The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  Even then their mothers usually scolded them.

  But the cities…

  Raz liked the cities. That much was true. He had an easier time remembering his infant years than his cousins or sister, and could still recall the first time the Arros had dared take him into town, a few years after his adoption. Miropa had been their first stop that season, the sprawling “Gem of the South.” Built around an oasis only slightly smaller than the Garin, Raz remembered his fascination with the city, his curiosity at the towering, oddly shaped hills and mountains he’d eventually understood to be timber and stone buildings. Unlike the other fringe towns, Miropans paid the price to have better materials than clay and mud shipped to them. Heavy pine and granite came from the North, brick from the factories in the port cities to the west, and glass—the reason Miropa was called the Gem—bought from the Imperium and West Isles across the Emperor’s Ocean. Most of the roads—with the exception of the dingy shantytown alleys that were an unavoidable offshoot of any city—were paved with stone from all over the occupied lands, making inner-city travel easier. Topping all this off, though, was the fact that Miropa’s governing body was one of the few left relatively untouched by the slavers, meaning it still maintained at least some control over its own civil systems and private workings.

  Karth was a hellhole in comparison, but Raz didn’t care. Whether it was Miropa or Cyro or Karavyl or any of the smaller fringe towns, they all came with their own individual curiosities and dangers. Cities he loved.

  What Raz didn’t like were the people.

  “Trims,” nomads called the city-folk, for the decorative and impractically flashy clothes and robes they wore. Trims were a different breed of men, and Raz hated the way they made him feel. They all knew who he was. Part of the Arros’ success was a direct result of people thronging to see the “tamed lizard.” He knew his father hadn’t liked it but, with the family’s wellbeing overriding his own personal sense of right and wrong, Agais had let it happen.

  To Raz, at least, it turned out to be the better choice. The initial flame of intrigue that had raced through cities upon the Arros’ arrival burned out each time after only a few days, diminishing until finally he was a known anomaly rather than a fascinating curiosity. Raz had been too young to realize the exact nature of the events going on around him, but he acutely remembered the relief he’d felt whenever the throngs died away.

  As with everything, sadly, there was a price.

  Trims were not an open people. They did not welcome Raz i’Syul Arro in the same way the trading caravans had eventually done. When their thirst for a glimpse was quenched, they fell into the only mindsets that possibly made sense to them.

  Dislike. Disgust. Contempt.

  Sneers were the most common greeting he received from the locals he dealt with. More often than once the Arros had lost a customer because someone “refused to make deals with a scaly” or “didn’t want to touch something the ‘lizard’ had had his dirty hands all over.”

  Agais himself had personally threatened several such characters’ manhoods if they were ever seen near the Arro’s stalls again.

  Still, maybe Mama was right, Raz thought, holding on to Ahna a little tighter as the cart jolted over another hump of sand. Maybe trims could be made to see that he wasn’t the animal most of them thought him to be.

  He ignored the tiny voice of experience whispering in the back of his mind, telling him it wasn’t likely.

  CHAPTER 15

  “She will return him to the man he was. She will be his guiding light when he is blind. She will be his anchor to true reason.”

  —Uhsula, Seer of the Under-Caves

  “Don’t stare.”

  Syrah tore her eyes away from the ragged group of men she’d been watching, turning her attention back on the road. It was hard to see much through the thin veil of white silk that covered her face, but without it she was almost blind in the sun.

  Damn her eyes…

  “It’s not like they can see me,” she said with false innocence.

  Beside her, Talo smiled. “Just because no one can tell you’re staring doesn’t make it any less rude.”

  He stopped to drop a copper into the wooden bowl of a shrunken beggar. The old man was a pitiful thing, all skin and bone and thin pale hair, with a dirty bandage wrapped around one shin. Syrah watched Talo kneel and pass a hand over the injury. There was a white glimmer, barely distinguishable in the bright sunlight, and the Priest stood up again.

  Laorin magic could only do so much to help the natural process of healing, but at least the beggar wouldn’t die of infection now.

  In the thirteen years that had passed since the Laorin took her in, Syrah’s Priest-Mentor hadn’t changed much. Talo’s trimmed beard still framed his strong chin, though there was now a peppering of silver amongst the coarseness. It streaked through his long ponytail too, striping the waist-length brown with pale gray. His ice-blue eyes, so capable of sharpness and discipline when need be, were warm as he pressed a second copper into the palm of a little boy with two missing fingers and barely any clothes to speak of. Still a head taller than most men, Talo leaned heavily on the steel staff in his left hand, something he’d once only rarely carried, trying to keep off the knee that had recently started bothering him on these longer trips.

  Syrah reached into her purse for one of her own coppers. The coins were square, different from the circular gold crowns, silver dukes, and copper barons that were the common coinage this far south. That didn’t stop the old woman she held it out to from snatching it up eagerly, though, just as it wouldn’t stop her from haggling for bread with it. One of the northernmost desert towns, Karth dealt with the few northern tradesmen almost as much as Miropa to the east. It made the North-come coins a generally accepted form of currency, especially in the slums.

  Then again, there wasn’t much that wasn’t a generally accepted form of currency here…

  “Seek Laor,” Syrah told the grateful woman gently, “for the Lifegiver welcomes all to his faith.”

  It was a simple enough message, one meant not to push the Laorin way onto nonbelievers too abruptly. Rather, it would hopefully spark the curiosity of a handful of the beggars they helped today, and in time maybe some of them would find their own way into Laor’s embrace.

  Syrah heard Talo murmur the same words while they worked, moving down the street. Across the way, Priest Jofrey al’Sen and his acolyte, Reyn Hartlet, were progressing in the same direction. They wore white sleeveless tunics and loose tan pants to help keep them cool in the broiling heat. Turbans of light cloth were wrapped around their heads and the bottom half of their faces, protecting them from the sandy wind that frequently graced the dusty streets. Talo wore similar attire, though the wrapping had been pulled down, freeing his mouth so that his words wouldn’t be muffled.

  Syrah grimaced. Though all three of the men looked flushed from the heat they weren’t accustomed to, she was more than a little jealous of them. Her full-length robes covered her from head to toe, not leaving even a sliver of skin available for the sun to claw at. Her hands were gloved in soft, thin leather, and the veil that covered her face was part of a shawl that wrapped over and around her head and neck. Apart from her gloves and boots, every bit of her clothing was specially tailored from thin silk to trap as little heat as possible, but there was only so much the quality of the fabric could do. Even silk was practically useless when the temperatures were so high the contents of a full water barrel could evaporate in an hour if left to the full effects of the sun.

  Syrah grit her teeth, feeling beads of perspiration trickle down the curve of her back. The insides of the gloves were soaked from moist palms, and her eyes stung as salty sweat found its way down her forehead. She had to pause often to drink from the flask on her belt, lifting the veil to gulp down mouthfuls of the unpleasantly warm water.

  Each time, even in those few seconds of exposure, she felt the sun stab at the skin along her jaw and cheek.

  S
till, it was a price she didn’t mind paying. There was poverty in the North, of course. Hundreds who couldn’t find food or shelter perished in the winter months every year, starving or dying of exposure when the temperatures plummeted. It was an unavoidable tragedy, one the Laorin fought endlessly to fend off.

  But it was nothing—nothing—compared to what Syrah saw around her now as she straightened up.

  They had ventured deep today, farther than they’d managed in the past week or so. The street they were progressing along was narrow, less than fifteen feet wide, and lined on both sides with rickety hovels and crumbling mud-brick shacks that gave little more than the illusion of shelter. Bloodshot eyes watched them from the shadows beyond open doors, and almost every beggar they handed money to thanked them with a smile yellowed and diseased from ragroot abuse. Syrah felt a measured mix of fear and alertness whenever they trekked into the slums. They’d been attacked once already by a man so desperate he’d jumped them bare handed.

  Talo had left him in the shade of an alley, unconscious but relatively unhurt, with a whole silver duke in his pocket for when he came to.

  That night at the Ovana, Talo had barely touched his mutton and potato stew. It was only after they’d washed their faces, finished their silent prayers, and blown out the candles that he’d spoken aloud at all.

  “These people need more help than the whole of our order could offer them in a hundred years,” he’d said, then bid Syrah good night.

  The populace in Karth was largely divided into two groups: the inordinately wealthy—those few families and individuals who controlled almost all the coin passing in and out of the city—and the unbelievably poor. Slum towns ringed the city in all directions except directly east, and each area was plagued with its own problems. Murder, rape, and theft were a daily part of these people’s lives. Slavers ignored the laws which rarely served to punish them anyways, stealing through the night to rip men, women, and children alike from their beds. Brothels—legal, illegal, and everything in between—could be found on almost any main road. Twice now the male Priests had been approached by emaciated whores offering services none of them had ever heard of, or at least pretended not to for Syrah’s sake.

  The second girl couldn’t have been older than eleven.

  These pilgrimages south by the Laorin—rare occurrences already since all involved were volunteers—were the only help some of these people would ever receive from complete strangers.

  Syrah looked up from her work, watching a group of children playing in the dust a few yards away. The game was something she’d seen before but had yet to figure out completely. It involved three rocks—two painted red and one white—all passed in a circle while the boys and girls chanted the same verse over and over again:

  Little by little they all fade away. Little by little, as does the day.

  Little by little Her Stars disappear, taking with them all of our fear.

  At that point, whoever was holding the white rock would groan and step out of the circle, and the game would start again. Syrah couldn’t even give a guess as to what the red ones did, but it didn’t matter.

  What mattered was that they were playing in the dirt.

  The dirt… These children who should have been having about with wooden swords or laughing over straw-stuffed dolls. Who should at least have had the right to return home to a decent meal. A few didn’t even have proper clothes. One tiny girl, a small, twig-like figure so thin Syrah couldn’t understand how she could be standing, wasn’t wearing anything at all.

  But it didn’t matter to them. The vulnerability of the girl in her nakedness went by unnoticed. This was what they knew. This was the world they’d been born to and brought up in.

  And all she could do was give them a few measly coppers…

  “Syrah.”

  She started, realizing suddenly that her eyes were wet. Even as she turned she felt a tear escape her hard-fought attempt to hold it back, joining with the trails of sweat along her neck. Thank Laor Talo couldn’t see her through the silks.

  Still, as he looked over her shoulder at the group of children, the fall in her Priest-Mentor’s face spoke of knowing her thoughts all too well.

  “Come. That’s enough for today.”

  Syrah nodded wordlessly, saddened by her helpless relief when the four of them turned to make their way back toward the busier market streets.

  CHAPTER 16

  “With each passing year the Cienbal widens its reach. Thankfully, to the north and south, where a majority of civilized desert culture has taken root, this growth is minimal. To the east and west, however, butting heads with the Emperor’s Ocean and the Crags along the coast of the Dramion Sea, the sands can eat away leagues of richer earths in less than a decade.”

  — “The Cienbal,” by Adolûs Fenn

  “Six dukes? That’s a crown and a half! This roll of rags isn’t worth a third of that!”

  “I’m very sorry, sir, but that’s the price. I’ve already given you a reduction on the Karavyl silk, so it isn’t possible for me to—”

  “If I’d known you expected me to pay that much for cotton I could find in most refuse piles, I wouldn’t have come all the way here to begin with, would I?”

  “It’s not the cotton, sir, it’s the dyes that mark the price. See how they swirl without clashing the colors? It’s a new technique developed in—”

  “Sun burn you, woman. What makes you think I care where you stole this from in the first place to get it? I’m not paying a baron over two silvers, and you’ll sell it to me or—”

  “That’s enough.”

  Prida and her customer both turned. From the cover of the tent, Raz watched Jarden step over from his table of spun-glass jewelry.

  The Arros’ first week in Karth had gone well by any standard. True, the half-hour walks to the markets every day were tedious, especially when they were all loaded down with goods and tables and collapsible overhangs, but it was nothing worth complaining about. Already they’d heard that the “tax” for desert traders holding residence near the markets had been driven up to three crowns a week, half again the previous year’s. By circling their caravan in to the east, the Arros not only avoided this extortion but also managed to steer clear of much of the crime that had grown even more prominent since the previous summer. The Eomons, another trade group, had already been robbed of half their stores by street runners.

  In general, though, commerce was good. Everything was turning a marginal profit, and they’d had few problems with customers until today. It was bad for business to have someone yelling about how unfair the prices were at a particular booth. It meant those individuals nearby in the crowded market who’d been contemplating stopping by the table were much less likely to do so.

  Still, it was worse to let a trim run you down with his bartering. If it got out that a family was selling at cut-costs, it meant two things. First, while everything would likely be sold in days, it would be sold at almost no profit, and the sellers would have less coin to purchase other goods to resell at the next city. Second, the other families would lose business, and bad blood amongst the clans was never a good thing to enter the grueling summer months with.

  Dealing with bullying customers was an essential—if distasteful—part of the life.

  “The price is set,” Jarden said curtly, his gray eyes on the fat man in question. “Either pay, or find somebody else to buy from. You won’t come across cloth this good just anywhere, but you are certainly free to try.”

  “What’s going on?” Mychal asked eagerly, scooting so he, too, could peer out from between the tent flaps. They’d been playing at dice before the shouting started. Ahna sat in the corner, occupying herself as she always did with one of her cloth dolls, unconcerned with things that didn’t involve her little make-believe worlds.

  “Trim thinks he can cause trouble,” Raz answered with a smirk. “Idiot.”

  “Go take a chunk of him,” Mychal laughed, moving back and picking the dice up
again. “Day’s worth of cleanup says I get double sevens.”

  “You always get double sevens, you cheat,” Raz said with a snort, not looking away from the scene outside.

  Mychal laughed again, but didn’t say anything back. At twenty-one summers, he had grown into a handsome young man. His dark hair was pulled back into a short ponytail like his father’s, and the clean shadow of a beard lined his lower jaw. He was strong, and would have been a great help carrying goods to and from the market if the brown cloth of his left pant leg weren’t pinned back behind his thigh, covering the stump of his missing limb. As it was, though, Mychal was far from useless. He had quick hands and a good head for numbers, and Agais had tasked him with keeping track of the family’s profits while they were in any city. Every night Mychal stayed up well past sunset, counting and separating and tallying the earnings they’d made.