The Far Far Better Thing

by Auston Habershaw

  Then, by dawn, the word had spread that the Young Prince and Lady Michelle were captured—kidnapped in the night by the Ghouls of Dellor, who had murdered good men in their tents in the dark and then vanished into the countryside. By that point they had effectively corralled the remaining Dellorans in the city inside the castle, more or less. The city was virtually theirs. Myreon had hoped a simple parley could win the day.

  But the men of Eretheria hadn’t marched this far and hadn’t bled this much to let Ayventry steal their prince and laugh at them behind their enchanted walls. Myreon was sitting in the common room of a tavern appropriated for her use when she received a bloodied and weary Valen Hesswyn, his helm clutched under one arm, his lips trembling. “The sixth company have begun burning the Garden Row.”

  Myreon looked up from a hastily drawn map of the city. “What? On whose orders?”

  “No one is taking orders anymore, General. I just broke up some looters sacking the library. There’s a lynch mob hanging any man they find not in a white tabard. It’s chaos out there, and it’s getting worse.”

  “Well? Don’t just stand there—do something!”

  Valen seemed to collect himself. He stood up straight. “I’m going home.”

  Myreon was already in the middle of doing something else, so it took her a moment to hear what he’d said. “What?”

  “I’m going home, Magus.” Valen put his helmet on.

  Myreon rose, her staff in her hand. “You swore an oath!”

  “I swore an oath to the White Army!” Valen barked back, his voice cracking. “I swore an oath to the Young Prince! And they’re both gone now, General. You wanted me to protect Eretheria? How can I do that when they’re killing each other? Is there some spell you can use to make this”—Valen gestured out the window, which showed burning houses and carnage littering the streets—“make this go away? Because I can’t.”

  Myreon blinked. Valen Hesswyn, the de facto Count of Davram, was weeping. Gods, she thought, watching his shoulders sag, he’s barely nineteen. Just a boy.

  Valen wiped beneath his eyes and flicked the tears away. “My men are dead. My house is ruined. What . . . what more can you ask of me?”

  Myreon had a lump in her throat so hard it hurt. “Go.”

  Valen blinked. “What?”

  “Go home. You’re right.” She looked him in the eye and shook his hand. “There’s nothing more you can do. I release you from your oath.”

  The tears welled again beneath Valen’s bloodshot eyes. “These people . . . these beasts don’t deserve you, General. They never did.”

  Myreon waved him away. “Just go.”

  Valen drew his sword and saluted her, then presented it to her, hilt first. She accepted it, and he went.

  She took a moment to collect her thoughts, and then went outside herself. A cordon of weary men in white were blocking off the street, just out of easy bowshot from the castle. Barth was sitting on a barrel, tending to a deep cut along his scalp. “Barth!”

  He grinned, holding up a helmet with a deep gash. “Look at that, eh? Battle-axe, right to me temple. Helm saved my life. Fine workmanship, that. Could kiss the bloody smith.”

  “Barth, get your men in line!” Myreon yelled.

  Barth glanced at the rank of pikemen nearby. “They are in line. What are you talking about?”

  Myreon gestured around. “Where’s the rest of them? Where’s the rest of the damned army?”

  Barth looked up at her and, in his eyes, she could see that he understood her question. He understood it the first time. He licked his dry, cracked lips. “They’re doing what armies do when they capture enemy cities.”

  Myreon gaped at him. “There was to be no pillaging! No looting! It’s the Common Law!”

  “This isn’t that kind of war, Magus—you said so yourself.” Barth stood up and cracked his knuckles. “These here bastards have murdered our wives, burned our villages, and stolen our crops, and here we are, at last, in their city. What did you expect?”

  “That was Sahand, not Ayventry! These people are Eretherians, like you!”

  Barth shrugged. “A fine sentiment, Magus, but I’m old enough to remember the last time Ayventrymen did this. Except then we had Perwynnon to talk sense into us.” Barth grunted a laugh. “Gods, could that man give a speech, too. Talked us right out of killing the lot of these two-faced Ayventry shits and salting their bloody ground. Made us feel like the better men for it, too—made us think we’d done right. But now, look where we are again—betrayed by the same shits.”

  Myreon pulled herself to her full height, which was a few inches taller than Barth. “You are to recall your men and get them in ranks—that’s an order!”

  “Kroth take your bloody orders, General,” Barth spat. “This stinking city needs to pay for all it’s done to me and mine, and that is a long bill, let me tell you.”

  Myreon flinched at the venom in the old man’s tone. She softened her voice, trying to find the stalwart old ally she’d leaned on since that first bloody night in Eretheria. “What about the cause, Gammond? What about justice for your people and a new beginning? Don’t throw that all away.”

  “You ever notice, Magus, that you and your Young Prince were the only two folks ever talked about that ‘justice’ idea? Not a man you spoke to ever said he wanted things to be just, and if he did, he didn’t mean it. You, you’re an idealist—I admire that, I do—but when you live a life long as I have on this end of the shit-shovel, you understand that some things you just ain’t gonna get. Justice? Too expensive for men like me. But revenge? That there’s cheap and readily available.”

  Myreon stepped back from him, scarcely able to understand what he was saying—she just refused to accept it. “Remember what Artus said when they were going to lynch that Delloran prisoner? Barth, this makes us just as bad as they are!”

  Barth’s eyes blazed in anger. “The hell it does! I didn’t kill my daughter in the street because she was in the tax-man’s way. I didn’t send my son off to a rich man’s war for nothing, only to have him die with an arrow in his throat. I’m not the wicked man here, Magus. I’m the avenger.” Barth rubbed his cut head, his anger subsiding. He sank back to sitting on the barrel. “If you knew what you were about, you would be, too.”

  Myreon drew back from him, horrified. “I’ll stop them. You’ll see. I won’t let this happen.”

  “You’re too late, girl. Your prince is gone and now we men of Eretheria are free to do as we please, with no high-handed shit on a pretty horse to tell us what we need.”

  Myreon leveled her staff at him, its end burning with Fey energy. “Traitor!”

  Barth stared Myreon in the eye. “You go on, General. Kill me right here. Won’t make a spot of difference now. Today, Ayventry dies, Sahand gets his arse kicked, and tomorrow my people go home. They don’t need me anymore and they don’t need you, either. The war’s over.”

  Myreon shook with anger, but she didn’t release the spell. Instead, she backed away from him. Barth laughed. “Like I said, girl—you’re too late by half.”

  Myreon fled into the streets.

  Tyvian and Eddereon worked until dawn. The hardest part was forging the ring—neither of them were smiths, though Eddereon had done this before.

  Once before.

  After a night of fumbling in the dark while a battle raged outside and heating the fires and melting the iron and pouring it into the mold that Eddereon had fashioned, the last part—the most crucial part—was actually the easiest. It was also the most terrifying.

  Voth was tied up, her sending stone taken, and then she was stripped of all her many, many daggers and garrotes and poison needles. She thrashed and she screamed into her gag, but there was nothing she could do but watch as Tyvian held the still-hot ring in his right hand—his ring hand—and see it glow with sun-bright light, so intense that the interior of the forge was lit as bright as day.

  Tyvian felt as though his hand, then his arm, then his whole body was g
lowing along with the new ring. He was empowering it somehow, though this was magecraft far, far beyond his experience. It was primal, primordial, even—a sorcery bereft of the complex incantations and centuries of practice and refinement that modern magecraft relied upon. To a simpler soul, it would look as though the power of the god were flowing through Tyvian and into the simple ring in his hand.

  He seized Voth’s wrist. She struggled, but he held her still. “It’s all right, Adatha. I’m not going to hurt you.” He saw the terror in her eyes and added, “I am sorry about this.”

  He forced the ring onto the fourth finger of her right hand. It was too large and, for a moment, Tyvian thought that he had screwed it all up somehow. But then it collapsed in size, all at once, and with the barest gust of air and a soft pop, sealed itself onto her hand.

  Voth was screaming, her eyes wild. But then, when there was no pain, she stopped.

  Eddereon was on the other side of the room, sitting beside Artus, who was now sleeping comfortably. In the pale light of predawn, Tyvian could not see his face. “You can cut her loose now. I hope you’re right about this. I don’t think she’s right for the ring.”

  “I’m sorry, Eddereon, but I didn’t exactly have the chance to interview her mother at length over her positive qualities,” Tyvian said. He loosened the knots in Voth’s bindings and stepped back.

  It took the assassin alarmingly little time to wriggle out of her bonds. The moment she was free, she cartwheeled across the room to where a hatchet had been left on a workbench and raised to throw it at Tyvian.

  The ring stopped her. Just as it had him, a lifetime ago.

  Tyvian smiled. I was right.

  “What . . . what did you do to me?” Voth clutched her wrist, looking at her hand like it were some kind of alien appendage.

  “Adatha, let me explain—”

  Before Tyvian could finish, she flew across the room, hands outstretched, ready to throttle him. Again, the ring stopped her cold. She struggled with it, just as he had, forcing one foot in front of the other as the ring tortured her into submission. “No . . . no . . . noooo . . .” she growled.

  Tyvian took a steadying breath. “This would go a lot more easily for you if you just sat down and listened for a moment.”

  Voth crumpled onto the floor. She was crying, “What . . . what did you do? What did you do?”

  Tyvian held up his own right hand. “You aren’t alone, Voth. What is happening to you now happened to me, once.” He pointed at Eddereon. “That is the man who did it to me, too. He has one of his own. Welcome to the club, as it were.”

  Voth was on all fours, trying to collect her breath. “Why can’t I kill you, you son of a bitch?”

  “The iron ring seeks to . . . to focus your better impulses and excise your worst ones. You can’t kill me because to kill me would be wrong.”

  “Says who?” Voth asked with a breathless laugh.

  “Says you, actually. The ring gains its power from you. It contains the best parts of your soul.” Tyvian licked his lips. He really couldn’t believe he was doing this—it was surreal. He had, at some point, become bloody Eddereon. Gods, what a strange life.

  Voth sat up and grabbed the ring with one hand, trying to pull it off. She screamed at it. “Get this thing off me! Get it off!”

  “I know how you feel, believe me.” Tyvian shook his head. “But it’s permanent, I’m afraid. The good news is you become much harder to kill.”

  “And you become a better person,” Eddereon added.

  “Yes, that too,” Tyvian said. “Though I’ve found the ‘being hard to kill’ part more beneficial, to be honest.”

  Voth glared at him, pure murder in her eyes. “Why? Why me? Why not just kill me and get it over with?”

  “If we’d let you go, you would have revealed me to Sahand. And I couldn’t bring myself to kill you.”

  “Killing you was my vote,” Eddereon said, checking on Artus. “But Tyvian’s a better person than me.”

  Voth pushed herself away from the two of them until her back was to a corner. She hugged her knees to her chest. She was still trembling. “So what happens now? Do we go about the countryside, righting wrongs or some nonsense?”

  Eddereon shook his head. “If only it were as easy as all that.”

  Tyvian looked at him and then back at Voth. “Truth be told, we really hadn’t planned much further than this.”

  Artus stirred, causing both Eddereon and Tyvian to leap up. “Artus?” Tyvian asked. “Artus, can you hear me?”

  The boy’s eyes fluttered open. “Mi . . . Michelle? Where?”

  “Calm down,” Tyvian said, taking up his hand. “You’re safe for the time being.”

  Artus sat bolt upright. “Michelle! Where is she?”

  Tyvian held up his hands, trying to calm him. “Don’t go running off after your lady love, Artus. You need to focus. You need to take a deep breath and get your bearings.”

  Artus’s eyes locked on Tyvian. “You! You’re alive!”

  Tyvian nodded. “Yes. I—”

  Artus punched him in the nose. “You lousy son of a bitch! What is the goddamned idea, leaving me like that? Do you know what that was like? Do you know how that made me feel?”

  Tyvian tried to formulate an answer, but his face hurt too much. “Artus . . . really . . .”

  Artus grabbed Tyvian by his tabard and shook him. “Everybody thinks you’re dead! They think I’m crazy! Gods, they think I’m a prince?”

  Tyvian smiled at him. “Well, you do have that nice jawline.”

  Artus’s anger melted from his face. He laughed. And cried. And still laughed. Then he pulled Tyvian into a tight hug. “Oh, gods, Tyvian! I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Tyvian found himself returning the hug. His eyes blurred with tears. “Me too, boy. Me too.”

  Eddereon slapped Tyvian on the back. “Tyvian—Voth!”

  Tyvian released Artus to see that Voth was gone. But where? Not the door—he and Eddereon were sitting by that. Up, then! He charged to the ladder that led to the low roof of the smithy and climbed it as fast as he could. What if he had been wrong about Voth? What if she went to Sahand and told him he was alive anyway?

  He got to the roof, expecting to see Voth skipping away down a street. Instead, he found her standing, stone-still, by the fat chimney. She was staring at something.

  Tyvian looked, too.

  The city was burning. Not too far away, a group of thin, desperate-looking men in bleached tabards were dragging people out of their houses and beating them in the middle of the road. Not far beyond that, a man hung by the neck from a streetlamp. He was still kicking.

  “Gods,” Tyvian said, the ring blazing to life on his hand.

  Voth’s mouth hung open. “We’ve got to get out of this city. Now.”

  Tyvian took her by the hand.

  She did not pull away.

  Chapter 21

  Myreon the Destroyer

  Myreon emerged from the boardinghouse with the ashes of twenty men covering her hands. Twenty of her own men. Men who had cast off their humanity and become beasts. She screamed.

  Two hours had passed since she learned of her army’s descent into madness. Two hours of her running up and down the streets, screaming commands at looters and lynch mobs. The first groups she met had the decency to look ashamed—to hang their heads and leave their beaten victims on the street. But she was only one woman, mage or not. When she left, the men came back.

  She talked to some of them. Interrogated them in alleys at the point of her glowing staff. She asked them why. The responses varied, but all had a central theme: These people were hoarding food, these people were harboring the enemy, these people betrayed us . . .

  These people . . .

  There was no getting around those two words. The good men of the White Army—the revolutionaries Myreon had led across the country to rid it of evil and injustice—had in them the same malice she was trying to stamp out. Appeals
to the cause fell on deaf ears and empty stomachs, and all they cared about was that Ayventry had more than they did, and that they got it by helping Sahand. And now the city would be made to pay.

  Then there was the boardinghouse. The housemaster had opened his doors to widows and orphaned girls—women with no one to guard them and nowhere to go. He had barred his doors and boarded his windows and kept them all quiet in the dark, waiting for the chaos outside to end. And then someone had found them.

  The housemaster put up a fight and killed a man. He died shortly thereafter, and the blood of their comrade gave the hungry, desperate men of the White Army every excuse they needed. Word spread—a house full of Ayventry whores, ready for the taking. That was how Myreon had come upon it. Three floors of rape, of screaming women, of weeping girls beaten bloody by weapons intended for Delloran mercenaries. Weapons paid for by Myreon’s own gold.

  It was all Myreon could take. The Fey filled her like a volcanic eruption, and she cleansed the house of every man in a white tabard, burning them to the bone, one by one. There was nothing they could do to stop her—she was inevitable as death.

  This battle had ceased to be a battle. This was no longer war. Myreon began to doubt whether she had ever actually known what war truly was. She wondered if any of these people had known. Horror and pain and senseless violence and pointless suffering and the blood of children. If only I’d known this would happen.

  Myreon leaned against a wall in an alley and sank to the ground, head in her hands, weeping. Tyvian told me. He told me and I didn’t listen. This was what he wanted to stop. This is what he died to prevent.

  And it had happened anyway. She’d been a fool to think she could change the world from what it was. She’d been a fool to think the world was made up of good people. She, of all people, should have known better.

  They were right. Oh gods, Lyrelle and Tyvian and Xahlven—they’ve been right this whole time!