by Jackson Lear
“The fuck?” muttered Scurvy. “Really?”
“Heard of it,” said Runaway. “Didn’t see any of it happen. Maybe it’s what happened here and word traveled.”
“That’s some high-born shit, there,” said Docks.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“High-borns read and write, yeah? Who else is going to leave a note like that?”
“Lieutenant and the Captain can read and write,” I said.
“Maybe it was a rattler,” said Shadow. “But why they’d want to rattle an orphanage …”
“Her dad’s gonna be connected, guarantee it,” said Docks. “Whoever he is, he’s someone high up. He fucked a maid, he fucked a farmer, whoever. Someone found her and is holding her ransom until the dad pays up.”
Greaser nodded. “That’s why you would leave a note.”
“Her dad died not long ago,” I said. “He wasn’t anyone special.”
Greaser broke my winning streak and thanked me for distracting everyone. I had to keep quiet for a bit or the game would end. I needed as many of them on my side as possible, so I spent a handful of pennies trying to figure out if Agrat was right about advertising your intention to kill a kid. The problem was, no one went to rescue Kiera twenty years ago. This had to be something else. You’d only risk doing it again if it worked.
So, what kind of magic required someone’s death? I figured Greaser would know, being one of the most experienced mages in the company, but getting that kind of answer out of him was like getting a whore to offer a freebie because it was her birthday.
Greaser was caught in that older-but-not-quite-old look. If it’s a choice between being slapped in the face with his hand or a shovel, take the shovel. Every couple of months we tried to get Greaser and Ox to throw down, just to see what would happen. No one ever found the right balance of drunkenness from either of them to make it happen, but holy hell did we try. It seemed as though he was on babysitting duty with yours truly as his focus, something he relished as much a tooth that needed to be yanked.
The other two on my tail that morning were no where to be seen. Smoker and Third-Eye. They were twins. Both had a beard. Both laughed the same, both snored with competitive rivalry, both punched each other in the shoulder when they thought the other had just farted, which was entertaining enough when you were gorged on enough beans to keep a werewolf from coming after you. The lasting difference between them is that Smoker is a rattler, Third-Eye is a mage.
Truth be told, we all shared traits of mages, rattlers, and being the face of the company. And we all occasionally commanded like a captain. Our business relied heavily on rattlers such as Runaway and Smoker. A rattler stirs up the threat of trouble. Not trouble itself, even if that’s what a company of mercenaries is primarily known for. A rattler is the boogeyman outside your window when you’re up at night, finding it impossible to sleep. Inside your house we’ll have someone like Lieutenant. We’ll be on your side, a united front against whatever foul demon is haunting you. You might even meet your own rattler without realizing it. They’ll promise to fight poison with poison. You hire a rattler and all of a sudden your problems go away.
That was our job. We made sure people paid for their protection against the boogeymen they were afraid of and we ensured that no one rattled them. If they thought something was amiss they would come to us, we’d flush out our competition and something of a push and shove contest would begin, usually with the threat of a war being bandied about as a last ditch effort to scare the opposition, though trying to scare a mercenary generally isn’t a good idea.
To help us out we used mages. They are the go-to masters of magic and spend most of their lives actively studying it. I might be good at magic but a mage would beat me pretty much every time. Take me being arrested, for example; I could argue my case in front of a judge but that wouldn’t make me a lawyer. I could be reasonably persuasive and get the same result, but a lawyer’s knowledge would always be just a little bit better than mine. They have more tricks up their sleeves. They know what will work and what won’t. Me? I’d just try to appeal to the judge’s sense of reason. Lawyer’s can do that too, as well as appealing to the judge’s sense of the law and the danger his decision would pose to the greater public.
My babysitter at that table, Greaser, is a mage. Mages are world-renowned dicks. Their levels of concentration while preparing a spell is what separates them from the rest of us. We all get distracted from time to time. Staying awake for days on end to focus on one effect, maybe a second if you’re dicing with death, really takes it out of you. Mages reach the ‘fuck this’ stage later than the rest of us. We have a ‘good enough’ attitude. They don’t. We’re not quite up to their level and we’re generally more rested than they are. The result of them always being tired and looking down on us: dicks.
Officially, we collected protection money and dealt with local criminals. Sometimes we were hired for a job that was supposed to elude the authorities. Mostly, we waited for something to do. Usually we were stuck in the compound for so long the drink became boring. We’d play dice or bones so much that it all became boring. We had women come and go until tempers flared and the Captain would have to intervene. You’d lose your favorite lady because someone is convinced they’ve fallen in love. So you have to find a new favorite one. Then, just as you’re getting cozy, some asshole would force us into lockdown and the Captain would intervene once again.
Fights certainly relieved some of the boredom but there was a difference between a fight because you’re all bored as hell and a fight because some little shit needed to be put in his place.
Mostly, there was waiting.
The high-borns have tried to quell the truth, lest they be overrun but there’s not a single person in the world without access to magic. Everyone does it. Everyone lies about it. Getting it hasn’t changed in thousands of years. The richest people in the world are mages who have ‘unlocked the secrets of magic’. They sell out amphitheaters and pamphlets so you too can succeed if you follow their method. Everyone looks for a short cut, a system that is as foolproof as it is hare-brained. The shit they try to convince you of: Eat nothing but green food to improve your luck with money. Eat only at night to make someone love you. Horse shit. All anyone has ever been able to do is something physical and to do that you need to exhaust yourself.
There was a mage one province over. He ‘turned’ the steel of a dagger into gold. He made more money from giving lectures than being a mage. He grouped the schools of magic together and assured his public that they would be better at some spells than others, so they should focus on what comes naturally to them. If you slept on your back then the key to exhausting yourselves is through starvation. A side sleeper? Exercise. A morning person? Stay awake. A night owl? The activities of lust. That last one wasn’t too popular with the authorities but there was never a better time to own a brothel.
We had several converts from one system to another in the company yet the results never changed. No matter how we prepped ourselves, it all came down to what we’ve known for centuries: exhaustion is key. You focused on a word and an effect. No change there. The simpler the effect, the less exhausted you need to be. Pelo said it a thousand years ago on the side of Mount Keltiun. Even though it’s still true, it’s never stopped anyone from trying to find an advantage that no one else has.
If I wanted to levitate something I wouldn’t need to focus on levitating on that specific thing, even though mages in Ispar recommend exactly that. A rock, a cat, a person … it doesn’t matter. The only difference comes in the resistance. If I know I want to levitate someone of my weight, I’m going to need to spend days – and I really do mean days – awake, barely eating, barely drinking, until I’m almost dead. I might even add a lot of running to speed up my level of exhaustion.
Three things are critical here: how utterly exhausted I am, the effect I want, and the word I’m charging. Any word will do. It could be ‘potato’ for all I care. The effect ne
eds to be something physical – anything that someone could do normally, only now you can do it better. Want to jump over a building? No problem. Want to break down a door without touching it? Sure thing. Given enough practice you can focus on conversations out of ear-shot, see who is coming at you from miles away like a hawk, and react fast enough to catch a dozen arrows coming at you. So, why isn’t everyone jumping over rivers and driving out enemy armies when they appear? Probably for the same reason we all walk instead of sprinting everywhere, because utter exhaustion is a misery.
Breaking open a door through magic takes days of running yourself ragged, almost to the point of death. It’s much easier just bust it open with a mallet, or convince the person inside to open it for you. Every bite of food I eat while preparing an effect is keeping me from the level of exhaustion I really need. Every time I sit down to rest, it’s keeping me from where I need to be. If I relax and stay up all night, eating and drinking as usual and all I’m doing is trying to stay awake, I might be able to lift a single sheet of paper by morning. If I stay up for two nights, a book. Or thereabouts. You don’t ever know just how successful your exhaustion was until you unleash your spell. Experience can help but your mind also adapts to the nightmare you put it through. Last year I might’ve spent three days awake on a single spell. This year I might need four days to get the same effect.
The worst is when you unknowingly fall asleep. You’ve spent all this energy to keep yourself going. You’ve been hallucinating some of the weirdest crap your brain can come up with: Flamingoes coming right at you, the walls warping without ever breaking, and you’re left awestruck, unable to look away because the walls are rippling like waves crashing on a beach and yet the roof is still intact and why is everyone looking at me?
You reach that point when not even the bare ass of a princess in your face could keep you awake. At that point, that crucial moment, all you need to do is focus on two things: the effect you want, and the word you’re charging.
If you get distracted and think of another effect, or another word to charge, or you fall asleep ... well, you just wasted a few days of your life. I’m pretty sure everyone is walking around right now with the same problem; just before falling asleep they’ve mistakenly charged the wrong word with a different effect, only now they have no idea what the word is or what will happen if they slip it into everyday conversation.
Sometimes the results are what makes joining a company of thieves and mercenaries worthwhile. Third-Eye was on a bender. We’d dump his head in a water trough to revive him, we’d slap him in the face if he started blinking wearily. After six days of this we distracted him a little too much because, well, we were bored. We had a woman from the tavern dress up like the Captain, in his actual clothes and all. Smelled just like him, too.
I do not recommend ever doing this to a man who’s used a sword more often than a pen.
The woman danced around, pretending to be the Captain, confusing the hell out of Third-Eye who hadn’t slept all week. As soon as she pulled off her top we all lost it. Third-Eye too.
“Holy shit, the Captain’s got tits!”
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have let her kiss Third-Eye either.
A few days later we were on assignment. We were all rested and ready to go. Third-Eye and the other mages were there to blow the gates off the city treasury. Gates of that strength and for that purpose are often imbued with their own magic. The builders do their exhaustion thing as they’re forging so that the bars never bend, never rust, the locks never fail, the hinges remain in the wall, the bricks remain stuck together, and so on. Treasuries are often quite small as a result of all the meticulous work that goes into building them, all to keep people like us from getting in.
Also, working next to a forge with molten steel within reach when you’ve been up for several days has got to be one of the worst jobs there is.
We’d been planning this all season. Five people were needed to blow the gates off, all focused on the same effect. The Captain counted us down.
Three.
Two.
One.
Sometimes you end up overpowering a spell, like if you’ve spent all week preparing to break apart a set of gates but instead find yourself in the middle of a lap dance with no memory of how it even started, being cheered on to rip the lady’s clothes off as fast as you can, and you accidentally charge that effect instead of the one you should’ve been focused on.
Keeping a straight face was never more difficult than seeing the surprise of our Captain standing in the middle of the street, his clothes exploded to shreds and his sword now fifty yards down the road.
The gates were blown open, so at least it wasn’t a total loss. Greaser was able to convince the Captain that losing his clothes was a failsafe charged into the gate. Not even Third-Eye knew that he fired off the wrong effect. We moved in. The mages got to work on the doors. Reinforced. Not as strong as the gates out front, but strong enough.
Four of those mages got the doors open with the residual power from their spell. The fifth mage blew apart Runaway’s trousers, leaving his tackle dangling in the crisp air until he found a guard’s uniform to pilch.
After that, the mages’ powers dwindled like a forest fire to a bonfire to a candle spluttering at the last of its wick. The rest of us worked our way inside, our spells at the ready, though our blades were of more use.
By dawn, we were rich. Despite that, no one retired. We would have former members come by every now and then, bored of civilian life. The life of the people we hustle is as foreign to us as our lives are to them. If I buy a house and start talking to my neighbors, I can’t exactly tell them what I used to do for a living. I’d have to make something up, and what the hell do I know about anything other than the life of a thieving asshole? Every year here makes it all the harder to live a civilian life. All it takes is one punch in the face and you’re arrested by the city watch. At best, you’d lose your hand to the ax. But let’s be honest, are any of the people I work with the type who would allow an axman anywhere near his wrist without a nasty surprise waiting for him? That’s why few of us ever hang. We’re usually hacked to death before we have a chance to blast our way out of there.
Mostly, the thing that keeps us here is because no one else will understand. We’ve used more magic than the casual person. They give up too easily. We don’t. As a result, we’ve seen things. Exhaustion is the key. It always has been. But the further you go, the longer you keep going … eventually you start to cross into the other world, the one made up of ghosts that are helping you break into a treasury.
You see them. Thousands of them. All howling these charged words back to you with chaos in their eyes and bloodlust in their soul.
The first time you see it, it clicks.
It’s their magic. Not ours. And the dead are toying with us.
Chapter Eight
The first time it happened to me I crapped myself. I was fading, almost ready to pass out. I was hiding in the marshlands north of Erast. The whole land swelled with water from the inner sea at high tide. I didn’t realize just how much it would rise until I entered the area. We had a dispute with Alir. Goods came through there, traveled down to us, and our haul was getting lighter and lighter every month. Taxes, Alir called it. We went to negotiate. Peacefully. One of theirs got a little carried away with his new found authority. He had two of our brothers caught by the city watch and swiftly executed. Six of us went to find out what happened. Alir ambushed us, killed four more of my brothers. Carver and I escaped. We fled into the marshlands, our bodies crippled with exhaustion from the running, ducking, weaving, and wading through wet mud that was getting wetter with every step. We figured it was the only way to lose our pursuers.
There were a hundred tiny islands at high tide. Carver and I got separated when the water overwhelmed us. We could see each other but there was a swell between him and me. For the first time since joining the Governor’s Hand, I was alone. I was lost. I knew that Alir were
preparing for a full blown war against us. We had to get back to Erast and warn the Captain of what was to come.
The mist was settling in, a fog so thick you could split it in two with a knife and see the slice linger all night.
I needed to sleep if I had any chance of finding my way out in the morning. I needed to stay awake to fight off the Kroats coming for me. You would think they were men. Perhaps they once were. Skin as white as milk, their bodies naked with long, black hair poking through. They lumbered over land but their abilities in the water made up for it. They hid in mud dens during the day, squeezing their way through the slick tunnels whenever the water started to seep through. The palm of their hands are covered in poisonous thorns. Once they grabbed onto you, you were theirs. Their poison would set in, numbing you at first, then slowly paralyzing you. Their kiss, though. They forced their mouth over yours, breathing a noxious cloud into your lungs. After that, you’d be stripped and licked, dragged to their tunnel, and they’d squeeze you into their den, your bones breaking from the confines and there was nothing you could do to fight back.
Their guttural grunting rang through the night, croaking like toads. I had been awake for days. The run through miles of marshlands had wrecked me, rendering my legs useless for anything but a shaky walk.
Then I started to hear my name.
Sirens.
They were calling to me. My birth name. I’d been Raike for years by then. No one called me Brayen anymore. I don’t think I even told the Captain when I first arrived. So to suddenly hear, “Braaaayen …” when you should be all alone …
I kept my blade dangling in front of me, seeing fluttering visions of my past. The voices converged into one, distant at first but drawing closer.
Someone was coming, walking through the fog without cracking a single twig.
