KNITE:
The night was quiet. Dark. Cold. It knew nothing of the hot-blooded violence brimming beneath the toughened exteriors of my followers.
The cache of slaves Lira and Polerma had sent lay in induced slumber, their wrapped bodies stacked upon a succession of horse-drawn carts. A squadron of overly armored men and women headed by a Seculor marched beside the plodding procession toward Junko, a free city half a day’s ride from Frelkri. Their path wound between gentle slopes of drab meadows sparsely dotted with thickets, early spring winds making waves of the pale fields of grass.
My people and I stood behind a Painting on the crescent of a far-off hill, a patchwork of leather and steel and deadly intent thrumming with eager anticipation. I had crafted their uniforms anew, reimagined iterations of those I had made the days before we took to war. Except for Helena, that is. She’d been but a child back then, and the leathers I’d fashioned for her from the black pelt of a large, evolved feline from the plains of Af’titala were the first of its kind.
Kip stomped to my side, chipper in that maddening way he was, slime sloppy, eyes dead. “Will the exchange be in Junko?”
I looked over in the direction of the free city, seeing nothing but the tip of its glow in the distance. “Yes.”
“Surely they’ll try to catch them in the act.”
“The Annanas will. They have no need of slaves.”
“Then what is their aim?”
“The Scorpions are fanatically covert about their acquisition of slaves, and for good reason—not only is it outlawed, but Grono does not care for the practice. Indentured servitude? Sure. But speak to him of slavery, and he’ll expound on virtues he’s stolen from our father.” A soft growl rumbled in the back of my throat despite myself. “For reasons unbeknownst to me, he thinks starving a man into oppression and dressing it in pretty verbiage is far more acceptable than simply chaining a man with tethers of bondage. It is a curse of irony that hypocrisy runs so deep among the children of a man as integrated as Merkusian.”
“I thought Grono was in favor of all trade,” Kip said.
“He’s in favor of wealth trickling into Evergreen. Slavery does little of that.”
“What about Silas?”
“He is too carefree to care.”
“And The Annanas?”
“They’re here to attain evidence for a tribunal.”
“What of The Hoard? Will they be waiting in Junko?”
“Perhaps.” A half-truth. It seemed my every utterance was just that these days: a manipulation of perception. There was a time I’d been more honest, where my promise to Merkusian inspired me to trust. That trust suffered a grave wound when he died, then perished the day I’d been betrayed. Seldom did I spare a moment in remembrance, and so deep and dark was its grave that I doubted anything or anyone had the power to resurrect it.
“Intercepting one shipment is rather shortsighted,” Kip said. “Did you not say this Linton fellow is a clever sort?”
“Compared to most. Like most clever men, he has an inflated sense of self.”
“Then he’ll wait until they catch sight of whoever arranged the delivery, won't he? I’d think his best option is to finagle The Scorpion’s new source.”
“Probable, but not certain,” I said. Another half-truth. “Linton might aim to trap me under his service. He may think I am worth more than whoever he’d find at the exchange, not least because I might lead him to them regardless.” More half-truths. I was confident Linton would appear. Why? Well, because I am a molder of emotions, and his had been set to loath me. Much as a kindly father is cursed with unruly children who butcher his teachings into a mindless chimera of dissonance, it is a clever man’s curse to feed his pride into a gluttonous beast of arrogance.
“But—”
“Kip,” I said, “leave the thinking to me. I’m better at it than you.” The hypocrisy was not lost on me. I was, after all, a child of a kindly father. I still am.
“I just—”
“I am well aware of why you are questioning me. Whatever happens, your hammer will crush godlings this night.”
I glanced back at him, then beyond him towards the others. Pride swelled in me for what I had so far reclaimed. They were a sight to behold: Helena in layers of black, tall and graceful, the sharpness of her presence animating her status as one of the most dangerous Named to have ever lived; Roche, dressed in the skins of Belinins—evolved bats found in the high caves of Golodan’s most perilous mountain range—his handsome gaiety a siren for his poisonous Tunnels and keen wires; Kip, decked in the thick furs of an evolved bear, scars upon scars crossing his exposed skin like medals of martial prowess and spiritual fortitude; Halga, adorned in an obsidian armor and helm, the burnt-auburn metals harvested from the depths of the earth by the gods of Kolokasi. Then there was Sanas, who stood at the rear, back erect, shoulders squared, head held high, her supple form swathed in a flow of deep burgundy, the accented silk of its threads plucked from the carcasses of evolved arachnoids found beneath volcanoes in the southern provinces of the far East. More of her had returned than the Sanas who’d left us on the western shores of Partum. She watched me, her gaze hard and soft at once. That was the Sanas I remember: a woman striding the wall between empathy and conviction. She was, in temperament and moral resilience, more than anyone else I knew, and despite not having met the man, the closest effigy of Merkusian, though she was not nearly as surefooted as he.
“They’re slavers,” I said to her. Sanas nodded. “I trust you have no objections against what I intend?”
“None I care to action.” Her eyes softened as they shifted past me towards the procession of slaves.
“When I said they’re slavers…”
“I am well aware of their origins and why they were chosen for the task, yet there are some ordeals too grievous for even the most reprehensible of sinners.”
“But you will consign them to their fates so we might do what we must?”
“I will.”
I grinned at her. “Good to have you back, Sanas.”
The softness in Sanas’ expression hardened as her gaze shifted back to me. “Did you know?”
“What became of our great empire’s vassals?” I shrugged. “Not the details, but I remember the war. As do you.”
“So you knew?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew how I’d react?”
“Yes.”
“And that I’d fail?”
“Did you?”
“You knew I would.”
I sighed. “If a man went into the world seeking a fortune of gold but returned with the secret to happiness, did he fail?”
“His aim? Yes.”
“I might argue otherwise—I might argue that his quest for wealth was a misguided quest for contentment and that the root of his purpose was achieved—but that was not the question. Did he fail?”
“I…”
“Nor did you? I assume you rushed to save the first hapless strays you encountered?”
Sanas’ head dropped to her chest. “I failed them.”
“Perhaps. But you did not fail. Are you not here, ready and able? Did they not give you back your purpose? Your strength? Your conviction?”
“I know.”
“Indeed, you do. Else, you’d not have made it back, nor would I have welcomed you.”
Sanas had no more words to share after that.
Our enemies arrived long before dawn. The band of riders nearly escaped my senses; I had not expected them to travel so far underground.
“The time is nigh!” A wave of my hand shattered the Painting we hid behind. “Burrowers!”
My people moved. Helena sank into the night, fading like fireless smoke. Roche loped down the gentle hill, arms flapping, cackles shrill, Aedificator wires reflecting moonlight so he appeared to be traveling in a glinting haze of tempestuous rain. Thunder marked Halga’s single step. Clomps of soil erupted. She soared, a bird of metal and death, swooping across the sky. Kip was a wave onto himself, a tide of earth rolling forth. The torch that was Sanas floated on a billowing cloud of flame, a beacon of daylight amid a landscape of darkness.
Yes, I was proud of what I’d reclaimed, but there was so much more to take back and even more to extract as compensation.The caravan shuddered to a halt. Panic set in. Horses neighed. The Halorian women scurried closer to their burden in a practiced formation. Weapons left their sheaths to leap into shaking hands. Sensus glowed. Tunnels swayed. Paintings shimmered. All this without having seen their true enemy.
Linton and his band of ambushers got to them before we did. Horse legs and the wheels of the carts sank into the ground, the compacted earth of the road suddenly too soft to carry their weight. Once the animals were knee-deep, the soft soil rehardened. The beasts went wild, bucking and thrashing. Their legs remained rooted. Bones Snapped.
The ground rumbled. Dadaks, leech-shaped creatures covered in a carapace of rock, their forms slick with mucous, emerged from mounds of excavated dirt. Three dozen sat low to the ground on squat legs, each twice the height of a man, twice again as long, and almost just as thick. Spaced evenly, they encircled the band of Halorians and their carts. With wet hisses, their backs parted as if they were the blooming petals of a hideous, acidic, flesh-eating species of flower. Behind the shells, standing on folds of skin meant to carry their young but were now reserved for their riders, were Linton and his flock, two to each dadak, over fifty Alchemist and Aedificators, here to dispossess the Halorians of their merchandise.
Then my weapons landed.
Halga arrived first. A swing of her hefty claymore adjusted her trajectory just so as to land its edge across two women. Ribs broke. Hearts were sundered. Blood flew. Screams of surprise shrieked into wails of pain and horror.
Helena faded into view on one of the Dadaks. She slid Pin into a man’s temple, twisted around him, and drove Moon in an arc meant to slice open the next victim’s throat. The former was a Root, his hazel eyes agast and leaking blood. The latter was a godling, her teeth gritted as she blocked Moon with her shortsword, turned the blade, and dashed in low. Helena had faded into darkness and toward more unsuspecting victims before the counteroffensive was little more than a spark in the godling’s eye.
Roche’s madness fell under the sway of his survival instincts; his Tunnels led him to the greatest concentration of Roots. There, he sowed their slow deaths, a flurry of steel and sensus slicing into their flesh and minds.
Kip plowed into a Dadak without care, riding earth, his hammer held high. Few could penetrate his stalwart constitution. His momentum knocked a pair of godlings from their dadak. Kip’s hammer followed, flattening one to the ground. Three swings later, the woman had turned to paste. All the while, three godlings tried their utmost to topple him with claws, swords, and castings of earth and stone. Their efforts garnered no visible results, and when he turned his bloodthirsty gaze on them, they ceased altogether.
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Sanas waited. Hovering. Ablaze. Watchful. Thoughts and emotions flickered across her face like words on a page. First, the creases of trepidation between her brows as she considered the safety of her comrades, then the spasms of hesitancy as she contemplated how to aid their plight without dispensing death, and finally, the resolute tension of tight lips and a clenched jaw as she found the least unacceptable answer. She plummeted into the ranks of The Hoard, arms wreathed in flames, delivering the quickest deaths she could.
The battle raged. Lira’s people were rooted in place, shivering in wait, backs pressed against their slumped carts and dead horses—the strength of both parties was more than they could face; whosoever claimed victory decided their fate, and the excerpts of brutality they witnessed sketched for them a future of doom, irrespective of who won.
Amid the chaos of battle, I watched as Linton and two others slipped into a dadak. I lashed two matrixes in their direction before the evolved beast burrowed and slid them underground. I was not in the habit of letting my quarries escape.
The violence raged on. Surprisingly, it did not end with a clash of metal, a shout of defiance, or the brilliance of a powerful matrix, but with a whimper. Our enemies died, one by one, until the symphony of screams and shouts was whittled into the lonely, pitiful moans of a single Tripler. She hung from Roche’s wires like a puppet as he played with her mind and forced her to enact her own torturous death. After she groaned her last breath, Roche diced her body into mince and let the pieces pour and splash to the ground. He had fed the soil well that day.
“Is that all of them?” he asked, standing amid a field of body parts, his clothes dry as bone, his skin smeared with blood.
“All but three,” I said. “Four, if you include the dadak.”
“Escaped?” Halga asked.
“So they believe,” I said. “I’ve Tunnelled the dadak. Its distorted sense of direction will keep it near.”
“Ha!” Kip’s jubilance took on a note of genuine glee after the battle—the façade of joy he wore most other times was a cheap and hollow imitation in comparison. “What I’d pay to see them when they realize.”
I glanced over at Helena. The battle had been fierce. Linton had brought along a competent lot—the Roots were all Named, and the godlings, though far from Leaves, were not Autumns. Helena’s thirst for divine blood had thrown her into the thick of the action. She did not have a good time of it. But then again, perhaps she had. While blood traced down from her split lip, one of her shoulders hung out of its socket, and sweat mortared strands of hair to her forehead, her grin was wide, and a sinister satisfaction radiated from her soul.
“Do you require healing,” I asked.
Helena reached around to the small of her back and withdrew a pair of tinctures. “I can tend to my own injuries.”
“What is to become of the Halorians?” Sanas asked.
“Let us go and see,” I said.
I approached the Seculor in charge of the slave train. She wore a hideous and impractical suit of armor, cumbersome, sharp, and bright. Adulation sparked in her people’s eyes when they saw her lumber forward. Fools. If only they knew what I knew, what Lira knew when she sent this young Seculor on this errand.
“My thanks for your aid, stranger,” she said. I wondered if she’d be so cordial if she was privy to her role as bait. “I am Pefely kin Lira. May I know who—"
“Leave,” I said.
“I—”
“Now.” I pointed at three surviving dadaks. The domesticated beasts were dumb without instruction. They sat there, waiting amid the ravaged corpses of their riders. “Make use of your new steeds and go about your business. We have our own to conclude.”
A battle played out in Pefely’s soul. In the end, fear won over anger. With a withering look that promised a vengeance that’d never come to be, she returned to her people, coordinated a rescue of the mired carts from the hardened soil, attached makeshift harnesses to their new draft animals, and restarted their sluggish trek to the free city of Junko. I waited for them to go beyond the reach of their sensus before I turned my attention to the Tunneled creature circling beneath us.
At my behest, the dadak eagerly returned to the surface. Another light touch on its soul—light because its eagerness to please disgusted me—and its back bloomed. Three figures blurred. I let them escape our encirclement and turned to face them. Helena and the others arrayed themselves behind me, weapons out and, except Sanas, grinning murderously.
“We meet again,” I said.
“Who are you?” Linton asked, his expression grim.
Golden sensus suffused Linton’s entire being, particularly around his head and most especially in his brain, where it saturated, shining like the sunkissed turquoise of the southern shallow seas. Invisible tendrils of sensus slithered masterfully around him. I had to dull my senses to see him, and see him I did. Beard combed, hair washed, skin clear, clothes neat, I saw Linton. Then I saw deeper. A child. Incomplete. Arrested. Clever. Dangerous. Prideful. But most of all, afraid.
“I assure you,” I said, “who I am is far less important to you than who you think you are.”
“Do not play games with me.” Linton hissed the words through gritted teeth.
I looked to his sides, where two familiar godlings stood. My eyes landed on the older female. “Are you training him to take over?” I asked her.
A hint of surprise came and went like a mote of dust caught in a breeze. I was very impressed by Fiora’s control; she might very well have been a Leaf, though her talent was in an Art few in Partum would appreciate.
“More games!” Linton shouted. He had far less control, most likely because his sense of discipline was proactive, not reactive. Keep him on the back foot, and the man was useless.
“Not at all,” I said. “Just because I’m enjoying myself does not mean I’m playing games.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who are you?” I threw back.
Tunnels caressed Linton’s aura once more, easing his spike of anger.
“Better yet,” I continued, gesturing at the pair of godlings, “who are they?”
“My subordinates,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
Linton glanced at them both. His brief note of uncertainty was crushed by the way they flinched under his gaze. He smiled and turned back to me. “I am.”
I sighed. “You’re a Duros, correct?”
“How did you—Ah!” He tapped a finger under one eye. “Soulsight. Then you should know I am more than just a Duros.”
“You think yourself an Auger?” I shook my head. “Are you familiar with the Wheel of Arts?”
“Only godlings are limited by their spread of talent.”
“The spread must be near even to cross adequately into opposite Arts. Do you mean to say you count yourself among the exceptionally rare statera?”
“I…” Linton shook his head. “I—"
The Tunnels dug harder. Deeper. Discombobulation shifted Linton’s expression between confusion and concern.
“What are you saying?” Linton asked.
I pointed at him and addressed the Silas Tunneller. “Are those your bindings?”
“You can see them?” she exclaimed before reason and caution could stop her. Her hand flew up to clamp over her mouth. Too late, I thought.
Linton spun, fists balled. More Tunnels enveloped his aura, squeezing ever tighter. When he spoke, the words were calm and all the more chilling. “Explain yourself, Tillis.”
The woman sighed as if she’d lost a game. The young Fiora with her—Jolnes, I think his name was—laughed, back arched, hands flat on chest, eyes shut to hold back tears.
“You’ll be anchored to his bond this time,” Tillis said.
“Worth it,” Jolnes said, wiping tears away. “I’ve endured his insufferable arrogance too long.”
“Savour the time. The Court’s handler shall not permit such failures too often.”
“Another reason it is worth it. You have been a disagreeable partner, and I shall enjoy witnessing your punishment.”
“As I shall enjoy the remainder of your training. And pay close attention when I suffer through the handler’s ministrations—the same will be waiting for you the first time you fail. And you will fail. Much as I hate this rebrobate, his mind does well to pick apart our prison. This’ll be the fourth time we have to build it anew.”
Jolnes’s amusement vanished, replaced by chagrin. “Do you see what I mean? Leave it to you to wring the fun out of this.”
“Neither of you seem to understand your predicament,” I said. Both godlings turned to me, unconcerned.
“This pawn is no more dangerous to us as this dadak is,” Tillis said.
“He will be once I free him from his bond.” I gestured my people forward. “He, however, is not the predicament you face.”
Tillis reached into her silken robe, down her abundant cleavage, and pulled out a miniature flute no thicker than a feather and no longer than a child’s finger. “It is not us who’ll face a predicament. Our superior shall be here soon. I called for him the moment you appeared.”
“I know,” I said and watched her smug surety drain a little.
“How long do you think a Leaf needs to travel here from Frelkri?” she asked.
“He is not Leaf.”
“He used to be.”
“I know.”
Tillis went pale. “And you think yourself able to survive his wrath.”
“I do.” I looked back at Helena. “Two hundred?”
“More like a century and a half.” Helena’s smile was hungry. She’d not had her fill. I doubted she ever would. “He’s barely older than me.”
I shrugged. “In the end, it matters naught.”
“Where is he?” The boy, Jolnes, glanced between Tillis and me, confused. He could sense her worry but did not understand the reason for it; coddled children rarely have reason to fathom the fallibility of those whose protection they enjoy.
“Likely neck-deep in tinctures and whores.” I flicked my hand at Tillis. A slice of force severed her hand by the wrist. Another wave and a gust of wind sent the appendage to me before it hit the ground. The pain only hit her when I had her severed hand in mine, and she grimaced. “The call for his aid did not reach him. Now, please die.”
Sanas and Halga moved in unison. Wind and flames rushed. My Leaves made short work of them. Halga’s sword crashed into Jolnes’ ribcage and slammed the boy onto the ground. He died before the back of his head hit the dirt road. Sanas buried spears of fire into Tillis’ eyes, scorching her brain into a lump of seared meat. The Tunneller toppled over, eyes wide and hair burning.
I turned to the flabbergasted Linton.
***
Like most free cities—like most cities in general, but particularly those who dared call themselves free—Frelkri was a chasm of freedom; all but a few of those who lived within its walls were afforded any degree of liberty. And so it was that in the brightly lit city, only guards and the well-to-do residents who’d bought or otherwise attained the favor of the city lord were allowed to roam the streets past curfew. That, I found, was the city’s only distinction besides how painfully bright and ordinary the place looked.
The guards needed only to glimpse Sanas and Halga’s ice-blue gazes peek out from under hoods to open the gates and scurry out of our path. The rest of us walked through Frelkri along its main road. The city appeared deserted. Distant footfalls of patrolling guards and the hum of evenly spaced matrix lanterns were the only sounds to reach us. Plain structures of wood and stone stretched out before us, their masonry generic, their carpentry practical, like someone had redrawn a series of the most dreary buildings in a sequence. Only at the end of the road, as though the cobbled street was a pointer and all the buildings on its peripheries were but a dull background meant to further accentuate the grandeur of its subject, stood the city lord’s home, a monstrosity of white stone and symmetry and pointed towers.
“How drab,” Roche said. “I’d expect nothing less from a former Branch.”
Helena snorted. “We can only assume how much of a loyal dog he was to be given his own free city to rule over.”
“Who?” Sanas asked.
“Silas,” Roche said. “He gave Inacu Frelkri when the lucky bastard managed to find an unspent phoenix feather somewhere on the borders of Kolokasi.”
“The Chameleon?” Sanas asked.
“The same,” Helena said. “I wondered how he came upon his role as a city lord. When did he have cause to be on the frontier? Last I knew, he was Silas’ Adjudicator.”
Roche laughed. “Silas sent him there the day he lost to you.”
“You mean to tell me I as much as gave him this city when I defeated him?”
“Now that you mention it—” Roche’s laughter redoubled.
“And the exchange is on his land?” Sanas was frowning as she asked the question.
“Within his estate,” I said.
“Won’t he be… biased?”
“The weasel will do whatever casts the least amount of risk on his life,” Helena answered, though her attention was burning a hole in the back of Roche’s head.
I pushed Linton forward. “We shall be there soon. Best you act the part. We can’t have you leading from the back.”
Linton stumbled forward and shuffled ahead, back bent. Much had happened to him that night, and the weight of it all saddled his sapless shoulders. The arrogant man I’d met in that seedy bar, the Root who commanded godlings and gazed at me with such superiority, was nowhere to be found. The shell had been broken, and before me hobbled the broken boy beneath.
“Stand straight,” I said. The bark in my voice sent lightning through Linton, and he stood erect. “Remember who you are. And if you cannot, remember who they think you are.” I turned to my people. “We must hurry. The slaves have nearly reached the manor.”
Each of my five pulled their hoods over their heads and matched my quickened stride.
The gates were golden. At its boundary, the cobbled stone of the road shifted from drab, cracked, grey bricks to smooth, sanded, white slabs. Beyond it, the seat of Inacu’s fiefdom sat like an ugly actor in the role of someone much more impressive, the waxy, stained ivory of his walls a cheap costume of the white marble godlings so preferred.
“Whoever you are,” said the guard in ornamental armor painted violet, “Lord Inacu the Dragon is entertaining guests and is unavailable for an audience.”
“Did you say ‘The Dragon’?” Helena’s pitch drove ever higher. “He dared Name himself.”
Roche snickered. “Does he make you call him that?”
The guard’s hand tightened around the shaft of his spear, and he stepped forward, the noseguard of his helmet poking out between the golden bars of the gate. “You best be an envoy from Frelkri, else—”
Helena dashed forward, slid her fingers under the open visor, and pulled. The helm thudded against the cheap metal of the gate. Then she kept pulling until the metal groaned, the golden veneer began to scape off, and twisted edges of the helm began to bend inward and cut into the guard’s cheek. Three men heard the commotion, saw their fellow guard being assaulted, and hurried from the small gatehouse to the side, clattering in their useless suits of steel.
“Stop,” Linton spoke the word barely above a whisper, yet the command was clear and domineering. Somewhere along the way, he’d reassembled the broken shells of his hubris and made himself his own costume. “Release the man.”
Helena did as he ordered, schooling away her surprise and anger. The bleeding guard fell back on his rear, breathing heavily and whimpering.
“I am an envoy,” Linton said to the newly arrived guards. “You shall open these here gates posthaste.” The irrefutable command in his tone remained, this time laced with the offhand twang of a threat.
The men sprang to obey him.
“Take us to the meeting,” Linton ordered. Again, they obeyed him without thought.
We entered a garden, circular and encompassed by the same tainted walls of off-white. A bed of grass covered its floor while different species of plants and flowers, all shades of purple, hugged the outer edges. All parties were present. Georde and his fellow members from The Annanas, Aersly and a trio of Alchemists, Pefely and her underlings, and between them, an aged Named with stark white hair, the kind of rotund figure attained by a marriage of gluttony and sloth, and a look of duplicitous submissiveness. All four parties turned to watch us enter.
“Did I not order you to turn away any visitors?” Inacu screeched.
The three guards who escorted us stepped back in primal fear, then went to their knees and bowed when a more rational fear crossed their thoughts. The bravest of the three men spoke.
“Apologies, Lord,” he said. Inacu grimaced, knowing he’d risk offense when he allowed—or, more likely, demanded—his subject call him by that title. “I did not think the order applied to an envoy from Frelkri.”
Squinting, Inacu gazed at Linton. “The tithe has been paid this moon, and you are not my usual contact. Why has the Reeve sent you?”
“A misunderstanding,” Linton said. “I do not come at the behest of the Reeve.”
“Then—”
“I come in the name of The Hoard.”
Gasps rang out.
“Shall we sit and talk?” Linton offered.
I did not set all this up to kill them; I came to plant seeds of trust—not for each other, but for a man named Merkus. Many would die today, and the war that’d begin in the aftermath of their death would feed me their confidence.