“Better,” he grunted to no one in particular, crossing the room and rolling his head, wincing as his long neck popped. Jerr’s armor was comfortable and efficient, but even a man so talented as the old smith couldn’t take the weight out of steel.
Sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, Raz picked up the slim box he’d taken from the dresser and pulled it open. Inside were his grays, a carefully folded shirt, pants, and cowl, all colored the same mottled black and slate, woven from the same thick, form-fitting wool. It wasn’t ideal material for its purpose, sadly. It got caught on edges and rough surfaces and itched around the exposed scars on his wrists, but it was the only material that worked. It hadn’t been news to Raz that the cold affected him more profoundly than it did men, but only once he’d started having to venture out during the frigid southern nights without his usual swath of thick furs and layers did he realize to what extent the icy air got to him. His first contract, long before he’d started accepting jobs from the Mahsadën, had almost been botched for the mere reason that Raz hadn’t managed to stay warm. The cold slowed him down, making him sluggish and tired, and it was more luck than skill that had ended the life of the smuggler he’d been hunting that night.
Mychal used to joke that Raz was “a whole new kind of cold-blooded killer.”
Raz frowned at the thought of his cousin, but pushed it aside, unfolding the dark clothes and laying them down by the bed. Turning over, one wing unfurled to drape over his body, his tail snaking to curl around him. Needing little sleep was a blessing considering he worked all hours of the day, but it was still a good idea to catch it when he could. He already had another job lined up for the evening, and the Sun would start setting in only a few short hours. Raz closed his eyes, letting the limited light of the room filter in through the dark-red skin of his wing, and willed sleep to come.
Soon after, old habits found him drifting off with one hand around the handle of the throwing knife he kept under the corner of the mat.
A blue half Moon hung in the midnight sky when Raz stepped out of the alley shadows, turning along the brighter streets of the market districts. Behind him the body he dragged scraped and bumped over the cobbled stone, leaving a trail of smeared blood to harden in the cold night air. Ahna wasn’t with him, as was usual on jobs like this. She was heavy and cumbersome, problematic considerations when it came to stalking the evening darkness.
Not to mention Raz had never liked the idea of carrying his sister’s namesake when he was out with the intent of murder.
Then again, it had been a long time since he’d lost any sleep over simple murder. He’d done his research. He always did before contracting with the Mahsadën. The man trailing behind him, dead eyes staring back at his own blood, was no innocent. Avon Plyth was a lower lieutenant to one of the šefs’ stronger competitors, a slavemaster named Kî Orran. Orran had been smart and careful, staying in the shadows as her organization grew. She’d only made herself known recently, once she posed a decent enough threat to force the Mahsadën to take things a step at a time with her.
Killing one of her lesser officers was the first move, an unmistakable warning that Orran would either heed or ignore, at which point the next move would be made.
The hunt had been a hard one, by most standards. The šef had their spies in every corner of Miropa but—as much as the society liked the world to think they were all-seeing and all-knowing—the reality was that in a city of a half-million people it was always possible to lose yourself, at least for a time. Plyth had somehow gotten wind that something was coming for him, and he’d taken measures to vanish almost at once.
Still, it took more than a few friends willing to lie for you to keep the Monster of Karth off your scent.
It barely took Raz two hours to figure out the game. Whereas coin spent on information was generally well worth it, tonight it had been a waste. For most of the evening he’d found himself going in circles between a dozen different brothels, inns, and root dens, with nothing to show for any of it. In the end, he’d changed the rules. Plyth had a brother, Barrus, whom he was well known to be close with. Barrus, having no reason to be afraid of the Mahsadën himself, was wasting his night gambling in a tavern in the east district, the Seven-Sided Dice. Raz had found him and offered a dozen crowns for information on where his brother was hiding. He’d paid up front, all twelve gold pieces, almost half of the bounty he would collect for Avon Plyth dead. Barrus had taken the gold eagerly enough and pointed Raz in the direction of an old abandoned storehouse in the middle of the slums to the west. Raz had thanked him and taken his leave at once, turning west.
Then he’d darted into the side streets and climbed his way up to the rooftop across from the Seven-Sided Dice.
It had only taken minutes for Barrus to appear, hurrying from the tavern, swaddled in furs to ward off the cold. Looking around briefly to make sure no eyes were watching him, the man turned north.
Quiet as death, Raz tailed him roof to roof.
Plyth, it turned out, was hiding in the modest home of a distant cousin the Mahsadën’s spies hadn't seemed to have found out. When Barrus rapped out some secret knock on the timber frame of the door, Raz dropped on him from above with gladius drawn. Avon opened the entrance just a crack, expecting to hear news of how the plan to mislead his hunter was turning out. Instead he’d found Raz i’Syul Arro over the twitching corpse of his brother, and he’d barely taken breath to scream before the evening’s bounty was fulfilled.
Raz made sure to retrieve his dozen crowns from Barrus’ body before dragging Avon out by the bloodied collar of his shirt.
Torchlight crawled around a corner ahead, and Raz flattened himself against the wall of the closest house, shoving the body unceremoniously behind a water barrel. Privately he smiled. He liked these wars the rings waged with each other. They were rare—the Mahsadën did a fair job of lassoing in all the loose ends that were or would be competition—but when they did come around every few years it meant one certain thing: lots of work.
Which in this case meant a lot of dead slavers.
Within a minute a half-dozen men in matching yellow and purple tunics rounded the corner, torches held high. Raz didn’t even flinch as they moved closer. The city guard were entirely in the Mahsadën’s pocket, the exceptions either quickly flipped or their hacked pieces left as meaty fodder for the pig sellers along the market roads. He watched them march, feeling his temper flare with the light of their torches. They were nothing but a ceremonial unit now, a vestigial offshoot of a government that had at one time held its own.
Now, he thought, watching the group yell and halt around the dead man’s blood, you are the perfect symbol of what once was and what is now.
One of the men—their captain, judging by the triangular gold patch on his left breast—knelt down by the faded trail and followed it to the side. They were only a couple paces away, so to a one the guards all jumped when the torchlight fell on Raz. He could have avoided them, probably even cut them to ribbons before they knew he was there, but it was the little things about his work that made him enjoy it so much.
Like the reactions.
He watched them, smirking and imagining the figure he must have cut, casually leaning against the wall with arms crossed, bedecked and hooded in gray and black layers that probably made him hard to see even in the light. The gladius strapped to his back stuck out over his right shoulder, the length of rope around his chest casting twisted shadows like a snake. There was a tense moment, every eye on him.
Then the captain stood up, shifting his torch so that Raz fell into darkness again.
“Forward,” he said over his shoulder, and at once the rest of the patrol started moving again, acting as though the crimson splatters at their feet didn’t exist. Turning back in Raz’s direction, the captain nodded once, then hurried to catch up to his squad.
Reaching down, Raz pulled the body back out into the street, his eyes trailing the men down the road.
Nothing I can do.
He always had to remind himself of that. The world was beyond saving.
Starting off in the opposite direction, Raz lifted the corpse and tossed it over his shoulder, grimacing at the touch of the dead arms flopping against his back. The run-in had put him behind schedule. Picking up the pace, he hurried, making his way toward center district.
Miropa’s design was more efficient than that of most cities, especially compared to the likes of Karth. Though it was still cleanly divided by class and wealth, its sectors had a structured shape to them, each centered around an open square with roads radiating outwards in all directions. In the city slums these “squares” were little more than wide patches of dirt the children played in to stay out of their parents’ way, but in the market and the wealthier districts they were cobbled and clean.
And huge.
It was five minutes before Raz turned the corner onto a main road, and another ten before he stepped out onto the square itself. Nearly two hundred paces across, the circular plaza had once been a favored spot for trade and exchange. Raz could remember setting up shop with his family not a dozen yards from where he stood, in fact, shouting and waving out into the crowd. Even during the summer the place used to be packed with people out enjoying the days, mixing with vendors publicizing their goods at the top of their lungs.
Now? Now it was all gone, and the monstrosities that replaced the crowds loomed like iron skeletons out of the night.
Spaced evenly near the center of the wide circle, three rectangular pens rose straight from the stony ground, ghostly visible in the Moon’s light. About eight feet high, they were ten feet wide and two dozen long, built close together so that the shade of the surrounding buildings never once reached their edges except for the very extremes of dawn and dusk. The slim iron bars, spaced barely a hand-width apart so that not even infants could slip through, were bent and dented where prisoners had attempted desperate escapes.
When they were full, the sobbing screams and pleas from the Cages could be heard from nearly anywhere in the district.
Tonight, mercifully, they were quiet. Two small forms were huddled in the corner of one pen, but even as Raz approached he knew they were too still, too silent. In the quiet of the night he’d have been able to hear their breathing a dozen yards back, but there was nothing. Again he forced himself to look, stepping into the circle. Again he forced himself to bear witness, to remind himself why he did the work he did, why he’d turned into this person he’d become.
A child. One of them was a child no older than ten…
Swallowing back the raging whirlwind of emotions that ripped through his chest at the sight, Raz turned away. There was one less head-trader in the world tonight because of him. Maybe it would mean one less body in this very spot tomorrow.
The Cages were eerie in the dark, torturous hollow enclosures that seemed to emanate fear and pain. Raz clenched his teeth and looked up at the Moon, offering a brief prayer that she would rush the poor souls who’d died miserably here up into Her Stars.
Then he dropped the body and got to work.
Lifting the rope off his shoulder, he moved to the closest of the pens, pulling a key he’d lifted from one of the Cage guard out of his pocket. The lock opened with a click, and Raz stepped in, instantly uncomfortable in the confined space. Brushing the feeling aside, he reached up, looped the rope over one of the bars, and pulled the end down. Tying it into a noose, he let it hang there, moving back to drag the body inside.
It was quick work to get the noose around the dead man’s neck, and after hauling him up till his head lolled about a foot from the top of the Cage, Raz tied the rope to one of the side bars. For a minute he watched the body spin in a slow circle in the middle of the enclosure, suspended above the ground.
“Sun burn you,” he spat before stepping out, not bothering to lock the door behind him. Throwing the key aside, he walked away without looking back. The Cage guard had already been paid off to arrive late to their shift in the morning. The first people to see the body would be locals and traders, and from there word would spread fast. No one would dare cut it down. Everyone knew better than that, and if they didn’t they’d best learn damn fast.
The Mahsadën liked to teach by example.
Pulling his hood down, Raz let his ears spread, welcoming the brief breeze that dipped down off the surrounding rooftops and into the street. It was a surprisingly warm night, more cool than frigid. Raz was quiet, walking the wide route he’d mapped out for himself. Stopping by a public water trough, he dipped his hands in, scrubbing the remaining blood from his skin. He watched the dark swirls dissipate in the ripples of his own reflection, brooding.
The Mahsadën had won again.
He couldn’t understand his own thought process. He hated them, hated every one of them. He’d killed men barely old enough to be called men just for being a part of the underground rings. He’d hunted them, cutting them down one after another in the name of the innocents whose lives they’d ruined.
So how did he justify his own actions now?
He was working under different conditions. That was what it always came down to. He was powerless to wipe out the growing beast that was the Mahsadën, powerless to even limit it or tie it down. He’d tried when the rings had first started to bind together. He’d killed more men in a handful of weeks than he could count, drunk on blood and the desperate need to keep the slavers from taking over.
And he’d achieved nothing.
No, he thought, watching Her Stars shimmer across the water’s surface. I achieved something. I got them to notice me.
At first the rings had treated him like exactly what he was: a threat. They’d sent soldiers and assassins, hired killers and anyone looking to make a crown. They’d even tried to send true sarydâ, he’d heard, but the desert bandits turned mercenaries had been familiar with him and his family long before Raz had become a problem for the underworld.
Each and every one had firmly refused the contract.
It was then, probably, that the Mahsadën—for they’d already become a single group when they approached him—sought him out on different terms. They offered him everything imaginable: money, property, titles, power. They’d even offered him whores, human women, something he’d found abhorrently amusing.
Even if he’d been attracted to them, he’d asked, what was he supposed to do with them?
The Mahsadën messengers all returned to their employers with the same things: a polite decline of all offers, and the hands and heads of the enforcers sent to guard them.
It was then that one of the šef finally recognized what it was that Raz was after, and offered him exactly that.
“Work for us,” the man had exclaimed pompously, bravely paying Raz a personal visit, “and we’ll give you the coin and supplies to hunt whoever you like. Kill whoever you like. Do whatever you like. We have common enemies, I think you’ll find. An infinite number, in fact. Deal with them, and you’ll be getting paid to do what it is you do best.”
The next day, small pieces of the man had been sent to each of his colleagues in expensive silk-wrapped gift baskets.
But the offer had stuck in Raz’s head, flitting around in his thoughts like an angry fly. A week later the Mahsadën had received Raz’s reply, accepting the terms of the arrangement.
And now, after three long years, he was stuck.
“You didn’t really think it through, did you?” he asked his now-still reflection with an angry snort. For a second the cold breeze of the desert night picked up again, ruffling the skin of his wings.
No, came the reply, like it had ridden the wind to his ear.
What he’d expected to happen differently, though, Raz wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d thrown himself in with the mindset that the accord would bring him closer to the center of the organization. Or maybe he’d just limited his vision to what was happening directly in front of him, refusing to acknowledge the consequences of opening certain doors. When he killed, whenever he killed,
he wiped another monster off the map. A murderer dead, a rapist slaughtered, a slaver butchered. One by one they fell.
What he’d always willed himself to be blind to was the beast lumbering in his wake, devouring the piling bodies and growing stronger with every kill he made.
There was nothing Raz could do. He’d entered this vicious circle of his own accord. He’d stoked the fires that were the Mahsadën and watched them grow, watched until the dark flames consumed Miropa.
And now he had to live with it.
Turning away from the water, Raz kept walking, looking up into the sky. Searching, it took a moment to make them out, but he finally caught sight of the three Stars—two bright orbs sitting side by side in the sky with a tiny one resting just below them.
What would the Arros think of what he’d become? What would his mother and father have said? Ahna would have forgiven him, of course, but she’d been only eight when the rings fell on his family like wolves in the night.
She’d be what? Fifteen, sixteen now? Would I have forgiven myself then, if I knew the path I was choosing? Would I have allowed it?
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 21
