by J. J. Newman
“I’m Keyes. I’m your training master. You’ll all be taught many things by many different instructors here, but I’m the main man. You understand?”
“Training for what?” a tall boy with dark brown hair asked. Keyes answered him with a heavy fist across the jaw.
“Don’t ever interrupt me again.”
Keyes gave the boy a minute to stand back up before pressing on. “You’re all about to be a part of something bigger than you can imagine. That’s all you need to know right now.”
Tsaeris wasn’t so sure that this was a thieves’ guild anymore. There was something different about this place. Something bigger. The men he had seen in the large chamber carried themselves differently than the thieves he had known. They had a kind of dignity about them, not the resigned contempt that most thieves displayed.
“At this point you’re all committed. If you try to leave, you will be killed.”
Tsaeris was baffled by the scope of this place. It seemed so big, yet he had never heard of it. He wondered if anybody ever had. How could these people have kept this secret so well?
The swing doors opened, and five men walked into the tavern. They lined up beside Keyes.
“Each recruit is assigned a mentor. The mentor will help guide you during this part of your training, and if any of you are lucky enough to reach novice they will take over your complete training then.”
There were only five men beside Keyes, and six boys. Tsaeris found that odd. At Keyes’ order, the men all chose a boy. Tsaeris was the only one not chosen, and there were no mentors left. Tsaeris frowned.
He raised his hand. Keyes nodded to him.
“Where’s my mentor?” he asked.
“Your mentor was the first one here,” he replied with a grin.
Tsaeris was confused at first, and then he cringed. No. Not him. He turned towards the bar. Elias was staring at him. Tsaeris wondered why the luck had been so cruel to him of late.
“I’ve told you all that I’m gonna for now, and you have your mentors. Stay in the tavern for the rest of the day. Eat, drink. Enjoy your free time. You won’t have much of it in the days to come.” Keyes took his own advice, and went to the bar to fetch a drink.
Tsaeris grabbed himself an ale and sat at a table by himself. He was miserable again. He was afraid of Elias. The man seemed like he would murder at the slightest provocation, and now Tsaeris was stuck with the guy. And worse yet, he was told quite clearly that if he tried to leave, he would be killed. The thrill of this place faded quickly, and Tsaeris began to feel trapped all over again. One of the boys walked up to his table.
“Mind if I sit?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” Tsaeris replied. He chided himself. He was going to be here a while, no sense making enemies. “Sorry, go ahead. Just not in a great mood right now.”
“Why not? This is pretty neat, don’t you think?” The boy sat.
“Cool? Oh yeah, this is definitely the neatest prison I’ve ever seen.” Tsaeris was bitter.
“It’s not a prison,” the boy replied.
“No? Can we leave? Can we do whatever we want?”
“Well...no.” The boy frowned.
“Sounds like a prison to me.” Tsaeris felt he had argued his point quite expertly.
“I can tell I sat at the right table.” Despite what he had just said, the boy made no move to leave.
“I’m Jarod, by the way.”
“Tsaeris.”
“What did you do before you were recruited?” Jarod asked.
“You mean before I was captured?” Tsaeris planned on sticking to his prisoner metaphor.
“Sure.”
“I was a street kid. You?”
“I didn’t do much. I worked for my father occasionally.”
“Good for you,” Tsaeris replied.
“Yeah, it was good work. I did a lot of...” Jarod stopped as Tsaeris held up a hand.
“I’m going to level with you, Jarod. I hate this place, and I’m miserable, and I honestly don’t give a shit what you used to do. I wouldn’t have even asked if I knew you were going to give me your life story.”
Jarod looked suddenly angry. “Maybe I’ll talk to you later, when you’re not such an asshole,” Jarod replied sharply. He stood up and walked away.
Don’t hold your breath, Tsaeris thought to himself.
He spent the rest of the night avoiding Elias and the other recruits. He ate a few times, and drank excessively. The other recruits eventually started sitting together and seemed to be having a good time. Tsaeris sat by himself, hating them.
He felt like he was in over his head. He had no real idea of where he was or why. One thing he was certain of was that his life was about to make a drastic change. Tsaeris was terrified of the idea.
Elias walked over to him then, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Welcome the Third Eye Initiative, boy.”
Part Two
Novice
I remember the first time I killed a man. My hand was trembling, and I was sweating profusely. The man was already beaten, and he was on his knees begging me to spare him. And the truth is I would have. But my mentor would have none of that and made sure that I finished the grim task. I wept like a baby. For the next week, I vomited every time I thought about it.
That’s the usual reaction to a first kill. But it does come easier for some. Every Third Eye Initiative Agent is required to take a life before entering the novice phase of their training. Killing is part of our dark craft, and a recruit who couldn’t take a life would make a useless agent. A novice works in the field with their mentor, learning the work hands on. That’s why the first kill is a perquisite. If you couldn’t kill in the controlled setting of the safe house, then you would never be able to perform in the streets.
Tsaeris, I’m told, approached his first kill impressively, and disturbingly. When informed of his trial, he slashed the man’s throat with a steady hand, seemingly unaffected by the enormity of what he had just done. Some saw that as a sign of a greatness to come, an agent who did as ordered without the inconvenience of a conscience weighing him down. But others saw it as a sign of madness or brutality. They saw it as a warning that dark deeds were in Tsaeris’ future, and that a conscience was not a burden. It was a leash.
Did Tsaeris lack that leash? Would he become a monster? Or had his hard life just prepared him perfectly for the work ahead? The answer, as it turned out, would lie somewhere in between.
--Excerpt from “The Sydarin Chronicles” by James Sydarin
Chapter Eleven
Message Received
There was no moon this night. The small illumination cast by the streetlight torches seemed symbolic only, as they did little to banish the all-consuming darkness. The streets were empty of workers, merchants and their customers. The night did not belong to them. Human monsters roamed silently from shadow to shadow. The day folk were content to leave the streets to them. Better they prey on each other. Even The City Watch avoided the streets at night, unless they were many and forced by their profession to enter the often lethal shadows.
The man ran. The sound of his labored breath and the clicking of his boots on the stone seemed almost profane in the absolute silence. He knew better than to be in the streets alone on a night as dark as this. He had been forced from his home. Fighting had seemed futile. Running was his only chance.
He passed from alleyway to street and back to the alley again. He heard no pursuit, but he ran anyway. He ran until his legs hurt and his chest burned. He was not a young man, and his stamina was quickly depleting.
He had to stop. He took several large swallows of air, and stared into the darkness of the alley around him. He looked for irregularities in the shadows, trying to determine if the alley was empty. He slowly and quietly walked the length several times before convincing himself that he was safe. Satisfied, he sat against a wall halfway down the length of the alley, as far as he could from both street entrances. He could see faint torchlight c
oming from the openings and knew he could tell if anyone entered the alley.
He waited. A long time passed. He had moved swiftly, and it was clear he had shaken his pursuers. As soon as the sun came up he would make for the Neutral Roads and be far away from Market.
It was a cold night, and winter was rapidly approaching. He wished he had his cloak with him, or even a blanket. His sleeping smock and pants did little to keep the biting wind from his skin, and the heat generated by his long run was quickly disappearing. His sweat was turning cold and he shivered uncontrollably.
He rubbed his chest and arms to try to keep warm, all the while watching the darkness around him for signs of movement. His thoughts kept drifting back to his house and his soft bed with its thick warm blankets. He began to sob softly.
He stared into the darkness. He had been watching the entire time, never taking his gaze from the shadows. He had been so careful, yet there they were. He stared in terrified awe as a group of silhouettes separated themselves from the rest of the darkness. One moment he had been alone, the next he was surrounded by a half-circle of shadowy figures. They had made no sound and he had not seen them enter. He wondered when it had happened. Perhaps they had been there the whole time.
A rough hand gripped his upper arm and pulled him to his feet. He trembled in fear and warm urine ran down the length of his leg. He had no fight in him. What was the point? The shadows formed a box around him and lead him away from his hiding spot. He hoped it was warm where they were going.
***
Elias stood over the man in the chair, holding his head back by the hair. He let go and the head slumped forward limply. Elias straightened and removed a towel from the table to the right of the man. He wiped the blood from his hands.
The table was a macabre testament to what had happened to the man in the chair. Long flaps of skin, fingers and teeth sat in tiny puddles of blood on the iron tray among a variety of knives and small hammers.
Tsaeris watched from the corner of the room, leaning casually against the wall. He was sixteen years old now, and he looked closer to the man he would become than the child he had left behind. He was still short, though, less than five and a half feet and showed no sign of growing any taller. He wore a dark green tunic and brown pants. His brown cloak sat on the floor beside him. His missing right eye was covered by his usual dark green dress scarf.
“He came clean right away. Why did you keep it going so long?’ Tsaeris asked, more out of curiosity than concern.
“To send a message,” Elias replied.
“I think he stopped paying attention when he died.”
“The message wasn’t for him.” Elias was wiping off his tools and replacing them in a small leather bag. “Tell the others that they can leave.”
Tsaeris opened the door to the room and dismissed the agents keeping watch outside. They had brought the man back to his house shortly after he had run off into the night. Elias had spent a good hour working on him.
The mutilated corpse in the chair had once been a contact for the Initiate who had decided that he could make a bit of coin by selling some seemingly harmless information about the order to various underground organizations. When Elias found out about it, it didn’t matter that the secrets being sold were small and harmless. You did not sell out the Initiative. Ever. That was the message that they were sending this night.
During his three years of training, Tsaeris had learned one thing above all others. The Initiative was paramount. The agents were disposable. Loyalty was not just taught, but demanded. Even the smallest breach in loyalty was punished harshly. This applied to anyone associated with the Initiative, not just agents.
Elias approached Tsaeris and looked him in the eye. “Are you alright?”
Tsaeris shrugged. He had never seen a man tortured before. He had only just begun the novice phase of his training a month before. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. “Yeah, I’m good. He had it coming, right?”
Elias stared at him hard, and nodded. Tsaeris had the feeling that the message had been for him as well. How better to secure his loyalty than to show him first hand the consequence of betrayal? Hearing about it was one thing, but seeing it was something else entirely.
When not working on a mission with Elias, Tsaeris spent most of his time in a tavern called The Tarnished Tankard, one of the many taverns operated by The Third Eye Initiative. Though not strictly forbidden, agents were encouraged not to spend their down time in regular taverns. The reason for this was that drinking sometimes created a loose tongue, and there were no safer places for a loose tongue than an Initiative-owned tavern. Several carefully cultivated nasty rumors kept most of the non-agents away. A batch of bad booze and food and a room full of glaring, dangerous-looking men kept the rest away. The Tarnished Tankard had good food, booze and whores for Initiative clients. There was no real need to go anywhere else.
Yet from time to time, Tsaeris found himself drifting to different venues, particularly the brothel where Cyra worked. He was willing to endure the frowns and judgmental gazes for the occasional time away from his peers.
Tsaeris and Elias entered The Tarnished Tankard. It was late, nearly morning, but the place was packed full of agents winding down from their various missions. Men and women sat at the tables, some drinking and playing dice, others just staring into nothingness with a tankard in hand. Tsaeris observed that you could often tell how an agent’s night had gone by the way they interacted in the tavern.
There were no empty tables, but that didn’t stop Elias. He stood before a table occupied by two men. All it took was a look, and Tsaeris and Elias were quickly seated in the now vacant chairs. A barmaid came to ask their drink order and returned with two tankards of dark dwarven ale.
“You did good tonight,” Elias said, then took a long pull of his ale.
“Thanks. I didn’t really do much though.”
“You kept quiet and unseen with the rest of us. You didn’t give us away, and you weren’t a liability. Not bad for a novice.”
“I’ve been sneaking since I was a kid,” Tsaeris replied.
“Just take the bloody compliment so we can move on.”
Elias sounded annoyed. Tsaeris thought it best to accept his advice. “Alright. Thanks.”
When he had first become a novice the month before, Tsaeris had found these sit downs with Elias unnerving. Every day after they completed a job they would come to the tavern to talk. Tsaeris could ask questions then, and would often receive critiques of his performance. For the first two weeks Tsaeris barely talked. He found the older man’s calm and cold nature intimidating. Everything Elias did or said was tinged with a hint of danger. He was also a haunted man, though haunted by what, Tsaeris couldn’t say.
He had grown used to the man’s nature, however. Behind the dark walls the man had erected around himself, was an intelligent and profound mind. Tsaeris hung on his every word and action, as he knew neither was ever wasted or inconsequential. Though most of his pre-novice training did not involve Elias himself, Tsaeris felt that everything important he had learned had been from this man.
Tsaeris still didn’t understand what this was all about. The Third Eye Initiative was still a mystery to him and he did what he was told without question. At this stage of training he was not entitled to the larger answers. He was expected to obey. He had heard agents occasionally refer to the ‘purpose’ but they never elaborated.
If he was honest with himself, he would admit that as things stood he didn’t really care what it was all about. After spending so much time as a helpless street kid, he found himself enjoying the power that the Initiative afforded him. People who would have once left him naked and mutilated in a ditch no longer instilled fear in him. He was more dangerous than they had ever been. He liked that. It was enough for now. The answers could wait until later.
Tsaeris and Elias sat quietly drinking their ales. Neither seemed in the mood to engage the other in conversation. Tsaeris guessed that Elias was re
flecting on what he had done that night. Tsaeris was content to keep the silence. If Elias didn’t say anything, then he must not have screwed up too badly tonight.
Tsaeris began to idly finger the dice in his pocket. He looked longingly at the dice games at the various tables, and wondered if Elias would let him go play. Probably not, he decided. Elias considered these post-mission meetings to be part of the job, not down time. He amused himself by trying to spot which dice were shaved and which were honest at a table to his right. He almost chuckled when he realized that they were all shaved.
Most people wouldn’t be able to spot the difference, but Tsaeris was talented when it came to geometry and mathematics. He enjoyed the structure and often looked upon a math equation as a puzzle to be solved. A game. He was also fascinated by chemistry and engineering in general, and spent much of his off time studying both and learning from experts who were part of the Initiative.
“There is one thing that I need to bring up,” Elias said, breaking the silence. Tsaeris almost laughed. It couldn’t be that big a deal if it took him this long to come up with it. The man couldn’t let Tsaeris get away with a perfect night, he supposed.
“Oh?” Tsaeris replied.
“You didn’t bring your sword,” Elias accused.
“That’s it? Really? So what?”
“On jobs like this you should be armed.”
“I was armed. And come on, Elias. I barely use the bloody thing. Light knows I’m not very good with it.”
“It doesn’t matter, boy. One day you might find that you need it, and not having it will probably mean that you’re dead.” Elias and Tsaeris had argued about this before. Tsaeris decided to concede, as he always did.
“Alright. I’ll bring it next time.”
“Do you at least remember where you left it this time?” Elias asked.
“It’s in my room here at the Tankard.” The sword in question was a short sword, barely longer than a dagger. Tsaeris didn’t like to have the extra weight, so he would often leave it behind on missions where he didn’t expect any combat, which was almost all of them.