In less than an hour’s time on the streets of Ir-Caul, she’d found an impressive smooth-stone manor with banners of the Relothian lion hanging from the eaves on either side of a great porch. The stately mansion sat amidst several of equal grandeur, each similarly displaying a coat of arms, but flying their colors beneath the Relothian crest. Only this great house bore the single shield.
Her plan was simple.
She’d always believed that secrets were the only real power men had. But men were bad with that power, because they were bad at keeping secrets. Divulging hidden knowledge, she thought, made men feel superior to those who hadn’t secrets of their own. Relothian folk, she guessed, were no different. So, her plan was to steal her way into the company of the king’s family. And listen.
Checking the streets, Mira found an opportunity to slip unseen over the wall to the south of the house and drop quietly into the large enclosed gardens. To her surprise, she found the outbuildings and grounds of the city estate rather rustic: a woodblock for chopping wood, a chicken coop, an overgrown hedgerow garden. Amidst the oddly farmlike yard, a fountain statue and basin stood dry, its stony flesh patched with dead, blackened lichen.
Mira crept along the base of the manor, looking and listening for signs of movement. She’d nearly reached the rear entrance when the sound of footsteps approached. She scrambled to the chicken coop and got inside just before the rear manor doors were pulled wide. A man led a woman by the hand down a few stone steps and across the uneven lawn, directly toward her.
She whirled, quickly surveying the coop. Chickens clucked and stirred at her haste, chaff rising thick into the air from the flutter of fowl wings and her own shuffling steps. There was little room to hide, but she opted to duck in behind a wall of wood boxes where the chickens laid their eggs. If anyone came far enough inside the shed, she’d be in plain view. She’d just drawn her swords when the door opened again and the man and woman stepped inside. Then the door closed, leaving them all in the musty dimness.
Over the sound of clucking hens, the strangers began quietly to speak. Mira caught herself smiling at the sound of conspiratorial whispers offered in the company of chickens.
“Who are these strangers? What do they want with the king?” the man asked.
“Don’t panic. It’s ugly and makes you foolish,” the woman replied. She cleared her throat and sniffed. “They’re little more than messengers. Someone thinks a personal plea will succeed, where the regent’s request failed cycles ago. They’ll be leaving soon. The king is sufficiently convinced that his only duty is to his war with Nallan.”
“I think you’re overconfident,” the man said. “Why would they send a Far and a Sedagin? Her kind hasn’t been seen outside the shale in ages. They may have suspicions. Perhaps they know we’ve been filling the traveling army with loyalists.”
“Then they will test those suspicious and find them wanting. Or, these messengers will go missing, and the king’s attention will be drawn back to important matters. Are you prepared to make that so?”
The man didn’t reply, and began to pace the small coop. He cocked his head back slightly, and stared upward as he passed directly in front of Mira. She remained perfectly still in the shadows, ready. The man wore a tabard, richly embroidered with the Relothian lion, white on a red field. Chaff and a few feathers clung to his recently oiled boots. His wavy, golden hair touched his shoulders. He reached the wall, pivoted, and walked back, passing before Mira again.
“Already, the boy has spoken to the king a second time.” The man paused. “Relothian may listen. The Sedagin doesn’t have the practiced words of a politician. He’s crossed borders without a military escort. The personal risk will impress the king the more he thinks about it. But more than any of this, the lad bears an emblem no man should hold.”
“What emblem?” the woman asked.
In the quiet of the coop, the man spoke as if sharing an omen. “Draethmorte.”
Silence stretched for several moments. The feeling in the coop tightened. Even the birds seemed to quiet with the mention of the Quietgiven name.
“Are you sure?” the woman finally asked.
“The king has seen it. He confided this news to us at war council. He believes it speaks well of the regent’s chances at Convocation. He may join her if these messengers aren’t dealt with.” The man’s boot leather creaked as he shifted his stance. “Which is why I sent Delos to take care of the Sedagin, and bring the sigil to me.”
The woman made a soft, feminine sound of approval. “I should have more confidence in you,” she said. The sound of a kiss came and was lost in the noise of the clucking birds. “When you have this sigil, bring it to me. We may leverage it to hasten our trade.”
Another kiss, this one longer, louder. “The crown will dress your head nicely, but it’s your mind that I love.”
“It’s the seat beside the throne that you covet,” the man answered, and Mira heard the sound of his hands rustling through the folds of her dress. “But,” he added, “as long as your maiden box is mine…”
The woman made a seductive sound, in which Mira found more humor, mostly because of the place and company it kept—high romance had here in the stench and impertinence of eggbirds. Though some of her mirth grew from understanding that this was an affectation. The man’s hands hadn’t coaxed this sound from the woman, as he no doubt assumed. Any woman could hear the difference.
The man was a dolt. If these conspirators succeeded in displacing Relothian from the throne, this aspiring king would be dead as soon as his queen could devise the plot. She’d then ascend the throne herself.
But she left all that alone. It was the woman’s words that bothered her:… leverage it to hasten our trade.
“We need to consider what comes next,” the man said. “The lad is Sedagin. The Right Arm of the Promise won’t like hearing of his death. They’ll want answers.”
The woman laughed. “While you were planning his death, I asked Yenola to become acquainted with this boy. I’ve learned he’s not truly Sedagin. He bears their sword and glove, but they’re little more than gifts. And he’s taken more interest in my sister than in being a Recityv envoy to the king.”
The man made an appreciative sound deep in his throat. “Still, his Sedagin emblems will mean something to the king. As for the Far, her presence gives their entreaties credibility. She won’t be easy to kill.”
“But you’ll find a way, with both of them,” the woman said. “I have faith in you.”
Mira sat in the shadows of the coop and listened as the man and woman worked at each other like rutting pigs, until the sighs of climax faded beneath the sound of distressed chickens. Then, the coop door opened and shut, leaving her alone again with a choir of clucking eggbirds.
She sat a moment, reflecting on what she’d learned. This deception meant Ir-Caul, even all of Alon’Itol, had been compromised so deeply that it might be useless for Relothian to join a Convocation army.
When she thought it safe, she began to stand. Just then, the door opened again. Lighter, less confident steps shuffled slowly from one chicken box to the next. The delicate sound of eggshells clicking against one another rose as someone collected eggs into a basket.
Mira crouched, ready should this new stranger try to raise a call of alarm. When the old man shuffled around the wall of chicken boxes, he caught sight of her and stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t yell or try to run. He just stared, one hand holding a wicker basket, the other hand holding an egg. Mira thought for a moment that he might try to throw it at her. He didn’t. He just remained there, frozen in place.
Eventually she stood, the floorboard beneath her groaning slightly. The birds had quieted some, the coop mostly still. Sunlight fell through a few windows and the cracks where planks had stretched or yawed with time and weather. In the shafts of light, the chaff lazed.
Mira didn’t like the thought of needing to kill an old man. He would try to yell with his feeble voice, showing loyalt
y to his duplicitous masters, and she’d have to cut him down. Just an old man collecting eggs. Once more the feeling in the old chicken coop drew taut, but this time with nuances Mira hated to consider.
Then the man spoke, softly, meaningfully. “Don’t let them get away with it,” he said. He turned with his basket of eggs and left the coop with his shuffling steps. Sometime later, Mira followed, racing to find Sutter, taking with her the image and memory of the old man, whose entreaty had the sound of both hope and hopelessness.
* * *
Blinding light flooded the room. Sutter could see only a silhouette rushing in, a blade in each hand.
The figure went past him, swords descending in vicious arcs toward his attacker.
The glee in his assailant’s throat shifted to surprise, and one great arm brought around the heavy mace toward the sword-bearer that Sutter could now see was Mira.
She got her swords up in time to block the blow, but the force of it slammed her against the thick headboard. She quickly caught her balance, and thrust both her swords into the man’s throat. A strangled, gurgling sound bubbled up from the other’s gaping maw, as he sliced his own hand trying to remove Mira’s blades from his neck.
A moment later, Sutter’s attacker fell back onto the bed, his hands still clenched tightly: one around Mira’s sword, the other around the Draethmorte’s pendant.
Sutter and Mira stood, catching their breath, each massaging their own wounds.
When the large man on Sutter’s bed had taken his last breath, they shared a worried look in the light from the door. Sutter had only told one man of the pendant—the king. What did this mean?
Mira went and shut the door. When she returned, she didn’t light the bed table lamp, but sat on the edge of the bed. Sutter did the same, and took the sigil from the hand of the dead assassin. With his thumb and finger, he pinched the floating disk at the center of the charm, and spun the outer circle—it spun quickly, smoothly.
In the dark, they each whispered of the things they had discovered that day in the garrison city of Ir-Caul. Mira told him about Gear Master Mick. She also told him the things she’d heard in the king’s sister’s chicken coop. Sutter shared his conversation with Relothian on the rooftop of the castle, as well as everything about the orphanage and the children’s “walks” in new shoes.
He began to think he understood the real reason Vendanj had sent them here. But had the Sheason really thought that a rootdigger and a Far who was losing her inheritance could do anything about it? He couldn’t answer that. But he knew one thing: Tomorrow the king would answer the question of betraying Sutter’s confidence about the sigil.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Placing
In all of Suffering, the most difficult movement to sing may be The Placing. Being brought into a state of sympathy with the countless who were sent away into the Bourne, it’s hard to remain on this side of it.
—A customary reminder offered in memorial of Leiholan who succumb to the third movement of Suffering
When Braethen had raised the Blade of Seasons and said Remember, the air above the plaza had woven into a vision of the Placing. It had been meant as a reminder of how precarious the balance was between the Eastlands and the world beyond the Pall. It had carried them to the edge of history and shown them real events, shown them races driven into the Bourne.
But for him, it had been more real even than the sounds and smells seen by the throng on the plaza. Braethen … had gone there.
* * *
The darkness slowly receded, allowing light to bring the world into focus. Braethen squinted into the distance, the world a patchwork of grey and white under low, menacing clouds. Hilly tracts of land alternated between dimness and swathes of weak sun streaming from cloudbreaks. The smell of rain on dry ground rose, suggesting the dark clouds had stormed recently. And a gentle wind came in occasional fits, leaving stillness in their wake.
Dark shapes in the distance marched in lines or crowds over gently sloping hills, moving north. Braethen’s boots ground the dirt as he pivoted and looked to the east, where in the distance other numberless lines of unknown races slogged northward, their heads hung down.
The Placing. Dead gods, I’m in the past. He was there. He was watching races formed by Maldea being sent away into the Bourne.
The air and land and sky held the feeling of betrayal and uncertainty. It pressed in on him as he breathed the warm air and watched from afar as life was sent to a vast prison. Some were sent because their maker had overreached his calling, others because their makers had no faith in their potential. Far from the lines of the migrants, Braethen unwittingly began to walk north, his own steps loud in his ears.
He needed to see these migrants. To know the faces of those condemned to the Bourne. Lost in thought, Braethen crested the top of a hillock and almost stepped on the body of a slender creature lying dead between two blooming sages. When he drew nearer, he saw that a child sat beside the fallen female. The child’s tears were dry on its cheeks. It looked up at him, languid, sad, as though weakened by the unanswered cries that had caused its tears.
Both the mother and child had smooth, dark brown skin. The mother’s form was tall and slender, and lean, her muscles giving her a comely appearance. Braethen saw no hair to speak of on the creature, and patterns of branding wove around her middle with lettering he couldn’t read. Her breasts were exposed, lying full and firm on her narrow chest. Her long arms ended in fingers tipped with short, sharp talons. And he guessed by the shape of her mouth that he’d find large teeth should he peel back her lips.
But her face in death was peaceful, beautiful even.
The child at her side stared up at him with a quizzical look that wasn’t hard to interpret: The girl child wanted him to help rouse her mother. The babe’s large eyes pleaded, even as they showed some fear of Braethen.
There was no one to help the child. It would fall victim to predators who would come prowling. He couldn’t help but imagine the frightened cries of the babe, who wouldn’t understand what was happening, wouldn’t understand anything save its fear, wouldn’t know why its mother continued to sleep.
The mass exodus from the Eastlands had been only a reader’s tale to him, a subject for authors, not historians. It meant something entirely different to see it in the face of a child, even if that child belonged to a race created for the sole purpose of fighting man.
Did it know such things? Was hate rooted inside it from its conception?
The girl child made a pleading noise.
There was a mercy he could extend her. But Braethen hadn’t the steel inside him for that. And there was no rescue for the babe. He cursed himself for contriving such a dream, biting his tongue to try and wake himself—an old trick his father used to say helped him escape a nightmare.
Braethen’s mouth filled with blood. A very complete nightmare, then, and one he wouldn’t escape so easily.
He whisked up the babe and began to move as fast as he could over the long, rolling hills toward the moving masses. The babe emitted a weak mewling sound, raising its arms toward its fallen mother. But soon it stopped even that, unable to sustain the effort. The child laid its head against Braethen’s chest.
He passed through patches of sun falling from the heavens in great murky slants over the wide expanses of the world below. Ahead, the distant roll of thunder echoed down from dark clouds.
On he went, alternately running, then slowing to a fast walk, catching his breath, then running again. It struck him that saving the child’s life appeased only his conscience, leaving death—a slower, more spiritually rotting death—to the bitter world beyond the Veil. But at least he would have done something. Braethen slowly closed the gap between himself and the nearest emigrants trekking away from the Eastlands.
As he reached the line of creatures, the rain set in again. Mild, slow rain. It gave rise to a low hum, rather than the hiss of a downpour. The child in his arms wrapped its tiny fingers more deeply into Braet
hen’s cloak.
He tried to capture the attention of any of the exiled beings, hoping to convince one of them to take the child from him.
“The child’s lost its mother,” he repeated to one after the other.
His words were of no use. Either they couldn’t understand his language, or they were too focused on the struggle of their own departure, most carrying children or belongings of their own. Braethen couldn’t even draw their attention. Perhaps this was part of the dream. Perhaps they couldn’t see or hear him. He was just a silent observer in this vision.
But he kept trying, moving up the line, noting more races he’d never seen before. Some walked on two legs, some on four or eight. Some appeared to have no eyes. Some had coats of thick fur; others were hairless. Some seemed utterly like himself in appearance and potential. And all wore dour expressions, as though their minds were already caught in the Bourne.
He didn’t know how far he’d gone or how long he’d been pleading with these banished creatures to take the child, when he came upon horrors of the Placing that had never appeared in any of the books he’d read.
Braethen stopped, exhausted and defeated. He chuffed into the slow fall of rain. He half-turned, looking up the winding column, and saw that many had broken ranks and stepped out of the line. Some lay on the ground already. As Braethen watched, two sat together, holding short, silent looks with each other, before one took a sharp knife and cut deep the throat of the other, who did nothing to stop it.
Mercy killings.
By the dozens, the hundreds … the thousands … hosts of these abandoned races had chosen not to go into the exile of the Bourne. As Braethen looked farther into the distance he saw masses lying dark and motionless beside the trail.
It took his mind some time to acknowledge the last horror that littered the plains and hills on either side of this column of slow-moving exiles. Little ones. Like the one in his arms.
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