“Indeed,” Cyrus said. “That’s quite the long penance, Hiressam—especially for a transgression I didn’t even recall, nor one I would have held you to account for.” He stepped forward and offered a hand to the elf. “Many people left when I was declared heretic. Practically the entire guild, in fact. You could hardly be blamed for not wanting to fight back the entirety of Arkaria.”
“But you fought back the entirety of Arkaria.” Hiressam looked up at him with dull eyes. “You ended the tyranny of the elven kingdom that year. You fought back and toppled the unjust and corrupt Human Confederation. With fewer people than ever, you stormed the very realms of the gods with your loyal chosen and changed the world.” His eyes were aglow. “And I—in my disloyalty—failed you.” And here he bowed his head once more, thrusting his hilt toward Cyrus.
Cyrus exchanged a look with Vara, who shrugged. “Uhm, well … I’m not going to execute you for something you did a thousand years ago that wasn’t even a crime then, so … I’m not sure what you want to do here, Hiressam.”
“And we have other places to be,” Vara said. “In fact—” And she threw her hands up and then waved them at the crowd, who had stepped back to let this clash play out, awestruck and quiet. “Get the hell out of here, the coal yard is about to explode!”
She was not quiet nor nice about it, and the crowd began to flee, going from a ripple of uncertainty about it to a full break-and-run panic in a mere second. When they were safely on their way, Cyrus thrust his hand at Hiressam again. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of the way so we can blow up this coal yard and be on about our business.”
“What business is that?” Hiressam asked, regarding Cyrus’s hand with a sort of careful awe, then taking it and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
“Breaking apart the Machine,” Cyrus said, “rescuing a young woman’s kidnapped mother from them. You know, the usual—doing good.”
Hiressam blinked twice. “Breaking … the Machine?” He blinked once more, utterly neutral of expression. “You don’t play small, do you?”
Cyrus smiled. “Well, after you’ve wrecked the gods of Arkaria, helping an old lady cross the street seems a bit of a comedown. Even destroying a well-established network of criminals is a slight step down from where we were, but … with magic being what it is …” And he stuck out his finger, casting the fire spell, and trying to focus it as large and as angled as he could.
A burst of sparking flame shot from his fingertip in a parabolic arc toward the interior of the coal yard. It was tiny, no more than the size of one of the bullets he loaded into the pistols, but it streaked into the yard. About a hundred feet in, it seemed to spark, and there came a flash—
The boom that followed a second later sent Cyrus flying, hurling his legs above his head and tilting him into the street. He landed like he’d been flung by a god, armor rattling as he rolled to a stop some fifty feet from where he’d started. His head rang as if Vaste had clapped him on the helm with Letum over and over for a fortnight, and a little blood oozed out of his nose.
“Perhaps next time,” Vara’s voice asserted itself loudly into his consciousness, which seemed dark around the edges, “you might warn us so we can step farther away before you blow something up.”
“I’ll … keep that in mind,” Cyrus said, warring against the gonging in his head that seemed to be trying to disrupt his ability to hold a thought. A hand appeared before him. He took it and was pulled to his feet. He found himself looking into Alaric’s eye, which twinkled with amusement. “That just passed right through you, didn’t it?”
“I am a ghost,” Alaric said with a smile, then bent to offer Hiressam a hand as well. The elf was bleeding from a cut in his forehead, but had maintained his grip on his sword through the flight. That was the sign of a true warrior to Cyrus.
“Yeah, I wanted to be one as well,” Cyrus said, tapping on the side of his helm. He could hear it, which he took as a sign, along with Alaric and Vara’s statements, that he had not gone utterly deaf from the explosion. “But it would appear I’m just a junior ghost, unable to manage the feats of excellence that a full ghost can.”
“You’ll get there,” Alaric said, now standing before the mighty flames that were towering out of the coal yard. “Provided you keep your distance the next time you light something extremely combustible. Perhaps, in fact, it might be better left to me while you indulge a good run to your next target—General.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cyrus said, opening and closing his jaw, trying in vain to equalize the pressure in his head. It was as though he’d gotten water in his ear that he couldn’t get out no matter how hard he tried. “Sometimes I have a hard time delegating the dangerous tasks.”
“It’s not dangerous for me,” Alaric said. “I could have stood in the middle of the yard and lit it afire. Keep that in mind next time.”
“Let us hope it is a while before there is a next time of that sort,” Vara said. There was blood on her face as well, though from where he couldn’t tell. It stopped shortly beneath her helm, and he realized after a brief moment of trying to get his thoughts together that she had probably healed it. “Lest the city be blown over by the mere effort on our part to knock over this Machine.”
“You have chosen a worthy target,” Hiressam said as the light of a very small healing spell danced upon his forehead, and Cyrus saw Vara’s hand twinkle. Hiressam reached up to feel the spot where his wound had been and a small smile spread across his lips. “I had forgotten the touch of magic in these days. It has been so long since I have even seen it.”
“Do you know what happened to it?” Cyrus asked. “Magic, I mean?”
Hiressam shook his head. “When you killed the gods, the Leagues were overthrown—here, and back home. I thought it would result in more spellcasters—and it did, for a time. But without the Leagues, it wasn’t taught as it once was. Five hundred years ago, spellcasters started to diminish. We were already sundered, with over half the land lost to the Scourge. Other principalities were closing in. It just … sort of disappeared, almost overnight, I would say. Now, as divided as this land is, there is no unifying force. You will still find magic in Pharesia—or you did, when last I was there. But elsewhere …” He shook his head. “It is as near to gone as you could imagine.”
“That’s disappointing,” Cyrus said, and looked at the billowing flames of the coal yard. “I have questions—so many questions. Ones you might be able to answer better than our other guide.” He looked around and saw Shirri lurking a short distance from Alaric, watching them carefully, and opening and closing her mouth like she, too, was trying to regain her hearing.
Hiressam stared at him for a moment, then hit his knees once more, thrusting his sword’s hilt at Cyrus. “I failed you before,” he said, speaking over the crackle of the flames. “I abandoned you in your darkest hour.” He looked up, and his eyes burned like a reflection of the fires raging in the coal yard. “I will not fail you again. And I will never, ever, abandon you—” His gaze flicked to Vara as she came to stand next to Cyrus, “—either of you—again.” He bowed his head. “My sword is yours, as is my loyalty—if you command it.”
Cyrus looked at Vara, and she looked back at him. “Magic is near useless here,” he said. “And we’ve decided to bite off quite the large chunk in taking on this Machine. Right out of our long slumber, too.”
“I have doubts about this Shirri,” Vara said, low. “Probably as many as she purports to have about us. Hiressam was a true member of Sanctuary in the days when he stood with us. I find no more fault in him leaving when he did than I think you do.” Cyrus nodded along with her, and she went on. “Trust will be a difficult thing in this new world, and we seem to be accumulating new hangers-on already.” She pointed to the crowd, which was already meandering back, some more quickly than others. “It would be nice to have one who believed in us before we died and disappeared. Someone who understands that by our absence, we have missed much.”
“Aye,” Alaric said, causing them both to jerk as he entered their conversational huddle in a ghostly glide. He smiled at their surprise. “In a world new and unproven, it is nice to have some tried and true brethren to rely upon.”
“Hiressam,” Cyrus said, turning back to the elf, “Rise.” When he did, Cyrus waved a hand at him. “Welcome back to Sanctuary.” And then, inspired, he smiled, and said words that had once rung like a small, welcoming bell, in his own heart: “Welcome home.”
The elf’s trembled as he stood, and he drew a breath. “You don’t know … how I’ve longed to hear those words this last millennia. It has been …” He stopped and looked away, into the fire, then, after a moment to compose himself, he looked back to Cyrus, Vara, and Alaric, each in turn. “I will not fail you again,” he said, resolve hardening his voice, “and if I may serve you with my life—or my death—you need but ask.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that last thing,” Cyrus said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now come on—we’ve got a mill to go knock over and a Machine to break to pieces.” And he was off once more, Vara at his side, Alaric and Shirri but a few steps behind him.
And now, too, Hiressam, Cyrus realized as he cast a glance back, the elf walking with pride and determination as he trailed in their wake, the crowd slowly getting themselves together to follow once more. “Looks like we’re beginning again after all, Vaste,” Cyrus said under his breath. And to this, he saw Vara smile.
24.
Vaste
“That is not how you do it!” Curatio’s shout echoed through the Halls of Healing, and indeed, probably through the whole of Sanctuary. It was done largely through gritted teeth, and Vaste caught a scent of his stale breath, hints of the feast they’d had before leaving to assault the candle shop, as he tried to hold the Healer’s hand still to extract the metal bullet.
“I’m sorry I haven’t practiced my surgical skills the way you have in the last twenty thousand years,” Vaste said, jerking Curatio’s hand back to center again, a pair of blood-covered tweezers far too small for him to wield clenched in his fingers. “And furthermore, I’m sorry you’ve had your instrumentation built for people with tiny fingers and not, you know, normal-sized ones—”
“There is little normal about you, my friend,” Curatio said, looking away as he seethed. The last words came bitterly, cursing Vaste, though the troll little cared. Pain brought out even minor grievances and inflamed them far beyond proportion. “And I begin to suspect your mind is not on the task at hand.”
That much was probably true. Vaste sniffed, the scent of blood aggravating his nostrils. This was hardly where he wanted to be, after all. He made to move the tweezers again, attempting to make another go of extracting the bullet, but brushed a flap of hanging skin and then the bone, which caused Curatio to groan and yank his hand away.
“Are you paying attention at all to what you are doing?” Curatio cradled his wounded hand.
“Well,” Vaste said, brandishing the tweezers, “I haven’t accidentally jammed these in your eye yet, so … yes. At least somewhat.”
“Give them to me,” Curatio said, snatching them. He turned and opened a drawer in the desk that sat along one wall of the Halls of Healing, then sat stiffly upon the small bed where they’d been working, closing his eyes for a long moment.
“Are you going to meditate now?” Vaste asked, watching him, then eyeing the door.
“I’m going to lower my heart rate before attempting the delicate removal of this foreign object lodged in my body,” Curatio said, not opening his eyes. “Enhancing my calm is instrumental in insuring that I do not accidentally stab myself in every exposed nerve while trying to clumsily strike at this as though it were a foe to be crushed.”
Vaste eased back from the bed. “I’ll just give you the space to do that, why don’t I?”
One of Curatio’s eyes opened, slitted, and found him. “Stay right where you are. If I pass out, you’ll need to do this while I am unconscious and unable to resist.”
“You make it sound so romantic,” Vaste said, prompting Curatio to snort, a reluctant smile playing at the corner of his lips as he closed his eyes once more. “How long is this going to take?”
“Not long, I hope, since I have mere minutes to cast the healing spell before the time runs out,” Curatio said, then opened his eyes. Turning slightly pensive, he looked down at the wound. “Let us hope the constrictions upon magic in this new world have not diminished the window for the efficacy of healing spells.”
“That would be unfortunate for your hand,” Vaste said. “And you, I suppose.”
“Indeed,” Curatio said, positioning his hand upon his lap. “I can envisage a host of unfortunate consequences as a result.” He gritted his teeth and looked up, taking the tweezers delicately in hand. “Now—if you’ll pardon me for a moment—”
He brought the tweezers down with greatest delicacy into the open wound, peering intently at the work he was doing. He moved subtly, slowly, and Vaste licked his lips as he watched. A bulb of sweat ran down the elf’s forehead, and his brow furrowed, dropping it past his eyes. “Damn,” Curatio breathed, reaching up to mop it with the hand holding the tweezers.
An inspiration struck Vaste. “Hold on,” he said, and snatched up Letum where he’d left it resting on the wall. He grabbed it at the top and swung it low and slow until it was touching Curatio’s wounded hand.
Curatio sucked in a deep breath, and with amazing sureness, slipped the tweezers back into the wound. It was over in a moment, the metal ball dropping from beneath their pronged grasp and clinking onto the stone floor. A muttered incantation and it was done, the wound closed tightly, only pink skin beneath a thin layer of drying blood to mark its passage.
“Clever,” Curatio said, pushing Letum away now that the job was finished. “It diminished the pain and sped up my reaction. It was as though I could do the thing in slowest movement, but with elevated acuity.”
“Don’t thank me, thank the God of Death for making it possible,” Vaste said, clinking Letum’s bottom tip against the floor with a thud. “After all, I’m guessing he doesn’t get much thanks, given that he essentially destroyed all of Arkaria.”
“I hope Arkaria sees it that way,” Curatio said ruefully, rising to his feet. “For I doubt many who inhabit these halls do.”
“Yes, there is an epidemic of blame that goes around every time the scourge pop up in conversation,” Vaste said. “As though any of us intended to unleash that bloody horde. All we wanted to do was save you and Vara and our own beautiful arses—in some of our cases, anyway—not destroy everything.”
“And yet … the consequences remain,” Curatio said. “I may aim that weapon at you,” and he pointed at Letum, “intending to merely rap you upon the head as you have so often done to Cyrus of late, but if you move even slightly toward it, I might strike out your eye by accident. And while the intention was not there to harm you, you would nonetheless—”
“Look like a beautiful, green, immense version of Alaric, but with more majesty and less mystique,” Vaste said. “Curse the loss of magic that would force me into an eyepatch for life.”
“You haven’t lost it yet, fool,” Curatio said with a thin smile. “And hopefully you never will. Magic remains potent enough that I believe we could heal such a small thing as an eye loss.”
“That’s good,” Vaste said, drawing a hand to his cheekbone, “because I’ve finally seen something with them worth looking for again, and I’d hate to lose that now that I’ve found—”
“Oh, gods, you’re on about this troll woman again, aren’t you?” Curatio said, flexing his hand experimentally.
“I saw her, Curatio. Beautiful and tall and green and—”
“Yes, yes,” Curatio waved him off.
A burst of mist ran across the floor then, growing into a pillar the size of a man and coalescing into the form of Alaric Garaunt, and all in mere in seconds. Vaste frowned, staring at him. With Letum in
hand, he did appear much more slowly than without. Vaste reached out and brought down his staff, right onto Alaric’s head as he appeared—
“Ouch,” Alaric said, the staff rapping him squarely on the bucket-shaped helm and staggering him back a step as he appeared. He flinched and then opened his good eye, locking in on Vaste. “What the hell was that for?”
“I was testing something,” Vaste said. “Are you always vulnerable when you appear like that?”
Alaric sighed, reaching up to adjust his helm, which had gone slightly sideways from the blow. “Perhaps. I can’t recall anyone ever striking me coming out of the ether like that.”
“You should be wary, then,” Vaste said. “If you appear before someone who has a godly weapon, you come so slowly that it makes you easily strikeable.”
“Thank you for that insight,” Alaric said, sounding more annoyed than grateful.
“I live to help,” Vaste said.
“And also to find a troll woman, apparently,” Curatio said. He wore a smile, and was looking at Alaric.
“What is this?” Alaric asked, finally leaving his helm alone.
“I don’t think—” Vaste started to say.
“He found a troll girl,” Curatio said. “On the street. Or so he says. I did not see her myself.”
“You make it sound like I imagined—” Vaste started.
“A troll woman?” Alaric was smiling now, too. “Truly?”
“Yes, truly,” Vaste said. “She was right there, plain as the eyepatch on your face, taller than the crowd, green as sweet swamp moss—”
Alaric and Curatio exchanged smiles, and Vaste found his blood boiling. “You’re making fun of me,” the troll said.
“Not at all,” Alaric said, then touched the spot on his helm where Vaste had struck him. “Perhaps a little bit. But I have seen so many of my guildmates fall under love’s intoxicating spell. I suppose I never thought I would see it from you, Vaste.”
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