“Did it work?”
He glanced over his shoulder. Cesta stared up at the sky, searching for the messenger bird.
“It should have,” Dreadaeleon replied. “Lector Vemire prepared the spell himself before we left. I can’t see any reason why it should fail.”
His voice cracked slightly on that last word. Whether that was a betrayal of the fear lurking at the back of his head or perhaps just overdue puberty, he wasn’t keen to explore. And Cesta did not seem to care, one way or the other. When she looked at him, her grin was positively ecstatic.
“Can you believe it, Dread?” she asked. “We did it. We did it. Vemire expected us to only be of assistance, but we actually caught the heretic all by ourselves.”
“Right. Yes. That’s good.” Dreadaeleon nodded along. “But, uh, let’s still be careful. He’s still a heretic and we should be—“
“We took all the necessary precautions,” she countered. “He’s bound and gagged. He can’t cast. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Vemire said the heretics were dangerous, though.”
“And they are. When they’re not bound and gagged.” She held up her hands. “Okay, yeah, I know. We’ll still be cautious, but let’s savor this a little, hm?”
He looked past her, toward the meager fire they had built up and the prisoner sitting beside it. His hands firmly tied before him, his ankles likewise secured, Lathrim stared dully over the gag tied about his mouth. His eyes were empty, but not with the resigned blankness that came in defeat. Rather, to Dreadaeleon, he looked almost . . . bored.
Perhaps Cesta saw that too.
Perhaps that was why she strode toward him with a swagger that would look haughty even on a man six cups deep.
“Did you hear that, heretic?” she said. “The Lector will be on his way shortly. I expect your judgment will be extremely swift. The Venarium protocol is quite clear on matters of heresy.”
Lathrim did not so much as glance up at her. Not that she seemed to notice.
“But surely you already knew that. Surely you did not commit your crimes without knowledge of the price you’d eventually pay.” She walked a long, dramatic circle around the fire. “We were briefed on your charges before we left, Lathrim. Two Venarium agents were killed trying to calm you down when you snapped. You snatched priceless components when you fled Tower Defiant and took three Venarium agents with you.”
She paused, turned, fixed a glare down at Lathrim, who did not return it.
“They’re dead now, you know.” She thrust a finger at him. “Because of you. Because of the lies you told them. Because of the filth you spewed. You convinced them to betray the Venarium and they died for you.”
“Cesta.” Dreadaeleon took a step forward, reached out toward her. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”
“And you don’t even care!” Cesta shouted over Dreadaeleon, ignoring him as she stepped toward Lathrim. “Five people are dead because of you! Five people who had lives to lead, lost because of your wretched lies, and you don’t even blink to hear it.” She knelt down, reached out for his gag. “What do you have to say for yourself, you piece of—”
“Cesta! No!”
She glanced up at Dreadaeleon, cast a baleful scowl at him. “It’s fine, Dread. Any spell he tries to cast will be futile without his hands.” She sneered at Lathrim, tore his gag free. “Isn’t that right, heretic?”
Dreadaeleon braced himself. Though his body was still weak from his earlier spells, he immediately reached inside himself and searched for more power, more of that hazy, boiling strength. He unconsciously began to slide into a stance, ready for any spell the heretic might speak.
But the heretic spoke no spell. For a long time, he did not speak at all. And when his lips finally did move, he merely smacked them once or twice, then looked up at Cesta, and spoke softly.
“May I have some water, please?”
A sigh of relief washed over Dreadaeleon. It didn’t seem like an unreasonable request. And yet, to see Cesta’s face screw up in anger the way it did, one might have thought that asking for water was on par with insinuating certain proclivities involving her mother and livestock.
“What did you say?” she snarled.
“Water,” Lathim repeated. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“If it’s not too much . . .” She shook her head. “Did you not hear a damn thing I said? About the men you killed? About the laws you broke?”
“I did. I grew thirsty as I listened. The icicle I hurled at you earlier took moisture from me that I must replenish.” He blinked. “Am I not entitled to that?”
“What? No!” Her fist clenched. Her eyes blazed. “You’re a heretic! Traitor to the Venarium and all the laws we hold sacred. You’re no more entitled to water than you are entitled to—”
“To what?” Only now did Lathrim’s eyes snap out of their glazed-over look. Only did he now seem to be paying attention. “To justice? To a reasonable trial?”
“The Venarium will offer you trial by ordeal if you—” Dreadaeleon began, but he did not get far.
“The Venarium will pit me into a deathmatch with a wizard six times my skill and watch me die,” Lathrim interrupted. “Is that the only justice I’m entitled to? Even in slave-holding nations they grant more rights to people than a wizard is granted in the Venarium.”
“There are no rights, heretic.” Cesta straightened up, folded her arms across her chest. “There are laws. Laws that must be obeyed so that magic does not destroy the world and its people.”
“Its people?” Lathrim asked. “The same people you look down upon? The ‘barknecks?’”
“We don’t look down upon them,” Dreadaeleon said. “We . . . we protect them. They aren’t like us. They don’t have what we do.”
“So we protect them,” Cesta added. “The laws protect us and them. The laws protect us all.”
“And so the laws demand that you’re torn from your families and serve the Venarium’s will until you’re dead and can be harvested like scrap.” Lathrim sneered. “And so the laws demand that you forsake justice and trials so that order may be protected. And somehow, after you’ve abandoned everything that makes you human, you’re entitled to protect others? What sense does that make?”
“A heretic wouldn’t understand,” Cesta snarled. “A heretic never understands. They can’t be reasoned with.”
“Heretics must be punished for the crime of heresy. Heretics cannot be reasoned with, thus negating the need to ever talk to them. Thus, a heretic cannot defend himself from punishment for the crime of heresy,” Lathrim replied, voice soft and cool as a breeze. “Such paragons of knowledge, you Venarium. Such airtight logic you’ve created for yourselves.”
“We didn’t create this,” Cesta said. “These are laws. They’ve been in place since time immemorial.”
“You can’t believe that,” Lathrim said. “If they’ve been around forever, if they are truly so all-pervasive, how is it only the wizards know about them? Does the average ‘barkneck’ know about them?” He quirked a brow. “Did your mother, before you were taken from her?”
Dreadaeleon had known Cesta all his life. And in all that time, she had never once seemed to flinch. Those few spells she did not master immediately, she practiced day and night. Those very few spells that blew up in her face, she got right back up and started practicing again.
Where he looked at his feet, she looked into Lectors’ eyes like she was their equal. Where he mumbled, she proclaimed. Where he staggered and fell, she took a breath and kept going. Somehow, he assumed that was the way it would always be.
Until now, at any rate.
The look she wore on her face was not one of pain, as though he had slapped her. Nor was it one of fury or even anger. Rather, all the color from her face seemed to drain, all the light from her eyes seemed to fade. What was left behind was a perfect circle of white, broken only by her mouth hanging open, silent.
“Trace amounts of Venarie begin manifesting around five years
of age,” Lathrim said, his words soft and deliberate. “The Venarium comes to collect shortly thereafter. They pay a collector’s fee and take the child back to a Tower to be trained. But some . . .”
He looked down at his bound hands. He flexed his fingers.
“Some manifest sooner,” he said. “And some parents will not part with their children for any price.”
“Cesta?” Dreadaeleon stepped closer to her. “Cesta, are you all right?”
She did not answer. Cesta’s empty eyes were locked on Lathrim.
“Speak to any apprentice, they will tell you what they know of their parents.” The heretic glanced at Dreadaeleon. Sadness was in his eyes. “I suspect you might remember a little, hm? A face? A voice? A phrase they used to say? But within every Tower, you will find a few apprentices who recall nothing, know nothing of a life outside the Venarium. Not even a ghost of a memory.”
He looked at Cesta. His eyes were free from malice. The smugness in his voice had fled. What was left was something as dark and bleak as hers were white and empty.
“Do you remember your mother, girl?” he asked.
“Shut up,” Cesta whispered.
“Your father? An aunt? An uncle? A childhood pet? Anything?”
“Shut up!”
“What do you suppose they told her to tear you from her breast? What price did they offer you?”
“Heretic, I’m warning you.”
“Heretic.” He laughed. “I never even entertained the word until I learned how I had been taken. Do you suppose you were made the same way? Did they take you from her? Did she fight them? Did they raise their hands and speak their words and—”
She did not tell him again.
Her response was no word. It was a sound. It was loud and booming, exploding with life. No form. No style. Just noise.
And power.
The invisible force rippled across the sky, struck Lathrim against the side of his head and sent him flying. He struck a tree, collapsed.
“Cesta!” Dreadaeleon cried, rushing toward the fallen heretic. But no sooner had he drawn close than Lathim went flying once again.
The invisible force shot up from beneath him, sending him flying up into the air. He hovered there for a moment, dirty clothes flapping in the breeze, before he came tumbling down.
Quick, old man, Dreadaeleon thought. A spell! Reach out for him! Get him! Stance strong, arms out, deep breath, and—
He didn’t finish that thought. It was impossible to hear himself think over the heavy crunching sound of Lathrim’s body hitting the ground. Dreadaeleon’s mouth fell open as he looked from the unmoving heretic to Cesta.
But Cesta was not looking at him.
Her eyes were ablaze with red light. Her arms were moving in rigid, furious motions, as though she were conducting a symphony and Lathrim’s body was the sole instrument.
And it played a shrill, screeching note for her.
Lathrim sounded not nearly so eloquent in flight. His screams were lilting things, fading in and out as he was hurled from the earth to the sky, from the sky to a tree, from a tree to a stone, from a stone to the earth. Over and over, the symphony played a discordant harmony: Cesta’s screams driving the crunching bone of Lathrim’s body, Lathrim’s agonized howls fighting to be heard over the wind moaning in sympathy.
Against such a cacophony, Dreadaeleon’s own cries for sanity—for Cesta to stop, for Lathrim to recant, for someone to do something—were but one chiming note, easily ignored and completely lost.
Until, at last, the song came to an end.
Cesta’s voice was a hoarse, wheezing breath. Her arms hung limp at her sides. She slumped to her knees, drenched in sweat and muscles trembling. The magic had devoured her, eaten away everything inside her to perform that feat of violence, leaving her only enough to keep her eyes—dark and lightless—open to admire her work.
Lathrim was painted all over the clearing. He was smeared upon the bark of the trees and the grass of the hills and the stones jutting from the earth. And at the center of the many stains, his body lay almost comically twisted in its anatomy.
Still.
Breathless.
Dead.
“Gods, Cesta,” Dreadaeleon whispered as he approached the dead heretic.
“There are no gods, Dreadaeleon,” Cesta said, breathless. “What happened to him, he brought upon himself.”
“You killed him.” He looked at her, mouth agape. “You killed him.”
“He was a heretic. He was going to die anyway. He deserved to die for what he said about me, about . . . about . . .”
Whatever words she had left were lost. Her mouth hung open, a hoarse, choked sound emerging. Her eyes trembled, yet she had no tears to spend. Her voice, her tears, her sorrow—the Venarie had taken all of it, poured it into what she had done to Lathrim.
And left her with nothing but silence.
You can’t let this go, old man.
And in that silence, he could hear himself. In cold, clear thought, he spoke.
The laws are there for a reason. It’s not her place to pass sentence on a heretic, let alone carry it out. You can’t let her go with this. You have to report it to Lector Vemire. You have to—
“Dread . . .”
He turned. Cesta made a move to try to stand, but her quaking limbs could not support her. She fell once more to the sodden earth. She stared at Dreadaeleon with a face that tried to hold what little life she had not used up to kill Lathrim. And her voice, what was left, tried to croak out a response.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t . . .”
It doesn’t matter that she didn’t, old man. You have to do what’s right by the Venarium. These are the laws.
He opened his mouth to tell her this. Yet what came out what something else.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s okay.”
No, it’s not okay! Don’t do this.
“He was going to die anyway, like you said. Right?” He shook his head. “We’ll tell Vemire . . . we’ll tell him that he tried to attack you. We somehow overpowered him.”
Not like this. Not because of this.
“We’ll make it work, Cesta.” He walked to her side. He leaned down and laid a hand upon her shoulder. The smile he offered her was warm. “It’s going to be fine.”
And as she looked up at him, the ghost of a smile at the corners of her lips, he could almost believe his own lie. He would have believed it, even. If not for the cold voice in the back of his head that hissed out a single word.
Coward.
* * * * *
The hours passed slowly.
Dreadaeleon had been thankful for this, at first. It had given him time to position Lathrim’s body in such a manner as to suggest a struggle. It had given him time to give Cesta water, help her closer to the fire, let her fall asleep. Vemire’s return was slow, and he was grateful for that.
At first.
But as the hours passed in silence, he found himself at a loss for what else to do but wait for Vemire. And so he sat at the edge of their little camp and stared out over the distant hills, left alone with nothing but his thoughts. And while they were certainly conversational, he found their company less than ideal.
Well done, old man, well done. This is how you’ll prove your worth, eh? Covering up a crime, lying to your superior . . . and let’s not forget you simply stood by and watched Cesta kill him, hm? Based on just a few harsh words he said.
I mean . . . they were really harsh words, but still. Wizards aren’t supposed to let emotions rule them like that, or else . . . well, that happens, doesn’t it? It’s not too late. Vemire hasn’t arrived yet—what the fuck is taking him so long—you could still tell him the truth when he comes. You could still come clean and prove your worth . . .
And watch Cesta suffer for it. She’d be sanctioned. Disciplined. Maybe even stripped of her rank. Or would she? Vemire likes her, maybe he’d go easy on her. But Lathrim had knowledge we could have used
. He won’t like that we killed him. No, that she killed him, old man. You’re not a murderer, just the accomplice. Let’s not be sloppy here. Anyway, that’s settled. You can’t do that to her. You can’t let her suffer.
He closed his eyes. He drew a breath. He stilled his thoughts.
So long as she’s safe, this is all worth it. Believe that, if nothing else.
The hours did not so much pass as crawl. They crawled up onto his back and settled down upon his shoulders, bearing his head low. The stress that had propelled him to action now seeped out of him like water from a sieve. He felt his eyes begin to droop, his head begin to bow, his vision begin to go dark.
His ears were the last to go. And an instant before they did, he heard the sound of rustling behind him.
He looked up and over his shoulder. There, he saw Cesta, busying herself with their satchels. She was busily attaching the last waterskin to it, taking the few bits of food he carried and loading them into hers. She attached the pack to her belt and rose up on shaky feet.
And then she noticed him watching her.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said, voice still weak.
“I wasn’t,” he said, slowly rising to face her.
She looked away from his eyes and her stare fell upon his empty satchel. “There’s food back at the tower,” she said. “You’ll be all right. Vemire will be here soon.”
“And you won’t be.”
He hadn’t intended to say that. He had meant to ask it, instead. He had meant to give her a moment to deny it, to reassure him. But he didn’t. And she didn’t. And they merely let his words hang between them for a very long, cold time.
“I can’t remember her, Dread.” When Cesta finally broke the silence, it was with words that sounded soft and painful. “My mother. I can’t remember her name, what she looked like. But I had to have had one.” She looked up at him. Fear shone bright in her eyes. “Right?”
“Yes. Of course.” He took a step toward her. She took a step back. He frowned. “But . . . what does that have to do with anything?”
“Lathrim said he . . . said he learned how he had been taken,” she said. “They took him, he said. They took him when he was an infant, killed his parents to do so.”
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