The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4)

by H. Anthe Davis

  Linciard went for the nearest Seether, who had his back turned while being hammered by shield and truncheon. The man was short and stocky—Amandic maybe—which gave Linciard a good angle to hook his gauntlet-arm down past his shoulder and under his chin, then haul back and slam a plated knee into his cuirass over his kidney. The shock went right up his thighbone but he heard the man choke, saw his sword drop, and backpedaled hard while keeping up the headlock. A fist hammered against his arm in vain.

  A heave and he put that man on the ground on his shield-side, then knee-dropped to get him face-down. Air wheezed out hard from the Seether's lungs, and he kicked frantically, boots scraping the stone floor. For a moment, Linciard considered leaning harder, but he knew how it was to be flattened in armor, so he gripped the man by the nape, below the edge of the helm, and let up slightly on his back.

  “Stay still,” he snapped. “We're not here to hurt you. Don't force us.”

  The Seether stopped kicking. Through the helm, Linciard could just see the gleam of a fearful eye.

  A Blaze and a Shadow rushed past him then, coming from the room opposite his to join the hallway fray. He looked back to see them hit and the struggle largely dissolve from there; one Seether went down in the press, while the other put his back to the wall only to have three truncheons and a sword leveled at him.

  Another flare of color from the storeroom, then suddenly all the mage-lights went out.

  “Well. That's it, then,” Linciard said into the following hush. “Can we get some lanterns, please?”

  “On it,” came an unfamiliar voice. The air changed subtly, a lukewarm current stirring through the chill, then came a scrape and a sudden bloom of eye-shaped lights on the walls. More joined until a Shadow with a hooded lantern stood at each of the ambush-doorways.

  “Good. Now give me a head-count, us and them.”

  His officers responded rapidly. All Blazes were accounted for, and bearing nothing more than bruises and scrapes. His room had netted three Seethers, the opposite room two; the one closest to the storeroom had grabbed two as well, leaving the last three Seethers to be felled in the hallway. All were alive, though broken bones were likely. The mage had been knocked out with far more force than necessary and needed to be taken to the medics.

  The Shadows reported themselves fine, though even in the low light he could see bleached-out shadowmarks on some faces.

  “All right, now explain to our new friends how we're not gonna hurt them, and neither are the Shadows, but they better not piking try anything while we're in transit or they'll probably get eaten.”

  The sentiment was conveyed in a variety of colorful ways. He heard arguments start up from several corners, and the thump of leather on flesh, and called out an order to quit punching them even if they were aggravating. Grumbled yessirs returned to him.

  “Who in blazes are you people?” said the man he had pinned.

  The question hit his post-fight funnybone, but he managed to choke the laughter down before he terrified the guy too much. “Ex-Crimsons,” he said, “and there's a good reason for it. Come quietly and hear us out, and I swear no harm will come to you.”

  The Seether didn't answer, but when Linciard hauled him up, he didn't fight either.

  Trekking back seemed much quicker than their first journey, even with one Seether having a screaming breakdown upon entering the Shadow Realm. Linciard sympathized for about a heartbeat, then ordered the man blindfolded and dragged along no matter his feelings.

  The shadowpath let them out right at the infirmary, the cells already cleared of all the miscreants except Rallant. Linciard schooled himself not to look at his ex-lover as the medics bustled over to do a quick triage of the prisoners; three plus the mage ended up being taken away to the cots, while the other seven got locked in with orders to strip their own armor and pass it out through the bars. They did so sullenly, revealing themselves as mostly Amands and Riddish, except for their sergeant who was a dark, husky Darronwayn.

  On the earhook, the captain said, “On our way down.”

  As an impromptu debriefing began between his men and the Seethers, Linciard looked to the lingering Shadow officers. The man, Ticuo, stood by the folding screen with arms crossed and expression closed; the woman, Zhahri, raised her brows as she met Linciard's glance.

  “You're quite audacious,” she said. “Our commanding agents aren't allowed to put themselves on the front lines unless necessary.”

  “Your boss came out and shot my captain in the face.”

  “Yes, well… She's used to working alone. Your excuse?”

  He shrugged stiffly, then winced at the twinge in his shoulder. Must've pulled something when I hit that guy. “Haven't been an officer long. I guess it's habit.”

  “Effective habit. You've brawled a lot?”

  “Got three older brothers, six blood-uncles, too many cousins.”

  “I see.”

  “So your officers just stand back and direct shit?”

  Zhahri spread her hands. “That's the job.”

  “They pay you more than the ones who actually do the punching?”

  “Yes. But normally there isn't much punching, so they just stand around and look menacing. They also have regular assignments, while we officers are always on-call.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything. Riots, disasters, this business. We evaluate it—and deal with it—until the muscle gets assigned.”

  He eyed her sidelong. Tall and lean, she looked like she could put up a good fight, and had an odd curved blade tucked into the back of her belt in addition to the regulation truncheons. She was light-footed too; he'd seen that on the way back, since his eyes had no longer been glued to the path. “So you could jump in if the grunts needed you?”

  A smirk creased her dark lips. “They don't often. But yes.”

  “Huh.”

  His other questions blew from his mind as the captain, scryer, Warder Tanvolthene and Enforcer Ardent arrived from the hall. At the captain's beckon, Linciard moved to his side and endured a critical once-over. “Have you been seen to?” said Sarovy.

  “Medic checked me quick. I'm fine.”

  “Good, stay here. Warder, if you'd lower the sound-ward on Rallant's cell, please.”

  Linciard blinked, then tensed. Was the captain about to call him out in front of the medics and the prisoners? But he caught the scryer making a soothing gesture in his direction, and as the senvraka drifted toward his cell bars quizzically, the captain said, “I am told that you move in rarefied circles.”

  Rallant slid an inscrutable look toward Linciard, then back to the captain. “I have.”

  “After this debriefing, we should talk.”

  *****

  Scryer Mako settled into her camp-chair and smoothed her dress across her knees. Beside her sat Captain Sarovy, with Ardent at his other hand and Linciard at hers; on Mako's right side was Tanvolthene, keeping up a one-sided sound-ward between them and the rest of the area. They could hear what went on outside, but no one else could hear in.

  Before them sat Rallant on his bunk. He hadn't been let out since his capture and now his golden hair hung lank, insect-eyes dark-rimmed, clothes a wreck. His hands had been unbagged and unshackled for good behavior but he seemed to feel no need to neaten up.

  In his mood, Mako read a veneer of polite interest over bone-deep resignation. She'd let Linciard visit him occasionally while she tagged along in his head, but despite the lieutenant's hope, it hadn't lifted Rallant's spirits. Not surprising; they all knew he couldn't be released.

  “I'm told you served in the Imperial Court,” said Sarovy, direct as always. “With the Crown Prince before he claimed generalship of the Crimson Claw.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  Mako cast a sidelong look at Linciard as his emotions flinched. She didn't need to pry to understand; thirty-nine made Rallant ten years his senior. Not a big deal normally, but w
ith the control issues as they were...

  “Do you remember me?” prompted Sarovy.

  Rallant frowned. “Sir?”

  “In the Palace. My conversion. Did you witness it?” There was a dangerous flatness to the captain's tone, and Mako fixed her attention on him with a frown. He hadn't been back long, and he'd never been forthcoming about his personal matters—never allowed her to peek into his head and repair any conditioning-made dysfunctions. She couldn't imagine how knotted up he must be in there, what with the sarisigi revelation and their new Shadow status.

  But the senvraka was shaking his head. “The Imperial Court dissolved when the Crown Prince left. That was fifteen—sixteen?—years ago. You were converted more recently, yes?”

  “Twelve years ago.”

  “By then, I was serving the Wyndish Court. If you saw 'courtiers' during your time in the Palace, they were likely wraiths or new specialists still gaining control of their changes. The Imperial Court's existence was almost entirely for Prince Kelturin's benefit.”

  Enforcer Ardent sat forward. “That seems like a lot of trouble to go through for one man, even a prince. And they just dissolved it?”

  Rallant shrugged. “It's the Emperor's way. He gets what he wants, toys with it for a while, then discards it. Raising an heir was his distraction of the moment, and when the Prince tried to assert independence...” He spread his hands silently.

  “The Emperor discarded his son?”

  “Relegated him to the head of the worst-performing army, yes. Refused to let him take any of his court attendants with him. Dispersed them to the winds, from what I understand.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. Boredom? Spite? Neither he nor his advisors are kind masters.”

  Mako sensed as much as heard the ice in Sarovy's voice as he said, “They have no care for their followers.”

  “If they did, captain, would they make such monsters of us?”

  “Who were you before your conversion?”

  Rallant smirked, honeycombed eyes hooding, but behind that smug façade Mako sensed bitterness. Thus far, there had been no dissembling in him, just a sort of sour amusement. “Do you expect some revelation from it? I was no one, captain. A backwoods boy, a Gold Army grunt in a batch of six hundred sent to the Palace to feed its greed. One of the lucky ones, I suppose, for the conversion didn't kill me, and senvraka are rather rare. They sent me off to the Imperial Court for training, and I'm not ashamed to say that I indulged myself wantonly there. It was more privilege than I'd ever been accorded in my life, and I was nineteen.

  “When it dissolved, I was put to work in Wyndon. Similar role—a handler for nobility—but without the perks, with handlers of my own. Perhaps I was spoiled, or perhaps the Wyndish Court was simply rougher, but eventually I was deemed unfit for that sort of duty. And so I was cast to the Crimson, like you, though with an obligation to serve the White Flame.”

  Mako could tell that there was more: a black river roiling beneath the sanitized surface, full of venom and filth. But she had neither the interest nor the skill to delve into old, bad memories, not when they were likely irrelevant.

  “So you're familiar with the White Flame agents,” said Enforcer Ardent, diverting the conversation as if she could tell the captain was steaming over his exile. When Rallant nodded, she gestured encouragingly. “We've rarely encountered them. We don't even know what they want.”

  “What any parasite wants,” he answered coolly. “To replicate regardless of the life of its host. I can't say that I'm privy to their plans, but I heard enough in court and during my time as their agent to know that they want the world converted. For all of us to 'stand in the Light', as they say, whether we like it or not. They haven't had much success yet, since most of us converts were sterilized by the Maker and the White Flame armor is quite recent, but the Field Marshal has his ideas of what makes a 'purified' person. Most of them distasteful.”

  “And there is no resistance?” said the Enforcer.

  “Of course there is. And then we feed the resistance to the Palace, and the cycle continues. Houndmaster Vrallek and his ilk were all Imperial enemies before their capture, and we've converted Trifolders, skinchangers and common malcontents galore. Not always successfully, but that doesn't matter to the Emperor. Anyone who dies in the process just gets aggregated into the ahergriin, which hold back the ogres on the border.

  “Beside that, isn't it right and proper to sacrifice ourselves for our god? To our god, if he wants that? Ask any good Light-follower in the Heartlands and they'll tell you so. We've been well-indoctrinated over the years.”

  To Mako's surprise, the acid in his voice was mirrored in his mind. Whatever he might be, Rallant had no love for the Field Marshal's policies. Her choice to allow Linciard some contact with him started to seem like less of a mistake.

  “You're not a Light-follower, then?” said the Enforcer dryly.

  “Oh, I am. I can't help but be. And that's the problem. I'm a controller, and have been for twenty years. I know well when I am being controlled. Many of us love the Light philosophically, morally, naturally—but all of us are compelled to it no matter our original feelings. We can't turn away without strain. The only reason the specialists here haven't torn you Shadows apart is that the Light is gone. The leash is still there, it's just slack.”

  The captain and the Enforcer traded glances, and Mako was amused to catch the same thought broadcast from both their minds: Good riddance. In Sarovy's case, it was troubled, angry; in Ardent's, it was more measured.

  Meanwhile, the mention of leashes had given her the itch of an idea, but she couldn't quite unearth it. She sat back but kept her focus on the conversation, figuring that if she just let it sit in the back of her mind, it would eventually bloom on its own.

  “And you reported to your superiors in the White Flame regularly?” said Sarovy. “Colonel Wreth and his ilk?”

  Rallant held up a hand. “Understand that I am not, myself, of the White Flame. Not their nasty branch of the faith nor their pseudo-military order. Yes, I served them loyally, but I was never allowed to join them; after the Gold Army, I was considered too unreliable for that. And while I may have...espoused some of their noxious tenets, I have to credit that to the Enlightened Messenger. The touch of the Light could make a fanatic out of any convert, and he made sure that we were...” A smirk. “Well-touched. No, I have never been more than a tool for their use.”

  Mako frowned. He wasn't lying, but he was definitely hiding something. Without digging into his mind, though, she couldn't tell what or why. She'd only been in there once, during his first debriefing post-capture when he'd formally admitted to his spying and White Flame connections, and had found it to be a hideous tangle of deceit, suppression and self-justification. A wild thorny overgrowth that might once have been a well-trimmed garden: all his conditioning blown, all his secrets buried under emotional debris. She never wanted to go in there again.

  Unfortunately, her instincts were telling her she had to. There was something going on that he wouldn't—or couldn't—discuss, and she needed to know what it was.

  “Your reports,” Sarovy repeated flatly.

  The senvraka sighed. “No, I did not report regularly. We couldn't trust any letters to go through your hands, and from what I'm told, mentalism has a limited range. My job was to accumulate observations, attempt a few experiments, then report what I had learned whenever I was contacted by a handler.”

  “Always a mentalist?”

  “Yes—though before you ask, I have no names to give you. Beside those who came with the Enlightened Messenger and the colonel, I never met my handlers.”

  The itching thought flared into realization, and Mako sat forward in a rush of alarm. “You'd never had contact with them before, of any type? They didn't scry to you at all?”

  Rallant's honeyed gaze slid to her, then he shook his head slowly. “No, I don't believe so. Unless they did so without my notice. Why?”

  “
Because that's not how mentalism works. You can't just reach out and talk to someone you've never met—not without either a proximate or arcane connection. I managed to attack Ardent without meeting her because she was wearing an earhook, which gave me both, and being within view of someone or open-scrying them would give you proximity, but you can't do it through a closed scry. You can't even do it with a sample like the hairs I took. That can be scryed but it isn't a mind, it can't be connected with. So how did they find you?”

  “Question,” said Ardent. “Closed scry, open scry?”

  Mako hissed an impatient breath. “A scry is like a window. Closed scry is a closed window, open scry is open. If I can see you with my eyes but not my mind, I can't reach you.”

  “So your mentalism can't go through the, ah, window-pane?”

  “Right. Either his handlers open-scryed him, which I should have detected within my wards, or they used a mentalist anchor. Like an earhook, or—“

  She blinked. Those buried secrets, the thorns and debris, all the psychic overgrowth she'd been unwilling to bushwhack through… “A mindhook. They built something into you that they can contact remotely, and then they covered it in damage. Pikes, I'll have to excavate.”

  Through the bars, she saw Rallant blanch. She raised her hand to make a soothing gesture, then realized everyone was staring at her—even Tanvolthene. “What?” she said.

  “Will that be a danger to you? Either of you,” Sarovy clarified. Beyond him, Ardent looked thoughtful and Linciard alarmed; in fact, that feeling radiated so strongly from him that it made her heart-rate rise in sympathy. She couldn't tell offhand whether it was fear for Rallant or fear of mentalist adjustments in general, but either way, it was annoying.

  “Well, yes,” she said, “but if there's a hook in his mind, it means that somewhere out there is an object—or two, or ten—that can connect with him directly within a certain range. Something that contains a pinched-off part of his psyche. I've heard that the Inquisition uses things like that to turn non-mentalists into unwitting spies, but I didn't realize the White Flame would have access to them. Or use them on active agents, since—“