Ancestor Blades were one of the most precious things in the world. To lose one was a great tragedy. Omand probably should have felt something over the loss of such a valuable resource, sadness, or at least guilt, but mostly he wondered how much this complication would upset his current plans.
“If we were to leak this information in the Chamber of Argument, the loss of their sword would ruin the reputation of Great House Vadal,” Taraba suggested.
“A bold move.” Omand had already thought of that. Vadal was one of the strongest houses, militarily and economically, and one of the few powers which could thwart him. “But no, we will proceed with the plan. The important thing is for the great houses, and more importantly the non-people, to believe as long as possible that there is still an ancestor blade outside the Law. That will make the first afraid and their casteless bold. There are other ways to manipulate Harta Vadal to our side.”
“When Lord Protector Devedas and his men find Ashok, they’ll return to the Capitol, bragging, probably with his head held high on a spear. Then everyone will know the truth.”
“Ah, Devedas.” The man who would be king had recently gone from adversary to ally in the great game. Yet his hunt for Ashok was personal, and there would be no swaying a man so motivated by pride. “Leave him to me. We have come to an arrangement…And if he doesn’t honor it, there are other ways to apply leverage.”
“Speaking of which, Radamantha Nems dar Harban has not been fulfilling her obligation at the library.”
So Devedas must have realized that having an object of affection was a liability and moved her someplace safer. Love was a weakness in the great game—whether it was for a person or an ideal, devotion was just another weakness that could be leveraged against you by the more morally flexible opponents. A clever move. Devedas was learning.
“How long since we’ve had eyes on her?”
“We have men watching their family estate, but she hasn’t been seen since the Protectors left the city.”
“Ah, that was my mistake then. I told Devedas I was willing to kill his woman. My brashness deprived us of a valuable bargaining chip. I should not have been so blunt in my threats.”
Unlike most Protectors, who were rather direct in the application of force, Devedas had some political cunning. He would make a fine puppet king under Omand’s guidance, and a much better friend than an enemy…within limits of course, because if Devedas ever found out that Ashok’s rebellion was Omand’s creation, the Lord Protector would most certainly try to kill the Grand Inquisitor. Such a development would be most unfortunate because the Capitol couldn’t have the heads of its various Orders haphazardly murdering each other.
“I’d hope our potential future queen is refraining from any further meddling in our affairs, but if she does, I saw that there are several open spaces on the dome…No, we must keep it discreet. Put a bounty out for her safe retrieval. We’ll place her in our custody somewhere nice, and return her after the coup, ensuring that Devedas keeps his bargain. However, I still must decide what to do about the Protectors until then.”
With Angruvadal, Ashok could survive nearly anything. Without his ancestor blade, he wouldn’t have a chance against his vengeful former brothers. He had brought great shame upon their entire Order and the Protectors were a tenacious lot. The rogue would be hunted down, the stain scrubbed from their honor, and then they would tell the whole world he was no more. If Omand was to get the most out of the Black Heart’s fearful reputation, he needed to slow down his pursuers.
“I think that if something were to happen closer to home, something which would even come to the attention of the judges themselves, it will draw the Protector Order’s wrath in the wrong direction and buy our sword-breaking troublemaker a bit more time.” They had run out of stairs. This floor of the fortress should only be populated by loyalists, but Omand would take no chances, so he leaned in and whispered to his subordinate, “Send word to Javed that it is time to complete his mission.”
He gave the order as casually as if he were telling his chef what to prepare for lunch.
Taraba’s eyes widened, but then he responded with a grim nod. “It will be done, Grand Inquisitor.” The young man turned and walked away, pulling his mask on as he went, probably because he was having a hard time keeping the emotions from his face. Not everyone could be as calm and casual about ordering the massacre of hundreds of innocents as Omand Vokkan.
Chapter 4
For the last six months, every single morning, Inquisition Witch Hunter Javed would sit on a rock, high above the main trade road south of the Capitol, eating his breakfast and watching.
His mask—the leering, fanged face of the Law—had been left behind when he had been given this assignment, but he didn’t need a mask to hide who he really was, for Javed was a man of many faces. Everyone in Shabdkosh believed he was merely another merchant of Great House Zarger, with just enough status to avoid the shakedowns of jealous warriors, but not important enough to be of interest to the local arbiters and their political machinations. So no one paid attention to Javed as he plotted murder and counted wagons.
Every day he watched for a specific trading company. When he saw them, he counted the wagons until he got to the fifth one. That was the wagon which would be carrying his orders from the Inquisitor’s Dome. Merchant caravans always flew banners advertising their wares. He didn’t care about the words, just the colors. Usually there was nothing new, just green, yellow, yellow. Sometimes it was blue, red, blue, which meant he needed to walk up the road a bit to check for a coded note left beneath a specific rock.
This was a common method of passing messages among the secretive witch hunters. It made him idly wonder what they’d ever do with an obligation who was color blind? That could lead to some hilarious miscommunications.
This morning the slowly lumbering wagon bore three flags: yellow, red, yellow.
About damned time.
Javed left his breakfast unfinished on his favorite rock and climbed down the hill, excited to fulfill his mission. His house had obligated him to the Inquisition because he was a handsome, likable sort, easily trusted by others, but also an excellent liar untroubled by conscience. He was perfect for assignments like this. Javed began to whistle a happy tune as he walked. He only needed to go slightly out of his way to scratch a symbol on a door at the edge of the casteless quarter.
Shabdkosh wasn’t much of a town. It existed as a way-stop for the important people traveling to and from the Capitol. They may have shared the same desert, but the Capitol was served by several mighty aqueducts that enabled it to sustain a huge population, while Shabdkosh had a few deep wells that could serve at most a thousand souls, after they had watered the caravan oxen and the carriage horses of the first caste of course.
So Javed’s next stop was to poison the well inside the warrior-caste fort. It had been a long time since any criminals had been bold enough to threaten anything this close to the Capitol, so the guards here were complacent, and as the merchant who delivered their rice, Javed was a familiar face. Nobody noticed the always friendly rice merchant drop a clay jug down their well.
The formula was potent and often deadly even in small dosages. It was one of the Inquisition alchemists’ more useful mixtures, because the victims would not usually experience any symptoms for six to eight hours after ingesting. By the time they knew something was wrong, other soldiers would have been drinking all day.
Meanwhile, he knew that the Inquisitors who had been secretly living among the casteless would have seen the mark he had left for them and begun their preparations as well. There were a large number of casteless living here due to the sulfur mine, a tedious, smelly trade that the worker caste thought beneath them. Javed had two other conspirators, one having taken the place of the overseer, treating the non-people with extra petty cruelty to make them bitter, and another playing the part of a casteless religious fanatic, nurturing hostility and fomenting rebellion. He didn’t envy his brothers, living
in filth and disease pretending to be stupid fish-eaters in order to accomplish their mission. Javed was looking forward to ending this charade and returning to the Capitol. His brothers had to be ecstatic, certainly hoping to never smell sulfur again.
Once the casteless started seeing warriors clutching their guts and collapsing at their posts, it would be hailed as a sign of the Forgotten’s favor. The strong made weak, so the weak could become strong, and all that nonsense. His allies would kill a few warriors to show the rest how easy it was, and then the casteless’s bloodthirsty nature would take over. Out of obedience or fear, most of the non-people would remain hiding in their shacks, but he had been assured that enough fools and hot heads would rise up to ensure quite a bit of bloodshed.
Casteless were violent, but untrained and stupid. They would squander their energy on the wrong targets, the workers who profited from their labors most likely. So Javed would personally make sure there were sufficient casualties among the important people to make this a notable act of rebellion. He would do so by setting the lone first-caste compound on fire, burning it to the ground while its occupants were trapped inside, and picking off anyone who made it out alive.
Javed returned to his shop and removed his bag of tools from where he’d kept it hidden in the rafters. There was one particular arbiter who had sneered at the quality of his rice. Javed didn’t even particularly care for rice, but he took his cover identity very seriously. He would make sure that arbiter got a poisoned crossbow bolt to the face.
He never asked why the Law needed them to kill a town, especially one only a couple days journey from the most important city in the world. He had seen no more signs of wickedness here than anywhere else, but regardless of the reason for their death sentence, Javed was looking forward to carrying it out.
Chapter 5
The Sons of the Black Sword stopped and made an early camp. They could have pushed on, but in the dark even their surefooted Somsak horses were bound to break a leg on the narrow, rugged mountain path. If the big moon, Canda, had been up, perhaps they would have tried, but tonight only tiny Upagraha was rapidly crossing the sky, and it was nothing more than a bright dot, not much larger than a star.
Ashok had the fortitude to suffer through the cold night in nothing but a coat, but the others might have frozen to death, even huddled together beneath blankets, so he allowed them to build a fire. If the Inquisition truly knew which pass they were crossing, there would be no hiding. If the masks sent a legion of warriors after them, they might as well die warm.
As Keta preached of forgotten gods to the fanatics, their general sat alone, away from the others, sharpening his stolen sword on a whetstone. Ashok had heard most of the Keeper’s stories by now. They were surely a mix of ancient truth and modern lies, but the telling made Keta happy, and it motivated his army. Ashok scoffed at the thought. His army was a handful of raiders and a few of the workers they’d been raiding. The only thing that united them was that they’d all worshipped the old ways in secret and had fallen into a religious fervor after seeing Thera’s odd magical powers manifest in Jharlang.
A year ago he would have executed all of them as treasonous cultists without a second thought. Now he was supposedly one of their leaders. Truly, Omand Vokkan had a gift for creative torments. The Grand Inquisitor would have a good laugh if he could see what indignities Ashok had been reduced to now.
He had once been numbered among the highest caste, the bearer of an ancestor blade, and a senior member of the Protector Order. In a land where everyone had a place, his had been near the top, and he’d done his best to keep everyone where they belonged. However that had all been a carefully crafted lie. His entire life he had been nothing more than an unwitting pawn in a political game, all because for some mysterious reason mighty Angruvadal had chosen a pathetic casteless boy to be its bearer.
Once informed of his true identity, Ashok had condemned himself, exposed the guilty parties, and then turned himself over for judgment. He would have taken his own life in shame, but it was illegal for the bearer of a precious ancestor blade to perish in such a dishonorable manner. So he’d sent himself to prison and waited until the Grand Inquisitor himself had delivered his final orders to Ashok’s humble cell. To a man whose very foundation was based upon obedience there was no punishment more humiliating than being banished to live the rest of his days as a criminal.
Yet Ashok had still obediently set out to fulfill his new obligation—find and serve the casteless prophet—for the Law demanded it. And he had failed so utterly, that after only a few weeks as a criminal, the prophet had been carried off in the talons of a great black bird, and his precious ancestor blade had been destroyed.
The only thing that remained of once mighty Angruvadal was a single black-steel shard that was still lodged in his heart. The sword had spared his life, and for that he was bitter, for as long as he lived he was required to fulfill his mission, no matter how terrible it might be.
While Ashok had been deep in thought, Keta had finished his nightly sermon. Satisfied that the inferior steel was as sharp as it could be, Ashok put his new sword away, and he listened as the believers asked questions about their god.
For a bunch of fanatics, their questions seemed reasonable. If the Forgotten was real, why did he abandon us for so long? If the casteless were the chosen people, why did the Forgotten allow the Law to crush them into dust?
Keta acted as if he had all the answers, but Ashok could see that he was afraid. The Keeper did a good job hiding it, but without his prophet to guide him, he was lost. Ashok found the whole situation odd, because Thera herself seemed to be an intelligent, level-headed woman—for a criminal outcast—not a believer in Keta’s wild stories.
When it came to Thera, Ashok was…conflicted. He had been torn down and rebuilt as a perfect servant of the Law. He despised rebels with every fiber of his being. Except he’d come to respect Thera’s dedication and professionalism, and in an odd way, even enjoy her company. It was difficult, getting to know those you were supposed to hate.
The worker Gutch wandered over, stopped a polite distance away, and coughed to get Ashok’s attention, even though one would have to be deaf to not hear the giant of a man lumbering through the trees, stepping on every crackable twig…Or perhaps he was loud on purpose, because Ashok had the reputation of not being a man you wanted to surprise on accident.
“Excuse me, General. Could you spare a moment to have a word with your humble servant, Gutch?”
Jagdish had warned him that the smuggler was often deliberately obtuse, and liked to play the jovial fool, but not to underestimate him. Gutch was the reason they were headed for Neeramphorn, because a faint hope was better than no hope at all.
“Of course.”
“Heh…Seems odd, calling you General.” Gutch squatted in the snow beside the log Ashok was sitting on. “I remember when we were both inmates in the same prison, and now you’ve got yourself a fancy title again.”
“The title is only as good as the army it leads.”
“Perhaps someday your ranks will swell into a mighty force, fit to take on the army of a great house or the Capitol itself.”
Ashok shuddered at the thought. “I do not think we ever met at Cold Stream.”
“Well, you were a bit more memorable than me, what with all the killings. Place got a lot safer after you arrived, once the uppity sorts became afraid to draw your ire. I did enjoy watching your many duels through a crack in the wall of my cell. Entertainment helped pass the time. As for me? Old Gutch prefers to stay out of the way and not cause trouble.”
“Since you’re too large of stature to avoid notice—an unfortunate trait for one who has chosen a life of crime—instead you play dumb and friendly so no one takes you as a threat.”
They were far enough from the fire that Ashok could only barely see his features, but it was obvious Gutch’s forced smile had died. As Jagdish warned, this one was smarter than he looked. Then Gutch chuckled. “Dumb, I tak
e some exception to, and I don’t pretend to be friendly. I truly like everyone, General. I just like them better when they’re not informing on me. As the Law says, a man must recognize his place. My favorite place is outside the view of those in your former profession.”
“Of course.”
Gutch gestured rudely at where Keta was speaking to his faithful. “Not like those rabble-rousers. They’re just asking for trouble. Can you believe the tales the skinny one is spinning? You’d have to be terribly gullible to believe such things. Only the fish-eaters can save us from the army of demons that are gonna rise up out of the sea? Not bloody likely. Surely you don’t believe any of that?”
He had been taught the gods were a myth, created as a tool of the ancient kings in order to subjugate and abuse the masses, before the Age of Law had brought justice and reason to Lok. Exhaling, Ashok could see his breath. It was just vapor, visible because of the cold. There was no spirit inside like the fanatics proclaimed, and when it was gone, they were just dead flesh to be discarded in the most sanitary manner possible. However, a few recent events had made Ashok question his beliefs…Like Thera predicting the future, or ghostly beings speaking to him as he lay dying. So there might be gods—just in case he had warned them to stay out of his way—but he did not like to dwell on the idea.
So Ashok ignored the question, and focused on the real world. The worker was thickset, but it was not the lean, fast muscle of a combatant, but rather the big arms and chest which came from the repetitive movement of heavy weights. He might not have been a warrior, but Jagdish had said he’d seen Gutch crush a wizard’s head flat with the giant iron beam they’d used to bar the front gate of Cold Stream prison, a beam that normally took two warriors to lift.
“I am told you were a smith.”
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