Something is wrong.
When Sora reached the top of the stairs, Aquira was nowhere in sight. She searched, frantic, but there was no sign of her, nothing to clue her into where Aquira had gone until…
A frightened screech rang out. Sora dug her heels in and pushed off toward the sound. She slid around a corner and gasped. She was before an open, circular temple with a domed roof held upright by marble columns, Eyes of Iam dangling from gold chains between them.
The seven mystics from earlier stood around a young boy lying horizontally on a stone slab in the center. He was tied down, struggling to wriggle free as he cried. The mystics' faces remained shrouded by the loose-hanging hoods of their robes. The Ancient One, Aihara Na, wielded a crude weapon, little more than a sharp rock, and had it raised above her head. Aquira hovered, watching but not interfering.
Aihara Na spoke words in Panpingese, words that Sora wouldn’t have understood the day before, but now they met her ears with clarity. She wished she didn’t understand.
“Blood of babe, bone of child, bring forth the power of Elsewhere's fire.” Aihara rotated the weapon so that the razor-sharp edge was facing the boy’s chest. Sora’s mind instantly drew on rumors she’d heard from passersby and even Torsten in the Webbed Woods, about how the old mystics used to experiment on their people in the name of magic. She’d thought them to be exaggerated stories like everything else, but she’d thought the same about Nesilia.
Sora didn’t think, she just reacted.
“Aquira, move!” she said as she sliced her arm with her knife. Blood flowed, and Sora barely noticed the pain. She entered the temple and raised her hand, knowing that she needed to be careful not to harm the boy she was trying to save.
Aihara Na and the other mystics turned to face her, Aihara lowering her shiv. All their expressions remained hard as stone, unfazed by her arrival. It was then that Sora realized how gravely outnumbered she was. But it didn’t matter.
All manner of thoughts passed through her mind in the moments it took to call upon Elsewhere, turning her hand into a deadly, fiery war-machine. Fear gripped her at the thought of turning another city into cindery ash, but she had to do something to save the child.
“Lower your hand, girl,” Aihara Na spoke, her voice like thunder. “The boy’s life is the sacrifice to commune with the other side. With Elsewhere. It must be done, lest we fade to ashes.”
Elsewhere. Sora froze, flame wreathed around her hand. Of all the places for Aquira to lead her, it was to this clandestine ceremony where the Secret Council sought to connect with Elsewhere.
“Aquira led you here with reason,” Aihara Na said as if reading her mind. “Breaching the other side is the key to unlimited power. To eternal life and resurrection! It can be yours as well. For that is why you sought us out, is it not?”
Sora found herself unable to reply. The other mystics returned to the ceremony, surrounding the struggling child, chanting in Panpingese and other languages. Every language. They blended, one beginning where the other took off, overlapping. Their voices hummed, and the air crackled as air swirled around the temple. In fact, now she realized that around that structure, all she could see was darkness as if Yaolin City had disappeared.
“Come, Sora,” Aihara beckoned. Before she knew it, Sora had lowered her hand and approached the boy. “Fulfill your destiny and join us. Rip open the fabric of this world as the gods did so long ago, and become as powerful as a goddess yourself!”
Sora felt Aihara Na place the stone in her hands but didn’t see her. All she could focus on was that boy, thrashing, begging to survive. Fire closed in over the weapon as Sora gripped it. From within her, she could feel her power bubbling to the surface, her very soul drawing upon the world between worlds, on Elsewhere. Only now it was different, the sensation stronger. It was like a dam she didn’t know existed broke open, and her power flooded through her.
She raised the stone over the boy. The blackness around them took shape, and again she could see Whitney in a realm of shadow and obscurity. He called out to her, so near yet impossibly far. All she had to do was complete the ritual, and she could tear him free from the torment she’d exiled him to.
Only, he wasn’t alone.
She also heard Nesilia, whispering her name, her voice both matronly and seductive. She could see her pale, colorless eyes reflected in those of the boy. “I know you,” she whispered. “I’ve always known you.”
“Sora!” Whitney called out.
Sora’s hand’s shook as she gripped the weapon. Her fire was intense now, the stone itself glowed. She struggled to focus as more power than should have been possible through her bleeding hand crackled on her fingertips. And then, in the faintest whisper, she heard the boy’s cries again.
“Please don’t hurt me…” he whimpered. “I’ll do anything...”
“No!” Sora screamed. She brought the stone around and stopped it a finger’s length away from Aihara Na’s throat. The darkness surrounding her whisked away, and the city and the temple grew visible again along with the other yellow-clad mystics.
“I’ll die before I hurt an innocent child,” she said.
Aihara Na stalked forward, unperturbed by the sharp object at her throat. Her hands were folded in front of her chest as if praying to Iam. Sora backed away but kept the blade raised.
“Don’t touch him!” Her anger fueled the flame along the stone, and its tendrils now lashed out at Aihara Na. The mystic’s skin should have been boiling, but it didn’t appear to harm her at all.
“Brave,” Aihara Na said. “It appears the Will of Fire is true.” She waved her hand toward the boy, and all his bindings came undone. “Go child. And remember that we are not lost.” The child didn’t wait for her to finish speaking before he scurried away.
“What are—”
Aihara whipped suddenly around and placed her finger against Sora’s forehead. She whispered something in Panpingese, too quiet for Sora to understand, and Sora’s fire extinguished in an instant. Her vision blurred.
Before her world went black, she realized that she’d rejected the chance to open Elsewhere and save Whitney in exchange for a child she didn't know. She wondered if she’d missed out on her only opportunity, but she didn’t regret it. No matter what happened in the Webbed Woods or Winde Port, no matter what she really was, she knew one thing—she wasn’t a killer like Kazimir or Muskigo.
XIX
THE DESERTER
“Are ye sure this is smart?” Sigrid whispered into Rand’s ear as they followed Valin Tehr and his cronies through the winding Dockside streets. Night had fallen upon Yarrington. While clouds obscured Celeste's normally bright glow, snow blanketed the streets, making it more like home for the Drav Cra.
“We need to disappear, and nobody does it better,” Rand said.
“But still, Father always said he was a man never to get in bed with.”
“The King’s Shield deals with pretend-lords like him all the time. I know enough about his operation to keep us safe.”
“Keep up, Shieldsman!” Valin hollered back. “I shouldn’t be able to outpace you on this leg.”
Sigrid took Rand’s arm. “I trust ye; ye know that. And I missed ye.”
“I’ve been with you this whole time,” Rand said.
Sigrid leveled a glare at him. The kind that said, ‘No you haven’t,’ and he couldn’t deny it. Perhaps in body, but his mind had been absent for far too long. He put on an abashed smile. All things considered, she seemed to be handling her first kill well.
“I’m with ye now,” he said, his Dockside speech returning, if only for a moment. No matter how badly his head ached or his body sweat as it longed for a sip of ale, he vowed silently, staring upon her face, never to touch the stuff again. He’d broken the vows he’d made to the King’s Shield, but one made in her name, he'd keep.
“I hope so.”
“You don’t have to worry about me anymore. What about you? I know what it’s like to take a life.
Better than most. I—”
“I’m fine brother. It was him or watching ye die, and I’d do the same every time.”
“You’re stronger than I am.”
“Yer finally noticing?”
They exchanged a smile and a nod, then caught up to Valin who crutched along the docks. A line of Drav Cra longboats swayed in the water. A group of them sat outside a tavern, drinking with no signs of stopping. They remained outside as if the worst winter Rand had known in his life were summer. They even had some of their animal-skin tents set up in the yard.
“Look at them, Rand Langley,” Valin said. “They flood the district, autlas like trinkets to them, our women like toys. They pay for nothing and intimidate inns for ale and lodging. Some have scared my people from their homes and taken them for their own.”
“They have no respect for us,” Rand agreed.
“They have no need for that kind of respect. I don’t fault them for how they treat this city. In the North, survival is all that matters. But they’re bad for business.” He stopped and pointed to the tavern’s owner. The man poured them another round, shaking, braving the cold instead of making them come inside. “I control that tavern. I decide what everything costs. Jipper there is a good fellow, always pays on time. But when my people are more frightened of the foreigners than me… that’s when I have a problem.”
“Then why don’t ye drive them off?” Sigrid said. “Yer owing them protection, just like yer owing it to Trapp. Ain’t that how it works?”
Valin scowled. “It isn’t so simple, girl. After they returned victorious from Winde Port, more came. There are now more than twice as many of them here than men on my payroll. The depravities Old Yarrington shirks as being for us poorer souls, the Drav Cra adore. I can’t protect it all now.”
“Only your drugs, huh?” Rand glanced back at the crate one of Valin’s men grabbed from the basement of Maiden’s Mugs before leaving. People all over the city used manaroot, the powerful sensory amplifier Valin smuggled into the city from the far east—the perks of owning the dockworkers. Rand had even found some in the castle kitchens once. The chef swore he was trying a new dish.
“Careful, Rand. You may wear that armor, but you’re an outlaw, now, in the company of outlaws.”
“Trust me, I know.”
Valin started walking again, and everyone kept to his leisurely pace. “In the end, the Drav Cra are bad for us all,” he said. “But make no mistake. If they came down here with gold instead of furs and relics, I’d have handed you over to Redstar already.”
“Some champion of Dockside,” Sigrid murmured under her breath. Rand nudged her.
“Did you know that some of the servants your brother executed for the Queen were from here?” Valin said. “Rose to the highest place a man or woman from Dockside incapable of fighting could rise, only to be cut down at his hands.”
“She didn’t leave him a choice.”
“My dear, there is always a choice. I merely have the means to see mine through.”
Sigrid grunted but kept quiet. Rand focused on keeping the memories of those executions at bay. He hadn’t known any of his victims were from Dockside, but why would he? Neither he nor the Queen gave them a fair trial. All he could do was wonder if her beautiful, sweet, handmaiden Tessa had grown up right down the street from him, or if they’d played on the docks together as children, angered old Gunter together.
“Spare a coin, Lord Tehr?” a beggar asked. He kowtowed on the street, hands upturned, an Eye of Iam etched in the snow before him. A group of others doing the same had gathered on a lane down to Fortune’s Landing, the small, well-off part of Dockside, if any part of it could be called well-off.
Rand knew the place well and knew that The Vineyard—the brothel Valin made his headquarters—would be just down the way. There was no sign on the door saying that was where to find him, but everyone in Dockside knew it.
Rand and Sigrid fell back a bit while Valin reached into a coin purse and removed a handful of silver autlas. He placed them in the beggar’s hand, and before the man could run, grabbed him by the wrist.
“Share this, or it is the last that shall come,” he said.
“Yes, me lord,” the beggar said. “Praise Iam.”
“There is no Iam here.”
Valin continued walking by as the filthy beggar handed out alms for him. He’d made the man an employee without him even realizing, and all the others stroked Valin’s arms and praised him as he passed, like he was Wren the Holy himself.
“Valin, we discussed this,” Codar, his Breklian advisor said, speaking for the first time since the Maiden’s Mugs. “The more you hand out to these people… they’ll keep coming back like stray cats.”
“Oh, Codar, have a bit of fun,” Valin said. A dirt-coated woman took his hand and shook it in gratitude.
“So long as the Drav Cra are here, we can’t afford to give—”
“Codar, do you know why you have stayed here all this time, instead of returning to Brekliodad to handle the coffers of one of your fancy oligarchs?”
“Because you pay better than anybody else.”
“Exactly. And if, or when, all these poor souls are forced to rise and take iron to the Drav Cra, they’ll do it for me. Loyalty, old friend. That’s all that matters in this life.”
“Valin Tehr!” a husky voice barked. “Just the man I’ve been looking for.”
Rand saw the sheen of armor first, then grabbed Sigrid and ducked into the shadow of the nearest overhang. Captain Henry of the Dockside guard stood outside of the Vineyard with a few other Glass soldiers.
He was an unimpressive man, as one would expect for the soldier tasked with keeping Dockside safe. Rand didn’t know him well, but having been a city guard before The King’s Shield took him in, Rand had spent a year serving beneath Henry.
“Captain Henry,” Valin said, leaning on his good leg so he could bow with a flourish. “To what do I owe this great pleasure?” He strutted right up to him, seemingly without concern that being carried behind him was a crate of outlawed manaroot as well as the most wanted man in Yarrington.
“What do we do?” Sigrid whispered into Rand’s ear.
“Just wait,” he answered. He kept his head low, hoping the darkness and the falling snow would be enough to conceal him.
“Crazy happenings down by the castle,” Captain Henry said.
“Are there?” Valin replied. “I haven’t heard of anything.”
Captain Henry’s fat lips went straight. “What’s in the crate, Valin?”
“A cake from my favorite baker. It’s Codar’s birthday, you see.”
Henry and his men circled him, stopping by the thug carrying the crate. Valin and Codar watched calmly.
“I love birthdays,” Captain Henry said. He slapped the top of the crate. “You wouldn’t mind if I crack it open, try a piece?”
“I would prefer you didn’t,” Valin said.
Captain Henry started to lift the lid, but the brute holding it glowered down at him and he backed off. Rand also noticed Codar’s hand wrapped around the blade of a dirk sheathed behind his back.
“I’m full anyway,” Captain Henry grumbled. He went to turn, and his gaze froze upon Rand. “Got Shieldsman working for you now, do you?”
“One can’t be too careful in these days,” Valin said.
“Ain’t that the truth. Thing is, the Crown has us all keeping on the lookout for a traitor to the Order. One of them took a shot at our new Prime Minister, the hero of Winde Port and the King’s own uncle.”
“Why, that is awful.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Captain Henry started toward Rand, but Valin was unexpectedly quick on his cane and got in front of him.
“Nothing at all. But we’ll keep a weather eye out for the traitor, in the name of the King. To kill the royal uncle, no matter what he did in the past... why, that I cannot abide.”
Rand thought he saw something pass quickl
y between their hands. The captain looked Valin over once more, then grinned.
“Long reign the Miracle King,” Captain Henry said.
“Now,” Valin guided him back the other way, “why don’t you go make sure your armory is secure before the savages take everything? Leave our busy streets to me.”
“Aye boys, I think we will.” He waved his hand in a circle for them to move along, then grabbed Valin by the collar. “You’re up to something, Tehr,” he whispered. “Whatever it is, I want in.”
“I assure you,” Valin said, removing the man’s hand with two fingers, “I only mean to celebrate the life of my dear friend Codar amongst good company.”
“I want in,” Captain Henry whispered again before catching up to his men. He offered Rand a salute on his way by, a few of his men chuckling, then seized one of the beggars and shoved him along. “Clear the streets, ye filth. No begging beyond the church grounds. All of you!”
Rand rarely thought about it, but now he remembered why he was so eager to get out of the Dockside guard. Most of them were less honorable than Valin’s thugs, and they did a hell of a lot less for Dockside. Rand also knew he should’ve been concerned that the guard captain recognized him, but he wasn’t. So long as Valin kept the man’s mouth full and his pocket’s stuffed, serving the Crown came second.
“I detest that man,” Codar said, releasing his weapon.
“Now, now, old friend, don’t bite the hand that appeases us,” Valin said.
Codar didn’t respond.
Rand hadn’t known many people from the mountainous lands of northeast Pantego, with their hair as white as the land and accents just as harsh, but all those whom he’d ever met were equally short with words.
“Come along, Shieldsman,” Valin beckoned. “There are others who would take justice into their own hands, even if Redstar is a bloody savage.”
Rand retook Sigrid’s hand, and they followed Valin. Only two structures in Dockside were more prominent than The Vineyard—both were churches, both were on either side of Fortune’s Landing, and both were in far worse shape. The chapel of sins, which made Valin Tehr the wealthiest man in Yarrington outside of castle halls, sat like a jewel within a field of gray stone. A balcony lined the second floor, oak railings sculpted to appear like grapevines and big-bosomed women. On warmer days, the terrace would be packed with wenches and rich, old men.
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