Chapter Eighty-Nine

The Horror of Doubt

Michael let the tip of the pen hover over the page for a moment longer than he’d intended, when finally he pressed the quill to the commitment line. It froze there.

The hitwoman who’d been quietly watching the process strolled over to him and raised an eyebrow. “Need any help?”

Michael gave an awkward smile and twirled his pen. “I’ve never signed anything before. I don’t have a signature...”

Klaryah withheld a look of surprise, realising he couldn’t be older than fifteen. Most citizens, however poor, are bombarded with legal paperwork after they come of age. He seemed older, though she wondered if it was just that kind of day. “Ah, I see. Well, you can make one up, now, or write your name. Some use symbols, like the Riinin chain, or the Malank sun-and-moon.”

Michael smiled at an idea and thanked her. He put the quill to the parchment and as well as he could manage, scribbled the same accented ‘X’ that was scrawled on the face of the book he’d found in the library.

After another ten minutes of signing, the stack of parchment was finally all filled out, and Amekot looked over it peacefully, as though bureaucracy itself soothed him. He then turned to the antsy crowd and announced, “Thank you all. Now, we have one other topic to discuss before we all retire: the fate of Oliver Jacobs.”

Several dozen of the Legacies mumbled angrily or tensed at the words like a pack of hungry dogs, while others merely fell silent.

Michael and his companions hardly registered the sentence, after having spent so long avoiding it, the name felt strange and mispronounced somehow.

“This shall be a collective decision,” Amekot said magnanimously, “for if it were mine alone, he would be executed by hanging or beheading before the sun’s first light tomorrow. But, this is not an imperial city and I am not emperor. This fortress is a...” his face twinged with distaste, “...democracy in such matters, and so we will decide together.”

Rose frowned, wanting to mention that only one person in the entire stronghold with a room like a villa was Amekot Hillborn, but when it came to tough choices he was suddenly all about sharing.

Amekot gestured to the crowd openly and said, “Voice your thoughts on the matter!”

The most confident and least sympathetic shouted first. “Rack him! The coward would’ve seen that we were all killed and left to rot!”

“Take off his head!” barked one.

“Burn him!”

“String him up from the keep!” called someone else.

“Draw an’ quarter ‘em!”

Michael listened only vaguely to their callousness as he looked at Sarah, watching as she entwined two blades of dry grass.

Klaryah winced as the shouts became even more violent, and glanced to Jack, whose face was plain with disgust at the lot of them. Next to him, Amekot had a very playful look in his eye, the same hungry one he’d had for days.

“He tried to sell us to Nikereus!” yelled Kresta from the back of the mob.

Jack stood, unable to keep his seat. “So, we kill him? As if somehow that would undo the damage? It will not take back sold secrets. It won’t erase the injustice, just further it!”

“He’s a traitor, Jack-” said Jordan, the restorician’s assistant began.

Jack barked, “He’s a kid!”

The man’s protest was met with a cold moment of silence, and then a cataclysmic roar. Amekot stepped up beside him, waving the crowd into relative peace before certain groups could spiral into frenzy.

“I think!” Amekot shouted, smiling all the while, “We should take a vote, now!”

Jack turned angrily to Amekot. “This is a joke, Hillborn. They are blinded- stupefied by rage and you know that! We have to let tempers cool.”

Amekot only muttered, “We are out of time, Mister McKennedy. It’s this or perhaps I make the decision on my own?”

Jack ignored the roaring horde of Legacies and felt his anger tickling the Blood Magic in his veins as he spoke to Amekot, “This is not how a man’s life should be decided.”

Klaryah, sat tensely on the step, leaned back and yelled, “You did say you wanted to partake in something democratic, Amey. If this is jury, then it means your boy should get a chance to speak, and a chance to be judged.”

Amekot glared at her and bit his tongue before turning back to the angry crowd. He took one last venomous look at Jack and snarked back, “What makes you think he’ll speak when he’s spent every moment of his captivity in silence?”

Jack listened to the man’s irate voice, and his permanent disdain for Amekot’s every facet nearly stopped him from hearing it, but something frantic undermined his tone. A flutter. A single breath on the back foot.

Jack’s scowl gave way to a frown. “If he’s certain to be convicted, why do you care if he speaks or doesn’t?”

This forced Amekot to take a moment before he scoffed. “Fine.” He turned to the mob of Legacies and shouted, “The boy will be brought forward for trial. We will hear him, judge him, then sentence him!”

The entire crowd yelled in agreement, though more so in anger than relief, it seemed. “I’ll go fetch him then. Michael!” Jack called, waving to the archer across the way. “Give me a hand, will you?”

Michael swallowed. His heart pumped rather anxiously at the thought of seeing Oliver but a certain look in Jack’s eye made him grit his teeth and push himself up. Michael felt hollow as they started walking but before he could turn back to ask, Sarah, James, Nichole, Aroha, and Rose fell in beside him.

Jack saw the determined looks on their faces and the paranoid one on Amekot’s and said nothing as they made their way out of the forum.

The company led by Jack walked in a suspenseful silence as thunder chanted in the dark void above, and a storm cloud inched its way over the stronghold. Before long, rain began spitting over the dark stone of the keep. Lightning coloured the horizons lying behind the hilltops.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jack’s armour clinked with the odd rain droplets as he looked to Rose and asked, “When you went in earlier, what did he say?”

Rose frowned as they approached an outer ladder to the Arena. “I didn’t get inside. Who told you I went looking to talk to him?”

Jack pulled himself onto the ladder and hoisted himself up to the stands of the Arena. He gave Rose a hand up and pulled on his dim Javen-helm. “Sidney’s second-in-command, Francis. She tried to stop me a few minutes after you.”

Rose’s face scrunched a little smile at the thought. “I’m sure you took that well.”

“I reminded her that if I wanted to, I could drive enough fear into her heart to pop it like a grape. She decided to extend visiting hours.”

Jack wrenched the Murk trap door open and neglected the ladder, dropping through to the dark floor. The others climbed down after him, squinting through a veil of shadow so thick that Michael summoned a fistful of Starfire just see three feet in front of them. As he maintained the light in his fingers, he felt almost like he was submerged beneath water, watching the starfire waver in strength before he focused and sent a harder surge of power into it.

“Why is my Arcancy struggling in here?” he whispered, a shiver crawling up his spine as he saw all manner of shapes lurking in the dark beyond the cage-bars.

Jack drew his mace and tapped it one, two, three times against the nearest set of bars. All chattering stopped. All shifting and pacing fell still. Jack’s eyes search the black and finally, he answered, “It’s called a Gathering Field. When Creations remain in one place for long enough, they collectively create a kind of magical fog. It suppresses Arcancy. It can stop our power completely if its strong enough,” he said, looking at the light in Michael’s hand and pulling an unlit torch off the wall. “Which is why we use fire, an element which has no master.”

Jack touched a rune on the side of the grip and the torch-head erupted in flame, casting away the nearby shadow far more powerfully than Michael’s magic.

Michael let his Arcancy fade and they followed the warden down into the depths of the Murk, listening to the silent whispers of the crackling flame.

“What about your Arcancy, then?” Aroha asked, looking into the cells filled with a darkness even thicker that descending ramp.

Jack briefly explained that fear was was just one point on a spectrum of his control, but yes he relied on it more than the others. Fear is just damaged courage. Courage is just conquered fear. His power was in the ability to affect the balance however he pleased, in both himself and others.

The ranger nodded, looking down through the dark at her own hands. “So I assume you’re used to the Gathering Field, then. I’ve never seen someone bend the wills of so many creatures at once.

Jack frowned and realised she was referring to the silence of the hundreds of creatures spiralling around them. “Oh, I’m not using my power. We just have a mutual understanding. They don’t inconvenience me and I don’t inconvenience them. Luckily for everyone, the Shanii have a very particular culture surrounding loss.”

Michael could see his breath in the cold. “How so?”

“It is not some badge of disgrace for them like it is for us Draendicans. Death is a marker of the unwise. Age, scars, even outright loss, all reflect survival. They hold survival more highly than anything. I suppose they respect that about me.”

Aroha looked into the thick shades of black. Eyes flickered in the backs of cells. Small chitters and shuffling feet pitter-pattered lightly. “Ever wonder how highly you’ve been placed in here?”

Jack shrugged, though in his mind he knew Shadiirageous was not a name picked by any Legacy.

They kept walking, down and around. Down and around. Down and around. All the way until the torchlight glinted off cell-bars at the end of the passage.

A pair of hands clamped around the bars, as though they fed off the dull, faraway light. The fingers trembled despite their white-knuckled grip.

Each step they came closer, the light revealed more.

Oliver was on his knees, clinging to the iron with a tortured, unfocused stare. His hair was mangled, stuck out, and flattened in random patches like he’d been tearing at it. Nearly his entire body shook, like he was struck by a bolt of lightning moments before they arrived.

Sarah looked at him and her mind tried to force her gaze to the ground or the ceiling or anywhere else, but she knew she had to see it. She knew if she looked away, she’d never look at him again. She just knew.

Jack approached the cage ahead of the others with his torch aloft and looked him over. The dark was a kindness for Creations. When Amekot first ordered the Murk to be filled, he’d run it much differently. The halls were torch-lit, and its warden was chosen on a lottery system. The torches on their own created chaos, for the mere touch of light inflicts pain on most Creations, though they rarely show it.

The key turned in the lock with a grating, metallic crank!

Oliver fell forward onto the stone floor, barely able to hold his weight until Jack helped him up and clamped shackles around his quivering wrists.

Michael and the others watched Jack tow Oliver wordlessly back up the ramp, and as they walked, dozens and dozens of Creations began to chitter and cackle in the dark, sending jolting fits of terror down Oliver’s spine as he yearned to sprint, held only by Jack’s iron grip around his chains.

Jack took one look at the dark cells and the noise ceased.

Oliver cast the barest of glances to each of the others, and each time his gaze would last less than a moment before it would crumble and his head would fall. After looking at Michael, he settled for merely shutting his eyes and gritting his teeth, still not uttering a sound.

Jack began ushering Oliver up into the dark and slowly everyone followed him but Michael.

Michael stayed at the foot of the Murk for a small moment with an inkling of confusion on his face. He replayed Oliver’s glance to him over and over in his head until finally he decided he’d imagined it.

Everyone’s eyes look strange in the dark.

Jack came to the trap door he’d dropped down and pulled himself back out. Above him, stars faded behind the thick cloud as rainfall became steadier and thunder growled hungrily in the sky.

James and Rose looked to Oliver and painfully nodded to the ladder, ushering him along after the warden, and slowly the prisoner pulled himself up into the stands where rain swept across his face.

With the rain washing down his eyes, and his first breath of fresh air in his lungs, he looked to Jack and opened his mouth for the briefest moment. But as James and Rose pulled themselves up after him, Oliver’s eyes fell shut, and with them his mouth closed too, and he resumed his placid silence.

Jack had been too busy looking over the fortress defences to notice.

Before long, Michael followed the others up onto the platform and he found himself staring lightly at the back of Oliver’s head.

Jack sighed as he pulled off his helmet and ran his fingers through his wet hair. He looked out over the darkened fields and saw Amekot speaking with the restless crowd, wondering what kind of frenzy he was trying to whip them into.

“Better get back. Come on.”

Jack stepped onto the outer ladder, and one by one the other Legacies followed until it was just Oliver and Michael up on the stands.

“Oli,” Michael whispered, like he had so many times before.

Oliver turned sharply to Michael like the word had shot through him, and took a staggered breath before looking back to the ground, and quickly following the others down the ladder.

Michael stayed standing there in the darkening night as ran began pouring around him. He stood there for a while, thoughts running dangerously through his head. He watched Oliver moving across the stretch of dark grass, dragging his manacles through the mud. The memory of seeing him in the reflection of his sword was so clear he could’ve painted it. His clouded hazel eyes. Something about it irked him in a way he couldn’t understand and a crawling dread wrapped around his shoulders as he stared into the distance at nothing in particular.

What’s in your head? You saw him there. You saw him do it, Michael thought to himself.

I know.

Why do you care what his eyes look like?

The same reason you do.

Eyes change colour when people are going through hardship. It happens.

I know.

Then why are we standing here? he groaned at himself.

Because his eyes haven’t changed colour. They’re the same colour. But they’re clouded, like they’re lost in fog.

Don’t be dramatic, they were that way when you caught him.

They were. And they’re that way now. So, why weren’t they any of the days before?

Michael’s internal debate came to a sudden stop and he looked up to his friends walking in the distance, trudging through muddied grass and wind-blown rain as lightning crackled through the sky above, showering the entire fortress in one moment of pure clarity. By the time the thunder rolled across the valley, Michael hit the ground and couldn’t make his legs move fast enough.