Confronted by the gods themselves, King Mudt of Orvesis was the first of the mortals to recover his wits. He spied King Hectore of Infinzel kneeling in awe only ten feet away. Though their cities had been at war for decades, Mudt had never actually seen Hectore Salvado in the flesh. He’d heard rumors of the preposterous girth of Infinzel’s king, the jiggling coward who hid behind the walls of his pyramidal city while Mudt scoured the land beyond with his warbands, leading from the front, as a king should.
“You are fatter than I imagined!” Mudt bellowed. He drew his knife and flung himself at the wet-eyed King of Infinzel, who barely had time to tumble backward onto his prodigious backside.
And yet, Mudt found himself unable to strike what was a sure killing blow. His arm went numb as he stabbed against an invisible force that shielded King Hectore. If Mudt had been a more observant man, he would have noticed how King Hectore’s eyes changed, fear hardening into something else as the fat king watched his lifelong nemesis try to knife him.
“There will be no killing between factions,” the ge’ema declared. “If you must do murder, King Mudt, we allow you only to murder your own. But be forewarned, at the end of a knife, they may not stay yours for long.”
--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, up before the dawn
King Cizco Salvado, Quill of Infinzel, Kingdom of Infinzel, noticing some grays
Emelia, Issa, and Benton, the family of the late Ben Tuarez
----------------------------------------
2 New Summer, 61 AW
The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent
298 days until the next Granting.
The curtains were heavy and black, made from some fabric that swallowed light. The merchant who’d given them to Cortland guaranteed him no more sleepless nights. And yet, Cortland had only slept a few hours the night before, tossing and turning, dreaming of a slender woman in the mask of a monkey, and often murdering her.
So much for guarantees.
He couldn’t complain. The curtains had been free, like so much of the furniture in Cortland’s apartment. Such were the perks of being one of Infinzel’s champions. It was considered an honor to have a gift accepted by a champion and certainly a boon for business. Even his old mother’s apartment was overstocked with ornate furniture that she never sat in. The offerings had tailed off these last few years, ever since Cortland had grown gruff in his refusals of the latest vase, or painting, or decorative hammer. That was fine with Cortland; he had everything he needed.
Cortland thrust open the curtains to let in the damp morning air, scaring off the sparrows who nested on the window’s ledge. His rooms were on the second highest tier of Infinzel, which put him nearly a mile above the ground. Only the king himself lived above Cortland, at the apex of the pyramidal city. The vast graystone structure straddled the Troldep River and stretched three miles corner to corner, the impenetrable edifice built and maintained by magic and engineering that Cortland would never comprehend. A manmade mountain with a city hidden inside.
Although, lately, the city had been spilling out from the pyramid. Ancillary structures and thoroughfares, entire districts, were now wedged between the base of Infinzel and the ring-wall that encircled the city. These were cluttered neighborhoods that lacked the meticulous planning of the pyramid’s interior, but people had to live somewhere. In his grandfather’s day, such outbuildings would have been suicidal with Infinzel under near constant bombardment from the Orvesians. But the siege had broken sixty years ago and, in the decades since, the population of Infinzel had only swelled. Every year, it became more and more difficult to earn a place within the pyramid.
Cortland’s windows faced south, so he could see the curving path of the Troldep River where it flowed out from the lowest tier of Infinzel and into the unclaimed pastures beyond. Even more than a half-century removed from war, his people were still superstitious about the protection of the stone. If there wasn’t space for everyone inside the pyramid, they would at least stay as close to the base as possible and certainly not venture beyond the ring-wall. Only in the district of Soldier’s Rest had the ring-wall been smashed down and humanity spilled beyond. Cortland watched black smoke curl up from the dense thicket of rooftops. Probably a brothel on fire. There were always problems down in the Rest, but those were not problems for Cortland. He’d been born on Infinzel’s lowest tier, the son of a fisherwoman and a blacksmith, and he’d risen all the way here.
The city was quiet at this early hour, although the last revels of Wish Day must have only just guttered out. There would’ve been a parade around the pyramid’s base and parties on every tier. The feasts were paid for by the king’s own treasury. All day, people would raise toasts to the champions and then spontaneously bend to kiss the stone floors and thank Infinzel for its protection. As Wish Day wore on, and the ale flowed free, some of those revelers wouldn’t get back up. Others would stumble home to their apartments to kiss more than the walls. There were always a surfeit of babies born nine months after Wish Day.
Cortland had partaken in none of that. Instead, he had spent the day with the widow Emelia Tuarez and the children. Well, they weren’t exactly children anymore. Issa Firstdot-Tuarez was twenty-five now and a promising prospect in the Garrison. Benton Secondson-Tuarez, twenty and a man, was studying with the masons so that he could take over the family’s stone-working concern when Emelia decided to retire.
“I’m sorry, Emelia,” Cortland had told Ben’s widow. “I should’ve brought him back alive.”
“Don’t ever let me hear you blaming yourself, Cortland Finiron,” Emelia had replied coolly. She flipped her braid of gray hair over her shoulder, her eyes dry. “I told that old fool to take the wash. Get rid of that damned Ink. I practically begged him. Twenty-six Grantings, he did. More than anyone else. All his fellows dead or smart enough to retire. Oh, next year, next year, that was always his answer. Well, he ran out of next years, didn’t he?” She put a hand on Cortland’s clean shaven cheek. “It was kind of you to never marry, Cortland. Kind to spare some poor woman this life.”
“Yeah,” Cortland agreed, his throat scratchy. “Guess so.”
Ben Tuarez was a beloved champion of Infinzel. There were already paintings of him going up throughout the pyramidal city and there was a grand funeral planned for the following week where the king himself would deliver the eulogy. But Ben’s body wouldn’t make it there. Emelia had wanted the internment done quietly and privately. So, while there were tearful toasts at festivities throughout the city and gaudy floats decorated in the man’s honor, Cortland and Ben’s family had taken a lift down to the foundation tier and lowered Ben’s muslin-wrapped body into the soft stone of the mineral garden. Cortland’s hands shook as he watched his friend and mentor sink into the bubbling gray soup. One day, his bones would fortify the very walls of Infinzel.
Cortland couldn’t help but imagine his own bones, breaking down, disintegrating beside Ben.
He was embarrassed by the memory the next morning, but Cortland had been the only one to cry. The Tuarez family all had Ben’s steely resolve.
The dawn was getting closer. It was time to get on with things. Ben would want tradition honored.
Cortland dressed quickly in plain pants and sleeves. He pulled on his boots that still smelled infuriatingly like cinnamon and strapped his war hammer to his hip. Finally, he maneuvered his squat bulk into the hallway, closing his door quietly because everyone on this tier was probably freshly asleep. The hallway was wide and stone, like all of Infinzel’s interior chambers, although the walls were draped with luxurious tapestries to give the surroundings a warmer feel. Sconces glowed every few paces, their light low and orange, a magical approximation of firelight that never needed tending, provided to the city by the ageless King Cizco and his rune-work.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Down the hall, the floor grew sticky under Cortland’s boots and the tang of sour cherries mixed with vomit filled the air. He came upon the broken wine bottle just a few paces from the door of Vitt Secondson-Salvado. Cortland glowered. He thought about pounding on the door and waking up the noble. It was Vitt’s obligation as a champion to be a part of this tradition. But, in those early morning hours, Cortland couldn’t quite summon the ire necessary to drag Vitt out of bed and lecture the younger man. And anyway, Cortland would have more say in the selection if Vitt wasn’t around to fill his father’s ear.
A few doors further down the hall was Henry Blacksalve’s room. There were no signs of a party gone on too long there, but he also wasn’t awake to greet Cortland. Let him sleep, Cortland figured. He’d not be able to rouse the drunken healer even if he wanted to.
Cortland reached the staircase alone. It needled him a bit that he was the only one awake to respect the tradition, but part of him was also glad to be without the others. He was the senior champion, now that Ben was dead. The selection of Ben’s replacement should fall to him.
Well, him and the Quill. King Cizco Salvado.
Cortland jogged up the stairs to the king’s apartments. He could have taken the lift, but Cortland never turned down an opportunity for exercise. Small acts of endurance might one day be the difference between life and death on the island.
There were never guards stationed outside the king’s apartments. However, Cortland suspected he’d tripped a dozen or so wards on his way up that would warn Cizco of his approach. The king’s magic was the only defense he needed. Cizco had been a formidable champion – he’d reached the twentieth level of renown as an archmage, the records said. But, before Cortland was even born, it was decided that Cizco was too valuable to Infinzel to risk at the Granting. So, he became the Quill, took the wash, and spent decades rebuilding his power without Ink.
The lights were low as Cortland entered the king’s apartments, so low that he at first wondered if Cizco had forgotten the tradition, too. Cortland stood awkwardly in the entry salon, ignoring the silk draped loungers arrayed in a semi-circle around him. The doorway to the king’s bedchambers was open, but Cortland couldn’t exactly go clomping back there. A shadowy form stretched and turned over behind the bed curtains. A shapely young woman, no doubt. Had the king married again? Or was he currently in one of his periods of bachelorhood? Cortland put little effort into tracking the king’s love life. He was mostly grateful that the king had stopped bothering with royal weddings and settled into a routine of private elopements. Cizco had appetites, loved making children but not raising them, and tired of his wives quickly. There was an archivist whose sole purpose was to keep track of the ever-expanding Salvado family tree. The last Cortland had heard, the king had fathered some forty children, not counting the bastards. They’d interred Cizco’s eldest son last year, in fact. He’d died peacefully, in his sleep, at the age of seventy-one.
There was an oft-repeated joke about how King Cizco was so grateful for his immortality that he intended to thank every woman in Infinzel personally. Cortland always found that joke strange because it was him and the other champions who fought every year for the king’s everlasting life. Not that he wanted to go to bed with the king.
As Cortland’s sleep-deprived brain tripped down these bizarre pathways, the king strolled forth from the bedroom. Cizco Salvado looked not a day over thirty-five, even though he was over ninety. He was of average height, which made him considerably taller than Cortland, with a lean frame. His light brown hair was swept back into a loose ponytail, and his close-cropped beard lent him a certain rugged nobility. He was not a man who struggled to attract wives. He smiled as he approached Cortland, tucking a loose white shirt into his breeches.
“Just the two of us, then?” Cizco asked.
There was no bowing or kneeling expected with King Cizco. That had been tough for Cortland to learn when he first became a champion, but now he simply met the king’s eyes and grunted. “Apparently we’re the only ones who bothered waking up.”
“The secret, Finiron, is to not sleep to begin with.” The king breezed by Cortland. “Let’s hope they’re more alert down in the garrison.” When Cortland stayed rooted in place, the king stopped in the doorway and raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming?”
“You’ll need the quill.”
Cizco snorted and waved a hand through the air, muttering something that made Cortland’s brain sizzle. A pocket dimension opened and Cizco produced the phoenix feather and golden inkwell.
“Your attention to detail never ceases to impress,” Cizco said.
They took a lift down to Infinzel’s base level. Cortland would’ve preferred the stairs. Perhaps it wasn’t just an opportunity to build his endurance, as Cortland always told himself, but an aversion to traveling the narrow stone tunnels on an enclosed platform. The lifts connected much of the pyramidal city top-to-bottom, with mechanized carts available to ferry people between districts on the same tier. Like the wall-sconces, they were another result of King Cizco’s arcane pursuits, a mixture of rune-work and advanced engineering.
“I didn’t see you at any of the parades yesterday,” Cizco remarked on the way down.
“No,” Cortland replied.
“Emelia wanted to get Ben in the stone, eh?”
Cortland nodded. “She’s angry with his ghost. Thinks being shut of him will make her feel better.”
“Maybe it will.” Cizco paused. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since our return, have we? I’m sorry about Ben. I’m sure you know that. He was a good man and I know you two went back.”
“He brought me on,” Cortland said.
“I brought you on,” the king corrected. “At Ben’s insistence.”
The lift door opened and they stepped into the stone honeycombs and archways that comprised the Garrison District. Before the war ended, this vast space would have housed Infinzel’s standing army, which the archivists said numbered close to ten thousand men and women. Now, only a few hundred lived and trained in the Garrison. The soldiering life didn’t offer the same appeal when the only enemies most of them could kill were each other. Sure, there were forays into the Underneath to get the blood pumping, and the occasional riot in Soldier’s Rest that needed quelling, but most of these soldiers acted as simple peacekeepers throughout the pyramidal city. If they were lucky, they’d get to accompany a merchant vessel downriver. Far from the glory of the old days, unless you were called upon to become a champion.
Most of the Garrison was given leave to partake in the Wish Day celebrations. No one was expected to train this morning. But there was a story about the first Granting that King Hectore Salvado had chosen his final champion from the soldiers who trained before dawn. According to King Cizco, the story was apocryphal nonsense and his older brother had never gotten up before dawn even while the city was getting smashed by Orvesian catapults. But still, the tradition persisted.
The air down here smelled like stale sweat and copper. Up ahead was the pit, an open field of sand where the members of the Garrison practiced their combat games. Cortland could hear the clang of steel and the rush of conjuring. He grinned. At least a handful were there to honor tradition.
“Do you see this, Finiron?" Cizco asked, stopping Cortland before he could rush forward.
“See what?”
The king leaned down so Cortland could get a good look at his temples.
"Grays," the king complained. "Those are new. Gods dammed Brokerage. Shaved a year off my life. Maybe more.”
Cortland rubbed a hand over the short bristles on his own scalp. He was forty-one and had his own grays, not to mention the widow's peak forming where his hairline receded. The man next to him was ninety-five years old and only now looked like he was tiptoeing into middle age.
"Tragic, your highness," Cortland said flatly.
Salvado resumed walking at a languid pace, suggesting to Cortland there was more he wanted to discuss. "I would very much like to know who paid them. Is this an old grudge made new again? Something to do with that Orvesian madness in the south? We haven’t had issues with anyone these last few years, except when those fools at the Ministry wrap us up in something I’m too kind to refuse. I’d like to know who wants me killed."
"Wasn’t you they wanted dead," Cortland said.
"How's that?"
"One of the assassins, I beat some information out of her..." Cortland paused, his neck getting hot at the thought of Laughing Monkey. "Well, more like she gave it up after we scuffled. Said the Brokerage was paid to do Ben specifically."
"Ben? Who cared about Ben?" At a hard look from Cortland, King Cizco raised his hands. "I'm sorry, Cortland. Of course I didn't mean it like that. I loved Ben, just like you did. He wasn't one to make enemies. Tuarez is an old family, but they don't have rivals.”
“You sure about that?”
“Noble rivalries breaking out across the districts, that’s something for the playwrights to use in their tragedies of the war days. There’s not so many noble families left and the ones still around want for nothing. They’ve no need to go killing each other.”
Cortland considered that. Tuarez was indeed one of the last noble names left in Infinzel. Over the last sixty years, many of the others had faded away or climbed into the ever-expanding Salvado family tree.
“Suppose it doesn’t make sense,” Cortland said. “If it was someone from Infinzel, they could’ve just done it here.”
“Contracting with the Brokerage doesn’t come cheap, either,” Cizco said. “Someone he fought on Armistice, perhaps? He crossed swords with quite a few over the years. Some cold vengeance from business we’ve all forgotten?”
“Could be,” Cortland said. “I’ve sent a request to the archivist for a list of his kills.”
“And you trust this assassin wasn’t just playing games with you? Telling you something to send your spiraling?”
Cortland bristled at that, though of course the thought had crossed his mind. "I intend to look into it."
"Do," the king replied. "Although you'll have a champion to bring up to speed. Maybe two."
"Two?"
The king sighed. "Blacksalve approached me during the feast last night. Said he wants to take the wash. Man was out of sorts."
Cortland shook his head. "I won't allow it. We can't lose all that experience in one year. And I haven't been impressed with the healers coming through the Garrison."
"Well, it's his choice," the king said gently. "I told him what it was like, though. To lose the Ink. Not an easy thing. Certainly won't improve his mood."
“I’ll talk to him.”
At last, they reached the entrance to the training pit. Cizco put a hand on Cortland’s shoulder and peered down at him, his tone growing harder. For a moment, Cortland thought he caught a glimpse of the tough old man living within the young fop’s body.
“It’s not just some gray hair, Cortland,” the king said. “If my immortality is not maintained, I will weaken. And if I weaken…” The lights on the walls flickered. “…then Infinzel weakens with me.”
Cortland’s jaw tightened. He was senior amongst the party now. Preserving the king and the city fell on his shoulders. “We won’t fail you.”
“A partial success isn’t failure,” Cizco said, his tone lightening. “Come. Let’s see who answered the call.”
----------------------------------------