behind him. It had a black shaft and fletching, but the feathers were tipped in red. Arslan swore and pulled the arrow out.
“Friend of yours?” Alexis asked.
“Not exactly. More like a complicated acquaintance.”
“How dangerous are they?”
Arslan ran a finger over the fletching. “He could have killed us with the first arrow, but chose not to.”
Alexis took that in. “He is shooting to spook us?”
“Or to slow us down and make us drop what we are carrying, or to see us run for the fun of it. Hard to tell what his motivations are.”
“Charming.”
“He is very charming, and that’s part of the problem.”
A third arrow whistled overhead and struck higher, near where his head would have been if he had stood up.
“He must have been very bitter about your breakup,” Alexis snorted, staring at the arrow.
“I wasn’t…we weren’t in a relationship! He’s probably just bored. We can’t stay sitting here,” Arslan said gruffly. “He will tire of being this polite eventually.”
“Sounds like a broken heart to me, my friend,” Alexis teased, enjoying the red staining Arslan’s cheeks.
“He doesn’t have one, and I assure you if he does, it has never beaten for me.”
“Whatever you say. I suggest we run to the boat, but in different directions. If we go together, he will hit whichever of us is closer to the center of his aim. If we split, he has to choose, and while he is choosing, we will both be running.”
“Fine, we meet at our boat still or steal another?” Arslan asked.
“We try for ours, but if we are separated, we make our own way to Galata. If I’m hit, you don’t stop. You run straight to the Eos and secure that casket.”
“Alexis—”
“Do as I say,” he snapped, and pointed to the precious box in Arslan’s hands. “Look after that. I’m not going to die from a damn archer, but I will be very put out if I lose that altar stone for another nine thousand years.”
Arslan made a frustrated noise. “Fine! Let’s go.”
They both sprang out of their hiding places and put up magical shields. Arslan’s manifested as a thick cloud, while Alexis’s was a shimmering blue, shaped like the old shields of the Atlantean army.
Arrows rained down around them so fast that Alexis knew that whoever the archer was, he had supernatural abilities. Two of them bounced off his shield, and the third nicked his calf. He whispered a cantrip to stop the wound from dripping and leaped into the boat.
Alexis’s magic unraveled the ropes and filled the sails with air. The boat was drifting past another dock when Arslan appeared and leaped from the dock and straight into it.
“Wounds?” Arslan said immediately.
“Calf. It’s nothing.” Alexis summoned a current in the water under them, and the boat shot through the waves. There was no sign of the archer or another boat that could be a pursuer.
“Do you want to tell me how someone knew we were going for the fragment?” Alexis asked.
“I didn’t tell him if that’s what you’re implying,” Arslan replied, bristling like a cat. “He has watching-magics on certain hidden things in this city. I knew that, but I hadn’t considered that the church would be one of them. He’s got no interest in the new god or his priests, so I didn’t think of it. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
“It’s not your fault, Arslan.” Alexis tied a scrap of his cloak around his leg. “He wanted us to know we had been seen.”
“He did, and now will probably go out of his way to make our lives difficult.”
Alexis scooped up cold salty water from over the side and splashed his face with it.”Why not kill us in the crypt?”
“Because the crypt is consecrated ground, and killing us in front of the church would mean that the rest of the players in this city would have learned that something he wants was taken. It would put them in a frenzy to find out what it was to try and get to it first.”
Alexis stared at the casket. “He must have known something of great power was there. Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you until we are somewhere safe enough to say it out loud.” Arslan’s face was tired but stubborn. Alexis realized that he was protecting him from the consequences of speaking it before they were behind a wall.
Alexis ran a hand over his face. “Summoned by saying a name aloud? Gods, I hope we aren’t dealing with a djinn.”
Arlsan laughed bitterly. “If only we were dealing with djinn. They can be reasoned with.”
Alexis couldn’t help but wonder what he had stumbled into, but decided it would be wiser not to ask any further questions.
They reached the Eos before dawn. Arslan gave Alexis the casket, and he placed it in the deepest chest of the hold, behind three of his own personal wards. He didn’t dare open it. He was too tired to deal with the outcome.
“Go and sleep.” Arslan waved him toward the cabin. “I will keep watch and make sure our friend doesn’t come and visit.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re bleeding and shaken up because of whatever happened with that stone. Tend to yourself and sleep for a few hours.” Arslan scanned the dock. “I’ll wake you if I have any more excitement.”
Before Alexis could object, Arslan sat cross-legged on the deck with a hand resting lightly on the pommel of a large curved knife at his belt and watched the sun begin to rise.
Alexis, who wasn’t inclined to take orders from anyone, did as he was told. He mended the wound on his leg, bathed, and curled up in the cabin’s only bed. When he finally fell asleep, it was to the sound of lapping waves and faintly under it, a strange bell tolling from the past.
***
As, always, thanks so much for reading!
Want to catch up on the other chapters? Click here for where I’m compiling them every week.
If you haven’t read Alexis and Penelope’s adventures yet, you can check them out here. Or if you are curious about who Arslan is, then click here.
Ames xx