A Tale of Two Hoods: Chapter 3

Rona didn’t need long to take stock of the new arrivals. Only three of them managed to stumble through the gates once they opened, but they at least had the sense to enter as soon as the sun rose. Getting a good night’s sleep with the Greenbeans would have exposed them to dozens of curious eyes. Instead, they flitted through empty streets, guided by armed escort, with only Rona watching. She hunched over the ledge of the roof where she had crouched waiting for them. An early morning summer breeze blew across her face, but her hair went untouched beneath her red hood. The night before, she had tied up her burgeoning afro into a bun. The hair bulged against the inside of the crimson hood now, but that didn’t concern her. The camouflage spell woven into the Red Cloak would shield her from curious eyes.

It was easy enough to pick out which of the men was Baron Harkley. Visiting nobles always moved in one of two ways: befitting grace or unearned arrogance. For the untrained observer it could be easy to get the two confused, but Rona was well practiced in observing nobility. Baron Harkley’s cautious, disdainful gait reminded her of Count Remmerly of Torance. Torance was an island city about twenty miles off the coast of Kolor. The Count was sure to visit Kolor at least three times a year and he would usually bring a full retinue of servants and entertainers. They were a colorful bunch of people, but Count Remmerly never invited them inside for the welcome feast. All the minstrels and jugglers and court fools were forced to find their own food in the city. A good performance at the farewell feast might distract the Count long enough to sneak a few morsels of chicken, but that was never guaranteed.

Looking at Baron Harkley, Rona could see the same contempt in his step. Yet, Count Remmerly’s arrogance was expected. Torance was a crucial trading partner for Kolor, so Remmerly knew how far he could lean into his air of conceit. Baron Harkley had no such leverage. He ruled over a small city that barely constituted more than a glorified town. His people hadn’t made contact with Kolor in generations and they had little to offer even in the days of the Monarchy. When the Old King had been chased out of the city gates, the House of Harkley cut off its contact with Kolor. Now, thirty years later, Baron Harkley marched through the outer city slums, hoping for his audience with the High Council.

Rona turned away from the visiting party and skipped across the roof top. Golden beams of sunlight washed across the rich brown skin of her hands and face. Beneath the Red Cloak she wore a gray woolen tunic and beige trousers. She held her arms out at an angle to help her balance as she moved. Morning dew drops flicked off the orange tile as her feet danced along their edges. The end of the rooftop jutted out, providing the perfect ledge for Rona to lower herself onto. From there, she latched onto a rusted gutter pipe and slid down to the ground.

If she wanted to, she could have followed the Baron’s trek through the city from the shadows. He was in a hurry, but his thick legs wouldn’t carry him fast enough to escape Rona’s sight if she set herself to tracking him. But Harkley’s Council meeting wouldn’t be for several more hours. The entire Council had to be present in order to formally welcome Harkley, and at least one guild leader would be late. One of them was always late to early meetings. Today, Rona reckoned it would be Jonah Orly, Captain of the Greenbeans. Harkley had been escorted through Kolor’s gates by a Greenbean, but not by Orly himself. That meant the Captain was likely dozing in his treehouse, dreaming of the days before he swore to patrol a haunted forest.

No, Rona didn’t need to follow Harkley to the Council chambers right now. In fact, she might not even listen in on the meeting at all. It held all the potential excitement of spying on a colony of seagulls for the day. Harkley would gripe and groan and the Council would listen, measuring his complaints against their own indifference. The Baron would then storm out ranting about the dangers he surmounted to gain an audience with the leaders of Kolor. He would go back to his pile of rocks he called a castle and fume at the Council’s refusal to listen to one of their noble betters. He would hardly be at fault though. It was nearly impossible to convince the High Council to do anything not specified within Kolor’s Compact. The Compact gave them a set number of duties and powers that had to be carried out at precise times. It also gave the Council arbitration powers with foreign emissaries and exterior threats.

Every foreign leader was worthy of an audience with the High Council, but only a few warranted its full attention. Even Count Remmerly could only expect so much reverence during his visits. Rona, for her part, had her mind set on meeting someone who dominated the Council’s most animated discussions. To find him, she needed to leave the slums. There were strong men who slumbered in the homes she slithered past, but strength meant very little in Kolor. In Rona’s experience it was better to be fast than strong, though eventually a person’s legs would falter or their sleight of hand would fail. Someone had once told her that the best thing to be in Kolor was smart, but she knew that to be false. Intelligence was a good thing to have anywhere, and Rona suspected it was the best thing to have in some places. But Kolor had plenty of smart people. A quick wit could just as easily earn a person a smack on the ear here as it could guarantee a better life.

No, the best thing to be in Kolor was powerful. Power in Kolor meant you didn’t need money, or strength, or even intelligence, because you had people willing to provide it for you. And while there were plenty of strongmen in Kolor, and while the city was filled to bursting with people convinced of their own cunning, there were few people who judged themselves powerful. There were fewer still who were correct in their assessment. The High Council fancied itself the most powerful institution in the city, and with its full might mustered could affect Kolor like nothing else. But the Council’s power was fickle, subject to rivalries or rogue Guild Heads.

The Guild Heads held the illusion of power, but in reality their hands were usually tied by the Compact, or ambitious subordinates. The moment Corial, Mistress of the Shipwrights, made a decision out of line with the other shipbuilders, was the moment she risked her position as their leader. It was a problem all the Guild Heads faced in one way or another. And it meant that none of their power had an ounce of worth. But there was one man in Kolor who operated outside the constraints of Guilds or the Council or the Compact. There were some who believed he was just a myth, a revenant made up to discourage people from breaking into the castle he supposedly roamed.

As a child, Rona had gazed up at Castle Farlow and longed to explore it. Her father had patiently explained that the castle had been declared off limits when the last Farlow king was overthrown. But, the castle had not been abandoned. Instead it had been gifted to a mysterious benefactor of the revolution.

“The Council decided it would be both a reward for the man’s services, but also a deterrent against any revolutionaries with delusions of royalty,” Rona’s father had explained.

“But what’s to keep this man from making himself king?” she had asked.

Her father’s smile caught her attention even in the blinding sunlight. A dozen years later and that same smile still brought a feeling of safety and home whenever she saw it.

“Kings and queens have to rule. He just wants to be left alone.”

They had kept walking, and it wasn’t until they reached home that Rona realized her father had avoided revealing the castle owner’s identity. It took a while for Rona to bring the topic up with her mother, but again, the mystery man was never described in detail. When her schoolmaster refused to even discuss Castle Farlow’s ownership after the revolution, Rona’s suspicions were confirmed. People were afraid of the man in the castle. They didn’t just fear disturbing the man, they were afraid to even say his name.

Naturally, Rona’s curiosity had only grown with each refusal to discuss the mystery castle dweller. Now, she dashed from alley to alley, avoiding the crust filled eyes of men and women starting on their way to another day of hard work. The red Cloak’s spells were strong, but they didn’t make her invisible. She could be seen if someone was looking hard enough. And she had no interest in being seen today.

Castle Farlow sat on one of the highest hills in the city, in the middle of what used to be one of Kolor’s richest neighborhoods. When the last Farlow king and queen fled into exile, it had been filled with noble mansions, but now those mansions sat deserted and empty. There were no more nobles in Kolor, the odor of democracy drove even the visiting ones through the gates eventually.

A growing chatter could be heard throughout the city. By the time Rona reached the border of Anchor Hills, the city was bustling with activity. Below her, the smell of breakfast and fresh sweet tarts wafted up from kitchens and carts spread across the various crooked streets. Echoes of the jubilant clamor bounced off the first empty homes she reached in the formerly illustrious neighborhood.

The last clumps of morning mist still clung to Anchor Hills as Rona traversed the silent cobblestones. Technically, anyone with enough money to restore one of the mansions could move their family onto this hilltop that overlooked the city. But the abandonment of Anchor Hills had more to do with a surplus of superstition than a lack of funds. Even the most desperate among the homeless dared only to stay a night or two at the most in one of the Hills mansions. Invariably, anyone who lingered in Anchor Hills for too long would start to feel a scratching in the back of their mind, and feel whispers crawling up their spine. They would come screaming of the great curse that overthrew the Farlows and how they had barely escaped. Fools. There was a power here in these hills, and it had driven King Harlan Farlow from his throne, but if it had been a curse neither the king nor innumerable street urchins would have escaped to scream about it.

Soft sunlight streaks melted their way through the mist as she came upon the inspiration behind the Anchor Hills’ name. The black iron gates to Gray’s Ferry Cemetery creaked as she pulled them apart and slid inside. Anchor Hills had once been known as the cultural center of Kolor. It was the seat of power in the city and the royal family along with the adjoining noble houses curated everything from trade to fashion from these peaks.

Of course, at the very peak of these monarchial hills sat Castle Farlow, home to the long reigning royal family of Kolor. It occupied the highest hill in the city, also named for the Farlow family, and could be seen lording above the world from nearly every part of Kolor. At night, its shadow seemed to glower down at the poor denizens of Kolor, taunting them with the specter of the monarchy.

Rona tiptoed past graves, careful not to disturb some of the more unstable tomb stones. The first time she had ever entered the cemetery, it had been pitch black and filled with the cawing of ravens. She remembered her fear that one of the camouflaged birds would swoop down and peck out her eyes. At the time she couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than being blinded by an invisible attacker. The irony brought a sour smile to her face now. She had learned eventually that the crows were just as afraid of her as she was of them, if not more. The crows in Anchor Hills were probably afraid to bother the dead, let along the living.

Her destination towered over the rest of the graveyard, a castle of its own kind among the silence. Additions had been made to the Farlow Mausoleum over the course of several generations. Its large stone frame had stuck out when Rona’s Father took her to look at the castle up close. That had been several years ago, and the mausoleum still sent chills down her back every time she strode up to it. Even in the mist, the structure still struck an imposing figure.

The Ghost of Anchor Hills slept in Gray’s Ferry Cemetery. Or so the stories told. If a man slept in one of the abandoned estates the Ghost would hear him snoring in the night. If you stole an heirloom from a forgotten noble family the Ghost would steal it back. And if you broke into Castle Farlow looking for the treasure said to be vaulted there, your screams would be added to the volley of tortured whispers used to haunt the next trespasser. These horror stories had drawn Rona in, almost as much as the suspicious responses her parents gave. If she had known there was any truth to them, she probably wouldn’t have started exploring the Hills. And she certainly never would have found the secret entrance into Castle Farlow.

For generations, the Farlow royal family had used a secret tunnel that ran from their castle down into Gray’s Ferry Cemetery. In line with the Farlow tradition of naming things after themselves, the tunnel had been known as the Dragon Path. It was the might of dragons that uplifted the Farlows to the throne, and in the end it had been that same fiery folly that toppled them. Dragon insignia had once decorated the outer walls, the royal seal and even Kolor’s flag. Now those flags were burned and the Dragons of Kolor flung to the wind.

She nudged open the iron doors and stepped inside. A wave of stale cold air met her skin. Before her lay a large sarcophagus. Rows of nearly identical stone coffins filled the mausoleum, the engraved image of a mighty dragon roaring into the silence. She suppressed a shiver as she ran her hand across the wall, feeling for the familiar grooves worn into the stone. After a few tentative steps she reached the oldest sarcophagus in the mausoleum. A fine layer of dust had settled onto the stone since her last visit, but it was nothing compared to the grime that covered the other coffins.

It had initially taken her a while to discover the secret cavern carved beneath her feet. There were few books written about the days of the monarchy and researching too deeply into the Farlows was discouraged. But, after ample digging and even more exploration she had found this hidden place among the tombs.

This was the place that anchored the Dragon to the ground.

With a grunt, she slid the stone slab that served as a lid off of the coffin. She peered down for a moment, then dropped down into that dark passage of long silent kings.