“Captain Redvar, my saber,” said the chancellor.
“Milord,” Darien protested as the chancellor staggered forward to take his blade. “You’re still recovering. Let me do it.”
“I uphold my own justice, Captain.”
The chancellor raised the saber to his shoulder. A pair of Morphs held Ren by the shoulders so his head drooped in front of him.
“Consider this the dying wish of your Gallows Girl.” Cyrus Maro raised the blade above his head, his hands shaking.
Merri held Tori tight. Her entire body felt like it had been filled with lead. It was all she could do not to look away. She held Ren’s gaze. She owed him that much. His eyes were beautiful sapphires, glistening in the torchlight. Tori’s heart wrung inside her chest. Oh gods! No, no, no!
The blade came down.
One of the Watchers shrieked.
But Ren’s head did not sever from his neck.
The blade struck the stony ground in front of the Watcher captain with a sharp clang. The chancellor let the blade slip from his fingers, and it clattered on the ground. Did he miss? Is he too weak to wield the saber?
The room was completely silent. No soldier stepped up to finish the deed.
All of the Watchers’ eyes were on the chancellor, waiting to see what would happen next.
Vashti Burodai stepped forward and turned to face the Watchers she had betrayed. “Our captain and his Gallows Girl would sacrifice your lives for the sake of their radical shenzah. Ren had a feud with the chancellor long before he recruited us, and he formed the Shadow Watch because he wanted to use us to seek his revenge. And he set the chancellor up as our common enemy. The enemy of our Watcher kind. But this chancellor is not our enemy. He never wished to take our lives. He came to peacefully quell our resistance.”
Vashti raised her hands. It made Tori sick to hear her speak. “In exchange for peace, he has offered me freedom and the union between my people and Osha. But that offer is not just for me.”
The chancellor smiled and took Vashti’s hand, gently. “I offer you all the chance to use your gifts to serve the empire. The time has come to bring magic back to the North. If you join me, you will be free. Not to run and hide, as in the days of my father, and not to fight and die for a hopeless cause, as your former leaders would have you. You will be free to discover your gifts and serve the people of the New World. The time has come for magic to return to the world, and all of you can be part of the future of magic.”
The chamber was silent at first.
Ren was the first to speak. “Don’t listen to his lies. It’s all a—”
Darien silenced him with his fist. “The chancellor spared your life. And this is the gratitude you show?”
“It’s all right,” said the chancellor. “He’ll come around. As for the rest of you…”
Dajha glanced at Tori, then shook his head. He gestured at the saber lying in front of Ren. “If this is justice in the empire, I reckon Ren’s been feedin’ us shenzah all along. I never signed up to be a barterin’ chip in some noble’s blood feud. I signed up to learn magic. And I reckon I can do that just as well in Osha as anywhere.”
Many of the others nodded their heads in agreement.
“I’ll serve,” said Dajha. He stood to his feet, and Vashti helped him up.
The chancellor patted him on the back. “You’ve chosen well, son.”
The young Fieri boy, Jann, was the next to rise. And then, Vashti’s friend, Calla, rose to her feet.
In the end, there were only a few who resisted—Sahra, Vonn, Mischa, and Ren chief among them. In a dark way, Tori wished they all had joined the others. There was no future left for the Watchers but death or betrayal.
34
Tori’s blood was drained daily, just enough to keep her body weak and her magic suppressed, and she was not alone in this daily agony. All the Watchers were drained of their strength each night, and in the morning, they were herded through the catacombs beneath the Crooked Teeth, dull aches filling their bones with each jarring step. Those who pledged their allegiance to the chancellor, however, received kinder treatment. They got food and water rations and slept on mats in the main chamber. If they complied until they reached the citadel, then they would go free. Tori and the other dissenters were treated like cattle. Their bloodletting was arduous. They were chained in dark chambers and watched at all times. The Legions and the Morphs surrounded them, kept them apart, kept them from conspiring, or even sharing in their hellish march.
The system of caverns was an immense labyrinth. Tori’s mum had told stories of the tunnels beneath the world. It was said they were formed by the Gulag, a giant worm-like monster of the Old World. Even in her youth, Tori had thought it an outlandish myth. Tori wondered, now, if it was real, if the Gulag was in the chancellor’s abyss somewhere, along with all the other legends of the Old World. Probably a world of sinking sand, where it could dig no tunnels, she thought.
Every few leagues or so, the catacombs reached an expansive chamber, where the large company made camp. The races of the Old World were said to have used the caves to hide from Rulaqs and other beasts. And now in the New World, they had been forced to do the same.
At first, Tori wondered why the chancellor had not used the godstones to escape the catacombs, but the disgruntled murmurs of the soldiers answered her question soon enough. The chancellor was still weak from the unleashing of the Rulaqs, and he had drained his store of the Gallows Girl’s blood. And worse, according to the soldiers, the chancellor’s dark witch, Medea, had been lost in the madness. And so they were all cursed to wander this underworld maze until they reached the surface.
It was some time before Tori pieced together who else had died in the Rulaq attack—Joran, the Regenero from the Ytalan fights, a Medici named Gany, and a Conjuri named Lera. Every time Tori saw any of the turned Watchers, she was overwhelmed by guilt. Her resistance had been futile; perhaps it had always been so, ever since the day of the Gallows. And if she had complied, the others would be alive. Zaya would be alive. Only once, she caught Mischa’s gaze during the march, and her best friend looked away, holding back tears. Tori wished Mischa would join the chancellor like the others. At least, then, she would survive.
After the chancellor extended mercy to the Watchers, Tori noticed a growing uneasiness among the soldiers, even in the apparent safety of the catacombs. The grumblings grew worse by the day. Many felt that the chancellor should have killed Ren. Others were unhappy that their rations were being shared with the turned Watchers. A fight broke out on the third night underground over food portions. A large brute stabbed a younger, scrawnier Shadow for his helping. Darien broke up the fight himself, disarming the brute with a swift flash of his saber. The young soldier was not mortally wounded, but Tori feared it was a sign of worse things to come if they spent much longer underground.
According to lore, the cannibalistic Nosferati inhabited the catacombs. As the soldiers murmured during the marches, Tori found herself remembering the old terror stories that her mother had told around fires on the Steppe. At the climax of the stories—the point when a Nosferati always came to the surface in the night and kidnapped little boys and girls—one of the older children would sneak up and grab the littles from behind. Tori could still remember the thrill, the squeals, and the relieved laughter that had always followed. Because, of course, monsters weren’t real. They were only stories.
Tori longed for those innocent days again, before the betrayal of her mother, before life as a Fringe rat and a slave. Before the citadel and the Watchtower. Before Tori had discovered that if some tales were true, then they all must be. There is no magic without monsters.
Tori saw little of the chancellor and his new queen-to-be during the march. They kept to the front of the company, and the chancellor and his personal guards did not camp in the same chamber as the soldiers and the Watcher prisoners. Tori saw much of Ren and Mischa and the other Watchers who had refused to turn. But always from a distance. Th
e more their blood was drawn and the longer they were herded along, the weaker they became. It was evident in the way they held themselves, heads down, backs hunched, feet shuffling. They looked like poor abused animals resigned to their fate, not Watcher rebels—even Ren had visibly given up.
On the fourth day underground, Tori was kept at the rear of the company, escorted by Darien’s companion, Valeria. Tori had noticed the way the female Morph regarded Darien—whether it was affection or comradely devotion, she did not know. But Tori despised the Morph soldier with silver hair.
For the past few days, Darien and Merri had been close by, but they did not regard Tori, except when Merri would come to drain her blood each evening. And each evening, it was the same cold look in her eyes. Darien had not even bothered to look her way since the first night.
Tori often wondered when it had happened. When Darien had turned from rebel slave to mindless follower. Is it all some dark magic that’s taken over his mind?
But Darien did not seem like he was under a spell. No, Tori imagined it happened when Darien began feeling like he belonged with the Legions more than anywhere else. And she had the suspicion that Valeria had something to do with that sense of belonging, for Tori had noted the way he looked to her as well. She suspected Valeria had become to Darien the Soldier what Tori had been to Darien the Slave—a survival companion.
Valeria kept silent the entire march, occasionally offering a good shove when Tori slowed. But as they reached a small chamber with a pool of water, the soldiers rushed forward to drink, and Valeria held her back.
“He’s still in there,” Valeria whispered when there was a distance between them and the soldiers clambering for fresh water.
“What?” Tori was about to turn and face her, but Valeria held her fast by her shackles.
“Don’t look at me. Just listen. Darien is not much like the boy he was when you last knew him, Gallows Girl. But he’s not all gone.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So you don’t lose hope.” Valeria paused for a moment. “Not all Shadows are as dark as they seem. Some are still human deep down. And some are… biding their time.”
With that, Valeria shoved her, and Tori collapsed to the ground, aches shooting through the hollows of her bones. “Quit your bitching! You don’t need a drink till we make camp, like all the other prisoners!” Valeria kicked Tori in the side for good measure.
Valeria did not say anything more the rest of the march. When evening came, the chancellor and his entourage marched on to camp in an adjoining chamber, and the Legions began to pitch tents in a large domed space. If Tori believed the murmurs among the soldiers, this would be their last night in the catacombs. They were near the surface. Which meant Tori was drawing nearer to death with each step. Once they reached Maro’El, she would be executed for all the world to see.
Tori had come to accept this reality. It was like the dull aches that wracked her body as she walked—something she could not change. The chancellor had forced them all into a corner, and there could be no good outcome.
Tori pondered what Valeria said all day, but no matter how much her heart longed for it to be true, she kept telling herself it was a cruel Morph trick. Why would a Morph want to keep her hopes up?
But still the idea teased her. Could it be that Darien was not as far gone as he seemed? Tori kept telling herself it was foolishness, but she could not stop herself from hoping. It was all she had left.
Time moved slowly that night. Anticipation hung heavy in the air. The Legions were restless, knowing the world above was only a short distance away, and this restlessness was turning them ruthless. Tori shuddered as she watched Sahra be dragged out of the chamber after her blood was drained. Sahra did not have strength to fight. Vonn barked and bellowed at the offending Shadow, only to be knocked to the hard stone by another soldier. Blood poured from his mouth, but he did not stop screaming until a Shadow rendered him unconscious with a blow to the head.
Tori watched, helpless, like all the other Watchers. Her body tensed. She wanted to make it stop, but knew no one could. They were chained and weak. Tori closed her mind to the scene. The sadness was too much to bear.
The Legions were famously feared for their vicious treatment of war prisoners. The raping and ruthless destruction of defeated cities was what made the Legions so notorious in the New World. The Watchers were the latest defeated army, and they would be treated no differently. All Tori could do was listen helplessly to Sahra’s muffled cries.
But a moment later, Valeria emerged with Sahra in tow, her saber drawn, traces of blood specking it. The offending Shadow hobbled after, cradling his bleeding arm. A spark of hope surged in Tori once more. Valeria is saving Sahra?
“These prisoners are the chancellor’s prized possessions! You will not treat them like some Morgathian rat!” Valeria raised her blade in the air. “The next Shadow I catch taking prisoners to the back caverns, I’ll run through!”
But it did not end that easily. The Shadows were restless and growing more so by the moment. One Shadow overturned a bucket of Watcher blood, splattering it across the cavern floor. “What’s it matter, ey? We’re already takin’ their blood, what’s it hurt to take a bit more?”
This sentiment was chorused by a few others. The room quickly turned into chaos. Soldiers shoved one another, and a second priceless bucket of Watcher blood was overturned.
Darien transformed to his Morph form and roared. The sight of his beastly shape sent shivers through Tori. “That blood is worth more than your very lives!”
Valeria morphed and flew to his side, along with a few others. But it was little use. The tension had reached a point of no return.
In the chaos, Tori went unnoticed, chained at the edge of the room. Unnoticed by all but one.
A hand came from behind, covering her mouth before she had time to make a sound. And then, she was being dragged backwards into a side corridor. Before the dark enveloped her, she caught a glimpse of her attacker’s face, and it filled her with fear. It was Jujen, the soldier who had wanted to harvest her blood.
The Shadow shoved her up against a wet cave wall in an abandoned chamber. “The Gallows Girl,” he hissed. “I heard a rumor you and the captain tossed around back when you were slaves. But seeing as he’s moved on, well, I reckon it’s equal shares now, en’t it?”
Jujen spun her around to face him, throwing her head back hard against the stone, his hands tearing at her cloak and thick woolen shirt. Dazed by the blow to her head and weakened from the march, Tori could hardly resist. She let out a weak cry, only to be stifled by another blow against the cave wall. She squirmed with what little strength remained, but Jujen was too strong. Her mind went hazy, drifting away from reality, and Tori did not try to come back. She could not fight him, and she did not want to remember what was to come.
Jujen pinned down her arms and wedged his body against her. “Seeing as the chancellor wants you dead, I reckon there’s no need to worry about—”
“Jujen!”
The boy’s hands fell away from Tori’s body at the sudden voice from the darkness. A torch lit up the chamber. It was Ol’ Merri. “What’re you doing, comrade?” Her voice was soft, but commanding.
Jujen spluttered at first. “I, er, just… It’s none of your business, cook!” he snapped. “I came back to drain her blood.” His fists were clenched. He reached for his belt.
“Ah,” said Merri. “No need ter be defensive, comrade, if you’re just bleeding out the prisoner, is there?”
“I, er… I en’t defensive!”
“You’re a fine soldier, Jujen,” said Merri carefully. “But I think you may’ve forgotten something important.” She held up a bucket and tube.
“Oh gods, er—how foolish of me.” He reached for the elements, but Merri pulled them back. Jujen’s eyes were alight.
“Don’t be foolish, son. Fools in this world wind up dead, you know.”
“A-are you threatening me?” Jujen said
tremulously, hand still hovering near the blade at his belt.
“Why don’t you let me deal with the Gallows Girl’s blood, as our captain commanded me, an’ you head on back ter the main chamber? I reckon the captain could use your help calming down the troops an’ their... lust.” She held his dark gaze, and finally, he stood down.
Without another word, Jujen darted away into the dark. Tori breathed with relief.
Merri regarded her with cool eyes, and Tori steeled herself for the bloodletting that was to come. She wished Merri would drain all her blood and be done with it. Be done with the chancellor, this march, this unrelenting world.
But the prick of the needle did not come. Merri dropped the bucket on the floor. The clatter echoed off the walls.
“For someone who’s been through a dozen hells, you’re the most resilient girl I’ve ever known,” said Merri. Her voice was barely a whisper, and it cracked as she spoke.
“W-what?” Tori managed.
Merri smiled. Her face seemed to lighten the room, brighter than any torch. It was the warm smile Tori had known from Scelero’s estate. “You survived, Tori. You kept your head through more suffering than any girl should endure. But you’re still here. I’m so proud o’ you, child.”
Suddenly, Tori was wrapped in Merri’s arms. And Tori cried desperate tears of relief, soaking Merri’s Legion uniform. “Thank the gods,” Tori muttered between sobs, her fingers clutching the old cook as though this reality would disappear if she let go.
Merri brushed Tori’s dark, matted hair out of her face. She smiled as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Yes, child, thank the gods.”
There was movement in the dark.
Tori pulled away quickly. She would not reveal Merri’s betrayal to her comrades, if she could help it.
A face came into the light. But it was not that of a soldier or Morph.
It was Mischa. The small Melanesian girl was gaunt and staggered as she walked, but there was a glimmer in her eyes. “Th-that Morph, Valeria, she was d-draining my blood when that soldier came back with Sahra. When Valeria dragged him off, sh-she let me go… a-and then Merri found me.”
The Shadow Watch Page 31