Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

  “Whether Burr knows or not, the Protectorate Ministry surely does,” Lexi answers stiffly. “He disappeared less than a week after he told us of his suspicions. I do not believe in coincidence, not of that import.”

  “Nor I,” Taru affirms.

  “I will not allow them to tear us apart,” Lexi insists. “I will not allow them to use whatever they’ve done to Brio as their excuse. I’ve done all I can to find him. If it comes to nothing, the least I can do is hold us together until he—”

  Lexi breaks off in midsentence as the sudden, stony change of expression on Taru’s face halts her next words. They’re staring past Lexi, down the length of the berth.

  Lexi follows her retainer’s gaze. Two Aegins are approaching them, one of them almost as tall as Taru and the other short and squat. Both are young, male, and the faded threadbare state of their green and black tunics speaks of years wearing them. Like all Aegins they don’t carry swords; the city was designed to negate the efficacy of long blades in its purposefully narrow streets. The daggers sheathed in scabbards resting against their chests on draped baldrics are long with curved handles.

  “Te-Gen,” the taller one greets Lexi with mock respect, although it’s clear neither of them is interested in her.

  “Aegins,” she responds in her best hostess manner.

  “Fine day.”

  It’s further clear he’s not interested in the weather.

  Lexi only nods.

  “Who is this here?” the Aegin asks, his eyes locking on Taru’s.

  Lexi answers in the same dutiful tone. “This is my personal retainer, Taru.”

  “You don’t look Crachian,” the taller of them observes. “You’ve got a bit of the Isle of Rok in you. Never seen one in the city proper before.”

  “That’s because they’re not allowed beyond the docks,” his stubby fellow reminds the Aegin.

  “Taru was born in the Capitol, I assure you,” Lexi says stiffly.

  The tall one grunts. “You’re one of them Undeclared, too, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t see as that is any of your business, Aegin,” Lexi answers for her retainer.

  “Two blades, is it?” the squat Aegins accuses more than asks Taru.

  “Taru is fully bonded through my Gen,” Lexi informs them evenly. “Bonded retainers are permitted to openly carry arms in the Capitol, as I’m sure you’re aware, Aegin.”

  The tall one nods, smiling pleasantly. “Hai. And we’re permitted to inspect those weapons for the proper proofs, especially here in the Spectrum.”

  “Let’s have ’em, ya great tree,” the squat one orders, gesturing with his pudgy fingers.

  “I only relinquish my weapons at Te-Gen’s request,” Taru answers them stonily.

  “Present your arms for inspection,” the taller Aegin demands, his tone no longer light or playful. “Or we’ll be detaining the retainer.”

  Taru’s forearms cross in front of their abdomen, each hand closing around the hilt of a blade. They draw the weapons so fast and with such force that both Aegins involuntarily back away a step.

  Lexi couldn’t swear to it, but she thinks she sees Taru grin in that moment.

  Taru lets the point of each weapon linger just a second longer, then sweeps the blades of each weapon back and extends their hilts to the Aegins.

  Before watching Taru unsheathe them, the tall one might’ve taken the weapons from Taru’s hands. He seems hesitant now, resigned to leaning over them to inspect the steel of each.

  “The Capitol proofs look genuine enough,” the taller one admits, squinting at the small impression of the Spectrum hammered into the thickest quarter of each blade.

  “I don’t know about that,” the squat one says. “Off-side smiths are doing marvelous things with counterfeit proofs these days. And that’s an interesting blade.”

  He extends a chubby digit at the crooked blade Taru carries in addition to their short sword.

  “This looks like a fancied rendering of a hook-end. Spent some time in the Bottoms, have we?”

  “My Gen has long served as pleaders for the Division you call the ‘Bottoms,’ ” Lexi interjects quickly.

  “I was born there,” Taru says, their lips tight.

  “I knew it! You may be the biggest port rat I’ve ever seen, but your kind can never get rid of the smell. How many Aegins did you bloody with your first hook-end before your mistress had her Gen’s smith forge you a prettier one?”

  Lexi steps between them before Taru can even begin to formulate a response.

  “Taru is a bonded retainer of Gen Stalbraid,” she says, addressing the two Aegins with an edge in her voice that causes them both to really look at her for the first time. “My retainer. You’ve exercised your authority to inspect my retainer’s weapons, which, as you’ve seen, bear the required proofs. By my reckoning you’ve now exhausted your authority, and I bid you both good day.”

  The squat one seems ready to press the issue, but the tall one’s gaze trails down to Lexi’s broach, tracing the lines of the official insignia there.

  “Good day to you, Te-Gen,” he says, his eyes returning to hers. “And to you… retainer.”

  Taru bows their head formally.

  The two of them turn and retreat through the reception hall crowd.

  “I’m sorry you’re forced to endure that,” Lexi says when they’re beyond earshot. “Perhaps if you served a more prominent Gen—”

  “They’re small men,” Taru says with more iron than any single forge could temper in their voice. “They’re so small I can’t even see them.”

  Lexi smiles quietly to herself.

  “You’d see them well enough if you had to cut them down, I imagine,” she says a moment later.

  Taru snorts their reply, immediately stiffening at the slip in formality. “Forgive me, Te-Gen.”

  Lexi dismisses that with a wave of her hand. “You really must stop apologizing for acting as a person. I’m the one who should apologize. I’ve never truly tried to understand how difficult it must be for you, existing in so many worlds.”

  “I only exist in one. I cannot speak to my ancestry. I never knew my family. As for being Undeclared, I make no apologies. I may have to give up my blades for the sake of the petty comfort of others, but that is all I am willing to give up. I made that decision before I came into Te-Gen’s service.”

  Lexi finds herself at a loss. Her only clear thought is that she wishes she’d had Taru’s kind of unyielding strength in the chambers of the Gen Franchise Council.

  “Well said” is all she’s able to offer.

  “Where do we go now, Te-Gen?” Taru asks.

  Lexi is silent for a moment before answering.

  “Home,” she says. “We will find a way to prevent what they are trying to do to us. I promise you. We will do that.”

  A THOUSAND FACES AND NONE

  DYEAWAN WAKES WITH WHAT SMELLS like the entire ocean filling her nostrils. Her first thought is what a welcome change it is from the dungeon’s cloying anise fingers constantly probing her mouth and lungs. This leads directly to her second thought, which is that she shouldn’t be able to smell the ocean from the dungeons. Accepting that, she realizes she can’t possibly still be in her dungeon cell. Finally, she remembers the dark figure, the dust blown into her face, and the potion sleep that followed.

  That last thought causes her eyes to snap wide open. Her awareness spreads out through her arms and torso. That awareness dampens at her legs as it always does, though she has long ago stopped thinking ruefully about that.

  She’s lying in a bed softer than any surface upon which she’s ever slept. The room surrounding it is small, the walls stone, but it’s clean and even lavish in its furnishings. There’s a silk dressing screen in one corner, a bamboo chest not far from it. A pillowy reading chair sits in the opposite corner.

  There’s one other piece of furniture in the room, and when Dyeawan’s eyes settle on it the wheels in her head stop turning completely for a m
oment.

  The contraption beside her new bed isn’t quite a chair and isn’t quite a wheelbarrow. A platform of polished wood rests atop two tracks of a dozen medium-size wheels. A thick rectangle of lush red and gold carpet has been laid over the platform. There are paddles attached to each side of the platform, a complicated series of strings and sticks connecting them to the tracks of wheels beneath. The tops of the paddles are like the armrests of a chair, thin and long.

  Even if she can’t immediately understand it, Dyeawan somehow realizes why, and for whom, the conveyance has been placed there.

  Rolling to the edge of the bed beside it, she presses her hands into the soft carpeting of the contraption’s platform. She crawls over it, pulling the weight of her legs behind her, and settles atop it just as she would the tin sheets she appropriates to slide herself around the city.

  Settled comfortably, Dyeawan rests her arms atop the paddles, fingers curled around the end. Her natural instinct is to drag them backward. When she does, the motion of the paddles causes the contraption wheels to roll forward smoothly and easily almost a foot.

  A sound somewhere between a laugh and a gasp escapes her lips.

  It’s like rowing a boat without having to grip the oars or bear their weight. Dyeawan simply moves her arms back and the momentum of the wheels causes the paddles to complete a full arc.

  She realizes the motion to control the contraption is exactly the same as those she uses to slide herself along the city streets, only a million times cleaner and more comfortable, and requiring not even an ounce of the effort.

  It’s as if the conveyance beneath her was designed and built specifically for her.

  Dyeawan experiments with the paddles, moving one forward and the other backward. As she suspected, it allows her to turn the contraption right or left effortlessly. By reversing her stroke on both paddles, the entire thing shoots backward at alarming speed.

  After several minutes of wheeling herself around the confined space of the room, Dyeawan realizes she’s giggling and crying all at once. She’s seen chairs fashioned with wheels in the Capitol, usually supporting high-ranking Gen members, but she never even allowed herself to dream she’d possess one of her own.

  And this is so much better and more magnificent than any chair could ever be.

  She slides herself over to the room’s sole window, raising herself up as high as possible to peer outside. There is a mountain capped by clouds in the far-off distance to her right. To the left she sees water. There’s a beach not fifty yards from the window, although it’s far, far below. From there the ocean stretches until it hits a white misty nothingness miles offshore. There are no boats, no other landmasses in view.

  There’s a knock at the door; Dyeawan can’t yet think of it as her door. The knock is soft, unobtrusive.

  She stops herself at the foot of the bed, unsure of what to do. It doesn’t occur to her that permission to enter the room is hers to grant.

  “Hello?” is the best she can come up with.

  The door opens. A figure so tall it has to duck to enter the room. The man is as gaunt as he is lengthy, his nondescript brown robes hanging from him as if he were a coatrack.

  “Good morning, young lady,” he says with a kind smile. “My name is Quan. I am certain you have many questions about where you are and how you’ve come to be here. If you would kindly follow me, I will take you to someone who will explain all these things.”

  Dyeawan can’t think of anything to say to that; he’s addressed most of what’s going on in her head right now.

  Instead she just nods. “Okay.”

  The corridor outside is more spacious than the room, lit by the same lamps used in the Capitol streets, and it is all Dyeawan can do not to wheel herself in giant circles or weave fast and free just because she can. As Quan leads her, she notices the corridors wind in large circles that grow smaller the farther they move through them. The building itself must be shaped the same way, like a circle. Dyeawan has never seen a structure like that in the Capitol.

  They pass a lanky man polishing one of the fixtures housing the lamps. He’s missing his left leg below the knee, as well as his right arm nearly at the shoulder. The stumps of both have been expertly treated and well healed, and the man looks clean and nourished. He smiles at them as they pass.

  They must have reached a center point in the winding corridors by the time Quan motions to an open door. “Through here, please,” he bids her.

  Dyeawan wheels herself inside, surprised when the door shuts behind her with Quan on the other side and she hears a heavy latch secure it.

  She turns her head from the door and is immediately convinced they’ve locked her in a room with a dead man.

  They’ve dressed the corpse in a simple gray tunic, upon the breast of which is pinned a simple steel crest of a dozen concentric circles. He’s much older than her. Threads of gray are steadily overtaking his thick, dark hair. The man is seated in a large chair in the center of a featureless room. His icy blue eyes are wide and glazed, and the features of his face are completely slack.

  Dyeawan squints, examining his neck, and then her eyes go as wide as they’ve ever been. There’s some form of reptile affixed to his throat. Thin, hollow spikes, at least a dozen, protrude from the back of a body that’s bulbous like a toad, but the creature’s snout is long and scaled and latched firmly onto the man’s neck. There’s no blood that Dyeawan can see, but the complete void of expression on the man’s face says death.

  When his hand moves, Dyeawan almost wheels her brand-new conveyance back into the door.

  Splayed atop a long tray in front of his chair is what looks like dozens and dozens of silk fans attached to sticks. As he selects one and picks it up, she realizes they aren’t fans, they’re silk masks. The one he holds in front of his face by its handle is painted with a perfect likeness of his face. Rather than the blank expression of his slackened face, however, the artist has rendered him with a cordial smile.

  The effect is eerie, alive and lifeless at the same time.

  “Good morning, young lady. My name is Edger. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  His voice is even more unsettling than his inhuman smile frozen in silk and oil. The words don’t come from his mouth; instead, they seem to be pumped through the spiky tubes growing from the back of the creature attached to his neck. It’s like being spoken to by the wind in a deep canyon, more elemental than voice.

  “I know my appearance can be jarring to the uninitiated, and for that I apologize. I was born with a condition that paralyzes my face. As for my little friend here, his name is Ku. He’s a wind dragon. I assure you he is not harming me. He allows me—”

  “You’re talking from your throat,” Dyeawan says, fascinated. “And it’s… it’s making the sounds for you, like your mouth would, through those little pipes on its back. That’s so… amazing.”

  Edger lowers the stick mask with its cordial smile and replaces it among the others in front of him. He selects a new silkscreen portrait, this one with the raised brows and tight mouth of surprise.

  “You obviously have a keen mind. That’s just right, yes. May I ask your name?”

  Dyeawan hesitates. Though she isn’t sure why, something in her warns against telling this man her given name. She thinks of the time she spent in that cell with Evie, the conversations they had.

  “Slider,” she answers. “My name is Slider.”

  Edger lowers his surprised face and replaces it with the cordial smile that first greeted her.

  “That’s very appropriate,” he says. “May I ask you a question, Slider?”

  She nods.

  “How did you remain on the streets of the Capitol for so many years on your own? And without being arrested by Aegins? The Capitol is more fanatical about clearing out vagrants and the homeless than any other city in Crache. And most of the ones Capitol Aegins target are able-bodied.”

  Dyeawan isn’t sure what to say at first; she’s never thought he
r daily life a special or unique feat.

  “I… I learned to stay down by day. Most of us get taken during the day.”

  “And where would you stay?”

  “A lot of places. The hulls of ships that haven’t been put all the way together yet are best most of the time. The Capitol makes more ships than it can ever launch. The hulls are stacked deep at the port. They’re all covered up and barely guarded or even tended to. A lot of us live in those hulls. But I’ve spent weeks inside an empty barrel before. Anywhere that’s dark and hidden and no one bothers to look.”

  “And at night?”

  Dyeawan shrugs. “It’s easier to move around without being noticed. There are taverns and streets Aegins are afraid to go. But they can be good places to find food or beg for it. A lot of people are generous when they’re drunk.”

  “Isn’t that equally dangerous for you, though?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly they ignore cripples.” It is clear from the resentment in Dyeawan’s voice that she’s repeating a word hurled at her as an insult or dismissal many times throughout her short life. “I’d always make sure my face and hair were dirty, and the real trick is to never have anything worth taking. Mostly they leave you alone.”

  “That’s very smart. Strategically speaking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why hide from the Aegins though, Slider? Especially when you’re cold and starving. Do they harm you and your friends? Beat you, or otherwise molest you?”

  “No. They’re not allowed to. Most of them, anyway.”

  “Then what do you fear? Other than shelter and food for a few nights?”

  “Where I come from, everyone knows when Aegins take you, you don’t come back. We don’t know why, but if it were a good thing we’d see the ones who were taken again. Somewhere.”