Isco [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_21_01_Isco-S1.png]

GEGENES

The room Astar had deposited Isco in had felt large at first, but as time ticked by the walls shrunk around him. After having paraded him in the Theatre and the streets then leaving him here, Isco had yet to receive a visit or an invitation. Meals were delivered to him, but otherwise he had only himself for company.

Isco had walked the halls of the second floor where he was staying, noting the sitting rooms, a small library, and other spare bedrooms, but didn’t wish to intrude further into the Governor’s home.

In the bath attached to his room, he took another shower in an attempt to further wash away the grit of Gegenes and the sweat of panic that soured on his skin. It left him refreshed, at least physically, but after he had nothing else to bide his time with before the Governor’s planned dinner.

Digging through the night stand in the room, Isco found the now familiar box of matches and deck of cards. He sat on the bed and shuffled, the cards bending at the corners and dropping from his hands to mock his awkward attempts to keep them under control.

Isco never spent time on card games. The decks had been used by the ancients to divine futures, and though the gods were dead and gone and those old practices were buried with them, he didn’t need to draw the ire of any remnants of a vengeful fate. As it stood, he had his hands full with coincidence.

That didn’t mean he didn’t know how to play. Games of Palamedes were ubiquitous and inescapable, popular for passing time with friends or gambling the night away in bars. It was a game of strategy and trick, and his fellow students at the university had often played to unwind while covertly testing what they viewed as their competition.

There was also a version that could be played alone, for those that weren’t exactly welcome in group settings.

Isco flipped the Legatus card between his fingers. The ultimate trump. He considered it for a moment, the suns in the center overlapping and shifting direction until they appeared as an eye, then tucked it into the stack.

After attempting another shuffle, Isco set a board in front of him and kept the deck in hand, his fingers worrying over the creases along the sides where the cards met.

For hours, he worked on the game, hoping it would either distract him from his thoughts or give his mind the chance to sort through events that had lead him here, to this moment, playing a fool’s game in the home of a brutal Governor while somewhere else in these same walls an omen was preparing to sit at a dinner table with him.

If this was a new Solarian ploy, it didn’t make sense as to why now, why here, deep within the territory of Gegenes.

After the decimation of Cardea in Adur, a tentative peace had settled in Lifrasir. The Solarians turned their focus inward, uniting and building up their already claimed territories. They had even pulled back the front lines, with Atarrabi serving as an unspoken neutral buffer between the Empire and the three remaining independent regions.

Governor Hautman didn’t seem concerned about an encroaching attack. There was no real milita from what Isco had seen, the once proud Gegenii fighters reduced to mercenaries and entertainers.

Perhaps the woman had deserted. She was a loa, he was certain of that, and the hardest lesson had learned was that a Palamidia loa was never alone. The Cardea had believed her to be helpless, only to be struck down by the terrifying force that arrived in her wake. Their base was devastated, as was the bazaar above it, to the point that many of the buildings were still rubble all these years later.

She had commanded him with a single word.

She had saved Isco’s life.

It was a stalemate. Isco didn’t know where to move, couldn’t even if he tried.

He swept his hands over the cards, scattering them across the room. He covered his face with his hands and sighed, flopping back onto the pile of pillows at the head of the bed.

A knock sounded on the door. He removed his hands from his eyes, registering the fading light of day. He stood and stretched, trying to ease the tension in his limbs, before opening the door.

Instead of a servant as expected, he found himself facing Astar again.

She was wearing what he was coming to know as her usual mischievous grin, this time accompanied by a deeper blue wrap. Gold threads snaked over the fabric, curling into intricate leaf patterns.

Her eyes flickered over him. “You’re wearing that?”

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“It isn’t like I have anything else.” Isco pulled down the hem of his waistcoat to smooth any perceived wrinkles. “And not everyone has the chromas for fancy dresses.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who spent money on fancy dresses,” Astar quipped.

She looked past him at the room and the scattered cards, her brow rising. Her eyes traveled to the few that had scattered near the doorway and she bent to retrieve one. Her easy grin returned.

“Looks like I win,” she said, turning the card to reveal the Legatus.

Isco whipped the card from her hand and bent to frantically gather the rest. Finally retrieving the mess from the room, he straightened the deck as best he could and set it back in the nightstand.

“Oh,” Astar exclaimed behind him, and he jumped.

“You look wonderful,” she said, leaving the threshold in a flurry of silk.

Isco crept to the doorway.

“I mean,” Astar said, “I know I do good work but not this good.”

Standing in the hall was the Harbinger.

Kanna was clothed in a nude fabric that was only a few shades deeper than the unusual porcelain of her skin. The shoulder of the gown was stitched with beads of varying sizes and shades of red that caught the light. Despite the fact that she was cleaned of dirt and blood, the dress lent itself to the illusion of it, turning violence into a kind of strange beauty.

It was no wonder the Gegenii were so enthralled with her.

The cut of the dress did little to mask the long healed scar between the curve of her neck and shoulder or the crudely stitched gash on her upper arm, but she stood with a practiced ease and simple confidence. Her deep red hair was braided back, which brought attention to the striking grey of her eyes. They were distant, detached from the scene.

“I knew that would suit you,” Astar said.

Kanna trained her inscrutable gaze on Astar. “I will have to take your word for it.”

Astar clapped her hands, then linked her arm with Kanna’s. She pulled them around, turning them away. The back of Kanna’s dress was open, coming together at her waist. The scar on her shoulder reappeared along her back, ending abruptly just before reaching her spine.

“That’s Isco, the guy father invited,” Astar said as an afterthought, waving in his general direction.

Kanna turned her head just enough that she could see Isco over her shoulder.

“Kanna, right?” Isco asked, struggling to keep his voice from betraying the fact that his heart was leaping at the bottom of his throat.

Her eyes flicked from his toes to his face, but Isco there was no recognition in them. His pulse stilled, bracing itself for an attack.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

Isco swallowed as his heart hammered back to life in warning.

“He came to meet you,” Astar said, unknowingly saving Isco from himself.

Kanna’s brow arched and she turned her gaze away from him and back to Astar.

“The Theatre,” Isco hurried to correct, grasping for the easiest lie. “I came to see the Theatre.”

“Which is pretty much just Kanna at this point,” Astar said without missing a beat.

Kanna didn’t respond as Astar pulled her along. Isco followed them as they took the stairs, watching Kanna. She shifted her gaze around her surroundings, the slightest tilt of her head the only indication. Although she appeared relaxed, bored even, it was a practiced facade. She was on high alert, scoping out her environment without giving herself away.

As they passed through the foyer at the bottom of the stairs Kanna stopped. Astar was tugged back, not having realized that Kanna had halted so abruptly.

The room was absent furniture, but the walls were bursting with life. Murals coated every available surface, one bleeding into the next. Older paint had faded with an aged warmth, but newer ones bordered on garish.

Isco recognized some of the scenes depicted in the murals. Stories of creation, the fall of the gods, and the trials of Tengri were interwoven and overlapped, some obscured and reinvented into newer work.

Tengri’s seventh trial morphed into a battlefield.

Kanna Mural [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_21_02_kannamural.png]

Astar followed Kanna’s gaze. “It’s the battle of Ganglere,” she offered. “The last time the Independents faced the Palamidia on a large scale.”

The wide landscape depicted a few white soldiers on earthen walls facing what should have been insurmountable waves of Independent fighters in a storm.

“But we lost,” Isco said.

He clamped his mouth shut. It was a stupid thing to say. Everyone knew that.

Astar nodded. “Spectacularly.”

Kanna’s gaze was steady, her body still.

“Then why is there a painting of it?” Isco asked, partially to fill the tense silence and partially out of true curiosity

.

Astar shrugged. “Beats me why he does the things he does.”

They stood that way long enough that Astar’s offhand disinterest shifted to concern. When Kanna still didn’t move on her own, Astar tugged her arm and broke her trance.

Kanna blinked, her eyes focusing, then turned to Astar like a person waking from sleep.

“Come on,” Astar said, almost gently. “Father will be waiting.”