Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists

by Edited by Adrian Collins

  Shae didn’t need to hear the name to know who was responsible.

  “Shhh.” Shae pulled her in closer, clutching Vitra to her breasts. Bloody spittle spattered her tunic with every weakening breath. “Go with Dru, my love. It’s okay. I’ll find Aruur and bring her home.” Heedless to the approaching blaze, Shae clutched to Vitra as she went limp in her arms, her chest falling still.

  Shae stayed that way until a spark struck her cheek, a fiery reminder of what must be done. She eased Vitra from her lap, cradling her head until it lay still upon the floor. Empty eyes watched Shae as she stood, taking in the ruin of their home. Aruur had been taken so it served no purpose seeking her out in the conflagration. Still, there were things Shae could not let the flames devour. She would need them soon enough.

  With a shallow breath through the meager protection of her shirt, Shae bolted deeper into the apartment. She trailed the edge of the flames until she reached the hearth, ignoring the irony of the cool chimney’s stones, the fire having yet to besiege it. Shae had no doubt it would soon, so she drove her elbow into the hearth’s brick facing, knocking one inside the dark shaft with a loud clunk. From there, she clasped at another and pulled it loose, and then another, and another, until she could lean inside and reach the bundle wedged high in the shaft. She clasped the cloth-wrapped package and yanked it free of the chimney, peeling aside the covering as soon as it emerged. Her efforts revealed twin swords: Bol and Patnja, passed down from her mother, and her mother in turn. The worn, unadorned scabbards that cradled them were comfortable in her hands but the heft of the blades was bittersweet. A plaintive hum echoed in her ears as she ran her fingers across the pommels. She ground her teeth at the sound. It was a dirge, a sign of things to come.

  Though she had given the swords up, exiling them to the darkness for years in favor of Vitra’s soft touch, there was no recrimination in the blades’ songs, only a desire that washed over Shae like a breath of fetid air. They longed to be used, to be bloodied once more.

  Shae cast one last glance across the apartment as the flames licked at Vitra’s body, slowly consuming her, and surrendered to the psalm that set her veins alight. She slung the blades from her belt, the action all too familiar, and kicked the shutters free from the nearest window. The fire snarling at her back, she leapt free of the apartment and left it to burn.

  * * *

  The severed hand spun in the air for what seemed an eternity.

  The man it belonged to—until just a moment before—had yet to even scream. His gaze remained focused on the whirling piece of his body as it pirouetted before him, the stump spewing blood. Shae ended him with a thrust, driving Patnja under his sternum until the sheen of its crystalline shard disappeared inside the well of his chest.

  She circled her head with Bol, blade down, to parry a blow aimed at her back, the embedded moonshard guiding her hand. Steel clanged as she freed the first of her swords and spun about, flicking blood into the eyes of her assailant.

  “You sharding bit—” A crevice opened at the man’s throat, leaving his unfinished curse to spew down the front of his tunic. Shae kicked him aside and leveled her blade at the last of Eroghast’s men she’d ambushed in the narrow alley outside the Al Zahir Tavern.

  The place was a magnet to the reivers, an oasis for the desert Kazuks fearful of the wide ocean that lay to the west. The wafting scent of Quwarmah Al Dajaj that enraptured the air as far as the next block over was sure to draw them in, if nothing else would. She only had to wait for those bearing Eroghast’s sigil, the black vulture clutching a snake, to arrive.

  They’d obliged her at dusk.

  “Tell me where to find your master.”

  His steel wavered in a trembling hand but Eroghast’s lackey shook his head, the barest flicker of a snarl curling his mustached lip. “There’s no shame in dying to you, Oluja. In fact, better to you than him, I think.”

  Shae growled and darted forward, feinting high and driving a fist into the man’s liver. He gasped and crumpled to his knees. Shae batted his sword away and straddled him, aiming the point of Patnja at his eye. She pinned one of his hands flat on the ground with her knee as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Who said I was going to kill you?”

  She reached down with Bol and chopped off the man’s thumb.

  Shae waited until his shrieks subsided. “Now tell me where to find Eroghast.”

  His loyalty lasted only two fingers longer.

  * * *

  Night settled over Napier yet the darkness was never given full rein. Sai hung in the heavens above, casting her turquoise pall over Whitegate Market, the gleaming orb standing witness. The moon’s light aided by the liberal smatterings of lanterns that lined the cobbled roadways, Whitegate held the gloom at bay.

  Shae resisted the urge to spit as even the name of the well-to-do quarter filled her mouth with the sour sting of bile. Here, the rule of law only recognized coin. Pay enough and you could do nearly anything. Proof of such was evident in the raucous crowd that littered the streets, hooting and howling, pampered royals sampling all the deviance the market had to offer. Street hawkers strutted their wares along Market Way, their voices raised in competitive ardor. Oiled breasts and thighs glistened in the lantern light on full display, distracting the eye from stiff leather collars clasped about porcelain throats and the glazed expressions of saari-smokers too sharded to ever fully recover.

  Though Shae had once been a part of this world, her own decadence a thing of legend, she found herself out of place. Hunched in a sliver of shadow in a narrow alley, she cursed her foolishness at letting Eroghast live when she left his service. Vitra had paid the price for Shae’s stupidity, her arrogance, and now Aruur was in danger. And so Shae stood, waiting, scanning the street in search of the man who would lead her to the thief lord and her precious girl.

  Time passed slowly until, at last, Shae spied the peacock Eroghast’s lackey had spoken of: Belan Razul. There was no missing him in the crowd. His purple headdress stood out above the gathered revelers, garish yellow robes marking him as a keeper. Twin bands of crimson offered his rank among his order, a maharat in service to the sky god Galaksus, or so his garb would have one believe. The gold rings at his fingers and his wandering eyes, which greedily took in the flesh on exhibit, betrayed the illusion. Belan strolled through the crowd, at home in the carnival debauchery where even the most inebriated of the merrymakers made way for him.

  Shae lowered her chin and strode after him, pulling her cloak tight to keep her blades from sight. Unlike the priest, she was forced to slither through the throng. Dressed so plainly, her wild hair in her face to distort her features, she had already begun to draw curious stares, so she was grateful when Belan turned off the crowded thoroughfare, unwittingly guiding her down a familiar dead-end street.

  “Shards,” she cursed under her breath, melting into the shadow of a shop’s awning as the maharat continued unaware.

  There, at the end of the cobbled street, stood Napier’s resident Butkada Saimoon; a moon temple dedicated to the deity of judgment and protection, Dru. Shae snarled. Leave it to Eroghast to make his home in a church.

  Though she, unlike Vitra, had no love for the gods, it was bad omen to spill blood in their halls of worship. She could only imagine that was why Eroghast had chosen the locale to do his business. Few would dare—at least publicly—to defame the church within its sacrosanct halls.

  Razul clambered up the steps and peeled one of the great doors of the temple open, disappearing into the flickering candlelight inside. The door closed with a heavy thump, the sound reverberating down the barren street. Still, Shae held her ground and watched. This late, it was unlikely there were parishioners inside, but she wanted no witnesses to her return, no rumors to contend with.

  Time ticked by slowly as she waited, finally giving in to the need for action that gnawed at her. She loosened her cloak and let it fall away. If there were innocents within, their fate
would be in the hands of their gods. Oluja has come.

  Shae mounted the steps and flung the door open, pausing only an instant before plunging into the gloomy interior of the temple. Blood was her goal, not stealth. Her blades leapt from their scabbards, her knuckles white about their pommels as she marched inside. The foyer opened before her into a wide hall, wooden pews lining the crimson carpet that snaked its way to the dais near the far end of the Butkada. The steps gleamed ivory in the flickering candlelight, and Shae froze at seeing her quarry lounging casually upon them, Belan Razul stood at attention beside him.

  “I told you she would come,” Eroghast said to the flamboyant keeper, his laughter echoing through the quiet church as he clambered to his feet. Dressed in a simple black tunic without adornment, and loose fitting pants tucked into calf-high leather boots, he looked nothing like the infamous lord Shae knew him to be. “She simply needed proper encouragement. Isn’t that right, my dear?”

  “Encouragement?” Shae’s cheeks erupted with warmth. “You killed my lover!” Her raw screech reverberated through the temple. Belan eased a step higher, his smile withering.

  “And I’ll do the same to Aruur should you raise your voice to me again, Oluja, my little storm.” He met her gaze with steely eyes. “Care to lose both of your loves tonight? Or do you doubt my commitment?”

  Shae bit her lip, inching forward in defiance of reason. “At least you would be dead, too.”

  Eroghast shrugged, his slim shoulders relaxed. “Indeed, but then who would issue the counter-order to keep poor Aruur from being diced into tiny pieces, all while being kept alive to feel every rusty sawblade amputation? Hmmmm?”

  Her feet froze in place of their own accord. She tasted copper, her lip bitten nearly clean through. “I’m going to kill you, Eroghast.”

  “Of that, my dear, I have no doubt. But it won’t be tonight, nor anytime soon for that matter.” With no apparent concern for the naked steel in her hands, the thief lord strolled across the carpet and came to stand before her, so close she could smell the tang of the oil that held his long black hair in place. He reached out and ran a finger along her oozing lip, trailing blood across the tip. “I warned you what would happen should you ever leave me, did I not?” He sucked the blood from his finger, his grin widening.

  Shae snarled and took a short step back. Only a child when Eroghast took her in, rescuing her from the streets of Portmar where, despite the inheritance of her mother’s crystalline swords, she would have grown to be nothing more than an urchin, a whore, or a corpse, she could find little to be grateful for right that moment.

  “You killed Vitra,” she repeated, hating the weakness that crept into her voice.

  “That, my dear, was truly an accident,” he said, the rigidness of his features softening to offer up the barest flicker of regret. “She was feisty, that one, and my man was overzealous. I meant to capture both your woman and Aruur without harm.” He gestured to the keeper. “He has been seen to, has he not, Keeper?”

  The priest nodded.

  “The maharat can show you to his...remains, should you so wish. The fool has been dealt with accordingly.” Eroghast moved in close, throwing a bony arm over Shae’s shoulder, pulling her to his side. His breath smelled of peppermint and absinthe. “You, however, are not entirely blameless here. It was you who chose to flee my service despite your blood oath.”

  “I was but a child when I agreed to that.”

  “Be that as it may, it does not absolve you of your duty. Each day that you hid from me bears a cost, my dear. One you must pay or the penalty falls on Aruur. You of all my children must understand this, Oluja. You are mine until Araqh carts your soul across the Whorl or I absolve you of your service.”

  “Do so now, I beg of you.” In his embrace, Shae felt just as she did the day he introduced himself in that rainy Portmar alleyway: cold and hollow and fearful of what was to come. “Return Aruur to me and let us leave. Please.”

  “I’ve invested too much time in you to let you go so easily, child.” He released her, moving to stand before her once more, pale, liver-spotted hands bookending her shoulders. He shook his head. “No, I will not let you go. I did not cross the desert to this godsforsaken hole for nothing, but I will spare Aruur the consequences of your rebellion should you deign to do a task for me.”

  Shae sighed, her decision already made. Aruur will not suffer for my stubbornness. “What is it you would have me do?”

  His leathern face brightened with his grin. “I would have you bring Valare Sudar’s head to me and I will, in turn, absolve Aruur of your debt to me.”

  “You ask so little,” Shae told him, drawing in a deep breath, letting it go stale in her lungs.

  “Your sarcasm aside, this is what I require.”

  She nodded. “Then his head you shall have.” Shae let her breath ease out, the bitterness of her decision playing across her tongue. “But I warn you, no harm will come to Aruur or I will bring your world crumbling down around you no matter the consequences.”

  Eroghast stepped back and bowed low, muffled cracks sounding at his back. “I give you my word, Oluja. Now cease your threats and abide by your own word. You have two cycles to deliver Sudar to me, no more.”

  Shae spun on her heels in silence and left the church, letting the door slam shut behind her as she stormed into the cool night air once more. With but two cycles to slay Napier’s renowned warlord mayor, she had no time for words.

  The clock of Aruur’s life ticked in her ears.

  * * *

  Thoughts of Aruur crowding her head like tenement rats, Shae sped her way across town to where the mayor made his residence. Born of dirt and built powerful upon his wits and prowess, Sudar took no steps to obscure his home. Quite the opposite, in fact. Once a lowly reiver, Sudar came to rule over the Dûpişk Clan, one of the largest and most feared tribes to roam the Oldenspear Prefecture. Ever since he’d come to Napier and claimed the seat of mayor, his presence had been a shining beacon as to his power of will.

  Sudar reveled in his mastery over the world. Part house, part museum, an entire wing of his expansive mansion was dedicated to his success. The heads of dozens of his enemies were mounted upon the walls, their staring, glassy eyes a reminder as to the fate that awaited those who might challenge him. Around those stood displays of feral beasts, some as fearsome as the diranê çêkirî, the fabled three-fanged tiger, and the poisonous dûpişk, for which his clan was named, or the vatra pauk, spinning webs of acidic fury inside their stone enclosure. The most dangerous of the beasts were dead, of course, such as the great horned bull, but many of the cases squirmed with unnatural life, memories of the constant skittering behind the thin barriers setting Shae’s skin to crawling. Though she’d never imagined she would go there to kill Sudar, she had visited the manse several times, hoping to show Vitra a small part of her past, to give her lover a taste of the desert no sane mind wanted to see outside of a cage.

  Shae exhaled in slow huffs, pushing aside thoughts of Vitra and the maddening images that came in their wake. They would do nothing but slow Shae down, distract her from what needed to be done. Vitra was dead and nothing could be done for her. Shae would kill Sudar for Aruur, then she would concern herself with thoughts of revenge upon Eroghast. Until then, she had a job to do.

  She stood outside the low walls that surrounded Sudar’s home and watched as well-armed men patrolled the yard. Though the warlord mayor might not fear attack, he wasn’t so foolish as to invite assassins into his home. Still, Shae grinned at her thought, he hadn’t done nearly enough to keep this particular assassin out.

  She waited until the nearest of the guards turned his back and strode off about his rounds, the grip of his lantern creaking in his hand, before scaling the wall, her gloves and padded boots silencing her movements. The plush grass on the other side muffled the sound of her landing, and she darted low toward the manse. Once in the shadows of the building, she dug fingers into the plac
es between the stones that made up the wall and clambered to the second floor where Sudar’s quarters resided, the lower levels the museum. A small balcony splayed out before her, and she scrambled over the retaining wall and surveyed her surroundings.

  She’d seen the mayor address the throngs of citizens from this exact balcony several times and spied the comfortable furnishings that lay beyond the wide double doors at his back. Now, in the pitch of night, those doors were closed, but Shae had seen enough to know they would be her best choice of ingress. She grasped the latch, expecting to have to pry the doors apart, only to find that Sudar, in his confidence, had left them unbarred. Shae swallowed a chuckle and let herself inside. Thick, fur rugs silenced her footfalls as she slipped into the dark room, her eyes adjusting the to the gloom.

  Shae drifted through the living quarters, weaving her way around the furnishings toward the archway at the far end of the room. Bol and Patnja hummed in her ears in anticipation, their sheaths almost vibrating in an effort to contain them.

  Your time will come, she told them and eased into the hallway beyond the archway. Lanterns lined the corridor walls, yet none were lighted. The warlord seemed to prefer the dark. At the far end of the hall, she spied a wide stairwell, spiraling down to the museum below, and knew she was close. The tremble of her blades grew as she came upon what she believed were the sleeping quarters of the mayor. Their excitement was contagious, and Shae found herself clasping their pommels in anticipation. Much as she detested the reason she was there, there was no denying the primal urges inside her, the need to stalk, to hunt. She was exactly what Eroghast had made her: a killer.