The Immortal Walker
Copyright © 2017 McKellon Meyer
First Printing, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9960520-3-0
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Tugboat Design
Formatting by Tugboat Design
For Gemma
Contents
Part One: Running
1 | The Thief-king
2 | Fifth City Diamonds
3 | The Mountains
4 | Death by Falling
5 | The Fourth City
Part Two: The Second City
1 | Sorcery
2 | The Royal Captain
3 | Ti-em
4 | Blood and Poison
Part Three: Dying
1 | Mountain Shifts
2 | The Phoenix King
3 | The Third City
4 | Winter Plans
5 | Dethroning a King
Part Four: Immortality
1 | Mending Messes
2 | Confessions
3 | The First City
4 | Ikaros
5 | The Immortal Walker
Part One: Running
1 | The Thief-king
Knives flashed in the filtered light of the semi-underground room, blinding Kaislyn. She stepped back into a half crouch and blinked her eyes to clear them. The boy advanced. He was scrawny with dirty blond hair and brown eyes. His baggy pants were tucked into fitted boots and he wore a brown shirt and vest. He was much taller than Kaislyn. But then, everyone was taller than Kaislyn. If she wore boots and stood on her toes maybe she could claim to being five feet tall.
A silent crowd surrounded them. They were similar in appearance and age to her opponent. She’d have to sort out their names later. She kept her gaze fixed on the knives in the boy’s hands as he took another confident step.
This was what she wanted. But Kaislyn didn’t feel as confident as when she’d arrived. Those knives in Jaden’s hands were no playthings.
Girl, don’t get distracted. Think of the priests.
The thought brought an unwilling smile to Kaislyn’s face. She once promised herself that she’d destroy the priesthood. She would destroy the gods of those priests, the gold, the altars, the blood sacrifices, the dance rituals. She would crush their religion.
Kaislyn jerked her attention back to the present. Jaden had started talking again. Didn’t he know it was always more intimidating to face a silent opponent? She thought of the queen’s infamous assassins and amended the thought. Most of the time, anyway.
“Look at you! You’ve never seen a hard day’s work in your life. Just because you had an argument with your parents, you thought running away to the gutters was the only thing to do. Well, it’s not. Go home and have a good, long cry.”
Kaislyn looked down at her neat, clean clothes. At the telltale softness of her hands. He thought she was a baby. “Crying never got me anywhere.”
“You’re being stupid,” Jaden warned. He circled around and Kaislyn spun to keep him in front of her. Her feet slid into old patterns, old positions, and she hid a grimace. If her principal hadn’t been so obsessively single-minded during drills she’d have lost these habits years ago.
“I don’t think you know me well enough to know when I’m being stupid,” Kaislyn retorted with a ghost of a smile that made Jaden hesitate. A frown creased his forehead. “You plan to scare me just enough that I break down sobbing and beg you to let me run home to dear papa and mama. I don’t believe in begging, and I haven’t cried since—” her voice faltered for the first time. “—since a long time. What’s the matter, Jaden, Thief-king of Ir-Ime? Don’t you fight scared little girls?”
Jaden’s face paled in anger, revealing numerous dirt smudges. Those would have to go, Kaislyn thought. How did Jaden expect to advance against the other gangs when he looked like that?
“Your gang is nothing special. You’re just a bunch of adolescent children running wild,” she added.
Her barb hit deep and Jaden’s face contorted in anger. It was easy to mock Jaden. His gang was one of the smallest in the city and she’d heard he had to give tithes to the larger gangs to keep them from taking over his territory.
“I will teach you otherwise,” Jaden jeered at her.
“I’m glad we’re agreed on... those points.” She grinned up at him.
Jaden hesitated again. Good.
“I want to learn how to fight.”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?” Jaden demanded.
“Right,” Kaislyn nodded. “If I beat you here and now, in front of everyone, I get to be a part of your gang, and you teach me everything you know about fighting. Deal?”
“I don’t teach spoiled merchant brats.”
“I don’t like them either. Do we have a deal?”
“What if you lose?” Jaden asked.
Kaislyn skipped away from his advance. She needed to get into the middle of the room. “If? I’m touched by your faith that I might actually win! No wonder you’re near the bottom of the scum pile. You’re not arrogant enough.”
“Your arrogance is about to get you killed!” Jaden lunged, one knife swiping at her face. Kaislyn ducked to the side as the second knife sliced along her arm. She bit her lip in pain. A few more paces and she’d be in the middle of the room.
“The threat of death has lost its sting in recent years,” Kaislyn said, resisting the urge to look at her arm. “No wonder everyone laughs at you. You only fight if your opponent is a tiny, unarmed girl.”
Jaden ran at her. Kaislyn leapt. Grabbing the ceiling beam, she lashed out with her feet and connected with Jaden’s back as he rushed beneath her. He stumbled and Kaislyn dropped on him. The air rushed out of his lungs as they hit the ground. Stunned, he didn’t move for a few, critical seconds. Kaislyn yanked the knives from his lax hands and pressed the points against his neck.
At the same time, she felt a phantom, cutting pain against the back of her own neck. She twitched and pressed too hard, drawing blood.
The pricks roused Jaden. He tried to toss Kaislyn off and she threw herself across him. Wrapping an arm around his neck, the knife in that hand came dangerously close to slitting his throat.
“I wouldn’t try that,” said Kaislyn. “I don’t know much about knives.” She risked a look around the room. The rest of his gang had moved closer to hear the exchange better. They wouldn’t interfere unless she broke her end of the deal. Would they interfere if Jaden broke his?
Jaden sighed, his body relaxing. “All right, all right. You can join us and I’ll teach you how to fight with knives. Let me up.”
“Sorry, what? I wasn’t listening. I tend to ignore groveling.”
“I wasn’t groveling,” Jaden growled. “I was conceding defeat.”
“Excuse me, but you’re the one with your face smashed into the dirt begging me to let you up. If that’s not groveling I don’t know what is.”
Jaden swore at her and Kaislyn laughed. Her laugh ended in a gasp as a ripple of pain cut across her abdomen. Damn the gods, not now! Another ripple of pain. Her throat felt raw. As if someone had raked their nails across it from ear to ear. She couldn’t breathe.
Her grip loosened on Jaden as the next spasm radiated out into her left shoulder. Before Kaislyn could tighten her hold again, Jaden heaved upward, fli
pping her onto her back and slamming her into the dirt floor. Kaislyn’s vision danced with grey and brown spots. Rocks? she thought, stupidly. The ground smelled like pine needles, but there weren’t any trees here.
Her vision and sinuses cleared. Jaden knelt over her, trapping her arms at her sides. He’d recovered his knives and now held them against her throat. At least that had stopped hurting as quickly as it’d begun. The spasms in her abdomen began to fade in intensity. Blazes, why did she have to have a Shift attack now?
“Looks like I win,” Jaden said softly. “You let your guard down too soon. You should have accepted my offer instead of mocking me first. Ah, ah,” he said when she tried to move. How could someone so scrawny be so heavy? “I haven’t decided whether to kill you or not.”
Kaislyn closed her eyes. She should be panicking.
“I will see you dead.”
She could smell sulfur. Kaislyn opened her eyes. It wasn’t Jaden who had spoken. His mouth was closed. Besides, the voice had been... distinctly female. And uncomfortably familiar.
“No more sarcastic remarks now that you’ve lost?”
Her nose twitched. “I... I think I’m about to sneeze.” And so saying, she did. The fit passed, as did the sulfur that had accompanied the words. Her words.
Jaden waited until she finished and then stood. He put his knives away, leaned down, and pulled her to her feet. “I guess congratulations are in order. You can stay.”
“What? You mean my sneezing persuaded you? I should remember that for next time.”
“You do that,” Jaden said and left her, replaced by a circle of grungy thieves suddenly friendly and eager to introduce themselves.
Kaislyn plastered a smile on her face and tried to pay attention to the babble around her.
She’d done it.
If only she was happier about it.
Kaislyn didn’t see Jaden again until later that evening. He beckoned for her to follow him from the same underground room she’d fought him in She detached herself from the small group of thieves currently trying to teach her the finer points of picking someone’s pocket and joined him.
“Everyone seems to like you,” Jaden commented, “which is as important as anything else here.”
He led her up two flights of stairs to the roof of the house. Not many roofs in the city were used as additional floor space. Enough storms came off the ocean to make it impractical to keep much of value up high and in the open. Jaden’s roof was protected by a low wall around the edge and there were several chairs. Discarded bowls, some clearly showing the remains of a sticky meal, made walking across the roof without tripping an interesting game. Jaden pointed at a chair of woven reeds stretched between crosses of wood.
“I’ll stand, thanks,” Kaislyn said. “I don’t need to break my neck looking up at you.” On cue, her neck throbbed. Why did it have to hurt every time she said something like that? What did she do?
Jaden sat in one of the chairs, propping his feet on the wall. “Everyone in my gang gets an equal share of whatever we grab. You’ll get less than that as you’re new.”
“And how long will that last?”
Jaden shrugged. “Until the next new member comes along or you get caught or killed. You’ve made Trista quite happy. She’s been pestering me about giving her an equal share for years now. Feels like years anyway. This is my place—”
“I would never have guessed by all the filth.” She nudged a bowl with her boot.
“Filth is easy to hide in. We meet here and hang out here. But you’re on your own as far as finding a place to live or food to eat. And if you get caught... that’s it. Don’t expect any help.” Despite his relaxed pose and his light tone, Jaden’s face flushed a deeper red as he spoke. Kaislyn watched in interest. She didn’t think she’d chosen wrong, and Jaden’s evident shame over his low status was proof.
She pushed white-blonde hair out of her eyes. “It wasn’t an accident that I stumbled across your gang. I knew you were the best in the city with knives.” The best she was willing to learn from anyway. “Plus your gang is weak and it shouldn’t be. Not when you have the reputation you have with knives. You don’t use that to your advantage. I’ll bet you anything that I can turn you into one of the most powerful thief lords in the city. They won’t be calling you Thief-king in mockery but in respect.”
Jaden shook his head ruefully at her. “You’ve what? Spent a day here and are already making sweeping promises? You don’t do anything by halves, do you, Kaislyn?”
“Not promises, bets.” Kaislyn met his brown gaze. “What do you have to lose?”
“Everything.” Jaden dropped his feet to the ground, leaning toward her. “You might curl your lip at how small my operations are, but they’re all I have. I won’t risk losing that.”
“I lost everything once.” Twice, Kaislyn corrected herself, remembering the Fourth City again. “Believe me, I would never do anything to risk repeating that.”
Jaden eyed her for a moment. “Yet you almost lost everything—your life—today, and you hardly seem upset about it. What happened anyway?”
“When?” Kaislyn feigned confusion.
“Let’s start with your little jumping trick.” With the conversation safely moved away from his own failures, Jaden relaxed. He propped his feet back up on the wall.
“Oh, that,” Kaislyn sniffed. “I’ve never been very good at that sort of thing. I learned it in the Fourth City.”
“Fourth?”
Ah yes. The cities had returned to their original names after the Second Bloody Year. It was a detail she could never remember. “Um... the Royal City.” That wasn’t its original name either, but she couldn’t remember what it was called now.
“You’ve traveled then?”
“Yes.”
“Is the Royal City your home?”
“Gods forbid, no! That horrible place? I was born in the mountains. That’s my home. If I bothered to have one.”
Jaden nodded, seeming pleased by her answer. “I prefer that my thieves are loyal to their gang, not to their homes. Not to places. How old are you?”
She was silent too long. “Kaislyn?” Jaden prompted her.
“I was trying to remember. Fifteen. I think.”
“You think?”
“My age was never considered very important,” she said reluctantly.
“I see.”
She doubted it. He probably thought she was lying anyway.
“Do you know why I didn’t kill you earlier?”
Kaislyn shook her head.
“You didn’t care. You hardly seemed to notice you were about to die. Why?”
“I’ve seen a lot. Death doesn’t scare me.”
“I don’t like liars, Kaislyn, and you’re not very good at it. I saw your face. You were hurt, and not by me. If you expect to be a part of my gang, I need the truth from you. I can’t risk lives on anything less.”
She couldn’t deny the fairness of that. But what would satisfy him as to the truth? It would have to be a partial truth. She could never trust the entire truth with anyone.
“Kaislyn, I’ve only known you a few hours, and I already know you’re trying to come up with a plausible lie.”
She laughed to gain more time. “Not quite. I was born too early. I was lucky to survive at all. But because of that I have a stomach condition that leaves me with random cramps. Some are worse than others.”
“And you had an attack earlier.”
“It wasn’t a very bad one.”
“You were nearly crying.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t a very bad one.” Her last Shift attack had left her limping for a week.
Jaden looked at her sideways. “You’re a very strange girl, Kaislyn.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Kaislyn grinned.
He grinned back. “I think we’re going to get along really well.”
Interview finished, Kaislyn thought, sitting at last. She tilted her chair back so she could look at the
stars.
“I haven’t belonged anywhere in a long time.” Unbidden, an image of blue and green silk, the distant sound of a drum, filled her senses. Kaislyn blinked and shook the memory away.
She was here in the Third City now. She’d learn all that she could about fighting with knives. Then, when she saw him again, she would kill him.
2 | Fifth City Diamonds
Kaislyn tapped her nails against the table. She sat in a corner booth of the inn. The thick shadows hid her from any immediate notice. The narrow windows of the inn faced north, missing most of the natural light. There weren’t enough candles in the place, and those that were lit made the room smell like refuse.
She pressed the handkerchief against her mouth and nose. Never did she miss the mountains more than when she was in one of the dirtiest places in the city. No stench could ever survive in the brisk mountain winds.
“Ah, ah, ah.”
Kaislyn leapt from her seat, fingers closing over the dagger at her waist. The mocking voice was followed by a cramp in her abdomen. She buckled into her seat and wrapped her arms around her middle.
“Blazes,” she whispered as the spasm passed. Her handkerchief had disappeared somewhere under the table in her panic. Kaislyn pulled her shirt over her nose.
No, she thought sourly, the mountains had one stench worse than any inn.
“What’s with the glare? We’re not that late.” Jaden slid into the seat opposite her. He flung an arm across the back of his seat and propped his legs along the bench, as confident as if he owned the inn. He wasn’t scrawny anymore. His face had filled out, shoulders broadened. And though his clothes hung loose on his frame, it was a deliberate choice to hide valuables or knives about his person.
His companion, short and comfortably pudgy, remained standing. He and Kaislyn ignored each other.
“You picked a horrible place to meet.” Her voice was muffled by her shirt.
“Kam bet you’d complain.”
“How perceptive of you,” Kaislyn said, shooting a glare at the other thief.
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