The soldier backed up one step, his sword in front of him, but Aaron could see the confidence building in the man’s face; he now fought an unarmed foe. “You don’t understand,” Aaron rasped, his voice barely human at all, “the song isn’t in the sword or the steel. It never was.” He grinned, baring his teeth. “It’s in me. It always has been.” He lunged forward, striking the flat of the soldier’s blade with his wrist and knocking it aside as he leapt onto his opponent, his feet striking the man in the waist, his hands gripping the back of his head and digging into his eyes.
The soldier screamed as he tumbled onto his back and tried to push Aaron free, but the anger would not be pushed aside so easily, and the sellsword wrapped his legs around the man’s waist even as he continued to dig his thumbs deeper and deeper into his eyes. The soldier screamed again, louder this time, and something popped. Warm fluid spilled over Aaron’s thumbs, but he wasn’t finished, and he jerked the man’s head up and slammed it into the cobblestones of the alleyway again and again. By the time he came to a panting, satisfied halt, the back of the man’s head had lost all semblance of the shape it once had held, and his struggles had long since ceased. Aaron pulled his thumbs free and jerked himself upward, spinning. There were others here, other blood to shed, and the song was not yet finished.
Three men and a youth stared at him with wide eyes, and he grinned as he stalked to where his sword lay, still stuck in the dead man. He grunted as he bent and ripped it free. The steel might not carry the song, but it made its notes ring clearer. “Alright then,” he rasped, turning back to the others, “who’s next?”
The man closest to him, an older man with white hair said something, but he might as well have spoken in a different language for all that Aaron understood him. Aaron started forward, raising his sword to cut the man down. Once that was done, he would finish the others. Four would not be enough for the song, not nearly, but he could feel the thousands in the city around him, feel their hopes and their dreams and their worries. He could have told them to let them all go, for once he was finished here, they, too, would become a part of the song.
The old man held a sword, but he did not raise it as Aaron approached, instead holding up a hand as if to ward him away. Aaron and the rage inside of him thought to tell the old man that the song could not be stopped, but didn’t bother. He would know soon enough. He was just about to strike when a voice spoke behind him.
“Aaron, stop.”
Aaron’s arm froze of its own accord, and he felt like he was moving in slow motion as he turned to see the Parnen man staring at him. The man’s brow was furrowed as if in concentration and sweat coated his forehead.
Aaron growled in frustration, trying to bring his blade around to deal with this new threat. But it was as if the sword in his hand weighed a ton. He hissed and strained, spitting with fury, and finally the blade did move. Inch by agonizing inch, he brought it closer to the Parnen. The man did not move but his hands clenched into fists at his sides, and he began to shake. “Aaron, no!” The words resounded in Aaron’s head like a thunderclap, and he howled in pain and anger.
He bared his teeth, grabbing the blade with both hands and pushing it through air that felt as thick and impenetrable as a stone wall. His muscles screamed in protest, but the blade moved another inch. Then another. “Aaron,” the man said, the words echoing in Aaron’s mind, “we are your friends. You do not want to hurt us. Remember, Aaron. I am Leomin. Remember me.”
The name tickled a memory in the back of Aaron’s thoughts, buried deep beneath the sea of rage that roiled through him, and he hesitated, uncertainty creeping into his thoughts. “Leomin?” he rasped.
“Yes,” the Parnen said, nodding slowly, “I am your friend. Remember me, Aaron. Remember why we are here.”
And suddenly, Aaron did. The rage vanished in an instant, leaving in its wake exhaustion and searing pain from his wounds, and he stumbled and collapsed to his knees, letting the sword fall on the cobbles. “Gods, Leomin,” he said, his voice weak and full of fear and shame at what he had almost done. “I’m … I’m so sorry. He stared at his hands, coated with blood, and they felt as if they belonged to someone else. A stranger’s hands. A monster’s hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“He alright?” another voice asked, and Aaron turned to see Wendell moving closer, holding the boot over his head as if he’d intended to brain Aaron with it.
“Yes…” Leomin panted, “I believe he is.” Then he stumbled and would have fallen if Darrell hadn’t stepped forward and caught him.
“Well,” Wendell said, “in that case, I wouldn’t worry overly much about wantin’ to kill Leomin, sir. It’d be my guess that most of his friends have considered doin’ the same thing at one time or another.” He knelt, offering Aaron his hand.
“No,” Aaron rasped, “don’t touch me, Wendell.” His eyes glanced back at his hands, stained with blood. “It doesn’t wash off. It never washes off.”
“Eh … are you alright, sir?”
“I have to be,” Aaron said, mostly to himself. Then, grunting with the effort, he rose unsteadily to his feet.
The sergeant shot an uncertain, worried look at Leomin before turning back to Aaron. “Now then, sir,” Wendell said, “I ain’t tryin’ to be contrary, but I wonder if, maybe next time, you wouldn’t give us a warnin’ before you go all crazy, eh? If I wanted to get surprised with crazy every day, I would’ve gotten married a long time ago.”
Despite the shame he felt, Aaron found himself giving the man a weary grin. Then, his thoughts returned to the child lying dead only a few feet away, and he sobered. “Children,” he said, turning to meet Darrell’s eyes, “they’re using children, Darrell.”
“I know,” the man said sadly, “I saw.”
“What’s the plan, sir?” Wendell asked.
Aaron glanced at the Parnen. “How much did you have to use on me, Leomin?”
The Parnen captain was still breathing hard, and he took a minute to swallow before shaking his head regretfully. “I think I told you once before, Aaron, the bond of a man with a Virtue acts as a sort of buffer between him and the others. It can be overcome, but…” He shook his head again.
“How much, Leomin?”
The Parnen met his eyes. “All of it,” he said, “all of it and more, Mr. Envelar. I have never carried so much of the power at once—I felt as if my body was going to be ripped apart from it.”
“Which means that if Kevlane is in the city, he knows we’re here now whether he did before or not.”
“Yes,” Leomin said, “I’m sorry, Aaron.”
“It’s not your fault, Leomin,” he said, shaking his head as he struggled to get his breathing under control. “It’s mine.”
“So I ain’t tryin’ to rush you fellas or nothin’,” Wendell said, “but if that’s the case…shouldn’t we ought to be runnin’ about now?”
“I might know a place we can go,” the youth offered, and Aaron noted that he stood behind Darrell, eyeing Aaron as if he were a rabid animal that might attack without warning. The sight of it wounded Aaron more than he would have thought, but there was no time to worry about such things now.
“No,” Aaron said, shaking his head, “there’s no time. We have to get out of the city now.” Even as he spoke, Aaron bent and tore a strip of cloth from the shirt of one of the dead guards and began wrapping his wounds.
“But, sir,” Wendell said, “and don’t get me wrong—there’s just about nothin’ I want more than to get out of this city with my parts all in their right places, but what about the proof we come here lookin’ for?”
Aaron glanced at the dead girl lying in the street. Bringing her would be proof enough, but their chances of making it out of the city were already slim without being weighed down by a corpse. No, taking her wasn’t an option, and he found himself glad of that. “We’ll tell them what we’ve seen here.”
“And what if they don’t believe us?” Leomin asked.
Aaron met the man’s ey
es. “Then we’ll make them believe.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
The man screamed and begged, but Kevlane barely noticed. After all, they always did and the work still had to be completed despite that. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” he asked in a voice that was not unkind as his fingers dug into the latest wound the knife had made.
The man screamed louder, most likely too far gone in his agony to hear Kevlane at all. “It wasn’t always this way, you know,” the ancient mage said in a regretful tone as he paused to roll up the already bloody sleeves of his robes. “Once, long ago, long before your parents’ parents met,” he said, giving the bloody, screaming man a wink, “the Art was always waiting there. All I—or those like me—had to do was reach out and grab it, to use what knowledge we had to shape it to our wishes, our desires.”
He considered for a moment, then gave a shrug, before bringing the knife back down and starting to carve the man’s flesh once more. “But the world moved on—it always does. Still…” He paused, grunting with the effort, trying to remove the short blade that was stuck in the man’s side. He’d had it sharpened only this morning, but it had been a long, busy day, as he sought to finish with those specimens he was holding before the tournament began. Then, he knew, the work would start in earnest.
“Anyway,” he said, “there’s no use mourning what was lost. All things eventually are, and the Art is no exception. Most think it dead but it is not—at least, not completely. A skilled man might still draw upon it—though, admittedly, he will receive only a trickle where once there was a river—if he but knows the means of doing so.”
He glanced at the man’s face to see if he understood. His eyes were wild, and he thrashed against his bonds, heedless of where the steel manacles dug deep furrows into his wrists and ankles. He paid the mage no attention. Kevlane sighed. “With the use of great emotions as a conduit, such a man might draw on what Art is left, and out of all the emotions that exist—lust, love, hate—there is none greater than that despair caused by pain. This was true many years ago, when I first began my experiments, and it is even truer now.”
The man’s only answer was a scream, but that was alright. He didn’t need to understand Kevlane’s words, for soon his body would stand testament to the truth. If, that was, he survived. Kevlane was pulling the knife out, just about to start another cut when he froze, his eyes going impossibly wide, the wildness in them a match for the insanity lurking in the manacled man’s gaze.
“It can’t be,” he breathed. “They wouldn’t dare.” Even as he said it, a burst of power came again, stronger than before. It was as if he was standing on a dark shore and somewhere, across the water, someone had set to light a bonfire whose flames reached into the clouds themselves. There was no denying it. They were here. In the city.
He cocked his head, pushing away his sudden fury and disbelief as he focused on trying to determine where that burst of power came from—where it was still coming from. The man on the table continued to scream, his wailing, tortured cries making it difficult for Kevlane to concentrate. “Shut up,” he hissed.
But the man continued screaming, and with a growl of frustration Kevlane buried the knife in his throat. He stared down at his latest experiment, watched as the man breathed his last breaths through a mask of blood, listened as his screams turn to gurgling, choking gasps, then stopped altogether. The light of life faded from the man’s eyes, but Kevlane didn’t notice, for he wasn’t seeing the man at all but that bonfire on the distant horizon, was busily tracing its sparks and smoke back to the source.
“Master?” Caldwell asked, and Kevlane barely managed to suppress the suddenly powerful urge to rip the blade free from the corpse lying on the table and use it on the man. “Is everything alright?”
“They’re here,” Kevlane said, still having difficulty believing it. “Evelyn and Aliandra.”
“Sir?” Caldwell asked, his voice uncertain.
“The Virtues, you fool,” Kevlane hissed, “Aaron Envelar is in Baresh as we speak!”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
On the outside, the castle was the same as Adina remembered it, but the inside had not escaped the rebellion unscathed. The portraits and tapestries of her and her family that had once hung on the wall had been replaced with portraits of the inner council members and their families. They passed a portrait of the general himself in his military dress uniform, his chin high, a nobility to him that shared few similarities with the man that shuffled along behind Adina and the others. Ridell had been knocked unconscious when Beth tripped him, and when he’d woken he’d tried to fight his way free. Bastion had managed to dissuade the man of thinking he could get away, but the general’s broken nose was a testament to the fact that the young soldier hadn’t been particularly kind in doing so. Not that Adina had minded. The man had tried to kill her after all, not once, but twice.
As they made their way through the castle, startled serving men and women that Adina didn’t recognize stared at the bared steel Bastion now held at the general’s back with unveiled fear. Adina had no doubt that once she and her friends passed the servants would go running to the nearest guards to warn them, but she had other concerns on her mind just then.
She’d stopped and asked one frightened serving girl where the members of the inner council were, and had been thrilled to learn that they were even now in session. She shot a glance behind her and saw Ridell scowling, the side of his face covered in blood. “Oh, don’t look so down, General,” Adina said, “these are your friends we’re visiting, after all.”
The two guards standing outside of the council chambers drew their swords as they saw Adina and the others approach. Adina recognized one of them and she found herself smiling. Apparently, the noblemen and the general had neglected to completely change the castle staff. “Hello, Franklin,” she said, pushing back the hood of her cloak, “how are you?”
The guard frowned for a moment, clearly confused, then his eyes went wide with realization. “Q-queen Adina?” he stammered. “But…but I thought you were dead.”
“It seems,” Adina said, glancing back at the general, “there was a bit of a misunderstanding. One which I have come to rectify.”
The guard nodded and dropped to one knee, bowing his head. After a moment, he glanced over and saw that the younger guard who stood with him was still holding his own sword up uncertainly. “Drop the blade you damned fool!” he hissed. “That’s the queen!”
The young guard let the blade fall to the floor and followed after it, kneeling. “Forgive me, Majesty,” he said, “I didn’t know.”
“There is no forgiveness necessary,” Adina said. “Please, rise. Both of you.” She motioned to the closed door, “Are all of my counselors inside?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Franklin said, “they’ve all arrived for the meeting.”
“Perfect,” Adina said, she started forward, then paused, turning back to the older guard. “Tell me, how is Esmerelda? And your daughter, Constance, wasn’t it?”
The man beamed at that. “Yes ma’am. Thank you for remembering. They’re both great—the little one’s a handful just like her mother.”
“And her father too, no doubt,” Adina said, smiling.
The guard grinned. “As you say, Majesty. Eh, Majesty,” he said, his face twisting into a scowl as he stared at the general, “would you like for us to come in with you?”
“Oh, that’s quite alright, Franklin. Thank you though, and we’ll speak again soon.”
“It would be my honor, Queen,” he said, bowing his head.
“Oh, and Franklin?” She said as she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head once more.
“Yes, Majesty?”
She winked. “I’d like to surprise them, if it’s all the same to you.”
He nodded then he motioned to his companion and in another moment they were swinging the doors open.
“What is the meaning of this, guard?” a familiar voice said from insi
de, its tone somehow angry and whiny at the same time. “We explicitly told you that meetings of the High Council are not to be interrupted under any circumstances.”
Franklin glanced back into the hallway at Adina. “I believe they’re ready for you, Majesty,” he whispered.
Adina nodded and led the others inside. “I demand to know the meaning of this,” the man said.
Adina heard a noise behind her and turned to see Gryle trying to fit the pew through the doorway. He couldn’t seem to get the angle right, and he gave a grunt as he pulled it through, tearing a gaping, pew-sized hole in the doorframe and wall. He winced, his body tensing, and glanced back at Adina, his eyes wide. Adina only laughed, and Bastion grunted, shaking his head. “Told you to leave that damn thing,” the youth said.
Adina laughed again then stepped into the room, glancing at the five counselors seated in the chambers. All men and women she knew, men and women she had trusted, up until they had done their level best to have her murdered and steal her kingdom.
“Who are you to dare to enter the chambers of the High Council?” A woman’s voice, and Adina turned to look at the heavy-set gray-haired noblewoman who’d spoken. She would have looked like a kindly grandmother if not for all of the face paint she wore, and the sparkling, gem-encrusted dress with a low neckline that would have looked out of place on someone twenty years younger. “Guards,” the woman snapped, “take these ruffians away.”
“Ruffians is it?” Adina said, sliding her hood back, “and what, I wonder, Lady Aversham, is all this talk of a ‘High Council’?” She shrugged. “But, then, I suppose vanity is the least of your crimes, wouldn’t you say?”
The old woman’s face went pale, and her mouth worked for several seconds without making any sound. “I-it can’t be. But how did you—?”
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