As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4)

by Bryce O'Connor

  Then Blaeth raised a hand, hesitated a brief moment, and brought it down in a fist on the table.

  CRACK!

  There was a flash of white that left Serys half-blind, followed by a dull blast that rocked over her body, shivering through her lungs and skull. It wasn’t so strong as to knock her out of her chair, but it stole her breath away even as she blinked, and she heard San curse behind her as he was forced back a step under the pressure.

  When her vision cleared, Serys found herself staring, along with every other person in the room, at Adrion Blaeth and his companion.

  Or rather, what was left of the table before them.

  From where Adrion’s fist still rested on the polished surface, streaking lines of ashen black had suddenly appeared in the wood, smoking and smoldering. They ripped outward from his hand like chiseled lightning, and here and there white flames flickered and faded in the charred crevices. Even as they all gaped, an entire section of the table to Serys’s left groaned and fell away, nearly crushing Ysera Ma’het’s foot as the woman cursed by the Sun and leapt from her seat to be clear of it.

  Before anyone could get a word in, Blaeth spoke.

  “You have heard rumors, I am sure,” he said slowly, drawing his fist back to reveal a scorched blast-mark where it had been resting on the wood. “Perhaps some of you from different lands are familiar with this sort of power. Regardless, take it in. Put to rest your curiosities as to how I have come to hold the reigns of Miropa against all challengers who have risen to claim them.”

  The room held its silence, most too stunned to say anything, still staring at the smoldering table as though unable to believe their eyes.

  “Eighteen months ago, I stood in this very room,” Adrion pressed on, looking around at them all. “There, along that wall.” He raised a finger, pointing to a space at the edge of the chamber not far from where Analla waited with the other confidants. “Despite our number, despite the fact that he came alone to face us, and despite this power that was growing in me even then, Raz i’Syul Arro was unstoppable once he broke through that door.” He indicated to the room’s entrance, now, and Serys recalled the empty holes where old nails had been torn from the mortar. “The šef numbered nine in all, many capable killers, including Sass himself. In addition, there were more than a dozen of us attendants.”

  He frowned, eyes shifting to the window Serys had thought looked newer than the rest. “It couldn’t have taken him more than a few minutes, despite all that. Before we knew what to do, our blood was mixed with that of the guards he had butchered on the way up the stairs, whose heads he brought as gift to us. He cut as down like we were nothing, cleaving through anything and anyone that got in his path. There was no stopping him, nothing any single one of us could have done. It was panic and chaos and blood and death. Looking back, I can’t even think straight enough to wonder if there was any action we might have taken to change things.”

  “Here?” Ahthys Borne breathed in disbelief, finally tearing his eyes from the ruined table to look around at the room. “It happened here, in this place?”

  Blaeth nodded, leaning back in his chair again and tapping the arm with a finger. “This is the very seat Imaneal Evony occupied, before he was fool enough to try and reason with beast. He died over there—” he gestured to a nearby corner, where a pair of young men leapt out of the way to reveal a sizable chunk chipped out of the stone wall “—where Arro ran him through last of all.”

  He looked around again, meeting each of their gazes before settling on the Dynec delegation.

  “I second the motion by Karavyl,” he announced loudly, his tone changing as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “We should accept the loss of Dynec, and move to gather our forces. It may give the Dragon a foothold in the South, but neither I nor Lazura believe he will hole himself up for long in any one place. His goal is to eradicate us, at a scale he did not achieve when he slaughtered the former šef of Miropa.” Blaeth’s eyes narrowed again, watching Marst carefully as the old man’s fists shook by his sides. “To put it bluntly, Marst, I would not leave the decision in your hands if I could help it. I have already mobilized Miropa’s garrison, but Arro will reach your city much sooner than my forces, even if we marched directly across the Cienbal. This must be your decision, but I urge you to consider carefully. If you face the Dragon’s army head-on, you will not only lose, but you will deny the fringe-cites the troops and supplies Dynec could have provided. Between Miropa, Acrosia, Karth, Karavyl, and Cyro, we number enough to match the Arro’s forces with some small advantage, but I will no longer allow the Mahsadën to underestimate that creature.” He gave the man a sad, almost-understanding smile. “Give us your ten thousand. Concede the city. When this battle is done, we can address the opportunity to rebuild and ensure Dynec thrives even without Perce to support it.”

  Liar, Serys thought, though she was more impressed than anything. Blaeth spoke with eloquent confidence, delivering threat and reward in the same breath without even batting an eye. There was, of course, no advantage to Dynec’s presence among the fringe cities if Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan were not rebuilt in the next handful of years. At best, the city would become another Karth, a shit-hole with no strategic value, useful only as a haven for the thugs and vagrants of low ambition the Mahsadën had no interest in bringing into the fold.

  Not to mention the fact that the current šef would lose all semblance of power the moment their army and resources were absorbed by the other cities…

  Unfortunately, Marst and his companions seemed to come to the same conclusion.

  “We will not be conned into bowing to some snake and his whore.” The old man spat on the table in Blaeth and Lazura’s directions, then turned and shoved his chair aside to step away from the table, Oren and Vest right behind him. “I don’t care what kind of sorcery you wield, Blaeth. Dynec will not allow itself to be swallowed so easily.”

  “Marst, wait!” Ahthys Borne tried to call after the delegation as they began moving for the door, their confidants falling in at their back. “Your forces could be key in this fight! Don’t just—!”

  “Sun curse your fight!” Marst bellowed without looking back, giving the room a rood gesture over his shoulder that Serys would never have thought the man capable of before today. “I will see to it we hire every sarydâ in the South, if we have to! Dynec will stand firm, with or without your help!”

  And then the delegation was gone, ripping the door open and stepping through, vanishing down the stairs beyond.

  “Unfortunate,” Blaeth sighed, cutting through the quite of the room that followed Dynec’s abrupt exit. All eyes turned to him, and Serys couldn’t help but reel again as she saw the devastation of the table, embers still smoldering in the places the lighting crossed itself over the wood. “But it could hardly be helped. Unfortunately, Marst will find mercenaries in short supply, when he goes looking.”

  Several people blinked at that, and it was the slight change in Lazura’s smile, the woman’s hand still on the man’s left shoulder, that gave it away for Serys.

  “You anticipated this,” she said harshly, frowning at the pair of them. “You knew Dynec wouldn’t care to play your game. How many sarydâ have you already contracted?”

  “This is no game, Benth,” Blaeth told her coolly. “But yes, it seemed the most plausible outcome. Miropa has officially employed five-thousand mercenaries, and we are in negotiation with several other groups that amount to another three. I’m loathe to trust sellswords over trained soldiers, and it won’t completely make up for the loss of Dynec’s army, but the sarydâ will still give us the advantage over the Dragon’s forces when the time comes.”

  “‘When the time comes…?’” the šef from Karth repeated nervously, like he didn’t want to dwell on what that implied.

  “Yes,” Blaeth said with a nod. “Eventually, the Dragon is going to force our hand.”

  “And it will be a fight for the South as a whole,” Serys grumbled to hersel
f, ensuring no one else could hear as the other šef leaned in, eager to hear any plan that would drag them free of the blazing fire that was Raz i’Syul Arro, Monster of Karth, Scourge of the South, Dragon of the North.

  Some hours later, Adrion Blaeth watched through the room’s center window as the last of the delegations took their leave. He hadn't expected much from the Karavyl representatives, but Serys Benth—despite her responsibilities lying largely within the management and prosperity of her city’s brothels and whorehouses—had proven herself deceptively astute when it came to plotting out the upcoming fight. He watched her and the pair she’d come with reach the bottom of the building’s steps, where a dozen guards stood waiting along the street below, then move south towards the markets as the soldiers fell in behind them.

  “Your infamous ‘šef’ are all nothing but pompous fools, apparently.”

  The feminine voice sent a shiver down Adrion’s back, but it had been a long time since he’d learned to control the fear. He didn’t turn away from the window, even though Lazura’s words made his shoulder tingle where her hand had rested for a majority of the morning.

  His fingers still ached from when she had forced her magic through his arm in her theatrical display.

  “Some, admittedly,” he said with a nod, watching Serys Benth vanish beyond the lip of the window frame. “But not all. Most of them were quick enough to come together. We have assurances from Karavyl, Cyro, and Acrosia, and I have no doubt Karth will fall in line after Arro crushes Dynec.”

  The woman gave an unconvinced grunt, and Blaeth finally decided to turn around.

  Lazura sat at the edge of the table, one finger absently playing with the edge of one of the cracks her power had formed in the wood as she watched him. Even now, a year after she’d forcibly taken his reigns and made him her little puppet in her political games, Adrion felt a twinge of what could only be lust as he took her in. She was a beautiful creature. Whatever god it was that created her, be in the Sun or the ‘Lifegiver’ she sometimes cursed to, they had done a masterful job in her making. She was petite, slender but not overly thin, and small enough in stature to appear delicate, though Adrion would never have been fool to say so out loud. Her features were porcelain in quality, blue eyes the color of dark water against the light skin of her face, and her hair—after years spent in the Southern climates—was more white than blonde. The only thing that marred the perfection of her face, in fact, was the scar whose tale Adrion had never managed to figure out. It bisected her features in a cross pattern, forming perfectly even, distinctly diagonal lines that cut across her cheeks, forehead, and nose in perpendicular directions. Adrion had never found the markings ugly, despite himself, but they held a sinister quality for him now they’d never possessed when Lazura had been feigning her doting roll as caretaker to the Grandmother.

  Adrion felt a lump swell in his throat as he thought of what had become of the old woman, the last surviving tie he had to his former life apart from Raz himself. Hate lifted its ugly head in his gut, studying Lazura’s face, but he fought it back down again.

  There are some fights one cannot win, he quoted to himself, recalling something his uncle, Jarden, had once taught him.

  Swallowing his pride, he steeled himself.

  “It was foolish of you to reveal your magics to them,” he told her, doing his best to keep his voice strong as he took a step forward, leaning into the cane nestled beneath his left arm in the place of his missing leg. “You should have kept that as a trump card, for when the right time came.”

  Lazura made a face, sneering at him as though his words were the chirping of some distasteful insect.

  “No,” she said, her sweet voice ill-matching the grimace. “It was time to give them a taste. You may be as capable a substitute as I could have hoped for, Adrion, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you are anything more than that. Enjoy your position, while you can.”

  Adrion’s free hand clenched into an unbidden fist at his side. “I came to terms with my position long ago,” he lied, refusing to look away from her. “It doesn’t change the fact that the longer we kept that hidden, the more impact it would have had in the right scenario.”

  Lazura waved the comment off like she was bored of the conversation already. “You know better than anyone that display was barely a fraction of what I’m capable of. I didn’t want to risk blowing your arm off, given the weak image you already present.” She gave him a sadistic grin, looking down at the stump of his left leg. “Providing them with an example of what ‘you’ are capable of will either plant the seed of subservience when the times comes for them to bend the knee, or spur them into the action against us while they think you are still within reach. Either option is fine, and if any of them choose to take the latter route, I will enjoy thinning the herd.”

  Adrion grit his teeth at that. He understood the necessary evils of the world, had come to terms with the wickedness that lingered in the hearts of all men. Ergoin Sass had showed him the abhorrent realities of life, taught him how to make the hard decisions that allowed one to thrive in a place like the South. Adrion knew he had grown into a cruel man as a result, but he held no regrets for the path he’d followed. His choices were for the betterment of the city as much as for himself. The week and poor that leeched at the working classes made themselves useful as slaves, and crime was under control of the Mahsadën, keeping it from raging rampant. A realistic order held firm in Miropa, balancing the needs and desires of the people who turned a blind eye on the society’s control over the city with the chaos and corruption that was an unavoidable byproduct of any thriving metropolis. Adrion believed with all his heart that men like him, men like Ergoin Sass and Imaneal Evony, were key in raising Miropa into ‘the Gem’ it had become. They might not be ‘good’, per se, but they were essential.

  Lazura, on the other hand, was something else altogether.

  Blood excited her. She took pleasure in her games, enjoyed pulling the strings of the Adrion and the city’s Mahsadën to increasingly terrifying results. There was no tempering her, of late. There had been a time when he had been able to reason with the woman, guiding her away from action that might have proven disastrous for them both in the end, but as she grew closer to her goal of dominance, Lazura had become increasingly harder to reign in. Ever since she had regained her magic, the woman had been drunk on her own power, but of late the insatiable gleam in her eye was sharper, more dangerous. She was growing increasingly blind to the risk of her decisions, but as her strength grew—personally and politically—so too, it seemed, did her sense of invulnerability.

  Even with Raz marching right at us, she still has her eyes on the šef, Adrion thought nervously, watching the woman play with a loose strand of bleached hair absently.

  Not for the first time, he found himself wondering who he would root for, if the titans ever came to a head…

  Adrion frowned, at that, forcing the considering from his mind. “What now?” he finally asked, deciding it was time to change the subject.

  In response, Lazura smiled. It was her typical, simpering display that most found innocent and endearing, but Adrion had longed learned to read the subtleties of. There was a hunger, there, though fortunately not one directed at him.

  “Mah’sed!” Lazura called over her shoulder, and at once a figure stepped through the door into the otherwise-empty room., the dark layers of his clothing rippling gently to settle around his lithe frame. For a moment, Adrion had a flashback of another such man appearing seemingly out of thin air, and he swallowed the twist in his gut.

  Whether fortunately or unfortunately, they hadn't received word from Na’zeem Ashur in some months, meaning the assassin had undoubtedly fallen to the Dragon a long time ago.

  This man, like his predecessor, said nothing as Lazura waved him in, approaching like a dog told to heel by its master. When he stood beside her, Lazura opened her mouth to say something, then stopped with a bemused look.

  “Adrion,” she sna
pped, looking around at him. “What were their names?”

  Adrion would have rolled his eyes, if the question hadn't made his stomach wrench even further. He didn’t have to ask who she meant.

  “Elon Marst, Amthel Oren, and Hestya Veste,” he said without looking into Mah’sed’s dead gaze and making sure to keep his voice even. “You’ll likely find their confidants looking for representatives of the larger mercenary groups, likely in the taverns and guild halls around the market. They’ll be trying to gather aid for Dynec as quickly as possible. Tail them, and they’ll lead you back to the šef themselves.”

  The man nodded at once, bowing briefly to Lazura before making for the door again. He didn’t carry himself with the same deadly confidence Na’zeem once had, but that didn’t endear him to Adrion anymore. When the assassin was finally gone, Lazura glanced around.