by Will Wight
Harriford Wells, leader of the brigand gang that had taken over Foster’s town after the Emperor’s death.
No one from the Capital had ever come to defend them or check on them.
The whole town was alone.
“This it?” Wells asked, jerking his chin at the workbench. He was chewing on something, but Foster couldn’t tell what.
Through sheer effort of will, Foster climbed to his knees, steadying himself on the side of the bench. “Read it yourself,” he choked out.
He wasn’t sure if he was correct or not. Had he finished the gun?
A surge of nausea kept him from straightening up. If he hadn’t finished, then he would die here. His family would be lined up and shot next to him.
He hoped.
The worst case would be if they weren’t shot, if Wells made him try again, if he forced Dalton Foster to continue making custom guns while still carving off a tiny piece of his family every day…
Wells ran his thumb along the tips of his fingers, blue-veined eyes narrow. A moment later, he called out the door, and a woman hurried in.
She looked like the child stories of a swamp-witch, her skin artfully streaked with mud, tiny animal bones woven into her hair, strange symbols tattooed onto her eyelids so that they flashed whenever she blinked. She had a staff with a skull that she claimed was that of an Elderspawn, but which Foster recognized as coming from an ordinary bat.
“Check it,” Wells ordered, pointing to the workbench.
Wells was supposedly an accomplished Reader…or at least, his men thought he was. Maybe he was only fooling them, or maybe his paranoia made him more careful than Foster would have expected.
There were indeed some traps that you could set for a Reader that carelessly checked an object. The simplest and most well-known of them being the unexpected inclusion of Elderspawn Intent, which Foster had indeed included.
Reading the Great Elders directly was a one-way ticket to an asylum, and Reading any Elders was tricky business, but most Elderspawn were weak enough that Reading them was only disorienting and disturbing.
But those effects could be enhanced. Foster had heard of Readers tricked into getting lost in Elder objects, caught in a trance from which they never escaped.
The witch-woman, whose name Foster had never learned, sucked in a deep breath. Wells glanced over to Foster, flipping out a switchblade.
The same switchblade that had taken off the fingertips of Foster’s children.
“It’s…amazing,” the woman said. “A work of art. A true weapon.” She had far less of an accent than Foster had initially expected, when he’d heard her speak for the first time. The swamp-witch getup was most likely a costume she’d adopted to impress customers who were superstitious about Reading.
Wells’ eyes lit up with greed, and he pushed her aside, snatching up the pistol.
For the first time, Foster saw the weapon he’d made with his own eyes.
It was a dark green, like the hide of an alligator, but it glistened in the light of the white quicklamps that illuminated Foster’s workshop. The leathery hide covered the back of the barrel and down the grip as though it had grown there, armoring the metal, and wherever the iron did show, it was a deep black that looked like it had been painted.
The weapon had a lean, aggressive, hungry look to it, and as Foster watched, he could see lengths of bone on either side of the barrel that resembled fangs.
The bandit leader held the gun from every angle, twisting it this way and that, examining his new treasure like a child with a present. His knife rested on the bench nearby.
“I knew you could do it, Foster,” he whispered. “I believed in you.”
It took everything left in Dalton Foster not to grab the knife and lunge at the man right then. He held himself back.
His plan was better.
It had passed its first check when the witch-woman had given the pistol her approval after Reading it. He had been afraid she would divine the weapon’s true purpose.
Awakened objects were complex to Read, and it took time to get to know them. A cursory inspection usually wouldn’t reveal much about its capabilities or nature.
He had been counting on it.
Wells dashed out of the room, leaving Foster to hobble along in his wake.
The workshop doors crashed open, leading directly onto a well-furnished living room in the Capital style. The ceiling was high overhead, lit by a chandelier of a dozen tiny quicklamps that required a servant to maintain. The carpets were expensive and imported, various firearms hung in display cases or racks on the walls, and an intricately decorated piano sat in the corner. The furniture was plush, comfortable, and lined in threads of gold. In between the guns mounted on the walls sat paintings, mostly originals, that Foster had once collected.
The room, and really the entire house, was a monument to what Foster had valued in his younger years. He was known as the greatest gunsmith in the world, his creations sought after from Dylia to Axciss, and he had built himself this home as tribute. He had bought everything money could.
It had cost him only all his time, his marriage, and his relationship with his children.
He had not been welcome in his home for years.
Now, those already-bad memories were polluted with a true nightmare. If he made it out of here alive, he’d burn this house to the ground.
At Wells’ command, the brigands all over the house scurried into action. Some admired their leader’s new weapon—Harriford Wells would be the only person in the world with an Awakened gun. A true legend.
He might even become Soulbound one day, which made him straighten up like he was being awarded by the Emperor himself.
Some of the other bandits dragged in Foster’s family.
His ex-wife was a dignified person in all other scenarios. Now, her gray hair was frizzy and loose, her days-old makeup streaked with tears and bruises. She wept and begged, pulling against them with her whole body as they dragged her in. Her dress was torn and spattered with blood. Her hands were covered in bandages so that they looked like thick mittens.
She only had five whole fingers left.
Not all on the same hand.
Foster had come home three weeks before, taking a leave of absence from his Navigator crew to follow up on a hunch given him by a Great Elder. He was supposed to spend two weeks ashore, then hire a local crew for a brief trip into the shallow Aion, where The Testament would pick him up.
He was now a week overdue.
When he had arrived, he was confronted by Wells, who demanded a Dalton Foster original of his very own.
When Foster refused, Wells had tracked down his ex-wife.
Foster had begun to work after the first threat. But not fast enough for Wells.
Every day that Foster worked, Wells trotted out another family member. Foster still didn’t know if the man had captured them all at once and only revealed them one day at a time or if he had been hunting down Foster’s family, picking them off one by one like a wolf pack taking down deer.
Only a week ago, Wells had decided that Foster wasn’t motivated enough. He had taken a box and cut a small piece off one of Foster’s relatives every day. The box was now almost full, but Wells had assured him that they could find more boxes.
Foster’s twin sons, each more than thirty years old, were bound as his wife was not. One had a bandage covering his missing ear, and they both kept their blood-caked mouths shut. The tip of their tongues had been removed.
Foster was forced to watch every one of the removals. Fortunately, the wives and children of his boys hadn’t yet been touched. If Wells had brought Foster the tiny finger of one of his grandchildren, Foster wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from lunging at the man and trying to bite out his throat.
He stared at his family with pleading, but they didn’t look at him. No, it was worse—their gazes cut away after looking at him, as though they found him too difficult to see directly.
They blamed
him for this. That had been clear from what little interaction he had been allowed.
That was okay. Foster blamed himself too.
“Please…please…let us go,” Terisia said. Foster’s ex-wife was not the kind of person to give in to anyone’s forceful demands, but this torture had hollowed them all. “You have him, you don’t need us. At least…at least the children…”
His two sons were gagged, but they looked at Wells, silently begging him to release their children. Still, none of them looked Foster in the eye.
Wells gave no sign that he’d heard. He idly pointed the gun in a random direction, too close to Terisia for Foster’s comfort, and thumbed the hammer back. She flinched as he pulled the trigger, but there was only the click of the hammer slamming into place on an empty chamber.
“It suits my hand,” Wells said, satisfied. He held out a hand to one of his men. “Shot.”
Foster stood up and cleared his throat. “It takes custom rounds. Got a half-dozen in my shop.”
Wells waited, frozen with the gun in one hand, for a moment that stretched on too long. Finally, in the tone he would use to berate an idiot, he said “Well…go get them.”
Foster did.
The bullets weren’t simple balls of lead, but shaped bullets that held their charge inside. There had been experiments from alchemists and gunsmiths that suggested this was the next step in the development of firearms.
They were most likely right, though Foster had cheated with Awakening. The rounds were ordinary.
Foster handed Wells the bag, trying not to show his rage or disgust. Or his newborn, trembling hope. “Push out on the side. Slide the bullets in…yeah, there you go.” Wells pushed out the chamber, which now looked like it had been made out of metal and bone fused together. It resembled nothing so much as a rib cage protruding from the side of a serpent.
“No powder?” Wells asked when he’d finished loading.
“It’s in the rounds already.”
Wells’ grin stretched the bounds of his face. “Well well, look at you, going above and beyond. You see what you can do when you’re properly motivated?”
“Never been so motivated,” Foster said. He kept his tone and his face blank.
Wells thumbed the hammer back and pointed the gun at one of his men. The bandit flinched back but didn’t dare to move.
Wells slowly moved from him to another man, who once again froze, hoping his boss would choose to kill someone else. There were four lackeys in the room, two holding on to Foster’s family and two lounging near the exits. The swamp-witch and Wells made six.
Foster saw the brigands with new eyes. They were prisoners of their leader just like he and his family.
And that didn’t change their crimes a bit.
When Wells spun to Terisia, Foster’s throat tightened. He passed on to their sons, and Foster had to look away.
Finally, Wells ended up pointing at an empty couch. There was the ghost of a smile on his face, as though he’d enjoyed the reactions of everyone in the room.
“Test run,” he announced, finger tightening on the trigger.
But before he squeezed, he glanced out the corner of his eye to Foster.
“Does it have a name?”
“Oath to Eternity,” Foster said.
Wells made a thoughtful sound. “Old-fashioned. I like it.”
Then he squeezed the trigger.
From the beginning, Foster had known that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave after making the bandit leader a gun. If he failed, he would be killed. If he succeeded, he would be kept as a slave or killed anyway.
But he had kept an extensive collection of old firearms and pieces that might one day be useful in Reading. He had the brigands bring him some of the more mundane substances he needed for his craftsmanship, but he had raided his own stores for the particular Intent he required.
This gun was a seeker of vengeance. It existed to destroy those who had unjustly wronged others.
No…it existed to destroy those who had hurt Foster’s family. He had sworn to have his vengeance.
His oath to eternity on it.
The gun dragged Wells’ hand up, pressing itself against his temple, and fired.
The sound deafened the room as smoke flew up from one side of Wells’ head and blood sprayed out the other. He collapsed to the floor, Oath to Eternity falling from his hand and sliding on polished wooden floors.
Foster felt no relief. His head was still pounding from Reader burn, but if this worked as he expected…
He knelt on the ground. The gun, defying momentum, slid on the wood between two carpets and rushed straight into Foster’s hand.
Even through his burned-out Reader’s senses, he could feel Oath to Eternity’s glee. If he were Soulbound to it, he might hear its voice, as he distantly heard the voices of his tools from time to time.
Instead, he sensed a lust for vengeance. And blood.
As the bandits came to their senses and scrambled for their own weapons, Foster pulled the trigger five times.
The four bandits and the witch-woman joined Wells on the floor.
Smoke hissed from the barrel of the gun as though from the snout of a satisfied dragon. He walked in a dream-like trance back into his workshop, delicately placing Oath to Eternity on the bench and picking up Wells’ knife.
When he returned, Terisia was scrambling at her sons’ bonds with her mangled hands, still weeping. He knelt beside her with the knife and cut them free.
When they were finally unbound, they all three spun around, looking at him in horror.
“Where are the others?” he asked, trying to ignore the look in their eyes.
Tears ran down Terisia’s face. “Why? You’ve killed us. You’ve killed us all.”
Wells’ gang did not number merely half a dozen. They held the entire town. By Foster’s estimates, there were a hundred lawless men and women keeping this town captive.
“I’ve got more rounds,” Foster said. His boys stayed quiet—as now they always would.
However, they both rushed out of the room. A moment later, he heard the door to the basement crash open, followed by exclamations of surprise and relief from children. Lots of weeping.
No one came to speak to him.
That was fine, he told himself. He had work to do.
He started boarding up the doors and windows immediately, injecting another alchemical stimulant in his arm when he felt as though he would collapse. The bandits outside tried to push their way in, but between the old, long-invested locks and the boards bracing the entrances shut, they got nowhere.
Most of the “boards” they used were pieces of interior doors or furniture that they broke up, the family getting to work quickly. They would speak to him when they had to, asking his instructions on craftsmanship or where to find tools, but mostly they treated him like a stranger.
Every time he glanced at their bloody bandages, he held the pain like a red-hot poker against his heart. He deserved it.
By sunset, the brigands had stopped shouting for Wells and pounding on the door. The others were relieved, but Terisia and Foster knew better. They were gathering their forces.
Even if the brigands left their family alone, the injured wouldn’t last long without food or medical supplies. They would have to break out if they wanted to live, while the bandits only had to wait.
Of course, while the house lacked food, it did not lack weapons.
Every pair of hands kept a gun nearby as they worked, even down to eight-year-old Zarentha. When the time came to fight, they would be ready.
Which was why Foster still felt no relief at killing the man who had tormented their family.
They were going to die anyway.
In a firefight, people died. That was the point. He didn’t want to see his granddaughters go out like a soldier on the battlefield.
So they stayed holed up in their fortified home. Waiting.
He didn’t know what they were waiting for.
S
lowly, over the next day, bandits collected outside of their house like ants gathering onto a fresh kill. They carried muskets, most of them. A few carried what must have been invested or—in one or two cases—Awakened weapons.
One woman revealed that her hands were four times too big and resembled the paws of a tiger. A former Imperial Guard.
Foster felt like he was reading about someone else’s situation. It was all so clear to him, from this distance. As the sun rose on the first day after Oath to Eternity’s birth, something slammed against his doors.
Splinters flew inside, cracking the boards used as a brace, and the children screamed.
He knew what was going to happen. The family would make the best stand they could, would drag a few of them down to Urg’naut, but the bandits would get in. And that would be the end of it.
The door shook as the bandits slammed against it again.
Lost in his own vision of the future, Foster felt no pain. No fear. Even the exhaustion felt like it belonged to someone else. He walked up to the door, a musket-ball crashing through the wood and zipping by his ear, and glanced through one of the newly made holes.
A mob shouted and screamed, pulling back the hammers and axes they were using to tear open his home. He looked past them, to the sparkling sapphire of the sea. Maybe he should never have left.
He almost thought he saw, standing out against the blue, the pale off-green of Elder-tainted sails.
He took his last, deep breath, cradled Oath to Eternity, and prepared to unload into the invaders.
Then he snapped back to reality and pressed his eye against up against the hole in the door.
A woman tried to stab him through it, and he had to pull back in time to avoid the cut and shoot her through the chest. But this time he was sure.
The sails were real.
“Fall back!” he shouted, so loud it felt like it tore his lungs. He pulled his son away, waving at Terisia. “Back to the basement!”
“We’ll be trapped in there!” his ex-wife declared.
“Do it! Do it now!”
He threw Zarentha over one shoulder and ran himself, hauling his family along. Every second counted. Each instant they bought themselves was another chance.