by Tammy Salyer
Mylla’s mind reeled at this news. A bounty? The Arch Keeper turned into a pale husk? And, most disconcerting of all, they were now allies? “Brun, slow down, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But to answer your question, no, I can’t heal these soldiers. Rejuvenation only works for those sworn to Vaka Aster who’ve received her mark.” She pointed to her chin star. “I would offer to help, but time and circumstance necessitate that you give me the Fenestros. Now. I have to get back to the Knights.”
“If you’d not noticed, we have a war going on here,” Brun responded.
“And giving me that stone is the only means of winning it.” She was stretching the truth, but Brun didn’t need to know that. “Why did you take it anyway? You don’t believe in Vaka Aster and the power of her artifacts.”
“To keep it out of the usurper’s hands. Obviously, it was the right choice.”
The commander spoke as gruffly as usual, but Mylla noticed how her eyes fell aside and her volume wavered. Brun did still believe in the Verities. And she was probably as shaken to realize it and by the cause that made her.
Brun went on. “What I can’t help but wonder is why, if the Knights think it’s important, you weren’t here sooner to get it.”
Mylla wasn’t going to take the bait. Time was too short and Brun was showing her usual willingness to be reasoned with, which was to say, none. As Mylla considered her next words, the guards holding Irrick brushed past, pushing the acolyte toward the far end of the chamber. He walked on his own, unbalanced and lumbering as if drunk, with a torn bit of cloth in his mouth and knotted behind his head. She watched the soldiers urge him, none too gently into a group of four more Marines against the back wall. They stood in obvious sentry formation and parted when Irrick’s group arrived, giving Mylla a look at what, or rather whom, they guarded.
“Wait,” she demanded. “What’s going on back there? Was that one of the usurper’s forces?”
“They’re called Raveners, Mylla, at least that’s what they call themselves, according to our friend in the back. He’s been a fount of information. We just had to find the right motivation.”
If Brun had so much as twitched her mouth to smirk, Mylla might have given her the same treatment with the pommel of her sword as she had Irrick and not have regretted it. Torture—the thought turned her stomach. “So that’s how you knew you had to strike them in the head to kill them . . .” she murmured.
“No, that we learned by experience. It’ll be interesting to find out if the acolyte can tell us anything more than this one.”
“Let Irrick go,” she warned, anger frosting the edges of her voice.
“That’s not going to happen.”
Before she’d finished the statement, Mylla’s wrist twisted, freeing her klinkí stones—but Lock’s grip stayed her attack. “Mylla, wait. Please for the love of life, don’t do anything rash.”
The room grew still around them, all eyes on the confrontation, all hands on weapon hafts.
Lock made a sound as if clearing his throat, the noise a dry and strained croak. “Commander, could you and I speak in private? Let me explain things? I think I may be able to broker a more conducive arrangement—for all.”
Mylla glared at him.
“Commander?” he said, refusing to meet her stare.
Brun nodded and gestured with her chin. “Over there.”
“Mylla, perhaps you could join Irrick? Nothing will happen with you watching over him. Right, Commander?”
Brun grunted noncommittally and turned on her heels, pacing beneath a sconce on the nearby wall to wait.
Mylla pulled her arm free of his hand and snapped, “What are you going to tell her?”
“The truth, love, just the truth.” His mouth twitched in an attempt at a reassuring smile. “She’s obviously seen the usurper Verity for what he is. Perhaps I can reason with her enough to force her mind to believe what her guts are telling her is true. If she can accept the Verity is not just smoke and mirrors, she’ll accept that the Knights are the ones with the best weapons to fight him. She is a practical person. She’ll come around.”
“Just get the Fenestros so we can get out of here,” she said shortly, then spun and walked to Irrick, forcing herself to ignore the commander and Lock’s huddle. The information he’d divulge about the Knights far surpassed anything Brun could suspect, and under ordinary circumstances Mylla would never let him speak of the things he’d seen—but these circumstances were not ordinary, and Brun would obviously not be swayed by the “smoke and mirrors” of Mylla’s Order.
She eyed the sentries standing between her and the acolyte. The nearest, a smooth-faced younger man no taller than Stave but twice as broad, held up a hand to stop her advance. “Sorry, Knight, we got these ’uns under strict control. Not to be disturbed.”
His proclamation came out more weary than confrontational, and Mylla found herself sympathizing with these Marines for the trials they must have experienced in the last day, were still experiencing. She stopped. “You’ve been in the fighting outside? Do you know what has happened in Asteryss?”
The four of them turned their eyes to her, each regarding her with the typical mix of apprehension and awe with which most commoners viewed the Knights. “Aye,” said the first. “The word is no battle has been this bad since the three kingdoms’ war.” His eyes brightened. “Were you . . . did you fight in that war?”
She cut off a tired laugh. The War of Rivening had been over two millennia ago. None of the living Knights had seen it. “No, I’m only three hundred and forty-two turns a Knight. That was long before my time. Or even the Stall—” Her voice caught in her throat. Speaking of Ulfric unsettled her.
Now their eyes held more awe than apprehension, as if the truth of the Knights’ longevity made sense for the first time. “But you don’t look a minute older than me,” the smooth-faced man said.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven turns and a winter.”
“I was thirty-three when I took the oath. Acolyte Irrick, whom you hold there, will be thirty-eight this turn. He will be a Knight someday—” if Vaka Aster ever comes back to us, she didn’t add. “He has spent his entire life devoted to serving our Verity, and our world.” Softly, she continued, “And he is a friend. Please, let me speak with him.”
The first guard looked right and left at his compatriots, gauging their willingness to let the bonds of friendship and fraternity, a value that lived in the core of every soldier, overcome their orders. Then he lowered his hand and turned to let her pass. “Do us a favor, huh, and don’t get us in trouble.”
“I give my word,” she said, her gratitude carried by her tone.
Stepping past them, her eyes fell first on the attacker called a Ravener. Like those they’d fought in the passageway, this one’s wounds, of which there were many, did not seem to bleed. Gashes to his arms and face gaped, the white, lifeless-looking flesh making her queasy in a way the sight of blood never had. The Marines had lashed his oddly long hands with a heavy rope to a metal sconce overhead, forcing him to remain upright, hunched over and barely keeping his feet. As Mylla stood there, he raised his head and brought his eyes to her face. Though his eyes were clouded, he bore no expression but hate.
“What are you?” she whispered, not expecting a response.
The Ravener’s throat tightened, as if he intended to scream, but the gag on his face stopped anything but a muffled gurgle from breaking through. Unnerved, Mylla turned away and knelt to Irrick, who’d been tied with his hands behind his back and pushed to sit on the floor. “Irrick? It’s Mylla Evernal. Do you see me?”
When he did not respond, she reached her hand to his chin, strangely unmarked by the blow she’d landed, and lifted it so she could see into eyes. They gazed at nothing, their vacancy far more than surface deep. The scholar she knew as Irrick wasn’t present in this body. Whatever had happened to him seemed to have drained anything of the man away and left this . . . husk. Brun called this �
�converted.” He’s become more like a corpse than a person.
“Marine,” she said as she rose, “do you know what’s happened to cause this?”
“No, not with any certainty. All any of us have seen are loads of people being taken at sword point inside the flying black fortress. When they’re released, they’re like your friend there. Like they’ve had the life drained right out of them but can still walk around. Worse, whatever the Raveners are doing to them is turning them against their own people. Everyone who’s come back to Asteryss has taken up arms against us.”
“How many people has this happened to?”
It took him a moment to put what he’d witnessed into words. “Nearly everyone, Knight. The whole city, at least those the Raveners didn’t kill outright for opposing them. The usurper’s forces breached Asteryss’s wall and boundary defenses in less than two hours and took the city by nightfall. No one’s seen or heard from the Arch Keeper either. We’re assuming she’s dead.”
Not a coup, as Eisa predicted it would be, Mylla thought. Balavad was in a hurry to take Asteryss, maybe all of Ivoryss. He must have believed his plan to cage Vaka Aster had succeeded and he had no more need to be discrete. But he was wrong; the vessel is still safe. A new urgency rode the heels of this last thought: I have to get the Fenestros back to the Vigilance—now.
She murmured her thanks and started toward where Brun and Lock still stood. His hands waved in the air, the gestures of a man wielding every ounce of his powers of persuasion in his argument. Brun’s staid position didn’t change, and her lips pressed tightly together as if to smother the words behind them. Mylla didn’t like what she saw.
Before she reached them, the chamber door resonated with three short knocks, and the entire room of soldiers froze. Two more quick raps, a pause, and a final series of three followed, and the nearest Marine finally pulled the bars holding the door closed. As Mylla continued to Brun and Lock, another soldier, after conferring with the one who’d opened the door, advanced toward the Marine commander too. They arrived at the same time.
“Commander—” the older Marine said.
“Brun—” Mylla said.
Brun’s hand shot up to silence her, the Marine, and Lock in a single, commanding gesture. She turned to the new Marine, “What news?”
“Commander,” the man repeated behind a thick gray mustache as bedraggled as his voice, “the city is done. We’ve only five squads, scattered, who can still fight. But worse—the desecrator’s fortress has been seen once more in the sky. It will be unleashing a new swarm any moment.”
Brun took in the news without a visible reaction, then said, “Captain, you know as well as I that we cannot hold back more than we’ve already done.” The Marine didn’t reply, and Brun’s brows knit in a cascade of wrinkles as she scowled. “There’s nothing left to do but retreat to Magdaster. If we get there before the usurper’s forces, we’ll join Nennus’s legion and prepare to mount a solid fight.”
“You believe the Raveners will take the fight there?” the Marine asked.
“It’s where Ivoryss’s second-largest force is. Their intention is to take over the kingdom. Where else would they go?” She grabbed a water jug from a nearby table and passed it to the captain, who drank deeply. “Return topside, send word to all the remaining forces you can find and bring them here to the tunnels. We’ll escape by sea and make haste to Magdaster. This will have to be done by stealth. Fate forbid we have to fight our way through soldiers who used to be our own forces.”
“And what of the remaining citizens, those who can’t fight?”
“We can’t help them if we’re dead. They’ll have to stay hidden until we can bring reinforcements.”
“You know what will happen to them.” The older Marine’s words carried no hint of a wish to dissuade the commander, only weary resignation.
Brun put her hand on his pauldron. “We’ll come back for them when this is over.”
The Marine gave a curt nod, then turned sharply and was gone.
“Commander—” Mylla started again, knowing it was now or never to force Brun to turn over the Fenestros before the Dragør Marines retreated from Asteryss.
Once more, Brun stopped her. “Take it, Knight.” Her hand went into a bandolier pouch and brought out the stone. “I don’t know what good I can make of it.”
Momentarily wrong-footed by this unexpected turn, Mylla cast about for words. “Thank you. You’ve done the right thing to put your trust in the Knights Corporealis.”
“Trust?” She sneered. “Hardly. I don’t trust anyone but other Marines.” She glanced at Lock. “And Wings. But we’ve lost Asteryss and we’re not far from losing Ivoryss completely. I don’t know what your handful of wystics think they can do with these trinkets, but you’re not worth the effort to fight over it. Go, leave. Abandon Ivoryss on your flying warship.” Brun must have caught the look Mylla shot Lock. Did he have to reveal the Vigilance? “Yes, Mylla, it seems I am guilty of underestimating just how little fealty you Knights have to Ivoryss, the kingdom that’s sheltered your kind for how many turns? What’s it matter now?” With a look of dismissal, too final to even show further disgust, Brun turned on her heels and began rallying her remaining forces. After barking a few commands, she turned back to the still-silent Knight. “If your kind ever gives a damn enough to redeem yourselves, then figure out how to undo whatever vile desecration the usurper is doing to our people. Maybe your wysticism and your Verity stones can actually do some good.”
Redeem themselves? From what? “What about Irrick?” Mylla said, unwilling to leave without him, though she hadn’t yet figured out how to take him with her and Lock.
Instead of responding, Brun yelled to the sentries, “Kill the Ravener, we haven’t room enough or any more time for him. The other one”—she finished the Order while staring at Mylla—“is the Knight’s problem.”
In a storm of precision chaos, the Marines gathered their equipment, their wounded, and their provisions. Before Mylla had more than blinked, they started through the tunnels, leaving the chamber eerily quiet. Only she, Lock, Irrick, and a handful of bloodied bandages on the floor and a single torch remained.
She placed the glowing Fenestros in a pouch, then looked to Lock. “I’m not sure how we’re going to take Irrick with us, but we have to . . .” Something in his face as he stared through the open chamber door made her trail off. “Lock.” After a moment without receiving a response, she tried again. “Lock?”
When he faced her, he wore an expression of sorrow so dark he was almost unrecognizable. “I think I understand now why you wanted to leave me behind.”
A lump that tasted of fear and faltering courage formed in her throat. “What?”
“She’s right, Vaka Aster help me, Commander Brun is right, Mylla. Why would the Knights keep such advantages like your ships and your weapons to yourselves? Do you know how many people might have been saved if Ivoryss had weapons that strong? The kingdom might have stood a chance.”
His words hit like an uppercut. “You must understand, the Knights are sworn to serve Vaka Aster and protect her vessel. We aren’t Marines, or soldiers, not for any kingdom. We protect the world, Lock. If the vessel were ever destroyed, the world would end with it. You see that, don’t you?”
His eyes, still on her face, glazed as he fought a battle in his mind. Desperate, she grabbed the neck of his leather armor. “Don’t you?” she repeated.
“What is a world without the people in it?” he murmured, stepping backward until her arms had to extend fully to maintain her grip. Gently, he took her hands and pulled them free. “I think . . . I think my place is here now. I am a Dragør Wing Marine. And after seeing the acolyte and hearing Brun . . . the things the usurper is doing to our people, or rather, to my people—it’s worse than prison or death. My family . . . I can’t leave them to this. If this is their fate, I need to know for myself what has become of them. There’s nothing more I can do for the Knights.” He struggled to force th
e next words free from his chest. “Like you said, I’m not one of you.”
Wildly, she begged, “Then become one of us. I will vouch for you and solicit Vaka Aster for your ordination.”
He released her hands, and with a frown, he said, “Even if Vaka Aster were here to swear allegiance to, how could I serve her when she allowed this to happen?”
Helplessly, Mylla balled her hands into fists. “I don’t have an answer to that.”
The remained silent for another moment. Finally, Lock turned his head to where Irrick, still vacant and motionless, slouched. “Take the acolyte and go back to the Vigilance, Mylla. And do what you can to put an end to this.”
Her skin went cold, and from a throat that felt as if it were made of knotty wood, she managed to croak, “Don’t forget that I love you, Lock. And I’ll find you when this is over.”
Without another word, he spun to the door and loped after the retreating Marines. Mylla’s heart shivered, and she thought of calling after him. But didn’t.
In a daze, she collected Irrick, still bound, and dragged him through the tunnels and the Conservatum above to the scout, uncaring who or what may have awaited her in the halls. But she saw and heard no one until she reached the ship. Over the city loomed a behemoth, it’s hull blackened matte steel, its size so immense it almost appeared to be a small moon. She didn’t need anyone to tell her it was the usurper’s warship, but its presence didn’t deter her from rushing Irrick to the imperceptible dragørfly scout and disembarking. It wasn’t until she felt the dampness of her tunic collar as she approached the docking bay of the Vigilance that she realized how long she’d been crying.