NIghtbird (Empire of Masks Book 2)

by Brock Deskins

  “Until they decide putting a tiny mask on your little soldier is fashionable. Talk about getting the screws put to you if you get caught wearing one of those.”

  Wesley laughed. “I wonder how the registration would go for those. That poor registrar!”

  The two made it through the sliver of Midtown and crossed back into the southeastern part of Blindside. Kiera groaned as she and Wesley took their place at the end of the food line, which was already wrapped around the block.

  “Damn it! That stupid spectacle slowed us down, and now we’re going to have to wait in this line for hours.”

  Wesley leaned out to look ahead. “It’s not that bad. Two hours tops. We aren’t even close to being last. There’s already people forming up behind us.”

  “You know there won’t be any fruit by the time we get there, if they even had any to begin with. I haven’t had any fruit since you brought those apricots home stuffed in your pockets.”

  “We just need to leave earlier.”

  “It’s hard when we all work the nightshift. We would have had a much better position in line if your crazy brother hadn’t tried to blow up our house! We probably would have been early enough to get some produce.”

  Wesley just grimaced and nodded.

  “He’s getting worse, you know,” Kiera continued. “I go days without seeing him, and when I do, it’s usually after he’s stolen something from me.”

  “He says he needs it.”

  “I need it! We all need it to allow us to make our tributes and continue living in that trash heap.”

  “He says what he’s doing is more important.”

  “I don’t think he understands that him being able to do whatever it is he does is predicated upon us not getting evicted or killed.”

  Wesley’s eyes grew wide as he gave Kiera a knowing smile. “Predicated, very nicely done.”

  “Did I use it right?” Kiera asked, her voice tinged with a mix of pride and excitement.

  “You did.”

  “Man, I’ve been waiting almost a month to use it! I heard some fancy man say it when I was scoping out marks for a job. Pretty classy, huh?”

  “Very classy. Feel better?”

  “Yeah, like finally getting to let out the fart I’d been holding during a snooty party.”

  Wesley smiled. “Very classy.”

  “Right?”

  Kiera craned her neck to look past the long queue and was finally able to see the front of the ramshackle building where some low-level government stooges passed out food to the poor. Just as she had expected, those filing back out of the building carried a loaf of bread and paper-wrapped parcels she assumed contained worm meat or some other barely edible flesh unsuitable for anyone able to buy real food. Skitter lizard was also common. She heard there were large ranches where people raised them but found it hard to believe. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one of the little pests.

  A burly, rough-looking man cut in front of Kiera, almost shoving her into the wall as he intruded into her space.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Kiera snapped.

  The man turned and looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m getting my food, same as you.”

  “Then take your unwashed ass to the back of the line!”

  The man looked from Kiera to the grumbling faces behind her and laid his hand on the hilt of the knife hanging on his hip. “I got places to be and ain’t got time for standing in line. Anyone got a problem with it can come try and remove me.” He turned his scowl to Wesley. “What about it, boy? You want to stick up for your little girlfriend?”

  Wesley raised his hands and chuckled. “Oh, no, I don’t do violence.”

  “Then best both of you keep your mouths shut.” The man leered at Kiera. “Unless you want to put yours to good use.”

  Kiera’s face sagged and she opened her eyes wide as if she were about to cry. “Please, sir, we’re so hungry and we’ve got such a big family to feed. Maybe you have a few extra tokens or some coin you want in trade?”

  The man rolled his tongue inside his cheek. “What kind of trade you got in mind?”

  Kiera jerked her head toward the alley across the street and the man smiled.

  “Hold our places, Wesley,” Kiera ordered as she stepped out of line.

  Wesley sighed. “Kiera, you don’t have to.”

  She took a shuddering breath and gave the man a forlorn look. “Yes I do. You know I have to, Wesley. It’s for the greater good.”

  “Fine, just try not to make too big a mess.”

  The man grinned. “Oh, there’s gonna be a mess all right.”

  The two crossed the street and disappeared into the alley. A sharp crack echoed out immediately followed by the man’s pained cry. A second smack silenced his wailing. Several more meaty thumps sounded from the alley before silence returned. Kiera emerged a moment later holding the man’s trousers in one hand while she cut them to shreds with his knife. She used one of the tattered pieces to wipe her baton clean before tossing the rags aside.

  “You had to take his trousers?” Wesley asked.

  “Sometimes, it’s not enough to take a man’s possessions to teach him a lesson. Some are so thick and vile that you have to take their dignity before they learn anything.”

  “I see. So you think it’s your duty to change the behaviors of repugnant people?”

  Kiera shrugged. “It’s a calling. It’s important to have a mission in life, otherwise you end up like that chump.” She showed off a handful of tokens. “Look, the fool had over a month’s worth on him.”

  “Maybe he has a large family.”

  “Not my problem. Besides, he won’t be chewing anything tougher than water for the next few weeks. They can eat his share.”

  “Looks like worm meat and bread again,” Wesley said as they shuffled forward and neared the door. “You know what would be good with that?”

  Kiera narrowed her eyes at him. “If you say chicken eggs, you’ll be the second person to limp home without his trousers today.”

  Wesley stared ahead. “I guess it no longer needs to be said.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Dorian’s void lance slapped aside his twin sister’s weapon as it thrust toward his heart. He dropped into a crouch and swept Xebarria’s legs out from under her, sending her crashing to the floor. Dorian leapt up, gripped his void lance with both hands, and tried to plunge its black tip through her equally black heart.

  Xebarria rolled aside, ignoring the line of fire that erupted across her back as the weapon cut through her leathers and scored her white flesh. She thrust her hand out as she focused some of the power stored in the soul stone she wore around her neck. An onyx ray leapt from her hand and struck Dorian in the chest, driving him back and freezing the flesh beneath his dark clothes.

  Dorian focused past the burning pain and drew power from his own soul stone, but his sister was faster. Xebarria glanced at Dorian’s shadow stretching out behind him. She summoned more energy, stolen from an unknown wretch and stored in her soul stone, and brought his shadow to life. The shade wrapped a spectral appendage around Dorian’s ankle and pulled him to the floor.

  Xebarria leapt to her feet and thrust her void lance down at his prostrate body, pressing the onyx tip to his throat with just enough pressure to draw blood. “Second born, second best, little brother,” she said with a mocking smile.

  The elder sibling, born just a handful of minutes before her brother, turned and faced their mother, Amaia, Harbinger of Death. Before Xebarria could pronounce her superiority over her brother once more, Dorian’s void lance, limned in ethereal darkness, stabbed her low in the back. Xebarria cried out as she felt her soul being ripped from her body, drawn through the void lance and into her brother’s soul stone.

  Amaia leapt from her throne with fury blazing in her eyes. She reached out to every shadow in the room, twined them together into a spectral serpent, and sent it striking at her son. The apparition
wrapped itself around Dorian’s body and hurled him against the far wall before carrying him across the room and lifting him to meet his mother’s fierce gaze as she stood upon the high dais.

  “Not only do you display your cowardice by striking your sister in the back, you attempt to soul siphon her, your own flesh and blood, because you lack the maturity to admit defeat!”

  Barely able to breathe, Dorian croaked out, “Admit defeat, like you have, Mother? Never!”

  Amaia released her hold on the magic animating the shadow, and Dorian fell to the steps near her feet. “Watch that petulant tongue of yours, my son, or I will remove it from your mouth.”

  Dorian knew the threat for what it was and how far he could push his mother. Amaia practically doted on her two children, at least by Necrophage standards.

  “You know nothing of true battle or defeat, child.”

  Dorian got to his feet and met his mother’s glare with one of his own. “I know the tempest has waned every day since the cataclysm, but you do nothing but dwell within the safety of this hall. And yet you call me a coward.”

  “I would call you fool as well! You know nothing of that day, of what my hubris wrought. Your father, and thousands of others, died for my ambitions. I will not foolishly walk into the sorcerers’ trap once more.”

  Dorian raised his arms over his head and looked around the room. “What sorcerers, Mother? Where are they? They have had two hundred years to come and destroy us, so why haven’t they?”

  Part of Amaia’s anger faded away as pain and guilt took its place. “It was a warning for us to stay away, one I intend to heed.”

  “What if it was not a warning?”

  “If not a warning, or a trap, then what was it?”

  Dorian’s righteous anger transformed into a pleading look. “The death throes of a dying man. Think about it, Mother. You saw with your own eyes that the barrier was failing, so much so that you made the same supplication to the old harbinger that I am making to you now.”

  “And look what became of it!”

  “Yes, look at it. One final burst of power, the tempest renewed, and yet it has weakened every day that has passed since. It is like an old man on his deathbed, who grips the hand of the one beside him one last time before dying. I believe that the sorcerers died that day, or at least the emperor, and the magic died with him. Our soul stones, created by the same cataclysm that nearly destroyed us, are the only source of magic we have now.”

  Amaia frowned, refusing to give in to her son’s argument. “It is not proof of their destruction.”

  “What other proof do you expect to get? Let me take a ship through the tempest. I will bring you the proof you need to launch the invasion you fought for, that my father died for. When I return, you will have your proof, and my father and everyone who has died at the sorcerers’ hands will finally be avenged.”

  Amaia stared at Dorian for several long moments, appearing to weigh his words despite already having come to a conclusion. “No. I will not throw my only son into the maw of the beast to chase after his father.”

  “Mother…”

  “My word is final!”

  Dorian turned on his heel and stormed from the hall, ignoring the venomous glare Xebarria cast him as she pressed a hand against the deep wound in her lower back. His friend, Jasso, detached himself from the wall and followed in Dorian’s wake, breaking into a jog once they left the hall to catch up.

  “You almost had her this time,” Jasso said as he fell in step beside his friend.

  Dorian curled one side of his mouth up in a sneer. “No, I did not, but it is kind of you to say.”

  A grin spread across Jasso’s face. “It’s a good thing your mother intervened or you might have granted your own wish of being an only child.”

  “I would not have killed her…probably not. I just wanted her to suffer, to share with her the pain I experience every day of my life by being her brother.”

  “You are better than her. She sticks to your mother like a shadow in both body and mind. You are the one who will lead us to glory and vengeance.”

  Dorian uttered a doubtful grunt. “Not if I cannot even leave this accursed city. For now, I shall lead us to a bar.”

  Jasso clapped Dorian on the shoulder. “I am your servant and friend, and I shall follow you to the deepest depths of inebriation.”

  The pair traversed Czernstred’s streets on foot as Dorian felt the need to exhaust some of his pent-up frustrations before settling onto a barstool. The city and its people were a far cry from what they had been before his birth—before the cataclysm. Prior to the destruction, Amaia had complained most vociferously of how the Necrophages were a shadow of their former greatness, succumbing to sloth and complacency. In her eyes, it was why their society was decaying and would consume itself before the sorcerers ever got the chance.

  That all changed with the cataclysm. Under Amaia’s leadership, the survivors returned to the old ways, back when they were powerful and rightly feared. Every Necrophage now carried a void lance and possessed the skill to wield it with masterful proficiency. They honed their dark arts as well as their weapon skills to become what they were today—deadly beings capable of crushing any foe that dared to stand in their path to greatness.

  The strong consumed the weak just as they had in their forefathers’ time, thus ensuring that only the powerful comprised their society, the weak culled so as not to infect the whole. Ulec also roamed the city in greater numbers. No Necrophage left their fortified homes without a strong entourage to guard their backs.

  As the harbinger’s son, and one of the most powerful Necrophages in the city, Dorian felt confident of leaving his Ulec at home. Jasso, although a respectable fighter, trusted that his friend’s presence ensured his safety.

  Eyes tracked them as they strode down the street, but none looked at them with hostile intent. No one paid them much attention when they stepped into the bar and ordered shots of whiskey. Jasso let the calming effects of several drinks take hold before broaching the sensitive subject of Dorian’s greatest desire.

  “Do you really think the sorcerers are dead?”

  Dorian stared into his glass for a moment before downing its remains. “I don’t know. What I do know is that whatever caused the cataclysm took enormous power, and I am certain we were not the intended target, if we were given any consideration at all.”

  “Your mother does not agree with your theory.”

  “She is wrong. She is allowing her fear to cloud her judgement.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Jasso raised a hand to forestall Dorian’s rebuke. “I am not saying I think you are wrong.”

  “Our journals state that the winds carried a great deal of red dust. Red, not grey, and in such quantities that you can still find some today. That means that the source of the great storm started not in Noirbedoj but Eidolan. No one is foolish enough to set fire to their own home in hopes that it spreads to that of its enemy. That means that the enemy, the true target, lay in Eidolan. The magnitude of the destruction tells me that whoever the sorcerers attacked was such a threat that they surely did as much damage to their empire as ours, most likely significantly more.”

  Jasso tipped a finger toward Dorian from the hand holding his glass. “That’s assuming it was the sorcerers who created the cataclysm.”

  Dorian’s head bobbed in agreement. “Exactly! That attack, whatever it was, resulted in us, and I assume the sorcerers as well, being unable to channel magic, at least the way we once did. In its place, the lightning storms trapped arcane power in the glass it created when the bolts struck the ground. That has resulted in a very limited source of power for the sorcerers to wield, giving us a great advantage since we can shape life energy and trap it in the stones after its original energy is spent. In what world does that sound like a thought-out assault, given the results?”

  “Absolutely none. And you have made this very argument to your mother?”

  “Many times, particularly o
ver the last twenty years.”

  Jasso nodded. “Because you think the tempest is passable.”

  Dorian slammed his fist against the table, drawing several looks his way. “I know it is traversable. I read my mother’s journal, and I think it is less violent now than when my father sailed into it.”

  Jasso shrugged. “Seems to me there is only one recourse when denied permission.”

  “Which is?”

  “Beg forgiveness after you do it anyway.”

  Dorian granted Jasso a rare smile. “That is why we are friends.”

  “Really? I thought it was my good looks and charming personality.”

  “Hardly.” Dorian banged his glass down onto the table. “Come, we must prepare.”

  “For what?”

  “For glory!”

  CHAPTER 7

  “The fact is this, Chief Inquisitor Willard,” the court magistrate continued, “without witnesses to corroborate the charges—”

  Willard Pearce held up a stack of papers and shook them at the magistrate. “I have half a dozen testimonials implicating Mr. Switzer in the distribution of tainted, illegal drugs and stolen property, as well as the cache of dream dust recovered by the gendarme in one of his warehouses.”

  The magistrate leaned forward, his eyes betraying the impatience he felt despite the mask concealing the rest of his features. “This court cannot cross-examine testimonials, Inquisitor. As to your evidence, you claim that an anonymous note led the gendarme to Mr. Switzer’s property, a tip-off that his defense asserts was likely made by the same individual who planted the evidence there in the first place.”

  “That is ridiculous speculation!”

  “It is plausible, and without any witnesses for me to question, this court has no choice but to drop all charges against Mr. Switzer.”

  “There are no witnesses because he and his thugs have obviously intimidated them.”

  Fred Switzer stood. “Magistrate, Inquisitor Willard’s accusations are not only slanderous, they clearly show that he has a groundless vendetta against me and is abusing his position in an attempt to destroy me. This is the third such time I have had to defend myself against his baseless accusations.”