The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  He watched another head hit the floor, the body flopping beside it, sword clattering away into one of the far corners of the room.

  The light of the lamps glimmered. Eerie reflections twitched in the black blood pooled about the eight bodies scattered around the basement. Raz listened, tasting the air and smelling the room, searching every shadow.

  Then, satisfied that the fight was over, he flicked the gladius blade clean, spattering blood across the wall, and sheathed it over his shoulder before sliding the ax back into its loop.

  “Bayl!” he yelled, grasping Ahna’s white handle with one hand and wrenching her loose from the ceiling. With a crunch of splintering wood the dviassegai fell heavily into his grasp. “It’s done. Get out here!”

  There was a snuffling, then a grunt of exertion. After a moment a stooped, fat rat of a man crawled out from the stack of wine barrels he’d been cowering behind. As he shuffled into the light, Raz’s snout wrinkled in distaste.

  Bayl Vyzen was the kind of slum runner who didn’t take baths even though he could afford them. In his younger days he’d done well dealing in ragroot and other opiates, even managing to put together a small band of street muscle that contracted out as bodyguards and smash-and-grab thieves. All that had since fallen apart, but a little power went a long way in these dingier parts of town. Bayl now worked as a coordinator for one of the few root distributors left in Miropa that wasn’t under the control of the Mahsadën.

  And—unfortunately—the pungent, sour smell of his history in the industry always seemed to cling to him.

  “By the Sun,” Bayl wheezed, his beady eyes wide, taking in the room. “If I hadn’t seen it myself, Monster… by the Sun…”

  “Your problem has been handled, as agreed,” Raz said curtly, pulling the leather sack that covered Ahna’s blades in public from where he’d tucked it into his belt. “Pay up. And two extra crowns for wanting to witness.”

  “You only said one extra!” Bayl squawked.

  “You only said there’d be six of them.”

  Bayl swelled, about to protest, but Raz stared him down. Almost at once the man deflated. Grumbling, he opened the drawstring of the fat purse at his side and pulled out a handful of gold coins.

  “You charged me extra the first time, too,” he mumbled angrily, dropping the money into the leather palm of Raz’s gauntlet. “Why I hired you again is beyond me.”

  “Because you wanted the guarantee,” Raz told him simply, counting the gold. Bayl had tried to dupe him the last time, assuming Raz was as dumb as most mercenaries.

  He’d been smart enough not to do it again.

  Raz dropped the coins into the pouch at his side and pulled the white hood of his thin robes back over his head. He cut a frightening figure, even with the blades of his dviassegai covered and his other weapons sheathed, and Bayl shivered.

  “You know where to find me if you’ve got more work.” Raz turned and made for the stairway to the upper floors. Bayl nodded, scratching his head at the bodies he now had to figure out how to dispose of.

  By the time he looked up again, the door to the house had closed shut with a bang above.

  On the stoop of Bayl’s home, Raz breathed in the hot air with a mix of masked relief and distaste. He didn’t like cramped spaces. They made him feel limited and trapped, although he’d never admit so aloud. On the other hand, it was early summer and—though Miropa’s slums were a far reach from the Cienbal—the blistering heat bothered even Raz when he was in full gear.

  A hot breeze tugged at the thin fabric of his hood, blowing the cloak around his feet and bare chest. He let his wings relax a little, catching the gust so that it ran through them as he turned and followed the road east. The wind felt good, and he fought the temptation to spread them and let the dark membranes breath. The White Sands, the tavern he’d taken up permanent residence in, wasn’t a far walk away, but he lived on a delicate balance. It was no good tipping it in one direction or the other by scaring the few people who saw him on a day-to-day basis.

  If you could call these poor souls people…

  Raz always looked, always forced himself to see the slummers, the runners and beggars. Too many people ignored them as it was and, while it was generally bad news to catch a slum dweller’s eye, most had enough sense to leave him alone. A few were even friendly, or would have been if Raz had let them.

  Man just wasn’t worth trusting.

  But he could still feel a pang for their predicament, all things considered. Over the last seven years the situation in the South had gone from bad to worse to downright ugly. Even Miropa had fallen to the thieves and slavers, and in a few months the world had changed.

  And not for the best.

  Crime was everywhere, in front of everyone’s nose, and there weren’t many people who did much about it. The Mahsadën, the unseen society whose grasp over the “official” governing bodies was an open secret, was turning on its history. It had risen from the worst parts of the cities, growing out from the secret brothels and root dens and grimy slums. As the smartest and vilest criminals realized their lives were a hundred times easier if they made truce and consolidated their power, so the trouble began.

  Now, though, the Mahsadën seemed to want nothing to do with the trash it had risen from. Whole families were dragged out of their homes by the city guard and arrested on falsified or exaggerated charges before being hauled off to the Cages. Since forced slavery was still technically illegal—the only reason the South wasn’t overrun by atherian slaves, like Perce and the Seven Cities—they couldn’t be sold outright. Men and women had to willingly accept their “civil repayment,” promising servitude as punishment for the crimes they had been found guilty of. More often than not the prisoners fought back, refusing to accept the terms of their “release,” spending days screaming their innocence to deaf ears.

  But nothing tore at a person’s spirit faster than being left in the broiling sunlight for days on end, often without food or water and certainly without privacy. People locked in the Cages weren’t even allowed a bucket to shit in, much less a blanket to keep warm when the temperatures dropped below freezing at night.

  Raz grit his teeth, eyes on the road, Ahna snug in her habitual resting place over his shoulder. The Mahsadën were the blackest of the black, and he hated the work he did with them. Unfortunately, almost all his contracts came from the society through direct and indirect channels. Personal employers like Bayl were a welcome rarity.

  On the other hand, the Mahsadën paid well and were familiar and comfortable with his one limitation, his calling card: “death deserved.” The men and women he hunted, the marks he was paid to attend to, had earned their sentence one way or the other. It was a drawn line that was never crossed. One of their less popular šef, the Mahsadën’s overseers, had tried to trick him once. Raz had refused any of their work for a year­­.

  But that was only after he’d found and hung the would-be employer by his own entrails from the topmost balcony of his sprawling four-story home.

  As far as he knew, none of the Mahsadën had made to fool him again. They were, if nothing else, accepting of his conditions. Why not, after all? It worked well for them. Some no one making claims and boasts they shouldn’t in the local pubs? The city guard could handle that. Small-timers trying to get ahead of the truce and make a name for themselves? Common assassins were ten a copper in any alley of the city.

  But when a true threat raised its head, the game changed. When a competitor proved themself dangerous, when one of the šef climbed too high and grabbed for too much, when treachery needed to be rooted out within the society itself—well, in those cases the Mahsadën liked to send a message. A kind of blanket statement that said, We own this city. We own you.

  Raz i’Syul Arro, the atherian sellsword—over seven dark feet of lean muscle, cruel claws, and pale, sharp teeth with a grudge—was exactly the kind of message they liked to send.

  It irked Raz to no end that he had to work with the scum. J
ust thinking about it made him clench Ahna’s shaft so tightly his hand hurt. If it were up to him he would have wiped them all out years ago. He loved nothing more than the idea of cutting the shadow government from the heart of the city, thrilling in the act of whittling them one by one till nothing was left.

  Sadly, it was an abandoned dream.

  The problem was that the rings simply grew too fast for such treatment, working as a pack of separate factions rather than as a single whole. Even if he could wipe out the Mahsadën in Miropa, the other cities would survive, and within a month a new ring would be in place, running things as usual.

  Raz cursed under his breath.

  Still, his uncle had once told him that to rip out the weeds you have to start by kneeling in the dirt.

  Raz looked up from the road, the metal claws of his free hand tracing the iron chain that still ran from the bottom of his ear to his nostril. It had been ripped out twice in fights in the last few years, but each time Raz had found someone to replace it.

  He would always find someone to replace it.

  Abruptly something hard knocked into the side of his foot, and Raz paused to look down. A fist-sized wooden ball lay in the dust, crudely chiseled until it was passable for a sphere. Bending down to pick it up, he turned it over in his hand. There was a sizable crack in it, like it had been bounced off a wall a few too many times, but it still held together well enough. Standing up, Raz looked around.

  He found them hiding in the shadows a dozen yards away, a boy and girl, maybe ten or eleven years old. Haggard things with scraggly hair, they looked to be made more out of dirt than flesh and bone. The instant they realized they’d been seen, they vanished, ducking behind the wall they’d been peering around.

  Jenza and Iro Zannyz watched the lizard-man with a mixture of fear and excitement. The Monster of Karth was huge, a beast that could probably have touched the sky if he’d wanted to. His giant two-headed spear rested on his shoulder, its evil curved blades hidden under a leather sack. They watched him bend down and pick up the ball that had gotten away from them as they played. For a few seconds he looked at it, rolling the wood in his fearsome metal claws.

  Mother had told them to stay away from the sarydâ. The Cienbal mercenaries were supposed to be bad, bad men, men who’d come pouring out of the desert when the nomadic trading clans had fallen apart. They killed for money and for fun, nothing more. She had told them that they didn’t have a problem with murdering children either, and that the sarydâ ate little boys and girls that got too close to them.

  But the Monster didn’t look like he was going to eat them. He looked like he certainly could, but not like he necessarily wanted to. Jenza and Iro huddled behind the corner of the hovel, safely hidden. Maybe if they were lucky he would leave their ball when he went. Mercenaries and sellswords couldn’t have much use for toys, after all, and it was the only plaything they had left that Mother hadn't had to sell for bread…

  And then the Monster’s golden eyes looked right at them.

  Jenza and Iro both squeaked and dodged back behind the wall. For a full minute they stood there, plastered against the rotting wood of the house, their heartbeats heavy and frantic. They listened for the sound of grinding dirt that meant the sarydâ was coming to eat them.

  Nothing. Maybe they were safe after—

  Thump.

  Both of them jumped as something came rolling past their feet, stopping squarely by Jenza’s bare toes. The pair squealed again, stopping suddenly when they realized what it was.

  Their ball had come back to them.

  Being the older one, Jenza knew she had to be brave. Still, it took her a moment to bend down and pick it up. When she did, though, she realized that it felt heavier than usual.

  Then Iro gasped, his eyes on the back of the toy.

  Slowly Jenza turned it over in her little hands. There was the crack they’d made playing against the wall of the local whorehouse a few weeks ago. Wedged in it, tight enough so they wouldn’t fall out but loose enough to pry free, were a pair of shiny gold crowns.

  By the time they peeked back around the corner, the Monster of Karth was little more than a faint blotch of white disappearing down the dust-blown street.

  CHAPTER 24

  The din and chatter that usually reverberated inside the White Sands’ common room died swiftly when Raz ducked under the low overhang of the tavern entrance. A few of the regulars gave him polite nods when he passed, making his way across the ale-stained floor toward the staircase at the back of the room. He ignored everyone, eyes set resolutely forward. This was his little haven, as much of a shithole as it was. He didn’t like to be bothered in general but—considering this was as close to a home as he’d had in years—Raz always went out of his way to avoid any kind of interaction in and around the inn.

  Miropa, though far gone from the city it had been even a short decade ago, was still the wealthiest of the southern municipalities. Its citizens could afford the risk of building up rather than out and, while the White Sands was nothing compared to some of the lumbering marble towers in the center of the city, its three half-timber stories were nothing to scoff at.

  Especially bearing in mind its location smack-dab in the middle of one of Miropa’s poorest districts.

  Raz’s room was on the top floor, per his request, and the biggest available. It was two rooms, in fact. There was always one šef or another who didn’t appreciate the work he did for the Mahsadën, and a few years back a pair of hired cutthroats had tailed him home from a job. The ensuing fight left the two men in more than thrice as many pieces, and had torn a massive hole through the wall between Raz’s and the adjoining room.

  The tavern’s matron hadn’t been happy about it, but when he offered to pay the rent for both rooms and front the masonry costs of removing the remainder of the wall, she’d given in. Business was too slim to turn down the crowns of a permanent resident, even if that resident was Raz i’Syul Arro.

  As he climbed the stair, Raz couldn’t help but smirk at the voices picking up again the moment he was out of sight. He didn’t mind the effect he had on people. Being frightening meant he was taken seriously, and only idiots and drunks didn’t take Raz seriously.

  Sadly, the idiots and drunks more often than not outnumbered the intelligent and sober these days.

  At the top of the stairs, Raz reached into the leather pouch at his side, fumbling through the crowns he’d won until his fingers found the room key. Pulling it out, he unlocked his door quickly and stepped inside, locking it again behind him.

  Breathing easy for the first time since he’d left that morning, Raz propped Ahna against the wall by the door and looked around.

  Even expanded, the room could barely be considered large. About twenty feet long and ten or so wide, it was spacious only because Raz had stripped it of any furnishings he’d deemed impractical. He’d had the beds removed from both rooms. Instead, he’d claimed the most outside corner for a bedroll with a half-dozen books piled next to it, a number of dirty candlesticks partially melted into the wood floor at its head. The dressers he’d kept, one for his clothes and light gear, the other for the armor he commissioned from Master Jerr. There was a table, too, set up beside the door, and Raz drew his gladius, ax, and long-knife, placing them all carefully beside the bowl of water and dirty rag he would clean them with later. His pouch he tossed on his bedroll, pulling the white cape from around his shoulders and moving to the dressers on the far wall by one of the room’s three shuttered windows.

  Flipping the latch of the first wardrobe, he pulled it open to reveal a half-dozen outfits, mostly plain and inconspicuous, only two richly colored and specially tailored for those rare times he had formal business in the inner parts of the city. Hanging his silk cape, Raz bent down and pulled a thin wooden box from the bottom corner, sliding it across the floor toward his bedroll.

  His armor only took minutes to unclasp. Allihmad Jerr’s work was always beyond perfect and—as one of the few humans R
az trusted—the man received all of his orders, supplying nearly everything he needed to work with. Opening the second wardrobe, Raz set his mail, gauntlets, and the rest of his plating carefully on the shelves he’d built inside for easy access. Carefully he hung his leather wrappings before shutting the wooden doors and latching them closed again.

  With nothing on now but his loose cloth britches, Raz extended all eighteen feet of his wings. The muscles of his back, sore all the time from being taut and folded, pulled and relaxed, and he groaned in relief. As he stretched he pressed up against the flat ceiling he so passionately hated, barely a foot above his head. More than once he’d contemplated asking the matron if he could tear it down, too.