As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4)

by Bryce O'Connor

  Her attention, though, was quickly diverted away, drawn to the figure who had spoken.

  Sitting slightly separated from the rest of the šef, Adrion Blaeth took her in with eyes the color of rain-splattered slate. His gaze was inscrutable, his expression lingering in a partial smile that always made it hard for Serys to tell if the man was pleased to see her, or if he was wondering what the best way to take her head was. He was a handsome youth, perhaps twenty-five years old, with bleached-blonde hair bound in a tail at the base of his neck, and a matching blond goatee that had been trimmed to perfection. He wore black and gold, his typical colors, which made him satisfyingly pleasing to the eyes when he was seated.

  If he stood up, though, Serys knew the man would take up the black wooden cane that rest against the right side of his chair, betraying the missing leg that rumors said he had lost to some desert beast in his youth.

  On the man’s other side, though, stood a figure that that made the presence of Miropa’s only šef all the more intriguing. A woman, of average height and slim proportions, lingered by his left arm, one hand resting suggestively on Blaeth’s shoulder. She was a Northerner, her skin tanned several shades lighter than anyone else’s in the room, and her blue eyes cut like diamonds as they met Serys’. An odd scar cut across her face in an X-shape pattern, originating about her right eyes, a pattern Serys assumed likely to be ceremonial label, and maybe even some sort of brand. She wore a vestment of dark silks that came just short of being transparent, and had Serys not been studying the woman herself she was sure she could have caught any number of the men gathered about the table eyeing the shadow of cleavage and the sensual curve of a narrow waist beneath the cloth. Serys had seen the woman before, at the announcement that Blaeth had single-handedly brought the Miropan Mahsadën to knee. At that time, the stranger had been a simpering figure, doting over the new šef from her place at his right hand as he’d taken to the seat that had once been Imaneal Evony’s. Serys had thought little of her, then.

  Now, though, bearing witness to the woman’s confident smile as she stood over her master, Serys felt that pull again, the troublesome sensation she’d experienced upon exiting the carriage outside, that something deeper and darker was wrong in this city than the issue they had gathered to discuss.

  “My apologies for our delay,” Serys finally responded to Blaeth with a penitent bob of her head in the man’s direction. “Our retinue had not anticipated the traffic of the morning markets. I hope you haven’t waited long.”

  Blaeth shrugged in an uninterested fashion, reclining in his chair to lounge against its back and arms. “It’s of little import. What matters is that you all arrived, and in time to address the problem at hand.”

  “The Monster.”

  It was Elon Marst who braved saying the name first, and all eyes turned to him. One of the šef of Dynec, the southern-most of the fringe cities, the old man was generally known for keeping a level head and an even temper, particularly in business negotiations. Serys had had several dealings with him—Karavyl being closest in proximity to Dynec, apart from Cyro—and was therefore taken aback when she found the man sitting rigidly in his chair, fists clench on the table before him, the two šef over his shoulders—a man and woman pair of West Islers that looked like they might have been siblings—looking equally tense.

  “Indeed,” Blaeth said with a curt nod towards Marst, giving no indication that he had taken note of the man’s obvious stress. “Raz i’Syul Arro. I’m sure, at this point, that you’re all aware of the happenings in Perce.”

  A chill fell over the room, then, though not a single voice spoke up. Of course they’d all heard. Word had been quick in arriving, at first carried as rumors and hearsay by travelers and merchant caravans, then officially by birds from Mahsadën diplomats that had been station in the city-states nation to the south.

  Finally, when refugees comprising of the former nobility of Karesh Syl had started to turn up at the gates of Dynec and Karavyl, there had been no denying it.

  Perce had fallen.

  “I’m pleased to see I don’t need to catch anyone up on the situation.” Blaeth’s dark grey eyes moved across the šef one after the other., gauging their reactions. “As you were summoned immediately following all this, though, I have graver news that may surprise most of you.” As he said this, his gaze held on Elon Marst, like he was sizing up the Dynec delegation. “As of three weeks ago, Arro turned his army north. For most of the past month, he has been marching back up through Perce.”

  For almost a full five seconds, absolute silence held firm over the chamber. Most gawked at Blaeth, as though not comprehending his words, while others—including Serys—turned back to Elon Marst, suddenly understanding the man’s apparent anxiety.

  Dynec. A thriving economy largely due to the trade it did with Perce, formerly being closest in proximity to what had been the nation’s city-states. The most southern of the fringe cities.

  All at once, a dozen voices exploded together.

  “He’s WHAT?” the unknown šef of Karth demanded, brown eyes wide with surprise.

  “Three weeks ago?” Ysera Ma’het, a Percian woman with a patch over one eye, called out from where the delegates of Cyro stood. “How near is he to our border?”

  “How many at his disposal?” Ahthys Borne, a former general of the Imperium, who now worked as the šef in charge of Acrosia’s land a sea forces, demanded in outrage. “What sort of men does the Monster command?”

  As more began to shout out their questions and denials, Blaeth raised a hand for silence. Serys, who had held her tongue, witnessed in amazement as the room stilled quickly. The fact that Blaeth held sway over all of Miropa alone, without the checks and balances of multiple ringleaders that had sustained the Mahsadën so well over most of the last decade, already bothered her.

  Now, seeing the šef of the other cities bend to easily to even his silent command, Serys felt that unease bloom into something larger.

  “I will answer all your questions, given the opportunity to,” Blaeth said calmly, his gaze turning first to Ahthys Borne, who had taken to his feet among the other Acrosian representatives. “First, to answer your concerns, Borne: Arro has an estimated fifty-thousand under his control, including fifteen-hundred cavalry, and several machines of war the army has been fabricating as they march.”

  “Fifty?” the former general hissed in disbelief. “Fifty thousand? Impossible.”

  “Oh, very possible,” Blaeth answered with a solemn shake of his head. “The army comprises vastly of former slaves and freed men from the states of Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan. He took the former overnight, apparently, and the latter fell to an original force of thirty thousand, swelling as a result.”

  “Slaves,” Borne repeated, sounding like he was turning this information over in his head. “That’s a silver lining, at least… Soldiers require training. Discipline.”

  “They’re receiving it,” Amthel Oren, another of Dynec’s šef, snarled in response to this. “Maltus Ameen the security of our city, and has been sending us word via bird as we traveled. The troops are being trained on the march by Arro himself, as well as several dozen former soldiers that happen to be among their number. It’s slowed their progress, but they will have crossed the border by now, and are still advancing towards Dynec even as we speak.”

  “Does the Monster intend to strike at the fringe cities?” the other representative of Cyro—one Serys didn’t know—asked in disbelief.

  “No,” a cool, pleasant voice came in answer. “He intends to strike at us.”

  As one, everyone turned towards Blaeth, though it wasn’t the man who had spoken. The response had come instead from the woman still standing over his shoulder, her smile easy and unwavering, even as twenty of the South’s most powerful—and often cruel—stared her down.

  Serys—like many of the others, she was sure—felt a seething anger rise up at the disrespect of the woman’s sudden intrusion, but she held her tongue. For one thing
, she trusted the less-restrained among them to raise a voice for her, but something else held her back as well. In general, Serys had a talent for gauging people, men and women alike. It came from a decade of servings the needs of the former, then another of molding the latter into tools for the pleasure houses she ran in Karavyl. For this reason, Serys was loathe to admit that she was starting to fear she had pegged the woman wrong, the first time she’d met her. Then, she’d assumed her to be some plaything of Blaeth’s.

  Now, though, as the stranger stood without so much as blinking as several of the šef of the Southern Mahsadën went stiff with fury, Serys knew that was more there than she had initially seen.

  “It isn’t your place to interrupt us!” Tyala Gerst spat in the woman’s direction from where she stood behind Ahthys Borne. “This is not a conversation for subordinates!” She jerked a hand at the wall of the room, where the other confidants stood, many looking nervously on. “Go stand with the others, before Blaeth has you dragged out by your—”

  “Lazura speaks with my permission, and my authority,” Blaeth cut the Acrosian delegate off smoothly. “Not only that, but she is singularly more familiar with Arro’s recent activities than anyone else in this room.”

  Gerst spluttered to a halting silence, gaping at the young man. Before she or anyone else could contradict him, though, he continued.

  “For the better part of the last year, Lazura has been tasked with tracking the atherian. A specialized unit of men she trained herself tailed him from the North all the way to Karesh Syl in Perce, with orders to kill at first opportunity.”

  Gerst regained some of her composure, at that, sneering at the woman—Lazura—all-too-clearly unimpressed. “Perhaps you would have done better to assign such a mission to someone more adept for the task, given that the Monster still breathes.”

  “They call him ‘the Dragon’, now,” Lazura answered sweetly. “And as for my adeptness… I sent a twenty-man group after Arro, all uniquely prepared for their task. In no more than two exchanges, every one of them died by his hand.” Her smile sharpened. “You encountered what remained of their comrades on your way up here. The ones I didn’t trust were yet ready to go after the Dragon.”

  The quiet that fell this time was broken up by the buzz of whispers between the šef, and Serys heard San praying again over her shoulder. She, like him, undoubtedly couldn’t help but recall the dead, cold eyes of the man who had led them up the stairs. She hadn't seen so much as the hint of a blade or any weapon on his person, but despite this she didn’t find it hard to think the man could have ended her, San’s, and Analla’s lives before any of them could even have drawn breath to scream.

  Gerst, apparently, was having a similarly consideration, because the tanned cheeks of her face were abruptly a good deal paler as she watched Lazura with an altogether different sort of expression.

  “Lazura and I shared a master,” Blaeth said, narrowed eyes on the Acrosian woman, though he clearly spoke to the room. “For those of you who don’t know who Ergoin Sass was, I suggest you see to educating yourselves before picking a fight with her again.”

  There were more murmurs of surprise at that, as everyone recalled the šef who had been in charge of the assassins of Miropa—at once point even the Monster himself—before his death at Arro’s hand.

  Blaeth, however, didn’t let them dwell on the realization long.

  “For the moment,” he said sharply, starting to sound a little impatient, “I would ask you all to humor my understanding of the situation: Raz i’Syul Arro is more dangerous than any of us have ever given him credit for, and we’ve been fool enough to allow him to raise an army that has not only ravaged an economic ally, but now threatens our very borders.”

  There was the thunderous scraping a chair going flying, and Elon Marst heaved himself to his feet.

  “Dynec will be under assault within a fortnight!” he exclaimed, his voice tense with anger and fear. “I would call for assistance from the other cities! We do not have the capability to defend ourselves alone.”

  There was a ringing silence at his words that might have lingered as many of the other šef watched him impassively, were it not of Blaeth’s punctuated response.

  “No. Scattered aid for a single city will not help us now. Dynec is already lost.”

  Marst’s weathered face blanched at these words, and he gaped at Blaeth for several seconds, like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Behind him, Amthel Oren and Hestya Veste shared a similar expression.

  Then, all three of their expressions twisted in fury.

  “‘Lost?’” Marst repeated, outraged, slamming both hands down on the table and leaning over it in the Miropan šef’s direction as though desiring nothing more than to throw himself over its surface and throttle the younger man. “Nothing is ‘lost’! Dynec has ten thousand soldiers under its command, including twenty-five hundred mounted cavalry. Our walls were built high and wide, when Perce was still a wild nation that sent raids across the border. Our economy is as solid as Miropa’s, and we spent months providing heads for the slavers at a reduced cost at your behest, Blaeth! Who are you to say Dynec is ‘lost’?”

  “Your walls mean nothing to Arro,” Blaeth answered evenly. “Not with a mere ten-thousand to see to them whilst still defending your gates. The Dragon will surround you, cutting you off from the outside world. The best you can hope for is a siege in which your šef will be starved out like some animals in a cage, and I doubt very much Arro will allow for such a drawn-out exchange.”

  “

  Our forces need only hold out until assistance arrives,” Oren insisted angrily. His grey eyes moved then to Serys’, and she held them without blinking. “Karavyl’s army matches ours, and Cyro—” he looked next to Ysera Ma’het and her partner “—have at least six-thousand at their disposal. If our men can keep the Monster at bay for even a week—!”

  “Then you will have accomplished nothing more than dooming the rest of the fringe cities.” It was the woman Lazura who answered this time. “Your desperation is faulted by basic math, amongst other things. Even if your numbers combined could meet the Dragon’s army on an open field, you would hardly make up half his forces. Since your ten-thousand will be pinned in by your own walls, it makes it even less feasible. What’s more—” her voice rose as Oren opened his mouth to protest “—you make a critical error in assuming Dynec is worth saving. You, old man.” Her blue eyes, still twinkling over her smile, fixed on Marst. “You believe your economy is as stable as that of our city?” She squeezed Blaeth’s shoulder indicatively, waiting for an answer.

  Marst took the chance at once.

  “I do,” he snarled. “We do not, perhaps, have the breadth of Miropa’s trade, but we are strong in our own right.”

  “You were strong, Marst.”

  As all heads turned towards her, Serys almost bit her tongue in annoyance at her inability to keep the words buried. She had promised herself to see where the cards fell—especially since Blaeth and his strange companion appeared to have a much better grasp on the situation than the šef of Dynec—but Oren’s assumption that Karavyl would come to their aid had pushed her over the edge.

  Not going back now, though.

  “You were strong,” she said again, meeting Marst’s angry gaze evenly as he and the other two delegates turned on her. “Your economic success was heavily dependent on trade with Perce, a partner that—for all intents and purposes—no longer exists. I imagine you could strike some sparse deals with the kuja, but the tribes have little to offer in the way of valuables, and they don’t buy slaves.” Her jaw tensed in annoyance. “None of you is fool enough to think the fall of Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan will not have a devastating blow on your financial and commercial powers, much less all of you. Which implies you would demand that Karavyl and Cyro—” she waved a hand at the pair of Cyroan šef to her left without looking away from Marst “—come to your aid at great risk to our own cities, with little to nothing to be gain
ed for our involvement.”

  She let the hand fall to the table again, before delivering the killing blow. “Karavyl will not offer its support. In addition, I recommend all of Dynec’s assets, particularly its standing army, be repurposed, or at least repositioned outside the city before Arro has a chance to seize it.”

  Immediately, everyone began shouting at once. Marst, Oren, and Veste were by far the loudest, outright screaming in her direction as the others called out their support or dismissal of Serys’ recommendation. Serys herself, though, wasn’t watching any of them. Her eyes, instead, had been pulled across the table, and she watched with mixed suspicion on curiosity as Lazura bent down to whisper in Adrion Blaeth’s ear. For a moment, Serys could have sworn she had seen the man flinch instinctively when the woman leaned down beside him, but whatever the expression had been was gone a as quickly as it appeared, and Blaeth just nodded as though accepting some sage advice. For several seconds longer the pair did nothing, turning to the room again, and Serys barely had time to notice the woman’s pale finger tapping on his shoulder, like she was counting…