6 - TYMORA

Unable to agree on a clear course of action, Justinia and I didn’t talk much for several days. Things began to feel awkward between us. The atmosphere was tense. Still, we traveled east, in the vague direction of Tymora, and soon enough stumbled upon an Autarchy road.

I already knew that the Tiran Autarchy had radically changed the continent over the last three centuries. They had built a hundred new cities, a thousand roads, and had, so I’d both read and heard, invented a new way of travel.

It was this new method that Justinia and I briefly talked about as the road first came into view.

“There are four ways to get around the Autarchy,” Justinia said, in the practiced tone of a teacher. “Firstly, you can walk. This is, obviously, the most shit way to do it. The Autarchy is massive and it’d take months to make any significant progress. There’s also by horse—that’s the second option. Better than the first but suffers from some of the same drawbacks, namely, the Autarchy is still massive, and horses aren’t that fast. Also, you have to more or less travel Autarchy roads, and that means plenty of checkpoints. Still, it’s the option I prefer.”

Justinia took a deep breath and continued, “The third option is that you can take a train. Hold on, save your question for a moment. Trains are fast and these days, there are a lot of them. The whole continent is covered in tracks. The Autarch insists upon it. It’s the main reason the empire can exist as it is. Would be logistically impossible without trains.”

“Trains,” I echoed. “What’s a train?”

Justinia sighed. “Yeah. That’s a problem. I didn’t know what they were either, when I first got here. Even though they’ve been around for, say, fifty years or so at this point.” She hesitated. “It’s a real problem that the Isles are so far behind the times. Makes my job a whole lot more difficult. But, more or less, it’s a machine that travels along rails at high-speeds. People can sit inside it. Hundreds of them at a time. They’re powered by high-pressure steam.”

“By steam,” I murmured. “And how, exactly, does that work?”

“Doesn’t matter right this moment. Anyway, it’s the most practical way for most people to get around—though mind you, tickets aren’t all that cheap, and all of the trains are patrolled by officials. It’s not a discreet way to travel, I’ll put it like that.”

I absorbed this silently. Trains. I couldn’t even visualize what she was trying to tell me. Still, I was quite sure I’d see whatever it was in person soon enough.

“And the fourth option?”

And now Justinia grimaced. “The fourth option is blood.”

“And what does that mean?” My impatience was growing.

“Officially, they’re called rifts. Some just call ‘em blood gates. Well, actually, there are a lot of names for them, depending on who you ask.” Justinia sniffed. “But, okay, there’s a whole Autarchy department called the Sanguine Ministry. They have special officials called Chanellers. And what these Channellers can do is this: if they have access to enough blood, they can open up a hole in, I suppose, reality itself. So you can walk through this hole and step out somewhere else. This is how all the real important people in the Autarchy get around. But it’s exclusive. The rich and powerful only. And, officially, as I said, it’s government business only.”

The pressure of a thousand questions inside my head was enough to make me dizzy. I rubbed my temples. So much to learn. So much to understand. I said, “How do they use blood to—”

“Don’t ask,” she said. “I don’t know and, seriously, don’t ask—at least, not anywhere where someone might hear you. Even questioning how it works is enough for the Order of the Seeking Hand to make you vanish. Technically, no one is even meant to know the Sanguine Ministry exists.”

“Right,” I said. “And have you done this? Used one of these gates?”

“Do I look like an Autarchy official to you?”

I pursed my lips. “Where do they get this blood from?”

“People disappear,” is all Justinia said to that. It was all she needed to say. I was already starting to put the pieces together. The Autarchy, it seemed, was a cold and controlling place. Step out of line and you vanish. Vanish, and their supply of disposal blood increases. An incentive, then, to disappear their own citizens.

Proving to me even more that my cause was just; that Marak very much needed to be destroyed.

If I could bring down this empire of violence and cruelty, I’d be doing the world a favor.

The only question was—how to do it?

#

We followed an Autarchy road for three days. In that time, it did not cease to amaze me. It was wide enough for perhaps two dozen people to walk shoulder to shoulder. It had been built of solid, gray brick, each laid so precisely that it seemed impossible human hands could’ve been responsible.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Some advice,” Justinia grunted at one point, “keep your eyes up, Aurion. ‘Else you’ll walk into a fucking Sun Knight and not even realize it.”

“But the road,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s incredible.” I peered into the distance. The road appeared to have no end. It stretched onward in a reasonably straight line across the rolling, green hills of a land that had once been a part of the Rising Dominion.

And then something caught my eye.

It caught Justinia’s first.

“Shit,” she hissed. “Shit, shit.”

“Wha?” I said, alarmed, squinting hard to make out whatever it was that had concerned her.

“Company up ahead,” she said. I didn’t like her tone. “Autarchy officials, by the looks of it.”

My guts twisted into a knot. “Should we get off the road? Try to hide?”

She glared at me. “Does it look like there’s anywhere to hide? Anyway, they’ve likely already seen us.”

“So—what are we going to do?”

“Keep our heads down, stay quiet, pray they leave us alone.”

I could see them more clearly now. Four people on horseback. I’d never seen horses in the flesh before—of course, there were no horses amongst the Withered Isles. Although I had seen illustrations of them in books, that was nothing compared to the real thing. The size of them awed me. The four officials were riding toward us at a leisurely pace. One was carrying a standard, banner fluttering in the cool afternoon wind.

A blood-red fist graped a white star upon a field of black.

I found it difficult to look away from the symbol. Something about it stuck in my throat.

“We need a cover story,” I said quickly.

Justinia glanced at me. “I really wish you’d left in something other than black robes. That’s going to make this difficult.”

“I’ll be a scholar,” I said. “An historian.”

“And what am I supposed to be?”

“Uh…my guard?”

“Your guard,” she echoed flatly. “I think not. And what sort of historian needs a guard?”

“I don’t know,” I hissed, now starting to panic. The officials weren’t far away. I could make out their gleaming, golden armor, which caught the light of the sun and seemed to glow. “Just go with it, for death’s sake.”

Justinia looked like she wanted to argue, but now the four were simply too close for us to say anything more. I put my head down, watching my feet as I continued forward. I hunched my shoulders in an attempt to look smaller and unassuming. Justinia was right: the robes weren’t a good idea. What normal citizen walked around dressed like this?

The clopping of hooves against smooth stone. One of the horses snorted. A man said something to another, words unintelligible to me. I resisted the urge to look up at the horses. I wanted to see them better. The four strangers were perhaps ten feet away. In a moment, we’d pass each other, and so long as nothing happened, so long as they didn’t find a reason to stop and question us, we would all go our separate ways without issue.

Of course, that wasn’t what happened.

“Halt,” said a woman in a bored voice.

Still, I didn’t look up. Maybe, I thought desperately, she wasn’t even talking to us. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw Justinia stop moving, and figured I ought to do the same. And, now standing still, I couldn’t resist an upward glance.

The four officials had brought their horses to a halt. They towered over us, leaning back casually in their saddles. Two men, two women. Actually, one of the men, the one holding the standard, looked more like a boy, his hair a mess of golden curls. The woman who’d spoken—their leader, I guessed, and this was reinforced by the insignia on her breastplate, gilded and shaped into a single open, golden tear, from which rolled a solitary tear.

“Identify yourselves,” commanded the woman.

“With all due respect, nomarch, may I ask why we’ve been stopped?” Justinia asked. I hadn’t thought it possible for her to sound so polite, so deferential.

“You can ask,” said the nomarch, “but I won’t answer it. Identify yourselves now, in the name of the Undying Autarch.”

Undying. A shiver of revulsion went through me. Undying was a sacred term. For the Autarch to abuse the title, to claim it without being a member of a necromantic order, was heretical. Just another crime to add to his already long list.

“My name is Aurion Akaran,” I said as loudly and confidently as I could. The key was to sound important and convincing and yet remain reverent. “Famed historian. And this—” I pointed at Justinia, “is Justinia, my bodyguard.”

“Famed historian?” The nomarch turned her head and spat. “What did you say your name was again? Wasn’t familiar. Junar?”

The man next to her shook his head, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Never heard of him.”

“Nor I,” piped in the boy with the standard.

The nomarch didn’t even glance at him. “Of course you haven’t. You’re an idiot.” She spat again. At this pace, she was going to rapidly dehydrate herself. “Where are you headed?”

“The glorious city of Tymora,” I said earnestly.

“Are you making fun of me, boy?”

I blinked. “Not at all—”

“And where are you coming from?”

“Ah,” my mind raced to come up with a name, to complete the lie, to sell the deception, but several seconds passed and I knew, intuitively, that I’d been too slow, that no matter what I said, now these four were suspicious, and there was nothing I could do or say to make the situation better.

The nomarch’s hand drifted down to the double-edged sword sheathed at her waist.

Justinia had already drawn both her handaxes. I hadn’t even seen her move.

The woman was damned fast.

The nomarch begun to unsheathe her sword.

My heart fluttered and sank. It was amazing, really, how quickly things could go wrong.

And then they got worse.