----------------------------------------
Meanwhile, as King Mudt hunted spies and raged at Captain Sulk’s defection, so did Mudt’s counterpart within Infinzel suffer a betrayal of his own.
Celebration rang out through the hallways of the pyramidal city. The citizens assumed that the end of Orvesian bombardment meant victory at last. King Hectore did not have the heart to tell them that the battlefield had merely shifted and that their army had been whittled from thousands to four. Infinzel would still need to overcome the fearsome King Mudt.
King Hectore dwelled on the helplessness he’d felt while pinned beneath the savage Orvesian. He shuddered at the memory of Mudt’s knife, plunging down over and over. Only the protection of the gods had prevented the blade from spilling King Hectore’s blood.
Shaken and ashamed, not yet ready to face his brother and his advisors, King Hectore lumbered to his chambers. His wife waited for him there, a dagger of her own resting in her lap.
“Too many blades today,” the fat king moaned. “What is this?”
“I tried to kill your brother this morning,” she said.
Queen Jocelyn was a tall and handsome woman, a renowned duelist and a capable rider from the distant lands of Crucifalia. Her marriage to King Hectore was arranged, a necessity for Infinzel to secure the support of Crucifalia, though reinforcements from the south had stopped arriving years ago. She had never loved her husband, but the revulsion she’d felt on their wedding day had, over the years, sweetened into a benign tolerance. Queen Jocelyn appreciated Hectore’s gentle nature, and the fact that he had never foisted any children upon her.
King Hectore sighed and flopped into a chair that creaked beneath his weight. “What did Cizco do to deserve that?”
“Your brother has done a great many things, but none to me,” she replied. “I was promised a vast sum of money for his life, but it appears I’ve waited too long.”
His eyes watering, King Hectore gestured around their chambers. The paintings and silks, the glittering chunks of ore from the mineral garden, all of it hers as much it was his. “You are queen of the richest city in the world,” King Hectore said, his voice quivering. “What need do you have of more wealth?”
The queen dragged her thumb across the edge of the dagger. “I was promised escape, too. A way out from this place.”
“Ah,” King Hectore said. “I see.”
“And now, look,” the queen continued, raising her chin. “Look how the gods have marked me.”
There, on the queen’s neck, was an image in Ink of a curved dagger like a smile that dripped coins instead of blood.
--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age
Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis
----------------------------------------
--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—
Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, a harsh taskmaster
Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 2nd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, an eager pupil
Henry Blacksalve, Healer of the 8th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, waking up too early these days
Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, he’s been hunting
----------------------------------------
23 Hazean, 61 AW
The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent
247 days until the next Granting
Carina began the exchange by trying to knee Cortland in the balls. He approved. Going direct for the groin meant she’d been paying attention.
A month ago, the girl had shown up for her first day of training wielding a duelist’s rapier. She’d gotten good with that mosquito’s cock of a sword down in Penchenne, where fencing was a pastime of the nobility. Cortland still remembered the way she’d squared with him like a judge would blow a whistle to tell them when to start. She was asking him a question about footwork when he kicked sand in her face and broke her stupid sword with his hammer. He made her defend herself with half a blade and ended the lesson by cracking three of her ribs. That was day one.
Over the ensuing weeks, Cortland made it his duty to beat any notions of fighting honorably out of Carina. She proved a quick study.
Now, Cortland checked her knee with his own. Carina grunted as their patellae knocked together. Her body sagged backward for a moment, shying away, as she tried to get her balance. Cortland felt the pull against the length of rope that connected his right wrist to her left wrist. He'd given only a foot of slack when he’d tied them together. She had no choice but to stay close.
Cortland stunk like onions and bitter musk, and sweat rolled down his forehead and thick neck. Carina wasn’t fresh either. Her hair was matted with dried blood and her ward-weave uniform—the wards already dark from damage—clung sweat-soaked to her narrow torso. Even this early, the heat in the training pit hung heavy. They'd been at this nearly three hours already.
Carina pulled harder against the rope and dug her heels in. It was the girl’s instinct to get away from him. She wanted to retreat—to dance and dodge and rely on her Ink—but that wouldn't always be an option. Cortland needed her to learn to fight close and fight brutally.
“Stop backing up!” he snapped. “Atta-!”
Carina's weight shifted as soon as he started yelling. Her attempted retreat had only been a feint. She jabbed her first two fingers into his open mouth and hooked them inside his cheek. Carina put all her weight into that scrawny arm, trying to drag Cortland's head down toward her other hand.
She’d slipped on a knuckle-knife without him seeing.
Cortland felt a momentary swelling of pride. Win at any cost, he'd told her. That meant sneaking a blade into a lesson on hand-to-hand.
She nearly had the triangle of metal jammed into the underside of his chin before Cortland got his hand around her wrist, squeezing hard enough that she'd have his fingerprints for bruises.
With her knife hand caught, Carina changed tactics. Cortland's gorge rose as she rammed her fingers for the back of his throat, trying to block off his windpipe.
Cortland bit down until he felt Carina's knuckles grinding against his back teeth, her blood filling his mouth. Screaming, she ripped her hand back. Cortland spit her own blood into her eyes.
Carina headbutted him, but he was lower than her and she didn’t have the angle. She caught him on the side of the face. He answered her headbutt with one of his own and struck her flush, her pert nose crumpling beneath the top of his head. Carina sagged backward again and Cortland thought she might be done, until she lunged forward and bit his ear. If she'd been able to see, she might have even gotten her teeth into his jugular.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
By then, Cortland had gotten Carina's wrist bent the wrong way around. With her own hand, he punched the knuckle-knife into her belly. Once, twice, thrice–
“Enough!” Henry Blacksalve groaned. “I'm going to be sick.”
Cortland stopped stabbing his fellow champion. Breathing raggedly, Carina slumped against him like a drunken dance partner until he got the rope untied, then she sank to the floor. She slapped the ground in frustration, leaving behind a bloody handprint. Carina rocked backward on her knees and glared up at him, golden grains of sand stuck in the bloody mess of her face. For a moment, Cortland saw the dark heat in her eyes. He’d seen that look every day for the past month.
Carina Goldstone was not a person accustomed to losing. She wanted to best him. She wanted it very, very badly.
But then she swallowed that frustration. Her eyes softened and she flashed him a smile with red-stained teeth. Suddenly, she was the girl who insisted on bringing him dinner every night, the girl who’d baked him cookies to bring to his aging mother.
“Had you,” she gasped. “Almost had you.”
“Better,” Cortland admitted.
Carina laughed, the sound whistling through her smashed nose. “I'd be dead, but maybe I’d have given you something to remember me by.”
Cortland dabbed at the side of his head, where his ear had been half ripped loose. “Maybe.”
Wincing, Carina probed the stab wounds on her abdomen with her fingers. “Feels like you missed the important stuff,” she remarked.
“Get your fingers out of there,” Henry scolded as he knelt down in the sand next to Carina. His hands lit up with a warm glow as he accessed [Healing Touch]. “What hurts the most?”
As Henry went through the process of mending Carina's injuries, Cortland considered his two champions. As expected, the girl was a work in progress. She was eager and diligent, he would give her that. They had started these training sessions the day after her arrival to Infinzel. Three hours before dawn, when the Garrison was quiet. Five days out of six. Carina hadn't missed a single one. In fact, she was usually waiting on Cortland and Henry to open up the training pit. After this, Cortland knew, the girl would spend some time in the Battle Library, studying champions past and present. Then, she would explore the pyramidal city, trying to reverse engineer the runes and alchemy that powered the place. He’d come across her working a shift in the mineral garden a few days ago.
Honestly, Cortland wasn’t sure when the girl slept.
While Carina had swiftly adapted to the training schedule, it had taken longer to get Henry broken in. Cortland suspected the healer would’ve no-showed a few times that first week if Carina hadn’t personally collected him from his neighboring apartment. As the days wore on, Henry had slowed down the nights spent drinking. His hands didn’t shake anymore when he healed and he’d stopped asking to take the wash. His Ink lasted longer before fading. Henry had lacked the power to heal Ben Tuarez back on Armistice, but these sessions showed him that he was still a functioning and necessary part of the team. Studying him, Cortland realized that Henry had even started combing his hair again.
“What are you smirking about?” Henry asked. He’d finished with Carina and now pressed his palm to the side of Cortland’s face.
“Thinking about the effects of young women on middle-aged men,” Cortland replied.
“Like a missing ear?” Henry responded with a raised eyebrow. He lowered his voice slightly. “Remember, Cortland, you’re training a logician. Not a berserker. It doesn’t need to be so ugly.”
Cortland breathed out slowly as his flesh fizzed beneath Henry’s touch. “I’m training a survivor.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Carina asked. She’d picked up her rapier—a new one, fashioned from Infinzel’s forges—and begun snapping through her stances.
“Nothing,” Cortland said. He glanced up at the clock chiseled into the far wall. Nearly an hour past first light. “That will be all for this morning.”
Carina swished her sword through the air in a quick crossing pattern, then sheathed it. She tucked the front of her uniform into her pants, plucking at the creases in the arms. The gray fabric was stained purple with blood, ripped in spots across her stomach, and soaked through with sweat. She looked like she’d been through a war, but there wasn’t a scratch upon her. Henry had been thorough.
“I need to visit the tailor and warder,” Carina said, looking at Henry. “Then, would you mind if I accompanied you on your rounds today?”
“Of course not,” Henry replied. He stifled a yawn in his forearm. “I’ll be in the food hall scouring my insides with coffee.”
The three of them walked together toward the arched exit of the training pit. The violence of minutes ago was already forgotten, except for the taste of blood still lingering in Cortland’s mouth. He spit into the sand as they went. Ahead, the stone double doors were closed and sealed. There were likely a few Garrison soldiers in hallway outside, patiently waiting for their time in the pit. After the first few days, Cortland hadn’t needed to chew out any of the other soldiers for sneaking onto the pit’s balconies to catch a look at Carina. Her private morning sessions became a matter of routine and curiosity in the girl waned. Or, at least, become better hidden. Even so, Carina seemed to have taken King Cizco’s caution to heart and, though she freely explored Infinzel, she tended to avoid other soldiers from the Garrison, particularly the prospects she’d supplanted.
And, much like Carina avoided her fellows in the Garrison, so did King Cizco avoid his gods-appointed champion. While the king requested periodic updates from Cortland about her progress, he otherwise treated Carina like a poisonous spider loose in the garden.
“You know,” Carina said, “today makes it a month since we started my training.”
“Yeah?”
“You told me after a month, you’d take me to the Underneath.”
Cortland grimaced. He remembered the conversation. The girl had asked about journeying to the Underneath on her very first day.
The network of tunnels beneath Infinzel were a reminder of the last age. When the Orvesian invaders found themselves repeatedly thwarted by the pyramidal city’s unassailable walls, they attempted to dig under them. The surprise attack that followed was the closest Infinzel came to falling during that endless siege, but the Orvesian marauders were eventually pushed back.
Not wanting to commit further Orvesian lives to the tunnels after the initial assault failed, a sorcerer instead infected the ground with vile dark magic. Horrors bred and multiplied in the Underneath, forcing the defenders of Infinzel into a battle on two fronts. However, the creatures eventually turned on the Orvesians as well. The gods always favored Infinzel.
When the Final War ended and Orvesian bombardment was no longer a constant threat, the soldiers of Infinzel at last had a chance to purify the tunnels beneath the city. However, they discovered that the horrors breeding there provided a reliable supply of Ink for champions, one that other factions were unable to access. And so, under the guidance of King Cizco, the policy of Infinzel toward the Underneath became control and maintenance.
“I told you that after a month I’d assess your progress,” Cortland said to Carina. “And then I’d decide.”
Walking backward now, Carina held her arms open. “So? What’s your assessment?”
“It’s dangerous down there,” Cortland said, exchanging a look with Henry. “When things get too bloody, the healer here won’t be able to call a stop.”
“I’ve faced danger before.”
“I know about your exploits. You’re a brave girl—”
“Woman.”
“A brave woman,” Cortland sighed. “But you’ve always had the protection of the gods. The horrors down below aren’t bound by the ge’ema’s rules. They can kill.”
“My predecessor didn’t die on Armistice,” Henry added. “She was killed in the Underneath.”
Carina stopped when her back pressed against the doors. She eyed them like the roles were reversed and she was a disappointed proctor. “King Cizco wants me to gain two levels of renown.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Cortland said.
“I can’t do that in the training pit.”
Cortland breathed out through his nose. “When you can best me in the pit, you can direct your own training,” he snapped. “Until then, I’ll decide when you’re ready for the Underneath.”
Carina’s eyes lit up. “Challenge accepted.”
With that, she spun and yanked open the double doors. There were indeed uniformed Garrison soldiers waiting to enter in the hallway. Carina walked by them quickly, her chin high, knowing how they stared at the blood covering her.
“Well, that was unwise,” Henry said.
“What?” Cortland replied.
“You’ve given her a goal,” the healer said. “She’ll be after you now. All because you’re too stubborn to bring her Underneath.”
Cortland scratched the stubble on his cheeks. “You think she’s ready, then?”
“Don’t you?”
“I think she was probably ready the day she arrived,” Cortland admitted after a moment. “She’s the type to take big bites. We got to make sure she don’t choke.”
Henry snickered. “When’d you get so poetical, Finiron?”
“Fuck off.”
Henry did. The healer joined Carina at the end of the hall, waiting for the lift to come down. As ever, Cortland took the stairs.
Vitt Secondson-Salvado waited for him on the first landing up. The party’s hunter had made himself scarce over the last month, ever since the ugliness on the day of Carina’s arrival. He leaned against the wall wearing last night’s clothes—a silk shirt halfway unbuttoned and untucked, britches stained with wine. Vitt’s red-streaked black hair was disheveled and Cortland thought he looked paler than the last time he’d seen him.
“Should I wish you good morning or good night, Vitt?” Cortland asked.
“Hammerhead,” Vitt said by way of greeting, his low voice hoarse. “I have something for you.”
He held out a folded piece of parchment, which Cortland accepted. The edges of the sheet were burnt like someone had dropped a lit smokeroll onto it. On the page, Cortland found an address and a crudely drawn map for what looked to be Soldier’s Rest.
“What am I looking at?” Cortland asked.
“A map, idiot,” Vitt said. “That’s a bar—”
A sudden coughing fit seized Vitt and he held up a hand to ward Cortland away. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. Cortland thought he saw dark stains there.
“You seen Henry about that cough?” Cortland asked. “Sounds like dust lung.”
“Dust lung is a mason’s affliction. Do I look like a mason to you?” Vitt answered. “I’m fine.”
Cortland shrugged. “The map, then?”
Vitt pointed at the paper. “A bar in Soldier’s Rest where an interested party could make contact with the Brokerage of Blades.”
Cortland’s hands tightened on the sheet. Laughing Monkey’s wooden mask flashed into his mind. The assassin who had killed Ben Tuarez.
“How’d you find this?” Cortland asked.
“We followed her,” Vitt replied.
Cortland’s hand dropped toward his hammer. For a moment, he interpreted from Vitt’s answer that Laughing Monkey was somewhere in Soldier’s Rest, that she’d gotten tired of waiting for him to answer her invitation and had instead shown up in Infinzel. Furrowing his eyebrows, Cortland realized that made no sense.
“Speak plain, Vitt,” Cortland barked. “Followed who?”
“Your girl,” Vitt replied with a slow smile. “The logician.”
----------------------------------------