I had not missed the feeling of walking while missing an arm since the last time it had happened to me. I had lost limbs in combat before, over a dozen times in fact, and the lack of a counterbalance to my movement when walking was always distracting. Worse still, my human body had no automatic compensation to balance my torso, so as I climbed up the stairs and into the guard post lobby I felt as though I was lurching up on one side whenever I moved my right foot forwards. It also didn’t help that my blood levels hadn’t yet normalized, so my blood pressure was perilously low, making my vision cloud over if I stepped up too quickly.
At the front desk, someone had already brought up my possessions. My sword, by some miracle, was mostly intact. Both throwing knives were recovered, as were my axes. My money pouch felt about as heavy as I remembered it being, though I had mostly handed it with my right hand so I wasn’t sure. My clothing, in complete tatters, was also offered to me but I opted to allow the guard to dispose of it since there was no point in repairing it. Finally, as predicted, the Revhite identification paper and medallion were gone. I thought about mentioning it, but decided to keep quiet to not draw suspicion to myself.
Laev, once he had confirmed that everything was in order, opened the door to let me out of the post, reminding me once again that I would be contacted later. My eyes were slow to adjust to the morning sun, probably a lingering effect of the brain injury, but once they did I saw Aavspeyjh and Koyl standing in front of a covered rickshaw-like cart that was drawn by two uniformed men. Koyl beckoned me over to them while Aavspeyjh looked on silently.
“Seyt,” Koyl swore, glancing at my empty sleeve. “What happened?”
“Not out here,” Aavspeyjh said, opening the cart door. “Get inside, there are eyes and ears all around.” In response to his words, I looked around at the foot traffic and noticed a number of people staring at us. Without needing further prompting, I walked up to the cart and hopped in, followed quickly by Koyl and Aavspeyjh, the latter of which closed the door behind us.
“Rehvites,” I said once the door was shut. “Four of them, assassins of some kind. Did they tell you anything?”
“They only told us you were involved in an incident and had sustained a serious injury,” Aavspeyjh said. “That being said, I did use my own channels to find more information, but I have conflicting reports. More importantly, what did they ask you, and what did you tell them?” Koyl, who was very conspicuously avoiding looking at my right side, frowned.
“Nothing that would implicate you or me in any criminal activity,” I replied. “They wanted to know what my relationship was with you, and I told them I know you and Koyl personally. I also told them I did a delivery job for you, and that I stayed in the inn on your recommendation. No further details.”
“I told you he-” Koyl began.
“Yes, you did,” Aavspeyjh said, holding up a hand to silence him. “I had to be sure, but you were correct. While that was not the best divulgence, it was far from the worst. I would have preferred that you simply denied having any involvement with me.”
“You came to pick me up,” I said. “Wouldn’t that have revealed it anyway?”
“Yes, but then I could have controlled the perception of that relationship,” Aavspeyjh explained. “Still, you being simply a mercenary who I hired due to you knowing my son is far from unusual, and I doubt they would relate you back to the killings that happened during your job.”
“Killings?” Koyl asked.
“Nevermind that,” Aavspeyjh sighed. “The rumors, how much of their content is true?”
“I’m not aware of their content,” I replied.
“The rumors were not a topic during your interrogation?” Aavspeyjh asked, raising his eyebrows. “I was under the impression that they were being investigated.”
“The guard has highly accurate information about the events of last night,” I replied. “There were some gaps which I filled in for them as part of the conditions for my release, but even before I did, they had a good idea of what happened.”
“Interesting,” Aavspeyjh mumbled, rubbing his chin. “The official story is that they arrived in the aftermath and are trying to piece together the truth. The rumors are that some kind of loud and highly destructive devices were used, along with an unknown blinding magic. There is also talk of a winged man, though I do not know what to make of it.”
“They used grenades, yes,” I said. “They are a type of explosive weapon that I’m familiar with. The designs were… not particularly effective, but destructive for sure. My room at the inn was torn apart by one of them.”
“And the light was you, right?” Koyl asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “The winged man was the assassin I fought, but they weren’t wings. He was using force magic to manipulate many small blades at once.” Aavspeyjh and Koyl both displayed varying degrees of shock and worry, Aavspeyjh more so in both departments. I'm guessing Aavspeyjh has never dealt with the Rehvites directly, I thought, Koyl, on the other hand, saw enough during the temple raid for this to be less of a shock to him.
“Did one of those grahneydz take your arm off?” Koyl asked.
“No,” I replied, feeling tired all of a sudden. “No, that was a different kind of magic attack. I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it wasn’t a grenade. It was launched by someone who had been concealing themselves from sight during my battle with the assassin, and who I didn’t get a good look at.”
“And it made a crater in the ground near where you were recovered,” Aavspeyjh said. “It was as though something struck the dirt with great force.” I know what it seems like, but there’s just no possible way they could manage that kind of magic output, I thought, feeling more drowsiness overtake me.
“I… I think I need to sleep,” I mumbled. “I don’t know what’s coming over me, but I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.”
“Then sleep,” Aavspeyjh said. “We will wake you when we arrive at my home in half an hour.”
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I awoke to Koyl nudging me through an open side door on the cart and stepped out before I remembered that my blood pressure wasn’t able to climb as rapidly as usual. After nearly falling on top of him, Koyl helped me to the entrance to the Zae’ey’yaob mansion, then brought me inside and sat me down in a chair. He mumbled a few words to a servant, something indistinct to me, and then walked off. A few moments later I found myself being propped up to my feet and led to a new room. Somewhere along the way, my eyes shut again, and then I felt myself flop down onto a soft bed. A feminine voice said something to me, but I fell asleep too quickly to hear what it was saying.
Many hours later, judging by the lack of sunlight coming through the crack beneath my door, I awoke in a bedroom of the mansion. Without thinking, I tried to rub my face with my right hand, then remembered that I didn’t have a right hand and sighed. Unable to find the motivation to move, I laid in the bed a while longer, letting my mind spin itself in circles as it wanted to. Sixty days or more, I thought, I don’t have sixty days to wait around, especially not if that assassin is still out there. I need to find some way to make myself battle-ready, at least enough that I can leave Kahvahrniydah. Possibilities, none of them practical, popped into my head like raindrops into a puddle. As I tossed each new idea out, my mind drifted to the last moments of my fight with the assassin.
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It was like a tank shell, I thought, or maybe a low-power railgun, but that’s just not possible. Railguns, while extremely powerful weapons, were exceedingly large and clunky when made man-portable, even by warbreed standards. Their main use was in extremely long-distance combat against armored targets, a role that they excelled in due to the fact that almost no conventional armor could resist the sheer amount of kinetic energy they could deliver. I had once seen a warbreed in full passive nanotech armor shot through the chest with a fifteen-millimeter railgun slug moving at Mach eight. He popped like a balloon, and the slug still had enough energy to blow a meter-wide and half-meter-deep crater into the composite wall behind him afterward.
It’s not possible though, I thought, that weapon needed almost twenty kilos of high-density ultracapacitors, and was the size of a missile launcher. Even a small railgun is the size of a large rifle. The person who attacked me had no weapon, and the energy they outputted is far beyond the highest magical energy emissions I’ve ever seen a human create. The most magical energy I had seen discharged at once was probably during the bear fight on Awsriyah island, and even those blows were likely less powerful than what had taken my arm off. But, should I discount it just because I haven’t seen it before? I asked myself, There’s clearly more to magic than what I know, it’s not unlikely that the Rehvites have some knowledge I lack. Another wave of fatigue passed over me, and I fell asleep again, dreaming of trying and failing to solve the problems on my mind.
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The next morning I was woken up by a female servant who brought a tub of warm water with her on a rolling platform, along with washcloths, soaps, and a new set of clothing for me that included a very fancy button-down shirt. After delivering the goods, she waited outside the door for me to wash up and get dressed. When I finally exited the room with my right sleeve dangling, the servant woman gave me an angry glare. I glared back, then after a moment she grabbed the sleeve, doubled it over on itself, and hooked one of the buttons on the cuff to a fastener on the shoulder, keeping it from slapping against my waist.
At her request, I followed her to Aavspeyjh’s office and sat down in a chair across from him while he looked over some work in a book on his desk. I peeked at the writing inside and couldn’t quite decipher what he was doing, though it looked like he was creating a spreadsheet of some kind.
“I spent quite a while yesterday working out a deal with the guard to ensure you will not be prosecuted for anything,” Aavspeyjh told me without looking up. “As of now, you are dead, officially. Of course, the truth cannot be hidden forever, but it should keep you safe for a while. I will be requiring you to continue working for me in the meantime, to be clear.”
“Understood,” I nodded. I'm not sure what you want me to do in this state though, I thought.
“Good,” Aavspeyjh grunted, still focusing on his work. “There are currently a large number of guards roaming the streets looking for your attackers, and there are even a few kehpveht with them for good measure. My contacts in the guard are keeping me apprised of the situation as it unfolds, so if the assailants are captured or killed we will know within the day.” I hadn’t heard the term Aavspeyjh used before, but I could intuit its meaning.
“What is a kehpveht?” I asked. “Is that like a yihzhae?” Surprisingly, my question brought a small smile out of the man.
“It is sometimes easy to forget, even with your accent, that you do not have perfect mastery of our language,” he commented. “A kehpveht is the land army’s version of a yihzhae. In Uwriy, there are far fewer kehpveht than yihzhae, due to the nature of our country as one primarily focused on naval power.”
“Do they use glass like the yihzhae I fought?” I asked, assuming Aavspeyjh had heard the story.
“There are many yihzhae and kehpveht techniques,” Aavspeyjh explained. “Most learn from a master who confers the techniques to them. The technique you are referring to is called zoyveyteyl yeyloyngeyvihdeyl and is one of the more common yihzhae techniques for those who specialize in above-deck combat and personnel capture. Kehpveht, on the other hand, often focus more on techniques that can complement and defeat a suit of armor such as ngpowm pahzvoydh, which is an internal force magic martial art designed to maximize the force of individual strikes.”
“Interesting,” I muttered, “How do you know that?”
“It is in my best interest to know things that others do not,” Aavspeyjh replied. “Advanced magic techniques are not commonly-held knowledge in Uwriy, those who know of them are generally officers in the military. And before you ask, that Rehvite assassin’s technique is not anything I know of, and could be something exclusive to their organization. None of this should concern you, however, because you will not be fighting them in your condition.” That’s a good point, I thought. “Damnable mathematics,” Aavspeyjh grumbled quietly, crossing out a section of the book.
“Mathematics?” I asked. Aavspeyjh sighed and finally looked up at me, revealing dark circles around his eyes. He was awake all night, I realized.
“I am trying to compute a number of values here,” he chuckled quietly. “It just takes quite some time to work out the division for each item, and if I compute one incorrectly it affects the next layer of computations, so small errors become a problem.”
“Can I take a look?” I asked, surprising Aavspeyjh. After spending a whole day stewing on other problems, I was yearning for a mental distraction.
“Be my guest,” he said, spinning the book around. The characters on the page were ones I didn’t recognize at first, but then I noticed that some of them were numbers. “I suppose this means very little to you,” he commented. “I assure you, it is as tedious as it appears. I envy the simplicity of your lifestyle.”
“These characters here and here,” I replied, pointing to some symbols with my left hand. “What are they?”
“That one is short for one hundred and forty-four, and that one is seventy-two,” Aavspeyjh explained. “It’s alright, I don’t expect you to do anything about this, it’s just-”
“Do you mind if I use your pen?” I asked, holding out my left hand. Aavspeyjh tilted his head to the side slightly, then handed me the pen in question. Uwrish numerals didn’t have a zero, they were written using a tally system and groups of twelve. Because of their notational deficiency, zero was often represented by simply writing “none” and never used outside of denoting the actual value of zero, which wasn’t conducive to quick calculation like what Aavspeyjh was attempting. Not to mention that fractions of one had to be represented by multiplying everything by twelve, then adding a note that the value was twelve times the true amount.
After parsing through the symbols on the paper, I translated the entire series of calculations into base ten numerals on the blank page beside Aavspeyjh’s work, then began quickly computing the results. Once I finished every line, I converted the result to standard Uwrish numerals and wrote them in the blank spaces Aavspeyjh was placing his answers into, then passed the book and pen back to him. Aavspeyjh looked at what I had written, squinted, then looked at what he had written, then raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know what you did, but that looks correct,” he said. “I’ve never seen this notation before.”
“It’s Gwahlaob,” I lied reflexively, eliciting a knowing chuckle.
“It is no such thing,” Aavspeyjh smiled. “My son told me that you had many unexpected skills, but apparently I underestimated the extent of it. If you would, I would like a few minutes to confirm your results.”
“Of course,” I replied. A few minutes to confirm the calculations? I thought, It’s just a few multiplications and divisions. I waited as Aavspeyjh scratched away, then leaned back and clasped his hands together.
“All correct,” he said. “I was worried that my generosity might not pay off, but it seems like I was very mistaken. You continue to impress, which makes this next part much easier for me.”
“Next part?” I asked.
“As you have likely suspected, you will be staying in my home while you recover,” Aavspeyjh said. “It is partially my fault that you were injured to begin with, as I suspect that a member of my staff may have leaked your location somehow. My investigation into that issue is ongoing, and you will be informed of the results when I have them.”
“Of course,” I nodded.
“You need not pretend that you harbored no suspicions,” Aavspeyjh said. “You are not a stupid man, I would suspect your first thought upon being attacked was that I had betrayed you.” I said nothing, but Aavspeyjh took my silence as an admission. “I am not offended,” he continued, “I would be more irked if you had trusted me completely like a fool.”
“It’s one possibility I considered,” I admitted.
“As you should have,” Aavspeyjh agreed. “I was going to have you perform basic chores during the duration of your stay, to help the servants of course, but it seems you have been trained as an accountant or something similar, which changes things. Should you be willing, I would be more than happy to give you work computing similar numbers to the ones you just worked on here. I will even pay you a small amount to do so. Is that acceptable to you?”
“It’s not like I’ll be doing anything else,” I shrugged, using just my left shoulder.
“No, I suppose you won’t be,” Aavspeyjh said. “Come, I’ll introduce you to some of the desk workers.”