Along the Razor's Edge (The War Eternal Book 1)

by Rob J. Hayes

  The art of Kinemancy is generating invisible waves of force. Some people believe it to be moving things with the Sourcerer's mind. They are ignorant idiots. I can throw a psychokinetic blast at a wall, but it requires me to throw the blast at the wall. The more experienced, more skilled Kinemancers can hold the wave of force. They are able to pick up and hold things, generate a constant push. Josef was one of those skilled Kinemancers even so early in our training. He excelled at generating pushes of varying strength. Some felt like little more than a strong breeze, some felt like being crushed by the weight of the world. I have never been so skilled even with a lifetime of practice behind me.

  The Kinemancy tutors pulled Josef aside at the end of our practice. The rest of us were dismissed. I would have been wise to go about my business, maybe find some food or continue my book studies, maybe even find a quiet space for some much-needed sleep. We were worked hard at the academy, even at eight years old I was rarely afforded more than five hours sleep a day. But I didn't like to leave without Josef. My curiosity may also have had something to do with it. I wanted to know what was being said to him. I wanted to creep closer and listen.

  There have been a few times in my life when I wish I was attuned to Vibromancy. With it, a Sourcerer can eavesdrop from a mile away or make sounds carry, to appear as though they have come from somewhere else. It is even possible to create a blanket of silence over an area, or amplify a whisper to a roar. But Vibromancy is not an attunement I can boast of, and even those who do often find themselves going deaf or being driven mad by the noises they work with. Poor Barrow Laney was one of those and I wouldn't wish what happened to that poor sod on anyone. So, I waited while Josef argued, listening to the sharp words, watching the thrown gestures.

  When finally, Josef was dismissed he was furious. An angry ten-year-old may look comical to an adult, but to an eight-year-old, Josef looked terrifying. I had never seen my best friend so disgruntled. He stormed past me and I followed along, hurrying to catch up with his longer strides. I remember following in silence for a while, not wanting to anger him further, but eventually my curiosity won out.

  The tutors had told Josef he was ready to advance past our basic training. They wanted him to move up a class, to train alongside older students. Josef's argument was that he refused to leave me behind, and the tutors had told him I was holding him back. They ordered him into the higher class. He still didn't go. Josef continued to attend the same class as myself and eventually the tutors relented. He may never have had my drive to be stronger, but Josef more than made up for it with a stubborn streak wider than Aranaen gulf.

  The thing I remember most is how fucking guilty I felt over the whole thing. As if it was somehow my fault. That the tutors believed I was holding my best friend back from greatness, was a revelation that stuck with me for many years. Maybe it was his friendship with me that quashed his drive to be better. Maybe Josef could have been the Sourcerer the tutors wanted him to be. The Sourcerer the Orran empire needed him to be. Or maybe he just didn't have the fight in him to excel. All he really wanted was a quiet life away from hardship. But that seemed to be the one thing life refused to hand him.

  By the time I returned to my little home cavern my mind was, for lack of any better term, blurry. Between the exhaustion, the pain, and the rumbling pit that my stomach had become, I was a sorry state as I limped in, still clutching at my ribs. I hadn't found time to wash Prig's blood off my right hand, and my cuts and scrapes were scabbed over with blood and grime. Despite it all, I was not defeated. The overseer might have crushed my hopes of rescue, but Tamura had given me a far greater hope in return. The possibility of escape.

  Most of my team were asleep, Hardt included, but Isen was missing. Josef watched me enter and tried to stand, before collapsing back against the far wall, clutching at his chest. I wondered if he, too, had cracked a rib. The pain certainly made standing difficult.

  I limped onward and Josef struggled to his feet, this time without collapsing. His wounds looked like they'd been tended to; Hardt's work, I didn't doubt. That man should have been a surgeon, but men as big as Hardt are always taught to fight before they are taught to heal. I think he has his father to thank for both skills, not that Hardt would ever thank his father for anything.

  As I drew close, Josef lurched forward and wrapped his arms around me. I'm not sure which of us that embrace hurt more. Two peas in a pod of agony. Despite the pain I leaned into him, and for the first time in so long, I relaxed a little. Josef always had a way of calming me, making me feel loved and protected. I hope I provided the same for him. Before I could stop myself, a sob broke free and suddenly I was crying into his shoulder. My legs finally gave out and we sank down to the floor together.

  Time is a strange thing, even master Chronomancers agree on that. It flows ever forward, and though its rate never truly changes, our perception of it can make a second last an hour, or a day pass in the blink of an eye. I don't know how long I spent collapsed against Josef, only that I was brought out of that strange trance by Isen.

  Hardt was awake, a bowl of water in hand, and Isen had a small clay pot. It was a healing balm made from a moss that grew deep underground. Those who fought in the arena were given a single pot after each fight, as long as they survived the fight. And Isen was giving the balm to me. I'm not so proud I didn't take it, and it's probably a good job that I did. My injuries were quite severe and not a one of them had been looked at.

  Isen never spoke of his outburst earlier that day. He'd called me a stupid little girl and at the time he meant it. But as quick as Isen could be to anger, he was just as quick to forget, especially when Hardt was there to talk some sense into him. Or knock some sense into him, when the talking failed. I think I envied him for that. I've never been able to forget my anger, only feed the flames until they have burned everything else away and left me too charred and raw to care anymore. Perhaps if I had been a bit more like Isen I would have more friends and fewer enemies. But I am who I am and fuck trying to pretend otherwise.

  "You're wheezing pretty bad," Hardt said, even as Josef pulled away from me and took the bowl of water.

  I nodded. "Hurts to breathe."

  "Sounds like both of you cracked a rib," Hardt said.

  "Prig was kind enough to crack it for me," I said with a grin at them, despite the left side of my face being swollen and ablaze with agony. "He won't be doing that again, the arsehole."

  "Which side?" Josef dipped a wad of cloth into the water and started wiping at the gash on my face. The cloth came away brown and red. I think perhaps if I'd had the wound seen to earlier, it wouldn't have left such an obvious scar. Now, it's a jagged line of puckered flesh running from the corner of my mouth, almost to my ear. A reminder of the hell that forged me into who I am. I wear it with a savage pride. That scar is a part of me, a symbol of what I went through. It shows that no fucker can break me no matter how hard they try.

  "Right side," I said.

  Josef chuckled and winced, tapping his left side.

  Hardt shook his head. "The sludge-licker gave you matching injuries," he said. "How kind. Lift your top up. I'll need to wrap it."

  It hurt a lot to lift my rags up, but I managed, stopping at my breasts. It would have been easier just to remove my filth-encrusted shirt, I know, but I didn't want Isen to see my breasts, not while they were coated in dust, and sweat, and grime. I turned red at the thought, no matter how fucking foolish that was. No one seemed to notice, or maybe they were just too polite to say anything. Hardt set about wrapping bandages around my chest and I closed my eyes against the pain.

  Josef and Hardt continued to tend to my injuries while Isen paced. The others in the cavern did their best not to watch, but I was nearly half-naked, and some of them probably hadn't seen tits in years.

  "You stabbed him in the neck," Isen said as he paced. "That won't stop Prig. It'll probably just make him worse. He'll fucking kill you, Eska."

  "I made a deal with Deko," I said, m
y voice croaking out between swollen lips. "Our fat fuck of a foreman won't touch me, so long as I'm useful."

  "Useful doing what?" There was an edge to Josef's voice.

  "Nothing like that." I punched at his arm but I lacked the energy and missed. "Information about..." Hardt and Isen were watching, listening. They still didn't know I was a Sourcerer, and I found I no longer cared. "About any Other World creatures they find down here."

  "You told him?" Josef asked. I was acutely aware that he was still cleaning out an open wound on my face.

  "He already fucking knew," I said with a sigh.

  "Knew what?" Isen asked.

  Keeping secrets is tiring work and I was already exhausted. Deko and his captains knew. Prig knew. I no longer saw any reason to hide it, especially not from my allies.

  "We're not just soldiers," I said, ignoring Josef's attempt to silence me. "We are... were Sourcerers for the Orran empire."

  "Goat-shit," Isen swore. "Guess I owe you my next heel of bread." Hardt just grinned.

  "You knew?" I felt relieved at telling them. Secrets aren't just tiring, they weigh heavily on a person's soul. I might have had no secrets from Josef, but together we held so many, I was amazed we didn't sink into the earth. Maybe we had. Maybe that is what the Pit was, a place for those with too many secrets.

  "I suspected." Hardt said as he finished wrapping my ribs and took the balm from Isen. "Soldiers don't get sent to the Pit. Takes a real crime to end up here."

  "You made a deal with a Djinn." There was a sullenness to Josef's voice, one I hadn't heard since the time I almost got us both killed back at the academy.

  "Deko isn't that bad," Isen argued. "As long as you stay on his good side and don't tilt the cart. It's his captains you want to watch out for."

  I rubbed at my neck. My voice was still hoarse and the flesh was bruised from where Horralain had strangled me. I wanted to pay the bastard back for that. Unfortunately, that was only the first time the giant slug-sniffer almost killed me.

  "I heard about that," Hardt said, peeling my hand away from my neck to look at the bruising. By the way he sucked at his teeth I guessed it didn't look good. "Everyone's talking about it. How a lone scab, a young woman, walked into the middle of the Hill and walked out again. I knew it would be you. No one else would have the balls."

  I have always found it strange that people equate having testicles with courage. Threatening a man's balls is often the fastest way to make him cower.

  "It was the only choice I had left," I said, wincing as Hardt rubbed the balm on my cheek. It is fairly hard to talk when your face is on fire, and mine certainly felt like it was bloody-well burning at the time. "I had to get that arse-sucking fuck, Prig, off my back somehow."

  "You should have come to me," Josef said. "We could have figured something else out. Together. Some way that doesn't put you in Deko's eyesight."

  I wanted to argue, to tell Josef that together or apart, Deko was the only choice I had. Unfortunately, Hardt chose that moment to push at the wound on my face, trying to force the parted skin closer together. I clenched my jaw and a whine squeezed out from between my swollen lips.

  "This is going to hurt," Hardt said.

  My eyes were screwed shut against the pain already and I could feel tears welling again. Having angry flesh stitched closed while awake is a precious sort of agony. I'd like to say I endured it with a fierce stoicism, I certainly remember it that way. I have been reliably informed by Hardt that my memory is shit. Apparently, I threatened to kill his entire family. And when he told me Isen was the only family he had left, I threatened to give him a puppy, wait until he'd formed a connection, then fucking drown it. I think I prefer my own recollection.

  When it was done, Hardt handed me a fresh bowl of water and told me to drink. I didn't realise just how thirsty I was until I started, and then he had to stop me from draining the bowl in one go. Apparently, it's important to sip, though I struggled to find the patience. It has never been one of my virtues. I'm much more of a wade in and deal with whatever consequences dare to rear their head type of person.

  As soon as I was feeling up to it, I pulled Josef further into the cavern with me. Hardt and Isen shared a look, then went back to their own pallets. We all knew it would only be a matter of a few hours before Prig arrived to order us to dig our day away again. No one ever asked me why I stabbed Prig. I have thought about it many times over the years. It was not his treatment of Isen or even the scar he gave me. It was for what he did to Josef. I would have stabbed a hundred Prigs a hundred times, and taken the beatings that followed, to protect Josef. I honestly believed he would do the same for me. I have been wrong many times in my life.

  "I think I have a way out of here," I lowered my voice so no one else in the cavern could hear, but I couldn't hide the excitement. Together there was nothing Josef and I couldn't do.

  "The overseer made his offer?" Josef asked.

  "No," I said. "Well, yes. But..." I paused. It took a moment for Josef's words to really sink in, and when they did they brought denial with them. I couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it. Hope is an insidious disease, and denial is one of the symptoms. I saw an eager look on his face. I saw hope. The same hope I had held for rescue before the overseer crushed it. "How did you know about that?"

  "Because he offered it to me as well," Josef said.

  "You turned him down?"

  Josef shook his head. "He didn't want me alone," he said. "He told me either we both agreed or we both stayed here. That you had to choose to be free. That you had to…"

  "To break?" I spat. Just like a horse, you had to break its spirit before it could be ridden. I had to have my spirit broken before I could be set free. Again, I will point out the overseer knew his business. If he had used Josef against me, if I had known my friend had given up, it would only have galvanised my resistance. It did.

  "But it doesn't matter now," Josef said. "We're getting out." I could hear the happiness in his voice, the relief. The almost hysterical hope. Then I crushed it just as the overseer had done to me.

  "I turned the fucker down, Josef." My words settled between us like a death knell.

  There are times in my life where I have looked upon those I love, searched their faces for the person I know, and realised I didn't recognise them at all. That was the way Josef looked at me then, as though he still saw me as the young girl I had been when we arrived at the Orran Academy, and only at that moment, was he realising I had changed. That young girl was dead, murdered the moment Josef betrayed me and forced me to surrender. Murdered by him! I was now someone else. I was what the Pit had made me, or was making me into. It hadn't finished yet. There was yet more it could do to me. More it could take from me.

  "Why?" There was hurt in his voice.

  "The cost was too high, Josef," I said. "We can't serve the Terrelans."

  "Why not?"

  "Because we're fucking Orrans," I hissed at him.

  Josef laughed then, a harsh sound that quickly turned to pain as he clutched at his ribs. "There are no Orrans anymore, Eska. We're all Terrelans now."

  "I'm fucking-well not."

  "Yes, you are," he snapped. "Even if the Orran Emperor was still alive..."

  "You knew?" I couldn't fathom how Josef had known of the emperor's death and not told me. How had he hidden something so important from me? Why had he kept it a secret? But the truth was obvious. Because the overseer had told him to. He wanted to save that bit of information to break me when I was at my lowest. And Josef had fucking helped him.

  Josef paused. I watched him close his eyes and clench his jaw. I think this was the angriest I had ever seen him, even more than when the bitch-whore put a hole in my side. I pulled back from that anger. I was scared. It was a side of Josef I had so rarely seen before.

  "It doesn't matter," he said eventually, his voice sharp. "Even if he were still alive, or any of the Orrans. Their empire is gone. It's all the Terrelan Empire now. And what did we ever o
we the Orrans anyway? They kidnapped us from our families. Put us through... It was torture. What we went through at the academy was torture, Eska. Then, when they decided it was time, they made us kill for them."

  I saw the anger on Josef's face fade away, and what it left behind was even worse. Guilt. I never really thought about the men and women we killed in battle. It was war. People died on both sides and no fucker emerged from the slaughter clean. I also hadn't realised how heavily it weighed on Josef. Unfortunately for us both, I was angry and I have never made the wisest of choices while angry.

  "You knew. And you didn't tell me." There was scorn in my voice. I felt betrayed, and with good reason. I still don't know if Josef even realised it, but he had betrayed me again. Just as he had on the tower of Fort Vernan. Just thinking about it makes me angry all over again. There're so many years between then and now. So many miles travelled, so many friendships made and broken. So many loved ones lost. I find I still cannot forgive him.

  "That's not really the point, Eska..." he started.

  "How long have you been whispering the overseer's words in my ear, Josef?" I couldn't keep the anger from my voice. Nor did I care to. "How fucking long have you been telling him how to get to me?"

  "Don't you want to get out of here, Eska?" Josef asked, tears in his eyes. "What does it matter who we're working for? At least the Terrelans won't be making us murder people."

  It took some effort, and the help of the cavern wall, to pull myself back to my feet. Every part of my body protested at the movement, and I could see myself trembling, though whether that was from the exhaustion or the rage, I couldn't tell. Josef just stared up at me, his dark brown eyes wide and pleading. That look almost stopped me. Almost. I was so close to collapsing and curling up next to him. Maybe if I had forgotten my anger just for that night, it wouldn't have festered within me. Maybe I wouldn't have widened the rift forming between us. But that isn't me. I never let things go.