by Matt Wallace
“Isn’t the fight for life part of all that?”
“So is breathing air. So is emptying your bowels in the morning. Do you sing songs about that?”
Evie blinks down at her in silence, unsure how to respond.
“Revering battle only births more battles,” Yacatek assures the younger woman.
“Yet your people have joined this fight.”
Yacatek nods. “We have joined this fight. And we will see it through.”
“And we are grateful. The B’ors are fierce warriors.”
Yacatek looks up at Evie with an expression of disappointment.
“Is that all we are to you, Sparrow General?”
Evie opens her mouth to answer, but halts her words. She takes the time to truly think about the Storyteller’s question.
“I suppose I don’t really know who you are, do I?”
Yacatek contemplates Evie silently for a moment longer, and then dips her head, seeming almost satisfied.
“I hope you live,” the Storyteller says. “You still have much to learn, but you have the head to learn it, I think.”
Evie grins. “You once told me you’re not here to be my teacher.”
“I am not,” Yacatek remarks, and says no more. Having filled in the hole cradling the B’ors’ story dagger, she flattens the repackaged earth with the bottom of her scoop and begins to rise.
“Do you fight alongside your warriors?” Evie asks.
“My name is on the knife,” Yacatek says as if that is answer enough.
The Storyteller parts from her. Evie watches the B’ors leader go, marveling at the air of serenity that seems to encompass Yacatek even amidst such chaos. She is at once strengthened by the woman’s presence and disturbed by the notion she is responsible for leading Yacatek and her people into this battle.
Evie then proceeds to gallop up and down the line, performing one final inspection of their formation. The faces of former Savages, refugee Crachians, freed warriors of the B’ors, and Sicclunan soldiers all blur together into a single visage. Not being able to distinguish their faces makes it easier for Evie, at first, but with that comes feelings of guilt. Regardless of the success of their siege, she is about to order many of them to their death. She should have to see each of their faces, and never forget a single one.
Evie draws her sword from its sheath, holding it aloft as she rears her mount to confront the city gates and the walls that extend around them. She feels the blood pounding between her ears like the drums of war carried by the Skrain. She already feels out of breath, though the exertion of battle has yet to begin.
In the distance, from high atop the city walls, Evie hears scattered shouts. It briefly occurs to her they don’t sound like military officers bellowing commands, but she doesn’t have time to puzzle over it. She is ready to give the order to begin the siege.
Evie’s mouth opens wide, her throat rumbling with the cry to charge that will send the vanguard screaming across the field.
At that exact moment, Mother Manai steps forward from the front line. She raises the honed steel that has replaced her right hand, pointing its prongs at the city gates.
“Evie!” she calls to her general, more in astonishment than alarm.
Evie allows the battle cry to die on her tongue, lowering her sword.
She watches with a dropped chin as the Tenth City gates open wide, seemingly of their own accord.
Two figures emerge from inside the city, both of them appearing to be prodded reluctantly forward.
Evie recognizes the tunic of an Aegin and the armor of a Skrain soldier. The Aegin bears first-class stripes. The Skrain is wearing a captain’s insignia on his armor emblazoned with the symbol of the Crachian ant. Neither of them is armed—their scabbards are empty and they carry nothing in their hands.
The Skrain captain abruptly collapses to his knees as if pushed from behind, and that’s when Evie sees several figures walking behind the pair. One of them is tall, bald, and thickly muscled. He wears the apron and the dark, sooty smudges of a blacksmith. His trade is also clearly revealed by the hammer he wields in his hand. He’s joined by an old, round woman with shocks of white hair and a withered face, clothed in tatters and brandishing a meat cleaver stained with dried blood and bits of crusted entrails.
Evie can see many more behind the two, throngs, all of them appearing to be people like those who live in the Bottoms of the Capitol. Still more are armed with makeshift weapons.
Sirach breaks formation on her mount and urges it quickly across the field, bringing the horse to heel beside Evie.
“What’s happening?” Sirach demands breathlessly.
“They’ve taken the city,” Evie marvels. “They’ve taken the city without us.”
It is as though Sirach doesn’t understand the language Evie is speaking.
“Who?” she asks, genuinely confounded.
“The people,” Evie answers.
BLOOD LIES
THE SCENT OF THE TEA is pungent, earthy, and inviting. Lexi watches Burr prepare it with slow, deliberate movements and what seems to Lexi to be strange and unnecessary gestures. It is almost performative, the way Burr uses a silken cloth to carefully clean the tiny ceramic cups and bowls and thin wooden instruments, ladle and spoon and stirrer. When she’s finished, Burr lays the cloth upon the table between them and deliberately folds it in halves until it forms a perfect, compact triangle.
Lexi soon realizes what she is witnessing is a ceremony.
Burr collects a spoonful of the tea in its dark green powdery form, scooping it into the cup in front of her. She ladles boiling water from a larger bowl into the cup. Hot steam rises from the top like angry spirits.
“I thought I would favor you with a taste of the world as it was when my noble ancestors ruled.”
“I’ve had tea before,” Lexi assures her.
“Of course you have. The way of tea, however, the ceremony, has been lost to Crache for many generations.”
The older woman gently stirs the tea half a dozen times. Afterward, she carefully cleans the slim reed before setting it aside.
Finally, Burr takes up the cup in both hands and offers it to Lexi, who draws a deep breath before reluctantly accepting.
She sips cautiously. The tea is deliciously hot on her tongue. It soothes her throat as she swallows. It comforts her entire body as it warms her stomach.
Lexi briefly ponders the ramifications of smashing the now empty ceramic cup into the side of Burr’s skull.
“How are you healing?” Burr asks her.
“Fine,” Lexi replies tightly. “Your surgeon is very talented. Gen Stalbraid hasn’t been able to keep a surgeon on staff for quite some time. I’ve been relegated to seeing the Gen Circus healer for years.”
“And how are they?”
“Drunk, usually.”
Burr gives her unpleasant, disingenuous laugh. “It seems a shame, a crime even, that a Gen contributing so selflessly to the welfare of the Crachian people is allocated so few resources by Crache in return.”
“Wasn’t it you who said my Gen is obsolete?”
Burr issues a dismissive breath. “A mere performance for those fools on the Franchise Council. I have the utmost respect for Gen Stalbraid’s compassion and advocacy for the people in the Bottoms.”
“I suppose nobility sees more value in the lives of the poor and forgotten.”
“Nobility is a caretakership of the common people, my lady. There are good caretakers and bad caretakers.”
Lexi says no more on the subject, knowing the futility of these arguments between them. Burr is a fanatic. There is no way to rationally debate such a person.
Burr finishes preparing her own tea, and sips idly in the silence that follows. Finally, she says: “And how are you coping with the emotional strain of your deathly struggle with our dear, departed Daian?”
Lexi feels her every muscle tightening. “He was a madman.”
“He was that,” Burr says. “His madnes
s had its uses, but perhaps you killing him was a blessing in disguise. He could no longer serve my interests as an Aegin, after being targeted by the Protectorate Ministry and killing the other Aegins they dispatched to eliminate him.”
“A terrible loss,” Lexi replies with a distinct absence of sympathy.
“Not an altogether irreplaceable one, however.”
Lexi narrows her eyes at the woman, not following.
“Sir Kamen!” Burr calls out.
Lexi looks past her to the chamber doors.
An affable-looking man in the middle of his life enters her quarters. He wears an Aegin’s uniform with second-class markings and carries a leather folder under one arm. His smile is warm and friendly, so much so that he seems wholly out of place in such sinister company.
“This is Kamen Lim,” Burr says. “The Capitol knows him as an Aegin in good standing. His comrades-in-arms know him as an honest, reliable man of unflappable character.”
“I’m happy for you,” Lexi says pleasantly.
“In truth, Sir Kamen is an anointed knight.”
It takes all of Lexi’s self-control not to laugh openly at Burr’s antique and fantastical language. The woman might as well say Kamen Lim is a dragon.
“He serves my house by posing as an Aegin,” Burr continues.
“So he is like Daian,” Lexi concludes, darkly.
“I’m not nearly as volatile, I promise you,” Kamen says, bowing his head respectfully, his smile unwavering and unchanged.
“He is, however, every bit as resourceful,” Burr says with menacing impetus.
She looks up at Kamen Lim, giving the slightest of nods with her chin. Lim obediently removes the folder from beneath his arm and places it on the table in front of Lexi.
She peers down, disinterestedly at first, but one feature sparks recognition within her.
There, burned into the leather, is the symbol of Gen Stalbraid. Beneath that, much smaller, are two characters representing a familiar name. Lexi reaches out and traces the markings with a fingertip.
“This belongs to my husband,” she says. “It was his father’s when he served Gen Stalbraid as pleader to the Bottoms. This is the old man’s monogram.”
Burr sips her tea with a noncommittal expression. “Curious.”
Lexi’s gaze moves from the charred leather to bore into the other woman. “I dispatched my retainer to collect this.”
“More curious.”
Lexi takes up the folder and uncoils the cord that binds its flap. She reaches within and unsheathes a ream of inked parchment. She immediately recognizes the official seal of the Spectrum. Even a cursory examination of the parchment’s contents is enough for her to know these are the documents referencing the Savage Legion and its true purpose that were collected by Brio.
“Where is Taru?” Lexi asks her stiffly.
“He… she… which is it? I have never understood how these Undeclared choose to categorize themselves.”
Burr glances up at Kamen Lim, who shrugs good-naturedly.
“Neither,” Lexi offers in an exasperated breath.
Burr stares back at her. “Pardon me?”
“Neither he nor she.”
“How very radical. What say you to that, Sir Kamen?”
Lim rubs his jaw pointedly. “I would categorize the lady’s retainer as a good fighter.”
Burr nods. “Well enough.”
“I assume you have a reason for informing me, in your maddening way, that you hold Taru’s life in your hands,” says Lexi.
“Motivation,” Burr says simply. “It is time for an alternate approach to our partnership. You’ve proved resistant to my original plan of action.”
“You mean to assault my mind and break me down until I bend willingly to whatever you want from me?”
“As I said, you have proved resistant. It is time for another approach. If you will not see the wisdom in Ignoble rule, you will simply have to fear the consequences of not helping us.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Why, precisely what you have taken it upon yourself to do in your husband’s absence: be the caretaker of those residing in the Bottoms. Not their pleader, mind you, but their true matron.”
“What does that mean to you? What do you want me to do in the Bottoms?”
“Feed the people, for a start. More than a few meals, I mean. We will provide for you amply from our larders to that purpose.”
“Why should you care that the people are well fed?”
For the first time, Burr appears impatient with her. “I care that you feed them,” she says. “I care that the ardor they displayed for you in the gallery of the Spectrum blossoms into outright fervor.”
Lexi falls silent, turning contemplative. The full weight of what is being proposed here is beginning to settle upon her. “How will I account for all that food?” she asks carefully. “It will be far beyond the allocation for Gen Stalbraid. The Franchise Council will ask questions, or at least the members who are not you.”
Burr waves her free hand while taking a sip of her tea. “We have other Gens loyal to our cause. They will supplement whatever you need. Failing that, we have endless ways to redirect state resources. You needn’t worry.”
“Very well, but how do I simply… return after such a prolonged absence? And what of the Protectorate Ministry agents who Daian murdered in my home? How do I explain all of that?”
“The bodies were removed from your home and the scene was thoroughly cleansed of any sign they were ever there. No one can connect you to the disappearance of those agents, at least not directly or with any proof. They might as well have just walked off a cliff. You’ve done nothing wrong. Taking time to one’s self in seclusion violates no Crachian law.”
“The Protectorate Ministry will never believe any of that. They already tried to kill me once.”
“Which is all the more reason to return to the people in the Bottoms who have taken you so passionately in their embrace. The Protectorate Ministry cannot simply erase someone so visible. Your safety will be assured by the task to which I am assigning you.”
“What is the real reason you’d have me do this? What do you gain?”
“As you feed and clothe and elevate the people of the Bottoms, I want you to tell them a story.”
“A story?”
“Yes. You will tell them a story about an age of nobility, when benevolent lords and ladies of ancient and royal blood took care of their people, who knew neither hunger nor strife under their rule.”
“So you want me to lie.”
“I want you to light a fuse, my lady. That fuse will burn slowly, but it will burn, and when it finally reaches every heart and every mind in the Bottoms, you will have served your purpose.”
“And then?”
“And then you will be rewarded,” Burr assures her.
Another acid-laced reproach is poised on the tip of her tongue, but Lexi stifles it. She recalls her moment of realization in Burr’s gardens, after Lexi came within inches of being swallowed by a giant plant. It was the first time she understood the depth of influence and power Burr and her Ignobles had amassed beneath the surface of Crachian bureaucracy, unbeknownst to the nation they pretended to serve.
Now Lexi truly grasps the focus of all that hidden machinery. Burr is waging a secret war against the Protectorate Ministry and all the powers behind Crache. She and the former nobles want to topple, or at the very least take control of the state; not for any altruistic purpose, and certainly not to help people like those subsisting in the Bottoms. Burr wants a return to nobility, and she wants to ascend to what she feels is her rightful place in that hierarchy.
Only a few months ago, Lexi would’ve thought the woman insane. Now she sees the genuine threat Burr represents. The Ignoble is wily and lethally cunning, and possesses the will to enact her fantasies of restoring the bygone era of lords and ladies and knights.
Burr knows to accomplish such a monumental shift in power and c
ulture that she will need the people of Crache to embrace the idea of nobles and nobility once more. She obviously sees Lexi as part of winning that support.
Lexi wants nothing more than to spit in the woman’s face. The Ignobles seizing control of the state would just be swapping the head of one beast for another. In either case, the people will continue to be eaten.
However, they not only hold Lexi’s life in their hands—they have Taru.
Lexi knows they both need more time, at the very least.
“Very well,” she says. “If all you are asking me to do is feed the people, then I accept.”
“Whatever else would I expect of you, my lady?” Burr replies with the sweetest of smiles.
CHOP
IT IS THE SECOND TIME in the past hour someone has vomited on Taru’s boots.
The hold of the Skrain galleon is among the most cramped, foul-smelling spaces Taru has ever occupied. The retainer and the rest of the Savages in their company have been crammed inside of it, door locked from the outside, for days and nights on end. The food has been quite literally rotten, the water sparse, and the companionship less than desirable.
And now a storm is tossing the ship around like some vicious cat batting about its supper before the kill.
After being marched half to death to the shores outside the Fourth City (Savages could hardly be seen deployed from a Crachian city port), they were hustled onto rowboats and sped out to be loaded onto a fleet of ships anchored in the bay. The skies darkened for days, but the full brunt of the storm didn’t hit the fleet until almost a week at sea.
Now it seems as though they are paying for not heeding the sky’s repeated warning. It is all Taru can do to stay in their rickety seat, so dramatic is the pitching and yawing of the craft around them. The crack of thunder seems to shake the very air. The retainer is soaked to the bone. Every grain of wood seems to be leaking, and the salt water is up past their ankles. They haven’t been able to keep a candle lit in hours, but the constant flash of lightning keeps the hold steadily illuminated.
It is at least enough for Taru to see the despair across the features of every face around them.
