The Broken Man

by Brandon Jones

  “Come now, Vale, do I really need to explain myself again?” Lady Stonelowe said, so condescending. “The notice we sent was quite clear. Your brother is considered a high-risk prisoner—a danger to himself and to anyone around him. He is volatile, so he’s being kept in high-security cell. No visitors of any kind.” Lady Stonelowe smiled.

  Vale’s fingers twitched.

  Lady Stonelowe glanced at Vale’s hands locked onto the edge of her desk and frowned. She pushed Vale’s hands from the desk, then produced a rag from one of the drawers, glowering at Vale.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” Lady Stonelowe said, polishing furiously at the smudges left by Vale’s fingers. “And off my desk. This desk is worth more than—”

  “Arietta,” Vale said coldly, and was rewarded by a brief stunned look on the First Prefect’s face. “Your precious desk can rot in a wet, fetid hell. It has been eleven days. Josen is not some petty criminal to be locked away on a whim for as long—”

  “Vale Oak, I suggest you lower your voice and—”

  “—he is a Reverate Steward, and you will treat him with—”

  “—speak with respect, or I will have you—”

  “—and respect he is due, or so help me—”

  “Vale!” Sam said, bursting into Lady Stonelowe’s office, heedless of the shouting match in progress. He was breathing hard, his face dripping with sweat like he had just run the entire length of Ceralon and up the many flights of stairs leading to the First Prefect’s office. “You need to… the Basin… workers are—”

  Vale rushed to Sam’s side. “Easy, Sam. Slow down, catch your breath.”

  Sam nodded, gulping in air. He really must have sprinted up the entirety of the Archonite Tower. But he was more than just winded. Vale could see panic written on the boy’s face.

  “What is this?” Lady Stonelowe said, not lowering her voice. “Lady Hanchi!” she yelled for one of the several Ladies stationed in her office. “How did this boy get past—”

  “The workers in the Basin,” Sam said. He was still breathing hard but, he understandable now. “There are riots breaking out in the streets and in the camps.”

  “What?” Vale asked.

  “Montiel, he sent me to get you, said you need to come back right away. They’re burning fields and barns.”

  “First Prefect Stonelowe!” a dark-skinned lady burst into the office, panic on her face. “We just received word. Basin City is in riot. Lower City is burning.”

  * * *

  “Hey. Hey!” Josen yelled, lurching across the cell the moment he heard the sound of wood rattling inside a loose metal track, the telltale sound that the little door at the bottom of his cell door was about to slide open. A small loaf of brown bread slid through, and a ladle sloshed water into a wooden bowl. “Wait! I can’t eat this!” Josen yelled, sliding onto his belly and pushing the little loaf of ceral bread back through the open space as the slide fell on his wrist. “I can’t eat this!”

  Three days. Three days of nothing but ceral bread and water. It was getting hard to think. His body needed food—real food. Anything but ceral.

  The someone outside the door stepped on Josen’s hand. “You’ll eat just like everybody else,” said a deceptively soft woman’s voice. “You’re not special in here, your Reverateness.”

  “It’s not like that. I have a condition—”

  “Get your hand in—”

  “I just need something that’s not ceral!”

  “Or I’ll break it off.”

  The Lady raised her foot and Josen snatched his hand back inside. She kicked the thick crusted bread back through the opening, and it cracked the bridge of Josen’s nose before he could roll away.

  She barked a laugh and muttered something under her breath, retreating further away. Josen held his nose, cursing and feeling impotent.

  He wanted desperately to break his cell door to ashes and walk out the front door of the prison. He could do it. Three days of ceral and nothing else meant the well of breaking energy inside him was overflowing. His body practically thrummed with it. He could break the stones at his feet to water, cell by cell, until he reached the ground. He could rot the door, and every door between himself and freedom. And how would the Archonites stop him? He would break their clubs to dust. Their manacles would flow from his wrists like sweat. No one would be able to stop him. He knew it was true.

  But then what? If he escaped, what exactly was his master plan? Go back to petty thieving, chasing the dreams of the Broken Man from a gutter? Abandon his family to the disaster he had unintentionally set loose at their door? But he couldn’t go back to Ceralon. The Ladies would just bring him back here, to die in prison.

  And Alia… Josen didn’t even know what to think about her. Was he willing to leave her behind as well? She had come to him, contrite and asking for forgiveness, and Josen had thrown it in her face. Would she forgive him for that?

  Josen stood, a wordless yell of frustration echoing off the stone walls of his cell. He took the bread and heaved it out into the abyss, watched it arc slowly out from his open sided cell at the tip of The Finger. The hard loaf clipped the edge of the prison roof below and broke apart before spinning out of sight and into the ocean.

  A man in the next cell over cackled.

  * * *

  “I’m disappointed, Alia,” Feramos said. He leaned in close, his hot breath on her ear, so she could hear him over the angry rumble of the crowd.

  Alia couldn’t see them, not from her vantage at the side of the stage, but she could hear them, could feel them. They were gathered at the Lower City Playhouse, men and women who had spent the last two days burning and looting and rioting as they worked themselves into a collective frenzy, goaded by Feramos.

  “I won’t lie,” Feramos continued. “I expected better of you.” He tightened the ropes around her wrists, then checked those at her ankles, making sure she was bound tightly to the chair. “I understand your hesitation, why you flinch and look away. The monster we created together is a truly terrific beast. But breaking my trust, trying to warn the Reverate…” Feramos trailed off, as if what she had done was literally unspeakable.

  She said nothing. She didn’t struggle as he checked her bonds one last time. It took all of her focus to not gag on the wad of cloth stuffed in her mouth. She didn’t know what would happen if she vomited like this, but certainly nothing good.

  “It breaks my heart—truly—to do this to you, of all people. You did your part well for so long. It is a tragedy that you switched sides this close to the victory.”

  Alia focused on her breathing—gentle, even, in and out through her nose. Once Feramos left, she could work the gag out of her mouth, perhaps find a way out of the ropes. She stared at the floor between Feramos’ feet. She had to wait, had to make it a few moments more.

  “But you did serve well,” Feramos said. He raised her chin with a hand and met her eyes. “You readied the way for this moment. For me. That merits my gratitude. I want you to watch our monster come to life.” He kissed her, a reverent kiss on the center of her forehead, and strode out onto the stage.

  Then Feramos did what Feramos did best. He spoke to the people. The crowd roared at his appearance, but quickly fell silent as he spoke to them. Feramos was a master of the crowd. He built them up slowly, playing on simple fears. He spoke of corruption among the Clergy, and the crowd rumbled in agreement. He preached outrage at the low wages and poor living conditions the common man suffered while Reverates held grand parties and slept in vast mansions. The mass stomped and yelled. He denounced the Church of the Faceless God as an institution of slave masters, shackling the innocent people of each of the Passbound Cities with the oh-so-subtle temptation of cheap ceral grain. The crowd roared.

  “But the cost!” Feramos cried. “The cost is much more than a few coins. The cost is our faith and the faith of our fathers. The cost is the livelihood of our friends and neighbors who cannot sell their crops at a price to compete with the
Church. The cost is our self-worth, a growing culture of apathy fed on the grain of ease and idleness.”

  Alia could not see the crowd, but she could see Feramos, could see the fire blazing in his eyes. The crowd—nearly a mob now—could see it as well, and they roared in response.

  “We are meant to struggle! To toil and strive and look at the work of our hands with pride! Not to have our bread handed to us! Brothers and sisters, we must fight to end this tyranny! The time is come! I will not let it stand another night! Will you stand with me?” Feramos drew his long, curved sword in a swift, fierce motion.

  The mob roared.

  “Will you fight with me?” Feramos hoisted the sword over his head, steel glinting in the torchlight.

  “Yes!” the mob cried again, the word a thunderous chorus.

  “Will you tear down this tyranny?”

  “Yes!”

  “Together!” Feramos yelled.

  The stage shook with the mob’s raucous response.

  “Then go! And I will be with you!” Feramos watched, sword held high, as the mob poured out of the gates of the Lower City Theater before turning back to where Alia sat, bound and gagged and waiting helplessly. He grinned at her, a manic, wild grin that held no sanity. “You see?” he called to her as he strode toward her.

  His eyes flicked up and to Alia’s left, surprised. Alia barely had time to turn her head as a dark shape flashed past, rushing directly at Feramos. Sharp steel glinted.

  The look of surprise on Feramos’ face melted in a heartbeat, and he raised his blade to meet his black-clad attacker. The attacker tried to step inside Feramos’ reach to make use of a long, slender dagger. Feramos danced back. A few screams rang from the open theater floor from a last few leftovers from the mob. Feramos paid them no heed, slapping aside the dagger with ease. He cut back at his opponent so fast and violent that Alia cringed away. The assailant leapt back, barely avoiding being cut in half. Alia knew nothing of combat or swordplay, but Feramos moved with an unmistakable familiarity. He knew how to use the weapon in his hand, though where he had learned, Alia had no idea.

  Feramos stepped back and cocked his head at the man across from him, his posture no longer tense or violent. He looked disappointed—almost bored.

  “Cowards,” Feramos said, his voice all contempt. He spat. “You are not even a proper assassin. You are an insult.”

  Feramos lunged, then changed direction so quickly that Alia almost missed it. His attacker tried to dodge, but too slow. He raised his hand in a vain attempt to stop the blow. The sword slashed through his palm, the force of the blow carrying the blade through the man’s body without slowing.

  Except the man did not fall. Fine powder exploded around him, and Feramos stumbled, the swing throwing him off balance. He spun again to face his attacker, a hilt with no blade still clutched in his hands. The man took him by the throat.

  “Enough,” the black-clad man said. He plunged his blade through Feramos’ chest and dropped him to the stage.

  Feramos lay still, dead before he hit the wood. The steel in his chest reverted in an instant to a narrow length of cord and fell limply. The black-clad man turned his back on Feramos and looked at Alia without meeting her eyes. It was the man who had attacked her and Josen at the Midsummer Gala.

  “You,” he said, his eyes tired and nearly lifeless, “you are to come with me. Master Riveran wants you with him.”

  * * *

  Josen let his mind wander as he sat at the edge of his cell, overlooking the ocean as the sun dipped down toward the horizon. Below him, water crashed into the cliffside, wave after wave breaking endlessly on stone a hundred or more feet below his dangling feet.

  He was almost flattered—after all, there were only six or eight of the open-sided Vaults in the Finger. This was not a cell for mundane criminals. Of course, that also meant the he was in deep. But that barely worried him. There was nothing he could do about it from inside his cell.

  Some piece of Josen knew that his detachment was a result of his forced ceral fast, that his mind was slipping into some kind of low-energy starvation mode. But what could he do?

  His cell was calm and mostly silent this high up—serene, even—with only the soft sound of the ocean below, and weeping prisoners in the cells to either side. He tried talking to those men at first in hope of learning something useful, then out of the sheer need to hear another human voice—one not threatening him.

  He stopped trying on the fourth day, when the woman in the cell to his left jumped. He could still hear the sound her body made when it hit the roof of the lower prison.

  Josen banished the memory with a shiver, refocusing on the sight before him. The sunset was spectacular. The pink and orange blazed on the horizon, deepening as the sun slowly slid out of sight. This was the seventh sunset Josen had watched from this seat at the edge of his cell. He had the best view in the city.

  He sighed and tapped his expansive reservoir of breaking energy, letting the tiniest trickle gather at his fingertips. He paused, holding the energy, examining the gentle sensation of power, letting the tingling energy clear his mind. It felt cold and sharp, like his fingers were submerged in the icy water of a mountain lake in spring. He traced his finger, the nail barely skimming the top of the stone next to him. He drew a straight line next to six others in the stone, each running right to the edge of the tower wall. The stone under his fingernail broke to water in a thin line, the water trickling down the wall of the Finger as he finished the line and released the power. It was far easier than ever been before.

  Ironic. All the power in the world, and nothing to spend it on.

  The sense of energy and clarity drained away like the water running down the side of his prison. The water didn’t drip far before it reverted back to brittle stone and crumbled away. Josen watched the stone tumble into the darkness—like little stone jumpers. Except they didn’t crunch when they hit the roof of the prison below.

  Josen imagined them falling peacefully, moments of rushing freedom, almost like they weren’t falling at all…

  He pushed himself away from the ledge, back into the cell. It was best not to let those kinds of thoughts run free. The cell was dark now that the sun was gone, so Josen pressed his hand to one of the stones set in the wall, breaking it with a mental nudge. The stone took on a soft, steady light glow in the shape of Josen’s hand, and the sense of energized clarity washed over his whole body this time.

  Josen pushed harder. He let power rage through him, like thunder rolling through stone. He channeled it into the wall in front of him. It was so much power. His body hummed with it, more power than he had used since the night he held the Basin pass for Abbahim.

  It was the tiniest fraction of the reservoir of power he still held, a thimble drawn from an ocean. The glowing handprint expanded until the entire stone block glowed, then the others adjacent to it as well. Josen stumbled back, unable to sustain the flow of breaking energy, and nearly collapsed. He dropped to a knee and steadied himself with a hand on the floor. He focused on breathing as he felt the energy ebb. He felt dizzy as the weakness returned.

  Josen crawled to the opposite wall and slumped into a sitting position to admire his work. The entire cell was now aglow with soft yellow light emanating from the five glowing stone blocks across from him. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was he had broken the stone into, but it was nice to have some light.

  This was the result of two days thinking and breaking, playing with the vast reserve of power inside him as his body grew weaker and weaker. What he understood of breaking said this should have been impossible, but it was a neat trick. There wasn’t much else to do besides experiment. It took an absurd amount of power—the glowing, not the thinking—but he had plenty of that now. But the thinking was growing harder and harder as well.

  Josen fumbled for the ragged, threadbare blanket that was his only bedding and pulled it over him. It was getting cold now that the sun had gone down. Josen stared at the wall until his e
yes grew heavy, and he drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 38

  Jamis sat in the corner of the room, staring at his hands. They were scarred, fragile now. He couldn’t keep them from trembling.

  His hands had been strong once, even still a little calloused. The Carters took pride in the physicality of their calling and pulling the handcart through the foothills of Ceralon had been one of Jamis’ instructors’ favorite ways to instill that pride in their acolytes. No one graduated the Seminary as a Carter with soft hands.

  But that felt like a different life, one he could barely even recall sitting in this room. Jamis flexed his fingers, fixated on the way the pink, scarred skin puckered and moved as he did, the way they trembled even when he tried to hold them still. These hands barely even looked human, let alone like they belonged to him.

  “Do they hurt?”

  Jamis started, head jerking up at the sound of the voice. The rebel girl stared at him from her chair in the center of the room. Alia. That was her name. He tied her to that chair not an hour ago, and then forgot her entirely. Jamis blinked at her, his mind struggling to re-adjust to the world outside his mind.

  “Your hands,” Alia said, taking his silence for confusion. “Are the scars painful?”

  Jamis shook his head. He tucked his hands under his legs. They didn’t stop trembling. Why was she speaking to him?

  Alia watched him in silence for a long moment, as if waiting for something more. Jamis fidgeted but said nothing. She was a pretty girl. She had a nice voice. Jamis hoped Riveran wouldn’t ask him to hurt her, but he knew better. Riveran always asked Jamis to hurt people.

  And Jamis always did. If he stopped to think, he hated himself for hurting people, hated being used that way, hated the fear in the eyes of the person he was about to hurt. He hadn’t always hurt people, had he?

  Alia must have seen something of that hate in his face, because a tiny flash of fear crossed her face and she turned away.

  “Sometimes.” The word came out before it even registered in Jamis’ mind.