“There’s always a way around things,” Slate said. “I might just kill him and say to hell with the rest of it. There’s another antidote out there for Teach.”
Isaac sneezed again, turned his face to wipe with his forearm. He hadn’t said anything since they’d first entered the room, didn’t seem to be planning on saying much in the future. Something is behind those dark eyes.
Alocar turned to face Slate, poker resting on his shoulder. “He has my family.”
“Not my responsibility.”
“I doubt you know the meaning of the word.”
“It’s the delusion of little people trying to give their lives meaning.” Slate chuckled. “Best of luck with that.”
Alocar leveled the poker at Teacher. “He’s yours?”
Slate unwound from the chair and his voice dropped to an ugly whisper. “Move that away from him.”
“If he’s yours, then he’s your responsibility, same as my family is mine. You should understand.”
“I said,” Slate grabbed, twisted the poker from Alocar’s hands, and heaved it point-first against the far wall, where it hung suspended for a split second before it fell to the ground, “to move the fucking thing.”
“Enough!” Crymson pushed between the two men. “Find a man whose face you’ve never seen? Mix an antidote to an unknown poison? It’s ludicrous.”
Alocar turned his back to the group. “There are a million rat holes he could have hidden my family in, if they’re even in Dradenhurst.”
Why do I always get saddled with the inept? “If Angras went through all this trouble, then they’re almost surely alive, somewhere.”
Another sneeze. Blood trickled from Isaac’s nose this time, thick and sludgy. He had the pallor of a miner without any of the accompanying muscle, and the way his eyes darted made Crymson think of a mouse in a wire cage.
Surprisingly, he spoke, his eyes on Alocar. “If you go, I’ll go. I can’t go back underground.”
“Underground?” Slate asked. “What are you, a convict?”
Isaac blushed and looked away.
Slate barked a laugh and Isaac turned a deeper red. “Is this a joke? A convict against the king – sounds like bad theater.”
Nothing remained of the portrait but the high cheekbones of the girl who’d once graced it. “What about you?” Alocar asked.
“I was the first to commit.” Crymson sipped her drink. Least it isn’t that damned Kreshnian brandy.
A sneer painted Slate’s face. “Pathetic. A man threatens and you all immediately cave and bow to his commands. What kind of person does that make you?”
“One who cares for his family,” said Alocar, lines crinkling his forehead like the ridges of a seashell.
Slate looked at Teacher, who was watching the proceedings with a smile, oblivious to the poison coursing through his system. “I should just kill Angras.”
“You’ll doom us all, not to mention your friend.” Although he’s probably dead already.
Hand on Teacher’s shoulder, Slate squeezed. “If I go, Angras is mine.”
“You’ll have to beat me to him,” Alocar said quietly.
Slate shrugged, packing all the apathy of the world into one motion. “If I’m going to even consider letting you fools ride along with me, then I’m going to need some convincing, preferably in a place that doesn’t serve poisoned drinks.”
“Brewmaster’s?” Crymson traced the rim of her empty glass.
“I’d rather drink the poison. That place is uppity as fuck. Why not the Queen’s Ransom?”
“Because I don’t fancy a knife in the dark. What’s the problem, can’t handle a bit of class?” Crymson nodded pointedly toward the now pictureless portrait.
“I’d put the noose around my own neck before I let it be thought that I have class,” Slate said, “but I should probably steer clear of Queen’s for a while anyway, so Brewmaster’s it is. Six o’clock.”
Nobody disagreed.
Slate continued, “Just so you know, working together doesn’t mean we’re a team; it’s cooperation by necessity, so don’t try and get cozy.”
“Who’d want to get close to you?” Crymson asked.
“I know a woman down the way who might can stand it. Come on, Teach.” Slate grabbed the big man’s wrist and pulled him out the door.
“Where is Brewmaster’s?” Isaac directed his question at Alocar.
The fire popped, and a smoldering log rolled within inches of the flooring.
Alocar looked up, seemingly so lost in thought that the words had just registered. “What? Oh. Errrm. Five streets north of here, take a right, and it’s the third door on your left.”
“Thank you.” He stood there a few seconds, but Alocar didn’t reply. Head bowed, Isaac turned and left the room.
Crymson watched Alocar smooth back his eyebrows, contemplate his hands. Does he even notice I’m here? Out of all them, he seemed to have the most trouble coping with the suddenness of the situation, and as such, he’d need the most work if Crymson intended to have her reward.
Minutes passed. “We don’t have much choice in the matter,” she said.
Alocar stood and kicked the chair into the fire, its flames leaping onto its upholstered surface and crawling across the floor, eating the other chairs alive in its search for prey. “We always have a choice.”
He walked out the door. Crymson stayed, watching the flames climb higher and higher, the brightness reminding her of nothing more than the lights at Beatty’s her first night, like the sun had fallen to earth, scouring away an urchin’s encroaching darkness as if it’d never existed. She left.
Miles behind, the Giles residence collapsed in flames.
Angras
Let me out.
“You think they can do it?”
Who? The old man and the convict? The priestess and the mercenary? You should have let me choose.
“I think not.” I removed the mask, infusing my crippled soul with strength. “I chose them for a reason.”
Or you chose them because they’re all failures at life, and so when they fail, you can lay the blame on them, preordained to take the fall.
“You’re wrong.” A man in a brown coat squinted at me. Hurried by. “They all know loss, so they’re all strong.”
You rationalize. They’re weak, just like you would be if it weren’t for me.
“You need me more than I need you.”
Will you follow through with your threats when they fail?
I pondered my answer. Alocar’s granddaughter. So small, so scared. Her father enraged. Her mother sad. I’d tried to explain, but they couldn’t see past their predicament. Why couldn’t they understand that this was the only way? Why couldn’t they understand that I’m forced to do these things? If I didn’t, then who would? Blame the world, not me.
Finally, I said, “They won’t fail.”
In the end, you’ll hurt all of them.
“I will not. They’re collateral, that’s all. I would never kill another man’s family.”
You’ll follow through with your threats. You must, or nobody will take you seriously.
“I don’t have to do anything.”
You’re fooling only yourself.
“I said shuttup!” A mother and her daughter turned. The child’s eyes wide, her mouth open. What was wrong with her? Was it me? I touched my face, but felt only smooth skin. It must be her.
Let me out.
Isaac
Five o’clock found Isaac against the back wall of Brewmaster’s, surrounded by Dradenhurst’s most proficient artisans and its mildly successful merchants. He’d slept in a narrow, refuse-encrusted nook last night, complete with a wild-haired man spitting curses at him from a nearby alley. After washing his face with water cupped from a brackish puddle, Isaac had wandered the city’s well-to-do sections, trying to be a real person in a real society instead of a creature chained beneath the earth. Linken had given him money enough for food, and so Isaac had arrived e
arly to the group’s meeting place, using the bar to aid his reacclimation process.
A few coins to the keep’s hands allowed him to keep his table open. It was quitting time for many, and the room was soon filled. Walls sealed from chill drafts, a cleanly swept floor, drinks without films on their surfaces; how could it get better? He nursed a single beer, occasional sips taken more for a change of pace than from any real desire.
The mug, oaken and carved with care, kissed the table, a thing crisscrossed with innumerable rings from the mugs of years past, each ring overlapping another. Isaac stared at the new ring, a stark, damp outline against the endless dried ones. It was so new as to look almost alone, darker and yet somehow deeper, wise as only the young can presume to be.
He could have disappeared into the night, into the city, the country, wherever would have him. But tempting though it was, the idea didn’t warrant serious consideration. Even the threat of a place worse than Whispers threatened his link to reality, and he’d be nothing but an easily snuffed light in the dark if he bolted.
But still, parts of Angras’s speech resonated with him. What if he had the occasion to become one of those people on high, to have no masters, never to return to Whispers . . . the idea terrified him, but so too did it give him something to hope for.
Beneath the table, he snapped, and a bright flame sparked to life on his forefinger before it disappeared. He looked around the room. Snap. The flame tickled his open palm. Snap. Gone, like it had never been.
He looked out the door to the setting sun, barely visible above the high rooftops of Dradenhurst’s market. Its distant rays warmed his skin, relaxing him.
“That’s the law of the world,” said Isaac’s mentor, his black coat dead-still despite the wind. “You do – ”
Isaac barged into him, knocking his mentor backward and to the ground. A horse and wagon charged past, the driver screaming obscenities and cracking the reins, packaged sweets tumbling from its bed and into the street.
His mentor stood and embraced Isaac. “Twice in two months! How’d I get to be this old without you?”
His voice muffled so close to his mentor’s coat, Isaac said, “It’s what anybody would have done.”
A push back to arm’s reach. A searching of Isaac’s eyes. “Everybody? No, son, not even close. Most would have let me be run down, too afraid for their own skin.”
“Does that mean I’m wrong?”
“No!” His mentor shook him. “Never change. Never.”
Snap. Would it have been better if he had lost it permanently? Magic, thanks to the Cao Fen’s hate-filled tirades, was a dying breed, and thus, so was Isaac and the other Blessed. Unless something changed, a few more generations would see the end of magic and people would be left to toil with nothing but their hands and minds. Part of him wondered how it would have been to live as one of them.
He’d been a Blessed since birth, but cut off from the source of his magic the last five years, he’d grown accustomed to a life of normalcy. The first year in Whispers, he had thought that the slow starvation of his magic would drive him to put stiffened fingers through his eyes. It was like a man losing his legs, unable to do the things he’d once understood as natural. By the third year, however, he’d learned to live without it, and by the fifth year, Isaac barely noticed its desertion.
But now, released of Whispers, Isaac could again lay claim to his birthright. Snap. Not that magic made things easier. If anything, it made life more difficult. A life of secrets was the least of it. Snap. He shook his hands and placed them on the table, where they wrapped around the mug, which he brought to his chest. This was not the time to fall back into old habits, if not for his sanity, then for those around him.
The sun had fallen beneath Dradenhurst’s shortest building by the time the first of the group arrived. Crymson entered at a quarter until six and headed to his table. Not quite the picture of beauty, her nose a touch too bold, she was striking, her dusky skin absorbing the light of the lanterns.
He managed a small wave before returning his hand to the shelter of the mug’s handle. She had changed out of her blue dress into something with an identical cut, but brown and made of tougher material. Men’s eyes stalked her, but she shoved past them.
She sat two seats from Isaac. His eyes wandered over her facial features, and she caught his look. A small curve of her lips, and a look out to the crowd. Two serving girls approached, but Crymson waved them off without a word.
They didn’t have long to wait. Promptly at six, the door opened again, and Alocar walked inside. He stopped in the entrance and surveyed the bar, his head moving like intervals on a clock. Apparently satisfied, he moved to their table, his steps long and even. He pulled out the chair between Crymson and Isaac and lowered himself into it. A nod to each of them and then he crossed his hands on the table, his face cast from stone.
“Slate isn’t here yet?” Alocar appeared to be caught between frustration and relieved expectancy.
Isaac shook his head.
“We said six, so let’s get started.”
Alocar attempted to continue, but Crymson cut him off. “Wait. He’ll be here.”
“I don’t think so,” Alocar said.
The silence returned. Thirty minutes passed before the door admitted the last of their group. The pommel of a sword stuck out from behind Slate’s back, and to his side stood the giant, whose frame dwarfed every man in the room. Slate caught the table’s eyes and smirked, his flawless teeth shining. He smacked a server on the butt and said something to her, and then made his way to their table. Isaac felt his hands shake.
“Looks like the gang’s all here, then,” said Slate, his hands on his hips, standing over the table. “Have we gotten the pleasantries and bullshit out the way or should I come back later?”
“Right on time,” said Alocar, giving Crymson a nod of recognition. “Take a seat.” Slate’s giant friend scraped a fingernail through the table’s wood, digging divots until he hit the edge, and then restarting.
“Now that everybody is here,” Crymson eyed Slate, “we know Angras brought us together for a reason. If he believes in this cause as strongly as he says, then he wants the best on his side, so we need to find out why he chose us.”
“Brilliantly observed,” Slate said.
“Have you considered the fact that we don’t give a damn if you join us?” Alocar’s lip curled. “Important things are at stake, and if you aren’t willing to try and help for the good of all, then it won’t hurt my feelings one bit to see you walk out that door.”
“Didn’t say I wasn’t going to help, just saying that I won’t be doing it for you.”
Alocar squeezed shut his eyes and slowly exhaled. “I at least have an idea as to why I’m here. I was once the Commanding General in His Majesty King Rone’s Royal Forces. I’ve seen more fighting and learned more about tactics in my life than any man in Prolifia. If it’s a mission against the crown he’s sending us on, he couldn’t have chosen much better.”
“From the War of Unity?” Isaac asked.
“One in the same.”
Slate snorted. “And what, pray tell, have you been up to since the Royal Force’s demise, Old Man?”
Alocar squared his shoulders. “Retired. I did my duty and united Prolifia under King Rone, but once King Olen took over and decided that he’d rather employ mercenaries than a standing army, I took my leave. Been staying busy ever since.”
“Key word there is ‘retired,’ I think,” Crymson said. “You’ve been out of real world for a while.”
“Maybe should have stayed that way.” Slate’s face, beautiful on the outside, was set in a sneer.
Alocar replied with the patience born of experience. “We all have our strengths and weaknesses. No more would I think to teach your large friend to wrestle or you to fight,” he looked at Slate’s broadsword, “so too should you recognize my abilities. I’ve led men my entire life, both on and off the field, and will continue to do so. If you have any
problems with that,” he blinked once, slowly, “speak now. Otherwise, until the day I grow unfit to lead, lead I will.”
The two men locked gazes. Isaac held his breath. Neither relinquished. Maybe Slate was tamer than he appeared, but his bared teeth looked anything other than a smile, and the instincts Isaac had honed in Whispers shrieked at him to turn and run.
“Lead all you want, Old Man, just don’t be surprised when you turn and find nobody behind you.”
Alocar nodded to Crymson. “What’s your story?”
She looked around the table, meeting each of their eyes. Isaac only held hers for a second before he looked away. “I’ve been with the Cao Fen since I was a child. Like all the women in the Cao Fen, I’ve been trained in a variety of combat styles, and I know more about espionage than most, although I’m still learning.”
“What happened?” Isaac alarmed himself with the question, but maybe it was just the part of him that identified with the pain in other people’s lives.
Crymson glanced over at him, running her hands down her dress. “It was politically oriented. I vied for a position and I failed, thanks to the Cao Fen’s hierarchy.”
“Or ineptitude,” said Slate, tracing the divots created by Teacher’s nails. Crymson glared at him but didn’t respond.
He looked up, “Guess it’s my turn. We’re mercenaries – real ones, mind you, not one of those simpletons that signs on with big companies and leaches off their momentum until a sword creases their skulls. Teach and I, we’ve been, ah,” he cast an eye on his companion, “traveling together for a few years now. I’m assuming our man wanted me on for my boyishly good charm and my way with females, but I’m sure our ‘cause’ would benefit from my weapons and fighting knowledge in a pinch, because I can outfight any man in this bar, and with Teach at my back, we can take on an army, no problem.”
“Outfight any man in this bar, maybe,” Crymson said.
“That’s right,” said Slate, his eyes on her. “Or woman. How about you, runt? You bringing anything to the table?”
Fallen Victors Page 8