by Eddie Han
“A constable brought it by my office. Found it in an alley not far from the breaker. A civil complaint was filed by Count Nigel Addy. It said you and your friend beat up his son. Is that true?”
Dale sat quietly rubbing his palms against his trousers, his eyes fixed on his untouched soup.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes, sir. But he started it.”
His father folded his arms on the edge of the table and stared at Dale from below his brows.
“He was taken to the hospital.”
Dale looked up.
“He’s going to be all right, but the school’s been notified. You’ve been expelled.”
Dale turned his gaze back down. He clenched his teeth at the injustice of it all.
“Did you hear me, Dale?”
“That’s not fair. They were beating me up! Four of them! Why am I getting expelled?”
“Expulsion is the least of your concerns! The count was pushing to have you sent to a juvenile detention center. He wanted to press charges for assault.”
Dale had heard stories of the detention centers—how it was full of hardened criminals like the Jones’ kid who stabbed his foster father in the leg with a pair of scissors.
“Sparrow too, if they knew who he was and where to find him.”
“Did you tell on him?”
“You worry about yourself!”
Dale’s eyes welled up with tears. The bitterness pushed on his chest until he could not stand it anymore. He wanted to flail, throw something, kick. The acute awareness of his powerlessness made him long for the ability to do something, to exact revenge, to kill Marcus Addy. “I should’ve killed him,” he blurted.
He felt a stinging jolt across his face and the force sent him spinning.
“You watch your tongue!”
There was silence. Silent tears began to flow.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? I had to ask the constable to speak to the count. I had to plead with him.”
“I’m not scared of the count,” Dale mumbled.
“What did you say? What did you say? You’re not scared? Who do you think you are?”
Dale didn’t care anymore. He got up and through streaming tears yelled, “Dad! Four kids attacked me. Because I wouldn’t let Marcus pick on me. He’s an asshole. He said something about Mom. And then he followed me and Mosaic. Why don’t you say something about them? Why don’t you stand up to the count? Why are you pleading?”
His father stood dumbfounded.
The silent stare was stifling. Dale wiped his tears. The rage was gone. It was replaced by fear. He had lost control; he had said too much. Then he saw an expression on his father he’d never seen before. Dale learned then that his father’s searing glare of disapproval was more bearable than the look of sadness and shame that had replaced it.
His father slumped back in his chair. “This is my fault,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, son. I’ve failed you as a father. I see now that you are of age—” before Dale could wonder, of what age? his father added, “—when you will either become a man or, like so many of us, remain forever as something less. I won’t let your fate be determined by my failures. You’re going to the Academy. It’s time you followed in your brother’s footsteps.”
Dale’s brother, Darius, was already a cadet three years into the Academy of the Republican Guard. Having quickly climbed the ranks, it was expected that he would graduate at the top of his class. He was the pride of their family.
“Darius will be taking his first leave in about a week,” his father continued. “When he returns to Pharundelle, you’ll go with him. Enrollment begins at the end of the month.”
There was a long pause. It’s fair, thought Dale. It wasn’t his father’s fault. His life was just how it was. And his father didn’t know what to do with him. Dale’s eyes were on his toes, chin to chest. His father looked at him for what felt like the very first time.
“You’re excused if you’ve no stomach to eat now.”
Dale turned and fought the urge to run into his room. He took slow deliberate steps as his father added from behind, “Ice that cheek and dress your knuckles. We’ll talk more about it later.”
That night, lying awake with swirling emotions and racing thoughts, Dale began to worry. The romantic in him found the idea of becoming a soldier appealing. But he knew enough to know it would push him to his physical and mental limits. He thought about Master T’varche’s words: Most things of value are born of pain and refined with suffering.
He worried about whether or not he’d really be able to take a life if he were in battle. That was his last coherent thought before his mind fell under the narcotic spell of exhaustion. Without a drift, he was fast asleep.
When Darius arrived a week later, he was taller and broader than Dale remembered. And seeing him in uniform only reassured him. His anxieties gave way to anticipation. Darius, the same brother he’d grown up with and followed, playing, scrapping—the same brother that would pin him to the floor and spit on his face or punch him in the arm just to remind him who was older—had left Dale’s childish world to become a man. A soldier. And suddenly, Dale could hardly wait to join him.
A few days before the brothers were to leave, the entire family gathered at the bakery in the late afternoon, passing time over frosted fig cakes and Dale’s favorite, chocolate milk.
“So it was just the two of you against four?” asked Darius, proudly tussling his kid brother’s hair.
“Let’s hear no more of that,” said Dale’s father.
“Yes, don’t encourage him,” Cora Tess added. “A boy shouldn’t be fighting in the streets like some hooligan. What is this world coming to?”
Mosaic sat with a slice of cake in her two little hands, frosting all over her mouth. She was softly humming to herself. Her big brown eyes darted from face to face, amused by the grown-ups’ idiosyncrasies—the bulbs of saliva that would gather on the corner of Dale’s father’s lips as he chewed, the way her own father would blink in rapid flutters while he listened to someone speak, how her mother would touch her ear whenever she laughed. Then suddenly, Mosaic noticed someone at the window.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “It’s your friend, the sad boy.” She waved. “What happened to his face?”
Peering in, his scarred face covered in soot, was Sparrow.
“You tell him you’re leaving?” asked Dale’s father.
“Not yet.”
“Go on. You better tell him.”
While Dale removed the copy of The Walgorende’s Last Stand from his bag and walked out to greet Sparrow, Dale’s father recounted how the two had become friends.
“When Dale was six years old, he was eating lunch in the schoolyard with the other kids. And he saw that boy drinking water from a drainpipe.”
Darius cocked his head to the side, his brows colliding in bewilderment. “Why was he drinking water from a drainpipe?”
“Because some kids couldn’t afford food so they filled their stomachs with water while the other kids were eating.”
Cora Tess put a hand to her mouth and looked out the window at the Azuric boy. “Oh, the poor thing,” she lamented.
“When Dale saw him, he gave him half his potato,” Dale’s father continued. “They’ve been friends ever since. I remember when he told me that story, I kept thinking how proud his mother would’ve been.”
“Aye, she would’ve been,” said Uncle Turkish.
“Imagine, having nothing to eat in this day and age. It just breaks my heart, it does.”
“Where are his parents?”
“From what I understand, his mother’s a prostitute in Azuretown. He has no father.”
“Oh dear.”
“What’s a pasta toot?” asked Mosaic.
“Never mind, young lady. Go bring him some of this cake. Go on now.”
Just outside, Dale greeted his friend.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
> “What’re you doing here?”
“We finished most of the swords,” Sparrow replied. “We still have to polish them but—hey, is that Darius?”
“Yeah.”
Sparrow waved, and everyone within waved back.
“He’s big. How long has he been gone?”
“Three years. We’re eating cake. Wanna join us?”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “I just came by to tell you that we’re almost done with the swords.”
Mosaic struggled the door open with a slice of cake in her hand and held it up. “Here. Mama told me to bring it out to you. She made it.”
Sparrow hesitated.
“Go on,” said Dale. “She makes the best fig cakes ever.”
Sparrow cautiously took the cake and true to Azuric form, he looked in at Cora Tess through the window and bowed his head in gratitude, then again before Mosaic. Mosaic bashfully twirled her skirt back and forth and watched as he bit into it.
“Ith good.”
Mosaic giggled.
“Okay Mo, go back inside,” said Dale.
“Why?”
“Because I need to talk to Sparrow for a minute.”
“About what?”
“Grown up stuff.”
“You’re not a grown up.”
“Am too. Now go on before I make you.”
She waited until Dale reached for her and then rushed in with a squeal.
Sparrow finished the cake in four bites.
“Want more?”
Barely able to close his mouth, he shook his head and wiped his hands on his pants.
“So guess what?”
“What?”
“I got expelled.”
“Really?”
“Marcus was taken to the hospital so his dad told the school. I’m lucky I’m not going to a detention center.”
“Gosh. Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s not your fault. I mean if it weren’t for you, I probably would’ve been the one in the hospital.”
“How upset was your dad?”
“Pretty upset.”
“Did he beat you?”
“No. But he’s sending me to the Academy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m leaving with Darius in a few days.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Until I graduate?”
“So you’re going to be a soldier?”
“I guess,” Dale replied with a tinge of pride. “It beats being in school, right?”
Sparrow shrugged.
“Trust me, it does,” Dale added. “Although, I bet you would’ve done well if you stayed in school.”
“You think?”
“Better than me. Here.” Dale handed him his book. “I never read it but it’s a classic. It’s about a Mystic king during the crusades or something. Anyway, I thought you might like it.”
Sparrow hesitated. He was not accustomed to receiving gifts. Growing up, his mother had instilled in him an aversion to receiving anything. Never allow yourself to be indebted to another, his mother had said.
“Take it,” Dale insisted. “You can read it when you get a break or something.”
Sparrow took the book with a kind of reverence that made Dale chuckle.
“Rohar, thank you,” he said.
“You’re my friend,” Dale replied. “You don’t have to thank me.”
Sparrow smiled. He ran his hand across the cover of the book and slipped it into his pocket. Then his smile faded and his gaze slowly fell.
“So I guess I won’t be seeing you around anymore, huh?”
Dale felt guilty, as if he were abandoning his friend to weather the world alone. Like him, he knew Sparrow had few friends. And he had no reliable family. Other than a mother he seldom saw and a strict taskmaster of a blacksmith, Sparrow had no one.
“I don’t know. I mean, I’ll come home on leave and stuff so I’ll probably see you then,” Dale tried. “And you can always come visit me too. Pharundelle isn’t that far. Only like two days by train if you take the express.”
Sparrow knew he could never afford a train ticket. And new cadets weren’t permitted to take leave for the first three years. As they spoke these last few wishful words, the two boys had no idea that by Dale’s first visit home, his Goseonite friend would no longer be there, swept away in the wake of tragedy. They could not imagine that more than a decade would pass before fate would reunite them.
Sparrow looked up with a glimmer of hope in his eyes contrasted against an otherwise expressionless face.
“That’d be neat,” he replied.
And for the moment, they stood beside each other with their backs up against the bakery glass window, watching in silence as people passed by, trying to enjoy their fleeting hours of friendship. The sun was low. The shadows were tall. Everything was saturated in gold.
NO 02
CH 05
WAR MACHINES
The first light of day was filtering through an icy haze. It was a cold Balean morning, colder than the starless night before. Thawing inside Castle Verona’s War Room were two bearded men with fair, rosy skin and long braided hair—Duke Merrick Thalian and his advisor, Eli Sorensen. They sat waiting at a table with a map of Groveland spread out between them and a great fire blazing in the hearth behind.
“The people love you, Your Highness,” said Eli, the firelight dancing in his eyes. “You are a just ruler. A reflection of our late king.”
The duke smiled. “Is that what your Ciphers told you?”
Eli Sorensen was both advisor to the throne and the director of the Royal Intelligence Brigade, commonly referred to as the Ciphers. As the head of Balean intelligence, it was his job to oversee the collection of sensitive information. He was constantly analyzing and re-analyzing, sifting through countless documents and sources of information. The duke knew what he was getting when he appointed Eli. He wanted someone cold and calculating in his political corner, someone who could navigate that treacherous terrain of “snakes and thespians,” as he would refer to politicians, without turning into one himself.
Following the untimely death of the late king, Aegis Leawen, the duke was elected regent. As a man who despised politics, it was a position he had accepted reluctantly.
“It’s not their love that I desire, Eli.” He looked down at the map. “It’s the preservation of the oldest monarchy in all of Parabolis. To see it handed down to its rightful successor in its rightful condition.”
Groveland was separated into two global powers: the Republic of Meredine to the south and the Kingdom of Bale to the north. The kingdom’s borders were marked on the map with a red outline stretching from the Hesperian Highlands to the Lecidian Mountains of Silverland.
“And its rightful condition will be the glory into which you will lead it,” Eli replied.
The duke looked at his advisor from below his brows. He was about to say something, cast some doubt on their undertaking, when General Arun Kilbremmer entered. His eyes still had sleep in them.
“It’s colder than a spurned lover,” he said, cinching his collar. He was clothed in a fur-lined, leather uniform. He had platinum hair and was older than both the duke and Eli. His face wore many years of hard decisions but his body was fitter than those of men half his age.
He walked over to the hearth to warm his hands and looked around the room. “Where are the others?”
“There are no others,” the duke replied. “Sit.”
Merrick waited until the general took his seat beside Eli. “This meeting is not for the Royal Court,” he added. “Not for now, at least.”
“Why the secrecy?”
“We’ve decided to act.”
The general sighed through his nose. “And how long have you known this?”
“For as long as our benefactor has funded this initiative.”
“‘Benefactor.’” The general grunted. “I don’t trust that man, Merrick. You know this. I don’t trust anyone who wears a mas
k.”
“Trust him or not, General, he has delivered on every account,” said Eli. “We now have international support.”
“You call a handful of wealthy men ‘international support?’”
“I call it money. As you know, General, wars are won with money. And with our funds secure, we will proceed as planned. We enter Meredian soil on the night of their Harvest Festival and take Carnaval City. We take Carnaval City, we take Pharundelle. And that means the Republic.”
The general pressed his finger down on the map along the borderland marked by a star, northwest of Carnaval City. “What about this?”
“Yes, the Gateway to the Republic. What about it?”
“You still don’t understand the implications of what it is that the Republic has managed to construct here, do you?”
“Enlighten me, General.”
“The Ancile is a star fortress. Unlike your conventional fortresses with high walls and rounded turrets, this intricately designed structure is composed of low set, thick walls made of brick, reinforced with an external shell of iron. Here, several armed bastions extend out into diamond shaped points, designed to prevent storming infantry cover from defensive fire. Run between them and you’ll be met with an onslaught of rifle fire and arrows. A conventional approach will do us no good.”
Eli smiled. “I couldn’t agree more. Consider for us an unconventional approach then.”
“To the west, you have the Wilds, the World’s End beyond that. To the east, the Borderland Ridge overlooking our own highlands as far as Muriah Bay. There’s no way around it but by the Amaranthian. And we’d risk forfeiting the element of surprise and invite a swift counter-offensive, assuming, of course, the Royal Fleet’s successful engagement with their blockade. There is no strategically advantageous approach.”
“I’m disappointed in your lack of imagination, Arun,” said the duke.
The general sighed again. “For more than a millennium we have managed to coexist in relative harmony with our neighbors to the south. Perhaps it is not too late to reinitiate dialogue.”