Fallen Victors

by Jonathan Lenahan

  Finally, the fingernail came free and the Priest put it in a small metal bowl atop the table. A closing of the plier’s jaws on the second fingernail. “Are you sure?” he repeated.

  Slate forced a smile, the light making his face skeletal. A drop of water fell into Slate’s left eye, and then his right, and his fury coiled itself, ready to spring. “You better watch you back, you dried up old corpse.”

  A leer from the Priest. Four fingernails later, Teacher sobbing uncontrollably, the Priest put down his tools and shuffled out the door. He closed it behind him, and they hung there. Alone.

  Tears ran down Teacher’s face, matching the ones on Slate’s cheeks, still unable to blink. “It’ll be okay, Teach. I ever tell you about the time I ran into one of your old students? He remembered you . . . ”

  The feeble torch emitted a sputtering flame, giving Isaac at least some light to check his surroundings in the windowless room. His black hood was gone, the chains on his wrists gone as well, a fact he discovered by unconsciously raising a free hand to scratch an itch on his chin. He felt for his power, almost grasped something – was it back? – but returned empty-handed. Maybe if he could get in the sun . . . Sitting up, a wave of dizziness washed over Isaac, and he held still, but not for long.

  The torch’s fire crackled brighter, surprising him into movement. Kross sat at the room’s other end, his mouth full of green, the ever-present whiff of mint accompanying the smacking of his overly large mouth.

  “Calm down,” Kross said. “It looks like you’re finally out of luck.”

  “What do you mean?” Isaac drew his feet against the bed.

  “Found out where you are yet? You’re in Tabernack, right under the nose of the King himself, figuratively speaking, but only just.”

  Isaac didn’t reply.

  “I know you’re more curious than that. Come on, now.”

  Raising his eyes level with Kross’s knees, Isaac asked, “What do you want?”

  His fat head bobbing up and down like a flag in the wind, Kross clasped his hands around his legs. “Want? Nothing more than I’ve ever wanted. Your friends? They’re below ground, spread out, dungeoned. They aren’t getting around that, no way. You, however, I’ve managed to get into a nicer spot. This is still a prison, mind you, but it’s one with some comforts, and you won’t be receiving any of the ‘attentions’ I’m sure your friends will.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why! Because, oh Isaac, I need you alive, not dead. But first, you must cooperate.”

  Isaac didn’t reply, lowering his eyes back to the ground.

  “Now, tell me, what use is the sun to you?”

  Angras

  Please tell me it’s almost over, that I can come out.

  “I’m finishing the job you started. You should thank me,” Angras said.

  “At what point did I stop becoming the good guy? Did I pass it up, like a line in the sand? Or is it ever moving? Am I good as long as I perceive myself to be good?”

  “There is no such thing as good or evil. There are just results: happiness, sadness. If something evil brings happiness to the world, is it still evil? If the net result is something good, then doesn’t that make the action in itself good?”

  You’re right. You’re always right. It just seems so hard to push forward, knowing there’s nothing at the end for me.

  “There’s always something. It just might not be what we wanted. And I’m here for you.”

  Thank you, Angras. But when can I come out?

  Queen Melanie

  Two days had passed since Kross’s return, and that infuriating little frog of a man hadn’t yet knelt to pay her homage, not even to collect his bounty. Her blood sang, her anger making her head pound, an orchestra at full crescendo, even while soothing thoughts reminded her that she’d foiled Angras’s assassination attempt.

  Talliver took the lead, his booted heels ringing against the stone floor. Melanie followed in his wake, her mind coated with the turmoil of newly arisen problems, glossy oil, likely to cause her to slip and fall at the most inopportune moments. Almost wizardly quick rumors of new taxes springing up amongst the middle and lower classes, the massacre in the square, their rapidly deteriorating economic spiral – Melanie had on her hands the ingredients necessary to brew a rebellion, a riddle she sorely needed to unravel and stow away.

  She pushed the thoughts from her mind and focused on the one thing within her control at the moment: Angras. In her palm, Melanie held a group that worked under him; she couldn’t fumble this opportunity. And if they knew nothing of interest, well, she had much at her disposal to calm the fury she felt at being threatened in her own domain. The nerve.

  “What is the priest’s name again?”

  “Frye, Your Majesty,” Talliver responded.

  Minutes later, they arrived in front of the dungeon. Frye greeted Melanie with a crooked bow and led her inside, where sat two of the prisoners, chained. The woman – a priestess, from what Frye had told Melanie – stared, her eyes little more than slits in a face swollen with bruises, but it was the man sitting opposite that intrigued Melanie.

  “Alocar Leyton, as I breathe.”

  The old general turned, wrinkled and fleshy, his belly bigger than she’d remembered. Melanie wondered if she’d aged as badly, and she started to touch a hand to her face before she arrested its movement. Alocar didn’t say anything, but his pupils dilated and he jerked against his bonds. Apparently some things couldn’t be forgotten, nor forgiven.

  “It has been a long time.”

  “Thirty years.” His voice, if anything, had grown more potent, deeper, the voice of a legend, a threat to her reign, even now.

  “Time passes us all, some more leisurely than others.” She eyed Alocar’s stomach. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Do not play me for a fool, you doddering old man. I have you at my mercy, so you might as well be forthright with me. Why did you agree to Angras’s demands?”

  Alocar shifted his head a fraction, tilting it toward her, as if considering. “He has my family.”

  “Your son? Pah, you and I both know that you could have found them had you been so inclined. That may be part of it, but it is not all.”

  “Truly then?” Alocar’s eyes twitched toward Crymson, and then refocused on Melanie. She felt their power, their conviction, just like she’d felt it in his days as general, in her first years as queen.

  “Truly.”

  “I did not jest when I said a large part of it was my family. One does not gamble with the lives of loved ones. But disregard what you took from me all those years ago; what are you hiding from the people?”

  “Took? It was never yours to begin with. You answer to the kingdom, and the kingdom answers to me, which means you are mine, a possession, free to command, as are all things in Prolifia, and what you consider yours is only so because I allow it. But hiding? Nothing, at least nothing that needs to be told.”

  “Bullshit!” Alocar’s face reddened, contrasting sharply with the white of his upper lip. “I saved this country! I brought it together! And just when it was over, just when I could possibly enjoy the things I’d slaved away my whole life for, you took it all away, threw me aside like a used rag, frightened, like a child playing at wearing her mother’s crown.”

  “That’s a lie and you know it!” Melanie rose half out her chair, her hands gripping it by the arms.

  Controlling her breathing, she sat back down, smoothing her dress across her knees. “A lie. I did what was best for my country. I could not allow a man such as yourself to overthrew the throne.”

  “Regardless,” Alocar calmed his breathing, “you’re hiding something from the people, maybe from everybody, and that’s why I’m here. It can’t last.”

  “Maybe I am hiding something, but you wouldn’t understand.”

  Alocar chuckled, twisting his head away from her as much as his restraints allowed. “Sounds about right.”

  “I�
��m doing what I have to do!”

  “As do I, but not for my king, not my queen, and not my government. I serve the country and its people. And to have somebody like you in charge, running this kingdom,” Alocar spat, “it leaves me sour. You don’t deserve it, and you don’t deserve Prolifia. That’s why I really took this job, to fix a wrong I left unattended long ago.”

  Melanie sat, unblinking, staring at the knife in the middle of the room. “I need answers, and I would like them now; I am an impatient woman, as you can attest to. Where is Angras?”

  No response. Alocar simply stared straight ahead, his chin thrust forward, the very picture of ridiculous obstinacy only the old could claim to; the priestess on the other side put her chin to her chest, equally stubborn, equally stupid.

  “You’ve forced my hand.” Melanie pulled the knife from its wooden sheath in the table, leaving behind a wide incision.

  “I am going to leave you here, for now. Tomorrow night, I will be back.”

  She twirled the knife, the first she’d held since Rupert’s death. “I am leaving this one here with you, within reach, Alocar, and Frye will give the priestess one as well.”

  “Take that knife, and cut off one of your hands. Just one of you – I care not which of you does the deed. Neither do I care about how you do it: saw it, hack it, make a clean cut, but remove the hand at the wrist.”

  “If, by the time I come back, you have decided not to tell me the rest of the story, I am going to cut off both your hands and pack the stubs in salt.”

  She walked closer to Alocar, her voice lowering. “Afterward, I will have both of your feet removed, and treat them much the same. If you are still not talking by that point, I will have both your eyes removed, and then I will set you in a cage in the middle of the city, filled with plenty of food and water, constantly replenished.”

  The last was a whisper. “You will live until a ripe old age, blind, dismembered, reliving misery after misery, regretting every stubborn moment you have ever shown me.”

  “Or,” Melanie shrugged, “you can solve it all. Tell me what you know and I will let you go free. I give you my word.”

  “One day. The eve of tomorrow. A hand better be on this floor, or a story better be on your lips.”

  Kross chuckled, gathering himself as he walked. It’d been two days since he’d returned with the prisoners, long enough for the Queen to be bleeding from her eye sockets and ripping furrows in her skin. Great powers expected great obeisance, a facet of life he’d managed to avoid in no small thanks to his reputation.

  Of course, that reputation required some small acting ability on his part, a thought that dried his chuckle and turned his lips into a flat line. The bounce in his step failed, and he let his shoulders slouch, forcing the enjoyment from his eyes, deadening them.

  He kept a leaf of green in his front pocket.

  Kross slid the door open and seated himself before the Queen, waiting for her to begin the meeting, to lend him power over the conversation.

  Her cool eyes watched him, the guard behind resting his hand on his sword. The wait lengthened. Twenty minutes passed, and still neither of them said a word.

  It grew uncomfortable, even for him.

  Knowing that he’d lost the round, Kross said, “You have your prisoners.”

  “I have my prisoners.”

  “And you have my bounty.”

  “I have your bounty.”

  Kross fought a desire to lick his lips. Something didn’t feel right.

  The Queen stood and walked to the end of the room, her auburn hair cascading in intricate ringlets. It’d probably be easy to grab and pull them, put a knife to her slim throat. “Do you know what the problem is with this country, Kross?”

  His hand slipped under the table and grasped a leaf of green. “Inept noblemen?” It seemed like a safe bet.

  She acted like she hadn’t heard, continuing. “The people, Kross, that’s what wrong with this country. They start feeling uppity, better than what they are, forgetting who holds the reins, who provides them with the things they need. People, it seems, need reminders from time to time.”

  “Maybe it’s the government that needs to be reminded of the people they serve.”

  “See. That is precisely my point. I am a queen, and queens serve nobody.” She turned toward him, her eyes flashing. “Including bounty hunters who overstep their limits one too many times.”

  “Seize him!”

  Fuck. He whirled and pushed off his toe, sprinting to the door. Panels burst off the surrounding walls, and six men detonated into action.

  They charged. Not enough time to get to the door. Kross thrust the leaf of green into his mouth, chewing, molars tearing it apart. Two of the men slowed, but the other four flew past them. They wielded metal wands, three feet in length and twice the thickness of a man’s thumb.

  Well-trained, the four men closed on him from opposite angles. The duo in front thrust with their metal wands, aiming at his stomach, and Kross slammed his time warp against them – releasing his original two. He ducked into a roll, and with sweeping backhand, hamstrung both.

  Sharply, he freed the two hamstrung men and let them fall to the ground in a curtain of blood, their wands spilling from their hands. His mouth pulped the green leaf and he threw time against a rushing guard, whose overhead cut stalled in midair.

  “Don’t kill him!” Kross turned left, parrying a low thrust that came at his knees from another direction.

  “There, there! Take the right!”

  “I have the goddamned right, you worry about the left!”

  Kross released time. The stalled overhead cut whistled past. He swallowed, and his hand darted to the pouch of leaves on his waist. He thrust a handful into his mouth and stopped three of the men in their tracks. A headache bloomed at the back of his skull.

  Kross’s left arm flashed forward and a knife sped toward a guard’s face, entering his cheekbone, but Kross didn’t notice because he’d already turned to slice his sword across another’s throat, letting the blood spray from the rent.

  Sword twirling in his hand, Kross walked toward the three remaining time-warped guards, a crooked smile on his wide mouth.

  The sword, so dexterous in his graceful fingers, clanged to the ground, followed by Kross’s knees. Pain blossomed in his groin, and he looked up, only to see Queen Melanie walking toward him, crossbow in hand.

  “Wha – ”

  Another arrow took him, slightly above the first. He clutched at the fletching that tickled the top of his stomach. Funny, this one didn’t even hurt. “Bloody shrew, killing me for your mistakes. Can’t admit to being wrong, can you? Your kingdom is falling down around your ears and – ” her foot collided with his chest and pushed him to the floor. “Fucking shrew.”

  The leaf disintegrated and fell back in his throat. The three upright men, released from time, circled him.

  Kross coughed. The pain generalized and spread throughout his body. “This is pathetic. End me.”

  “End you?” The Queen threw the unloaded crossbow to the side. “Why would I do that? You have a power that my Cao Fen allies find appealing, and at this point, I owe them a few favors. You may help balance the scale.”

  The little blood that remained drained from Kross’s face. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” said the Queen, almost brightly. “Talliver? Bring him along, and find a couple healers. I cannot have him die on us, not now.”

  Angras

  Whispers, whispers, and more whispers. Whispers of people chained beneath the ground. Whispers Kross had told us in a haze of medicinal drugs, of a small Blessed he’d hidden from the Queen’s prying eyes. Whispers of chaos. Whispers.

  Help me. Please.

  “You let me out,” Angras said. “Now it’s your turn to watch.”

  Alocar

  Bodies weren’t made to sit in place for this long. Alocar twisted in his chair, attempting to pop his spine but only succeeding in wrenching the muscles that
ran alongside it. His piss-stained pants rubbed against his inner thighs, the flesh probably red and swollen.

  Only hours until the Queen returned, and here they were, both their hands attached and whole.

  Crymson sat in front of him, grasping her knife. Her eyes had a certain glaze to them, like she was seeing life as a picture in a frame, an observer rather than an active participant.

  “One of us has to do it.”

  Crymson’s eyes, barely visible in the puffy flesh surrounding them, rose to meet his. “I know.”

  “We can’t just give up the rest of our story. They’ll kill us.”

  “I know,” Crymson said, again.

  He wondered which of them would break first, and whether it would it make the one who broke the stronger or the weaker? Faced with this dilemma, one losing one or two losing four, the choice seemed obvious, but to actually wield a blade against your own flesh, to remove something part of yourself, required a detached sort of courage Alocar normally only had when drunk.

  The decision must be made, and soon, and as a duty known only to those called to leadership, the decision rested on him. A leader leads by example, takes on hardships that the people beneath him cannot abide or handle; he stands up for his people, for if he doesn’t, then nobody will. A leader doesn’t throw his people to the wolves or allow them to be brutalized without taking part of it on himself, for a leader must be stronger in both mind and body.

  Still. Eyeing the knife sitting in his lap, Alocar knew that thinking and doing are two different beasts of the same mother. Alternate thoughts warred within him. He was already withering away, old age taking the things once dearest. Hadn’t he lost enough? Would it not be proper, perhaps even Crymson’s onus, to take her own hand? For somebody with a heartier vitality to take the wound for him? Didn’t he deserve something at his late age?

  But even as he thought those words, he knew the hypocrisy they carried. He was an old man, had been for a while, and if there was one thing that he could still do correctly, it was make the right decision. Besides, a young woman like her had decades of life in her blood, whereas he, even with two able hands, wouldn’t be much longer for this world.