Did Adravan make our forward camp visible to thieves on purpose? Is this a test?
Azima stood by Adravan’s side; she gripped her own captive, whispering things into his ear. She caught Damien’s eye and beamed; her skin was as white as the death masks the people of Nom Ganald tied to their dead, but her irises glinted like amethysts, meaning she had some Phadrosi blood in her. Her long hair, tied into twin braids, shone with a similar metallic violet—Damien had never seen hair that colour before.
‘Stay still, low-blood scum,’ Brother Sateo spat. He struggled to rein his captive in; though he moved fast and hit hard, Sateo lacked the confidence to wield his strength properly. His voice cracked when he shouted commands, and his was the last thief to be cowed. Like all bullies, Brother Sateo yielded when challenged—Damien was surprised each day he remained with the disciples.
The captive struggled and almost broke free of Sateo’s grip; the brother struck the thief with the pommel of his knife. The thief fell limp, a brown stain blooming on the sack on his head.
Sister Caerith, however, had none of Sateo’s shortcomings; she kept her marigold-coloured hair in a tight braid and always stood tall and proud. She was Adravan’s favoured pupil and followed his every word and carried out each order to the letter.
She held the brigands’ decoy woman, the one who had led Adravan’s weak-willed guards away with promises of her body. She didn’t struggle in Caerith’s hands.
‘With your blades, carry out Nyr’s justice,’ commanded Adravan. ‘As the Gods will it.’
‘As the Gods will it,’ the disciples chorused. Damien placed the flat of his sword against the thief’s throat. The man squealed and wet himself, his muffled voice pleading beneath the hood.
I want to see the fear in his eyes…
‘With your final words, will you renounce the wickedness of your ways?’ Adravan called.
The captives begged and whimpered.
Damien’s heart thumped.
…as the realisation hits him…
Adravan nodded—and the Nyr-az-Telun carried out the Death God’s justice.
Damien’s captive slumped to the ground. Damien yanked the dying man’s hood away and spun him onto his back. He watched as the man writhed in the dirt, blood pooling around the fingers clutching around his throat.
Damien sensed Azima’s heartbeat rising alongside his own.
He kept watching, until the light in the dying man’s eyes dimmed.
For days, Damien confronted these memories over and over, alone in the seclusion of the Solacewood.
Do you truly believe the past will hold answers, ‘Damien’?
He meditated and replayed the moment he first looked upon Cleric Adravan—he analysed every word, every deed the Nyr-az-Telun performed. He forced himself to recount his growing desire of Azima—of how she made him feel, how she made him shed his own shame. How she made him believe he was capable of love.
Each night, he woke screaming—confronting these memories had birthed nightmares of the killings Adravan had commanded of him.
No, not nightmares—you’re not supposed to enjoy nightmares…
The process drained Damien, yet he was still no closer to pin-pointing the moment Adravan had transformed him into a living weapon. He grew more and more desperate, like an addict scrambling for a fix that would never come.
A lashing wind scythed through the night air. Sweat soaked Damien’s skin and the mourning music of the Solacewood whispered in his ears, mocking, judging.
It’s this place… The place it used to be… It should have burned down with the rest, with the memory of what we did. Adravan, Caerith, Sateo… And Azima…
‘Azima had to die,’ Damien whispered.
‘Is that what you tell yourself, fire-born?’
The woman’s voice shattered the stillness.
Damien spun onto the floor, reaching out for a knife—
‘Your weapons are mine—knives, swords, and gun.’
Damien knew the voice as well as his own, yet it couldn’t be her. A dream. It has to be.
But Azima resolved from the shadows, her porcelain skin curling with scar tissue. ‘Firearms, Damien?’ Her voice tinkled like a bell. ‘You were once above such vulgarity.’
She wore dark robes and dulled, light armour, near identical to the garb Adravan had had them wear. Her belt displayed throwing knives and smoke bombs, and on her back—
‘Is a light, one-handed nyrtalis-ungula sword—“death-talon”. I can see your mind working, fire-born.’
Damien clenched his fist. ‘Fieri does not—’
‘Does not mean “fire-born”.’ Azima giggled. ‘How we settle into the same old dance. Tell me, how many times have you read Auferustrina since I last saw you?’
They circled one another in the confines of Damien’s bedroom. Questions rose and fell in his throat. ‘You could’ve killed me in my sleep.’
Azima cocked her head and remained silent.
Have it your way.
Damien struck before she had time to draw her sword; she blocked his flurry of punches with ease, parried and deflected like he was an amateur brawler.
Her knuckles bit into his chin and sent him reeling.
Damien spat blood and maintained his assault—he parried a punch, twisted Azima’s arm and threw her to the floor. He brought his fist down hard to her throat—at the last second, she slipped away and swept Damien’s legs away and stomped on his face.
Copper flooded his mouth.
Azima walked away. ‘Pathetic.’
He sprang to his feet as two throwing knives spun through the air. He twisted, a blade grazing his thigh and the other sticking into the wall behind him.
He pulled it from the wood and darted to his opponent—Azima drew her sword. She struck with lightning quickness, a lethal silver blur; Damien recoiled, Azima rending the air around him.
Damien leapt away and whipped a dirty shirt from a basket and wrapped it around his fist, punching Azima’s blade away and kicking her to the floor.
She screamed in pain, a melody as sweet as a note from Musa’s harp.
He kicked her sword away. ‘I do not wish to kill you, Azima, but—’
And then he sensed it.
Another heartbeat, coming from outside.
A child’s.
Azima giggled.
Damien burst into the cold wilderness.
Zofia. The blacksmith’s daughter.
Gripped in a fever dream, Zofia lay in the snow like a discarded rag doll. Her brown hair streaked across her sweat-glistened face, and low moans escaped from her. Her heart beat in slow, heavy thumps.
‘What have you done to her?’
Azima’s feet didn’t crunch in the snow. ‘Musa’s Bane.’
Damien’s wounds burned more, and his limbs turned to stone. Musa’s Bane—a dysphoric narcotic derived from temetum insidiae, similar to scuzz.
But instead of offering users a fleeting, profound sense of euphoria, Musa’s Bane plunged the user into an hours-long stupor of relentless misery—and remained every bit as addictive as scuzz.
Used in small doses in a child, the effects would be subtle—but as the host matured, the need for further doses would grow more acute. And there is no cure, save for that which comes to all life.
Damien lifted the girl and brought her inside, Azima hovering behind him.
‘Kill her, Damien, and you’ll end her suffering. Allow her to live, and you’ll condemn her to a life of abject misery.’
Damien’s fingers trembled as he set Zofia down. ‘How could you do this to a child? She’s innocent.’
‘There is no such thing as innocence—you know this.’
‘Why not kill me and be done with it? This revenge is—’
‘Revenge?’ Azima hacked laughter. ‘I do this not for revenge, Damien—I do it because I still love you.’
Damien backed away from her, dizzy, sweating. ‘This is not what love looks like. You cannot love me, just as I can
not love you—Adravan stamped out what humanity we had.’
Azima shook her head. ‘You believe we made you what you are?’
‘Adravan turned me into a monster,’ said Damien. ‘He did it to all of us.’
‘You speak as though you hate him.’ Azima glided closer to him. ‘How quickly you forget the oaths you were so keen to swear, the promises you were so keen to make.’
‘Lies.’
She placed a hand on Damien’s shoulder. ‘You’re a killer, Damien—an artist.’
‘I will not murder this child.’
‘I am handing her death to you. End her suffering. Kill her without troubling your conscience.’
Damien batted Azima’s hand away. ‘You robbed a child of her life. Why?’
Her eyes narrowed, the purple glint within them glowing. ‘Because you need to be brought back into the fold. You deny yourself the gifts you possess.’
‘A curse.’
‘Gifts.’
Damien grabbed Azima and slammed her hard against the wall.
‘There it is,’ she whispered. ‘Your anger. I remember it well. You’ll need it in the wars to come.’
‘You should’ve died in this place, along with Adravan.’
Azima’s head tilted to the side. ‘Something kept me alive, Damien—long after thirst and hunger should’ve ended me. Hate—hate kept my heart beating, gave me the strength to crawl from under the debris.’
‘Hate against me. So why am I alive?’
‘It took me a long while to reconcile what you did, fire-born. But I had an epiphany. You killed Adravan and renounced the Nyr-az-Telun for a reason.’ Her index finger trailed down Damien’s chest. ‘We held you back. And yours is a talent the world needs. At first I believed hate fuelled you, too—hate for your father. But that day by the shrine… The blackness we each witnessed that day—it infected us. Even Adravan feared it. But you… You feared nothing.’
‘Parlour tricks. He drugged Ulden, the altar he touched—’
‘Nyr claimed Ulden. Her darkness stared into him—but you were the only one who stared back. Adravan believed Nyr spoke to you that day. Tell me, is it true? Do you have the voice of the Death God in you?’
Damien backed away. ‘You’re delusional. A fanatic.’
‘You’ve denied yourself for too long.’ Azima glanced to Zofia. ‘Use the gift I’ve given you. Reawaken your bloodlust, be the weapon the Gods meant you to be.’
Damien’s heart pounded. ‘Get out. Get out of this place.’
‘She’ll live a life of misery.’
Damien knelt by Zofia. ‘I’ll find a cure.’
‘Only I have the cure.’ Azima’s lips curved into a bitter smile. ‘And you’ll never find it.’
What? ‘Then why bother—’
Azima’s heart spiked—and, too late, Damien caught the glimmer of the knife in her hand.
‘Your father sends his regards.’ Azima drew the knife across her throat.
Damien pounced, used every ounce of strength to cross the room in time.
Arcs of blood spurted from the wound, and—eyes still pinned on Damien—she slumped to the floor.
Damien left Azima’s body for the wolves.
Inside, Zofia moaned, slipping in and out of consciousness. ‘I… don’t feel well, Papa.’
‘I know.’ Damien’s fingers wrapped around a vial containing a tincture he’d intended on using himself, if the temptation to kill proved too great. ‘I know.’
‘I had dreams, Papa… A shadow monster took me…’
‘Hush, child. It’s just a dream.’
‘I… I can’t see, Papa.’ The girl trembled. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I… have a tonic for you. It will help you sleep, Zofia.’
‘I dreamt of Mama… dreamt of the night she went away. She reached her hands out, but it… it wasn’t her…’
‘Hush, child.’
Zofia’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t want to sleep, Papa.’
Damien’s hands trembled, and when he spoke, his own voice strained from the lies. ‘Did you know it’s almost Wintercast? You’d like to see Mother Snowfrost, yes? This will make you strong.’
‘You’re crying, Papa.’
Sweat slicked Damien’s palms. ‘Happy tears, because I know this will make you better.’ He tipped the vial to Zofia’s lips. ‘I promise.’
Zofia’s eyes glistened and roamed over him. His hand froze.
No.
Damien screamed, and hurled the vial against the wall, smashing it.
‘Open up!’ Damien called. He carried Zofia in his arms. She weighed nothing. ‘Open!’
Ruder, Zofia’s father, appeared in the doorway, bleary-eyed, sleep still clinging to him. ‘Fieri, why in Gods… Zofia?’
Damien stormed inside. ‘Get chamomile and lemon balm. She’ll need someone to watch over her twenty-four hours a day.’
‘What’s wrong with her? What have you done?’
Damien set Zofia down onto a battered couch.
Ruder flung himself over and cradled his daughter in rough, calloused hands, thumbing sweat away from her forehead. ‘Zofia… What have the Gods willed? What happened, Fieri?’
Damien struggled to explain. ‘She’ll beg for Musa’s Bane—give her none.’
The expression on Ruder’s face told Damien he knew of the narcotic.
‘You did this?’
‘No.’
Yes.
Damien turned. ‘I’ll find a cure.’
‘Fieri!’
Damien left without meeting Ruder’s eyes.
Damien’s cabin burned, as it should have with the rest of Adravan’s legacy. He sat close to the fire; its flames did nothing to warm him.
I should never have returned here.
He watched the fire dance in the breeze. A column of smoke reached up to the moon, ready to yank it from the sky and smother it.
Damien would return to Hawthorn Gnarl with a cure. He’d make it right, reverse the horror Azima had inflicted. If the Gods existed, then she’d burn in the deepest hell, alongside Adravan.
‘You believe we made you what you are?’
Azima’s question gnawed at him.
‘Your father sends his regards.’
No-one wastes their last words on a lie—not even Azima.
Damien stood. The wails of the Solacewood urged him to stay and die and water its soil with his blood.
Perhaps one day I will. But not before I find the truth.
CHAPTER NINE
‘The Gods’ll see us all right,’ Morton muttered.
Qitarah was locked in the cell opposite to his, sitting still and saying nothing.
Couressa’s men shared a cell with him, and they weren’t much better.
‘The Wanderer hasn’t let me down yet, we’ll be fine.’ Morton’s fingers drummed his knees. Silence made him nervous. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Qitarah fixed Morton with a wicked glare. ‘Tell that to Darron and Schaefer.’
That stung, but not much. Danger’s part of the job.
Qitarah’s accent and dark skin reminded Morton of the nuns he’d once helped in Nom Ganald—that job cost more than it was worth, too, but if wasn’t for the Fayth of the Indecim, then what state would the world be in?
He placed Qitarah at around forty, a good few years younger than him; her perfect teeth gleamed like a mantle of untouched snow. Like Morton, she’d been shorn of her Stormrider gear, left to sit in the serving staff’s slacks.
Morton rested against a cold, smooth wall. The cramped, damped brig of the Queen of the North wasn’t the worst he’d been in, but it was close.
He balled and flexed his fingers, still feeling the tremors from firing his craft’s guns. It took longer and longer before the shaking settled, these days.
More and more, Morton found himself a stranger to the world changing around him. He didn’t much like the way it was going—firearms were easier to come by than penny sweets, it was getting harder for a man to make d
ecent coin, and the Indecim’s words were being bent to fit messages they weren’t intended for. Where did all that leave a man like him? Where was his place? Where would he go when he was too old to fly? Would he die in the cockpit, leaving nothing behind?
Gods, he needed a distraction. ‘Some bit of flying out there, Qitarah.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Where’d you learn?’
‘Around.’
‘Right.’ No gaming, no chat. Am I to die of boredom before the pirates get a chance to kill me?
Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes threatened to turn into hours.
‘Nice flying for sure, Qitarah. But if you don’t mind me saying—’
The curve of a smile sharpened on Qitarah’s lips. ‘Ah, there it is—the part where the wise man gives the simple woman advice on something she’s expert on.’ The Ganaldi accent sweetened Qitarah’s words but didn’t blunt the bite from them. ‘If you want a way into a woman’s nethers, you’ll have to try harder than that.’
Morton’s mouth hung open. ‘Uh, no offense meant.’
He didn’t speak for a while after that. He hated silence; it got him thinking too much. Better to live in the moment—leave the quiet reflection for the poets.
‘When we get outta this, Qitarah—’
‘Would you please be quiet?’ Fabian’s voice screeched like a coping saw rasping across the strings of a violin. He tended to his friend, the old boy with the slash across his face.
‘Just tryin’ to keep optimistic.’
Morton sat on the edge of his bed. The metal squealed, and silence filled the room like igneus filled to the brim of a Phantom’s fuel tank.
He needed to be surrounded by noise, action, life. It was the only way to tune the negative stuff out. Sure, he’d flown skirmishes and lost before, but he’d never felt responsible. That was the benefit of mercenary work—you fought for someone else, so when you lost, it wasn’t really you who lost.
But this was different—the attack on the Queen had bruised his pride. Designed the flight plan and security myself, and still those buggers unravelled us.
And that meant the dead were his responsibility.
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