As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  Beyond that, there was Eva, now. She was stretching her small network to its full extent, he knew, making sure she had ears on the ground at all times. She was making excuses with her current patients to keep them from leaving, knowing all too well—as Raz did—that given the opportunity not a few among them would go straight to the guard in hopes of a reward, or gather their friends and return with the intention of making a play for his head themselves. Within four days her people were having to lay out spare bedrolls in corners to make space for the sick and injured who came stumbling in with handfuls of coin and stolen valuables as payment. By the fifth day the woman—who’d already been strained when Raz and Syrah had first arrived—looked in poorer health than some of her patients, struggling to balance seeing to all the men and women in her care and keeping Raz’s presence secret. Every time he saw her, the shadows under her eyes clear now, Raz felt a little of his conviction flake away.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t till another three days after that a bird came from the east, bearing a response from the captain.

  Raz saw the girl arrive in a hurry, a narrow scroll in her hand as she took the steps to the room two at a time before looking around frantically for Eva. She wore ratty, baggy pants and a thin shirt, and her bare feet left dusty footprints across the ground once she caught sight of the woman and hurried over. They exchanged a few words, Eva’s eyes gleaming excitedly as the girl told her who the message was from, and she handed the slum runner a copper from her pocket before thanking her and sending her off again. Before the girl was back up the stairs and gone, Eva had broken the seal on the letter and started reading.

  It must have been a short reply, because a few seconds later she was hurrying over to Raz.

  “Where is Syrah?” she asked him at once.

  “Over there,” Raz told her, nodding toward the far end of the room where the Priestess was assisting some of Eva’s attendants in their tasks. “Did you hear back from your man?”

  Eva nodded without looking at him, catching the eye of one of her guards and indicating the woman with a jerk of her head. At once the man lumbered over to speak into Syrah’s ear.

  “I did,” Eva finally answered as Syrah began weaving her way through the beds toward them. “And it’s better news than I expected.”

  Raz blinked, unsure what to make of this statement.

  “What’s going on?” Syrah asked quietly, reaching them and looking between he and Eva. She was still dressed in her white robes, but the sleeves had been rolled up, revealing the scars along her wrists as she wiped her hands clean with a moist towel. Similarly, her white hair had been pulled back and tied into a ponytail behind her head, though she’d left enough loose to hide the mangled remnants of her right ear. Unlike Raz, Syrah had found a way to keep busy over the last week, assisting in the treatment and healing of what patients she could.

  Before responding, Eva handed the letter to Raz. “Garht says he’s willing to grant you passage,” she said as he began reading the response for himself. “I’d asked what it would cost you, but he says he won’t accept any payment in exchange.”

  Though he didn’t look up from the parchment in his fingers, Raz rather thought Syrah’s silence was indicative of his own feelings: surprise and confusion.

  And—above all else—suspicion.

  He read the response carefully several times, trying to discern anything amiss in the captain’s words, but there was nothing more there than Eva had said. The handwriting was ugly, the hasty, rugged script of a man struggling with his letters.

  Willing. Payment not necessary. Details upon your arrival.

  -Garht Argoan

  “A man of few words,” Raz said evenly, handing the letter to Syrah so she could review it herself. “Though the fact that he’s refusing payment concerns me.”

  Eva frowned. “I’ve never received a letter like this from him. It’s like he was in a hurry to agree.”

  That did little to assuage Raz’s worry, but he said nothing of it. On one hand, he had never known a smuggler or thief of any kind to work for free. It bothered him. On the other… He and Syrah had no gold with which to pay their passage. What little they’d been granted by the council of Cyurgi ‘Di had been abandoned when they’d fled the temple, leaving them without so much as two copper barons to rub together. He supposed, considering it now, that the pair of them might have attempted to work off the price while on the ship, but if this ‘Garht Argoan’ was truly offering them free passage…

  It’s too good to be true, a cold voice said in the back of his mind.

  Raz was inclined to agree.

  “We don’t have any other options.”

  Syrah, too, had apparently read the letter’s single line more than once, and was now handing it back to Eva. She didn’t look happy, but her eye was resolute as she looked around at him. “Raz, we have no other choice.”

  “Even if it’s a trap?” he asked her darkly.

  Syrah bit her lip. “Yes. Even then. I don’t like the fact that he’s refusing payment any more than you do, but Eva trusts him.” She looked at the surgeon uncertainly. “Don’t you?”

  Eva hesitated, then nodded slowly. “As far as I can trust a man of his vocation, I suppose.”

  Syrah nodded. “Then—as much as I wish he’d put them in ink—there’s a chance he has his reasons. Even if it is a trap, I’ll take the odds of us against whatever he and his crew might have in store over our just staying here, waiting for the Mahsadën to strike again. It’s a risk we have to take.”

  Raz didn’t respond to her, looking instead at Eva. “What did he mean, ‘your arrival’? Would you be coming with us?”

  “I would,” she said, crossing her arms, as was her fashion. “Along with a few others. Garht won’t risk his goods to a middleman, and I need to take stock of what he has for me, as well as haggle a price.”

  Raz felt a little better, knowing that. He was still concerned, but he trusted Eva about as much as he trusted anyone else in the world, and he thought it might be bad business for a smuggler to risk one of his patrons by involving her in something like a trap.

  And yet, he still hesitated.

  Perce, he thought to himself, the land’s name sounding like a curse even silent within his own mind.

  He could list a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t go, had listed a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t go. He hated the idea of it viscerally, feeling almost nauseous as he considered every other alternative once again. He turned everything over in his head a last time, fighting with every ounce of desperation he could muster to try and find a better solution.

  In the end, he came up empty, like he knew he would.

  Eventually, Raz looked up at Syrah. “If I promised to convert, do you think Jofrey would allow us back into the Citadel?”

  Syrah laughed, a bright, sad sound of relief, anticipation, and fear.

  Then she politely asked Eva to send a reply at once, telling Garht Argoan they would be taking him up on his offer.

  They departed Ystréd the following evening. While the north, east, and west gates were all barred to traffic after sunset, the south gate was kept manned at all hours to greet any messengers and travelers from Azbar and the surrounding villages who chose to ride through the night. For this reason, it was in that direction that their little party headed first, leaving Eva’s illicit infirmary in the slums behind.

  Smuggling Syrah out of the city, it turned out, was a simple matter, if a little tedious. Eva had her attendants wrap the Priestess from head to toe in cloth bandages, obscuring everything from her fingers to her hair to her face. After that, Syrah allowed herself to be bundled in several layers of dirty blankets, then laid down in a thick bed of straw along the bed of the narrow wagon that had been hitched to the mount of one of Eva’s men. By the time they were ready to depart, Syrah Brahnt, Priestess of Laor, looked like nothing more than some miserable leper headed out to die among family in the Plains.

  It didn’t hurt that her blankets
and straw also hid the three small chests of gold and silver Eva would exchange for Garht’s stolen medicines.

  Raz smiled, watching the gate guard wave them through after hardly a minute’s inspection, those who weren’t staying well away from the cart outright unwilling to do more than glance at Syrah’s bandaged form before shuffling back. He waited until they were well-clear of the walls, following the group as they took a turn in the road to make east, before lifting himself out of his crouch to look out over the city.

  There was a beauty to the sprawl of the valley town. From where he stood on the sloped roof of the three-story cobbler’s shop overlooking the gate, Raz could see most everything. Ystréd spread like its own small world before him, the glint and glimmer of fire and lamps and candlelit windows carpeting the earth like a million stars reflecting up at the night sky above. Beyond it, though, there was little more than darkness, the Moon shedding just enough light over the land to draw away from the suspense of the black. If he peered closely, Raz could just make out the jagged outline of woodlands to the south, then the waving shapes of the Dehn’s horizon to the north. For a time he took it in, wondering—as he had when he’d left the Citadel—if he would ever have a chance to witness the warm glow of the Northern cities ever again.

  Then, with several bounding steps, he launched himself over the gap of the road between him and the buildings opposite, landing on the wooden roof of a blacksmith's forge with a dull thump.

  Raz moved quickly and quietly, keeping the wall of the city to his right as he ran. It felt good, being on the rooftops again. He hadn't had the opportunity in some time, since well-before he’d left the walls of Azbar behind, and the world opened up for him as it always did when he was above the horizon. Even in full gear—Ahna clenched in one hand and his gladius strapped in a borrowed sheath across his back as he watched the shadows for signs of life—he sped over the homes and shops and buildings, winding unseen up and down the inclines and declines of the town, between chimneys, over open-air balconies, and under the overhangs and eaves of higher rooftops. He moved beneath the gaze of Her Stars above, dropping into the darkness of unlit alleys as needed, then back up the half-timber walls and into open air once more. The stiffness of the last week left him bit by bit, fleeing his limbs and chest as he pushed himself to go faster. Muscle stretched and lungs expanded, and eventually Raz was starting to feel a little bit himself again, the night sky whisking away the frustration of having been cooped up indoors for too many days.

  After about a quarter-hour, maybe halfway between the south and east gates, Raz decided his fun was at an end. He shifted his course to trace Ystréd’s curved wall more closely, granting himself one more minute of tumbling and leaping across the skyline.

  Then, sure he was in the clear, he vaulted onto the roof of a split-level home, turned sharply, and launched himself into the air toward the emptiness of the night beyond the brightness of the city.

  For a second or two Raz allowed himself to fall, thrilling in the lurch of freedom and fear that comes when one is prisoner to the harsh judgment of gravity. When he was sure he was beyond the lip of the wall, Raz spread his wings to their extent, feeling the jolt of his momentum cut short and the shaking strain of the muscles in his back, unused to such stress.

  He held them firm, however, and a moment or two later hit the grassy earth beyond Ystréd with a thud, rolling to his feet and twisting to come up with Ahna at the ready, facing the city.

  Nothing.

  For thirty long seconds he watched the outline of the rooftops he’d leapt from, his eyes flicking toward every shiver of light or whip of curtains through windows. Finally, when nothing rose or tried to follow him from the shadows, Raz turned and began hurrying east, his clawed feet pounding over the soft summer earth, the dviassegai over one shoulder.

  He made them out not five minutes later, waiting at the crossroads Eva had described, all ahorse and peering expectantly through the night in his direction. Syrah saw him first, having freed herself of the disguising bandages, and he heard her give a distant exclamation, then raise a hand to wave. He slowed down as he approached, crossing the dirt road at a jog and accepting Gale’s reins with a nod of thanks as one of Eva’s guards handed them over.

  “No sign of them?” Eva asked as he put a foot in the stirrups and heaved himself up into the stallion’s new saddle.

  “None,” Raz confirmed, guiding the horse around so that he, too, could look back at the city. “Either they’re better than I gave them credit for, or they never managed to figure out where we were.”

  “Truth be told, I don’t know how many of them could have been left,” Syrah added thoughtfully, nudging Nymara up to snort at the grass beside Gale. “I left six or seven unconscious, at least, and I don’t know how many you dealt with.”

  She said the last two words as casually as she could, which almost amused Raz.

  “Not enough,” he said coolly. “There could be a half-dozen left in play. Likely more.”

  “That’s assuming the Mahsadën hasn’t already sent reinforcements,” Eva said darkly. “I haven’t known them to ever give up easily…”

  Raz glanced back at her. She sat astride her own horse, frowning at the light of the city to the west. Beside and behind her, three of her retinue waited patiently, two men and a woman, the cart yoked behind the left-most’s dappled gelding. None of them looked nervous, but it was clear by the way their eyes shifted between Raz and their employer that they found the conversation unsettling.

  “All the more reason to put as much space as we can between us and this place,” Raz told them all, turning and heeling Gale into a canter down the east road, Syrah right behind him.

  CHAPTER 15

  “The further I delve into what little I have found on the man known as Adrion Blaeth, the more terrifying the picture becomes. I hesitate indeed to put some of my findings to text, as I fear the speculations I’ve been able to make may indeed deter many of my readers. The man’s apparent violent nature, the horrible powers he seems to have wielded in a time when magic is largely considered to have been reserved only for a chosen few… I wonder if I do not challenge our understanding of the period too much, with too little to show in defense of such claims…”

  —from the journals of Kohly Grofh

  The messenger arrived in the evening, just as supper was being set out. The man had been ushered into the hall by one of Adrion’s attending servants, and at once he saw Lazura’s lip curl in distaste across the table from him, though he couldn’t venture a guess as to whether it was due to the interruption, or simply the state of the runner himself. He was filthy, the thick furs wrapped about his shoulders to fend off the biting chill of the desert night matted with dust, his face streaked with lines of sweat. He looked as though he had run full-tilt to deliver the message.

  Add that to the fact that whatever news he bore was apparently enough to warrant disturbing their meal, and Adrion instantly felt apprehension dampen his appetite.

  The messenger, to his credit, didn’t waste time with apologies or explanations. As soon as he was let in, he made a line for Adrion, who took a moment of amusement from the further ire this seemed to cause Lazura. She’s growing tired of the game, he thought as he wiped his fingers on the napkin in his lap and accepted the rolled message with a nod of thanks to the man. He was about to dismiss him when the seal caught his eye, and a sudden chill overcame Adrion despite the warmth of the room.

  There was the black circle of wax, embossed with the letter “M” of the Mahsadën. It was the same stamp he saw up to a dozen times on any given day, with nothing particularly remarkable to be noted at first glance. There was a detail that stood out in the impression, however, one few others would have even given a second look. The shape of the band that wrapped around the symbol was broken in two places, like the ring that had been used to make the seal was dented in a diagonal manner.

  Na’zeem’s mark, Adrion realized at once.

  The letter was not mea
nt for him.

  For a second he froze, earning himself a curious blink from the messenger and a piercing look from Lazura. Coming to his senses, Adrion handed the message back to the man. “This is a missive for my consort,” he said with a nod toward the other end of the long table. “She has been expecting word from family in the North regarding a private matter.”

  The runner took the roll in fumbling fingers, managing to get out a stumbling “Yessir” before turning and hurrying to the woman. Apparently unable to restrain herself, Lazura snatched the letter up and stood, breaking the seal and unrolling the paper as she stepped away from her dinner.

  “You may go, runner,” Adrion said hurriedly, not taking his eyes off the woman as he watched her cold blue eyes tick across the message quickly. He had seen that look before.