by Matt Russell
Cassian stared with maddening composure at the blazing onslaught. On the tenth slash, the Starborn raised his hand and made a whipping gesture, and Soulic felt several of the bones in his right hand snap. He let out a scream, dropping the weapon. It floated, hilt first, through the translucent shield, and Cassian took it in his hand.
“You bastard!” Soulic snarled. The Starborn had ripped through the protection of his animus as if it were nothing. Truly, Asango was every bit as powerful as people said. He could kill Soulic at any time and was only toying with him.
"Not toying," Cassian said. "I was fairly certain you had at least one surprise for me." His eyes shifted to the Odessian blade in his hand, and then back to Soulic. "Any others?"
Soulic took a moment to breathe, surprised that Asango was choosing to speak with him rather than break more of his bones, or just kill him outright. He took the opportunity to send his animus sense out behind him to see if anyone were outside. He perceived at least twenty men, all with weapons drawn. The Starborn had planned all of this!
"There is no escape," Cassian said in a grim voice.
"Yeah, I gathered that," Soulic said with a low growl. His sword-hand was broken, but he had learned to fight with his left appendage. He subtly adjusted his footing.
"I would prefer it if you surrendered quietly."
"Go to Hell!" Soulic hissed, and he yanked another dagger from his belt and slashed at Cassian’s face. It came as no shock that the blade bounced harmlessly away. He expected his arm to be shattered, but the young Starborn whispered something inscrutable, and there was a tiny flash of lightning that burst from his hand. Every muscle in Soulic's body suddenly convulsed in pain as the electricity struck his chest. He dropped to the carpeted floor of the tent, his flesh on fire.
“Do not try to rise,” Cassian whispered, stepping over him.
Soulic gazed up, feeling a sense of resignation that he was going to die. He was surprised at how calming that thought was. "When did you know?" he managed to rasp out, curious at where he had erred.
"The moment I met you," Cassian said with a slight shrug. "The false mind you have crammed into your brain is... admittedly quite an impressive bit of work, but it is not the first time I have seen the tactic. The finest assassins in the world have been coming to kill me since I was eleven.
“My heart breaks for you,” Soulic snarled. “How difficult it must have been growing up as a disgustingly wealthy aristocrat gifted with near god-like power.” He did not care about dragging out these last moments. With a final glare, he said: "That's all I wanted to know. Get on with it."
Cassian sighed, a slight frown on his face. "How disappointing. I was hoping I might win you over with enough time. Our philosophies are not that dissimilar. Tell me, what made you decide to act today?"
The calm in Asango's voice was gut-wrenching. "I grew sick of serving you – of listening to you talk!"
"Huh," Cassian grunted, seeming amused by the words. "If you are trying to provoke me, I have no need or desire to kill you here. You know my one-time-friend Kota, after all, and your mother... I might wish to seek an alliance with her at some point. No, if I cannot reason with you, I shall send you to the capital to meet justice. You have murdered several imperial officers and a general. I do not particularly approve of the gruesome modes of execution reserved for men who commit crimes against the military, but I doubt anyone will accept my recommendation for a quick death."
Soulic smirked. "You think you can scare me? I'm not some peasant in awe of a Starborn. I see you for the self-righteous, hypocritical cutthroat you are!"
"I appreciate that," Cassian said with a hint of a dark grin. He knelt down over Soulic and said: "And no, I do not think I can scare you, Soulic. Your heart is far too consumed by anger to bother with fear. I have seen all the terrible things you have done, and I saw why."
"You don't know anything about me!" Soulic was becoming acutely aware of the fact that he could not move. Cassian's invisible magic was holding him in place.
"I do know, actually. You are not terribly complicated. A Denigoth military official raped your mother. You want to punish your father and everyone like him." Soulic glared up, enraged that the Starborn could steal these things from his mind, but Cassian leaned in still closer and said in a soft voice: "I want to help you, Soulic, because I understand how you feel, and I hate all the things you hate."
"You are what I hate! You've been running around committing murder for more than a year, just doing whatever you want to the weak!"
Cassian sighed. "Neither my men nor I have killed a single person who was not trying to kill us, nor have we taken food from starving peasants, taken slaves, or committed rape. On the contrary, we have redistributed a great deal of wealth from the rulers we have deposed, and many peasant families are eating now who would have otherwise starved." His face contorted a little. "Still, I grant you that military conquest in any form is ugly business."
"But I'm sure you have a wonderfully composed justification to that ugliness!" Soulic laughed. His power was returning slowly. Perhaps if he could keep the Starborn talking a little longer...
"I doubt anything I might say would do much good with you, would it? Not with your rigid, childish sense of justice."
Soulic took a breath. Just a little longer. "How many have you killed in the name of your empire?"
The Starborn chuckled. "You do not give up, do you? I admire that. However, I have been studying your animus for weeks, and I know how quickly it can generate energy." Just then the flap to Cassian's tent opened, and a man in a black robe Soulic had never seen before stepped inside holding a small metallic bucket. Cassian nodded to him and held out his left hand, and the man reached into a concealed pocket in his chest and drew out a pair of tongs, which he gave to Cassian. Soulic watched with unease as the Starborn reached into the bucket with those tongs and carefully drew out an inky black leech with streaks of brilliant blue curling about the length of its body. Soulic recognized it instantly.
"NO!" he hissed, glaring at Cassian. "Just kill me!"
"You are far too useful to simply kill," Cassian said. He knelt back down, holding the squirming leech with his tongs. The Starborn pointed at Soulic's chest, and his shirt instantly ripped open, revealing his bare chest. Then Asango lowered the leech.
"STOP!" Soulic screamed, and he tried to thrash against the magic, which was impossible. Cassian placed the slug down on his sternum, and there was an immediate tingling sensation followed by a sharp feeling of coldness. Soulic felt the energies of his animus begin to drain into that icy void. Power was pulled quickly from every corner of his body, and after only a few seconds it was completely gone.
"Interesting," Cassian said in a soft voice, peering down at him. "I was not certain that would work on a Sansrit warrior, but apparently to the leaches, your animus's power is enough like a sorcerer's magic."
Soulic found that he was free to move his hands, and he reached immediately for the slug on his chest, but when his fingers touched it, he discovered that the slimy, soft thing Cassian had placed on him had become quite solid. Instinctively, he dug at it with his fingernails, but it was like trying to claw at solid steel, and as soon as he made the attempt, a mind shattering level of pain erupted in seemingly every nerve in his body at once. For all his Sansrit training, Soulic could not help screaming out.
"I apologize for what you must be going through," Cassian sighed. "Amanthian leeches are the stuff of my nightmares. I have a recurring dream of the Nemesai Bishop putting them on me and draining away my power while he smirks down.”
Soulic was able to lift his head enough to glance at the hideous creature. He could feel it drawing out his animus’s energy as fast as it was generated, leaving him weak and helpless. He rolled up onto his knees and bared his teeth like an animal. "Just execute me! I'm never going to serve you."
"You will," staring into Soulic's eyes, "because I am going to make you a bargain.”
“Yo
u can’t buy me, Starborn!”
“I can tell you who your father is.”
Soulic froze. "T-that's not possible! How could you know?"
"I know an old man who was a corporal at the time of your conception. I wrote to him, asking if he knew who took Princess Angretta as a prize, and I received an answer. He is alive—the man who raped your mother."
Soulic trembled. Even with its power drained away, his animus could still bristle with hatred. Asango could be lying, but the prospect of finally finding the man was too irresistible. "Tell me. I'll assassinate anyone you want—I don't care who!"
"I know you would," Cassian said, his face appearing... disappointed. "We shall have to work on that." He peered at Soulic. "Actually, I want to keep you in reserve for a time. If things go as I hope over the next several weeks, I will have achieved enough victories for the empire to go to the capital and be named crown prince." The Starborn rolled his eyes. "I expect my enemies to act against me then. They have had plenty of time to lay their traps, and I am certain they have been studying my tactics, my powers, and all my resources this entire time." He cast Soulic a slight grin. "I doubt anyone will expect me to have a Sansrit in my retinue though. In a crucial moment, such things can be the difference between life and death.”
"And you're just going to trust me to be your bodyguard?"
"Of course not,” Cassian laughed, “I would not trust you with anything as you are now." His face became deathly cold as he added: "Which is why I am going to do a bit of tinkering on you. Your animus puts up remarkable defenses around your mind, yet I am confident I can get through them."
Soulic edged back. "I don't want you in my head!"
"You are a very deadly killer who is ruled by an insane sense of right and wrong," Cassian said, stepping forward and raising his hand. "I cannot have you running around as you have been, and anyhow I am not asking your permission."
Soulic tried to run, but he found once again that his body could not move, and this time his animus could not help him at all. He stared, unable even to flinch as Cassian's hand moved to his forehead. Just before it touched, he snapped: "I don't care what you do to me, as long as I get to kill my father. Swear it, Starborn!"
Asango paused, seeming to consider the request. "I am not going to give you license to break into a man's house and hack him to death, but... when I have the power, I will grant you justice."
"That's not good enou—" Soulic lost all connection to whatever it was he was trying to say as Cassian’s fingers touched his forehead. Psychic strength like nothing he had ever imagined pried into his mind, obliterating all thought. It was almost peaceful, save for the sense that something alien had taken control. Even his animus stopped raging and fell silent, like a dog before its master.
Chapter 25:
Slave of the West
Livia stared at the illustration that lay on the desk in Hervin's back office, her eyes narrowing as they traveled the details. The figure of Prince Arkas was marked by a slightly exaggerated right hand with three missing fingers, so the people would recognize him. He stood with a vicious, predatory grin next to a boy who hung by his wrists, stripped down to only pants and looking terrified. They were in a Nemesai cell together—Livia's best guess at the layout of such a room—with a table in the corner littered with instruments of torture. Off to the right was Bishop Cromlic, whom Livia had never seen. She had heard descriptions of an elderly man with a thick beard, and she had improvised. Arkas's face was burned into her mind though... She had seen it hundreds of nights in her dreams. Always her drawings captured the evil of that face. It was her victory over him that thousands—perhaps tens of thousands all over the empire had seen her work. For this particular illustration, with the frightened child and the eager princely torturer, she wrote the words: "So much easier when my opponent is not Cassian Asango." It was important to keep the captions short. The purpose of drawing the images was to speak to the countless peasants in the Empire who could not read. The words were for the small handful in most villages who could, so they might pass on the message. When Livia was satisfied with her work, she signed the sheet with the name the empire had come to know her by: ‘Slave of the West.’
"Are you finished?" Domor said, perking up from his chair in the corner. Livia raised her head and nodded at the burly dwarf. He grinned, hopped down from the chair, and scurried across the room on his short legs. She watched him, eager for a reaction to her work. Domor leaned over the desk, which was only a little shorter than he was, and gazed at the picture. After a few seconds, his thick lips curled into a smile, and he let out a deep-throated chuckle. "You sure hate that little bastard prince."
Livia tapped the dwarf on the shoulder three times. He turned and looked up to see her questioning look. They had been working together long enough that he knew immediately what she was asking.
"I can make the plate by tomorrow morning," he said.
Livia frowned and exhaled loudly through her nostrils. This was the closest she could get to vocalizing exasperation without a voice. If Domor took until morning, that would likely mean some of the work would take place at night, in candlelight, when he would be drunk. That would mean the plate would have errors, and when they used it in the printing press, her painstaking satire would be riddled with smudges and imperfections. If she could get him to complete the task before his nightly guzzle of wine though, every detail would be replicated with the almost magical precision of a dwarven craftsman.
"I..." Domor said, shrinking a little under her gaze. "Maybe by tonight?"
Livia smiled and cast him a polite nod. This drew a grin from the dwarf’s heavily creased face. He was just a little infatuated with her, she knew. She handed him the cartoon and let her lips curl up just a little higher. Livia had never put much energy into flirting, but there was perhaps no harm in just a tiny play upon his affections to help keep him motivated.
"I—I'll take it to my shop," he said, the side of his mouth twitching a little as he looked at her. The dwarf turned and walked out the back exit of Hervin's shop, and Livia watched him go. There was always a little flutter in her heart when Cassianites walked in and out of that door. So far as she knew, the Nemesai had no idea that the infamous Slave of the West resided in her town, let alone that the defiant voice who had inflamed the empire belonged to a female mute. There was a delicious irony in that.
Just before the door swung shut, Domor's mannerisms changed. The town knew him as a perpetual drunk, and so he wobbled as he walked, reaching out and catching himself here and there and making slow blinks of confusion. He could play the part well, bellowing out crude and salacious remarks at uncontrolled volume, or making ornery threats at anyone who looked at him wrong. Dwarves were dangerous. People knew that and left them alone unless there was very good reason to do otherwise.
Once she was alone, Livia gazed down at the sheet of blank parchment still on her desk, her mind running through several dozen topics of criticism to level at the Nemesai and the ‘Claw Hand Prince.’ She wondered at times if Cassian Asango had read any of her essays on slavery or religious intolerance. More than once, Livia had imagined him sitting in his war camp, having a chuckle at her latest piece of work. So far as she knew, she had become one of the most well-known voices in his movement while he was gone. Did he know that? Would such a man care about the thoughts of a crippled, former slave?
Livia blinked and shook her head, throwing off these tangential thoughts. Her eyes moved to the map that hung on the left wall of the office. Arkas Adronicus was most likely hiding Iona somewhere in the Vakathy Region. She had extrapolated through secret letters within the Cassianite network that the horrid Prince disappeared to this uninhabited corner of the empire roughly once a month. No one knew exactly where he went though, and the territory was incredibly vast and largely unmapped. It was suicide to attempt to follow a Starborn in the wilderness who did not wish to be followed. Without the distractions of a populated area, their telepathi
c senses could supposedly register any intrusion with incredible accuracy. Even Livia herself, while possibly immune to having her mind read, had no reason to believe she would be undetectable to Arkas. Still, following him into the uncharted forest seemed to be all she had. The Cassianites kept track of who was in the cells of the Nemesai temples, and if the information they had given her was correct, no girl named Iona, nor any female in the empire matching her description or age had been among the unfortunate prisoners of the order since the abduction.
Livia wondered, as she often did, whether her little sister was dead. The thought filled her with guilt that she had not done more. It had taken a great deal of time and resources to rise as high as she had within the Cassianites, and she still was uncertain how much pull she had in the organization. Asango would return from the battlefield soon. Perhaps... after all she had done to help his movement, he might see her.
"Livia?" Hervin's voice rang through the several walls between the office and the front of the store. She shot up immediately and moved to the floor board in the back corner of the room, which she quickly opened, stuffed all evidence of her political writings inside, and then resealed. Then she moved to the door to the office and walked through to the storeroom amongst all the meticulously inventoried stock. Several dozen clay pots rested amidst this inventory with concealed chambers holding hundreds of inflammatory pamphlets. Her most recent essay on aristocratic abuse of power was planned to hit the streets of every major city in the western half of the empire soon. That brought a smile to her lips as she lifted the bar on the heavy wooden door and stepped through to the front, where she saw a nervously smiling Hervin standing next to several extremely well-dressed individuals.
"This is my daughter," he said, with a somewhat quaking gesture of his arm.
"Ah," a tall man with a thick, gray beard grunted, casting Livia a smile of yellowed teeth. He was wearing a black, silken tunic that was beautifully stitched. A gold chain as thick as a man's finger hung from his neck, ornamented at the center with a red sapphire encased in still more gold. This obviously wealthy man stepped forward and said: "Your father has been going on about your cleverness, my dear." There was a subtle tone in his voice that did not quite match the friendliness of his words. It seemed to communicate that she and her father were amusing, but not important.
