Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  “Listen to Sallah,” Kandler urged. “Would you rather ride in with your head held high and have it handed to you or swallow your pride and get the job done?”

  Deothen stood before the justicar and steamed, unable to bring himself to speak. Kandler looked the man dead in the eyes and shook his head.

  “Never mind,” the justicar said. “Burch and I are going in anyhow. With or without you. If you want to charge in after us, just don’t give us away.”

  “Wait!” said Sallah. She turned to her commander. “Sir Deothen, I beg your leave to accompany the others into the warforged city. They may have need of a knight’s talents.”

  Deothen grimaced as he considered the request. As Kandler saw it, this was a way for the knight to be able to do the right thing while still keeping his own precious pride. He just hoped the knight would agree.

  “Very well,” Deothen said finally. “Brendis and I will stay here in the airship, ready to come to your aid at your signal.”

  Kandler nodded. “What kind of signal would work for you?”

  Deothen gave Kandler a hard look and said, “If I see the light of the Silver Flame dancing along Sallah’s sword, we will immediately fly to your aid.”

  Kandler saw what the knight was doing. If the only signal Deothen would pay attention to was Sallah’s sword, then the justicar would be compelled to help keep Sallah alive.

  “Fine,” he said. He turned to Sallah. Her face was flushed, but whether from the impending action or just standing in the whipping wind, he couldn’t discern. “You in?”

  The lady knight offered a small bow. “To the end. My sword is yours.”

  The justicar turned to Burch and Xalt. “Let’s go.”

  The trail to Construct was not an easy one, but Kandler ignored its challenges. He was too eager to get to the moving city to worry about such things. He’d had Deothen set them down in a hollow out of sight of the warforged capital, and from there they had hiked along in the city’s wide wake.

  “Did I have to leave my armor behind?” Sallah said as she hurried after the others, dressed in a large, formless shawl that covered her from chin to waist. Burch walked right in front of her, with Kandler next to him. Xalt led the way toward the mobile city, which grew closer to them with every step.

  “We’re posing as Xalt’s slaves,” Kandler said. “Didn’t you hear Deothen explain how a knight would never be a slave?”

  Sallah sighed and rested her hand on the pommel of her sacred sword, which she had disguised by wrapping it in a dull cloth she had found in the airship’s hold. “As a Knight of the Silver Flame, I am trained for battle, not subterfuge. This makes me”—she searched for the right word—“uncomfortable.”

  Kandler looked up at the rolling sections of Construct as they neared it. The low, gray buildings on the dozens of platforms sprawled away from them like a string of massive barges scudding across the gray-green land. He was thankful that the walkers under the city moved so slowly, but it irritated him that the place was moving away from them at any speed. It made the journey seem much longer than it should.

  “If you’re afraid of going into that place …” he said.

  “I didn’t say I was afraid.”

  “You should be. I am.”

  “Me, too,” said Burch.

  “How about you, Xalt?” said Kandler.

  “Had I skin, it would be white as a sheet.” The warforged gazed along the length of Construct’s platforms. “Even without a gang of breathers tagging behind, I never liked this place.”

  “Why?” said Kandler. “It looks like a warforged paradise.”

  Xalt shook its head. “This is a place dedicated to conquest and war. As the lady just said, such things make me uncomfortable.”

  Burch stared at the moving city as they it grew closer. “Must be heavy,” he said. “Moves slow.”

  “When Bastard wishes, the city can move much faster.”

  “What happens if we run into one of the warforged from Superior’s camp?” Sallah asked.

  “We won’t,” said Xalt. “Bastard does not smile upon failures. None of the patrol’s survivors will be willing to come here to report what happened and risk his wrath. Warforged have been dismantled for far less.”

  As the quartet neared the rear of Construct, Xalt waved at a squad of warforged soldiers standing on one of the ballista-bearing platforms that lined the edges of many of the platforms. A soldier draped with a wide red collar returned the gesture.

  At the squad leader’s signal—a series of stomps on the platform below it—two of the walkers at the end of the rear platform slowed their strides. As they did, the end of the ramp they were standing under pulled out atop them while the city moved on ahead until the other end of the ramp caught on its hinges. Then the two walkers crunched themselves down as low as they could while matching the pace of the city. When they were done, they only stood about a foot tall but still moved as fast as the others in front of them.

  “That’s amazing,” said Sallah. “I’m surprised they can make themselves so thin.”

  “This is nothing,” Xalt said. “When they stop moving entirely, they can fold themselves down to a height of only a few inches. Sometimes a roving animal gets stuck under a platform when this happens. It’s always a mess.” Xalt lowered his voice as they made up the distance between themselves and the end of the ramp. “Remember, you are slaves. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not meet the eyes of any warforged but me. And you must obey my every word. There is far more to a slave’s proper etiquette, but that should suffice for our purposes.”

  Kandler put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “You’re sure we’re okay with these swords?”

  Xalt nodded. “You are my bodyguards. It’s dangerous for anyone to walk through the Mournland alone, even a warforged.”

  As Xalt said this, Kandler saw the artificer look down at the stump where its finger had once been.

  When they reached the ramp, Xalt jumped up on and walked up to the squad leader. The others followed the artificer and stopped behind him, keeping their eyes low. As Sallah cleared the far end of the ramp, the walkers carrying it along stood up, raising the ramp, and walked it toward the city platform, shoving the ramp back into its home.

  “Business?” the squad leader said to Xalt.

  “I am an artificer. I have come to offer my aid.”

  The squad leader surveyed the people behind Xalt. “Business must be good for you,” he said.

  “There never seems to be a shortage of injuries among our kind.”

  The squad leader nodded. “You won’t find one here. Report to the central workshop. They should have plenty of work for you.”

  “My thanks,” Xalt said. He strode into the city, the others following right behind.

  “That went better than I hoped,” said Kandler. Sallah slapped him on the back of the head. He turned and glared at her. “What was that for?”

  “Were you spoken to?”

  “Quiet!” Xalt said. “When we find our quarters, I will have to whip you all for your impudence!”

  Kandler and Sallah glanced around to see the other warforged on the platform looking at them. As one, they bowed their heads and said, “Yes, master.”

  The quartet moved further into the city, Xalt leading the way. Each platform seemed to have a purpose of one kind or another. Some were forges, others homes, still others open spaces where warforged either sat and meditated or trained with various sorts of weapons. The spaces between the platforms were covered with wooden gangways that moved and shifted with the vagaries of the walkers underneath them and the terrain they were covering. When moving between platforms, most people walked along the gangways unless they were just hopping over to the next platform. Once the quartet passed the first few platforms, they saw few others.

  “Where is everyone?” Kandler whispered.

  “Patrol, most likely,” Xalt said. “Construct is a base of operations, not a home. We’re rarely all here at the same time.�
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  Kandler stared around him at the eerily empty platforms. “What do the people here do then?”

  “Study, train, undergo repairs. They gather to watch our finest warriors battle each other in the main arena for sport, then it’s up to artificers like myself to piece the losers back together.”

  “That’s barbaric,” said Sallah.

  “It’s the curse of being a young people,” Xalt said. “We are still struggling to find our way. Most of us aren’t much older than five years old, although very few are less.”

  “The Treaty of Thronehold barred the creation of more warforged,” Sallah said. “All known creation forges were ordered destroyed.”

  “Good thing, too,” Burch said softly.

  “It was a crime,” Xalt said. Kandler could tell by the artificer’s tone that this was no joke to him.

  “Why is that?” asked Sallah.

  “It was an atrocity. To deny a people the means to reproduce … it is one of the reasons the Lord of Blades finds so many of the warforged willing to flock to his banner.”

  “But the treaty granted you all the rights of sentient beings,” the lady knight said.

  “We were already sentient beings,” Xalt said. “That part of the treaty only recognized what was already a fact.”

  Sallah frowned. “But we couldn’t let every country continue to produce warforged without restriction,” she said. “They would have outnumbered the other peoples in a matter of years.”

  “Centuries, perhaps. It’s not so easy to create a warforged as you might think.”

  “Still, I think you can understand the fear.”

  Xalt nodded. “But I find it hard to accept the actions taken. Look around you, and you can see the direct results of these restrictions. The Lord of Blades is in the process of creating a nation of disaffected soldiers. Someday, the warforged of the Mournland will grow restless in their harsh homeland and start to look outside their borders. What do you think will happen then?”

  Sallah shook her head.

  Xalt turned to look past Kandler and Burch at the lady knight. “A conflict that will make the hundred years of the Last War seem like a pit fight.”

  Kandler raised his eyebrows at Burch. “What do you say?” the justicar asked.

  “Think more about Esprë and less about politics,” the shifter answered.

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  Burch smiled and lowered his head. He snorted and snuffed for a moment, flexing his arms and twisting his head. When he looked back up, his eyes were wider and more yellow than ever, and his nose a bit wider too. He sniffed at the air and then ran his tongue across his sharp, pointy teeth.

  “What’s the word?” Kandler asked.

  Burch turned his wolf’s eyes on his friend. “Esprë’s scent,” he said. “Roses. I got it.”

  You will like it in Karrnath,” Te’oma said to Esprë across the single table in the tiny room, “for as long as we’re there. Of course, after the Mournland, I think anything would be an improvement.”

  The girl glared up at the changeling but didn’t say a word. She’d been utterly silent since the two had slipped into Construct just before what passed for dawn in the Mournland, and it was starting to grate on Te’oma’s nerves.

  “It’s a long trip not to say a word the entire way,” Te’oma said. There was still no response.

  The changeling sighed and stood up. She knew she’d been fortunate to find this abandoned warforged shelter—it was too bare for her to think of it as a home—before any of the guards had spotted them, but she was already tired of being in the dim room. She’d spent time in jail cells that were roomier and more welcoming.

  Warforged needed no rest, water, or food—three things Te’oma wanted badly, and she suspected Esprë did as well. The girl had dozed with her head on the table for a bit, but Te’oma was too wary of every sound she heard outside their borrowed quarters to let sleep take her. The constant tromping of the walkers’ feet beneath the city’s floor didn’t help any, although it lent the entire place a gentle sway that Te’oma thought might have been able to rock her to sleep under more pleasant circumstances.

  The changeling started to pace the room. The place was so small that she had to turn around after every few steps.

  “I’m thirsty,” Esprë said.

  The sound startled the changeling, although she tried not to show it. She covered by leaning across the table at the girl and saying, “Ah! She speaks!”

  Esprë ignored Te’oma’s sarcasm. “I’m hungry, too.”

  The changeling sat down in the rough wooden chair across the unpolished table from Esprë. She looked at the walls and ceiling around her, fashioned from thin panels of wood painted with something the color of ash. A flimsy wardrobe stood in the corner, empty but for a pair of threadbare tabards. The only light in the room streamed in through a high window above the place’s sole door, which was made of the same material as the walls.

  The utilitarianism of the warforged of Construct astonished Te’oma. As a changeling, appearances were vital to her. She spent much of her spare time studying the way others looked and behaved, how they spoke, and what they wore. It seemed to her that imitating a warforged would be a simple thing, as most of them seemed almost identical, various styles of interchangeable cogs in a long-defunct war machine—if only she could make her skin seem like metal.

  Te’oma leaned across the table, looked into Esprë almond-shaped, blue eyes, and said, “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  The girl sat up straight in her chair with an offended look on her face. “Isn’t that your job? You’re not much of a kidnapper.”

  Te’oma stared at the girl for a moment with wide eyes, then threw back her head and laughed. “Believe it or not, I don’t kidnap many children,” she said. “I wasn’t aware of the protocol.”

  “What do you usually do then?”

  Te’oma stopped laughing. “What do you mean?”

  She suspected the girl was just trying to get her off guard so she could attempt an escape, but Esprë had been silent for so long that Te’oma was willing to indulge her for a moment.

  “What do you spend your time doing when you’re not kidnapping innocent children?”

  Te’oma flashed the girl a savage smile. “Don’t play innocent with me,” she said, leaning closer across the table. “I know all about you.”

  Esprë screwed her face up at that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Te’oma stood and walked around the table like a hunting cat on the prowl. As she crept behind Esprë, she pulled the girl’s collar back and looked down her shirt at the dragonmark that lie hidden there.

  “Hello, killer,” Te’oma said.

  Esprë jumped as if the changeling had stabbed her. “Get away!”

  Te’oma danced away, feigning fear. “Don’t kill me,” she said in a falsetto tone. “Just like all those people you killed in your dreams.”

  All the color drained from Esprë’s face.

  “That’s right,” Te’oma said as she moved to put the table between her and the girl again. “I know all about that. Your mind is an open book to me. It’s been an interesting read. A little short though.”

  “Shut up,” Esprë said sullenly.

  Te’oma leaned across the table again and leered into the girl’s eyes. “You might as well face up to it,” she said softly. “You are a killer. Just like me.”

  “I am nothing like you,” Esprë said, her voice just a bit louder.

  “Of course you are,” Te’oma pressed. “You come from a long line of killers. Your mother fought in the war. Do you think she had no blood on her hands?”

  Esprë swallowed hard. The color returned to her face, but her eyes sank with barely suppressed rage.

  “Your father was probably a killer, too,” Te’oma continued. “And Kandler. That man leaves a wake of blood behind him wherever he goes.”

  “Shut up,” Esprë said through clenched teeth. />
  Te’oma softened her tone. She’d been using vinegar. Time for a little honey. “There’s no crime in killing. Birth, life, death … it is the way of the world.”

  “I’m not like you.”

  “Not yet, no,” Te’oma smiled. “The difference is you have no control. You kill without meaning to. Innocent and guilty alike, you’ve killed them.”

  “I—” Tears welled in the girl’s eyes.

  “It’s all right, Esprë,” Te’oma knelt beside the girl. “I know you didn’t mean to. It wasn’t your fault. But”—she put a bit more steel into her voice—“it won’t stop just because you don’t like it. You have to sleep sometime. If you don’t learn control …”

  Te’oma didn’t complete the thought. Let the girl finish it herself.

  “You just need time to grow. There’s a reason you bear that dragonmark, Esprë, when no one else has had it for over twenty-five hundred years.” Te’oma bent far enough over the table that she could have reached down to kiss Esprë on the nose, then she whispered at her. “You’re destined to be the greatest killer of all time.”

  “That’s not true!” Esprë raged. The girl stood up and threw herself at the changeling.

  Te’oma retreated back across the table, and Esprë’s hands missed her by scant inches. The changeling knocked over the chair behind her as she retreated to the far corner of the room. The girl followed her straight over the table, screaming in frustration as she went.

  “Take it back!” Esprë roared. “It’s not true! Take it back!”

  The girl lunged at Te’oma, and the changeling caught the girl’s arms by the wrists. “See!” the changeling said. “Do you see? Look at your hands!”

  In the heat of her anger, Esprë glanced at her hands, which she had formed into talons to scratch out the changeling’s eyes, and she saw that they were glowing a malevolent red that oozed and flowed around her palms and fingers like living blood.