by Eddie Han
The duke sat back in his seat. He folded his arms and cocked his head. “You don’t think this Ancile, which you’ve described in great detail, sitting there on our border, poses any threat to our sovereignty?”
“Of course it does.”
“You’ve no stomach to fight, then?”
“The question is not what is in my stomach,” the general’s voice grew louder as he continued, “but whether or not an open war is what the king would have wanted.”
“The king is dead. I am regent until the child returns. All I want to know is if I take a course of action that leads us to war, will you fight for us?”
Arun’s eyes lit up, brighter than the fire. Through clenched teeth he replied, “With all due respect, Your Highness, I was Bjorn of the Crimson Knights while you were still a hairless pup! Never again will you question my loyalty to the throne. Regardless of who sits on it, I would die for my kingdom.”
The duke smiled. “That’s all I wanted to hear.” Both he and Eli then rose from their seats. “Come with us.”
“Where? What’s this all about?”
“Our answer to the Ancile. Bring your coat.”
The three men shared a carriage into a barren field behind Castle Verona, heavily guarded by a series of checkpoints manned with the Cipher’s own security detail. They stopped just short of a steep hill and hiked to its icy precipice overlooking Brakkar Gorge. Welding sparks flew like confetti below, the finishing touches of a war machine in assembly. Another completed just beyond.
“Have you gone mad? You’re building ships in a canyon.”
“Skyships, General,” Eli replied. “A galleon of steel and oak designed to sail the clouds. It’s amazing what a balloon, some propellers, and wing flaps can do. That’s the prototype there.”
The general wasn’t sure he had understood Eli correctly. “The ship, it flies?” he asked.
“It flies.”
There was a moment of pause—an appreciation for the fact that the world would never be the same again.
“Incredible. How many?”
“Just the two there for now. But we plan to have a fleet of twelve ready for the Harvest Festival.”
“And the benefactor knows about this?”
“It was his idea,” Eli replied. “His blueprints.”
They watched as the operational prototype was being fitted with artilleries and munitions.
“Merrick, what exactly do you know about this benefactor?” asked Arun, his eyes never leaving the skyship.
“His name is Magog Siberion,” the duke replied. “A Veshalic national who believes the whole of Groveland should be united under the crown, as it was in the days of old.”
“Why should a Silven care what becomes of Groveland?”
“He doesn’t. He cares what becomes of the Republic. Before he founded the Machina Investment Group, he was a Red Dragon in the Reznevayok Special Operations Command in the Liberation Army of Veshale. He is no friend of the Republic.”
“An ‘enemy of my enemy.’ But do you trust him?
Duke Thalian faced Arun. “I have seen him without his mask. He wears it to conceal a grotesque bloodstain in the shape of a handprint tattooed across his face. Not many are privy to that. And then, there’s this.” The duke held out his hand over the gorge. “So yes, Arun. I trust him.”
The general nodded, eyes still glazed with wonder. Then he softly said, “This will change everything, Merrick. Forever.”
CH 06
A NEW BEGINNING
Thirteen years had passed since Dale left for the Academy, seven since his graduation and subsequent enlistment, four since his commissioning, and three days since his resignation. At twenty-five years old, Dale’s military career had come to an abrupt end.
He had since learned to enjoy the simple pleasures of life—the scent of a bathed woman’s hair, a ballad on the oboe, a smoke in the cold, and not least of all, a long, quiet, train ride. He watched the world scroll past the windows, the canopies of trees mushrooming over the morning mist, the migration of buffalo across prairieland, the grass swaying in the wind, and wild horses under the moonlight. The world on the other side of the train window was a world unlike the one he’d known for the past thirteen years—a world full of tightly structured days and nights, of endless duties, of class after class. There were training camps, anxious patrols through dangerous trade routes. And death.
“Life,” Staff Sergeant Weylin had said while leading Dale’s company through a village they had just raided. “So frail and so goddamn meaningless. Pile ‘em up and burn ‘em!”
It was a world growing distant with each rhythmic rattle of steel on tracks. And Dale couldn’t be happier for it.
As a commissioned officer, Dale spent most of his tour in the south patrolling bandit trade routes and protecting Republic interests in Loreland; that is to say, protecting Republic-occupied natural resources on foreign soil from the Shaldean Riders. His first kill was a Shaldean, an Emmainite villager barely old enough to be considered a man.
In retaliation for a string of attacks on copper mines owned by Republic corporations, Dale’s unit had been sent in to a nearby village suspected of sheltering a Shaldean cell leader. While investigating his whereabouts, a mob of loyal Shaldean sympathizers attacked them with nothing more than daggers and farming tools. Dale’s unit suppressed the village uprising. Some were shot and the others scattered. The village was left with only a handful of frightened women and children.
Contrary to the expectations of those who knew him, and to his own expectations most of all, Dale excelled in the Academy environment. He didn’t enjoy the daily regimen of training, but he developed into a good soldier. His superiors took notice and before long, Dale was given broader areas of responsibility. Once in the field, he discovered that he flourished in the heat of a fight. Coming off the adrenaline highs, he quietly reveled in the courage he did not know he had. But there was no reveling in taking another’s life. Once he had shot the young Shaldean and sent him across that irreversible line, he discovered it became easier to send others. The act became easier, but the ease became unsettling.
“If it wasn’t them, it would’ve been us,” his fellow soldiers reasoned.
For Dale, it wasn’t so simple. Dale had always been content with ambiguity when it came to questions of faith and religion. In the midst of his duties as a soldier, to remain ambiguous grew increasingly uncomfortable. Despite a context in which killing was sanctioned, even justified, he couldn’t help but feel a growing, looming judgment from some cosmic judicial system that would one day summon him to settle accounts. The feeling, corroborated by his conscience, would not leave Dale alone. He began to question the Republic’s policies.
What rights, if any, did the Republic have on Emmainite land?
He began to question himself—who he had become.
Dale’s career in the Republican Guard ended the same year his father passed away. Stationed in a remote Loreland outpost along the Saracen, Dale was unable to attend the funeral. He mourned alone. And it was then that he decided he was going to resign.
Days before his decommissioning and scheduled departure, Darius visited him in Pharundelle.
“You’re making a mistake, Dale.”
“Maybe.”
“No, you are. After you’ve worked all these years, you’re just going to give up now?”
“I’m not giving up. I’m moving on.”
“To do what?”
Stuffing his duffle bag with what little possessions he had, Dale replied, “I’m going to take over Dad’s breaker.”
“Dad’s breaker? What the hell do you know about running a business?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Dad poured his life into that thing so we wouldn’t have to live like him. So we could have opportunities he didn’t have. You want to do something for him, make captain.”
“I don’t want to make captain and I’m not doing this for him. You make it sound like wanting to live
a quiet life is asking too much.”
“Not too much. Too little. A quiet life isn’t living, Dale. Life is about being a part of something greater than yourself. It’s about sacrifice.”
It was regurgitated propaganda straight from the Republican Guard’s cadet training. Dale knew it well. There was a time when he believed every word.
“Well, that’s not what I’m about. I’m not like you.”
In the early years at the Academy, Dale had begun to suspect that he and Darius were very different. After graduation, as he began to serve, the difference grew increasingly apparent. Dale knew that if he stayed with the Guard, it would be for different reasons than his older, more ambitious brother. When Dale began to grapple with the moral implications of his career, there was no doubt that he and Darius were destined to take divergent paths. He wasn’t a warrior. At least not in the way Darius seemed to embody it. A major at twenty-eight, Darius was the consummate soldier. He followed orders well. He was competent, dutiful, and a natural-born leader. And when he killed in the line of duty, he did not seem to give it a second thought.
“I know what this is about,” Darius tried. “I know it’s not easy, the things required of us.”
“You don’t need to coddle me. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Everything. This whole system. Us. The Republic.”
“What’re you talking about?”
Dale walked over to his inventory chest at the foot of his bunk, removed an old textbook and held it up. “You remember reading this in the Academy?” He tossed it on the cot beside Darius. “The Siños Uprising. You remember what happened? The massacre? Why it happened? That course was all about how we stopped them. But no one ever talks about how it started.”
“I know how it started. The mining corporations.”
“Meredian mining corporations. We started it. The Shaldea are no different from the Siños Nacional Movement. It’s just a different era, different people, different resources.”
“The Shaldea? You’re talking about the Shaldea? We’ve got a warmongering pretender to the throne rallying his army to the north, and you’re talking about sandworms?”
Dale realized there was no reasoning with Darius. He shook his head and started for the latrine. Darius followed.
“You know what your problem is? You’re a romantic. You have unreasonable expectations of life.”
Dale stopped, appalled by the accusation. “Wait, I’m a romantic?”
“At some point, you’re going to have to just accept it for what it is and stop living with these silly ideas of how you think it should be—”
“You’re the one talking about glory and sacrifice, and you’re calling me a romantic?”
“You’re not a kid anymore.”
Dale threw up his hands. “No shit.”
“Calm down.”
Nothing made Dale more upset than being told to calm down.
“I am calm!”
Trailing him into the latrine, Darius persisted. “You think working at the breaker will make you any happier?”
“Maybe.”
“It won’t. You know why? Because you’re the kind of guy who can’t be happy unless there’s something to be unhappy about.”
Dale scoffed and squared up to the toilet. “You going to watch me piss?”
When he had finished relieving himself, Darius was waiting back at the bunk.
“Look, you know I’m being transferred to the Ancile.”
“Yeah, I know. Congratulations.” Dale resumed packing.
“It’s only a matter of time before Bale invades. You know that too. The Ancile is going to be the front line.”
“Well, I’m not worried. That thing is supposed to be impenetrable.”
“My point exactly. It’s where you want to be when the shit starts flying. You should come with me, Dale. I can put in a word for you. It’s not too late.”
“Dare—”
“Just think about it, all right? This isn’t about protecting corporate interests. Duke Merrick Thalian is a real threat to our world. They invade, you can forget about Dad’s breaker and you can forget about your quiet little life. It’s up to you whether you’re going to do something about it or not. But you can’t just ignore it. So think about that before you get on that train. All right?”
“I’ve already thought about it.”
“Dale! Just think about it, for God’s sake!”
“All right! All right. Calm down.”
And Dale thought about it. He thought about it as he was debriefed and decommissioned in the days that followed. He thought about it on the Groveland Express, watching the world change outside his window, bound for Carnaval City. Bound for the quiet life.
CH 07
ON THE GROVELAND EXPRESS
On the second morning of the two-day trip from Pharundelle, the Groveland Express pulled into a small station in a rural village called Lumarion. A handful of passengers boarded. During the stop, Dale stepped off the train to stretch his legs. He snacked on some candied ginger that he had purchased from a local vendor and had a smoke before returning to his seat, content. With two-thirds of his journey to Carnaval City behind him, he looked forward to a few more hours to himself. The first few days back, he anticipated, would be busy with seeing people and sorting through the state of affairs at the breaker. There had been little solitude over the past seven years since the Academy, so he relished the time on the Express, alone with his thoughts. He sat back and thought of Sparrow.
During his first visit back to Carnaval City, three years into the Academy, Dale went to Azuretown looking for Sparrow. After a year of letters trickled back and forth, the sparse communication stopped. Dale had assumed he would find things as he’d left them. But Master T’varche’s forge had been sold to another smith, who had explained to him that Aleksander T’varche practically gave him the business and left the country. Dale went looking for Sparrow’s home, the yellow building into which Dale had never entered. Sparrow was not there. When he asked around, he learned that Sparrow’s mother had passed away under unfortunate circumstances not long after Dale had left for the Academy. No one had seen him since.
Dale’s thoughts of Sparrow were interrupted by the sight of a young woman, a cleric of the Benesanti, walking down the aisle looking at the seats and the ticket in her hand.
She was beautiful. The modest appearance required of a Holy Order acolyte did little to hide her simple beauty. Her short, espresso hair was cut in a unisex fashion. She wore a cleric’s habit in standard gray, marked with the red and white crest of the Benesanti on its shoulder. The unflattering dress and the haphazardly cut hair only highlighted her face—fair with blue-gray eyes, full lips, and high-arching eyebrows that gave her the uninviting weightiness of a full presence, concerned more with what she was doing than who she was.
She took a seat, four rows up, facing Dale. He could neither look away nor sit staring directly at her. He was like a man pained by the setting sun, the unapproachable brilliance, the beauty of what he could not touch, slowly and inevitably slipping away. After thirty minutes of stealing glances, Dale got up and walked to the back of the train in agitation.
The last time he’d felt like this was when he first set eyes on Johana Sagan, a nurse-in-training at an all-girls school near the Academy. She had chestnut hair and a kind face. Dale couldn’t stop obsessing over her. After months of misery, he had an opportunity to talk to her. Like any boy his age, he feared rejection. Still, he tried. And to his surprise, Johana reciprocated his interest. They began seeing each other as frequently as they could. But with each encounter, the enchantment began to peel away layer by layer until at last, there was no more depth to their notions of love into which they could fall. He realized then that it was never Johana with whom he had been smitten, but rather a meticulously constructed idol in his mind bearing her likeness—a far cry from Johana the real. Before graduation, Dale called off the relationsh
ip, vowing never to make the same mistake again. A vow he could hardly remember standing there in the back of the train.
Darius was right. Dale was a hopeless romantic. When he returned to his seat, he couldn’t help himself from thinking about what might be. His approach, her reaction. For the three remaining hours, this cleric was his singular focus. At one point, he took an unnecessary trip to the toilet in the next car so he could get a closer look. In the bathroom, Dale was disgusted with himself. He was determined to stop obsessing. Then he went right on obsessing until the train finally pulled into Carnaval City’s Central Station.
As the passengers began to collect their belongings, Dale knew it would likely be the last he’d see of her. If there were to be any chance of either realizing or dispelling what only existed in the realm of possibility, he would have to exercise some sort of bold initiative. When the doors opened, Dale was one of the first to stand. He slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and weaved his way up the aisle. To calm himself, Dale remembered, I’m a soldier, I’ve been in battles. I’ve killed people.
The cleric had her back to him, gathering her belongings—a small satchel and several books. He tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me.”
She turned to him with an inquiring look.
“Yes?”
“I…” Dale went blank.
When Dale said nothing, she quickly assumed he was trying to get by.
“Oh, sorry.”
With a “thank you,” Dale walked past her. He stepped off the train, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. Walking through the station, his cognitive capacity coming back to him, Dale ran through all the things he could have said. It was so plain to him. It seemed so simple. He thought of how different the last leg of the trip was from the quietness of the first. How easily life is disrupted. Dale thought he had better find a place for a drink.
CH 08
SELAH
The cleric emerged from the train after Dale. Alaric Linhelm, Marshal of the Vail Templar, was waiting to greet her on the platform.
