“Even the ones who purchased that status?” Aimee asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“Especially them,” Rachim answered with a snort.
“What did you think of the speeches?” Harkon asked her next. The look on his face was contemplative, seeking another perspective.
“Yaresh is a nativist,” Aimee murmured after a few moments’ consideration. “Ironic for a cosmopolitan trade ship. He wants a greater share of the benefits of Iseult’s great trade-workings to go to her people first, rather than the collective whole of Flotilla Visramin and the guilds.” She paused to chew on her lower lip for a moment. “I’ve heard speeches like that before. I didn’t like his tone. And for one speaking for the people, he sure doesn’t seem to think much of the ones who live below the top levels.”
“Simplistic,” Harkon agreed, “but not inaccurate. And the others?”
Aimee sighed and sank into a chair. “Pentus is good at talking a lot and saying nothing at all. If I had to guess purely on that speech, I’d say he knows how to play politics, but not how to give his politics substance. Diara has good ideas, but she’s not used to having to deal with people as equals. She looked irritated that she had to make a speech at all.”
“Solid analysis,” Rachim sighed. “So you see the problem, Miss Laurent. And the maneuvering for votes hasn’t even started yet.”
“There’s something I’m actually not very clear on,” Aimee said then, resting her hands on the expensive hardwood table and regarding their host calmly. “What exactly are our goals here? You’ve said a lot about allies, factions, people who are ‘with us’ or ‘against us,’ but it’s not clear to me yet what ‘us’ is supposed to be standing for.” She laced her fingers together and met his eyes. “If we’re going to be helping you, I’d like to know what we’re helping you do.”
Rachim exchanged a look with Harkon. Aimee’s teacher nodded. Their host fixed her with his one-eyed gaze and said, “Keep this ship from being torn apart by sectarian violence.”
The bluntness of it caught her off guard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elias stir from where he was leaning with folded arms against the wall. His green eyes flashed as he looked up.
“It didn’t seem that bad in the council, this morning,” she said. “There was tension, sure, but I never felt like those people were ready to kill one another.”
“You’ve only just arrived,” Rachim sighed. “Try to understand… Iseult is a heavily divided society. Ninety percent of her population lives below the upper levels: the enlisted, the tenant merchant class, their families, all the transients and undocumented stowaways… Life in the lower levels is not easy, and this generation of the officer aristocracy is not as understanding as their predecessors. Amut was a uniter, an outsider who enacted reforms for the betterment of the ordinary man whilst managing to balance the ambitions and sensitivities of his officers. A balance had been established… When he died there were riots on the lower levels. We had peace, before. Now we have a lull before a storm.”
“How did Amut die?” Elias asked. The question intruded on the momentary silence, cutting to the unspoken heart of the issue. When Aimee looked at him, his angular face was tired and worn, but intent.
“Painfully,” Rachim said heavily. “His health had been declining for some months – he was always overworking. Against the advice of some of his councilors, he went ashore in the port of Albatross, came back with a cough that became a wasting sickness. It devoured him from the inside in under a week. Neither healing magic nor the physicians could slow its progress. The end was… messy. It’s not common for our dead to be wrapped in shrouds, Miss Laurent. Amut was.”
Elias nodded, silent again.
“So our allies in keeping this peace,” Harkon spoke up, “are Viltas and his son Vallus. Amut’s former allies. Did he have any others? In the absence of a uniter, perhaps those he most trusted can fill the void.”
Rachim laughed. “What you have – myself, Viltas and his son, and those few supporters we ourselves possess, are it.”
Harkon frowned.
“And Belit,” Aimee said. “Though from what you say, she’s determined to remain apolitical.”
“I will talk to her,” Elias said softly.
“Lad,” Rachim started, fixing the green-eyed young man with his single eye, “I told you, she’s not a politician.”
“No,” Elias said. “She’s a warrior. So am I. Tell me where she trains, and I will go there.”
Bjorn looked at the former black knight with a carefully neutral expression. Harkon seemed to consider it.
There was a hard look on the knight’s face… Then, after a moment, it relented. “Please,” he said. “Let me do this.”
Aimee paused. They still don’t fully trust him, she realized. They still see the conqueror named Azrael, the murderer, the knight of the Eternal Order.
And what did she see? Aimee asked herself. It wasn’t the first time the confusing question had been posited. More than anyone here, she knew him. In Port Providence, the Axiom Diamond – still sealed in a trunk in her cabin – had shown her the entirety of his life, how the order had taken him against his will.
“Elias is right,” she said. “He’s the best one to approach Belit. It would be foolish for him not to.”
Her words broke the uneasy silence. Clutch took an audible swig of the flask. Bjorn looked back and forth between Elias and Aimee, then gave a small nod. Harkon gave Aimee a considering look, then said, “I agree. Do it.”
Elias briefly glanced her way, inclined his head in thanks.
“She trains in the Rose Hall,” Rachim said, accepting the decision. “You’ll find her there many hours of the day. I hope you’re good though, boy. They don’t take kindly to anything less than the best in their space.”
Aimee thought she saw the ghost of a smile on Elias’s face before he said, “I’ll manage.”
“As for us,” Harkon said, gesturing to Aimee and himself, “I would like to speak to the healers responsible for Amut’s care, if you don’t mind.”
“That can be arranged,” Rachim said. “But before all that, I’d like to offer you the chance to see something more relevant to your interests: Hark, Miss Laurent, I believe Iseult will be making its first portal jump in an hour, and I know the best place from which to view it. Will you accompany me?”
Aimee surged to her feet with renewed energy that startled even her teacher. “Born ready.”
Chapter Five
The Deep Sky
Elias stood before a pair of elaborately carved hardwood doors set with pale marble, gold, and jewels. He had dressed in simple training attire, and carried his few weapons in a long, hardwood box loaned to him from Elysium’s cargo hold. To his left was a whitewashed wall of pale stone, to his right, high arched windows displayed the infinite expanse of an impossibly vast sky.
It was two days since their first jump had carried them out of Ishtier’s domain, and now Iseult was truly upon the trackless vastness of the trade route through the deep sky men called the Dragon Road. According to their host, Rachim, one more jump would return the immense behemoth to her home flotilla.
The two days had passed much like the preceding month on Elysium: awkward silences, discomforted stares when he entered a room. A simple, painful uncertainty infected even the more congenial moments amongst his crewmates with stilted unease. Harkon and Aimee were in the middle of a lesson – or else meeting with Amut’s former physicians – and Bjorn accompanied them. He was free to do what he had said he would do: find the red-armored, reclusive Belit, and convince her that the crew of Elysium wished to be her allies.
That he was at once the necessary advocate for Harkon Bright and his crew was an irony so rich that Elias wondered why he didn’t choke on it. Likewise, as he stood before the door, he wondered why he was hesitating so long before pushing it open. Fear is weakness, weakness is death, his old master’s words echoed in his mind. It made his teeth grind. “Go away,” he growled to Lor
d Roland’s echo. “Nobody asked you.”
“Having trouble with the door?” The voice that intruded on Elias’s thoughts was female, rich, and lower in register. Turning, he found himself facing its owner: a broad-shouldered woman with ebon skin and perceptive gold eyes. She wore no ornamentation, nor mark of status. Her thick hair was cut short, and she wore a simple canvas wrestling jacket and breeches. She was of even height with Elias, an unusual thing in itself, and her posture was relaxed.
“I’m here to train,” he answered, after a moment spent in awkward silence.
“You’re at the right place, then,” she said. A pause. “But you’ll need to open the door still. So I ask again: are you having trouble?”
Elias considered. A hundred awkward lies came to mind – veils behind which he might hide shame and pain, but then another, small echo of advice echoed through his mind in a woman’s voice.
Noble and brave. Gentle and kind.
Honesty was best. He had precious little sense as to who Elias Leblanc was – who he was – but he at least knew what he didn’t want to be. Azrael had lied. Azrael had murdered. Elias would start by being what Azrael was not.
“It has been a long time,” he admitted, tired, “since I was in a proper training hall, and each has its own etiquette. I don’t want to shame my hosts,” he finished. Or myself.
“You’re one of the newcomers staying in Rachim’s villa,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I am.”
“Rumors travel quickly on the upper levels,” she said, and favored him with a thoughtful nod. “Come, I will be your guide.”
She pressed her hand to the wood and pushed. A seam of light split the carvings, and the doors to the training hall rumbled inward. Elias blinked in the bright light. An arched dome rose high overhead, painted with extravagant, mythical depictions of warriors from myriad stories. At its apex, a single circular skylight flooded the chamber with sunlight that danced off the pale stone floor.
All around the far walls, practice weapons hung from pegs or rested against racks. Straight, two-handed longswords and single-edged messers such as those favored by the order, broad-bladed boarding axes, maces, spears, halberds and long rondel daggers. All of it was familiar to a student of the ancient Varengard style in which Elias was trained. And orphaned, a part of him reflected. When he’d turned against his masters, he’d lost the benefit of their teachings, and no one else was learned in the war-arts of the ancient masters. The order had long ago made certain of it. There were weapons in hundreds of other varieties as well: curved blades of varieties without number. He spotted steel-bladed whip swords, punch daggers and gracefully curved polearms and thick staves.
The next things his senses noted was the quality of the fighters making use of the space. Natural-born skyfarers tended on average to be shorter than those born on land, more limber, quick and dexterous. Yet here, the spread of individuals at work was startlingly diverse. Tall, short, broad and powerful, lean and swift. Elias counted more than a few with thick middles and trunk-like legs. What unified them was the unerring skill with which every one of them moved. This training hall was not for amateurs. Since coming to Iseult, Elias had vowed to keep his magical gifts hidden, in case some keen-eyed savant should recognize them for what they were, and identify him as the monster he’d once been. Without use of those gifts, any one of these people would be at least a middling challenge to his talents.
“You’re pensive, outsider,” his guide said with a small smirk. “But I know that confident look. Well trained, are you?”
“Extremely,” Elias answered. It wasn’t a lie.
The fighters were taking note of the pair of them now. Their eyes followed Elias, sizing him up. Some nodded in greeting, a few smiled. Most simply watched and assessed. None wore red armor. There was no sign of Belit. Yet before he could even start to properly look, one of the fighters – a tanned, bald man of middling height and copious scars – walked towards him. He pulled a long stave from one of the racks and threw it across the space between them. Elias reflexively caught it. The others, watching solemnly, nodded with approval.
“That one is Hakat, a senior member of the royal guard. I would stretch,” his guide said, an amused smile on her dark face. “New blood that can walk proudly among this crowd is rare. You’re going to have more than a few challengers.”
Elias breathed hard. Three bouts with a stave lay behind him, followed by two with the long rondel, then two more of wrestling. This was his fourth round against a fresh fighter using a blunted steel longsword. He had been fighting continuously for what seemed near to half an hour, without calling upon his magic once. There was a familiar ache in his limbs, and his breath came even and slow.
With the stave he had sustained a handful of welts, yet won every match. With rondel and in wrestling, he had taken a bruise or two, yet come out each time in control. With the longsword in his hands, none could touch him. A wry, rueful pride filled him as he waited for his next challenger. Orphaned he might be, adrift and uncertain in the world, but one fact remained inviolate: he was still the best he had yet come across.
Taking a moment at the edge of the training ring, he took a proffered drink of water from his guide. The amused expression had never once left her face. Across the ring, another fighter was taking up a blunt steel sword – this one curved. Elias turned, letting his face sweep the assembled faces of so many different colors and shapes. Not once had he been shamed, savaged, or treated as less than an equal. The others were laughing, trading casual jokes. Hakat was grinning as the newcomer – his student by the look of it – experimentally twirled his weapon. The fight was an easy thing in which to get lost: a place of escape where he need not remember anything but the move before him, the breath, the moment. He could escape no longer. Elias put the point of his training blade in the floor and breathed out, remembering why he was here.
“Where is Belit?” he asked the crowd. “You honor me with your efforts and your courage,” the words felt so awkward coming from his mouth, so foolish, “but I came seeking her. Where is the legendary commander of the Red Guard? I would see what she is made of.”
Silence fell. Looks were exchanged. A small laugh came from Hakat. “You still don’t know, boy?”
Elias frowned. He had seen no one receiving constant deference from the others, no warrior with a special crest, or high seat. There was nobody in this room of whom everyone was afraid. “I see no one to whom you all defer,” he answered. “I see no red armor, nor marks of status.”
“Then you don’t look close enough,” Hakat answered. “Or your experience with leaders is paltry. You want to know Belit? Find she who serves first. Who uplifts and shows by her example who is accepted.”
“Hakat, enough,” the voice of the dark-skinned guide said behind him, and Elias was immediately still. Gods, he thought. I am such a fool.
He turned, and the gold eyes in the dark face greeted him. Her strong arms were still folded, her expression still amused.
“You,” Elias said.
“Me,” Belit nodded. “Forgive my deception, stranger,” she said, expression unchanging. “But my mother always taught me that if you want to know a person’s character, see how they treat a person with no visible status.”
“Commander,” Elias began. “I have come on behalf of–”
“No,” Belit said. Already she was walking away from him – but not to remove herself from conversation. The warrior stopped by a worn weapons rack, and selected from it a blunt, straight longsword, the twin of Elias’s own. “You said that you wished to see what I was made of, and after witnessing your performance against my own trained fighters, I find myself curious of the same. What is your name?”
It took a moment for Elias to remember which one was right. The shade of his former self still lingered, toxic and mocking, on the tip of his tongue. “Elias,” he affirmed, as much to himself as to her. “Elias Leblanc.”
Belit favored him with a smile, and assumed
a guard that mirrored his own, smooth and perfect. A sudden shock went through him. That was a Varengard stance. Sudden fear gripped him. Where had she been trained? Who had taught her? What was he about to walk into?
Does the order have an agent upon Iseult?
Belit’s smile was panther-like. The eyes of all the room were upon them now. “Come, Elias Leblanc,” she said. “You came all this way. Don’t keep me waiting.”
There was time neither for fear, nor hesitation. Elias banished thought, and burst forward, closing distance with a dropping cut aimed at her opposite shoulder. At the last second, his thumb – pressed to the flat of his blade – pushed, rotating from a long-edge to a short-edge strike, closing off the line. Belit moved gracefully, powerfully. Their blades met, bound. Belit pivoted back, forcing Elias’s cut short. Fast. He wound the strike into a thrust.
Deft as a water-reed, Belit lifted her hilt high, slipped beneath his thrust, and drove her point home. Elias had the skill to see it coming, but not to stop it. His body was moving, adrenalized, his momentum forward weighted. He ran onto the blunt tip of her sword, and the blade flexed to near ninety degrees. The pain of a hard, bruising hit exploded through his chest, and Elias Leblanc slammed into the training hall floor.
He lay there for a moment, fighting to regain his breath. Habit didn’t let him release his sword, and a pair of slow, deep breaths told him that nothing was broken.
Belit appeared standing over him. She regarded him for a moment, then offered her hand. “Too eager,” she said.
Groaning, Elias clasped her palm and hauled himself to his feet. “The masters teach their students to always take the initiative,” he said, meeting her eyes. She knew. Somehow. Yet she wasn’t of the order, that much else was obvious.
She gave him an odd look. “They also teach that a sword that comes in too wrathful is easily displaced. A blade too eager for blood binds too hard, is easily offset, pushed away, or overcome.”
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