As the people in their clutches screamed, I tensed and prepared to blow their tormentors out of the sky. But the bird-faced creatures merely chuckled and deposited their terrified cargo unharmed along the cobblestones inside the city’s largest square.
More people were gathered, until the number resembled several hundred. Then the Mongrels and Miscreants formed a ring around the terrified crowd in the center, prevented their escape.
“Do not leave!” a tall, Earthborn man in chain mail and robes called out to the rest of us in the city center. “Even if you have not been chosen, do not leave! Attend to our next command!”
So the assholes wanted to play city courier. That was fine. It would give us more time to blend in and figure out how to trail the caravan of prisoners back to the Pit.
I expected more murmuring, but the crowd of non-prisoners went deathly silent, except for a few people still sniffling at the sight of their neighbors and relatives being chosen.
“The expenses protecting your city from the next Tumult have increased,” the armored bastard continued, and, once again, no one so much as blinked at his obvious lie. But I saw more and more men with non-native skin tones gather around him, some of which were actively scanning the crowds.
I carefully lowered my head just enough to hide more of my face. Through the mindlink, I felt that most of my retinue had already done the same minutes ago.
“In addition to fighting the monsters, criminals, and despotic false deities threatening your very lives, we now face a movement of propaganda and slander sweeping across this world. One that would turn you all against each other with hate speech and fear.”
The speaker continued, but I had to replay his words in my head. Warren’s Malus Men currently drew their entire pool of employees from those that broke all manner of our own world’s laws, and the only candidates for outsourcing were flesh-eating monsters or semi-corporeal powers that usually thrived on either slavery or human sacrifice. They derived their own powers from another entity whose name literally meant ‘ill-will’ in Latin.
And they were using fear as a primary tool to keep the population in check.
The hypocrisy of his words was beyond blatant. It baffled me that he would even bother attempting it.
But I had a nagging suspicion that a big part of hypocrisy, blatant or not, was one’s attempt to benefit from condemning the very sins one was the most intimately familiar with.
“In spite of all of this, this city has failed to uphold its oath,” the man continued in a harsh, pompous voice. “The pact we have formed with the one you called Lalla Anahita requires your population to provide a certain amount of resources each week, so that we may perform our duties governing your world. But this city has failed to provide its portion time after time. Each week, despite knowing the challenges your leaders face, this city continually provides insufficient assets.”
Well, that happens when you start culling your tax base, Salima spat in our minds, you stupid jerboa.
Easy, Weylin cautioned, and I could feel him struggling to keep his own rage in check, he might be trying to provoke us on purpose.
That did make sense. Or they could be trying to draw out Anahita, I realized.
I hadn’t heard them voice any concern for her over the Breath, but then again, it was best to always believe none of my powers were as foolproof or useful as I wanted them to be.
If I relied too much on any one of them, it could be the end of us in the very next fight.
But I saw no sign of Anahita. No one looked up defiantly from among the crowd, or shouted an angry response to the douchebag’s words.
Even Breena couldn’t feel her fellow Satellite, I realized as the little fairy shared her emotions through our bond. She should have been able to do so, and the fact that she couldn’t worried her immensely.
I can’t even send her a whisper spell, Breena added nervously, this is weird. If you hadn’t been able to reach her through the Breath I would have never believed she was here.
Well, stealth’s her specialty, right? I asked, deciding to watch the men gathering on the raised platform in the center of the square. I hadn’t sensed any aggression from the people around me, but the Malus Men definitely looked grim and tense.
They were clearly expecting some kind of trouble.
Even if they weren’t certain it would come.
Then I saw their shoulders brace, as the speaking asshole threw out his next words.
“We have decided to help you all,” he said especially loudly, putting more aloofness in his voice. “We have taken careful look at your circumstances. Careful look at your expenses and needs. We have concluded that is unreasonable to expect you to somehow make up for the toll our agreement demands that you pay. Know this: we will not increase your tribute by a single copper piece. Not by a single drop of oil, or seed of grain. Instead,” he added loftily, “we will decrease your expenses. We will reduce the burden your city has been bearing for so many years.”
I felt wary confusion emanate from the robed bodies all around me. A few people dared to mutter questions, but they were quickly shushed by those around them.
“Get on with it,” I heard one of the other Malus Men growl to the speaker, his words barely reaching my ears.
He seemed to be sweating profusely now, which was one of the reasons I thought they all were so tense.
But then he grimaced, and I realized that he wasn’t sweating because he was nervous. He was sweating because he didn’t feel well.
His Descent-enhanced body, one almost completely immune to the daily discomforts a normal person faced, wasn’t feeling well.
And after a few more glances, I suspected that most of the men on the platform were trying to hide their discomfort as well. They glared impatiently at the man at the center of the platform.
Wrap this up so we can go home, I read from their eyes.
“We will take from you your greatest expenses,” the dramatic prick continued, after taking a moment to clear his throat. “We have noticed that so many of you spend so much of your time and money on caring for that which gives you nothing in return.” His eyes scrolled across the outer crowd, and I felt the people next to me grow a hundred times more tense. “On caring for something that ages you. Deprives you of your very sleep. We will take this burden from you, and in doing so we will free up your coin purses for your own needs, your ovens for your own hunger, even add years back to your life.”
A woman near me let out a startled, horrified cry, apparently figuring out the speaker’s next words.
“We will take your children,” the Malus bastard finally announced, and the people around the screaming woman ceased shushing her. “The next culling will spare the breadwinners and tax-payers of this city, and enable them to better meet the own needs of their world, instead of throwing wealth and time into useless mouths.”
I saw robed figures all around me flinch back, as if they had been slapped in the face.
I remembered Nadine’s explanation, that Anahita had worked out a kind of compromise. She couldn’t completely stop the Malus Members from sending people into their Pits, but she had reached some kind of understanding with Warren’s goons regarding children.
Namely, that she would bury all of the Golden Sands in blood before she allowed a single child to be a victim for the Horde.
She had also managed to spread word of that vow, and even conducted a few ‘test runs,’ where entire Malus cells contemplating such atrocities had died slow, painful deaths. Those kills had been risky, and Anahita had been injured in the process, but the Satellite had pulled off the assassinations all the same. And then the Malus Members had backed off and begun accepting some of her demands.
They still pushed and cheated wherever they could with the other items regarding their agreement, but the lives and dignity of children had been the two items the Malus Men had not dared to infringe upon for the last several decades. Not in Tajam, at least.
Not until now.
> And the people all knew that their children were supposed to be off limits.
So naturally, they all began screaming in outrage.
I didn’t blame them. I was pretty pissed myself.
But Teeth’s snarl took me by surprise.
What does he fucking mean he’s going to take our kids? my inner dragon growled.
I didn’t have time to deal with him, though. The formerly passive men and women around me had finally found their spark of defiance.
“Do not fear!” the Malus speaker shouted, still sounding a perfectly asinine mixture of lofty and bored. “You will still see them! They will return here and join the workforce, just as many others chosen by the Culling have!”
His eyes began roaming the crowds. At the same time, I saw the other Malus assholes look at the surrounding alleys and rooftops.
Since I hadn’t gained a reputation for leaping off rooftops yet, I assumed they were looking for Anahita.
But they had underestimated the reaction of their normally docile crowd, and now their attention was further divided.
The inner and outer rings of Hordebeasts growled in surprise as the men and women of Tajam began shoving them. The people in the centermost ring, those chosen for the Culling, actually began screaming the loudest, many of them shouting that they refused to let their children or grandchildren take their place.
The leader held up his hand, still looking bored.
“Everyone calm down,” he called out, his voice barely making it over the throng. He held out his hand at the Horde Mongrels and Miscreants. The monsters had shoved the smaller, Un-Risen citizens away easily, and looked ready to execute violence on the screaming citizens. But at the sight of their human commander’s hand, they held their formation, even as the nearby citizens got back to their feet and resumed screaming and shoving at the monsters.
That was noteworthy. The Horde were notoriously difficult to control. Preparing them to be this disciplined in the face of what they considered to be screaming, defiant prey must have taken hours, if not days.
That’s not the point! Teeth growled again, reaching for my focus. What does he fucking mean he’s going to take our kids?
I don’t know! I growled back, trying to keep my eyes open. Be quiet and let me focus! I’m not going to let him hurt any kids!
I thought that Teeth and I had worked a good number of our issues out by now. We hadn’t battled for control in some time.
“We will not be taking your children immediately,” the man continued patiently, as if he was the only one trying to be reasonable here. “The next Culling will not go into effect for a few more hours. And only a few dozen tributes will be gathered then.”
His words did nothing to calm the people down, and I could tell the bastard knew that they wouldn’t.
But I could also tell from his face that he hadn’t expected the supposedly ground-down population to be inches away from attacking his armored, bestial troops with nothing more than their fists and blunt fingernails.
The sweat on his brow increased. His eyes took on a calculating expression, clearly weighing the consequences of whatever next order he was planning to give.
Even as those watching the rooftops and alleyways began to look more uncertain. By now, their physical discomfort was making the rest of their emotions much more readable. They were impatient, concerned that their trap hadn’t sprung yet, and uncertain what to do now that things weren’t going according to plan.
Good grief, I thought to Breena, as we prepared to intervene in case the Horde began attacking the civilians, are we this bad when things go wrong?
No, Breena sent back as she carefully moved to my shoulder, still too small to be seen by the naked eye, but their condition is affecting their behavior. I think they’re all really, really sick.
All of them? I demanded, as I reached over and stopped a woman next to me from throwing a rock at one of the Mongrels. They have enhanced bodies. Even if they completely neglected their Constitution, their vital guards should still keep their symptoms to a bare minimum.
I know, Breena replied, as the woman struggled in my grip for a moment, then began sobbing and beating uselessly against my chest. I would have guessed that they had been poisoned, but toxins or diseases strong enough to affect anyone with more than ten Rises, or Descents in their case, are rare.
We’ll have to figure it out later, I decided, as the woman beating on my robes and gambeson collapsed to her knees and began sobbing. Because it’s clear our plan isn’t going to work out either. These freaks are probably going to massacre half of the city before they decide to head back home. Everyone spread out. Pick a spot where the violence is most likely to start. We’ll save as many people as we can, slaughter as many enemies as we can, and then I’ll use Blood magic on a corpse or something to find out the location of their Pit.
That will give away our presence in the city to the Pit Knights, Eadric pointed out, even as he moved purposefully toward a crowd of people pressing against a shield wall of Miscreants, demanding that their children be left alone.
I know, I said as I pressed into another group crowding toward the nearest Horde soldiers, carefully moving the people in the back out of my way. But it doesn’t look like it can be avoided anymore. We’ll just have to hit the Pit immediately after we find it, and hope we catch them off balance.
Frustration radiated off of everyone—myself included—but no one had a better idea.
Then one of the men on stage began coughing. He tried to hide it at first, but then he doubled over, choking as he grabbed his throat.
The man next to him looked startled, but then he began choking, too. Then men on the other side of the platform gagged as they collapsed to their knees, until only the speaker in the middle was left standing.
“The hell?” the man asked harshly as he turned to look at his suddenly inhibited coworkers. “Get back up you idiots! We’re trying to maintain control here!”
But none of them answered. They just continued choking and coughing, as if it were pollen season and they were having the mother of all allergy attacks. The standing Malus operative lost his composure then, no longer bothering to hide his fear.
“What—what’s going on?” I heard him gasp, as he clutched his chest in horror. “What is happening?”
“Consequences,” a soft, feminine voice carried through the wind, somehow reaching all of our ears.
I looked around wildly to spot the new speaker, then cursed myself and looked back at the platform.
The Malus leader was now gasping on the floor as well, blood pouring out of a stab wound that looked to have somehow punctured through both sides of his chest armor. It was on the pectoralis opposite of the one he had been clutching.
He tried to gasp again, but this time he only managed a bloody wheeze. He let go of his chest to reach for his neck, which had suddenly sprouted a second mouth, one spurting blood from both sides.
His hand made it halfway to his neck before it fell uselessly to the ground. The rest of the man’s body collapsed with it, twitching for a few moments before it finally went completely still.
I had seen the look in his eyes.
He had been in pain for several long moments.
But he had still died before managing to realize what had happened to him.
He had still died before all of us realized who had killed him.
She was still standing on the platform with them, just now casting aside a set of heavy desert robes, much like the ones I wore. I saw her toss her ponytail back behind her head, then adjust the scarf around her face and straighten her black garb of a loose tunic and pants.
She was small, I realized. So small she wasn’t much taller than Val. In fact, she might not even be larger than Breena when the Dawn Fairy grew to her full size.
But she had managed to walk up the guarded stage and stab the local Malus leader in full view of everyone, without being noticed by a single person or Hordebeast until her target was already dead.
I hadn’t even seen her second swing.
None of us had, I realized, sensing the shock emanating from every single person in my group, Breena included.
It’s her, my bonded familiar sent to me over the Mindlink. Wes, it’s her! Anahita is here!
The woman had finished straightening her clothes. Now that I was focusing on her, I could make out a few more details of her form. The loose clothing hid much of her physique, but it was tight enough around the arms to remind me of a gymnast’s slender, highly toned muscles. The dark scarf covered the bottom of her face up to her nose, but rich, almond-colored skin just a hair darker than Salima’s peeked out just above it, along straight dark hair carefully tucked out of the way into a long ponytail.
Her eyes were still closed as she flicked a few droplets of blood off a small, curved dagger she was carrying. Then, stepping gracefully around the Malus Member’s corpse, she tucked her dagger back into the wide black sash around her waist and began waving both arms in circular motions.
Knives in the Night Page 31
