Eskir spoke very little, despite my insistence. It was a trait I would soon come to learn was unique to that particular meeting.

I miss it. I often wished after that day that he would learn to shut up more often.

I dragged him back into the tavern that we had just finished cleaning, threw him into one of our ancient wood chairs, leaned against the table, and stared at him until he said something. He responded to all of this with cooperative grunts, as if acknowledging that being tossed around was simply the way his life was going to be for the next few minutes. He wasn't quite a deadweight, but his arms flopped like a limp doll. When he collapsed into the chair, they hung down at his sides, exhausted.

I didn't know what I was waiting for him to say. I didn't think anyone could have known what had happened to Senvia, no matter what he said.

Not unless they were responsible for it.

I didn't even know if anyone had seen it, aside from myself and a few fishers left stranded on the waters outside the city. It had disappeared utterly without warning. I only survived because I was a coward, fleeing the assassination of Emperor Alaric.

An entire city, gone in a heartbeat, its absence filled by a rush of air and water to occupy the sudden vacuum. The structures, the people, the ground on which it stood, all gone.

I'd been surprised when I learned of the fishers, that some had survived the resulting torrential cascade of rushing water, and eventually set up a market on the cliffside where the city used to be. It was still a major crossroads. They did their best to make the most of it, and saw a fair amount of success in their newly forming village.

I would have written it off as a random natural disaster, a Phenomenon gone wrong, except for that small nagging voice in my mind.

Someone did this.

I knew it.

I felt it.

I tried pushing Eskir, but I had never been very good at getting answers out of people. Even in interrogation, I passed my duties on to people who had a firmer heart.

And this was no interrogation. He was willing, if slow to speak.

He sat there for a quarter hour, just staring at me, as if he didn't quite believe that I was real. A few times, he opened his mouth, as if expecting himself to speak, then closed it again.

When he finally did manage it, his words weren't about Senvia. They were about himself.

"You know, when I was a boy, barely ten years old, my father took me to coronation day. Lord Khet of the Isles was being appointed provincial monarch of Heldren. This was when they still held all the coronations in Senvia. Good old act of imperial solidarity. All the provinces selecting their own kings and queens underneath the watchful eye of the capital, reminding them how little their lives are worth. We're all equal under the empire. We're all just soldiers. My father saw it differently, though. He sat me on his knee and told me all about Senvia and what it was. This marvellous place, this unified continent of progress and freedom. It took me a decade to see the truth of things. He saw the world as it should be, never as it was."

Eskir lowered his eyes, staring at my feet. He had a habit of doing that, I had already noticed. He wasn't looking down in submission or supplication. Too many people did that, thinking of us Kindred as greater than them. We are not deserving of such veneration.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

But Eskir looked at my feet like he was walking through the dark, just trying to find his way. It was a habit some soldiers had when marching, to avoid tripping, and some Kindred had when fighting, to stop looking into the eyes of their enemy for a heartbeat, and keep watch of their footwork instead. Not a long glance, only a momentary look.

The eyes betrayed their intentions. Footwork betrayed their balance.

"Are you a soldier?" I asked.

"No," he said, his eyes still lowered. His hands twitched, and even though I couldn't see his eyes, the furrowing of his brows told me enough. He used to be.

I asked him again. A pointed question, that I knew I would make him answer, even if I had to rip the knowledge out of his mind. "What happened to Senvia?"

He smiled wistfully. "Will you help me?" he answered.

My fingers tightened into a fist. My ring pulsed on my finger. "With what?"

"It's funny," he said, "I never thought I'd have the opportunity to meet one of the Royal Guard."

"With what?" I repeated.

"And now, you're here, and... your purpose is gone. Would you like to reclaim it?"

Everyone knew by now that Emperor Alaric had been assassinated. I didn't know how. The fishers survived, but as far as I knew, I was the only one to escape the city itself. Nobody else could have gone from the Emperor's Spire to the walls of the city quickly enough to know that he was dead and make it out before it vanished.

I had done so too soon after the Emperor had died. The second assassination in two weeks. There was nothing for me to reclaim, nothing to return to. It was all gone.

"Would you like to protect again?" he asked.

"I've never been much good at protecting," I said. I'd learned that lesson.

"Then it's peace you want? Resolution." He looked up and into my eyes, I think trying to decide what sort of person I was. Not even I knew that anymore.

"I want to know what happened," I said.

"It was taken." He had a look in his eyes that I couldn't place.

Thieves do not steal cities. "How?"

"I can't tell you," he laughed. Maybe that look was heartbreak?

I knelt down before him and grasped his leg. I wasn't trying to hurt him, only intimidate.

"You will tell me," I ordered.

"I can't," he insisted. His hand instinctively reached down to try and stop mine. "Really, truly, I can't."

"Why not?"

"My voice was stolen."

From time to time, there were legends of this. Stolen voices and names, and people left without them. Often of people who wandered into the wrong fields at this very hour. I thought they were myths.

"You're speaking right now," I said.

"Oh... yes. But not of that. I can talk all day, but never of that." He brought his hands in front of him, clasping palms together. "Please," he said. "I can't tell you, but if you come with me, I can show you."

"You can show me? Show me what? Where Senvia was taken to? Can you do that? Can you lead me to a city that vanished from the face of the world?"

He paused, trying to collect his thoughts in a way that would allow him to speak. "There is a group... an organisation out there," he started, "that has kept to the shadows for a long time. They have a... no, they have... damn it, I can't say it. The words fall away. It's such a normal word too, like soldier or house. If I said this word in any other context, you would think nothing of it. But the word knows what I mean to say, and it leaves me before my tongue can form it."

"Should I guess?" He could nod when I got closer to the right word. He said soldier and house, so I thought to start there. "Fortress. Castle. Encampment."

"No," he said. "Don't bother. If I could write or mime it out, or if I were able to confirm or deny your guesses, this would be so much simpler. It's not my speech that has been stolen, but my voice. My ability to express. I can't hint at it, nor answer your questions, nor do anything to lead you to the truth. But this group, they're not done. Senvia was only the beginning. They want a repeat, another city to vanish. I'm sure of it. I can only tell you that because they didn't know what I knew what they were planning. They never stole that part of my voice."

I didn't know how to respond to that. How could a voice be stolen? How could a city be stolen?

If I could go back to that day, and have that conversation with Eskir again... I still wouldn't know what to say. I wouldn't know what to say to change anything. I don't think I'd want to change anything. Getting to the truth a little earlier would have only ruined more lives. Senvia's still gone. Nothing we've done together since that night has changed that.

But there's a reason I'm telling this story. A reason beyond the fact that Jenny asked me to.

"Will you come with me?"

Such a ridiculous question. Hundreds of scouters and strangers that had come to offer me all the wealth and fame, and here was a man offering nothing but an answer.

Of course I was going to say yes.