Not me. Some rules I don’t break. Most of them, actually. Once I gave up Cassi, I gave up my rule-breaking days in favor of life. Life without her is awful, but it’s better than no life at all.
I send the instructions to my front-line. He’ll have the genetic sample submitted by tomorrow afternoon. They may want me to do more with this case, which means I’ll have to spend more time on it and away from Pearl.
Still, even though my life belongs to the Sapphiri, it makes me happy to hear that there may be a limit to their power. I’ve never liked killing people, even though I haven’t ever killed anyone personally. It’s too risky for the League to send purebred field agents to do dirty work. They don’t want a purebred agent to accidentally get caught by the US legal system—once someone’s in there, it’s expensive to get them out. And, apparently, they don’t have a lot of purebreds, at least that’s the feeling I get.
Nope, I’ve only been sent to kill someone once, and that was Karl and he got away from me. Originally, we were going to pay Tara, Karl’s girlfriend, to finish up that case. She had already done a lot of work for us, and she would have killed him, too. But although her social media analysis suggested she’d not have any problem with it, it also suggested that her price was going to come in a little high. In the end, the superiors decided the estimated price was too high, and so I was assigned. They also wanted me to question him first, as some people thought Karl might lead us back to the Forgotten World.
He certainly didn’t lead us to the Forgotten World. Instead, he led us on a wild chase that finally led here, to Pearl. But, maybe Ler is from the Forgotten World, and the chase will end in a good place anyway.
One thing is odd, though. This seems like a really important case, and I’ve been involved in it from the beginning. No clue why they haven’t pulled anyone else in. You’d think they’d get more important people to do work like this once they realized where it was going.
I pull out the hefty instruction manual that came with the new system. I want to put this thing to sleep and call it a night.
I swear as I find a ten-step process required to shut down the system. I start to execute step one when a red box starts flashing in the upper right corner of the screen.
Unauthorized access from IP: Unknown.
I swear and flip through the book to figure out what to do about the message. By the time I get to the right section, the warning is gone.
Did someone just break into my system?
The instructions take me through several steps that should be able to point me to what the hacker did when they were in the system, but all the tracks are gone. For the second time tonight, I’m off protocol.
Maybe I imagined the red box? I’d hate to call in about this one. My superior will kill me over a second late phone call. And, all the evidence is gone. No, I’ll just leave this one alone. They have all this high-tech stuff, and yet it’s so complicated that I, a PhD, can barely use it. If I hadn’t looked up right when I did, I wouldn’t have even seen the message. I mean, a red box flashes a few times telling you something is majorly wrong and then everything disappears, and all traces are gone? What am I supposed to do with that?
I finish putting the system to sleep and get ready for bed.
I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Brit survived. Like so many others, she’s gone through life thinking she lives in a different reality. She thinks her government is in charge, not realizing the Sapphiri infiltrated her government a long time ago. There aren’t tons of us, but there are enough of us in the right places to call most of the shots in this country.
But she doesn’t know that. When her friend disappeared, she thought I was some cop showing up at her door. She never suspected I was someone from an ancient secret society. She didn’t realize we would milk her for all the information we could, and then we’d kill her.
And we did kill her, but she’s still alive. For now, anyway. The Sapphiri don’t fail. It’s the first thing I learned in school. Sapphiri don’t fail. We’ll want to understand why she survived, but then we’ll kill her again, and we’ll succeed. We haven’t failed in generations. Will she think she just got sick? Will she realize that there was an attempt on her life? People don’t see what’s right in front of them if it contradicts what they believe.
But then my mind flips to the flashing red box. Am I in a similar position as Brit? Are there forces I don’t understand? Is what I know about the Sapphiri true?
The legends of the Sapphiri were told to me as bedtime tales, without any deviation to make them more interesting.
A long time ago, there was a small Germanic kingdom called Reinhold. While Reinhold was small, it was destined to become powerful, as all who know the tale will surely recognize.
Reinhold was made when two distinct and pure genetic lines united. Today we call these lines the Sapphiri and the Azureans, but that was not what they were called then. The Sapphiri were known as the warrior class, or Ternians, and the Azureans were known as the ruling class. While the two groups were united into one kingdom, they were not friends. The union was one of convenience, where each group promised to contribute to society in exchange for protection from the outside world. The advanced warriors of the Sapphiri kept the people safe while the crafty Azureans kept treaties with enemies that would otherwise destroy them.
King Hartmut was the king of Reinhold when our tale begins, and it was a season of peace. King Hartmut was a ruler, an Azurean. And the king had a beautiful daughter, Belinde, whom the king loved very much.
But the king had to rely on the warrior class to keep them safe, and so he selected from the class a young man named Adolar to be his captain and ally. Adolar’s blood was pure Sapphiri, just as King Hartmut’s blood was pure Azurean. And all was well. The union, though tenuous, was working, and the people were safe.
All that changed when Adolar fell in love with Belinde. The love was forbidden by both groups, and so the couple kept their passion a secret until they could hold out no longer. They hatched a plan, and Belinde ran away from the kingdom. Adolar built a house for her in the forest, hidden from all.
King Hartmut was devastated at the loss of his daughter. Adolar did not abandon his post, but served the king faithfully. He led hundreds of searches throughout the land and other kingdoms on the pretense of looking for Belinde, constantly trying to satisfy the king’s desperation to find his daughter. But, when Adolar returned, always empty-handed, he would sneak away from his troops and spend time with his lover before returning to tell her father that he had failed to find her again. And Hartmut didn’t know of Adolar’s betrayal.
One night during one of Adolar’s visits, whether by accident or by the force of their love, Belinde and Adolar discovered a portal that led them to another world, one without people. Today we call it the Forgotten World. Belinde and Adolar recognized the Forgotten World as an opportunity to help the oppressed masses and prisoners of the many kingdoms in that area. From that point on, Adolar repurposed his searches to rescue and help hundreds of people secretly sneak through the portal into the Forgotten World. He raided jails, he took beggars off the streets, and he stole slaves. Each person he helped went through the portal.
It was said that when Adolar was on the other side of the portal, his eyes glowed bright blue, and that the people he saved interpreted his glowing eyes as a sign from the gods that Adolar was to be their king. But, Adolar didn’t want power. He wanted to protect more people. And so he always left the Forgotten World and returned to his Belinde to bring more people into the world.
The people in the Forgotten World would not be denied a ruler, however, and so when Belinde delivered her first-born child, a son, the people decided that he would become king whether Adolar agreed or not. They planned to sneak through the portal and kidnap the boy on his tenth birthday to make him king.
But before the boy became of age, the story takes a sharp turn. The turn comes from Adolar’s pureblood Sapphiri cousin, a woman named Mila. Mila was a str
ong woman of the warrior class who was obsessed with the purity of her people. Bored and undercover one night, she discovered and followed Adolar after he raided a jail just outside the city where she lived. It wasn’t hard for her to track Adolar to the portal, and she followed him through. There, in the Forgotten World, Mila learned of Adolar’s forbidden marriage and of the people’s promise to make her impure nephew a king.
She was, to say the least, upset.
As was common for the warrior class at the time, Mila threw a party. And, as was common, she requested Adolar’s presence. He came as required by tradition, and unsuspectingly drank from a spiked glass while he “waited” for other guests. But there were never any other guests invited. Intoxicated and disoriented, Adolar was seduced by Mila, and she conceived.
When Adolar awoke alone in the forest the next morning, he had no memory of the party, and returned home to Belinde. He continued to help people through the portal and didn’t think of Mila or the party again.
But Mila thought of Adolar every day. And when her middle started to bulge, she was ready to act. She met Belinde’s brother, Tahvo of the ruling class, and told him about the secret marriage. And she found in her enemy an ally. Tahvo, furious and determined that his father would never know of Belinde’s betrayal, killed Adolar, Belinde, and the boy.
Mila’s plan was working. With Adolar out of the way, Mila planned to travel to the Forgotten World, bear her son, and establish him as Adolar’s only remaining heir—the king of the Forgotten World and a pureblood Sapphiri.
But Mila’s plan was not to be. She delivered twins, a bright-eyed boy and a girl. Needing time to recover, she gave the little girl to a wet-nurse in the Forgotten World and settled home with her son to recover.
But her time recovering was an advantage for Tahvo, who was moving fast. Before he had killed Adolar, he too tracked the man’s movements and discovered the portal. And he realized what Mila was planning. He saw the thousands of people in the Forgotten World who needed a ruler, and he determined to take the world for himself.
With lies and deceit only possible from the Azureans, Tahvo told King Hartmut that Adolar had killed Belinde. Furious, King Hartmut started a civil war to destroy all members of the Sapphiri warrior class. While the king organized troops, Tahvo snuck back to the portal, went through it, and destroyed it, severing the link between worlds. And Mila and her son were locked out of the Forgotten World forever.
The genocide was nearly successful, but it was not complete. Mila and many others escaped, fleeing south and finding refuge in the forest. Mila told others of her son’s rightful place in the Forgotten World, and the survivors formed the group that we call the Sapphiri today.
And so, from that time until today, we, the posterity of Adolar, have been working to get back to the Forgotten World to reclaim it from the Azureans and take our place as rightful rulers and heirs. Our first thousand years were spent destroying the posterity of King Hartmut and the royal line, which unfortunately left little time for portal searching. For centuries, we waged war in the northern part of what is Germany today until we finally succeeded and the last Azurean was killed.
Then, in the 18th century, we heard rumors of visitors coming through a portal in the Americas. It was fate; we had destroyed our enemies and now the portal and the path to the Forgotten World was clear. And so, all the Sapphiri left Germany and came to America. Things haven’t gone as well as we hoped since we got here, but someday we will discover a reopened portal and the descendants of Adolar and the Sapphiri will travel through that portal and claim their proper place in the Forgotten World.
And we finish the tale with a warning. Some argue that Sapphiri must reconcile with Hartmut’s posterity before that portal will open. Do not listen to these claims. This cannot happen, as all of the descendants of Hartmut are dead.
So, the story ends there, and the League doesn’t tell us anything more. The League is so shrouded in secrecy that I don’t even know how many people are still alive and purebred. I don’t know who or how many people are calling the shots, or why I seem to be involved in all the important work. All I know is that I’m being watched, and if I make one wrong move, it may be the end of me.
Is the story real? Is it made up to keep people in power?
I don’t know. And, I don’t know what the League is going to do next. In that way, I’m a lot like Brit.
What I do know, though, is that something is going on. Ler seems to have come from the Forgotten World, and this Stapp family may be the secret of us figuring out how to get back there. And then we can take over that world and forget about trying to control everything here.
8 Attempt
Karl
“You okay, Captain?” Yuj asks me. The sun glitters off his uniform and blinds my eyes as he puts his arm around me. The arm-around-me-thing is informal for a subordinate, but I let it slide. Yuj is young, but he’s also gung-ho and hard working. He’s been with me a lot since we rescued him from the mess hall.
Not too far from us, Quint and Lydia sit on the grass discussing battle plans. My eyes fix on the window of the tent behind them, and I trace the rectangle. Breathe in, hold, breathe out, hold. The deep breathing exercise doesn’t calm my anxiety. We’ve only been with this group three days and Quint and Lydia already think it’s time for battle.
So much for saving people instead of killing.
“I’m not sure we should trust an Azurean, Captain,” Yuj says quietly. He’s watching me carefully, probably noting my anxiety. “You know what the last one did.”
I do know what the last one did. Wynn was going to kill me, but instead Buen sacrificed himself for my escape. “Princess Ria isn’t like Wynn,” I say. Lydia grew up in my world, and she’s one of the nicest people I know. A little hesitant, maybe, but smart. Definitely not evil.
And beautiful. I kissed her once, though the magic of it didn’t affect her like it did me. And now I’m with Somrusee, and I can’t help but feel like that’s what Lydia wants.
“I don’t know about that. All Azureans are the same.” Yuj shakes his head and backs away.
I watch him go, concerned. When we first came into the world, all the mountain people were waiting for an Azurean to help them. But, things are different here in the valleys and cities. It’s hard to blame them, after Wynn, but they don’t seem to like Azureans. The hatred of Azureans makes me question how effective our plan is going to be to establish Lydia as the queen.
I sigh and follow Yuj as he rejoins a group of soldiers. Twenty-five men, and I’ve only known them for a few days. Some of them recognized me from my days in the castle, and I doubt they trust me, a man of Wynn who just showed up with a new Azurean. Quint is persuasive, which has helped, but I’m not sure how deep their conviction runs.
Which is one of the main reasons I’m skeptical about an attack already. On the other hand, something does need to be done soon. People are starving, trapped in their homes as food supplies run out. Commerce needs to recommence, and we need order. But, can we really rely on a small group of men that might not even trust us?
I take off my helmet and use a handkerchief to wipe sweat from my eyes. I’ll be grateful for the helmet by the end of the day but wearing it in the hot sun is unbearable now. The armor is sturdy enough to stop anything but a well-placed knife, but that doesn’t make it comfortable. I stretch, annoyed by the hindrance of movement from the stiff metal. This isn’t how I was trained to fight.
Quint is adamant that we need a position of power before people will take us seriously, and if recruiting the past few days has been any indication, he’s right. Our forces haven’t increased at all. Quint believes by ousting the rebel guard forces from the castle, we’ll place ourselves in a position of credibility. Then, we will be able to recruit and build the army, which in turn will put us in position to establish a government.
And then we’ll have a government and we’ll enact laws and piece together a society.
He makes it all sound so simple.<
br />
I think Lydia’s putting an awful lot of trust in this guy. He seems like a great guy, and he seems to know what he’s doing, but I still wonder if it’s right for us to trust him. He was in Wynn’s guard, after all, and we found him after he made an attempt on our lives.
Across the camp, Lydia and Quint stand and embrace. I kick a rock and turn away. If Lydia had invited me to help plan, I would have joined them. But, she didn’t invite, and I didn’t ask.
“You’re clean shaven.” Somrusee’s voice beside me makes me jump. I didn’t see her coming from Cylus’s house, more than 100 feet away. She slips her hand into mine and runs her fingers around my palm. She is dressed in a Sattah-style dress, red, which is a great contrast to her dark hair and wide eyes, which look adoringly into mine. She will be spending the day here at the house to stand guard while we invade the castle.
“Hey.” I squeeze her hand. I don’t kiss her, though she tilts her head back and smiles. She smells sweet, like some kind of lilac perfume. The smell is a welcome break from the body odor of my men whose sweat this afternoon alone would flood the Mississippi river.
“It’s been a few days since I shaved,” I say.
“I know. I’m just teasing because you’re grabbing at your chin,” she says. “It’s something you’ve always done, whenever you’re nervous or agitated about something.” Her eyes go over to Lydia and Quint who are still talking quietly together. She squeezes my hand. The bare skin of her neck and collarbone look great against the red fabric of her dress. I should have kissed her.
I force a smile and pull my hand back. “I hope you don’t get too bored today.” I awkwardly wring my hands. I shift back and forth. The nervous energy inside me threatens to burn me up from the inside.
“I will be here to tend to your battle wounds when you get back,” she says.
The suggestion makes me grimace—it sounds a lot like what she did for me as a za’an.
The Sapphiri Page 7
