Step one.
There was always a calm before the storm. Now he just had to figure out how to push their buttons enough for one of them to snap, try to release all that pent-up rage, and make a mistake.
They steered away from the wharf, instead, climbing up the hill toward the wealthiest district in the city, positioned at the height of its northern bluff, overlooking all of Trader's Bay. Whitney spent his younger days pilfering the area, but after a few occasions in Winde Port, he found the challenge wasn’t there. There were too many distractions in the city and unlike presently, spotting a Glass Soldier or guard used to be a rarity.
They dragged him up a gravel path which turned to brick at the top. The haphazard nature of the city gave way to a neighborhood reminding him of Old Yarrington. Stone and wood mansions, heavy on ornament, only here many of them had balconies sticking out over the bluff, challenging nature to do its worst.
He was led to the biggest home of all, the door bearing the Darkings family crest. The constable’s place in Bridleton belonged in the Panping Ghetto by comparison. Whitney cursed himself for not looking deeper into the man’s history. He remembered wondering how Darkings came to such power in that little town and now he knew.
His family was in power everywhere.
Half a dozen of Darkings' private guards stood out front, one of which Whitney recognized.
“Oi! Scar-Face!” Whitney called, unable to help himself.
The one-eyed guard he and Sora had escaped in Bridleton growled like a bear. His knuckles turned white around the shaft of a spear.
“Count yourself lucky the constable… former constable… wants you alive,” he said.
“I always count myself lu—”
The butt of the spear whipped across Whitney’s chin with bone-crunching speed. He spit out a mouthful of blood, glad no teeth came with it.
“He said nothing about your quality of life.” The one-eyed guard cackled. “Can’t wait to watch you squirm.” He raised his free hand to his throat, stuck his tongue out and forced his eye wide, then laughed some more.
He went to take Whitney, but the Glass soldier holding him positioned himself between them. “I believe your boss owed us something for bringing him straight here.”
“Aren’t you men of the Glath thupposed thu be honorable?” Whitney said, mouth still filling with blood.
“Not for free.”
The one-eyed guard grunted under his breath. He reached back and was handed a plump coin-purse. The Glassmen took a peek inside, then handed Whitney over, saying, “Give Darkings my regards.”
“You thure you don’t wanth thu join uth?”
He was flung through the entry of the house. Somehow, this mansion was more elaborate yet just as sparsely decorated as Darkings' former home in Bridleton. Probably because it was double the size. What hadn’t changed was the giant portrait of Darkings hanging front and center. Only, it wasn’t this Darkings in the painting.
“My father, Yuri,” former Constable Darkings said, once again showing up as if from thin air from a side entry. “He is quite a handsome man. I’m told I got his good looks.”
Good looks was a stretch, but it was true, they could have passed for twins. If not twins, it was obvious they were father and son. Both had bellies that hung well over their belts. Darkings the younger’s new mustache was an obvious homage to Yuri, his father, as well.
“Father was so kind as to lend me his winter home since mine was burned to the ground.” His tone bore such venom Whitney expected to be hit. “Somebody get him a towel,” Darkings ordered instead. “He’s bleeding all over the marble.”
A moment later, a young Panpingese boy returned with a hot towel. Begging for coins on the corner of the Panping Ghetto seemed preferable to having to heed the beck and call of such a wretch. The one-eyed guard took the towel and forcefully wiped Whitney’s face. Whitney spat on the floor when he was finished.
Darkings clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Always the rebel.”
“You knew I wath gonna go afther Thavatha,” Whitney lisped. “You killed him and thet me up, didn’th you?”
“Please stop. You sound like a fool.” Darkings snapped again, and another servant arrived with two cups of wine. He offered one to Whitney.
“Don’t be proud,” he said. “This will clean out your mouth.”
“Like you care,” Whitney said. He took it with both his cuffed hands and lifted it to his lips anyway. It burned his cut gums on the way in, then quickly began to numb the pain.
Darkings pulled down on his collar to get a look at his chest.
“Whoa,” Whitney protested. “I’m sure you like seeing me cuffed and all, but at least gimme a meal first.”
The wine was helping, but now his mouth was beginning to swell.
“Where is the necklace you stole from me?” Darkings asked.
“Sold it for a horse back in… I forgot what town.”
“You sold that priceless artifact for a horse?”
“Two horses, actually. But they were shorthairs so, really—”
“Shut up!” Darkings shouted.
Whitney rolled his shoulders. “My legs were tired,” he whispered under his breath.
Darkings raised the back of his hand, stopping himself right before smacking Whitney across the face. His whole arm quaked. “Tell me, did you think you’d get away with it?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have done it if I thought otherwise.”
“I have been watching you since you entered my city,” Darkings said. “You and your little pet. Where is she now?”
“You tell me. She disappeared along with that white-haired killer who I assume you hired to come after me.”
“Ah yes, Kazimir. I must say, when I employed him, I didn’t imagine how excessively thorough he would be.”
Whitney pictured the man again, that awful, nightmarish grin. “What are you doing with her?”
“What he does with your knife-ear is none of my concern. I offered more wealth than you could imagine for him to track you down, yet the moment he knew of her, she was the only prize he wanted.”
“Prize?” Whitney scoffed. “He’s in for a rough night.”
“Heavens no! You think he’s that sort of hired blade?” Darkings chortled. He strutted over to a seat by the stairs, right below his father’s portrait. It may as well have been a throne.
“Well, you hired him. I just have to figure he’s scum.”
Darkings took a long sip of wine, grinning impishly as he licked his lips. “Have you ever heard of the Dom Nohzi?”
Just hearing the name had Whitney swallowing the lump in his throat.
He nodded.
Anyone who’d been to the big cities of the world had, though most thought them a myth. But Whitney had been to Brekliodad, and he’d seen their work first-hand. The Dom Nohzi were an order of assassins whose work was legalized amongst their people by blood pact. If one went to them and provided a case of why a man should die, and some deities they called the Sanguine Lords accepted, that was the end. It was all heaped in layers of mystery but what was known was that upon being employed, their order was ruthless, calculating, and apparently, now operating this far south.
“I’m sure you would have, being the worldly thief you are,” Darkings went on. “It was only when I got here and looked through father’s ledgers that I found a contact there. The business of coin can be so cutthroat after all.”
“And people insult my profession,” Whitney scoffed.
“Swindling people is a fool’s profession. And fools die.”
“Yet here I am,” Whitney said, “alive and breathing.”
That was the thing about the Dom Nohzi, if you were unlucky enough to be chosen as one of their targets, it was said you never saw them coming. One night you were carousing at a tavern, and then the tip of a knife found its way into the back of your skull.
Burning down a man’s house after robbing him was certainly enough to get their gods to
approve the blood pact, yet, somehow, Whitney lived. And it was then that he realized; he hadn’t burned down the house. That was Sora.
“All right, all right, Darkings, you got me.” He clapped his hands, chain jingling as he did. “So why don’t you let Sora go. The whole her-burning-the-house-down thing? It was an accident.” He released a nervous chuckle. “Seriously, you should have seen her face after.”
“You think I don’t know that you were the ringleader of that little escapade? As I said, what Kazimir does with your knife-ear girlfriend is not up to me. Though I can only imagine what use his order might have for a blood mage with no family to care about her.”
Before Whitney could think better of it, his eyes shot open with horror. Darkings had challenged him to that game of gems, and Whitney’s bluff was already shot. After looking into Kazimir’s horrible face, he couldn’t imagine. He didn’t want to.
“Darkings, look—”
“It is Lord Bartholomew Darkings to you!” he roared, springing up from his seat. He slammed his drink down on a table and approached Whitney. “I want you to hear me, boy,” he said. “I own you. I own you.”
He squeezed Whitney’s puffy jaw tight between his fingers. Whitney winced, feeling like a barrel of pins had burst in his mouth. “You’re still here because that is how I want it.”
“Just… let… Sora… go,” Whitney forced out.
“I wouldn’t even if I could. She is a perversion, a taint of Elsewhere that we loyal followers of Iam cannot abide.”
“Now… you’re so… pious?”
“You’ll never see her again. The blood pact on your head is complete. She is payment and now, your death is going to earn me the trust of the entire Panping citizenship.”
He released Whitney’s jaw and sauntered back to his seat, grabbing his wine on the way. The one-eyed guard promptly grabbed Whitney and shoved him to his knees.
“To think,” Darkings said as he sat back down. “I simply wanted to destroy you. I wanted to sully the name of Whitney Fierstown, or whatever you call yourself. Now, I get to drag two of your names through the mud, watch you hang, and further my foothold in this city.” He took another sip of wine, savoring every last drop. “You are the most useful pile of shog I’ve ever come across.”
“And you’re the ugliest.”
The comment earned Whitney a right hook across his already injured jaw from the one-eyed lackey. He would have gone down, but the other guards forced him upright.
“We hang him at dawn for the murder of Tayvada Bokeo,” Darkings ordered. “Such a sad city these days. They will revel in the entertainment. Throw him in a cell and tie all his limbs. We don’t want any miraculous escapes.”
Whitney spat out another gob of blood. “Then you captured the wrong man. Miraculous escapes are my specialt—” A cudgel to the back of the head had him on his knees and seeing bright lights. By the time he could see clearly again, Darkings was crouched in front of him.
“You’re nothing, boy.” He reached into Whitney’s jacket and removed the letters patent presented to him by Torsten and sealed by the Crown itself. On it, was proof of his noble name and house: Blisslayer. To his horror, Whitney remembered that in the chaos created by Queen Mother Oleander, there was no time for the newly named Master of Rolls to add a copy to the archives.
It was just a name and a worthless piece of paper, yet as Darkings raised it to one of the candles mounted on the wall, Whitney felt his heart sink. Fire caught the corner and spread, the ink melting away as it flaked into ember and ash.
“You will die as nothing,” Darkings said as he dropped the papers to the floor to finish burning. Then a second blow to the head sent Whitney face first into cold marble, and his whole world went black.
XIV
THE KNIGHT
It was two days marching before the stone of Fort Marimount shone under the light of the moons against a sea of darkness. It was said that the natural portion had been excavated by dwarves and used as a foothold for hunting the ancient dragons that stalked the region. The fortress itself was built across a shallow valley, half-sunken into the rock with a stone stronghold rising from its edges. The Glass Road, running north and south, led right through it like an armored bridge with a gate on either side. The farmland they passed on the west side helped feed the capital, and on the east was the Haskwood Thicket where Muskigo’s men were said to be waiting.
The valley didn’t cut across all the Southern Reach like the Jarein Gorge did up north, but Torsten knew Muskigo wasn’t foolish enough to go around it. He’d looked into the afhem’s eyes after all.
Marimount guarded the Southern Reach, the last bastion of defense before Yarrington. Muskigo had already ambushed many of the surrounding villages when the Glass was distracted by Liam’s death. Taking the Fort would make it easy for him to invade the heart of the realm without risk of being surrounded, to impede trade routes from the south and east, then put Yarrington under siege and to starve them out.
Redstar zipped up a nearby hill on his black horse, two gray dire wolves flanking him along with a Drav Cra dradinengor and the warlock, Freydis. Torsten felt like he was stuck in a nightmare every time he saw the man, still dressed in robes like a heathen instead of being armored properly like a Glassman off to war ought to be. Flame wrapped his hand for light. A torch would have been easier, would’ve required no drawn blood, but Redstar seemed intent on unsettling Torsten’s men with his dark magic… or perhaps he thought he was impressing them.
“Torsten,” Redstar said. “I bring news from the valley.”
“Nobody asked you to,” Wardric grumbled.
The dradinengor led his horse in a circle around Wardric. He didn’t speak, only stared. The man had a beard so thick it was hard to tell where it ended and the furs draped over his shoulders began. Torsten recognized him. He was Drad Mak the Mountainous, leader of the southernmost Fyortentek clan. Torsten didn’t know many of their kind by name, but this one was larger even than Torsten and had led so many successful raids against the towns surrounding Crowfall over the years that, as Wearer, Torsten had been forced to help bolster defenses.
Now they marched together.
“I prefer to rely on scouts that know the land, Shieldsman,” Redstar said. “Not fools with eyes.”
“Just spit it out,” Torsten said.
Redstar said something to Mak in Drav Crava.
“Yes, Drad Redstar,” the dradinengor grunted in response, then sneered at Wardric before riding to their people. Redstar then fell in beside Torsten.
“I had my followers in that ruin—you remember it, don’t you Torsten?” Redstar said.
“I remember the face you wore.”
Redstar referred to the dwarven ruins southwest of their current position where, not too long ago, Torsten had been deceived into believing Redstar was his long-lost mentor, Uriah Davies.
“Ah yes. You know, I always did dream of being some great knight after King Liam stole my sister. I always imagined what it would have been like if he took me too.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before trying to stop him with blood magic,” Wardric bristled.
“Stop him?” Redstar snickered. “Liam invaded in the name of his peaceful god and stole a young daughter from the hands of her father… yet, somehow you paint me the villain? I swear, the hypocritical nature of you people never ceases to astound me.”
“You’re welcome to leave at any time,” Torsten said. “Now what did you want to tell me?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Spit it out, I said!”
“My followers called on the Buried Goddess to listen. To hear the rumblings through the earth. They tell me that Marimount is not the Shesaitju’s only target.”
“And where else might they attack?” Torsten asked.
“Nesilia does not reveal all, only glimpses from so deep below. She speaks of grating mud, of river water sloshing beneath the feet of great beasts.”
“I th
ought you said your work in bringing your goddess back was complete?”
“I am her vessel, I only do as she asks.”
“What would you do then?” Torsten asked.
“The only logical targets for the afhem and his afhemate are here and Winde Port. I suggest you send a portion of your army east to the port city just in case. My men can go if you’d like?”
“And miss the battle?” Wardric said. “You truly are a worm, Redstar. Are you that frightened at the thought of fighting?”
“The armies of mortals are nothing compared to the goddess we slew in the woods. I am merely trying to help my nephew.”
“How quick your loyalties turn,” Torsten said. “Now, are you finished?”
He nodded.
“My scouts inform me that Muskigo’s army gathers before the fortress and he, himself is in the lead. Siege towers and catapults are preparing to breach the walls, and Prefect Calhoun of Winde Port sent word by galler, just this morning, that the only ships in Trader’s Bay are anchored merchants and our fleet.”
“And what does Iam tell you?” Redstar asked.
“He tells me that the sick feeling in my stomach is from being next to you, not doubt in our strategy. As we speak, Commander Citravan of the Winde Port guard rides this way. We will surround Muskigo here at Marimount, and we will end this rebellion before all the Black Sands decide to fall in with him in the name of their Caleef.”
“You shifted forces from the east?” Redstar asked, incredulous. “Why was I not informed about this?”
“Because you’re not the leader of this army, heathen,” Wardric said. “You’re here to do what Sir Unger tells you, then go home to your ice.”
Redstar slowly drew his dagger and held it over his lap. “Torsten, I would advise your man not to speak to me in such a manner, lest he experience pain no mortal should know.”
“You dare threaten a member of the King’s Shield?” Wardric reached for his sword.
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