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GEGENES

The trip to Gegenes was uneventful, even if it was a bit uncomfortable for Isco. After leaving Adur, the passenger car of the train had been moderately occupied. However, with each passing stop, more bodies filled the available space until he was clutching his bag to his chest and clenching his jaw each time someone slipped and trod on his foot. He was both glad he could sit and cursed it. The bodies that loomed above him blocked whatever flow of cool air was in the car, and for just a moment he was sure he was going to suffocate.

Isco wasn’t the only one disembarking in Gaoler. When the train screeched to a halt, he was swept into the wave of passengers as they streamed out onto the open air pathway.

Gegenes was dusty, the railyard wind whipped. Isco squinted after the dim of the train interior and sneezed.

After the first several strides out of the narrow doors, the crowd began to release him. Still clutching his bag to his chest, he stumbled out of the pull of bodies and found shelter behind a wooden post.

Isco waited to catch his breath. The wood planks of the platform had buckled from the heat, and the uneven lean of them didn’t help to shake the weird sense of motion that lingered after his journey.

The Cardea had told him he would be met at the platform, but they hadn’t given him information beyond that. While he had a sense that they didn’t actually want him to succeed on this mission, they didn’t have to make an impossible task even more difficult.

It didn’t matter. He would do this, and then he would be free of them.

Isco released a sigh of relief when the crowd thinned. He unknotted his hands from his leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. He brushed his hair from his eyes and attempted to dust the wrinkles off his waist coat.

“Hey, handsome.”

A woman’s voice whispered close, and Isco jumped and whirled to check behind him to make sure he wasn’t blocking someone’s path.

The post was behind him, and he jerked back to avoid hitting it.

The same voice laughed, and Isco recovered enough to turn. Before him was a Gegenii woman, only a few inches shorter than him, her blonde hair cropped short on the side and long and swept back at the top.

“You look lost,” she said.

The woman’s green eyes sparkled against her dark tan Gegenii skin. She propped a hand on her bare hip, the silk she wore shifting with her every movement.

“Not lost,” Isco managed to say. “I’m just getting my bearings.”

She squinted at him, then lowered her voice as if they were sharing a common secret. “Is that fancyman talk for ‘lost’?”

Isco cleared his throat and tried to straighten to his full height. “No,” he said. “I am waiting for a representative from your Governor.”

“Ah,” the woman said, her brow raising as she leaned back. She eyed him from the top of his brown hair down to the scuffed shine on his leather shoes.

Then, she stuck her hand out. “I’m Astar.”

Isco eyed her hand before taking it. “Isco,” he said.

The grip on his hand was firm when she shook it, the gold bangles on her wrist sliding against each other.

“Isco Madeiros,” she said. “I’d think a representative of the Camarilla Group would have arrived in Comfort Class, at least.”

“The Camaril--right,” Isco said, shaking his head. The woman’s appearance had thrown him, and he’d forgotten his cover. “The Camarilla Group representative. That is my. Me.”

Astar winked and backed up a step before turning and weaving through the crowd. A few steps away, she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

“You coming, Isco?”

“I’m supposed to be waiting for--” he stopped, realization finally dawning on him, and pointed at her. “You’re the Governor’s representative.”

“Yeah,” she said, then turned and continued through the crowd.

Isco struggled to catch up with Astar’s confident strides as she stepped off the train platform and into the city streets. When he caught her, he hovered close behind. The people that clogged the roadways stepped to the side, letting the pair pass.

“You were late,” she said. “We’re going to miss it.”

“Miss what?” he asked.

“The exhibit,” she replied, not looking his way. “A small sample of The Harbinger’s work. It was arranged so that potential investors can get a bit of a sneak preview before the main event.”

Astar slowed her steps and raised her brow at Isco. “That is what you’re here for, right? To see The Harbinger?”

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“Yes,” he said, and at least he didn’t have to lie.

The Cardea, under the guise of the Camarilla Group, had been tracking the fighters in Gegenes’s Theatre. Though most that had appeared where low level earth loas, they suspected that the Theatre’s new “Harbinger” character may be something more. Isco had been sent to assess the stranger and, if warranted, return with them.

“The fighters in the Theatre,” Isco started. “Are they under some kind of contract?”

Astar shrugged. “Some are,” she said. “Some aren’t. When the Palamidia backed off on expanding their empire years ago, there were a lot of soldiers that didn’t have any other skills. The Belisarins saw an opportunity, and they took it.”

Isco shook his head. “Aren’t the Belisarins merchants?”

Astar nodded. “Sure are,” she said, “and they started trading in people.”

“So they enslaved them.”

Astar stopped short, whirling on Isco with narrowed eyes. “Not slaves,” she said. “As far as I know, Adur is the only region that still allows that kind of barbarism.”

Isco held his hands up and backed away from her heated glare. “I’m just a doctor.”

Astar leaned back, but her eyes stayed suspiciously narrowed as she turned. She took a few more steps before stopping, and turned on Isco again.

“Why is a doctor representing a trading coalition?”

Isco opened his mouth to defend himself, but he couldn’t think of a lie. Instead, he looked past Astar. He tilted his head back, trying to take in the sight of the Theatre. Walkways ran along the outside of the circular structure, starting at the third tier, with arches along the facade to allow viewers to their seats.

“Is that the Theatre?” he asked.

Astar turned, squinting up at the pennants that batted against the sky.

“Shit,” she said. “We gotta hurry.”

Instead of moving to the main entrance, Astar darted to a smaller door at the side. Keepers on each side unlocked the gate in anticipation of her arrival, and Isco quickened his steps to meet her.

Inside the darkened stairwell, Astar took the steps two at a time and Isco hastened to keep pace. Astar ducked through an angled opening that led them back out into the Gegenii sun.

Isco found himself blinking once again in the bright light of Gaoler. By the time he opened his eyes fully, Astar had already alighted into a seat on the daise.

“Your friend’s here,” she said, her gaze roving over the stage below.

A Gegenii man in formal attire rose to meet Isco.

Gegenes was known as the Land of Giants, and the man was a true specimen. He didn’t stand so much as loom, barrel chested and dark as oak. His robes were sapphire blue, matching the pennants that waved against the orange sky. Dark flowing pants were cuffed at his ankles above flat-footed leather boots. A woven leather belt wrapped his middle, and the scarf that draped over his shoulders matched Astar’s sky blue silks. His clothes were clean and tailored, finely wrought to cover such a large frame.

He smiled, but it was too wide. There were too many teeth in it.

“Welcome,” the man said, and laughed. Isco suppressed a cringe. The sound was loud, false and echoing. He stepped forward. “Isco, it is an honor to put a face to the name.” He reached out and grasped Isco’s hand in both of his own. “I am the Governor here. You may call me Hautman.”

“Right,” Isco said, looking down at their hands. It was another moment before Hautman squeezed his and then released it.

“You were almost late, but we held the final act for you.” Hautman said. “I do hope my daughter was not disagreeable. I meant to send another, but they were called to a different task.”

Astar sat back in her seat and crossed her legs. She rested her elbow on the armrest, her head on her fist.

“Daughter?” Isco asked.

Astar waved over her shoulder with her free hand, but didn’t turn around.

“Please,” Hautman said, stepping to the side. He looked away from Isco and turned his strained smile to Astar. She rolled her eyes and stood, taking a different chair behind the one she had previously occupied.

Hautman turned back to Isco, his smile never faltering. “Sit.”

“I could’ve sat somewhere else,” Isco said.

“No, of course not,” Hautman said while waving his hand to dismiss the idea.

“Thanks,” Isco said as he slowly lowered himself to the stone chair, “I think.”

Hautman sat next to Isco in a rustle of silk. Once he’d adjusted his scarf, he lifted a hand, a gold ring flashing on each finger.

A horn blast followed his signal.

Isco’s attention turned to the Theatre’s stage. From this height, he could still see the stains of blood in the orange sands. There were tracks in the soft soil where the fighters had struggled, ghosts of previous battles.

At the sound of the horn seven black iron gates opened in the Theatre, one for every ordinal and cardinal direction save for the east gate. Fourteen fighters emerged onto the sands, chained in pairs, presenting themselves to the crowd.

When they’d finished their rounds, accompanied by the audience’s polite applause, the eighth and final gate opened.

A Gegenii man stepped out, and the crowd cheered. He moved into the light, holding a khopesh aloft and dragging a chain behind him.

“You chain them?” Isco asked.

Hautman’s hungry gaze left the gate and he turned to Isco, his smile faltering. “What?”

Isco indicated the trailing chains, and Hautman laughed. It was a jarring thing, too loud and too close.

“It is only to keep things interesting. Now wait, the Harbinger comes.”

The chain attached to the last Gegenii man shivered against the sand. Once drawn out to its length, it began to contract.

At the other end, a woman emerged from the dark tunnels into the harsh light.

Her features had settled since Isco had first seen her, whatever softness she had then chiseled away by the passing years. But her eyes were the same cold grey, sweeping over the stage and the audience, seeing everything and the nothing beyond it.

As if she could feel his stare, she looked to the daise.

Isco’s nails dug into the arms of his seat, his body screaming at him to run.