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

by Bryce O'Connor

  Raz’s body chilled at the words, and he felt the taunts tear holes in his self-control. His eyes never leaving Evony’s, he took a step forward.

  “Slaver,” he hissed as he moved, staring down the man, who amazingly stood his ground. “Murderer. Thief. Rapist. All of these and more can be applied to every one of you, Evony. Yourself especially, if I’ve heard right. You kill for personal gain. You take away freedoms so that your own might be improved. You maim and scar and lock people away in places that never see the Sun. You say you know my rules? Then answer me this. This game is at its end. I’ve done things for you that I will never forgive myself for. So, knowing that, tell me why would I ever go back to—?”

  The whisper of footsteps.

  Raz sensed more than saw the motion, leaping to the side in time to evade the curved dagger that would have buried itself into his lower spine. Even so, he couldn’t avoid the blow completely, and he snarled when the thin blade caught the membrane of his left wing, slicing a foot-long vertical gash clean through it. Reflexively he twisted, swinging Ahna around like an ax.

  Her head caught Sass, who’d taken advantage of Raz’s distraction to slip behind him, in the side just below his stomach, ripping him open from end to end.

  Raz’s body shook from the pain radiating from his wing and the aching crossbow wound. He watched his old handler stumble back, gaining his balance just in time to gape at his own insides slipping through the slash in his gut. Sass dropped the knife and fell to his knees, desperately grabbing at his entrails, scrambling to hold them in place. When he realized it was no use, he looked up at the other šef, his own shock reflected back in each of their faces for a long moment.

  Then he collapsed to the ground, eyes open and one side of his face smacking down into the blood pooling around him.

  “NO!” someone screamed, and all hell broke loose.

  Raz let go, giving in completely to the animal. He turned on the room, his vision slipping into the red-black spectrum of his own bloodlust. Falum Tyle, the head of the Mahsadën’s ragroot trade, fell first, braving a bodily lunge at Raz, sword drawn and yelling a warcry before leaping from the table he’d run across.

  Ahna speared him out of the air, flinging him through the windows with a crash.

  Raz was the Moon’s reaper, dancing to death’s drum, flashing across the room in all different directions. He leapt and twisted, slashed and thrust. Ahna moved through his hands like water, feeling light as air as he twirled her over his head, behind his back, and around his shoulders. She cut through everything she touched like a scythe taken to harvest, and immediately the room was filled with screams. Those few who tried to break for the door found their way somehow barred by Raz, his tail sweeping feet from under bodies and breaking necks. His wings whipped out to join the melee of steel and flesh, shattering bones and throwing people into the table and walls. The šef were struck down one by one, some putting up a fight with daggers and swords, others pleading for their lives. Ahna fell on them like judgment. Krane úl’Syen, master of the local thieves guilds. Vyrr Gaorys, the money handler. Dimonia Gríc, the woman responsible for coordinating and running the black market sex trades. Alysya Orture, a dark-skinned Percian who handled all inter city trade, and her brother, Ulan.

  There were others between them, the confidants that had accompanied the group. Raz made no exception, hacking Ahna left and right, up and down, leaving some wounded, some dead, and some hovering in between. Bodies fell, the stone floor of the room growing slick and sticky with blood. One after another they piled up. Throats were cut, bodies mangled, limbs severed, flesh slashed. Raz spun like a whirlwind of vengeance, a gale of steel, teeth, and claws.

  After three minutes, it ended.

  Raz came to a stop over the last moving figure in the room. Every other body was still, but Imaneal Evony looked up at Raz from his place on the ground. He scrambled back, sliding over the wet floor. One of his eyes was sealed closed by the blood seeping from a cut across his forehead, and his right leg was twisted at an odd angle, broken at the hip where Raz’s tail had thrown him across the room.

  “I can give you anything!” he screamed. Raz followed him unhurriedly. Ahna at his side, he stepped over the forms scattered across the floor. “ANYTHING! JUST NAME IT!”

  Evony’s back found the corner of the wall, and he started to shake.

  “You can’t do this,” he breathed, staring up at Raz. “You can’t do this! They’ll kill you! You think you’ve won by doing this? YOU’RE WRONG! WE ARE EVERYWHERE! THE OTHERS WILL FIND YOU! THEY’LL FIND YOU AND THEY’LL—!”

  Shtunk.

  The bottom tip of Ahna’s shaft speared his heart, splitting through him, and Evony jerked once. His bald head lolled toward his chest, his forehead resting on the leather of the dviassegai’s lowest handle.

  For a long time Raz stood over the dead man, watching him, unsure of exactly what he was looking for. He was in control of himself now, he was sure of it. So why did he still have the savage urge to tear Evony apart with his bare hands, along with every other corpse in the room?

  He resisted. Placing a foot on the man’s shoulder, he pulled Ahna free, letting Evony slide sideways down the wall. The man slumped to the ground, sending short ripples through the thick, pooling blood.

  Turning away, Raz listened to the snuffling of the survivors, taking in the moans and keening wails of shock and pain. His eyes moved over the forms of the living and dead alike, and he finally found the one he was looking for shivering near the east wall of the room, curled up on his side by the headless body of Alysya Orture. Moving to stand over the figure, Raz put a foot on his shoulder and shoved him over.

  Adrion rolled onto his back, glaring up at Raz and cradling what looked like a broken arm. There was a large gash across his chest, ending just below his collarbone, and red wetness dribbled from a stab in the thigh of his bad leg.

  And yet, despite all of it, he still managed a sneer.

  “You going to kill me, too, cousin?”

  Raz didn’t respond at first, looking the man over. He pulled Ahna off his shoulder and gripped her in both hands.

  “You don’t deserve any better,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, and you’re going to be the judge of that?” Adrion demanded sarcastically, pushing himself up onto his good elbow. “You? Really? Look at yourself sometime, Raz. You turned into you a long time before I turned into me. If anything, you taught me how to sail this ship.”

  “I’m not you,” Raz snapped. “And if you say that I am again, Mychal, I swear by the Sun I’ll cleave you open right here and now.”

  “DON’T CALL ME THAT!” his cousin screamed, striking out at Raz and falling over. “DON’T CALL ME THAT! BASTARD!”

  “Fine, Adrion,” Raz smirked, watching the man struggle to sit up again, his right arm hanging uselessly from his shoulder. “I’ll call you whatever you want. I’d rather it, actually. You don’t deserve the name your parents gave you.”

  “MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!”

  The room seemed to go quiet, the silence of the dead around them drowning out the cries of the living. Adrion started to laugh.

  “Dead!” he chortled, and Raz was shocked to see tears cut through the blood that stained his face. “All dead. Because of you, Raz. My parents, my sister, now my friends. You. Killed. Everyone.”

  “I didn’t kill the Arros,” Raz hissed.

  “You as good as,” Adrion chuckled, looking up. “Where were you, Raz? When they came, when those men spilled out of the city like wolves, where were you? You weren’t there. You were out playing on the rooftops. And they were there for you.”

  Abruptly, he stopped laughing. In an instant Adrion’s face shifted from maddened amusement to loathing.

  “They were there for you!” he screamed, throwing himself at Raz. “FOR YOU! I’LL KILL YOU, YOU FUCKING LIZARD! I’LL TEAR YOU APART AND BURN YOUR FUCKING—!”

  Raz backhanded the man, sending him sprawling. For a full minute Raz stood over his
cousin, heart pounding, feeling Adrion’s words rock through his body and tear at old wounds.

  Then he calmed himself, resting Ahna’s tip on the ground. Using her to help him kneel by Adrion, he found him unconscious but breathing. From a knee Raz stared down at his damaged face, trying to see the boy he remembered from years ago.

  He couldn’t. Mychal was dead and gone.

  “It was my fault,” Raz said quietly. “You’re not wrong. But at least I fought to make things better, Adrion. You didn’t.”

  Raz got to his feet gingerly and eased Ahna over both shoulders.

  “Take care of our Grandmother, cousin.”

  CHAPTER 40

  “We’re through. You can come out now.”

  At the driver’s words, Raz pushed up on the wooden planks he was lying under, lifting the door to the smuggler’s hatch he’d been curled in for the last three hours. Sitting up and groaning at the throbbing of his healing wing and side, he looked out the back of the open cart.

  The last twinkling lights of Miropa, the Gem of the South, were fading quickly in the distant night.

  Pushing himself to his feet, Raz grasped the cloth covering to steady himself. It had been years since he’d last traveled by cart, and the rumbling, bumpy sensation beneath his feet as he replaced the hatch’s cover felt both pleasant and sadly nostalgic. The wagon itself was a lot like his family’s had been, in fact, packed with goods and items to trade, pushed to the sides to offer better balance. Somewhere in the mess, Ahna was stowed away, along with his other weapons. His armor was there, too, finally removed with the help of hands greased by a couple of his last gold crowns.

  It didn’t matter. Money had little value if you couldn’t spend it.

  Raz moved to the front and knelt beside the old man seated there. It had taken a few days to track down someone willing to sneak him out of the city—not to mention a great deal more coin—since Raz had, in the course of a single morning, become the most wanted fugitive in the South. Still, he’d gotten lucky, though the man had refused to tell him his name.

  Raz looked out over the moonlit sands. They’d been traveling for less than an hour, and he already knew he’d never been this far north before.

  “S’far as the border,” the old man said suddenly, flicking the reins so that the two old mares pulling the cart picked up their pace a little. “I ain’t taken’ ya’ farther than that.”

  Raz nodded. Looking over his shoulder, his amber eyes fell on Miropa once more.

  “It’s far enough. Anywhere away from here is far enough.”

  Adrion was throwing things again. Lazura could hear him screaming profanity from her place on the balcony, grabbing anything within reach of the bed he was stuck in and smashing it against the nearest wall. Night had fallen, and with it came a messenger from the newly appointed Captain-Commander of the city guard.

  Apparently, the man hadn’t been bearing good news.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘HE’S GONE’?”

  Another crash rang out, and Lazura sighed, lifting a spoonful of soup from the clay bowl in her hand and bringing it to the Grandmother’s lips. There was a dull flash, and the old woman coughed, choking on the invisible force that pushed the broth down her throat. A moment later she resumed her statue-like stare.

  “Did you hear that, you ancient hag?” Lazura crooned softly, repeating the process. “Your precious pet isn’t in the city anymore. He’s run off, tail between his legs. Probably heard the other fringe cities are sending their best to get after him, didn’t he?”

  The Grandmother choked again, inhaling half the soup Lazura was compelling her to swallow, some of it dripping down her chin.

  “I can never keep you clean for very long, can I?” Lazura asked with false concern, tsk-tsking. She reached up and dabbed the old woman’s lips clean. “Doesn’t matter, though, does it? Another year, and I’ll have what I need from you.”

  The Grandmother’s eyes never moved, their dull gaze unwavering.

  “If only I could hear your thoughts,” Lazura laughed, a sound like wind chimes. “If only I knew how you worked. It would be so much easier. Look.”

  Putting the soup down, Lazura held out a hand. There was another dark flash, and a tiny flame appeared, floating above her palm, white like the fine ivories of Perce. She grinned in pleasure at the sight of the arcane fire. The flame grew and spread, building until it crackled around Lazura’s entire hand.

  Then it sputtered, clung to life for a moment, and died.

  Lazura cursed and tried a second time. The flash came, but little more than a spark rose from her palm this time, and she cursed again. Whirling on the Grandmother, she grasped both armrests of the old woman’s chair and leaned over until their faces were barely an inch apart, her blue eyes peering into those empty gray ones.

  “I will have your secrets,” she crooned, searching the still gaze for any sign of motion, any hint that her words were comprehended. “My master is dead. The Mahsadën of Miropa are gone, but only for the moment. And when the other cities replace them, I will have my place there. I will carry your pathetic cripple of a grandchild on my back if I have to, but when he is the man I need him to be, my turn to rise will come. And by then, bitch, I will have my strength back. I will have it back, even if I have to cut it from your body with my bare hands!”

  “LAZURA!”

  Lazura groaned as Adrion’s voice rang out from the bedroom. The man had become insufferable since the surgeon ordered him to bed-rest for his injuries three days ago.

  “LAZURA! MY TEA! NOW!”

  Standing up straight and smoothing her black silks, Lazura replaced her charming smile.

  “Coming!” she called back sweetly before bending down to pick up the bowl of cold soup. With a last glance at the old woman, she hurried back into the house.

  If she’d stayed another minute or so, she might have noticed the movement. If she’d stayed, Lazura might have seen the Grandmother’s eyes come back to life, her pupils dilating and focusing.

  If she’d stayed, she might have seen those eyes jerk upward, looking pleadingly to the Moon hanging in the sky high above, crowned by Her Stars.

  At once a dry wind picked up, whispering through the alleys and open windows of the surrounding buildings. Dust was kicked up in the dark streets. Doors left ajar banged shut. The air rushed back and forth, seemingly moving on no set course until it rushed like a wave over the Grandmother’s frail, frozen body, washing through white hair and over mottled skin.

  Muscles that had been taut for too many years relaxed. Willful breath rushed into the old woman’s lungs, and she partially collapsed in her chair. Gasping and wheezing, the Grandmother grasped the arms of her seat and pushed herself up, barely able to lift her own head. When she did, though, her eyes found the Moon again, and she smiled in content surrender to the call.

  Reaching out, the Grandmother grasped the railing of the balcony to her right. It took everything she had to pull herself to her feet. Fragile knees shook under the strain, atrophied muscles struggling mightily to keep her standing.

  Another breeze blew, and the woman suddenly found that strength reborn.

  Standing tall, the Grandmother looked north. There, between the crowning towers of the two nearby estates, she could see the barest outline of the horizon, marking the land beyond the walls of the city. Her lips cracked open, and words formed gently in a whisper so low they were almost lost to the wind.

  “Be safe, my child.”

  And then the Grandmother tilted herself over the railing, plummeting from the balcony to the cobbled street below.

  EPILOGUE

  “There is no breaking such a bond.”

  —from the journals of Carro al’Dor

  Syrah awoke so suddenly she jolted up, gasping. She was drenched in sweat, the dark night air digging a chill through her thin gown. She shivered, tugging the quilted furs of her bed to her chest.

  Beside her, Reyn groaned groggily.

  “Syrah? What… what
’s wrong?”

  “Shhh.” She turned to him, kissing his forehead and resting a hand on his cheek. He was warm, whereas her skin might have been ice in comparison. “It’s nothing. A bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

  Reyn nodded, already halfway there. She ran her fingers through his shoulder-length dirty blonde hair until he was breathing deep again, lost to the world.

  Sliding out of bed, Syrah stepped into her fur boots before stealing across the room to crack the door, slipping into the lantern-lit hall. Turning right, she started the midnight walk she’d done a hundred times before, but not in years.