As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Seems you’ve been busy,” Raz grumbled, glancing at Eva. “Don’t tell me you had all of this the last time we met?”

  In response the woman snorted, then half-turned, arms still crossed, to look back at her operation. “Hardly,” she said. “After that fiasco at the start of the freeze, Sven decided it was time to retire. He left not long after you, with a caravan for Azbar to stay with family there, and ceded me his list of… uh… clients.” She smirked.

  Raz could understand her amusement. He had first met Eva over a year ago now, when he’d still worked as a dog of the Miropan Mahsadën. Chained up among the slaves the society had attempted to trick him into collecting for them, the woman was part of the brutal understanding Raz had come to that night, the realization of what he’d become, and what he was doing. Rather than turn them over to the šef—the ringleaders of the Mahsadën—Raz had helped Eva and the others escape and flee northward, though not before the woman had put her skill as a surgeon’s apprentice to use in healing several broken ribs he’d suffered in the process.

  Ever since then—with no apprenticeship and no mentor to vouch for her legitimacy—Eva had been establishing a name for herself among the only people of Ystréd who didn’t give a rat’s ass that she wasn’t a fully-trained physician: the slum dwellers and criminals of the city. Raz had stumbled across her again some eight or nine months ago when a local hack—Sven, Raz recalled as the surgeon said the name—had been hired to save his life by a band of mercenaries he’d managed to get himself captured by, half-frozen and half-dead as he was. Sven had gotten word to Eva, who’d in turn reached out to the Laorin faith for assistance and managed to rescue Raz from the group before they’d had a chance to drag him back to the South as a living gift for the Mahsadën.

  And now, it seemed, Sven had given up the trade, leaving Eva with a city’s-worth of vagrants and miscreants to tend to.

  Abruptly, Raz understood why she needed the guards.

  “You must pay them well, if you’re not worried they’ll try to collect the prices on our heads,” he commented, still eyeing the men and women along the walls.

  Eva nodded. “I do. It also helps that each and every one of them is only alive today because of me.” Her face softened. “They feel they owe me.”

  “Not just them,” Syrah said quietly, her arm slipping into Raz’s, though she was looking at the woman. “Eva… Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done. And again, I-I’m sorry about…”

  She hesitated, sounding embarrassed. Raz glanced at her, confused, then at Eva.

  “By the time word reached me and my men and I got to you, you were unconscious,” Eva explained. “Unfortunately, Syrah—” she nodded to the Priestess with an amused expression “—didn’t know to trust us. She almost blew half the building apart before I managed to explain who I was.”

  Beside him, Syrah blushed in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled awkwardly.

  Eva waved her apology away, hiding a smile now. “Don’t be.” She glared at Raz with a meaningful, almost motherly expression. “It’s good to know that this oaf isn’t wandering alone anymore, especially if he keeps managing to get wounds like that.”

  She poked Raz’s bandaged arm playfully, making him wince.

  “You still need to work on your bedside manner, I see,” he grumbled, moving the limb about in an attempt to lessen the throb. “This isn’t how you build loyalty among your clientele.”

  Eva raised an eyebrow. “This is the third time I’ve patched you up in a year. I would say my bedside manner hasn’t stopped you from becoming a repeat customer.”

  Beside him, Syrah snorted and lifted a hand to her mouth as she tried to stifle a laugh.

  “I’m not sure I like having you two in the same room together…” Raz grumbled, eyeing the Priestess in feigned annoyance.

  “Oh, hush,” Syrah said, squeezing his arm in hers—which earned them a second raised eyebrow from Eva.

  Seeming to think better of asking, though, the woman’s eyes looked suddenly concerned. “Teasing aside… Raz, you need to tell me what happened. Syrah tried, but we figured you probably knew more. Were they really assassins? Your injuries… You looked like minced meat when we carried you down here. How many attacked you?”

  Raz frowned, feeling their collective mood darken, Syrah going still and silent beside him. “I don’t know,” he said after a few moments of contemplation. “Twenty, maybe more. It was hard to tell. The way they moved…” He paused, glancing around. Catching sight of his gear, shoved in a corner to their right, he pointed at it. “Can someone bring me my things?”

  At once, Eva looked around. With a word, two of the closest guards detached themselves from their places along the wall and moved as commanded, starting to drag Ahna and the bag still attached to her end over with some effort.

  “Lifegiver’s tits,” Raz heard one curse under his breath as they moved. “Dragon he must be, if he can bloody well carry this lot around with him all day.”

  Raz smiled to himself, nodding in thanks to the men as they deposited his things at his feet.

  It took him only a moment to find what he was looking for, rummaging through the bag carefully so as not to cut himself on the blade of the gladius, still bare and bloody within. Finally, his hand closed around the handle of the item, and he pulled it from the bag for the three of them to examine.

  He hadn't had much of an opportunity to examine the knife during the fight, but looking at it now he realized it wasn’t going to tell him anything he hadn't already deduced. It had a narrow, straight hilt with a black cloth handle and a large, semi-circular pommel. It’s broad cross-guard was unadorned, and the blade curved wickedly along its length, then more sharply toward the tip. Overall it was a plain, simple dagger, though exceptionally well-crafted. He’d seen a thousand such weapons of its ilk.

  He’d even sold not-a-few of them himself, in his years among the Arros.

  “Southern,” he grunted, turning the blade over to see if there was anything more meaningful on its flipside. “But I could have told you that already.”

  Beside him, Syrah nodded. “Their eyes. Grey. All of them,” she said.

  Eva’s own grey eyes blinked in muted surprise. “The Mahsadën?” she asked Raz, who inclined his head at once.

  “Undoubtedly.” He brought the blade right up to his face, peering at it closely, but the steel stubbornly refused to reveal anything of interest. “And worse than that… They were too good. They used the shadows like nothing I’d ever seen before.” He glanced at Eva. “It was like witnessing every story I’d ever heard about Ergoin Sass.”

  Eva bared her teeth in anger at the name, making Syrah blink.

  “Sass…?” she said slowly, like she thought she were treading on thin ice. “Your contact in the Mahsadën?”

  “My handler,” Raz spat, tossing the knife back in with the rest of his gear. “I’ll say it how it was. And one of the more evil bastards I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with, to be sure.”

  “But…” Syrah kept on, confused. “Isn’t he dead?”

  Raz nodded.

  Ergoin Sass had been the šef in charge of handling all the society’s assassination contracts and bounties. As a result, he’d been Raz’s primary go-between, reaching out whenever the Mahsadën had a situation which required a particular touch, or if they needed to send a message of the kind only the Monster of Karth was capable of delivering. Sass had been a vile, corrupted soul, having gained his power by his own hand, killing off what competition came along, and had thrived in his position as master of the group’s cutthroats and assassins.

  It had made cleaving him half-in-two the previous summer almost enjoyable.

  “He’s dead,” Raz confirmed. “But if he managed to pass his skills on to a group like the one we fought, that bodes well for no one. Men like that won’t give up, even if I killed half of them off. They’ll collect themselves and very likely try again.” He grit his teeth, turning to Syrah. �
�Making for Acrosia isn’t an option now. If we get caught on the road we’ll be done for, and if we survive until we make it to the city then the assassins will have the support of the Mahsadën, not to mention how much harder it will become to sneak into the port.”

  Syrah paled, looking as though she were thinking quickly. “We can still make west?” she offered. “Stullens and Drangstek are much larger than Ystréd, and the Laorin have a much greater presence.”

  “No,” Raz said at once with a shake of his head. “I won’t put the faith between me and these men. Not again.” His shoulders slumped. “And I don’t think you want to either, after what’s happened here…”

  Syrah tensed at his words. He could feel her arm begin to shake against his, and he took her hand.

  “No,” she finally said. “No, you’re right. We can’t.”

  A tear glimmered in the corner of her good eye, and her gaze was distant. He couldn’t blame her. She had borne witness to the death of a good score of her kind and, though she might bear a strong face now, Raz knew it would weigh on her.

  And it’s my fault, he couldn’t help but think. Once again… my fault.

  He shoved the guilt aside, allowing it to be replaced by a seething anger at the men who’d done this. He wanted to go out, wanted to take Ahna and hunt down every one of the bastards who might have escaped. He gave himself a moment to bask in that anger, to gain focus from the hate he had for the men who would so callously throw away the lives of dozens just to ensure the death of one.

  He was just calming himself down when Eva spoke.

  “You’re looking for a way out of the North?”

  Raz and Syrah both looked up at her in surprise.

  “We are…” Raz said, watching the woman closely. “Why?”

  “But not via the fringe cities?”

  Raz nodded, but said nothing more.

  Eva hesitated, apparently mulling a thought over in her head.

  “Do you have an idea?” Syrah pressed her.

  “I do…” Eva said, still sounding as though she were considering the options. “But I’d need to send a bird. Find out if it’s even an option.”

  “What is it?” Raz insisted. They were getting desperate, he knew. Any opportunity was worth considering at this point.

  “Well…” Eva began, sounding almost nervous and not meeting Raz’s eyes. “There’s a man I know. A captain, actually.”

  “Of a ship?” Raz felt his interest swell with a sudden intensity. “Could he get us to the Imperium? Or even just the Isles?”

  Eva shook her head. “Not likely. He doesn’t sail the Emperor’s Ocean.”

  That made Raz frown. “Then he sales the Dramion?”

  While the Emperor’s Ocean lay far to the west, playing host to the island nations of the West Isles and the more distant Imperium, the Dramion Sea was much closer, likely no more than a week or two’s ride east. The problem, though, was that it was an endless, landless expanse. Raz recalled old Kosen and the Grandmother telling him and his young cousins stories of the sea, speaking of hydras and serpents and other great monsters lurking in the depths of the vast emptiness. They had told him a hundred tales of adventurers who had sailed out, seeking distant shores at the edges of the world, never to return again.

  They might have only been stories to frighten children around the evening fire, but Raz felt a chill as he realized he hadn't even considered the Dramion an option for he and Syrah.

  Eva nodded. “He does. Every five or six months he makes the trip, back and forth. He’s has a… a shipping business. Some of the medicines, the herbs and compounds I need can’t be found in the North, and are too expensive to ship by traditional routes.” She blushed. “Garht can generally get me what I need.”

  “He’s a smuggler,” Syrah said flatly, sounding suddenly very disenchanted.

  Eva shrugged helplessly. “And a thief, I think,” she sighed. “But he seems a good man, outside of all that.”

  Syrah grumbled something under her breath that even Raz didn’t catch, which made it easy to ignore her. “But you think he would be able to grant us passage out of the North?” he asked.

  “I do. And I don’t think he’d want to draw attention to himself by turning you over to the šef. He’s refused to do business with them in the past, and I don’t believe they were happy about it.”

  “Why did he refuse?” Syrah asked, her eyes narrowed.

  A muscle twitched in Eva’s jaw. “He never told me outright, but let’s just say I choose to work with the man because he appears to have more morals than others of his ilk. Specifically when it comes to livestock of the two-legged kind…”

  Raz’s felt his face darken. “He wouldn’t traffic slaves for them,” he said simply. “No wonder he’d be out of favor with the šef.”

  “Oh,” Syrah said, sounding a little more enthusiastic at the prospect now. “Well, if that’s the case…” She paused, her brow furrowing in sudden confusion. “But if your captain is sailing out of the North and doesn’t end port in the South, then that means…”

  Right then it clicked for Raz as well, and he groaned in frustration even as Eva spoke.

  “Yes. Garht’s ship should raise anchor before summer’s end, making for Perce.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Syrah was the one who told Eva to send the bird, utterly ignoring Raz’s protests. Initially he refused, point-blank, to plot them on any course that would land them in the realms beyond the South, telling her over and over again that he wouldn’t set foot in an empire that had been built on the back of slaves, human and atherian alike. They argued several times over the next few days, Syrah pointing out repeatedly that they had no other good options and that suffering their pride in Perce was better than suffering a knife in the back anywhere else.

  “Where would you have us go, then?” she’d demanded furiously the last time they’d had it out. “In the North we are hunted, and in the South you would be as good as dead.” Her expression had grown sad at that. “I won’t lose you, Raz. Not you, too.”

  And then she’d walked away, leaving him in his cot with nothing more than his frustration and sudden desire to call after her and apologize.

  It was the better part of a week, in fact, before Raz was even remotely open to the idea, time that both women forced him to spend mostly bedridden, healing from his wounds and allowing his body to recover. For the first day or two he didn’t mind, the fight with the Mahsadën assassins—for he really couldn't think of anyone else who might have sent the men—having taken more out of him than he would admit to either Syrah or Eva. By the end of the third day, though, Raz was tired of being cooped up. Between his body’s own natural healing prowess and the spells Syrah worked into his flesh every morning, it wasn’t long before he was on his feet again and itching to move.

  Eva, however, wouldn't hear of it.

  “I don’t care how good you feel,” she told him on more than one occasion, shoving him back down on the cot. “You lost a third of your blood volume, easily. It’s going to be hard enough getting you and Syrah out of the city already. I won’t have you fainting before we manage to even get you within view of the gates.”

  Raz—having long since been used to being shouted down by healers—would always grumble and sulk, but eventually give in. In the end, he had to rely on Eva’s people for information on what was happening about the city, and the news was never good. The morning following the attack, word reached them that the massacre at the temple had indeed been discovered, and was being investigated by the Ystréd guard. Syrah spent much of that day in silent grief. Not a single Priest or Priestess had managed to escape their home with their life.

  They were the only survivors.

  Two days later, a slum boy arrived with several rolled-up parchments, handing them to Eva before stealing an awe-struck glance at Raz and darting back up the stairs, out of the infirmary. Eva had unrolled the sheaf and looked the papers over, glowering at whatever they contained before throwing them
into one of the room’s great fires without a word.

  Only after a lot of pressing had she admitted to Raz that they’d been notices the boy had found in the market streets, each bearing Raz or Syrah’s crude likenesses and a request for any information that would lead to their whereabouts.

  That was the moment Raz’s determination had started to waver, when the fear had started to sink in. He wasn’t worried about what happened to him. If the Mahsadën men came again, then they came, and fate would decide once more who would survive that second fight. But he had others to consider. He’d dragged Syrah into the muck now, truly pulled her into the blood and violence that was his life. He doubted the city guard thought them perpetrators in the slaughter of the Laorin, given the bodies they must have found at the scene, but if they were taken in even for questioning, then they would be trapped. Regardless of whether the assassins took advantage of that vulnerability, there was still the price on his head—on both their heads. All it would take was a couple of greedy souls, out to make their fortune in the world, and he and Syrah would die with soldiers’ swords in their backs.