The Red Hand woke up in a gutter, half-submerged in a puddle of water, his wounds dirty and stinging.
He lay in an alley in the depths of the city. His cloak fell over him, hiding his sword and glove from any onlookers, and he was grimy and dishevelled enough that no one would even think to check him for valuables to loot.
Carriages trotted past, making the coloured purple light of a nearby lumawhale-oil sign flicker.
He picked himself up out of the muck and wiped his face off, but his legs buckled a few seconds later, and he fell right back down.
He needed to rest and heal, but the Emperor’s life was in danger.
And what did it matter? The Emperor had cast out the Hand twice, now. He wasn’t the sort of man to recognize a job well done and restore the Hand’s privileges and reward him just because the Hand had saved his life.
But it’d maintain the peace if he foiled Lady Neria’s coup. Sort of.
The elven scum would still be free and causing problems, and the current Emperor wasn’t strong-willed enough to crush them quickly. He had to admit that Lady Neria’s designs served his purposes, too, no matter how much they disagreed.
But he wasn’t about to betray the Emperor, either.
He didn’t need an answer at the moment. He needed to heal.
He pushed himself back up and hobbled down the street. His head swam and everything hurt, but he’d live. He had to. If he died, there was no end to this—no drawn-out retirement in the Seissen countryside, no simple gardens and hovels and watching the sun rise over the eastern waves. Just an abrupt collapse, then complete nothingness.
It was nighttime, but city smoke and haze blotted out the stars. The mountain of the central city, the enormous towers, were to his left. The wagon had brought him out past three layers of city walls before dumping him in the gutter, and now, comparatively short five-storey buildings lined the edge of the street. Stacked buildings peered out from the alleys, and ramshackled gables leaned out over the street.
Everywhere he looked, a glowing sign flickered or a Smoke-recording played on loop. It made his head hurt even more.
But he still knew this city well. He’d spent enough time here as a servant of the Emperor. He hobbled to the corner of two streets. There were no signs, but if he was where he thought he was, an old friend’s shop was nearby—someone who could give him shelter.
He staggered through the city for a few more hours. Close was always comparative in Rasis Nureans-Ost, when it could take days to cross the city on foot. Pedestrians pushed past him, even so late in the night, and bird-riders fluttered overhead, delivering short-range mail and messages. A few airships creaked past, and instinctively, the Hand looked up. Of course, none of them belonged to the black-haired elf—they were too large—but he could hope.
But even if his prey showed up, it wouldn’t do much good now. The Emperor would not accept the elf’s head as compensation anymore.
He arrived at a storefront nestled in between a ring-wall and a pair of inns. A small sign hung above the door, and its worn letters glowed faintly in the night light. The lumawhale oil paint was old and cracking, and a candle probably would’ve done better to illuminate the sign.
Shrivelled Leaf Alchemist and Apothecary.
The Hand pounded on the door until it opened. A man’s face appeared in the gloom.
He was just a man. Fair-skinned and gray-haired, and average in all respects—height, build, looks. His people probably would’ve hailed from Greatsaad or Plainspar long ago, but they’d been living as second-class citizens in the Dominion for many years.
“What is it?” he demanded. He looked the Hand up and down. “Vagabond! Begone with you!”
The Hand pushed aside his cloak, revealing his sword and gloved hand.
For a few seconds, the man—a mortal alchemist by the name of Firren—was silent. Then, he breathed, “Kovar? You look awful.”
For the first time in years, the Hand dropped to a knee and bowed to Firren. “Please, Firren. I would very much appreciate your charity and a roof to stay under.”
Firren opened and shut his mouth a few times, then said, “Oh, get in here.”
“Thank you.”
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Lady Neria sat at a table across from Lord Two. It was a small, square table, meant only for two people, but Three stood behind her, watching over everything. A cup of purple tyrrh-shrub tea sat in front of both of them, steaming and bubbling.
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Lady Neria took a single sip, while watching Lord Two the whole time. A single cup of tea wouldn’t turn her eyes purple, but that didn’t make it any less bitter and hard-to-swallow.
“Your proposition has been noted,” Lord Two said. “I will consider it.”
“I need your allegiance now,” Lady Neria said.
A chandelier swayed overhead. They sat in the main dining hall of Lord Two’s manor. It was mostly dark, save for the single chandelier. Smoke wafted across the table, mixing with the sulfuric haze of the Scar. It gathered in the rafters and at the edges of the room, obscuring the black stone bricks and unlit candle sconces.
“Or else what?” Lord Two demanded. Magenta scorpion Essence encased his hand.
She didn’t need to reply. She didn’t even need to look over her shoulder to know that Three had prepared a technique of greenblood Essence on his fingers to meet Lord Two’s potential attack—if needed.
“Do you know the nature of Reyldaren’s Scar, my Lady Neria?” asked Lord Two. When she said nothing, Lord Two scoffed, then continued, “A star fell from the great void and scoured the land, ripping a great gash in the world—then called Reyldaren. It crashed in the south, eradicating the great southern empires and raising a cloud of dust and ash higher than the clouds themselves. It blotted out the sun for years, and were it not for the eight wizard-kings and their ingenuity, the races of men, ostal, elves and so on would all have perished. You know nothing of the ‘southern threats’ you hold over our heads.”
“And you do?”
“The old peoples are eradicated. Replaced. The falling star bore new beasts to the surface. If the Eight hadn’t raised the Stormwall, these beasts would have ravaged the entire world, not just the south.”
“And the Stormwall weakens,” said Lady Neria. “The hour grows late. The labyrinths and Essence-reactors that fuelled it are shutting down, and the North is weaker than ever before. Is that not reason enough to join me?”
“You seek power not to fend off the threats, but for yourself.”
Lady Neria scowled. “Don’t we all?”
“You should have led with that.”
He wanted to see what she was made of. She wouldn’t flinch. “I will be an Empress. Already, we have destroyed one Unbound Lord, and his family will soon crumble. I will distribute his advancement resources and imperial allowance among any who join me. You will raise your families and yourselves higher than ever before.”
“What would we need a mortal noblewoman for?”
“Do you want to be the public face of the Dominion? Do you want to address crowds and give speeches to armies? Or do you want to live comfortably as my enforcers, as has been the system for a thousand years?”
There was a reason most wizards didn’t dabble in politics. They were too busy advancing and learning martial arts and sitting in dark rooms while cycling Essence to rule a nation. Leave that to the scheming mortals.
There was a reason this system worked better than that of the ancient eight wizard-kings.
When Lord Two said nothing, Neria knew she had struck a nerve. “Precisely. Enforce my will, and you will have your comfort and little shadow-fiefdom.” She pushed her teacup to the side and leaned forward. “Ten years ago, you let Ískan rebel under your watch—such disobedience will not be tolerated in my empire. Do you have the will to make it so?”
Lord Two snorted. “It was I who suggested the Burning to set an example and a precedent. The Emperor only had to agree with me, and he did. Now, none will rebel again.”
A perfect response.
“In that case,” said Lady Neria, “you will also have control of the Elven Continent when we conquer it. And you will have what resources we can scrape from those lands. I hear ambersteel makes excellent elixirs.”
“You have a deal. Do you want a soul oath from me?”
“That won’t be necessary. Come aboard my airship. We have work to do.”
Without even a handshake, Neria turned away. If a deal needed a soul oath or a handshake, then it wasn’t a very good deal—not profitable for either party.
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Pirin sprinted through the cramped hallways of the warship. He ducked under low beams and jumped through rounded doorways in the bulwarks. Tarps held straw insulation tight against the ceiling, and the candle sconces were low to the ground so their sparks didn’t the hay and set the whole place ablaze.
Sailors in the white coats of the Neria company rushed in the opposite direction as Pirin, carrying tools and buckets, and a few even held weapons. Most didn’t even think to attack him—they were looking for someone on deck, or they hadn’t been employed as warriors and weren’t looking for a fight.
They were just mortals. If they didn’t attack him, he wouldn’t attack back. But when a few did attack, he knocked them into the walls with a technique or cut through them with his sword.
When he reached the stern, he turned back and sprinted down a different hall. “Gray, do you see anything?”
She was still circling above the company destroyer, acting as his eyes in the sky. Before, it wouldn’t have been close enough to maintain a stable Reyad, but now their bond and magic was strong enough.
Just a single ship! she replied. If I see reinforcements, I’ll let you— For a second, she stopped, and Pirin sensed her tilting her head, as if confused. Wait. There is another little ship, but it’s sailing away. It’s far off in the distance. Just a sloop, and it’s flying an Aremir flag.
Curious, but that wasn’t Pirin’s biggest concern. He needed the dagger.
He sprinted down the other hall, trying to narrow down his search with his spiritual senses. But they weren’t good enough. He knew he was close, and that was about it. Spiritual sight didn’t work through walls, either, and he wasn’t even sure what a dagger would look like in his spiritual sight.
But there were two more decks below this one that he had to search.
When he reached the end of the hall, he found a stairway and descended a deck. He sprinted past the magazine, dipping between a pair of sailors carrying a pre-packaged packet of pebbles and stones for a flack catapult. He passed through a bulwark on the other side, turning sideways so he didn’t plow through a young sailor carrying quivers of arrows up to the main deck, then stepped into a new, darker hallway.
A man stepped out of the shadows. A mane ran down the back of his head and neck, and glowing golden tattoos covered his arms and face. “Thief. Embercore.”