The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  “They’ll probably just be getting to the caravan if it’s where Kian said it is,” Mr. Tappers said. “I’m sure she’ll be alright, but you should probably head to the boat soon, before the violence spreads. Teth can go directly from the caravan and meet you.”

  “Won’t she have to come back here anyway? I thought the road through town was the only way to get to the village?” Dasen took a sip of the tea.

  “Sure,” Mr. Tappers answered quickly. He licked his lips. His eyes shifted. “But as you said, the city’s falling into chaos. If you wait much longer, you’ll have to contend with the mobs.”

  “I suppose,” Dasen answered with a look at Garth. The Morg had not moved from his place by the door, one hand on the knife at his side, the other flexing into a fist then releasing over and over. “But I’d like to wait at least until we know that she’s alright. I’m not going down the river without her – I don’t care what Kian has planned. And . . . and if something went wrong, if she’s been hurt or captured, I can’t be floating down the river knowing I’ve left her behind. No,” he decided, “it’s my decision, and I’m staying here until I . . . until I, at least, know she’s on her way to the boat.” Dasen took a long drink of the tea and settled into his chair. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go anywhere again. His hands and feet tingled, arms and legs were loose, eyes blurry, mind slow.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Mr. Tappers patted Dasen’s arm and looked into his eyes. “As long as she stays to the cover, they’ll never catch her even if things do go against them. She’s probably on her way to the boat now. You’ll see her there before the sun’s reached its height. Isn’t that right, Garth?”

  “Humph,” the Morg snorted.

  Dasen looked at Garth – why hadn’t he answered the question? – then reached for the tea. He nearly dropped it as his hand seemed to resist his commands. Why wasn’t his hand obeying his commands? An alarm sounded in his mind. Something wasn’t right. Mr. Tappers and Garth were both looking at him strangely. Garth’s expression was greedy and uneasy all at once, like a bear who fears scavengers might take a kill. Mr. Tappers was breathing nearly in pants. He was covered in sweat despite the relative cool of the morning. His heart could almost be seen beating out of his chest. Looking, finally, at the nearly empty cup, feeling his mind slowing, limbs easing, eyes drifting out of focus, Dasen realized, finally, what was happening.

  I’m being betrayed! the thought was almost enough for him to recover his fading senses. He tried to rise, but his legs would not respond, and he nearly pitched from the chair. Mr. Tappers caught him by the shoulders and held him up.

  “Careful,” Mr. Tappers warned, “you probably rattled your head when you fell. Maybe, you should lie down. We’ll wake you when we hear from Teth.”

  Dasen’s body wanted nothing more than to take the offer, but he forced himself to hold on, to keep going long enough to reach for the only thing that might still save him. He had not even looked for the chaotic power he’d used in the battle since that night in the alley, was not sure if he could still find it, if he would remember how, if his drug-addled mind could manage it, but he had to try.

  It was waiting for him as distinct and inviting as a fire on a winter’s day, and this fire was raging. Garth’s stoic calm created almost nothing, but the power flowed from Mr. Tappers and his wife in the next room – fear, anxiety, guilt. But it did not stop there. Outside the inn was as much energy as Dasen would need to annihilate the whole of Gorin West. The mobs – fueled by zealotry turned to fury and revenge, throwing themselves at the barricades, killing the soldiers that defended them, looting shops, executing the governor’s collaborators, burning and stealing and destroying – created a tsunami of the chaotic energy that outstripped even what he’d drawn on outside of Thoren. Dasen opened himself to it, felt it fill him until he might explode, felt all his thoughts and emotions subsumed by it, felt it blow aside the drug’s stupor like a hurricane throwing back an unlocked shutter.

  And, finally, Garth added his fear to it. The Morg’s face fall – he knew. In slow motion, he pushed Mr. Tappers aside. His hand reached not for the knife, but rather, a short club that was tucked behind it. It was too late. He betrayed you! the thought wormed through Dasen’s consciousness amplified by the hatred raging from the city until it carried the weight of purest malevolence. He lied. The Tappers lied. They all lied. They’ll give you to that old man. They’ll take everything from you. They’ll take Teth from you. They are traitors. They need to die.

  Mr. Tappers was falling back. Garth was coming around with his club. Dasen focused on his eyes, saw the fear there, and smiled. Not yet, he told himself. He formed a wish in his mind but channeled only the smallest stream of the power through it. The runes formed and faded, and the three hundred pound Morg was thrown into the wall behind him hard enough to crack the boards and shake the entire inn. He leaned there for a moment then slumped in a daze to the floor. The club slipped from his limp fingers.

  And Dasen was standing, the power he held enough to overcome the effects of the drugs. “Betray me?” he snarled. He looked at Mr. Tappers, his face frozen now in a mask of terror, then at Garth who was groaning and struggling to rise. “You will die!”

  The door opened and Mrs. Tappers appeared. She wasn’t afraid. That stunned Dasen long enough for her to manage words. “I am sorry, dear, but we didn’t have a choice. Please, stop. You don’t have to do this.”

  Fueled by the rage of an entire city, Dasen found no capacity to accept her apology or compassion to spare on her. They would die. He would rip them apart. He would burn them and their entire inn to the ground. And then he’d find Lareno. He’d find Kian. He’d find the governor. And they’d all suffer for what they’d done. He began to form the wish in his mind, began to picture their organs bursting, their bones breaking, their skin burning. He released the power, felt it flow from him like a long exhale and grinned at the prospect of seeing them die.

  And as quickly as that, the power was gone. Just as the first of the runes formed in his mind, it crumbled, and world fell away.

  When Dasen’s eyes drifted open, vision blurry and scattered, he was lying on the floor. His limbs were entirely paralyzed. He could barely keep his eyes open. He could feel none of the power he’d drawn only a few seconds before.

  “What were you thinking?” Valati Lareno’s voice rose enough to keep Dasen conscious. “Do you see now what you’re dealing with? He’d have killed every one of you. He might have destroyed the entire city. I told you, he couldn’t suspect anything.”

  “What . . . what did you do?” Mr. Tappers stuttered from the floor.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I doubt I could do it again. You’ll have to keep him drugged and try not to give him any emotion to draw on. Garth, you know what I mean. Do the rest of you understand?”

  Dasen watched then as the blurry shapes of Sam, Geoff, and Rog followed the valati into the room. He didn’t understand. They were supposed to be with Kian, were supposed to be helping him kill the governor, but they were here instead, and their uniforms weren’t even stained. The three of them helped, a still stunned, Garth lift Dasen onto the table like a hunk of meat. He tried to struggle, to find the power, to do anything but his body and mind were lost to him. His eyes drifted closed as well, as he mind spun toward blackness. Somewhere, someone was tying his hands behind his back.

  “He’s yours, just as we promised,” Valati Lareno said. “Now, get him out of here before his wife returns.”

  “What’s to keep us from taking her as well?” Garth asked. “She’s worth almost as much.”

  “I am what keeps you from taking her,” the valati said, cold menace in his voice. “You know what I am, and you know not to cross me. We have a deal. I have kept my side. Now, you keep yours.”

  “Humph,” the Morg said. There was a long pause. Dasen thought that he had fallen asleep. “It will be as you say, Weaver. Good luck with the girl. She is everything that Kian said. And
it seems nothing can sway her from this mockery of a man. Not even you may be able to control her.”

  “I do not hope to try,” Valati Lareno said in return. “I hope only to do my part. Now, take him to his father and collect your money. We are finished here. The pattern is maintained, at least for now.”

  #

  The world had been red. Everything red. Then it went black.

  When it came back to bright sun, blue sky, and green grass, Teth was lying under the shaking corpse of a man whose throat she had slit. His blood pumped onto her, sticky, warm, and wet. She could smell nothing but the metallic stench of the blood she had spilled, streams of it, flowing down the road and into the mud at the side. By the Order’s will, at the dictate of a demented old man, she had killed them, had cut their bodies open and released them back to the Order. And not a one of them had been able to touch her. Even as she opened herself to them, gave herself to their blades, they failed to so much as nick her. She was everything that Kian had said, a goddess of war sent to do the Order’s bloody will, and nothing could stop her, not even herself.

  Her first reaction to coming back to the world, to knowing what she had just done, to realizing that she was still alive was to scream. It was hoarse, ragged, barely audible, and pointless. There was no one left to hear it. She had killed them all.

  When her breath ran out, she released her anger on the corpse that covered her. She kicked the body, punched it, tore at its clothes, scratched its skin. Eventually, she worked her way from under it, rose – blood dripping from her as if she had just emerged from a river of it – and began kicking the dead man. She kicked until she fell to her knees on top of his back and then punched him until her knuckles were sore. She lifted her head to scream again.

  “You’re alive,” a voice said behind her. “The Order protect me, you’re still alive.”

  Teth had the man in her grip before he finished the words. She slammed him against the side of a wagon, her bloody hand around his throat, her mere proximity staining his leather vest.

  He was a big man, one of the porters, thickly muscled from a lifetime of heaving cargo. He could have snapped her in half, picked her up and thrown her ten feet, beaten her to a pulp, but he cringed away from her and cried like a child, “The Order be merciful! Please, no! Oh please, no!”

  Teth growled, white teeth standing out against the red that dripped down her face.

  “I’s just doin’ what the valati told me,” the man pleaded through his sobs. “He told me ta yell before the signal, ta start firin’ my bow as soon as I saw them twins. He told me that’s the only way I’d make it through alive. He told me you’d kill them. That we’d both live. That it was the only way. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but he’s a valati. He told me . . . .”

  Teth slapped him, smearing blood from her hand across his bearded face. He fell to the ground, and she kicked him. “The ugly valati?” she snarled. “He told you to do this? He told you I’d live?”

  “Yes! Yes! Please, the Order take me, yes!” He squirmed on the ground like a bug, hands up, knees to his chest.

  Teth looked up at the sky and growled. The valati. But he had wanted her to die. He had said it. He couldn’t be one of them, couldn’t be a part in this. “You’re a liar!” she screamed, voice hoarse, almost lost. “The valati wanted me to die. I heard him say it. Why would he tell you that if he wanted me to die?”

  “I . . . I don’t . . . . That’s jist what he told me. He said ya’d be alive. Said that ya’d kill ‘em all but me, that we’d both be alive when it’s done. The Order save me, I didn’t think it’d be like that. I jist did what he said. I jist wanted ta live.”

  Teth wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. She couldn’t still be trapped, couldn’t still be their puppet. But the truth was directly in front of her. The valati had told this man everything that would happen. He was one of them. He had made this happen, had controlled it all, had used his powers over the Order to manipulate her and everything around her. He had pulled her strings and made her a murderer twenty times over. Not only had he not allowed her to die, he had made her a killer, a demon, the very goddess of war that Kian had named her.

  The world turned red again. Entire body shaking, Teth found a knife, the handle jutting from the belt of a dockworker with a spear through his chest. She brought it to her throat, howled and prepared to drag it across her flesh.

  “The valati has a message,” the man yelled.

  Teth looked at him with death in her eyes. He was the valati’s servant, was the reason all this had happened, was the trigger that had set it all in motion. Why should he survive when so many others had died? The valati had told him that he would live, but she could turn it into a lie. She could think of no more fitting final act. She turned on the man, reversed the grip on the knife, and prepared to drive it through his throat.

  “Please, the Order be merciful, please,” the man wailed as she closed on him, taking her time, picturing the bastard valati, wishing he was there instead, that he could feel the wrath of the demon he had made. The man held his hand up to block her as if he did not have double her weight, as if he had no other defense against a skinny girl with a knife. “The valati said that the boy will die.” He screamed the last, his voice rising to a near comical tenor as Teth dropped a knee onto his chest and slashed at his outstretched hands.

  The boy. The words wormed their way through the murderous singularity that Teth’s consciousness had become. She fought through her next victim’s ineffectual defenses, stabbing his hands until they were bloody, maneuvering the knife relentlessly past them until it was in position, until it was prepared to push through his windpipe. He cried and begged and blubbered. His body surrendered, went stiff. He waited for the end, words falling to mumbled prayers. The boy. “What do you know about the boy?” Teth asked, the words registering just in time to stop the blade.

  “The valati said he’ll die!” the man squealed. His words were distorted by the hand pressing his chin back, by the knife pricking at the throat it had exposed. “He said that only you can save him, that ya have ta go back ta the inn, that ya have ta run.”

  “What do you mean?” Teth growled, lowering her face to his, teeth out as if she might bite him. “He’s safe. Garth is taking care of him. I know he’s safe.”

  “That’s what the valati told me ta say. He said ya’d try ta kill yirself, that I had ta tell ya that, and . . . .”

  “And what?” Teth pricked his Adam’s apple, listened to him howl like a stung babe. “What else?” she screamed again when he stopped. Her face hovered over his. Blood pattered on him from her hair – drop, drop, drop. Her knife angled toward his jugular, turning the prick into a growing cut.

  “Stop! Stop! I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya . . . . The Morg . . . the Morg betrayed you. The valati said to tell you that, to tell you that the Morg betrayed you.” He closed his eyes and cried. “Please . . . please. I have a family. I have children. Please.”

  Teth sat up. Garth.

  She ran, legs shaking beneath her, dripping red, and seeing the same.

  Chapter 71

  The 57th Day of Summer

  Everything was perfect. Too perfect. Ipid hated it.

  The seizure of the gold had gone exactly as planned and, four days later, remained undiscovered. The army had departed, were well on their way to Arin, leaving a mere hundred of the city watch to keep order in a city of several hundred thousand. The rationing was every bit as tight as it had been for weeks, and the people had to be feeling it. Yet there was only good news. The work crews – focused now on preparing the devastated areas for rebuilding – caused no problems for Naidi and Rynn. The people lined up patiently, waiting sometimes for hours, to trade their ration papers for the barest scraps of food. The refugees that had gathered around the Darthur took to their name as camp followers and went with the armies as they marched. Certainly, there were fights, there were robberies, there was crime, but there were n
o riots, no protests, no mobs, no attempt that Ipid could see to end his rule.

  And it was the same, by all indications, in all the other cities. Ipid almost wished that it were not the case. He knew the storm was coming – kept looking for the gathering clouds, the rising wind, the driving rain – but there was only calm. And with no word from Allard Stully or Ambassador an’ Pmalatir, Ipid had no choice but to wait and hope that his chosen successor was still taking his lines from the chosen script.

  With little else to do beyond worry, Eia had become his release. And he sought that release as often as his body would allow through the ever increasing emotion, danger, and pain it entailed. Things he had only dreamt of doing, would never have even considered with Kira, were now commonplace as each act seemed to build on the other, as they went deeper and farther, exploring dark corners of his emotions that he had not even known were there.

  Imagining their next encounter, Ipid eyed Eia lounging in a chair across the room, only her bare feet visible hanging over the arm, and then the few scribes remaining in the room before them. If he dismissed those men, he could have her. He began to consider what he would do, where they would be, what emotions he would bring, how he would heighten them.

  “Lord Chancellor,” the butler announced from the doorway, disrupting his building excitement, “Ambassador an’ Pmalatir has arrived. He says that he must speak with you immediately and urgently.”

  Ipid let out a long slow breath to release the emotion he had been building and bring his mind back from the dark halls it had been traversing. Eia’s face appeared from around the chair where she sat, eyes mischievous – had she been thinking the same thing? He watched her and could not help the shared smile that formed on his face.