Nevertheless, Raz had moved them once already, because dumb luck always seemed to come into play at the worst of times.
Some of the others were nervous about hiding in plain sight, but it made the most sense. They all knew the Mahsadën wouldn’t risk a public disturbance just yet. Such shows of power tended to shift balances, and if too many Miropans thought the shadows were losing their grip, civil outbreaks might erupt.
Assassins they might send. Raz had picked this particular house just for that reason. All but one of the windows were boarded shut, and the ceiling—usually a point of weakness since mud brick didn’t hold up all that well against the elements—was still strong, even reinforced by arched timber beams. The door was never opened unless he did it himself, and together the group had fashioned ragged curtains from dirty cloth they’d salvaged from the abandoned buildings nearby, hanging them over every opening. They took turns posting watch after the Sun set, just in case, but so far nothing hinted that they’d been found out.
So far, Raz repeated to himself, looking around at the ten remaining of the ragtag bunch, all huddled in whatever cramped space they’d been able to grab on the ground.
He was less than pleased with the situation, never a fan of crowds much less a packed sweatbox of a house he couldn’t even stand up in. Despite this, Raz was slowly finding that he enjoyed the company, at least for the moment. Especially Eva, the girl he’d ripped from Goyr’s grubby hands. A former physician’s apprentice, she’d been grabbed three months ago when her employer’s business collapsed and he’d arranged to sell his assistants to the Mahsadën in exchange for loan payments. Her skills, rusty as they were, would hopefully set Raz on a quicker path to recovery than he’d anticipated.
At the moment, though, he was stuck, barely able to get up and walk without trouble breathing. Ahna and his other weapons were tucked against the wall within easy reach, but he doubted he could have hefted any of them properly in his current state. There was nothing to do but sit and wait.
Sit and wait and plan.
Raz’s eyes shifted over the forms of the runaways. They could scheme and plot all they wanted, but the most immediate problem to be tackled was getting them all out of the city, headed anywhere, the general agreement being northward. They were close enough to the border that they could risk the summer heat, and these couple of months were all that the North could offer for safe travel before the freeze picked up again. Raz had heard the winters there were harsh, and that the previous year’s had been particularly devastating.
None of the group wanted to get caught in a storm like that.
Sadly, not everyone would make it. Two of them—a former blacksmith named Abon Grous, and Yuri Avina, a member of the city guard who’d refused to take bribes from the Mahsadën—had opted to risk making a break for it. On their own they’d taken their leave, heading for other cities in the hopes of staying with family until other plans could be made. They’d said their farewells two days ago, and Raz didn’t have the heart to tell the group that one of his contacts—via letter hidden in a loaf of bread—had informed him that Yuri had been killed and Abon was back in the Cages.
That had been the day they’d moved. He wasn’t about to let that happen to the rest.
“The atherian said he knows someone who can get us out of here within the week,” one of the women whispered from the far corner of the room. “Even if they take us as far as the border, we’d have plenty of time.”
“You’re really going to trust him?” a man hissed, jerking his head to indicate Raz, who pretended he couldn’t hear. “Why? He’s one of them, I’m telling you! This ‘someone’ he’s told us about is probably a private buyer that he just wants to up the price on! No. I won’t go back. I’d rather find my own way out.”
“How?” Eva demanded. She’d finished drying the bowl and moved to sit with the group. “With what means? We have no coin to pay anyone with, the Mahsadën have city patrols searching every caravan coming in and out of the gates, and I don’t know many people of the sort to risk their necks smuggling would-be slaves out of Miropa. You’re paranoid, Dayle. It might have served you well in the chains, yes, but right now it’s going to get you killed.”
Dayle grumbled under his breath, folding his arms.
“I’m thinkin’ I’m jumpin’ in with the ladies,” a man Raz was pretty sure was called Tym, a street runner who’d been grabbed while begging outside a tavern, offered. “No hard feelin’s, Dayle. I don’t much fancy lizards neither, bu’ we all done heard the stories about this one, ain’t we? The things they done to his family… I’ll trust he ain’t about to sell me back to the Cages after that. And if’n it means gettin’ away from the Mahsadën… Well, Sun take them, he can bleedin’ well ship me away with any lad he feels like.”
Raz couldn’t help it. He smiled.
It felt alien on his face, a strange, unpracticed motion. The last few days had not been easy for him. It wasn’t the ribs. Those were the least of his worries. And he was confident that he could get the rest of the group out of Miropa without a problem since he’d called in a favor with Bayl Vyzen, who owed him more than a few.
What bothered Raz was the reflection he saw in the shine of his armor, or in the ripples of his washbasin when he scrubbed his face in the morning. It was the frightened look he still got from several of the group when he caught their eye, the whispers he heard when they all thought he’d dozed off to sleep. Eva was the only one who seemed to believe in him wholeheartedly, for which he was grateful.
He just wasn’t sure he deserved it.
The Mahsadën had used him, played him. They’d been the puppeteers behind his actions from the start, manipulating him into thinking he’d managed to stay above their games. He’d fooled himself just as much, truthfully. He’d suppressed the voices of doubt and convinced himself he’d somehow kept his nose clean of their trickery.
And now it was costing him.
Whereas he’d been smart, they’d been smarter, playing on his desires and twisted concepts of justice to forge him into the first blade of their headlong charge. He’d become more than just a sword-for-hire to them. The name Raz i’Syul Arro, the Monster of Karth, had become a face of the system he hated so much. Unconsciously he’d fueled the machine he’d been fighting to tear apart, feeding the Mahsadën its own refuse and only making it stronger. They’d used him, toyed with him. They’d conned him into believing he was working of his own free will when, in reality, he was more like the kites children of the wealthier families would fly in the streets on a cool day. He could move about in any direction with some measured freedom but, in the end, his string was always wrapped around one finger or another.
Thing was, though, it was easy to blame them.
In truth the Mahsadën had only been the catalyst of every decision he’d made in the last few years, merely sparked the events and actions that shaped him into what he was. They’d fed him partial truths, paid him the crowns he’d demanded, given him the work he’d asked for. They’d provided the illusion of willpower, provided him everything he needed to fight the fight he was only too anxious to pursue. They’d pushed him toward the edge every time, nudging him closer and closer.
But on every occasion, without exception, it was he who had decided to take the plunge.
Raz’s arms knotted, the lithe muscle under his scaly skin flexing as he clenched his fists. His tail snaked over the floor and mat to his left, curling around Ahna’s handle.
How many people had he personally put in chains? How many of the faces floating in front of his eyes—those poor distorted masks of pain that were every figure he’d ever seen in the Cages—were in those iron prisons because of him? What had he done to help them? Had he ever in the last few years actually stuck out his hand to pull someone free of the shackles that rubbed their wrists and ankles raw?
No, Raz thought, turning gingerly to steady himself on the loose b
rick and ease to his feet. I haven’t.
Leaning heavily against the wall, he limped to the window Eva had just emptied the basin out of, the only one not boarded up. Pulling the curtain aside an inch with one finger, Raz peered out into the deserted street. He stood there for a time, looking at nothing in particular.
What do I do now?
“Atherian?”
Raz looked over his shoulder. Eva was there, her face lined with concern. Behind her the rest of the group still whispered, only a few of them having glanced up when he’d pushed himself to stand.
“Is everything all right?” Eva asked, moving to stand beside him. “Are the bandages too tight?”
Raz chuckled humorlessly and turned to look back out the window. High, high above them, a hawk circled in the blue sky, wings dipping lazily in a great spiral over the city.
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what is it?”
Raz frowned, thinking of how to answer the question.
“I lost my way,” he said after a pause, his eyes still following the bird of prey against the wisps of clouds. “I thought I was doing one thing, and in the end it turns out I was doing nothing. Worse actually. I was the right hand of the kind of people I would like nothing better than to rid the South of.”
“The Mahsadën,” Eva stated simply, and Raz nodded.
“I’d convinced myself I was above their games, above their schemes and plots.” Raz frowned. “But who was I kidding? Annoyances like Kî Orran? If I’d done what I was contracted to do, I would have killed her, gotten paid, and accepted the fact that everything else around me was out of my hands. Do you know what that means, Eva? It means you and the rest of the group would be in chains right now. Again. Probably on your way to a gem mine outside the Seven Cities, or some other awful place.”
Eva was quiet, her shoulder against the sill of the window.
“Do you know how many contracts I’ve taken from them?” Raz hissed, closing his eyes. He leaned his elbow on the side frame of the window and rested his forehead on his wrist. “Because I don’t. And the only difference between this job and those is the fact that in this case everything was right under my nose. What if you lot hadn’t been with Kî? What if you’d been left at her last safehouse? Sass and his men would have found you and sold you, and I would have been none the wiser. How many times do you think that’s happened? Ten, twenty, a hundred? How many people have I had a part in throwing in the Cages?”
“I don’t know.”
Raz opened his eyes and looked at her. Eva was frowning, watching the others plot away.
“I don’t know how many you could have helped, but I do know how many you put in worse situations than they were already in. None.”
“Makes no difference,” Raz growled, looking back out the window just as the hawk dove, rocketing toward some prey in the streets below. “I should have—”
“It does make a difference,” Eva cut in, looking up at him. “Yes, perhaps you could have realized all this sooner, done something sooner. But that didn’t happen. Instead, you woke up now. You are aware now. You know what that means?”
Raz didn’t respond, but he looked down at her.
“It means that now you have the knowledge to do something about it. Rest. Heal. Help us out of the city.”
She stepped away, moving to rejoin the others. Then she looked back over her shoulder at him.
“And when that’s over, you make them pay, Monster.”
IX
Raz stood alone in the dark beyond the west wall of the city, white hood pulled up to cast his features in shadow. He watched the small bob of light that was the cart’s only lantern swing side to side as the driver shouted a distant “Hyah! Hyah!” driving the horses through the night. Raz thought he saw the silhouette of a hand rise and wave in farewell, and he returned the gesture, the wind rustling his robes and tossing sand against the steel of his mail. Ahna rested beside him, the point of her bottom tip sunk into the desert floor.
It was almost ten minutes before the light vanished altogether, marking the disappearance of Eva and the others into the leagues of rolling hills south of the northern border. Even so, well after they’d gone Raz stood staring at the spot where the light had faded away.
Then he looked up into the night sky, taking in the Moon and Her Stars before closing his eyes.
See them safely to new life, he asked in silence. Watch and protect them, that they may never again know the hopelessness of stolen freedom.
He opened his eyes, searching the sky until he found a familiar pair of twinkling orbs crowning the smaller one sitting between them.
Help me, Raz prayed. Give me the strength I would have if you were here. I will need it soon.
The small gate, one of the city entrances used only by guards and the “diplomats” who were in fact Mahsadën messengers from the other cities, was still ajar. Slipping in, Raz darted into the cover of the nearest buildings. He was in the wealthiest of Miropa’s districts, a risk in and of itself. Night patrols circled more frequently here than anywhere else, and the contingents were always veteran soldiers, alert and ever wary. It had been a challenge sneaking ten wanted men and women through the brightly lit streets. In comparison, Raz relaxed. Getting back to the safe house would be less of a problem on his own.
First, though, he ducked into the third alley he came to, kneeling beside a group of figures all but hidden in the dark.
“Wake up,” he growled, gripping the chin of the closest one and shaking him. The guard came to at once, grunting as he tried to yell through the cloth gag in his mouth. The sound came out pitifully muffled, and he struggled with the bindings on his wrists and ankles.
“Shout all you want. No one can hear you through that,” Raz spat, standing up. The man stilled and grew silent, eyes wide, taking in Raz’s towering outline against the lantern light from the road.
“If I’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead, so stop worrying. I have a message. On the other hand, if you don’t deliver it—well, your friends will be happy to explain the consequences to you.”
He gestured to the other figures lying in the dark past the first guard, who turned to look at them. His muted scream was oddly satisfying, and Raz smirked humorlessly. The man fell over in his haste to scoot away. Blood pooled on the cobbled ground, forming black puddles where each of the rest of the patrol had had their throats slit. Every horrified pair of eyes was wide and staring, some gazing up at the night sky above, some at the walls around them.
Raz had made sure each and every one knew they were going to die.
“Are you listening?” he asked. The man nodded hurriedly, seeming unable to look away from the bodies of his comrades.
“Good. Then tell your šef that Raz i’Syul is coming for them next. Tell them the Monster says they’d best start running, and that they’d best start running now.”
X
“In the records we have, we find that the Laorin eventually came to call him ‘the Warring Son.’ ‘Violent by nature and content to kill if it served his purpose,’ the Priest-author Carro al’Dor wrote, ‘it is odd to say that he is the greatest ally our faith has ever come across. Laor bless him for his strong heart and kind soul, but the creature is a conflicted being. Talo always used to remind me that all beasts are of the Lifegiver, but I wonder at Laor’s greater plan, and how it might involve this haunted child.’”
—exc. “The Atherian,” by Jûn fi’Surr
“He’s a madman, Grandmother,” Adrion growled, coming to sit on the balcony chair opposite the woman’s, looking out over the city. The Sun hung imperiously at its apex in the sky above, a single bright eye gazing down on the world. “Do you hear me? Your pride and joy, the animal you had brought into our family. In the last week he’s decimated three full patrols, assassinated both the captain of the detail responsible for the Cages and his replacement, f
reed two shipments of slaves, and made an attempt on Gaorys’ life while he was collecting fees in the market. I’m telling you, the beast’s gone insane.”
The Grandmother didn’t react to his words, her empty gray eyes ever distant. She continued to stare out over the expansive slate rooftops of the houses around them. Her white hair, once neat and always kept in a tight bun, was disheveled and loose, hanging about her face and framing that maddening half smile plastered there. Adrion sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his temples. “I know how much you hate it when I bring up work with you, but this is important. If we don’t do something soon, Raz is going to cause a real problem for the society.”
The woman didn’t budge, the only motion in her entire bearing being the shallow lift and drop of her chest. A breeze picked up, catching a few strands of her loose hair.
Thank the Sun for this weather, Adrion thought, squinting to look up at the sky. The temperature was actually bearable, an exquisite rarity during the summer months even this far from the rolling dunes of the Cienbal.
“I’ll tell you what,” Adrion grunted, picking himself up out of the chair and grabbing his crutch from the bench beside him, “I’ll have Lazura bring you something to eat, shall I? Might do you some good.”
Hobbling back inside, he grabbed a silver bell from where it hung on the wall and rang it once. It was a quiet sound, but in moments the door to the study creaked open, and a young woman stepped into the room. She wore dark robes of black silk so thin they were almost transparent, the color clashing beautifully with her blonde hair and blue eyes. She was tall and slim, and Adrion would have found her attractive were it not for the great X-shaped scar that marred her face, leading from around her right eye and crisscrossing diagonally along her face in two perfectly straight lines.
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