Chapter 1 - Skeir

'The doom of any nation is to be ruled by people.'

- Introduction to A Complete History of the Four-Throne War

“Please…”

Skeir wiped the sweat from his forehead as he looked down on his work. The man - if he had ever been such a thing - was tied to the chair at both ankles. His left arm was also bound behind him, twisted at the shoulder where Skeir had dislocated it. He displayed a sunset of bruises on what remained of his face; Skeir had split his lip, knocked out a few teeth, and spent twenty minutes carving out one of his eyes. The man’s other arm he’d nailed straight through to the top of the table, where he was about to start working on the fingers.

His name was Elias Ornal, and he deserved every single wound coming to him.

“You know what I want.” He leaned over his prisoner. With one scarred hand, Skeir reached into his pocket and pulled out a scratched glass vial. Unstoppering it, he held it over the stump that was once Ornal’s thumb, the liquid within wavering close to the vial’s mouth.

“Answers first, then I patch you up. Or you can bleed out right here.”

“Yo-you can’t kill me yet.” Ornal’s single, spiteful eye did not waver, even as he hissed through the pain. “You think I don’t remember your face, folcá? Oh yes. You can’t do what we did and then forget.”

A single blow - his fist straight into the solar plexus - had Ornal retching and gasping for air. The Iscerian rocked back in the chair and reached for his throat, and the nails tore through the muscles on his forearm on the way out. Then the screaming started; panicked, choking, desperate. Skeir waited for the sounds to stop, counting along to the gallop of blood and breath behind his ears.

Cirraek. Dragan. Evonnia.

He dug his fingers into the open wound, eliciting one more cry from Ornal, before stepping back and pouring the contents of the vial into the cavities. The drought did its work quickly: within seconds, the bleeding had stopped and the skin began to grow over the wounds. But both of them knew that it would do nothing to fix the muscles; that Worked-healing, when applied incorrectly, could do more damage than the original injuries.

All it took was a few sceptres at the kymist’s and some basic training to cripple a man for life.

“You’ll never use that arm to lift anything again. But you have the rest of your limbs. Are you ready?”

It took less than a minute for Ornal’s whimpering to recede into silence, and less than two for it to break.

“… just promise me you’ll be quick, after.” He knew what awaited him on the other side of this conversation. The veteran smothered the faint embers of respect in his gut as he remembered who he was talking to. He did not blink as he lied.

“I promise.”

The Iscerian just nodded, head hanging over the table. When he spoke next, Skeir had to strain to hear the words.

“I was out. We were out, the whole company. The war was over, Thaban and his ministers signed the peace treaty, and suddenly we weren’t patriots anymore.”

You never were. Skeir’s knuckles turned white, but he mastered himself before the other man could see.

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“After the first trials, most of us went into hiding. I burned my uniform, dumped the ashes in the Sevren. Didn’t want the Thronekeepers finding it, you know?” For the first time since, Ornal’s voice grew uneven all on its own.

“The things I - that we - did for that uniform… I don’t need to explain them to you. But the years passed, and nobody ever came looking. We were trained, had weapons shoved in our hands and orders in our heads, and then we were thrown away. Like toys, when a kid grows too old for them.”

“The letter, the code,” Skeir growled. “I know you burned that too.”

The Iscerian hacked out a laugh, or perhaps it was a cough. “Southerners. No appreciation for a story, you just want to skip to the end.” A pause, and then: “Alright, yes. I got a letter, last tenday.”

“What did it say?”

This time there was no mistaking the bloody smile. “It asked us to rally beneath injustice’s shadow. To do something that truly matters. To take our due from the world, at long last.”

A call to arms. Skeir went completely still. “Those were the exact words? You’re sure?”

“On the Ten Virtues.” Ornal craned his neck, staring at the ceiling. “What I wouldn’t give to be there when they find you and -”

Skeir buried the dagger deep in the murderer’s belly, twisted the hilt, and yanked it out. With his free hand, he grabbed Ornal and drew him close, chair and all. Through bared teeth, he rasped:

“A fucking soldier earns a quick death, Elias.”

Tossing Ornal aside, Skeir strode across the cabin, sparing only a single glance back at the leaking body on the wooden floor. He grabbed his cloak from the hook on the far wall where he’d left it, rummaging around in the pockets before producing a small pouch. Then he opened the door and stepped outside.

He took a moment, letting the frigid air stab gently at his face. Beyond the cabin's front porch, Veruna beamed down on the distant snowcaps. With both her sisters gone, the Scarlet Moon made the mountains look like bloody teeth. Leaning against the banister, Skeir opened the pouch to retrieve his matches and pipe. His fingers trembled as he stuffed and lit it, a feeling he knew had nothing to do with the cold.

He’s back. If not him, then what he built.

He tried to speak a name - one that belonged to the architect of his grief - but only silence emerged.

Skeir let out a long, ragged breath, the pipe’s smoke dissipating into the early morning air.

Ornal couldn’t have been the only one who had been summoned to do his old boss’ bidding, and the words had left no doubt as to where they were meeting. ‘Beneath injustice’s shadow’ could only be referring to one place: the City of the Empty Throne, the ancient capital of Old Immeria.

Equinox.

He had been, once. A lifetime ago. But he'd heard the stories since.

A city at war with itself; a refuge for turncloaks, where loyalty was just another currency to be bought and sold. A land of four crowns, and thus of none. Its so-called Thronekeepers had seen to that, eroding the natural rules of the world in favour of a peace they wanted to see. What were they preserving, but a monument to a past long-gone?

He did not know what purpose the Company had for gathering there of all places, but there was only one thing he'd heard tonight that he agreed with: it was a place devoid of justice.

If there had been any at all, he would have executed, not tucked away in some vault-realm to grow old.

Skeir returned into the cabin to gather the rest of his belongings, taking special care to sheathe and wrap each tool in its right place. Where he was going, he would need each and every one of them.

He saved his highblade for last, the hilt of the gigantic sword finding its usual groove between his shoulder blades. It was weapon of an infantryman, a linebreaker. He'd used one during his stint in the vanguard to cut down formations of pikemen and horses alike. As he looked down on the now-still body of Elias Ornal, the Helkorite reflected that it had been a long time since he'd wielded it on either.

Destroying monsters, though, that was good enough.

He would find them all. Every last member of Ninth Company, wherever they might be hiding, whatever they might be planning. And when he did, there would be no trial, no judgment. He would tear them apart, one by one. That had been the promise he'd sworn to the shades of his friends. He would show them no mercy, for they had none in them to recognize it. Vengeance was too small a word for the deeds in his future, hate too narrow a sentiment for what surged in his veins.

His only regret, when he found the dirt, would be not inflicting enough torment on those who had first tormented him.

When he left the cabin behind, those thoughts still kept him warm.