by Sam Sykes
“Tales cannot be a part of our strategy in Cier’Djaal,” Careus said.
Not now. Asper growled inwardly. Not fucking now. Not because of this fucking saccarii. Think of something. Don’t let them walk away over this. Don’t let Gariath win. THINK OF SOMETHING.
“Tales are for children.”
She didn’t think of the reply that came, clear and crisp as a bell, but it came anyway.
And so, too, did the wizards.
At the edge of the crowd, they appeared: three figures in long, brown coats, postures perfectly rigid, eyes glowing faintly with magical energy. They stepped forward, the crowd clearing a path for them as though they carried a plague. But if Lector Shinka noticed, her pristinely calm face did not betray it. She merely stared out over the crowd with cold eyes as two Librarians fell into place beside her.
“Do I address children, then?” she asked.
“Guard your tongue, pagan,” Careus warned, reaching for the sword at his hip. “Or else I shall—”
“You shall do nothing if you do not heed the priestess—” Shinka caught herself, inclined her head to Asper. “The Prophet, that is, for she speaks the truth.” She folded her hands behind her back. “The tulwar army is thousands strong and its numbers grow daily. From across the deserts, the savages come flocking to Jalaang to join the battle. They will march on Cier’Djaal before long.”
“The word of a godless, bat-shit heathen doesn’t mean much,” Blacksbarrow replied.
“What of a godless, batshit heathen that can fly?” Shinka sneered at the Sainite. “We have seen the savages assembling. We can provide an accurate count to the nearest tenth. We have seen the swords forged and shields hewn. And we have seen their eyes turned toward this city.” She narrowed her eyes. “The city where my tower is located, thank you, and I’m keen to not see it overrun by monkeys.”
“To stand with pagans is one thing.” Careus cast a glare to Blacksbarrow, then to Shinka. “But to heed the counsel of the faithless goes against all that Daeon commands of us.”
“Heaven does not command.” Asper stepped forward. “Heaven demands. Heaven demands champions. Heaven demands those who would defend its creations.” She pointed to Careus. “Heaven has delivered you from sickness.” She pointed to Blacksbarrow. “And you from strife.” She drew in a breath. “And me from death.
“We stand here for a reason,” she said. “Amid the graveyard of our sins and our excesses, we stand together. Foes. Pagans. Fanatics. Faithless.” She shook her head. “Call yourselves what you will. Heaven would call you champions. Heaven demands your service. Heaven demands a war. Heaven demands a victory.”
She was aware, then, that she was breathing heavily. She felt sweat on her brow. She felt her heart beating with a fervor that it hadn’t beat with in so very long.
“Will you give it one?” she asked.
A hush fell over the crowd. The iron hush of the last man at the last battle falling dead from the last drop of blood. The cold hush of the river icing over for a winter that never ended. The black hush in the falter before every prayer to a deaf god.
And she stood tall. She stood firm. And with her gaze alone, she demanded their answer.
“We have orders …” Blacksbarrow said, looking at her feet.
“Your orders were to save Cier’Djaal,” Aturach said. “Will you honor it?”
“Our mission came from the emperor,” Haethen whispered. “We can’t just …”
“You won’t ‘just,’” Dransun said. “You’ll fight. You’ll fight hard. Or else we all die.”
“To ask this of us,” Careus said, “to ask us to kneel before you and—”
“Emperors ask you to kneel,” Asper interrupted. “Sovereigns ask you to bow. Men ask you to lie down and die.” She extended a hand. “Heaven demands that you stand. But stand with me.”
More silence. More looks of doubt. More gazes averted from hers. The fear and doubt was palpable, a fire in her skin. And in its wake, even behind her veil, Asper could sense the smug satisfaction across Teneir’s face.
And just as Asper was tempted to leap forward and throttle it off, a flash of movement caught her eye.
From the rigid phalanx of the Karnerians, a soldier stepped forward. He pushed past Haethen and Careus, casting not a look at either of them as he approached Asper. His face was youthful, full of life, and split by a large familiar smile.
What had his name been?
“Pathon,” she whispered. “Marcher Pathon.”
He smiled. He inclined his head. He stepped beside her and said simply, “I stand with you.”
“Marcher,” Careus said, a stern warning in his voice.
“The Empire serves Daeon, Speaker. And Daeon stands with heaven.” Pathon’s eyes snapped open and he added a hasty bow. “With all respect, of course.”
“The Venarium, too, stands with you.” Shinka stepped forward, inclining her head toward Asper. The Librarians behind her followed suit.
“And now she brazenly consorts with the faithless,” Teneir hissed from behind her veil.
Frowns creased the faces of both Blacksbarrow and Careus, clearly ill at ease with this endorsement. But whatever discomfort they felt, they did not give a voice to it.
Not until Haethen stepped forward, anyway.
“Haethen,” Careus snapped, less in warning and more in surprise.
The woman, though, did not turn back. Not until she stood beside the priestess and stared out over the crowd. “I stand with you.”
Maybe it was her reputation that did it, all the “miracles” the people had seen. Or maybe it was latent guilt, the agonies over so many lives lost.
Maybe you’re just good at speeches, she told herself.
She didn’t care. They came, regardless.
One by one. From the Sainites. From the Karnerians. Standing beside her, standing beside each other. Some bowed reverently, some simply inclined their head, some merely grunted.
But they all said it.
“I stand with you.”
With reverence, with a little fear, without hesitation.
“I stand with you.”
Soft at first, but growing louder with each repetition.
“I stand with you.”
Until only two remained. Neither Careus nor Blacksbarrow had stepped forward, nor had they stopped their soldiers from doing so. Now they stood, facing their own forces, who watched them nervously. Asper, too, felt her heart thunder—moved as their troops might have been, they were still commanders; one defiant word from them could end this whole farce.
And Blacksbarrow, who wore a scowl plainly on her face, looked ready to do just that. She opened her mouth, paused, then glanced sidelong at Careus. She sniffed. Then she snorted. Then she spit a thick glob of phlegm onto the cobblestones.
“Ah, fuck it.” She stepped forward, clapped Asper on the back, and grinned. “I’m with you.”
A deep sigh and the clamor of iron boots followed as Careus stepped forward. “Our mission remains the same as ever. Do not consider this cessation to be condoning of pagan activity inside Cier’Djaal. We still—”
“Careus.” Haethen offered him a single word, a single look, and nothing more.
And this, apparently, was enough to soften the iron in his features. He nodded briefly and turned toward Asper.
“I stand with you, Prophet.”
The thunder in her heart slowed. She allowed herself the barest of smiles at this. But she could not call it a victory, not with the sole remaining thorn in her side.
When she looked at Teneir, she had expected to see the fasha trembling with fury. Instead, the eyes that stared at her from past the veil were filled with resignation, almost a deep sadness. As though she had expected this to happen.
Asper couldn’t accuse her now, not while this alliance was still so fragile; a fasha could still cause immense damage, even in a city where she no longer held absolute power. And so, while Asper would have liked to throttle her, the Prophet knew
she could not.
She extended her hand. And said nothing.
Teneir looked at her hand. Her voice was soft and venomous.
“And what,” Teneir said, “will you sing of when you win this great victory, hm? Will you tell tales of how you overcame your petty prejudices to save a city you destroyed? Will you speak of the brave soldiers who died and think nothing of the women and children you slaughtered? Will you shake hands, united at last, as you divide my city up among yourselves?”
She shook her head. She turned away.
“I am a religious woman, Prophet,” she hissed, “but I am a businesswoman before that. I know a foul deal when I see it. And your bartering in sins and absolutions does not interest me.” She waved a hand. “May all you foreign demons find your graves together.”
The fasha stalked away from the square. And in her wake, a tense easiness rose. Soldiers exchanged nervous looks with people they had been ready to kill just a few days ago. Excited burble about tulwar and monsters was raised among them. Careus and Blacksbarrow moved to restore order.
When eyes were off her for even a moment, Asper finally let herself breathe. All the tension and fear came flooding out of her in a great, exhausted sigh. Her legs felt like jelly; her heart ached with how fiercely it had beat. But whatever pains she had was nothing compared to the small light of relief, flickering like a candle in a storm, at the back of her head.
She had done it.
“Teneir will be a problem.”
She glanced up as Aturach stepped beside her, his eyes fixed on the alley down which the fasha had disappeared. She followed his gaze, sighing wearily.
“You have no idea,” she muttered.
When she looked back to Aturach, he wore a look she had not seen before. He was a man of easy emotions, fear and joy painting themselves in broad, vibrant strokes across his face. But the look he gave her now, reserved and scrutinizing …
It moved her to offer an apologetic frown.
“Aturach,” she said, “I should tell you. About what happened earlier tonight, I—”
“No.” He held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. I can never know. Dransun, either.”
“But I—”
“You came to the soldiers, broken and wounded. And you emerged to lead them, whole and powerful. Heaven made you well again.” He swallowed hard. “That is the truth now. We need that to be the truth. Okay?”
He gave her a smile. But it was a weak and dying thing, small and trembling on his lips. And however slight it might have been, she could see the reality in it.
And she knew he would never trust her again. Not as he once did.
He nodded to her, then walked away, moving to help Dransun in restoring order to the mob. There would be soldiers to rally, tactics to plan, strategies to forge, and backs to watch. But she had done it. She had united them. She had an army to fight Gariath, to save Cier’Djaal.
It felt strange, then, that the pain she felt at that moment was the worst of that evening.
Look at you, she thought. The lies come so easy now. She closed her eyes, held back tears. Gods damn. Denaos would have been so proud.
TWENTY-TWO
A WORTHY HUNGER
Fuck me, but he’s taking his time, isn’t he?”
Dreadaeleon’s ears still worked.
He could feel his organs shutting down. He could feel his lungs drawing in less air with each breath. He could feel his limbs as leaden weights hanging from him, rendering him an immobile, silent, barely sensate husk on a satin bed.
But his ears worked just fine.
“The Lector said he’d take only a day to die.”
His eyes, too. When the Librarian leaned over him—a handsome young man with a sharp face and weathered eyes—he could see the irritation playing across his features.
“Fourteen years,” he muttered. “I was selected to become a Librarian fourteen years ago. Fourteen years of reading until my eyes bled, testing until my brains leaked out my ears; I was burned, electrocuted, frozen, and twisted.” He sneered down at Dreadaeleon. “All so I could be granted the righteous honor of sitting a corpse.”
“He’s not dead yet.” His associate, a young lady sitting in the corner of the room, thumbing through a book, spoke up. “The Lector says he’s had the Decay before. That might account for his resistance this time.”
“Does it matter? Decay’s decay,” the first Librarian said. “Leave him in a ditch and let him rot. You don’t need four Librarians to guard him, especially tonight.”
Dreadaeleon had seen the other two Librarians only in passing when they had brought him here. But he could hear them still, shuffling around in the living quarters downstairs, apparently as restless and disgruntled as their companions guarding him.
He wasn’t sure what everyone was so upset about. True, he was still alive—for reasons even he couldn’t account for, given how little life seeped into his numb body—but it wouldn’t be for long. And there were certainly more unpleasant places to die.
Shinka’s private accommodations were in a well-to-do neighborhood at the border of Silktown and the Souk that had escaped most of the fighting. It was a humble, if elegant, two-story room furnished in pleasant red silks and red furniture. He, in all his numb and lifeless glory, had been laid out on her bed: a sprawling and elegant mattress beneath a tasteful pink canopy, above a tasteful duvet, among a pair of silken red pillows.
The world’s cuddliest pyre in desperate want of a torch.
“She wants to be certain,” the woman said. “This one, apparently, has a habit of coming back if you don’t make certain he’s dead.”
The male looked him over with a sigh before turning away. “Just so long as she doesn’t expect me to clean her fucking sheets if he shits himself.”
Dreadaeleon drew in a staggering, rasping breath. And then, with immense regret, drew in another.
It seemed to him that everyone could be happy if they just killed him now. He was, after all, the man who had killed Lector Annis, the most ferocious wizard in Cier’Djaal and their direct superior. They should want him dead as badly as he deserved the dignity of a clean death.
Alas, old man, he thought. Neither a hero, nor a villain, this all ends with you shitting yourself to death. Just like Gariath said you would.
“And how are you so calm about this?” the man demanded of his companion. “You trained even longer than I did. How can you be okay with guarding a corpse while the Lector is out there, unprotected?”
“She has Ashimi and Declant with her. She trusts them to protect her, just as she trusts us to handle this. And while I’m not any happier about this … task than you are, I trust her.” There was a rather airy, satisfied sigh from the woman. “I hear it’s already happened, in fact.”
“Really? The whole thing went off okay?”
“Ashimi sent someone over to tell us. You were taking a piss. This ‘Prophet’ of theirs, apparently, pulled it off.”
“No shit?”
“Mm. She gave some speech about gods or heaven or some made-up bullshit.”
“And the foreigners bought it?”
“By the pound. The Lector barely had to intervene. They swore fealty right then and there.”
“Amazing. I can set a man on fire by snapping my fingers and I don’t wield one-tenth of the power of a priestess who spews bullshit to a bunch of morons with swords.”
“Life isn’t fair, I’m afraid,” she giggled.
Priestess?
Did they mean Asper? Was that who they were calling a Prophet? It occurred to him that he had been so consumed by this conspiracy he hadn’t even stopped to think what she might have been doing. Was she safe? Was she okay?
Obviously she is, he told himself. Listen to them. She’s … what’d they say? A Prophet? She was always going to be all right. You’re the fool who was doomed. That’s simply ironic, old man. He paused. Or is that poetic? I never can tell.
“Then that’s that?” the man asked. “We did
it?”
“The first part, anyway,” the woman replied. “There’s the tulwar to deal with, before anything else.”
“A bunch of savages will be no problem.”
“Not with magic, they won’t. The Lector is already moving to have us start preparations. But her concerns lie beyond that. Once the tulwar are taken care of, the real work begins.”
What?
“That part worries me,” the man said. “The barknecks’ belief in imaginary gods is enough to unite them. I can’t imagine that it’ll be easy convincing them to trust us to run things.”
Run things? What are they plotting?
“It can’t be helped,” the woman sighed. “The whole reason we’re doing this is that barknecks can’t be trusted. The fashas ruined this city for coin. The Lector isn’t about to let them ruin it for gods. This Prophet will have to be addressed.”
“Addressed.” As though she’s a debate question. You treasonous swine!
“And you think the Lector can take care of that?”
“I know she can. Whether the Prophet opts to respond to reason or force, Shinka has both in ample.”
As though you assholes would ever use reason when you could just kill someone. You shitheads! You fucks! You … you …
His thoughts became formless, wordless rage, a ball of impotent anger that slammed itself against his skull in an attempt to break free. It found no voice to curse, it found no limbs to raise in anger, it found nothing but a creeping numbness that slid a little deeper into his flesh and smothered it into a seething, breathless anger.
They would kill her. They would use her and they would kill her. That was what the Venarium did. They didn’t see people, they saw problems and solutions, and people were merely tools to address them. Once Asper outlived her usefulness—and it would be quick—they would kill her. Her. His friend. His companion …
Former companion, he thought, correcting himself. Had he had the breath to do so, he would have sighed. Had he had the strength to do so, he would have closed his eyes. You ruined that one, didn’t you? Or she did. Whichever. Doesn’t matter now, does it? Nothing you can do now except die.
