Arlin's singed upper lip curled in a sneer. “Like you keep faith with your monster lover? Do you expect us to stick to your piking precedent and present our asses to them?”
The blood rushed to his face, but whether from anger or shame, he couldn't tell. He opened his mouth to say something retaliatory, something dismissive, but the words wouldn't come, and Arlin's sneer just grew.
“Boys, boys,” Mako cut in reprovingly, drawing Arlin's glare. “You're being so dramatic. We can figure out some middle ground with the Shadows. They're not unreasonable.”
“Shall we gamble our lives on that?”
“It's worked so far,” Linciard rallied. “They've seen that the Empire is as much our enemy as it is theirs. If we barter what the specialists know, we both benefit—without any more death on our side.”
“Enemy,” Archer-Lieutenant Sengith echoed dubiously. He was a bear-like presence opposite Arlin, eyeing both him and his towering sergeant Kirvanik like mutineers. “That's our army we're talking about. Our people. We should be looking for a way to make amends.”
“I won't go back,” said Arlin. “Not after all that hog-crap the Messenger was spewing about forcing us to convert.”
“But we don't know if that's really an Imperial plan. Colonel Wreth could have been alone in it. He was a convert too, right?”
Scryer Mako rolled her eyes. “You don't listen to me at all, do you? Edar confirmed it as the Field Marshal's plan for all Imperials. The Golden Wing has been putting its troops and conquests through conversion for years; the Crimson Claw is just joining them.”
The mention of the Golden Wing raised Linciard's hackles. He'd served in the Gold-auxiliary Border Corps for years before requesting reassignment to the Crimson. The thought that everything he'd seen and done there had been for the purpose of making specialists...
“We can't trust him,” said Sengith, nodding toward the aforementioned mage. “You're holding him here under threat. Everything he says is suspect.”
“Except he's not a mentalist, and I am, and if you don't stop arguing against what I can clearly perceive, I'm going to shank you.” By the hard gleam in Mako's brown eyes, she wasn't joking. “You can whisper about me turncoating to the Shadows all you like, but if you want to keep receiving my advice, you'll piking well listen to it.”
“I was a hireling,” added Warder Edarwyn Tanvolthene in his own defense. “The Circle isn't permitted a voice in these sorts of squabbles, so I just did as I was paid.”
“How is that better?” Arlin snapped. “You were happy to condemn people to conversion as long as the money kept coming!”
“Many were volunteers. I'm no mentalist, I can't—“
“Hog-crap, it doesn't take a mentalist to see when people are coerced!”
“Sometimes it does,” said Scryer Mako stonily. “I remember you lot thought Linciard was in his right mind when he beat up that Corvishman.”
Linciard winced, wishing she hadn't said that—wishing he hadn't put himself in the position of exemplifying what not to do. He'd made a lot of mistakes in the past few weeks, and had suffered for them both physically and mentally. His arms still ached from the wounds of Weshker's retaliation, and he had more on his chest and legs courtesy of his half-thralled wooziness during the garrison fight. Thank the Light for the medics.
Though he supposed he should thank their heretic goddess instead.
“Enough about that,” said Sengith, annoyed. “What matters is that we can't just roll over and show the Shadow Cult our bellies. They massacred our comrades, maimed some of us—even killed your piking horses, captain.”
Don't call me that. “I know,” said Linciard, “but we're not in a position to hold grudges. We've burned some bridges with Seething Brigade—“
“Maybe you have. It wasn't me who cut off the colonel's head.”
“You'll still grace a pike with the rest of us, Sengith—or else get chucked into the Palace like they did to our wounded.” A memory of Vyslin's face, stark white, briefly choked him. “I can't— We won't have the luxury of kissing their feet and being let back into the ranks. We know too much.”
“So they'll mindwash us. That's fine. I don't want to remember this shit anyway.”
For a moment, Linciard just stared at Sengith, amazed that someone could be so accepting of mistreatment. Maybe it was the man's upbringing as an Amand: the stolid backbone of the Heartlands, loyal unto death. Meanwhile, Wyndish peasants like himself and Arlin were raised to distrust their leaders but not to say it, just sharpen their axes and bide their time.
Arlin was ready with his axe now. Linciard didn't feel as sure, but would swing it if he had to. He'd lost his faith in the Gold Army long ago, and now the Crimson. Maybe the Empire.
He missed the captain. Sarovy had been the only commander he'd really trusted, and now—
Scryer Mako's attention snapped toward the other end of the barrack, eyes widening. Her gestalt—Revek Voorkei the tall ugly Gejaran and ex-Sergeant Presh the Padrastan—copied her instantly; Tanvolthene followed suit a moment later. Confused, Linciard glanced that way too, then stared.
“Captain!” said the scryer cheerfully, as if she hadn't gotten them into this.
There, framed in the archway, was their missing leader. He looked the same as when they'd parted company: his formal uniform in tatters, skin unhealthily pale, grey eyes stern. Despite the damage to his clothes, there wasn't a mark on him, even his black hair immaculate.
Relief surged, then banked back warily. For all his former feelings, Linciard couldn't deny that he feared Sarovy now. The captain had always been inscrutable; now he was alien, even more so than the rest of the specialists. Linciard didn't want to think that way about him, but he'd seen the truth on the battlefield, when Sarovy had held Colonel Wreth in check to be executed.
His loyalty hadn't changed. He just felt uncertain.
“Sir,” said the gathered officers with varied but heartfelt enthusiasm. Sarovy simply took the scene in silently, from the rows of bunks they'd cleared out so they could talk to the glimpse of the infirmary and the detention cells beyond.
Then to him. Linciard broke out in a sweat.
Chastisement did not come immediately, though, and the captain turned his gaze to the group again. “Officers. Mages. Scryer Yrsian.”
The scryer made a rough approximation of a curtsey in her homespun dress. “Captain, you look well. We'd been concerned, of course, but we're glad to have you back. Officially?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.” Sarovy's expression was closed, as if brewing over a problem he couldn't discuss. “I'm told that our captors have treated us well.”
“Quite, given the circumstances.”
“Yes. The circumstances.”
Frost hung heavy from his words, and the whole room hushed, the officers and male mages standing stock-still behind Mako as she matched the captain's stare. Slowly, deliberately, she uncrossed her arms to plant her hands on her hips instead. “And what, exactly, was your plan?” she said, crisp and curt. “From what I could tell, you were content to stand there and sing Midwinter songs until they shipped us all to the Palace.”
“Inviting our enemies in was not the solution.”
“Oh wasn't it? Because that's what you did when you accepted Cortine!”
Behind her, Tanvolthene winced and cast a glance toward the infirmary, where the Enlightened Messenger had lain in alternating coma and delirium ever since the company's imprisonment. He and the priest had been assigned here together, and neither had fared well.
The captain's eyes narrowed, but he nodded marginally, accepting it. “That was my mistake, but not one that I saw a choice in making.”
“Well, likewise! I couldn't reach anyone else, captain—not who could do any good. They came in more aggressively than I wanted, but I couldn't know whose side our specialists were on. Or whose you were on. That you're here again seems to answer that.”
“The Enforcer and I are...in discussions.”
“About what?” Linciard interjected, then almost bit his tongue when Sarovy looked at him. Fighting down his nerves, he continued, “The ranks are torn over the situation, sir. We've got some folks who accept it, but our core is solid eastern, and the specialists—what will happen to them?”
The captain's brows arched. “Have they been threatened?”
“No, sir, but they haven't given us any assurances either. And we've already had to lock up some of our own guys for inciting violence. They want justice, sir. The cult attacked us in such a horrible way. It's hard to let it go.”
A shade of pain touched Sarovy's severe expression, then vanished. “You have been through wars of retaliation, lieutenant. You should know why we cannot tolerate it. Killing in the name of the dead does not serve them; they are beyond help or hurt.”
Linciard swallowed thickly. He'd never discussed his Border Corps experience with the captain, but he wasn't surprised Sarovy knew. “Still, sir, that doesn't ease the pain, and it can't guarantee that the troublemakers will quit. Being treated decently is great, but it's just a stopgap until we know what's going on.”
The captain nodded slowly, then glanced back toward the barrack entry. A few officers had followed him in—including Sergeant Benson, who gave Linciard the usual cold shoulder—but none of their captors were in evidence, either to supervise or eavesdrop. Not that it was any assurance. The shadows here had ears.
“I will press the question when I can,” said Sarovy. “For now, I have damages to survey.” With that, he turned and strode for the archway that led to the infirmary, gesturing for the others to follow. Soldiers and mages fell in at his heels like a motley flock.
Linciard did as well, limping a little from the lingering pain of his truncated left toes, but slowed automatically as the detention cells came into view just past the entry. The Shadow Folk had told them to stow their miscreants here, where both Blaze and the medics could keep an eye on them, but he could never go by without feeling the need to stop and stare.
Someone nudged him from behind, making him jerk in surprise. Half-turning, he saw that it was just Tanvolthene trying to slip by, and sighed. The mage glanced from him to a certain cell, then made a cutting gesture toward it; as the rasp of chains became audible through the lowered sound-ward, Linciard nodded his rueful thanks. Tanvolthene returned it and moved on.
“Well, that's interesting,” came the dry, subtly-buzzing voice from within the cell.
Linciard turned to regard the prisoner. Ex-lieutenant Savaad Rallant sat at the edge of the narrow bed-platform, illusion pendant gone, features revealed as the unsettling amalgamation of insect and human they had always been. He was still criminally handsome, but his skin had gone a marbled gold, and his eyes were tawny spheres made up of tiny hexes without pupil or sclera. His feet, bare below the ankle-shackles, were horrific clawed things, with a heel-spur locked tight against the sole and two jagged prongs instead of toes. Linciard had glimpsed his hands before the cultists had forced the bags over them, and seen the chitinous golden curves of his claws. Even his hair had changed, no longer natural blond but a strong honey-yellow.
His tattered uniform hid the rest of the changes, for which Linciard was infinitely grateful.
“Good or bad, though—that's the question,” the senvraka continued. “Sarovy certainly doesn't like me.”
“You know I won't let them just kill you,” said Linciard, drifting toward the bars. Though Rallant had taken control of him at least twice during their stint in Bahlaer, and though he still felt a sort of sickly craving, he didn't think he was being chemically influenced anymore. Mako had checked his mind several times and reluctantly cleared him for duty.
Rallant smirked, a familiar expression on that unnerving face. “So it seems.”
“As long as you keep working with us, it'll be fine. I'll tell him everything you told me, and he'll probably have some questions of his own, but I'm sure he'll see you tried to help. With Colonel Wreth dead, there's no immediate threat. You can rejoin us.”
“Such an optimist.”
“You didn't hurt anyone.”
“I hurt you. I made you hurt the Corvishman.”
Linciard waved that off, not trusting himself to address it. “We shouldn't be around each other, I know, but I don't want you to—“
'Linciard, get over here,' Scryer Mako snapped in his mind. 'You know you're not supposed to be alone with him.'
Wincing, Linciard gave Rallant an apologetic look, but his ex-lover just made a shooing gesture. “Run along to your mistress.”
“She's not—“ He cut himself off and ducked his head, uncomfortable with all of this. He'd been walking a fine line since their first assignation, but he couldn't bear to abandon the man, not when he was sure Rallant had tried to protect him. Used him, yes, but also confided secrets and showed a glimpse of pain—of damage—Linciard couldn't ignore.
It hurt to turn away even now, as if leaving Rallant in that cell was a betrayal. Those golden eyes pursued him the whole way back to the group.
*****
From the look of his specialists, Sarovy doubted they would get out of bed any time soon. Most of the twenty-two men and one woman could barely prop themselves up, and all were weary and hollow-eyed.
Like Sarovy, they had collapsed during the vanishing of the Light. Seventeen others had simply died—or been murdered on the ground like the treacherous Herrick, who hadn't enjoyed his stolen lieutenancy for long. The worst-off seemed to be the scouts, their black bracers flecked with grey, their control over their puppet-bodies weakened. A few could barely speak.
Surprisingly, none had any complaints about being cared for by Trifolders. Though their prayers and salves could harm the converted, the stripe-coated medics seemed disinclined to enact such revenge—and Medic Shuralla was overseeing them, a comfortingly familiar presence.
At the end of the row, Houndmaster-Lieutenant Vrallek flashed his nasty teeth to the approaching group. Five grey shapes rose from the floor beside him: thiolgriin, so-called 'hounds', their misshapen faces lighting up with doggish recognition. Sarovy averted his eyes, unsettled by how human they looked without their illusions.
“Captain,” rumbled the houndmaster, his voice a shadow of its usual booming self. “You're certainly a survivor. Done better than the rest of us, that's for sure.” He gestured at the other beds, then let his hand fall to a hound's head. It gave a groan of adoration and rolled its eyes toward him. “Lost all but these out of the hounds I took,” he added glumly.
“And the Shadow Folk are comfortable with you keeping them here?” said Sarovy, trying to wrap his mind around it.
“So long as I keep them in check—and I haven't seen why I shouldn't.” His ruddy face clenched as he made an effort to sit up, only for a spasm to drop him back down. “Ahh, curse the Light, curse all of it,” he spat as a medic moved in to adjust his blankets. “Captain, they've piked us somehow. Is it a spell, something Colonel Wreth laid on us?”
Sarovy shook his head. “I need to call a meeting. I suppose we should have it here.”
“Sounds ominous, but it can't be worse than what Cortine was screaming.” The big ruengriin jerked his chin toward a curtained area at the back of the chamber. “For a while it was all 'end of the world', but I'll be piked if the end of the world is women giving me sponge-baths.”
“Married women,” said the nearest medic primly, to which Vrallek chortled, then coughed.
“The Enlightened Messenger is...out?” Sarovy directed to her.
“Sleeping. He has been very much in pain, but we've found the right draught to let him rest. I would recommend against disturbing him.”
Sarovy nodded. He wasn't eager to see what the priest had done to himself.
“We'll discuss this soon,” he told Vrallek. “I need to speak more with the Enforcer.”
Waving a broad hand, the houndmaster said, “Go on then, not like I won't be here.”
With a nod, Sarovy headed back the way
he'd come, to cut through the bunkroom to the main chamber. Soldiers fell in behind him as he approached the Enforcer's and Greymark's balcony. More Shadow agents lined it than before—at least a score—with metal-folk observing both beside them and as bizarre spider-like shapes that clung to the walls.
“Enforcer,” he called up to her.
Arms crossed on the bannister, she raised a brow at him. “Captain.”
“I am satisfied with the treatment of my men.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“However, I need more answers. Your intentions toward us and the Light...”
“Easily stated. We want the Light back as much as you do. I told you, shadows can't exist without it. As for your company...” She smiled crookedly. “We'd like to hire you.”
Chapter 3 – Dark City
The tunnel shuddered around her. She could feel dust sifting over her hair, stinging at the corners of her closed eyes, but she couldn't move—couldn't even turn her head. Somewhere, close but infinitely far, Rian cried out for help, the full weight of the earth pressing down on his small goblin frame.
Fight it, she cried, but fear clogged her lungs, along with the strange knowledge that this wasn't the first time. Far from it. Those spindly fingers would go still in her grip, then a black space would open in the wreckage by her feet...
With all her strength, she tried to move. To change this.
Her fingers curled on fibrous shreds.
Dream, it's a dream it's a dream it's a—
Her eyes flashed open. For a moment, disoriented, she saw dark rock above her, but it was only the sky—distant, indifferent, empty. She inhaled sharply, filling her lungs with cool air.
There was a hand resting on her wrist. Heart clenching, she looked over with Rian's face still swimming in her mind, but it wasn't him. It was a man in ragged peasant's clothes, cheeks stubbled and ears cropped, dark hair half-obscuring his sleep-slack face. Maevor. The black bracer showed at the edge of his right sleeve, its protruding filaments fallen still.
Brushing his hand off, Lark wedged herself into a sitting position and felt the water elemental on her other arm shift sleepily, then settle. She grimaced. Useful as Ripple was, she couldn't feel any more fondly toward it than she did toward the man. She'd lost half her heart, and doubted it would grow back.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 7
