KNITE:

Roofs outside The Leaves are unsuitable for travel. Outside the special protections offered to the upper echelons, by which I mean The Branches and The Leaves, slanted roofs were the only defense against the persistent bouts of rain the capital suffered. Moving about them was a nuisance.

I crouched on the edge of a roof across the plaza from a gate to The Branches—the penultimate region of Evergreen where the less influential godlings and more powerful commoners lived. The green glow from The Leaves—the highest plateau and where the strongest and most prodigious godlings resided—was weaker here than most anywhere else in The Bark, but still, the light burned me with memories of when I’d last seen its full glory. My coign of vantage atop one of the more opulent buildings in The Bark gave me a decent view of the three roads leading to the plaza, though the southern entrance, closer to the gate than where I crouched, was somewhat obscured.

Leahne hadn't reached the gate to The Branches yet. Helena and I had agreed she’d likely apprehend Farian before she made her way to her master. Having escaped me once before, she’d be confident she could do so again. She wouldn't. Broken mask or not, when she came…

It was two turns of waiting before I spotted my target. Leahne came from the north, from the smallest of the three roads that led to the plaza, pulling at Farian as he limped and stumbled after her, his hands tied, his mouth gagged, and blood trickling from a shallow cut on his neck.

I dropped down to the street, softening my landing with an Art few practiced. The gate guards had a line of sight across the entire plaza, and I did not care to let Leahne reach that turn. So I dashed from alley to alley, leaped over walls, and swung from overhanging handholds, intercepting Leahne away from where meddlesome watchmen might complicate my mission. Taking flight was possible, but it would not be kind to the tattered mask I wore.

I sauntered to the middle of the street. Leahne halted and cocked her head, unable to see my face. I pulled down my cowl; she would concede or die knowing who I was.

Leahne giggled into her fist. “You have my thanks. I thought you a test, a way to prove I deserved what they’d refused me. I see now that you are so much more.”

“Release him,” I said. “If I deem you innocent of all but misplaced piety, I will spare your life. Otherwise…”

She furrowed her brows, unable to match the voice to the face she saw and knew. My brother had once told me that the deep timbre of my tone resonated with the fear hidden in the hearts of those who heard it, that its vibrations commanded the quickening of pulses, and that their hearts, more often than not, obeyed.

Leahne paused, her dark eyes watching me. I shot a slice of wind at the ropes that bound Farian. The corded twine slackened in her hands.

“You may take this fool,” she said, dropping the untethered rope. “But I will be leaving.”

“Move aside,” I called out to Farian.

“This ruffian ruined the tunic your mother had so diligently washed and perfumed,” he said. Clever. For all he knew, I was an imposter, particularly because I did not sound like Merkus.

“I did not think fire and ash were your preferred method and scent for laundry.”

Satisfied I was who I appeared to be, Farian shuffled away from his captor. He’d always been proud to call Merkus candid, bragging it was he who’d passed on his candor to his son. It wasn’t so, but he heeded me because of it.

I took out my twin swords: four-foot, double-edged blades. A few casual waves released an invisible Zephyr shield that would dull the coming commotion.

“Leahne,” I said, letting my deep voice play off the shrilling blades.

A trembling Leahne yelped a laugh.

“I know you believe yourselves capable of fleeing.” I took a step forward; she took one back. “You are not. I know you think you’ve grasped the extent of my strength.” I tipped a blade with a Zephyr matrix and swung it casually, leaving a gash on the cobbled road and casting fragments of stone into the air, the lighter pieces rebounding off the wall of wind I’d erected. “You have not. I know you believe you will escape me…”

Leahne backed away. I could hear her heart pounding, but she overcame whatever fear I’d caused, and the air between us shimmered with her inherent matrix, her namat.

My mask all but collapsed. Light-brown hair darkened, hazel eyes shifted to an umber almost too dark to be called anything but black, a hooked nose straightened and narrowed, cheekbones widened, shoulders broadened, fingers elongated, and at last, I was Knite once more, body and soul.

My swords rushed forward, marked by a sensus not seen since my death. They sliced through the closest of her mirages, top to bottom, forcing the mist of her illusion to revert to raw sensus, roll and churn across the ground, and disperse outwards. The glassy smoke charged toward her other illusions, reverberating back to their source and destroying them until all had dissolved into the night air.

Leahne fell to one knee, wheezing. Having used most of her sensus and then suffered the backlash of my dispelling, soul exhaustion ate away at her.

I walked closer and stood over her. “… You will not.”

She looked up at me. Her fear had blossomed, so captivating and rich and aromatic that I could taste it in the back of my throat. My mouth began to water. I wanted to whistle my tune and feast, but a better part of me refused. Not yet, it said. Not unless…

“Prince Knite,” she sighed.

“I had thought you too young to recognize me,” I said, resheathing my twin swords.

“There is a whole plethora of books and scrolls dedicated to you in my sector’s library,” she said. The soul exhaustion took away more of her, and she dropped to her hands and knees. “The books speak of your deeds.” She rolled to her back, losing weight before my very eyes. “Both the height of your strength, which they encourage us to mimic, and the depth of your betrayal, which they warn us to avoid. Within the records, your black sensus is well documented.”

“Is that so?” I asked, walking over to her. “I’m surprised the old hag allowed my name to remain in the annals of history.”

Despite her mounting weakness, she tried to swing at me. I grabbed her wrist, feeling nothing but skin and bone. Most of her fear had waned into an odd mixture of mirth and anger. My lust for death receded, replaced with curious amusement.

“Do not… insult… The Queen,” she said, panting. Her body was limp now, the clothes hanging loose off her skeletal frame.

“The Bark and Roots have no such books,” I said. “Here, where the larger masses live, she’s reduced me into a mythical parable, a fable uttered to children, a woven tale of a cruel and powerful man who betrayed all he knew. All part of the drivel that worms past her slithering tongue, of course.”

I lay my palm on Leahne’s forehead and fed her the sensus she craved. Her soul suckled on my offering, hungrily devouring the nectar of its survival. Sustenance poured into her shriveled body. Her eyes jumped open, energy and weight suffusing back into her.

“That you believe these lies tells me you are more foolish than guilty,” I said. “I will not take your life.” I took back my hand and stood. “But you will serve me until your dying day, and in exchange, I’ll release you from slavery—both the manacles of their lies and the chains of their control.”

Rosy cheeks brought color back to Leahne’s pale complexion. She could move now but chose not to, her soul a miasma of doubt.

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Farian approached. I behaved as though I’d not noticed. He’d seen me turn from a son to a stranger to a prince. Understandably, his loyalties were in a state of turbulence.

He stopped behind me. “Where is my son?”

I turned to the closest thing to a father I’d ever known—I respected Merkusian, admired him, but the man was never much of a father to me. A guide? Yes. A friend? Most definitely. But a father?

Farian had unbound the ropes from his wrists and removed the gag from his mouth. Blood no longer seeped from his wound, and there were smears where he’d tried to wipe away what remained.

“Here,” I said.

“No,” he said, oddly calm. “Where is he?”

I touched the back of my neck, the gate to my soul. “Here.”

Farian looked away. He did not cry, for his life had long ago dried up the well from which his tears sprung, but his eyes looked past me and off into the distance like they were trying to pierce the veil of reality, like what I’d said was an illusion he could see through if only he stared at it long and hard enough.

“I have no son?” he asked.

“You’re a father to a part of me, Farian.”

“I have no son?” he asked again.

I approached and placed a hand on his shoulder—a weak gesture, I knew, but the best I could offer.

“But I raised you from infancy?” he said.

“I am a prince of Evergreen, Farian.” Everyone knew we were immune to the ravages of time. Physical age was but a decision to us.

Farian blinked away his shock. “I have no son.” He wasn’t asking anymore. “You mean I have to contend with a dead son who never existed?” His hand slapped mine off his shoulder. “Why? Why did you…”

“I could tell you it wasn’t me, and in a way, it would be true,” I said. Unlike the bubbling anger he so often buried, his quiet rage persisted, demanding an answer. I decided he deserved that much. “But I allowed it. She asked, and I gave it to her. I gave it to her because I could not give her what she wanted most. Because I wanted her to have something in its stead.”

Farian watched me. He was among the few who ascended from The Muds and the only one in a century to reach as high as a Heartwood; he knew how to capitulate when defeat was inevitable. It was how he’d survived and prospered. Yet the coiled tension of his body said he had trouble resisting that urge he’d so often defeated.

“Where is Addy?” he asked.

“Home,” I said. “Let me—”

“Do not call it that! It isn’t your home!” He glared at me until I nodded my understanding, then stalked off, the pain of his hobble forgotten.

I watched him leave, a rare moment of hesitation rooting me to where I stood. I wanted to follow, wanted him to ask me to, to want me to. He didn’t, and so I remained rooted, watching him walk away.

“That was cruel,” Leahne said from behind me.

I nodded. “It was a kindness that blinded me to the cruelty. Or maybe it was self-interest. Whatever the case, you are right—however unintentional, it was cruel of me.” I turned to her, once again using my soulsight. “Wise of you not to try an escape.”

“I’m no fool,” she said. “But nor am I a traitor.”

I smiled; curiosity still roiled about her soul, churning into doubt. “Is reciprocation betrayal?”

“Isn’t reciprocation of betrayal, by definition, betrayal?”

“By the very fact that it is reciprocal, it is not.”

She shook her head. “That is beside the point. I’ve lived the consequences of your actions, of your treachery.”

“And you haven’t lived theirs?”

“I do so gladly.”

“Are you certain?”

“I am an agent of House Lorail. I command powers my parents could only dream of. I’ll live longer than my grandnieces and nephews. Hunger is a distant memory. Sleep has become an abundant yet superfluous indulgence. I’ve conversed with gods, learned to fight and kill and—”

“Is it your fear of poverty they’ve anchored your bonds to?” I asked. “Your hate for family, perhaps?”

“What?”

“That’s what they do, the godlings of House Lorail. They take the part of you that anchors your whole and mask your bindings within.”

Anger flared in her soul. I reached over my shoulder and tapped the butt of one of my twin swords. Her anger crumpled below a resurgence of fear, and she let loose a peal of laughter. What a strange woman, I thought, to find humor in fear.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“For what?”

“For me to expel your bonds. Best I remove your blindfold before I show you the truth.”

“And if I say no.”

“Then I would expend a tad more effort,” I said. “Nothing more.”

“And how do I know—”

“A pointless question. Come.”

She approached tentatively. I strode closer, unhappy with her hesitant pace. Yet, for all her reluctance, there was no resistance when I dove into her soul.

Recent memories played out in my mind’s eye, shaded by her emotions, a flicker of images. The shock of seeing me kill Rowan came first. There was a hint of awe in that. They’d shared history. One of admirer and admired.

I dug deeper.

I saw her ambush Farian. She came at him from behind, placing a dagger to his throat as he closed the door to his room at the council. There was a jolt of jealousy when he refused to speak of me. Of Merkus.

The scene shifted to when I lowered my shawl. Elation at possible redemption, at gaining back her power. Interesting, I thought. I shall have to check on that later.

The memories jumped forward.

She knelt on the ground, feeling the backlash eat away at her. She cursed her arrogance. It seemed a worthwhile course of action not to seek aid in the matter. To her, reaping all she could from uncovering a traitor was worth the risk. She’d discovered the greatest of them all, risk and traitor both.

I revisited the memory of her elation, tracing it back to when she’d suffered a loss.

She was on assignment. One that took her deep into The Deathly Forrest and beyond, to the free city of Holden. The ruler there lived in a keep made of black stone. Her mark, her target, the enemy she’d been sent to kill. She thought she’d caught the quarry unaware. She didn't. The figure hidden beneath dark robes ripped into her soul the moment she’d attacked.

I pushed forward.

She was in a room of white marble. The Branches. The inner sanctum. Her charge sat across her. Rowan. More than admirer and admired: apprentice and master.

The mark Leahne’s target had left on her was not of the body but of the soul. It corroded her namats, her streams. The treatment would cost her master more than she was worth. Her hopes of a cure were crushed. She felt no anger, only sadness, only the wretched truth of her demise and her inevitable relegation to The Bark, and Lorail forbid, to The Muds. Rowan tried to disguise it as an assignment, but she’d been banished, and they knew it both.

There was resistance when I tried to delve into memories regarding her assignment. Someone had put a matrix there. The traces of sensus felt familiar. Rowan. She thought she was clever when she hid a trap beneath the concealment matrix. Amateur. I nullified both.

Aki. He was the assignment. I was an afterthought. They wanted me, but they wanted him more—much more. ‘Watch him,’ Rowan had ordered. She didn’t tell Leahne why. Leahne had dared to ask. It earned her a cuff that split her bottom lip and threw her to the cold of the marble floor. She told herself she deserved it. Deep down, she knew she didn’t. Her mind forced her to believe otherwise. She didn’t notice that happening. I did.

I snatched at the slinking corruption that swayed her thoughts. The mass of matrixes tried to wiggle free. I wouldn’t let it. I followed it to a memory isolated by a matrix sphere, shielded even from Leahne herself.

I broke in.

A room. A space to train. Mounted weapons lined one wall. Blood marred the stone floor. Twenty bodies lay in the corner, discarded like trash, limbs intertwined and facing impossible angles, a large pool of red edging outwards beneath them. Dead girls no older than eighteen.

Four students sat beside Leahne in the middle of the room. They still lived, if barely. Recent wounds marked them all—bleeding gashed, the protrusion of broken bones, missing fingers, and more. Rowan stood before them. She stepped aside and went to her knees, hands on her thighs and head bowed.

The door creaked open. A child skipped in. She paused to stroke Rowan’s hair like someone might pet their lapdog.

The memory shuddered as a spike of wrath threatened my concentration, but I wrestled it back into view.

My sister still preferred her prepubescent body. Wavy hair framed her face, the ends brushing against her delicate shoulders. With her free hand, she twirled a finger around a strand of hair curled about her temple, her face expressionless. Ice-blue eyes gazed upon Leahne and the others with cold detachment.

Leahne's body felt empty, more exhausted than ever. Fighting and killing five of her fellow apprentices was arduous work. She knew them well enough to know their greatest hopes and deepest fears. They’d spent every waking moment of the last cycle of seasons together since being snatched from their families. She hated them. Each and every one of them. She was meant to. It had been a grueling contest from the moment they met. And as she sat there, kneeling before a god, it wasn’t guilt she felt, or fear, or awe, but pride.

Lorail held up a hand towards her and the other surviving contestants. The torment was sudden and all-consuming. Where she expected to be met with congratulations, she met with nothing but pain, the type that left no room for thought. It blinded her, expended her existence.

It was a Surgery of the soul.

Done with my exploration, I started with the isolation matrix, unraveling the components and destroying each element until the memory was accessible to Leahne. Next, I turned my attention to the scars the Surgery left behind. They diverged across her soul, branching off and stretching outwards. I checked them all, faint as they were, smallest to largest. Many led to dead ends where Lorail’s imprint had failed to take hold or last. Some withered but remained. I let those be. Those would fade with time. Only one held true, latched onto a part of her fear, a part buried deep in her soul. The long scar warped aspects of her into something else, something different, some amalgamation of elements I did not recognize. I removed the imprint, but for now, the scars were there to stay. If they were to heal, only she could do so. I saw the virulent smoke that dissolved her namat. It smelled vile. Familiar. It, too, would stay. Curing her of it would erase her value to me.

I let go of Leahne’s neck, drawing back from her soul. Her eyes fluttered open, meeting my own and telling me they remembered the memory I’d uncovered and felt the freedom I’d restored.

“Let's go,” I said, holding out a hand. “We have the rest of a very long night ahead of us.”

Leahne flinched back, giggling. I was beginning to understand why.