Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

“That is utterly ingenious, my dear.”

  “It’s crude and unwieldy right now, I know,” Dyeawan insists. “But the principle is sound. I know I can make the whole thing lighter, smaller, and easier to implement. And I know the proper way to do it would’ve been to design it and have it drafted, but I didn’t want to waste the drafters’ time—”

  “Slider… the words you’re using…”

  “You mean my vocabulary?” she asks without a trace of irony in her voice.

  “Yes… including the word ‘vocabulary’…”

  “I suppose I’ve picked them up from the reading I’ve been doing.”

  “In our library?”

  Dyeawan nods.

  “And that’s how you acquired the knowledge to do all this?”

  “Well, Tahei helped me understand a lot of it. But I didn’t want him solving any of the problems for me, so the rest came from books.”

  “Could you read before you came here?”

  “No. Not really. Except for some signs in the Capitol.”

  “May I sit?” Edger asks.

  “Of course.”

  He settles himself gently on the foot of her bed, the hollow bones in the back of the wind dragon with its jaw perpetually clamped on his throat exhaling slowly.

  “I came here tonight because today marks three months since you’ve been with us,” he says. “I wanted to see how you felt, how you’d adjusted. Are you telling me in one month you taught yourself to read, learned advanced principles of alchemy, engineering, and metallurgy, and adapted them all to build this wondrous device?”

  “I just… I have a head for it, I suppose.”

  “You do indeed, my dear. In fact, I have drastically underestimated you. I owe you an apology.”

  Dyeawan frowns. “No, you don’t. You’ve given me everything. Every morning I wake up breathless because I’m afraid I dreamed all this, and I’m back inside a stinking empty wine barrel in some alley. I owe you, not the other way around.”

  Edger nods, replacing his surprised face with his cordial smile.

  “Still and all,” he says, “the fact remains that I have woefully underestimated your potential. And I do not do that. Not ever. It’s quite shocking, really. I simply didn’t see it.”

  He rises from the bed, turning and walking toward the door.

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Dyeawan calls after him, the concern in her voice unmasked. “That you underestimated me, I mean.”

  “I don’t know yet,” Edger says without turning around. “But I promise you, we shall see, one way or the other. Your new invention is marvelous, Slider. Reward yourself with sleep, and see what else you can dream up.”

  He leaves her with that, closing her door behind him.

  Dyeawan stares at the door for a long time after he’s gone, her heart beating faster than normal. To calm herself, she pulls the levers on her invention several times, running through the sequence or extinguishing the light and then reigniting it.

  It works precisely as she intended.

  She never allowed herself to acknowledge it while she was designing and building the device, but it wasn’t and isn’t simple curiosity or inspiration. She wanted to impress Edger with it. She wanted to feel pride.

  Now that she has, Dyeawan finds there is no pride within her, only a quiet sense of fear.

  SAVAGERY PAYS A CALL

  LEXI SITS BESIDE THE WINDOW in the highest room of her kith-kin’s tower, sheer silken drapes the color of pomelo meat dancing around her in the high winds of the elevation. They call this room the surveyor’s quarters. A massive bamboo table upon which reams of colorful maps are splayed and piled dominates the space, some of them drawn by Lexi as a girl and detailing the city and the surrounding country that can be viewed from her window.

  There’s a medium-size instrument resting on the sill in front of her, its slender, three-stringed neck curving into a heavy wooden potbelly. Crachians call it the reed-of-the-stone-lake, and it’s a general and agonized portion of formal Gen education to learn the instrument as a child. When they were young and betrothed, she and Brio would sit at their windows in their opposite towers and play matching reeds. The more poorly they each played, the more they made each other laugh with every sour, thronging note.

  She hasn’t played or even picked up the reed in the three months since Brio disappeared; even the sight of it is enough to cause tears to threaten the corners of her eyes, but she can’t bring herself to displace anything in the towers, or in any way change the configuration of their home from how it was before Brio disappeared. In an absurd and almost masochistic way, Lexi is grateful to have this mess with the Franchise Council to give her thoughts a different dire focus. Having the very existence of her Gen threatened is the only thing that could possibly distract Lexi from how much she misses Brio and how terrified she is of receiving indisputable confirmation that she’ll never see him again.

  When she isn’t distracted, Lexi desperately wants to be angry with him. Anger is so much easier and brings so much more solace than fear and loss. She knows, however, that whatever befell Brio was in the course of serving the post and the people he cared for so deeply. Lexi can’t force herself to feel anything other than a deep and gnawing emptiness when she thinks of Brio now. It’s better, even necessary, not to think of him at all.

  Far below her, the Circus is quiet and appears very serene. The wraps and tunics of the men and women of the Gens are small splashes of color on the pebbled pathways and green grass. Lexi can see steam rising from her favorite soup stand in the Circus, though at this height she can’t smell the heavy ginger and onion essence of the delicious broths. Sometimes, if she’s out early enough, she’ll stop and watch the owners stretching and shaping noodles for the day in the open-air kitchen.

  Beyond the Gen Circus, the Capitol rooftops are a perfect grid separated by the amber light of the streetlamps.

  “ ’S like a poem, it is,” a voice that does not belong to Taru, and therefore does not belong in this tower, says from the door of the surveyor’s quarters. “A pretty lady by a window in a tower.”

  Lexi rises and turns from the window, the drapes still blowing around her bare shoulders.

  They’re men, though they scarcely appear human to Lexi’s eyes. They wear rags covered in thick hide cloaks and hoods. One of them, bald and half his face having long been chewed up by what must’ve been a wild animal, clutches a short double-bladed ax. The other one, lankier and malnourished-looking, is leaning on a tall spear with a length of bright horsehair streaming from the base of its barbed tip.

  It’s the physical detail they share that initially distracts Lexi from her shock and panic. Her first impression is that they’re diseased, covered in some kind of sickly blue and green welts. Then she realizes the patterns look too much like writing, like some arcane runes, and aren’t raised enough on the skin. They must be tattoos. They seem to cover every inch of flesh on the bald one that isn’t scarred. The lanky spear-toting one has far fewer of them pockmarking his face and hands.

  Lexi blinks rapidly, her mind racing to accept the scene and process the reality of these intruders.

  She asks the inevitable question, trying to make it the demand of one who is in authority: “Who are you?”

  “Death,” the bald, chewed-up one happily answers. “My companion is also so called.”

  “Taru!” Lexi calls out, still and perhaps absurdly trying to keep her voice deep and authoritative and free of cracks.

  The two of them share a brief, frightening bout of the giggles.

  Lexi feels the trembling begin in her every muscle. She reaches up and grips her own biceps, squeezing hard to quell the physical panic before it spreads to her mind, overtaking her reason. She lets her nails dig painfully into the flesh of her arms to keep that bubbling rush of inner mayhem at bay.

  “Your big retainer is in the other tower,” the lanky one informs Lexi. “It’ll be a long while checking every room and cranny for our t
ype. Very diligent guard dog, they are.”

  Lexi turns back to the window, staring out at the opposing tower of Gen Stalbraid. She searches the windows frantically for some sign of Taru, the light of a torch or the flash of her retainer’s leather armor.

  There’s nothing. Alania Tower appears as cold and deserted as it has stood since the last of Brio’s family passed away.

  She hears footsteps approaching behind her, light and hobbled, aided by the tapping of a spear’s shaft.

  “You can jump if ya want,” the lanky one assures her. “It all ends the same, but I think I should like to see such a fall. It’ll certainly make things less of a mess for us.”

  “Speak for yerself,” his companion says.

  Lexi looks down at the Circus spread far below her, still the picture of serenity, still the steam of dozens of boiling pots pouring from her favorite soup stand.

  She has no intention of jumping.

  Lexi lets her arms fall and her hands deftly slip over the neck of the reed on the windowsill. She waits until the lanky one’s footsteps place him and his spear directly behind her and then stop.

  “Shall I give you a nudge?” he asks, taunting her.

  “Allow me,” Lexi whispers, an incantation of strength and will more for her than for him.

  She grips the reed’s curved neck with both hands. When Lexi turns, her entire body becomes a fulcrum, beginning at her feet and rotating up through her hips, chest, and shoulders. When she swings the instrument’s wooden belly into the side of the lanky one’s head, it’s with the full force of her weight and power behind it.

  His neck crooks awkwardly and his body collapses under it. Even so, Lexi raises the reed above her head and brings it down on him again, smashing him in the shoulder as he falls to the thick rug beneath their feet.

  Lexi can’t hear herself screaming. If she could, her own ferocity would shock her.

  The half-face is much quicker than he appears. No sooner has Lexi dropped his companion than that heavily inked, disfigured head is looming above her. Lexi cries out and takes another swing with the reed. The half-face doesn’t react with the lanky one’s frozen surprise. Instead he takes an easy, measured swing with his squat ax, its double blade shattering the instrument into several pieces.

  Lexi drops the bit of splintered wood she’s now holding and begins to back frantically away.

  “Come ’ere,” he bids her, the bald, scarred thing that Lexi is forced to accept is a man. “I won’t kill you right off. I won’t violate you, neither. Nothing like that. That’s not part of it. I just… I just want to smell you a bit first. Smell a proper lady. It’s been so long, it has. So very, very long. Give us that and you can have a bit more time. I do have to kill you, though. No way round that.”

  “Why?” Lexi asks. “Why do you have to kill me? What are you doing here?”

  “Following orders, miss.”

  Lexi stops near the edge of the map-laden table, staring at him, suspicion overriding her fear for the moment.

  “Orders? Whose orders? Were you sent here? By who? Are they paying you to do this?”

  The half-face shakes his head. “Savages don’t draw pay. But we did get this lovely furlough. I hadn’t seen the Capitol in a year. Never thought I would again. A bit o’ murder is a small thing to ask against getting to come home, even for a bit.”

  “Who sent you?” Lexi asks again.

  Again, he shakes his bald head.

  “No more questions.”

  He begins stalking around the bamboo table in the middle of the room. Every microscopic, ethereal element that makes up her being is screaming primordially at Lexi to run, but she can scarcely force one foot forward.

  “Stop!” he commands her, spittle flying as he growls the word.

  She does, half leaning over the tabletop with her hands pressed flat against it.

  “Don’t make me angry,” he almost pleads with her. “I don’t want to do this angry. I just… allow me my moment, and I’ll make yours quick. Those are my terms. I advise you to accept them.”

  Lexi says nothing, merely waits, standing there against the table.

  The half-face moves around the mound of maps and closes the gap between them, standing behind Lexi.

  “Turn around,” he instructs her.

  At first she can’t move. Lexi has to close her eyes and practically push herself off the table to force her feet into action, turning her body into his.

  The half-face smells of the earth, dirt and grass and chalky granite. It’s far more pleasant than the unwashed odor of his body beneath.

  Her would-be killer leans over her shoulder, wide nostrils pressing into her neck. Lexi can feel her hair touching the waxy, twisted lines of the scars dominating his face. He inhales deeply, and it makes her shiver, desperate to recoil, but she doesn’t.

  “The smell of a lady is a fine thing indeed,” he says, sounding almost drunk.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been so deprived,” Lexi laments, and it almost seems sincere.

  Her scent is followed by two of Lexi’s fingers, which she spears inside the man’s nostrils as deeply as she can plunge them, his head tossing back and his spine arching at an awkward angle as her nails dig painfully into his membranes.

  The bald man shrieks and swipes wildly with his double-sided ax. Lexi presses her body deeply into his, giving the blind, panicked swings as little distance as possible. She reaches up with her other hand and grabs as she digs her fingernails into his hairless skull. The two of them dance around the surveyor’s room, the half-face trying to pull away from her, and Lexi intent on riding him through it, curling her fingers in his nostrils and securing her grip. She feels warm, sticky blood oozing over her knuckles.

  When the gyration of his body and flailing of his arms stops, Lexi thinks they’ve crashed into one of the room’s walls. Her ankles cross and she almost loses her footing as both of their bodies halt in midstruggle. Then his growling ceases and his body stiffens.

  Lexi looks up, squinting through their tangled limbs. The expression is frozen on his face as if his head were a bust of human rage itself. Taru stands behind him. They jerk his body away and disengage the attacker from Lexi. She rolls away and finds herself falling onto the floor.

  She looks up and watches as Taru thrusts the tip of their blade out through the man’s chest, lifting him a foot from the floor. With great strength, Taru steps forward and shoves the man free of their blade. His body is hurled over the top of the table, landing with enough force to crack the top of it down the center.

  Taru is holding their blooded short sword in one hand and their hook-end in the other. It’s the first time Lexi has seen her Gen’s retainer out of armor. Taru is wearing only a long nightshirt and boots. Their chest rises and falls with every shallow breath brought on by the exertion and rush of battle.

  “Te-Gen, are you—” Taru begins to say before all their senses come to bear on a stirring by the window.

  The second assassin, the one Lexi brained with her reed, has regained consciousness, albeit a diminished form. A shocking amount of blood has drained from his left temple and pooled around his neck. He uses the shaft of his spear to pull him to his feet.

  “Sneaky bitch,” he curses groggily.

  “Stand and face me!” Taru commands him in a voice whose power makes even Lexi shudder.

  The lanky one looks up, blinking against the harshness of the lamplights until he finally sees Taru.

  “Oh, fuck me.”

  He raises his spear and immediately thrusts it into Taru’s face, only to watch Taru effortlessly move their head from the weapon’s path. He takes several more quick jabs, and each time Taru either feints or knocks the head of the spear away with their sword.

  With a cry of frustration, the lanky one rears back several steps and springs forward with twice the force behind his thrust, attempting to skewer Taru through their middle. Instead Taru envelops the shaft of the weapon with their hook-end, trapping it between the oppo
site planes of the blade. The lanky man, teeth clenched and grinding in frustration, pull and jerks at the spear. It’s as if he’s buried the tip in solid stone.

  Taru draws their short-sword-wielding arm across their chest.

  “Taru, wait!” Lexi calls to them. “We need to question him—”

  With one backhanded swing of the blade, Taru opens the lanky one’s throat. The force of the blow alone jars his hands free of the spear and he staggers back several feet. Then, as the blood begins to escape, his trembling hands clutch at a throat that’s no longer there. Taru has practically cleaved his neck in half. He’s still searching the now empty space with bloody hands when he falls to the floor.

  A moment later, in the lingering silence, Lexi finds she’s clamped both hands over her mouth. She’s staring at the body almost completely separated from its blood, which is seeping through the rug beneath and spread almost to its very edges.

  Taru looks from their felled opponent to their mistress, realization dawning on their face. Taru strides over to Lexi and kneels before her, laying weapons down at Lexi’s feet, head bowed in abject supplication.

  “I am sorry, Te-Gen. I did not mean to disobey your orders—”

  Lexi is already shaking her head. “Rise, rise!” she insists. “Stop all that. You saved my life. He was trying to take yours. You couldn’t know.”

  Taru stands and looks down at both bodies.

  “Thieves?” they ask, genuinely confused.

  Lexi shakes her head, unable to vocalize an answer at first.

  “No,” she finally says. “No. They… they came here to k… kill me. That one told me as much.”

  She points at the half-face sprawled on his stomach atop her kith-kin’s map table.

  “They’re assassins? Sent here to kill you?” Taru can scarcely believe their own words. “No Gen member has ever been assassinated. Such arcane practices have not been seen in Crache since…”

  Lexi nods, fully aware of the implications. “Have you ever seen tattoos like these?” she asks. “In the Bottoms, or…?”

  Taru shakes their head.

  “Summon the Aegins,” Lexi instructs. “We must report this, have an official record of it set down immediately. Wait!”