“The orphans like Balish. They’re all Human, aren’t they? Not just the children we brought back from the river.”
Mahir’s lips stopped moving. He opened his eyes and turned to Luc. “I believe you know the answer to that.”
“Then you know what I am. Don’t you?” Luc asked. He stared at the Fates in their frozen moment on the wall, envying the serenity they exuded.
Mahir drew in a long slow breath, the sound of a man preparing himself to deliver bad news, long overdue. “You are a seeker. One who seeks the truth. And you have found it. Does this gladden you?”
Luc’s stomach tightened. He frowned at Mahir, uncertain if this was more manipulative wordplay. “Stop the games. You know what I mean. I am a Seeker, an infiltrator. Sent here by order of the Council of First to bring its enemies and those who harbor them to justice.”
“A fine speech. Your masters would be proud.” Sadness colored Mahir’s voice, like pity, as if Luc had just disclosed a lethal diagnosis, a wasting condition with no cure.
“Then why did you show me that tonight? You know what I must do.”
“You must act as your heart guides you.”
“My heart has nothing to do with this.”
“Does it not?” Mahir raised an eyebrow as he turned to him. His tone, his ever-patient tone, the same one that he used to explain to the children why they should not hit or throw things or use foul words. As if the acts of a Seeker would be judged such minor transgressions. “My heart tells me you are a good man, a just man. You could have abandoned us in town. Turned us over to your brother soldiers. Yet you returned. Why is that?”
Luc shook his head. “This isn’t about me.”
“And it most certainly is not about me.”
“If you surrender to me, come willingly,” Luc said, hating the desperation in his own voice, “perhaps I can convince them to sentence you to a Loyalty Center—”
“Where I can be brainwashed? Learn the truth of the sins I’ve committed in the eyes of the Council of First?” To Luc’s astonishment, Mahir chuckled. “That is a farce, and you know it.”
“It could be far worse,” Luc said. If Gia or her brothers had come here, what bloody chaos would they have wrought? “There’s time for you to recant, renounce what you’ve done.”
“Shall I pledge my enduring loyalty to your masters as well?” he mocked. “Would it please them to know they have this withered old man to command?”
“You know what the alternative is.”
“Consider.” Mahir placed a hand on his shoulder. “These children need you. They require a protector, more than these simple mud walls and this tired old man beside you. I prayed to Miri and her Sisters for help, and you arrived.”
Luc hissed the words over clenched teeth. “I am here by accident. I was lost in the river.”
“You were lost long before you came to Tasemar.”
Luc did not stay to hear more.
Luc stormed to his room. There: his. He realized the thought implied not only ownership but also collusion.
His reason to return here escaped him.
Floorboards creaked in the hall. The tread was one he did not recognize. This was someone walking with practiced stealth, paired with the careless stride of someone smaller. He was aware of eyes on him from the doorway.
“Luc.” It was a strained wheeze. And wrong enough to make him turn.
Balish was framed in the door, a knife pressed to his throat. A sinewy arm gripped the boy in an embrace that was anything but loving. Gia.
She glared over the top of the boy’s head. Someone had taken a blade to her face recently. It suited her far better than the freckles.
Luc registered her presence with an odd mix of relief and guilt. This can all be over.
“Lucky number three.” Her voice choked with pain.
Balish was rigid against her, his eyes wild with fear, confusion. She released him. “Stay,” she hissed.
Trapped between the door and her body, the boy had no choice but to obey. He seemed uninjured, at least physically. Luc willed the boy to look up at him. He wanted to tell him to be calm. To let him know that this would be alright.
“Unbelievable,” she snarled in Regimental. “They killed Amal. And a skew conscript like you lives.”
“Glory all.” It came out of him, like a reflex. Rote response because that was what you said for the fallen.
“Shut it!” She pointed the knife at him. “Not from you. Got it? He’d have gutted you if it weren’t for me.” There was only hate and pain. Something had happened to shove her into a place where reason could not intrude.
Luc nodded, his hands out to his sides. He stepped closer, the way you approached an injured feral beast.
“And Jadoh?”
Gia ignored him. “I tracked the Human sympathizer to the river,” she said. “Bitch thought she could escape. Showed her.”
The cloaked woman. Hatred filled his mouth like spit.
She scowled at the dingy room. “The Humans. Where are they?”
“Here. They’re here,” Luc heard himself say. It was not betrayal he felt. Because this was how it was meant to play out, he told himself. “Hidden. The old priest, Mahir, only he knows where.”
That was a lie or cousin to one.
It would give him time. For what? Stave off the inevitable?
Pain had made Gia more dangerous, but not stupid. Perhaps she thought he’d been inept, but there was nothing to suggest she thought him complicit. At least not yet.
“And this little rat,” Even as he reached for Balish, she pulled the boy up by the collar. “Found him hiding all on his lonesome, like the skew he is.”
Her knife lashed out in an arc. Luc grabbed her wrist. “No. We’ll need him. The priest trusts him.”
She scowled, releasing the boy. Balish’s face was a pale circle. His eyes, darting and wild with fear, focused on them both. It stung.
Gia reeked of blood. It was a bright copper aura, a deadly portend. She was badly injured, cradling her free arm around her torso. Blood trailed behind her right boot, leaving its stencil on the stone floor like a gory treasure map as they navigated the hallways of the sleeping monastery.
The uneven walls and cracked plaster seemed so flimsy to Luc. He realized how shabby and insubstantial it seemed. How temporary. They stepped out into the night. He tried to slow their pace, but Gia pressed on. Right leg stiff, she moved with grim determination, using Balish as an unwilling crutch.
Outside, despite the limitless night sky above, Luc felt a heavy pressure descend on him, shoving him along. Like the currents of that night-time river, it propelled them all on a course well beyond his control.
“Through the courtyard,” Luc said. “We should take the old priest first. Use the boy to lure him out.”
The lie came out of him like a gasp for air. It was a voice that belonged to another Luc, the same one that had defended an old man and boy from two of his own. Perhaps this other form of him had always been there, beneath his surface, watching. The river had washed it free, deposited on the bank of an alien shore. This new twin existed beyond desperation.
It controlled his steps now. He gave over, gladly. His steps were firm, transmitting to the earth and noting each pebble. Each cell in his body could sense the very nuance of the cool desert wind.
They passed the shrine to Brilta, a dark shape in the gloom. Up ahead the toothless black mouth of the courtyard gaped. There were too few braziers illuminating the space. There should be four lights, not two. Where were the novices that tended them?
The discovery filled him with absurd hope. Perhaps they know. Someone saw Gia, raised the alarm, smuggled Mahir and the children to safety.
He told himself it was just as likely the novices were dead, a result of Gia’s bloody insertion to this world. But this new Luc, this twin, saw it differently, perhaps a sign.
Ahead, two figures, one towering, the other a stooped heap, congealed under the flicker of the braziers. Fres
h burns scarred Jadoh’s face and thick neck. His monstrous size made Mahir look all the more vulnerable and frail as he knelt in the dust beside the giant.
“What is this? What’re you doing?” Luc asked, stopping.
“Let’s talk to your friend, the priest.” She jostled Luc, urging him forward. Gia fell behind, dragging Balish along.
An itch grew between his shoulder blades where he imagined her glare settled. This was some lesson, some test for him. It had its own malformed Gia-logic.
The priest’s face was bruised and swollen, rendered into some unidentifiable form. But the voice was the same patient one Luc knew. “Ah, my friend. I was worried.”
“Shut him up,” Gia growled. Jadoh did something, the movement hidden by the shifting light of the braziers. Mahir gasped with pain.
“Gia…” Luc began. But the next words weren’t there. This new Luc did not have the vocabulary yet. He was still weak, newly foaled and blundering.
“Got something to say, lucky number three?” Her eyebrows darted up. Her mouth performed a thoughtful pout. “No?”
She gripped the front of Luc’s tunic and pulled him in her staggering wake, releasing him when they stood over the priest. “You’ve been declared an enemy of the Order of First,” she barked down at Mahir. “You harbor fugitive Humans. Where are they?”
“They are harmless children. Let them be.” Mahir’s breathing had a wet quality to it. He coughed. “If you must have blood, let it be mine.”
“Well… aren’t you eager?” Gia sneered. “We’ll get to that. Now, where are they?”
Mahir bowed his head. He muttered under his breath, a prayer that Luc did not recognize. But the sound of it made the tiny hairs on his forearms stand up. The knot in his stomach tightened. It was a dirge, a low groveling for forgiveness.
“Quiet!” Gia smacked the back of Mahir’s head, ending the chant.
“One more chance.” She hunkered down, her face level with the old man’s. She prodded him under the chin, forcing him to look at her. Her free hand pushed the muzzle of her pulse gun against his neck. The brazier’s firelight made the weapon look as if it glowed from within. “Where are the Humans?”
“There’s a tunnel under the kitchen. That’s where he’s hidden them,” Luc blurted.
Defeat shrank Mahir’s shoulders.
“I knew it.” Gia straightened. She shook her head, pretending admonishment. “I’ll give you another chance, number three. Show us right now what you really are.” Gia sidled up to Luc. She pressed the pulse gun into his hand. The grip was still warm from her touch, and it felt wrongly intimate.
Gia leaned into him. Even her breath smelled like blood. Her eyes were gleaming black in the shadows. “Show you belong to something. Show me you’re a Seeker.”
She stepped back, her arm stretched out, half-beckon, half-command.
Gun in hand, Luc stood over Mahir. The old man might as well have been at the bottom of a well.
Mahir said with a grim smile, “The Fates will forgive you, my friend.”
It happened fast, then slow, in the space between heartbeats. Luc swung the pulse gun up in a simple arc. Jadoh’s expression, burned as it was, contorted with hideous surprise. His eyes widened. Then a white-orange flare and half his face was gone.
Gia screamed. It was full of rage and pain and cheated triumph. She tackled Luc mid-waist before he could turn. The pulse gun cartwheeled away into the night.
The ground rushed up to meet their bodies. Dust invaded his mouth, his eyes. She moved with incredible speed, pinning him down. He shifted, tried to buck her off. Her response was a frenzy of strikes at his face, his throat before he could block. Her fingernails gouged into his neck, his chest. He gasped at the burning, slicing pain as her teeth sank into his skin.
She’ll kill me like this. With her hands and teeth.
At last, he rocked free and climbed to his knees. On all fours, she snarled at him. If there were ever reason in her, he could not see it now.
Behind her, Mahir staggered to his feet.
Run! Luc tried to yell. All that came out was a winded grunt. Gia’s strike to his throat had stolen his voice.
She charged him again, her small body like a missile. The air rushed from his wounded lungs as he landed under her again. He gulped in one greedy breath, and her forearm pinned his neck. His lungs burned with need. She’d learned from the first time and was impossible to throw off now.
His vision telescoped, dimming at the edges. Over her shoulder Balish appeared, seeming a thousand feet tall. The boy’s face was a pale smudge in the waning light.
Something flashed once. Gia’s mouth formed a surprised O. Her eyes blazed at Luc, filled with betrayal and fury. With a wet sigh, she flopped to the dust.
Balish looked from Gia’s body to Luc. For a moment, his expression appeared a perfect mimic of Gia’s surprised expression. But he brought the pulse gun up. The hand that trained it on Luc trembled. Luc pushed up on one elbow. The air wheezed in and out of his assaulted throat.
“You’re Regime,” Balish said. It was condemnation. There was no room for anything else in it.
“Was,” he gasped through a throat on fire. “I was.”
“And now?”
Luc took his time. He climbed to his knees and sat back on his heels. His voice was a hoarse croak. “Now I’m just Luc.”
It hung in the blood-soaked air.
Balish lowered the pulse gun, allowed it to slip from his grip. It plopped to the ground with a soft thud. Luc was aware the night had lost its firmness. The long shadows of the courtyard had turned purple. Dawn was not long off. Then the glaring, white-hot suns would rise to show the evidence of the night’s bloody acts.
Mahir shuffled up, leaning at a gravity-defying angle. Even in his injured state, the old man attempted to help Luc to his feet. Balish, after a long hesitation, joined him.
The three huddled together in the purpling light of the courtyard, discarded props from some wretched play.
“Will they send more?” Balish asked, staring down at Gia’s still body.
“I don’t know.” Luc turned away. For a long moment, he considered the vast desert at the fringe of the city below and the dim gray mountains beyond that. There were dozens of nameless canyons and half-remembered trails.
It would be easy to hide two shallow graves somewhere out there, a simple thing.
Also by Amy J Murphy
www.amyjmurphy.com
Do you want to know more about the world of Luc and the Regime? Check out other titles in the Allies and Enemies universe. Or visit amyjmurphy.com to see updates on new releases, special offers and sign up for her newsletter.
* * *
Allies and Enemies: Fallen, Series Book 1
Allies and Enemies: Rogues, Series Book 2
Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Series Book 3
Coming Soon…
Allies and Enemies: Legacy, Series Book 4
About the Author
About the Author
Amy J. Murphy is not a Jedi. (Although she’s married to this Scottish bloke that claims to be one.) But, she is a fantastic liar.
She discovered this power at an early age and chose to wield it for good instead of evil. (The evil part remains highly tempting.) With this power, Amy writes space opera with kickass heroines. These books are sometimes confused for military science fiction which is an easy mistake to make. She’s ok with this as she’s a two-time finalist for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel Dragon Awards hosted by Dragon Con (2016 & 2017). Also, she’s infiltrated the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and was named a Kindle Book Awards finalist (2017).
She dwells in an isolated farmhouse in Vermont with the aforementioned Scotsman/Jedi and two canines. Visit her at www.amyjmurphy.com or follow her witty comments as @selatyron on Twitter.
Just a Quick Note
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A Simple Thing Page 5