by EF Joyce
Drexel's brigade circled around the building and into a bleak yard of stamped dirt enclosed with a razor wire fence. His commander led them though the gate and they stood in a perfect row, fifty men wearing gas masks with rifles strapped across their shoulders. They waited. The only sound inside the stale mask was his own breathing, and he listened as it quickened to near panic.
Calm, steady, sure. He poured his own magic into himself, forcing his vitals to slow. He'd never used his magic in front of the other guards – if they discovered him, he would find himself on the opposite side of this yard, awaiting the fate he was about to deliver, or so they said. Report any suspected magic use or strange activity to your local guard immediately, the teloscreens were always repeating, promising rewards for those who gave up magic users. Cursed, tainted, that was what they called people like him.
A wild thought flashed through him; he could use magic to free all the rebels and together they would take on the Guard, and then Arcadia itself...the idea burned out as quickly as it came. He was not nearly so powerful, and even if he was, the rebellion wanted these people dead. Why? Were they traitors? Or did the Monarch just want to send a message?
Drexel had been a member of the elusive Monarch Rebellion for nearly four years now. Before he'd been told to masquerade as a guard, he'd even lived in the base with Damien, the rebellion's pseudo-leader, the mouthpiece of the Monarch. If Damien hadn't been so young, Drexel would have been willing to be that he was the Monarch, creating a false identity to protect himself. But the rebellion had been flourishing for more than a decade; Damien would have been a small child during its conception.
None of the other elite members knew who the leader was, only that he possessed great resources and provided the rebellion with top of the line weapons and detailed, seemingly random orders that never made sense until after they'd been carried out. So the Monarch was a rich genius, an Arcadian with connections. But was he a man who truly cared for the people of The Unders, or just making war out of boredom?
With Drexel's magic and personal vendetta against Arcadian soldiers, he had risen quickly through their ranks, but even he did not know the grand plan, the final blow that would Arcadia to its knees before them. Drexel just had to believe in the mysterious Monarch and in the ranks of rebels, unable to suffer one more moment under Arcadia's heel.
They didn't wait long before the prisoners were paraded out, bound, gagged and clad in the rags they'd been captured in and without masks, since they would not need them. The fifty rebels were lined up opposite the fifty guards. Ten feet across the yard from Drexel stood a young man, in his twenties maybe, Drexel's own age. He seemed in good shape for an Underling; not skinny or emaciated, hair messy and smeared with dirt but trimmed, skin free of lesions. He stared Drexel down, burning him with his unwavering look, unafraid of death. The others' eyes bulged at the sight of them, guns at the ready. They began to panic, shaking their heads and thrashing on the ground.
Drexel could hardly bear watching them, begging silently to spare them, hoping desperately that death would not come for them that day. He wished Damien had told him what he was doing there, executing members of the rebellion – his own group, his own people. But the Monarch knew what he was doing. He had never disappointed them before.
A single horn sounded – their cue to raise their rifles. Drexel followed suit, not a whisper of hesitation in his movements. Beads of sweat slid between his shoulder blades, tickling his spine. His breathing grew louder inside the hot mask. Another horn blast. Aim. He did and the prisoner, his victim, burned him from the inside out with those eyes, leveled straight at him, staring right into the face of death without fear, doubt or regret; waiting, wanting, daring him to do it. The gun was heavy, his finger slick on the trigger.
The rebel's eyes held a promise; perhaps Drexel occupied the gun and the power today, but there would be retribution, vengeance. Trapped by the dead man's stare, he felt the vow like a weight, a certainty that worse awaited him. Or perhaps the rebel's face was nothing more than that of a scared man facing death, a blank canvas on which Drexel painted his own doubts and terrors. He had never killed anyone before.
The third blast. Fire. He pulled the trigger back in unison with his brigade, I'm sorry, he pulled it again, the rifle jumping in his hands, the rebel's head snapping sharply backward. I will make sure your death has meaning, again, but I have no choice now, not if we want to win. The gun smoke wafted up in blue wisps, mingling with the poison fog. Drexel strapped the rifle on his back once more, its grim task complete, and tried not to stare at the bodies, riddled with dark holes, leaking red onto the dirt.
Their commander led them back through the ruins, toward the barracks to return their weapons, scan their pay into their wrist chips and then set them free for the day. Most the men were quiet, filled with the subtle horror of delivering death, or at least that's what Drexel decided they were thinking, since those were his own musings.
Death lived there, in The Unders, exhaling poisoned air, crawling down the walls and across the floor, blossoming on infected skin, bleeding through blind eyes, always reaching, reaching. Drexel felt its presence heavy on him, the weight of it; suffocation. It was everywhere, and now it lived inside of him as well. He was an agent of death; he'd brought it further into this world with his own hands. But for a greater purpose, always.
Arcadia will pay.
II
Late that night he lay straight on his cot, eyes staring blindly into darkness. The sounds of snores, heaviness of sweat and scent of whiskey breath mingled through the stale air. Eyes open or shut, Drexel saw the young man over and over, his dirty hair and dark coal eyes, the promise, his head snapping backward with sudden mortality. The man who had looked into the face of death and had seen Drexel – except no, not really. He had seen just another mask, green plastic and smeared glass bug eyes. But Drexel had seen him, could still feel the weight of the gun in his hands, the jolting kick when he'd fired, death singing through his veins.
His orders had said to wait until nightfall, shortly after the others had fallen asleep, and then sneak to the door and let in the rebellion. Groping in the gloom, he pulled on his jumpsuit and boots, dressing by touch in the windowless dorm room. After six months of living as a guard, Drexel was thrilled this mission was over. Eager to escape that coffin filled with desperate men, grasping at life in The Unders, much like reaching for the light of the toxic vapor-masked sun, their stink and heat and apathy suffocating him, he slipped out of the room.
Unseen, hidden, invisible, the magic tingled through him like a mild shock, goose bumps pebbling on his skin. Drexel slipped through the black halls by memory, past the night guard and out the double airlock doors without notice. He was not truly invisible, such magic was impossible as far as he knew. Illusion was all he had and when he was charmed as he was now, eyes would slide right over him, seeing without knowing they saw.
The silence folded around him like a blanket, an eternal, empty, vast thing that had a way of making him feel insignificant. Nothing living roamed the ruins of Arzu or the surrounding waste; no bugs, rats, or animals of any kind to scuttle creepily through the rubbish that casually lined the shattered streets. His existence narrowed to the ragged, exaggerated sounds of his breath through the mask and the pinprick of his flashlight floating nebulously ahead of him, these small circles of the world all that remained.
Around the corner, one block away, Damien waited with twenty other rebels. Nodding at Drexel, they returned to where he'd come from, entering the barracks with one press of Drexel's thumbprint. With another nod from Damien, Drexel used his magic again to silence their steps. This had been his last instruction; whatever came next was all up to Damien, or the Monarch. He motioned for them to spread out, and the twenty men instantly split into ten groups of two and dispersed, knowing their orders already.
Drexel was left with Damien, who handed him a silenced handgun. They moved among the darkness and shadows, inching quietly toward the dorm
room where Drexel had spent the last six months. The weapon grew heavier in his hand as Damien nudged the door open with his shoulder, leading with the gun. A knot formed in his stomach, heavy and sour. He had already killed that day. For the first time in life he had taken someone else's and he couldn't bear to do it again, not like this.
Do you want to win, Drexel? Or do you want Arcadia to take everything, forever? They will keep killing. They will never stop. You have to stop them. Damien's words six months ago, cryptic to his ears, now deciphered. Without hesitation, Damien shot four of the seven men asleep in their bunks, and then turned his bug-eyed gas masked face to Drexel expectantly.
Your turn.
He looked at Damien, pleading. I can't, I can't, I can't. He knew these men. They weren't the best, but they deserved better than a bullet in the dark, no chance to fight back, to think their last thoughts, to even realize these were their last thoughts. Damien crossed his arms over his chest, waiting, silently reprimanding. They would stand there until Drexel killed or doomed them. He looked down at the gun, a blacker shadow in the black night, heavy and deadly and slick with his sweat.
I'm waiting, Damien's silence said. Then a loud crash from down the hall and a pained cry. Acting instantly, Damien shot the remaining three guards (skipping over the empty bunk which have previously held Drexel) and rushed out toward the noise. He practically cried with relief as he followed his leader, freed from the weight of murder, then felt immediate shame. What if another rebel had been caught, had been killed? Something they could have prevented if not for Drexel's hesitation?
They raced through the darkness, following the echo of the cry. Three men kneeled over a fourth, one of theirs, bleeding black blood in the darkness. A guard lay nearby, a dark hole through his forehead. Slowly, the remaining rebels emerged from the shadows, their tasks complete. No one lived to hear the shout or the struggle – all forty-nine guards were dead (Drexel had been the fiftieth). Damien ordered three of them to carry the wounded man back to the base. The eighteen left carried on, through the tunnel and into Brigade 34, opened once again by Drexel's print.
Guard the exit, Damien signed to him in the hand language of the Unders, necessary for communication in a place where they almost always wore masks. Drexel sighed with relief, pressing himself against the tunnel opening, gun in hand. This, he could do. Though he'd never been in a gun fight, stopping someone who'd attacked him was a lot easier to swallow than shooting a man in his sleep.
Drexel waited, skin crawling, desperate to be finished with this mission and hoping, however grimly, that his fellow rebels would be as quick with Brigade 34 as they had been with 153. He should have known better.
34 was made of soldiers, not guards. Arcadians, not Underlings. Only two minutes passed with Drexel waiting in the dark before the unearthly, magical silence was shattered with screams.
Chapter 7
I
The sun refracted from the gray sea like a thousand tiny mirrors, blinding Anaka if she stared too long. For once it wasn't raining, and she stood on the stone balcony off her bedroom, her arms resting on the sun warmed railing. A set of arms wrapped around her from behind and she leaned against her lover, briefly wondering what would become of him once Alaric Eide owned the world. Surely he would get nothing more than he deserved.
"Your own daughter has allied herself against you," Anaka said, replaying the meeting with the queen in her mind.
"That does not matter. She can do nothing to me."
"No? She can refuse to conquer Dalga with the Sphere's power."
"We have a large enough army. We can conquer without her magic."
"And if we fail?" she asked, turning to face him, his black eyes unreadable. "As long as Dalga holds Tibre, they have the upper hand." A hand she'd made sure to deal. "Why not negotiate?" What fire has lit under you that keeps you going, and how do I keep it burning?
"For so long I've dreamt of a world united, working together as a single entity, a world freed forever from the horrors of war and violence. Dalga is the last piece of that puzzle. If we let them win now, that dream will never be realized, or even worse, what we've already accomplished will all fall apart around us. Imagine if we were to let them go and one of the provinces decided that they too would rather be free of the empire. What then? More war, more death."
"And who will rule this dream of yours. You?" Anaka already knew that answer. Everything Stellan had ever done had been for power – to gain it, maintain it, strengthen it. Acting as god for three quarters of the world was just not enough for him. He had to own everything, control it all.
"Who better than me? I have walked this world for almost three thousand years. You cannot even begin to understand what that's like...what it's done to me. I've watched kingdoms, empires, armies rise to strength and conquer only to collapse into ash and dust. I witnessed the day magic was purged from this world, and almost all its users died. I walked the streets of Arzu at the height of its greatness, when technology so advanced it was nearly magic was abundant, and then I saw those very developments turn on them and raze that paradise, leaving nothing but The Waste behind." You mean one of your daughters razed it for you, at your command. But of course, the fault was theirs.
"Every time humanity almost achieves its ideal, it is brought down, leveled. Peace is the ultimate answer, but we need this one last war to achieve it. I've sent out all the sorcerers from the school, along with two legions and siege materials, to strike Kinjia." Shit. She'd known he'd been planning to pull the sorcerers, but as his partner she figured he'd at least let her know. So much for trust.
"The council will be furious!" Anaka snapped. Alaric would be furious. Somehow, she had to get the information to him before it was too late.
"By the time they find out, we will have gained Kinjia. From there it will be a simple task to retake Tibre." She took a deep breath, then another.
"How long ago did you send them out?" she asked.
"A week ago."
"A week and you did not tell me?" she said with obvious panic in her voice that she hoped Stellan would interpret as anger for not trusting her. A week meant the sorcerers would arrive in the next two or three days. She could send Alaric a wind message from the Serhli tower, but that would take at least a day to reach him. Dreaming her way to Dalga would be much faster, if she could manage it.
"I couldn't take any risks, Annie," he said, though a shadow of doubt crossed his features. Staring into his eyes, black as two drops of tar, she watched his emotions shift, his weakness exposed, a string to pull, a frailty to manipulate.
"I love you, Stellan Tristenza. I am on your side. I hope you will always trust in me," they rarely used that word, love, she meant it but that didn't matter. She would cross him anyway; she was already using it against him.
The hard angles of his face softened, the cold leaking out of him like a tangible thing, and she could see traces of the man he had been once, before his immortality had fossilized him. When he'd been little more than a young and hopeful mage, struggling for a place in an ancient world she could not begin to imagine, and despite her intentions she loved him a little more. His fingers traced her cheek, her jaw line, her neck, as if verifying her existence. He kissed her, a slow lingering kiss tinged with all the emotions he pretended not to possess.
"I promise there will be no more secrets between us," he said, his voice a rough whisper against her ear.
Anaka pulled shut the glass balcony doors, fighting the wind. The peaceful afternoon had soured into a gloomy evening as purple bloated clouds flew in from across the white capped sea and blocked out the full moon, the storm scented breeze ruffling the curtains that hung limply from the canopy bed. Latching tight both doors, she watched the clouds. The storm would be a bad one, she knew by sight after spending her life under Yeraz's sinister sky. She yanked closed the heavy velvet curtains and crawled into bed alone; Stellan was meeting with a few representatives from the provinces closest to Dalga.
I think o
f the place I wish to go, Elixa had said. Anaka focused on those words, closing her eyes and shutting out the room with its peeling cream wallpaper and worn, warped floorboards. Passing through its numerous rooms and vast corridors, the palace of Yeraz appeared ripe with splendor, lacking in nothing. But when scrutinized and studied, the faded spots in the wallpaper caught the eye, the uneven stone of the wall, the patched holes in the floor boards, the threadbare tapestries, the greened silver decor.
The almighty empire of Yeraz did not want for coin or decorators, in actuality these imperfections were repaired and replaced with alarming frequency. A force lingered in that palace, one that leeched out life and beauty from everything it touched, festering, corroding and rotting. The courtesans whom Anaka loathed visited from the provinces and usually left after two or three months, unable to bear another moment within those possessed walls.
Anaka had never noticed this force, this corruption, until she was granted the role of the Black Hand and began to travel through the empire, disposing of the queen's enemies. The first time she returned from such a venture, she felt it like thick fog draping over the castle, permeating the walls, seeping into her like poison, and she'd recognized that power immediately, she'd felt it once before. Dark, infected, vile: The Sphere of Dreams.
Anaka forced her thoughts back to Dalga, drawing it in her mind as Elixa had said. The orange, pink and white sandstone of Alaric's sprawling palace had been ghostly in the starlight, the rush of the ocean a softer sound than the furious seas of the north, the tall grasses whispering secrets in the night. The surrounding wall was low, built more to keep wild animals from the pleasure gardens than to defend against enemy soldiers and assassins. Guards leaned against the wall, their blue tobacco smoke mingling with the heavy perfume of the tropical flowers, blossoms more enormous and colorful than anything Anaka had ever seen before.