Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  “Some problem with the bombs?” Gau asked. It was the first reason he could think of for this conference. He kept his voice low so the ambient chatter in the room would mask it from any eavesdroppers.

  She cut the air with the side of her hand. No. “Lorsk wants to hold a celebration before we move out. You were late, so you missed the announcement.”

  “A celebration?”

  A jab from Kevret. “With a feast and everything. That’s why he’s opened up our stores.”

  A feast—as though they were still marching forth to mount their honorable war of protest against the Church in Diego Two. Challenging the mettle and survival instincts of the officials whose influence had relegated Chii Ril to the slums. Not inflicting bloody slaughter on the murderers that protest had brought down on the enclave. Maybe there was no difference in Lorsk’s mind anymore. Well, Gau could raise a bulb from their stores of whatever passed for kam’na to that— or perhaps you’d like something stronger, came Torres’s remembered words.

  Slim chance of that, he thought with a quiet, rough laugh.

  Even if the stores were open, the faction’s small supply of synthetic endorphin would be locked up safe somewhere else.

  They had to conserve what was left for the wounded. The Djandjer-Pralsh had already sold off so much endorphin to the shadow markets in exchange for the weapons to mount their original campaign.

  “I wouldn’t have expected it either,” Kevret said, misinterpreting Gau’s laugh. “I haven’t seen Lorsk this energized in years. Really . . . not since Geks died.” Kevret drew a circle in the countertop’s dust with a finger. “It’s been a long time since he asked me to lead the engineer corps; perhaps I’ve learned enough to equal the skills she had then—but I know I’ll never be what she was to Lorsk.”

  None of us can be what Lorsk wants us to be. Didn’t Kevret understand that? But of course she didn’t; Lorsk didn’t allow it. Only Gau understood, which was why he’d come back to end it all.

  He realized he’d been standing stiff and silent too long.

  With a conscious effort, he relaxed his shoulders. “Maybe not,”

  he said, “but you can help avenge her.”

  A metallic resolve like rust and rainwater flooded Kevret’s scent. She gave a short, sharp jab in answer. Then a single clap made them turn to the front of the room, as a hush fell over the Djandjer-Pralsh.

  Lorsk had risen from his place. He surveyed the silent, waiting audience for a few seconds. When he spoke, it was in a voice no louder than if he’d been addressing Jarn beside him, but in the silence it carried to the corners of both rooms.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I won’t waste your time recounting all the hard work and training every one of you has put in over the past few weeks. You all know your contributions, and I’m sure you’ve had enough of strategy meetings to last until the next of Krenkyr’s turns.”

  Scattered laughter at this, which Lorsk acknowledged with a small smile. “No, this is a celebration of what all of you have made possible. Tonight, our team will lay waste to the first nest of White Arrows infesting Diego Two.”

  Hisses of approval rose from the audience. Next to Gau, Kevret clenched her fist and said in a louder voice, “The first of many.”

  Lorsk answered her with a brief jab of his snout. “The first of many,” he said, and raised his own fist. In a voice that gained volume with every word, he said, “We will make the Arrows answer for their crimes, as the first House punished the warmakers for their Season of Wrath!” By the end, three-fourths of the Djandjer-Pralsh were on their feet with him. Snouts jabbed eagerly. Some made the salute common to soldiers and sephs, a half-unsheathed blade crossed over the chest.

  “Tell the story, Lorsk!” someone said. “Tell of the founding of the covenant.” Calls of agreement—not quite shouts, for Osk who had learned that quiet equalled survival were slow to break old habits—followed this. Lorsk patted the air with both hands, gesturing for quiet.

  “All right. But first let’s break open those stores. I promised a feast, didn’t I?”

  The Djandjer-Pralsh fell to distributing food and blankets from the stores with the discipline that clung to them even though they hadn’t been soldiers in the true sense for twenty years. Everyone formed a line to collect their allotment of rations and a blanket from Drej, who had sprung up to coordinate the distribution after Lorsk’s announcement. Gau waited until everyone else had joined the line before queuing up at the end. He didn’t like having anyone behind him.

  He smelled the older oskvan’s metallic scent at his back a moment before Lorsk’s hand fell on his shoulder. Half expecting it, Gau managed not to visibly flinch.

  “Come sit with me,” Lorsk said, leaning in to almost whisper in his ear. The suggestion would sound casual to an observer, but Lorsk punctuated it with a squeeze to his shoulder that gave it the weight of a command.

  Gau glanced wistfully at the group where Ariveth was sitting with Jarn and some of the suppliers. He’d meant to lay his blanket near them. She caught his eye as he followed Lorsk to the front of the room and frowned unhappy understanding before turning back to her conversation.

  He gave it a mental shrug. There would be other nights for that, nights when the optics of where he sat would carry less weight. Tonight, especially tonight, he could sit at their faction leader’s side.

  So Gau took his place behind the open trapdoor, with Lorsk on his left and the wiry Herask on his right, as they tucked into a “feast” that wasn’t much different than the faction’s daily rations: tubes of nutrient-optimized protein paste, nourishing but not particularly appetizing. But this time, everyone got two packets instead of one, and as a chaser someone had managed to get some packets of meat cured with a tolerable synthetic version of spiceleaf.

  Gau was squeezing the dregs out of his first protein packet (he’d saved the second in his cloak for later) when Herask observed quietly, “It seems the faction is getting restless. They’ll want that tale in a few moments.”

  Around the room, Osk were indeed finishing their plain double rations and looking toward the front of the room again.

  He hadn’t paid more than peripheral attention to them as he ate.

  “Indeed.” Lorsk swallowed the rest of his cured meat paste and rose again. The room quieted and eyes turned to him, flashing white slivers in the comfortably low light.

  Looking out at a point above their heads, Lorsk began to tell the tale of the covenant of peace.

  “A thousand thousand turns of Krenkyr ago, the House imposed a covenant of peace over Oskaran. Before that time, there had been many great Houses: lineages allied and broke these alliances at their fancies, so that new Houses sprang up like seedlings in the rains of the Storm Season.

  “As the Hatching of Krenkyr progresses from Storm Season to Dry, and lastly to Fire, so too did these new Houses progress, vying for power, each with each. For the honor of stewarding our world, they made war over it. The warring Houses fertilized the land with a rain of blood, offering the free lineages the choice of alliance and killing all those who refused.

  “The blades of their warriors brought an end to countless lineages. Neither the old, nor the sick, nor oskven gravid with eggs, nor hatchlings themselves were spared. Even their names were burned away by the zealous Houses, so that none would know they’d existed. The killing was a scorching fire that knew no boundary and no mercy. The war of the Houses truly brought Krenkyr to Oskaran.”

  “How did this war end?” asked Jarn in a clear voice, doing his part as an audience participant as was traditional, asking questions at predetermined times.

  As the teller, Lorsk had the answer ready. “Why, through reason, of course! Reason and justice. There was a House among these Houses which began an appeal to end the killing, sending ambassadors upon ambassadors to House strongholds all over the world. Their message was simple: our world is too fragile to resist the wrath of a Season mounted by Osk upon Osk. To protect our world we must work together
, and never forget our true enemy—the red star that brings the Season of Fire.“ ‘But what of our opinions? Our grievances and ambitions?’ asked the zealous Houses,” Lorsk continued, playing the role now of the old, hidebound representative of the rogue factions. Gau’s mother had always dropped her voice to a gravelly register at this part, but Lorsk didn’t modulate his tone. He didn’t need to, Gau thought—his normal voice suited the role perfectly.

  “ ‘Your House is young now,’ ” Lorsk went on, “ ‘your eyes clear, your blades and minds sharp—but there may come a time, once you grow old, when your vision has stagnated and your ways faltered, and the other Houses no longer wish to follow your path. If we surrender our armies, how we will be able to choose our paths?’

  “At this, the voices of the emissaries rang like brass against a crystal bell. ‘And what of the oldsters your armies murdered? The mothers? The hatchlings? Did they get to choose their paths?’

  “The other Houses were silent. ‘No, there will be no more armies,’ said the emissaries. ‘No more will House vie with House, lineage with lineage, watering their ambitions with the blood of our children. From now until the end of the world, the lineages shall not harm each other. It will be the leaders of lineages, and the leaders alone, who will succeed and rule, or fail and die. So decrees the House of Oskaran.’

  “And the House sealed this pact with the creation of a new kind of warrior.”

  Half the room called out “The sephs.” Gau joined them, his soft voice lost in the general cadence.

  “The sephs,” Lorsk echoed with a satisfied jab. “There was a warrior allied to the new House, and the lineage he had hatched of was shattered. He had lost everything: his ancestors, his kaneshi of a different lineage, even the hatchlings they’d had together. Everything save his name. We know him as Ilesh of the Justice.

  “When the decree went out, he swore he would shape the warriors under his command into the guardians of this peace.

  He marked this oath in his own blood, scoring the flesh under his eyes with his blades so that blood ran like tears from their corners. He would become the first Blademaster.

  “Under his direction, the province and power of the sephs

  grew like brushfire. They brought the armies of the unruly Houses under their supervision, and have remained in that capacity to this day. And when leaders vie with leaders, it is the sephs who step in to decide with their skills and their blades who get to lead, and live. Though the Houses of those days have become the Surarchies, each drawing its own sephs from the lineages within its domain, the sephs of the House will ever be the greatest. For they were the first warriors to swear allegiance—not to lineage, leader, or House—but to Oskaran .

  More than anything, the seph is sworn to our world.”

  Lorsk let the silence stretch, a moment of contemplation broken by the question that, for anyone who’d heard the tale, was inevitable. Gau surprised himself by being the one who asked it.

  “And what happened to the lineages who started the war?”

  he said. “Who killed mothers and hatchlings?”

  “Ah yes,” Lorsk said with a dark kind of satisfaction. “There was a bitter edge to this peace. The House had certain names recorded on the ledgers of injustice, and when the peace had been achieved, the House convened a trial. The leader of the new House was there. The leaders of all the Surarchies were there. The Blademaster was there. They brought before them those responsible for the Season of Wrath, as many as they could find.

  “Those who sat in justice charged the perpetrators with crimes against the people of Oskaran. They charged that their actions had brought Krenkyr to the land and damaged the balance of the world. Then the House asked the perpetrators of the war to explain their crimes.

  “The criminals were angry and frightened. They were angry because they had lost the war. They were frightened because they knew the truth of what their judges had said. Still, the wagers of war argued and blustered. They claimed that all they’d done, they’d done for the benefit of their lineages.

  ‘If this were a crueler age, the names of your lineages would be poisoned,’ said the first Blademaster. ‘They would be purged from the record for having hatched such as you. But this is not that age. The covenant of peace forbids us from doing as you have done, punishing an entire lineage for the crimes of a few.

  As I am bloodsworn to uphold the terms of this covenant, I advise this council to spare your lineages as you did not spare mine. But the House can still punish each of you.’

  “One by one, the names of the criminals were purged from the records of their lineages. The judges seared them off the hardwood records with a flaming brand. For their crimes against Oskaran, the traitors were branded Bladeless: those who have no blades and no lineages, who are no longer recognized as Osk. So ruled the judges of the House of Oskaran.

  “It was the sephs who did the killing. In the courtyard outside the hall of judgment, the seneschals of the new House built a huge fire, feeding it softwood until the flames roared like a vulis in heat. The sephs grouped the condemned around this fire—and behold, the sephs and the criminals numbered the same!”

  “How can that be so?” Herask spoke this time, doing a good job of sounding surprised even though he, like them all, had heard this many times.

  “It was fate,” Lorsk said. “And they treated it as fate. Each seph took one of the criminals in hand. At the Blademaster’s signal, the sephs wrenched the blades off each and every criminal and fed them to the fire as they forced their owners to watch. When they judged that the blades had burned to ash, the sephs cut the throats of the Bladeless and gave their bodies to the flames.

  “‘They became traitors, who once were Osk,’ pronounced the new Monarch, leader of the House that leads all. ‘Too dangerous to wield their blades or their lives as the rest of the Osk are fated to do, they who have damaged the balance of the world. We consign them to the fires of Krenkyr. The peace of Oskaran is preserved.’”

  As the last words of Lorsk’s telling ended, the gathering was quiet in the moment of contemplation the story demanded.

  “A brutal peace,” Herask said at last into the hush. “Even if it all happened long ago.”

  “Not so long,” Lorsk said. “And brutal perhaps, but we know the alternative.” Quick snout jabs answered this; it wasn’t so long ago that the White Arrows had reminded them of the alternative.

  Just then the buzzer on the door gave three short tones. It had been rewired into a jury-rigged sentry system, and one of those on perimeter guard duty had just signaled the arrival of full dark.

  The air flooded with expectant rust and rainwater scents, metallic as spilt blood. Gau’s skin prickled from the shoulders down under his cloak as he rose to his feet along with Kevret and the other members of the assault team. Lorsk took them in with a glance and grinned. “It’s time.”

  The White Arrow branch in Florisal District was sandwiched between a shuttered electronics wholesaler and a store that installed synthetic floor coverings. From Gau’s vantage, crouched on the gravel of a rooftop across the avenue, its vault-ed, gilt-edged façade looked like a child’s exaggerated drawing of a surface-to-orbit shuttle—all swept-back triangular wings with no space for the engines or crew quarters.

  Lorsk had chosen this base because of its location and size: situated on the outer edge of Florisal just inside the red barrier of the Thicket, the base’s semi-industrial real estate was humble while being firmly on the Terran side of the city—not an outpost like the branches in Los Gatos or Tarbreak. Those bases were entirely too close to the Djandjer-Pralsh’s home. There was something to be said, Gau thought, for not defecating where one ate.

  The base had an estimated fifteen staff, of which perhaps five would be on night shift, and a permanent garrison of thirty—not too many to contend with for the Djandjer-Pralsh’s first move in the game in twenty years. Still, against these numbers, their assault team including Gau numbered six. They would have to st
rike fast, hard, and in precisely the right spots at the right times.

  Gau tapped his vambrace to activate his shortwave communicator. “The EMP spikes are in place. They’re blind inside and out.”“Copy,” Kevret’s terse voice answered. “See you inside.” He heard the faintest pattering of five sets of boots on pavement before she cut the connection. Gau popped his head over the rooftop corner and adjusted the tiny camera he’d placed in a groove in the ledge there. Its lens was fixed on the façade. As soon as Gau saw the five other members of his team melt out of the alley below his rooftop hideaway, he started the camera recording. It was programmed to record for forty-five seconds—

  just long enough to capture the assault team’s profiles without capturing Gau’s among them. He’d volunteered to bring up the rear and watch their backs.

  Four of them held back in the shadows while Kevret approached the façade by a roundabout path that kept her out of the streetlights. She slipped into the camera’s field of view for the few seconds it took to place the sticky IEDs on the doorframe, then darted back to the alley where the rest waited.

  “Charges are go,” she said, and with a short chuckle added,

  “Close your eyes.” A few tense laughs greeted this, though Gau didn’t hear Lorsk’s among them. No doubt he disapproved of chatter over the mission band.

  But if Lorsk was irritated, it didn’t show in his voice. “On my mark,” he said, his voice clear even in a near whisper. “One—

  two—three. Now.”

  Gau’s eyes were already shut against the flash. The veins inside his eyelids lit up blue-green as a wave of heat and a sound like metal tearing pushed at him for an instant, then died. He opened his eyes again and scrambled to the rope hanging down the side of the building.

  Down below, five Osk in armor and dark cloaks surged in a wedge formation toward the ruined doors of the base. “We’re going in,” came Lorsk’s voice over the band, tight with anticipation.