by Matt Wallace
Evie parted with the last surviving members of the Elder Company at the city gates, feeling as though ten pounds of gravel weighted down her guts.
“I feel as though I should be going with you,” she’d said to Lariat as he readied to lead the rune-covered company out alongside Diggs and Bam.
“That’s not a general’s work,” he very knowingly replied, adding with less bravado, “That’s what Mother’d tell you, anyhow.”
Evie couldn’t stop the tears from welling in both of her eyes. “I’m sending you to die,” she said quietly, as if she had to admit that out loud to herself.
“Most of us, I reckon,” Lariat said dispassionately and without hesitation. “But that’s what we do, little sparrow. I mean, General.”
He chuckled at that last.
Evie shook her head. “I’m no better than the Skrain, then. I’m using you as they did.”
Lariat sighed, looming over her largely and sympathetically. “It’s our choice now,” he told her. “Most of us have no homes to go back to. We’d rather die fightin’ than bein’ gutted or dragged back by our tender bits from some blood coin hunter’s rope.”
He cupped her cheeks briefly with his impossibly large, callused hands. “This is the fight we chose,” he insisted one last time.
Lariat peered down at the blade-and-barb-encumbered leather straps crisscrossing his bare torso and shoulders and extending down his arms to skeletal gauntlets encasing his wrists and fingers, each with their own curved and sharpened metal teeth.
“I’d give ya a squeeze, but I’d stick you good,” he’d said to her.
Instead, Lariat stroked the top of her head and gently pressed his rough lips to her forehead. “I have daughters like you somewhere,” he’d whispered. “At least, I hope they’re like you. If you ever run across ’em, tell ’em the old man went out of this world trying to get back to them.”
Evie was forced to swallow hard before answering. “I will if I have to. But don’t make me if you can help it, all right?”
For the first time since learning of Mother Manai’s death, a piece of the brawny brute’s usual jocularity returned to him. He unsheathed his twin katars smoothly and held them aloft in a heroic pose.
“They’re gettin’ a weapon, not a man!” he boldly proclaimed, laughing raucously. Returning his triangular blades to their scabbards, he favored her with a wink before turning to depart.
“Tell me something,” Diggs said to her on the heels of following Lariat.
“What’s that?”
“Are you simply not taken by handsome older men, or…?” He trailed off then, grinning down at her.
Evie laughed, playfully shoving him down the path Lariat was still beating. “Good luck, Diggs. Never change.”
“The same to you,” he said, backpedaling. “On both counts.”
Bam lingered, arms folded sullenly across his bulbous chest, the haft of the mallet hanging over his shoulder laced through them. He stared at her forlornly through the veil of his gathered hood and hanging hair.
Evie had looked on him with such gratefulness and sympathy in her eyes.
“You have to go with them, Bam,” she’d said, firmly. “They need you more than I do now. Keep as many of them on their feet and fighting for as long as you can, will you? And don’t fall yourself, if you have the choice.”
Bam nodded obediently, as he always did.
Evie reached up and placed her hand against his chest.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for always watching over me.”
He nodded again.
“You’re nice,” he said in his surprisingly gentle voice.
Evie smiled up at him, a juggernaut on the battlefield she had witnessed commit so many truly brutal, even grotesque acts.
“You’re nice, too,” she said, and she meant it.
Evie has been parted from her gruff companions and comrades-in-arms for less than an hour now, but she feels the absence of them deeply. They are as much family as she has known in her adult life.
Mounted atop the best battle horse in their makeshift army, Evie performs a final check of her weapons and armor, finding every instrument and tiny fastener is held perfectly in place. Sirach’s mount trots up beside hers, her lover removing a pair of leather gloves from her belt.
Evie turns and peers at the ranks assembled behind them, ready to march at double-time pace to strike at the massive beast that is the Skrain host.
“Where is Chimot?” Evie asks.
“I sent her ahead with a party of my own scouts,” Sirach answers casually, fitting the worryingly thin gloves over her hands.
Evie is surprised and confused to the point of alarm. “With Lariat’s men? In the vanguard?”
Sirach shakes her head.
“Then what?” Evie demands, invoking her General voice.
Sirach chuckles quietly. “Relax. Chimot told me about her idea of setting a few fires in the camp. They’re going to slip in ahead of your rough-edged friends and make a few sparks before the battle begins. Why fight through the hordes to get in the camp? When the Skrain alarms sound, it’ll be even easier for them to pass into that tent city than it was for you.”
Evie stares at her with her jaw practically hanging. “Why didn’t I think of that?” she asks herself aloud.
Sirach’s newly gloved hand reaches over to lightly pat her cheek. “Don’t worry, dear. Just look pretty.”
Sirach blows her a kiss, and it is all Evie can do not to pop her in the mouth with an open palm.
She’s just so damned pleased Sirach is on their side, though.
A rising clamor beyond the threshold of the city gates sharply draws her attention. Evie sees the light of burning torches and hears the rattling of steel and the shouting of ramped-up voices.
For one wild, desperate second, she fears the Gen Circus or the Citadel or both have chosen this moment to storm from their barricaded havens and take the city back. She can almost see the remaining Aegins and Skrain coming for them in the receding darkness.
Instead, Kellan leads an armed assortment of men and women from the Shade out through the gates. They must number in the thousands, all of them strong-looking and able of body. They’re carrying appropriated Skrain weapons and wearing Skrain armor with Aegin daggers held in Aegin baldrics slung across their chests.
Kellan’s hammer is much larger than when Evie first met him, forged distinctly for battle.
“Permission to join the war, General!” he calls out to her as they approach the formation. She can see his friendly smile by the light of his people’s torches.
Evie breaks away from Sirach and her forces and quickly gallops over to meet him.
“What is this?” she asks, still in shock if no longer feeling the quick stab of fear.
“We thought you could use the help,” he says.
“What about the city?”
“Talma will stay behind with enough of us to keep the Gens and the arbiters in their holes until we return.”
Evie stares down at him gravely. “You’re sure, Kellan?”
The blacksmith glances back at the men and women behind him. It is clear most of them have never worn armor or held proper weapons before, yet they look neither uncomfortable nor unsure of themselves. Their eyes are hard. Their postures are tight and sprung and ready.
They want a fight. Evie can see it scrawled in the features of every face lit by the torches.
“Again, I thank you,” she says to Kellan. “Fall in behind the Sicclunan soldiers. We have to move fast.”
“We’ll keep up,” Kellan assures her.
At his back, the people of the Shade unleash a chorus of assenting battle cries, raising their hard-won weapons high in the air.
Satisfied, Evie rears her mount and rides back to where Sirach is waiting with a strange grin on her face.
“What is it?” Evie asks her.
“You’d almost think we’re not all going to die,” she marvels, watching the Shade’s bat
talion file out to join them.
Evie follows her gaze, the hardened faces she just stared into becoming a blur as her new recruits fall into formation.
“Almost,” she says grimly.
THE TRUTH
“THIS ISN’T RIGHT,” DYEAWAN SAYS for perhaps the fifth time in a row. “You should not be here.”
Oisin’s irritation finally boils over.
“Please cease your mewling,” he says with open disdain. “That word is meaningless, in any case. ‘Rightness.’ It is invoked by the weak to relieve themselves of fault in a chaotic world. There is no right, young one. That would imply a prescribed order to things. There is only the order we impose.”
“That is what you do,” Dyeawan tells him.
“That is what we all do. That is the purpose of both the Protectorate Ministry and the Planning Cadre. That is the thing at the head of which you currently sit. And that is why Edger’s former little pet is correct—you are not fit to lead.”
“I know this is all happening in my own mind,” Dyeawan says, speaking more to herself than the Ministry agent. “I know my body is back sitting at the planners’ table.”
“And so?” Oisin sounds terribly bored.
“Then am I imagining you, as well, or are you the one speaking to me back in the keep?”
“I am a construct, in either case. If my corporeal form truly is with yours, whispering to you back in the keep, then that form cannot hear your questions. Your mortal body is seized in a state of total paralysis. Therefore, if you ask me a question here, it is only your imagined self that is asking your image of me that question. Any answer I give you will, in fact, be coming from you, as well.”
Dyeawan is certain she’d have an ache in her head if she were not so starkly aware that the head atop her shoulders at that moment did not truly exist.
“Perhaps I am only your mind interpreting another’s words spoken to you in your unconscious state,” Oisin offers.
Dyeawan has her doubts about that. She cannot explain why, but even through the smoke and past the mirrors constantly created by the Planning Cadre, this feels wrong to her.
She begins to notice that those swirling colors in the far-off distance have grown much larger and closer as they’ve talked. In fact, they are like a wall made of the aurora rising tall directly behind her.
“Why are you here?” Dyeawan asks the agent.
“Was this situation somehow not fully explained to you? You seemed to have a perfect grasp upon it only a moment ago.”
“Why are you here? You are hardly impartial, are you? Where is Tinker?”
“I am here to carry out the orders you issued me in your role as the esteemed leading mind of the Planning Cadre,” Oisin informs her, making no attempt to hide his sarcasm.
The latter question he outright ignores.
“My orders? Which ones?”
As if in answer to her question, the colors that were previously swelling larger in the corners of her vision now expand to surround them both.
Starting, Dyeawan instinctively rows her tender forward just a hair.
Oisin appears unconcerned.
“What’s happening?” she demands.
“The truth,” he answers.
The walls of color close in around the two until they finally contract, enveloping them both and filling Dyeawan’s field of vision with rolling waves of vibrant hues.
When the color recedes, she finds the two of them occupying Edger’s office. The hour must be late, for the candles in the room have all burned down by more than half.
Oisin is standing beside her tender. He is also sitting in a chair across from Edger himself, alive and well and holding one of his neutral, conversational expression masks up to his perpetually blank face. Neither of the men engaged in conversation pay her or the Oisin beside her any heed, as if they are not even there.
“What is this?” she asks the Oisin accompanying her.
“You know, this is an illusion,” he replies, ignoring her question. “You could walk if you wanted to. You have no need of that contraption here.”
Dyeawan frowns darkly at him. “It is always the mistake of people like you to presume people like me wish only to be ‘cured’ of what you see as our weaknesses.”
Dyeawan glances between the two Oisins, realizing they are in a memory; not hers, but one being described to her back in the world of mortal flesh where she left her body.
Edger breathes his voice through the bony pipes of the wind dragon attached to the head of the Planning Cadre’s throat, addressing the other Oisin.
Seeing Ku, the little creature that enabled Edger to speak, causes a brief pang in what Dyeawan imagines to be her chest.
“She is progressing at a rate of acceleration beyond anything I could have anticipated.”
The Oisin to whom Edger is speaking dismissively waves a black-gloved hand.
“For a street urchin, perhaps,” he says.
“For any mind in this keep, including mine,” Edger insists. “Her mind is like a sponge. It soaks up any information to which she is exposed. Her knowledge, her vocabulary, her imagination—they are growing by leaps and bounds daily.”
“Again, impressive for a street urchin.”
Edger lowers his current mask in exasperation, retrieving and replacing it with another mask sculpted into a furious face. “You do not understand what she is, or why she is remarkable. And it is not my own vanity. I have guided Nia with my own hand from the time she was a babe, and I say to you that Dyeawan, with no formal education and no nurturing to speak of, has a more impressive mind than Nia has ever displayed. She is the one, I tell you.”
Oisin laughs bitterly. “This is a matter of engineering, and you speak of it as if it were prophecy.”
“I use one to create the other,” Edger informs him.
Dyeawan looks up at the Oisin who apparently conjured this place for her.
“What does he mean?” she asks him. “I’m the ‘one’? One of what?”
“We haven’t gotten there yet,” is all he tells her in response.
Just as quickly as they materialized in Edger’s office, Dyeawan and Oisin are standing at the bend of an alley in the Bottoms.
She recognizes it immediately. It is one of the more secluded arteries she once used to get around without being seen or bothered.
A familiar sound accompanies the familiar sight, drawing Dyeawan’s attention up the alley. It is the unpleasant, intermittent scraping of metal over stone, and it is a chorus she still hears in her dreams at night.
She sees herself from not so very long ago. That Dyeawan is gaunt, underfed, and dirtier. Her dark hair is like tiny slicks of grease hanging around her head. She holds a stone in each filthy rag-wrapped hand, grinding them against the alley floor and using them to pull the rest of her along atop her sheet of tin.
Dyeawan isn’t sure how seeing herself from that time makes her feel. There is sorrow and sympathy for the girl she was. There is relief and pride in the one she has become. There is also a strange sadness for the loss of that other girl, despite the terribly sunken place in which the younger version of her dwelled.
Two large figures stride past Oisin and the Dyeawan who is only an observer in this world. The two are clearly cut from the worst element of the Bottoms. Dyeawan recognizes their ilk, and remembers avoiding them like the plague.
She knew them by their eyes more than anything. Their eyes always gave them away. Their eyes were sinister, and always seeking weaker prey.
Today, as observer Dyeawan watches the men, their eyes spot her younger version rowing her way through the seemingly empty alley.
One of them smiles, hungrily, barely a tooth left inside his head that is not withered. He nudges his fellow, who nods in agreement.
The brutes strike out up the alley, clearly pursuing Dyeawan and her tin sheet. One of them pulls a rough-hewn blade from inside their clothes.
This cannot be a memory. Dyeawan does not remember either of the
men, and she certainly does not remember being attacked at knifepoint. She wonders if this is a problem she is meant to solve? And if so, how?
The brutes quicken their paces, closing the gap between them and the younger Dyeawan’s back.
Her older self is about to call out in warning, forgetting she and Oisin are only observers, but she stops short as two more figures emerge in the center of the alley, behind the malicious pursuers.
They are Aegins. They appear from one of the many discarded-looking doorways the Dyeawan of old just slid herself past along the alley.
Both Aegins have their daggers drawn. They seize the brutes deftly and expertly, clamping hands over their mouths full of rotted teeth to silence them before plunging those state-issued blades lethally into their backs.
They cradle the would-be attackers until both cease their struggling, and then quickly the Aegins haul the life-slipping bodies back inside the building, out of sight.
The Dyeawan sliding along the alley floor on her tin sheet never even notices the fracas that unfolds behind her.
Dyeawan of the present looks up from her tender at Oisin, as confused as she has ever been in her life.
He looks down on her, reading with disdain the question written in the features of her face.
“Did you really think you survived for so long down here, a crippled girl on her own, without being murdered for the coin or crust of bread you begged that day? Or beaten to a pulp for fun? Or violated in a far worse way? And how do you imagine you never once found yourself yanked from the street by Aegins until so late into your life?”
Dyeawan says nothing.
“Not that you didn’t suffer, I suppose,” he says with less harshness in his tone.
Their view of the alley is replaced by one of a nearby street, one of the Bottoms’ main arteries connecting the docks to the rest of the city. It is the top of the afternoon, and the action of the day is at a pitch. Merchants and shoppers and beggars and drovers all choke the space with their bodies. Aegins ominously move among them. Fishmonger carts nearly collide with wagons ferrying cargo from ships in the middle of the thoroughfare.