by Jackson Lear
She let it go.
I asked, “How do I find the doctors the general was talking to?”
“I don’t know.”
I pointed to Zara. “But she does. I was watching the orphanage when the general arrived. He took one look at the note left for Castor and his stomach must have flipped over itself. He sent Zara off in a hurry. My friend followed her. They hauled ass so fast that they got to the general’s compound before the general even made it back.” I smiled gently at Alysia, the kind of smile that normally showed a proud and stubborn business owner that he had until the count of five to hand over the money he owed the Governor’s Hand. “Where is Día?”
Zara squinted at me. The two soldiers tensed, desperate to reach for their weapons. Alysia raised one hand lightly, easing them back down. She studied me for a moment longer. “Can you speak on behalf of your company?”
“I am not the leader. The gentleman beside me has more clout. But I’ve been there long enough to argue on behalf of a cause.”
“Día really means this much to you?”
“No. Kiera means this much to me.” We weren’t getting anywhere. Zara would be a problem but she had a spear in a narrow street. That evened things out a little. The soldiers though, they would be reasonable contenders in a fight. I started to focus on sliding their arms across their bodies. I had no time to prepare. Limited time to focus. With enough warning I could’ve thrown them off their feet but shoving a full grown man who is ready for a fight is easier in person than using a spell. Besides, that’s how children think the arcane world works. It’s much better to focus on their weapon hand. It’s lighter than feet. They’ll reach for their sword and I’ll give their hand a little kick of momentum. They’ll overshoot the handle, buying me a breath of time to run.
“Stop that,” said Zara.
I didn’t.
Alysia stepped forward hesitantly, convincing herself that whatever she had planned was a terrible idea. “Let’s talk. You and me. Somewhere a little more private than this.”
Which sounded an awful lot like separating me from Lieutenant in case a fight was to break out.
“In exchange I’ll tell you where you might be able to look for Día.”
“You said you didn’t know where she was.”
“I don’t. But your friend who went missing all those years ago? Kiera? I know where she died.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alysia lifted her chin towards us. “First I want you both to expel whatever magic you have charged, without targeting us. I want to see you do it until your charges are exhausted. You will hand your weapons to your friend, my guards will pad you down, then you and I will talk.”
I did as the lady wanted. I handed Lieutenant’s dinky blade back to him and saw the quick rise of two hands from the guards come my way. “Let’s see the magic. Both of you. And if I feel any of it come my way you’ll each have a sword punched through your chest.”
It was a surprise to see someone like that believing that his threats outweighed my ability to detect bullshit. I believe that he believed it, but not once did I believe that his threats would actually ever happen. Apparently the look he got from me was as clear as day and I dared him to try it. His hand edged towards the handle of his sword.
I glanced towards Alysia, curious to see if she would intervene before someone else did.
“You heard me,” said the guard.
I backed down, refusing to blow a lead on Kiera over a pissing contest with some guy I had a reasonably good chance of beating. I had twenty years of practice and training in close quarters combat, of fighting like an asshole and cheating whenever possible. These two might have had military training but they were used to dealing with other armies, other soldiers, and a predictable fighter. My only hindrance was that Lieutenant’s showmanship was all show. I’d be the one doing all the fighting. Unarmed as well.
I took a couple of steps backwards, focused my attention on a wayward leaf that had come to rest on the side of the ground and said, “Now.”
The leaf rustled along the ground for a few yards. It was a poor excuse to say the least.
“All of it,” said the guard.
“Now,” I said again, still focusing on the leaf. It tumbled away from me before holding still. “Now,” I said once more. It didn’t even twitch.
Lieutenant’s turn. Sometimes your focus is so dependent on another human body that it’s difficult to fire something off without having an adequate target. Lieutenant apologized to me in advance, held me by the arm, and told me to brace myself. With a quick, “Go,” my right leg skidded to the left. He did it again, throwing me completely off balance. There was no more energy in the spell for a third attempt. It doesn’t take much to move the leaf but does take something substantial to kick a man’s leg out from under him.
“Let him through,” said Alysia.
The two guards moved an inch apart from each other. There was no way I was going to walk between them so I skirted around the edge, forcing one of them to move out of my way in case I tried anything on him. The growl from him was primeval, hoping that we would meet again when his instincts weren’t tied to keeping the general’s daughter safe. He sounded like a cub compared to Greaser.
I dug into the folds of my belt and freed a copy of Día’s note which Agrat had written up. “To prove that I’m telling you the truth.”
As I expected he had some level of reading comprehension, but not enough. He grunted back at me. “You behave.”
“He will,” said Zara.
I approached Alysia. She turned and had me follow her a few paces away.
“This whole deal ends if I think you are lying to me,” she said. “And since there are people looking for you who think that you are responsible the kidnapping Castor’s daughter it might be in your best interest to be absolutely forthcoming with me.”
“Then given the danger I find myself in I hope you’ll understand if there are some answers I can’t be entirely honest about. So instead of lying, I won’t answer.”
She allowed it. “Is Myalla still alive?”
“We’ve never killed a child before and we’re not going to start now. Whoever took her from us is working for the same people who took Día.”
“I understand why she was taken so I won’t insult you by asking. But still some methods are brutish and unnecessary, even for your kind.”
“If I can terrify whoever took Día into keeping her alive, then I will do whatever I can to keep someone from murdering an innocent child.” I held the note out to her.
She read it in barely a second. “You made a copy.”
“Yeah. Whoever took Día and Kiera can read and write. Most of my people can’t. Not just in my company but city wide. My kind didn’t do this. Worse still, except for among the sestas, Kiera has been completely forgotten. Same note, yet she hasn’t exactly lived on, has she?”
Alysia’s eyes saddened, one of genuine grief and not something that she had been trained to do if she ever wanted to become a senator. “My father wants you to consider an offer.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Return Myalla Castor unharmed and leave the doctors completely alone.”
“Not happening. This has been burning me for twenty years so it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a simple request from a general.”
“Everyone has a price. Isn’t that one of your mottos?”
“Me personally?”
“Mercenaries.”
“Maybe. But everyone has that one fight they won’t back down from. This one is mine.”
“Even if you were offered you a thousand marks?” She ended up squinting at me again. “So, you do have a price?”
That earned her a nod of respect. “Not bad for someone who’s spent her whole life in a villa surrounded by servants.”
“I grew up in Akaran, surrounded by lawyers, senators, and governors. They talk about your type, the cutthroats who value money over everything else.”
&
nbsp; I offered her a genuine smile. “I guess what I know about you is about as accurate as what you know about me.”
She nodded. “What do you call yourself? The job you do? A rattler?”
“I used to be. These days I’m the company’s closer.”
“A company of mercenaries?”
“Yes.”
“And here I was thinking you would have used a more polite word.”
“We’re not a shy bunch. Mercenaries describes us quite well. We’re not cutthroats, though. Thugs? Sometimes. Thieves? Often. Profiteers? Yeah. But mostly we’re trained to break into places and kill people.”
“You do that a lot?”
“Not as much as our reputation would have you believe,” I said.
She stared ahead, sullen, no doubt confirming her beliefs in my kin. “My family knows about Kiera. My grandfather became the patron of the orphanage just after she disappeared. We’ve been providing food and clothes to them for years.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “What happens when you leave Erast for good?”
“There will still be an endowment from the family. I’ve secured it with my husband.”
“Thank you. How long have you been married?”
“Three years.” Alysia squinted at me. “You’re testing me. Why?”
“It seems unusual that you would care about an orphan who disappeared long before you were born. I’m just trying to figure out if what you’re telling me is the truth. You’re the General’s eldest daughter?”
“Yes.”
“How come you weren’t named after your mother?”
“That’s not the custom in Ispar.”
“You weren’t born here?”
“I was. Mother wasn’t.”
“So, she didn’t want to look like a country bumpkin whenever she introduced you to her friends?”
“It’s almost word for word what she said.” She squinted at me again. “You don’t believe I’m Alysia Kasera.”
“As I said, it seems unusual that a general’s daughter would care about an orphan who disappeared long before she was born. You know the name I was born with.”
“Brayen.”
“Which begs a few questions about why you would even commit that to memory. Maybe you are who you say you are, maybe you’re not. What can you tell me about Kiera?”
“I know that she is in fact dead. She died three days after being abducted.”
In twenty years I’d refused introspection. Even when I saw Kiera’s ghost and heard a voice in the ether after staying up for three, four days straight, I refused to look inwards. There was nothing there but a howling fire, an unquenching rage that couldn’t be reasoned with. But I also harbored a long hope that maybe – somehow – she had survived, that she was taken to a far-off land, escaped, and was able to find a life of peace and happiness. I’ve heard of people disappearing in the past, gone without a trace. Parents traveled from one city to another looking for their children, desperate to know what happened. It mattered less if they were alive or dead. They just wanted to be certain of one or the other. It was the unknowing that kept them up at night.
Even so, I had trouble accepting Alysia’s words at face value. “How can I find these doctors?”
“They don’t reveal themselves to just anyone. You need wealth and connections.”
“I have the wealth of the entire city at my fingertips and I’m on a first name basis with half of the city’s thieves and mages. Believe me, I am more connected than Castor.”
“Castor couldn’t afford these doctors.”
I peered back at Miss Kasera, weighing her family’s social worth instead of what they held in a vault. “Then I propose a new deal. I will deliver Castor’s daughter to you, you personally, if you get me in the same room as these doctors.”
“They are more likely to kill you on sight than to listen to whatever you have to say.”
“Remember how connected I am? I could have every legitimate doctor in the city executed by the end of the day whether they are involved in this or not.”
“I don’t believe you would. You might be rash, and you might feel as though you have no other choice but to attack people who have had a better life than you, but you wouldn’t kill someone unless you knew they were absolutely guilty.”
“That’s quite a hefty gamble you’re taking considering that I’ve been harboring a grudge against these people for twenty years. I’ve seen your family meet with them. They came running the moment your dad summoned them. That puts him in quite a dangerous position as far as I’m concerned.”
“My family didn’t target Kiera. They didn’t know she existed until after I was born.” She looked back at me, her eyebrows arching towards sympathy. “South-east of the city, into the crag lands. That’s where Kiera was taken. Maybe that’s where Día is as well, I don’t know. They’re not exactly going to tell me where they’re holding their hostage, are they?”
Fair point. Still, the crags were hardly the best option to keep a screaming child, not with all the werewolves running around there at night. Or so I’d heard. “What else do you know about Kiera’s death?”
“She was a sacrifice, used in a ritual surrounded by six people, maybe more. They drugged her, kept her alive for three days, doing the same for themselves. They had already started out tired. They are a company of doctors by trade. In practice, they’re drunk on sorcery. They’re rumored to be able to breathe life into death. Some of them are supposed to be over two hundred years old. They may be completely bedridden at that age but they are still alive.
“They operate across the empire. They aren’t interested in the flimsy magic that murderers and thieves are known for. They don’t use the type of magic that an army of mages are capable of performing. They seek out primeval powers by unlocking secrets of the past and future. I’ve heard there are hundreds of them in their society. I’ve also heard that they don’t disrespect the body of their sacrifice. They don’t dismember them or drink their blood. Once they’re done, they are not simply left to the animals to feed upon. Kiera was killed in the crag lands. I’ve been assured that she was wrapped in a burial garb, given a proper funeral, and was buried there so that nothing could devour her.”
“The crag lands are several miles across.”
“If Día is there as well, she will be far enough away from Erast so that there is no hope of escape. She’ll also be far enough away so you can’t hear her scream. But you can still find her. They will have people watching her. They would want shade, shelter, and food. They will be hidden, but there’s only so much they can do to remain out of sight. If you go there I would be careful. Just because they aren’t interested in the type of magic you perform that doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of doing it themselves. They will kill you if they are forced to.”
“What time of day did Kiera die?”
“Dawn. That’s when they do it. I sent a scout out there after you were released to see if he could locate them. He hasn’t come back.”
“You did? Why?”
“I hoped he would be able to tell me where they were camped. Then I could trade you that information for Myalla’s return.”
“You were going to backstab the people your father knows?”
“I wanted options,” she said. “Where was Myalla held before you lost her?”
“Along the river in a burnt-out building.”
“I presume she won’t recognize any of her captors?”
“We are very good at not being remembered.”
She rolled her head away from me, shaking it with annoyance. “Castor won’t let this go.”
“I know. But orphans are very dear to me. When one of them goes missing and the city watch can’t be assed looking for them, sometimes we need to encourage them to do so. It may be stupid but it gets results.”
Alysia nodded gently. In that moment she seemed far more introspective than I could ever be. “Promise me that whatever happens you won’t do this again.”
>
“Remember my promise of not lying to you?” I shook my head at her. “Did your family know what would be involved when they hired these doctors?”
She glanced towards her guards.
“So,” I said, “your father knew something bad was going to happen to someone who didn’t deserve it.”
Alysia hung her head, at odds with keeping safe the darkest secret in her family’s history. “You’ve seen what people are capable of when they’re desperate.”
“I guess a general with enough guilt in him to sponsor an orphanage for the rest of his life … that situation must’ve been very desperate.”
Alysia nodded. “It was. He was a commander in Cryax’s army.” She raised an eyebrow. The name was unknown to me. “He’s just been promoted to First Protector, making him the head of the entire Imperial Army. How about Galinnia?”
“One of the empire’s newest provinces. North of Gerera. Cold as hell. What does this have to do with Kiera being executed?”
“My father was stationed in Galinnia when Cryax was its governor. A new karl had risen beyond the border, one who was very good at raiding Isparian settlements and eluding our armies. At first he was a nuisance, then he started attacking towns and cities with greater numbers. Cryax went to find him.”
“The karl was looking for a fight?”
“He wanted to provoke the empire into marching north and trapping them there when winter came. It worked. Cryax sent all of his commanders across the border to root out this karl. They were in unknown territory and out-numbered but they had better weapons and better training. My father took one of the key rivers and built a bridge over it. One suitable for cavalry. It still stands today. It was a strong position and an open invitation for the karl to come and attack it. Then an early winter came. It was exactly what the karl wanted. All of the commanders were cut off from each other. The karl crossed the frozen river and had Cryax surrounded. The governor’s army wasn’t going to last the winter. My father was closest. He sent skirmish parties out to draw the karl away but the karl wouldn’t budge. If my father stayed where he was, he could’ve lured the karl to him in the spring and would’ve won but Cryax and many of the other commanders would’ve been killed. If he abandoned his position to fight the karl, the karl could’ve crossed the frozen river and escaped. If my father split his army up to cover both sides of the river, the karl could’ve taken on the weaker force, moved to claim the bridge, and would’ve killed everyone stationed in the fort my father had built to watch the river.” She took a deep breath, one that I thought meant it was the end of the story.
