Savage Legion

by Matt Wallace

  “Is he all right?”

  “Oh yes. You see, we inject Ku with an elixir to keep him docile while he is joined with Edger, but once every month he undergoes the mating cycle of the wind dragon. His nature becomes violent, and more importantly, strong enough to overpower the elixir. In such a state he’d surely tear out Edger’s throat. He must be removed and his mating instinct sated before they can be safely coupled again.”

  “I see. I’m sorry, Edger.”

  He doesn’t change his mask of expression, but he does wave a hand dismissively.

  “It’s quite all right, little Slider. In fact, I relish the break from this one’s endless prattle.”

  Quan laughs at his own jest, and Dyeawan thinks she sees Edger’s shoulders rise and fall silently as if he’s attempting to do the same.

  Quan finishes treating Edger’s neck. He slips both the silk cloth and the salve inside his robes and strides over to Ku’s home away from home. Dyeawan watches with interest as the tall attendant reaches down inside the glass and gently unfolds Ku from his companion. The wind dragon seems half asleep and offers no resistant. Quan reaches inside his robe and removes a horsehide bellows small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. A long, thick needle is attached to the mouth of the bellows.

  The attendant lovingly cradles the green wind dragon in one hand. The other deftly slips the tip of the needle between two of his scales. Quan gently squeezes the bellows, the elixir of which he spoke traveling through the needle and filling the wind dragon’s small body.

  Quan returns the bellows to his robes and carries Ku over to Edger’s chair. Cupping both hands around the creature, he very delicately presses its body against Edger’s exposed throat. The attendant’s hands are obscuring Dyeawan’s view, but she watches as Edger’s body stiffens, just for a moment, and then relaxes. The rushing of air is audible, and when Quan removes his hands the wind dragon has its spread jaws clamped onto Edger’s neck anew.

  “Thank you, Quan,” the voice made of wind and piped through Ku says to the attendant. “You may leave us now.”

  “Of course.”

  Quan bows and strides away from the lounger, past Dyeawan, whispering to her, “Used and discarded daily, that’s me.”

  He punctuates his words with a wink, and she can’t help giggling.

  If Edger heard the statement, he must be accustomed to such things.

  “Good day, my dear,” he says to Dyeawan. “Thank you for your patience.”

  “Oh no, it’s very interesting to me.”

  “I’ve always believed we need only use the resources we’ve been given.”

  Edger holds the mask to his face he wears for conversation, a passive, friendly visage that doesn’t express any particular emotion.

  “Now, how did you find your week of tests?” Edger asks her.

  Dyeawan’s breath catches briefly. She was both hopeful and fearful this would be the topic he wanted to discuss.

  “Challenging,” she answers carefully.

  Edger’s empty, haunting form of laughter is expelled from Ku’s spine hollows.

  “I doubt that very much,” he says. “In fact, I have come to believe nothing is challenging for the likes of you.”

  Dyeawan’s brows furrow. “I don’t understand.”

  “Slider, my dear, simply said, yours is easily the most naturally keen mind I have ever known.”

  She is no less confused. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “There is nothing to be said. It is not praise. It is the truth.”

  Whether it is true or not, Dyeawan can’t deny that Edger believes it. Still, there’s always more with him, something he’s not saying. It’s a thing Dyeawan has come to know about Edger, even if she doesn’t fully understand it.

  Even when he tells the truth, he’s always lying.

  She just doesn’t know what he’s lying about.

  “I see that great machinery between your ears working even now,” Edger remarks. “What are you thinking, Slider?”

  “I want to know what you want from me.”

  “I only want to help you reach your full potential so that you may help Crache.”

  Again, he believes what he’s saying, but Dyeawan knows the key to fully understanding his intentions and motivation lies in what the word “help” means to him.

  “Usually when we bring a recruit to the Planning Cadre, we have a sense of their talents, what they are naturally gifted to do. You were a blank slate in the best of ways. I only expected basic functions of you. You would think I, of all people, would have learned by now not to judge someone based on where they come from and especially what maladies they may suffer. I’m sorry.”

  “You give a new life and a purpose to people everyone else wants to forget ever lived,” Dyeawan says, and this she truly means. “You don’t have to say sorry to me, or to anyone.”

  “Still and all,” Edger insists, “I was wrong about you. As wrong as I’ve ever been about anything, and I do not boast when I tell you I am rarely wrong.”

  “I believe you. Thank you, Edger.”

  “You’re most welcome, my dear. Now, I’m sure by this time you have deduced that the tests you’ve been given throughout the past week are the same tests we administer to Cadre members across all our varied pursuits.”

  Dyeawan nods. “I named the duck Greenfire. He’s my friend now.”

  Edger briefly replaces his conversation mask with one frozen in gaping laughter.

  “That is delightful!” he proclaims. “And well done. Well done to you.”

  “I always wanted a pet. I tried to tame a rat once, but… never mind. You were saying, about the tests.”

  Edger exchanges masks before returning to the topic at hand. “Yes, of course. By presenting you with this unusually varied array of tests, my colleagues were hoping to discern what part of the Cadre you’d be best suited to join. I had… larger aspirations. And I am pleased to say mine were met. You simply crushed every task we gave you. It has been precisely forty-three years since we have witnessed results such as yours.”

  “What does that mean? What would you have me do?”

  “I would have you do what I do. I would have you be a planner, the highest order in the Cadre. I would have you join us in overseeing all that the Cadre does, originating the ideas that drive it.”

  Of all Dyeawan’s expectations after the testing, none reached the heights expressed in Edger’s words.

  “I would… yes, I would like that, Edger. Very much.”

  “Wonderful! That is simply wonderful. I am very pleased to hear you say that, my dear. With that settled, you must realize while the results were indeed impressive, the tests we placed before you were meant for novices. And planners are not novices.”

  “You mean… there are more tests? Harder tests?”

  “In your very special case, just one, but yes, it will be significantly more difficult. My… colleagues… have insisted.”

  “Do they not want me?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. They simply haven’t been privy to our conversations. They don’t know you yet. And admitting new recruits into planning is a very rare thing indeed.”

  “All right. What is this final test? And when is it?”

  “I am afraid I cannot tell you either of those things, my dear.”

  Dyeawan only nods, unsurprised and undisturbed. “That’s part of it, right?”

  “That is correct. For now, you will return to your regular duties. What comes will come, and my faith in you remains absolute.”

  Dyeawan knows what faith is, but she’s never experienced it, and in that moment she can’t decide if she’s sorry or grateful for that.

  “Thank you again, Edger. Thank you for everything. I don’t want to let you down.”

  “That is impossible, little Slider.”

  Dyeawan smiles for him. It’s clear to her that he doesn’t think he’s lying. However, she has learned that people lying to themselves about a thing doesn�
��t make that thing true.

  ONLY FIRE AND ICE GROW IN CHARNEL HOUSE GARDENS

  IT’S THE SMELL OF WINTER rotting.

  The benefit of visiting The Dry House is that the small domed structure has been set far apart from the rest of the Spectrum. The robed Councilmembers, their clerics, and the many daily Capitol petitioners also avoid The Dry House like a plague, making it the most peacefully serene and vacant spot in the city’s bustling epicenter. It’s a perfect escape from the constant bureaucratic chaos and its million tiny agonies.

  The downside of visiting The Dry House, obviously, is that it is filled with the dead and rapidly decaying.

  Crachian burial rites revolve around one’s station and importance within their Gen. Agricultural workers are returned to the earth as compost to aid the next harvest while their departed overseers are planted with a tree sapling that will sprout into a mighty monument. Sailors are given to the sea in quiet ceremonies while the bones of shipbuilders are fashioned into polished masthead sculptures adorning the finest seafaring Crachian vessels. Those not belonging to a Gen are slotted into space efficient stone mausoleums where the summer will bake them to ash, freeing their tier for the next body.

  Whether they are to become dust or pillar, however, the dead’s first stop is The Dry House, where they are laid upon blocks of imported ice to preserve them until family can be contacted and burial or ceremony can be arranged.

  Daian doesn’t mind being among the dead, or their scent, like animal carcasses half buried in snow. He enters the spare stony confines of The Dry House without hesitation, unmoved by the sight of row upon row of bodies resting on their ice-block cairn. Of course, it helps that the dead are draped in woven hemp shrouds (for preservation’s sake more than modesty, which most Crachians consider a wasted quality).

  He finds only one living soul occupying the space. Keepers of Dry Houses are known as “huskers.” The husker on duty is an unusually young man with his long, hay-colored hair tied back and an even lighter, almost invisible scruff smattering his cheeks and jaw.

  It’s uncommon for the Capitol, where dark hair like Daian’s is overwhelmingly handed down between generations. The boy’s ancestors must have come from across the sea some time after the Renewal, before Crache placed a ban upon such visitors settling within the nation’s borders.

  “Can I help you, Aegin?” the husker asks around a mouthful of rice.

  Whenever he’s had cause to deal with a husker, they always seem to be in the middle of a meal.

  “I’m looking for two men,” Daian informs him.

  The husker swallows, staring at him in confusion.

  “All right, but unless I’m one of ’em I can promise you there’s no one here in a state to be arrested.”

  “That’s funny,” Daian says in a tone that clarifies it was not funny at all.

  Daian begins pacing between the rows of giant ice blocks propped on their wooden frames, copper drip pans carefully arranged beneath them. He peels back the shroud covering each unnaturally still face. Most of them are puckered with the wrinkles of old age. The few younger faces he uncovers are composed of smooth, well-fed features unmarred by the abrasions of a life spent in physical toil, let alone touched by any violence. None of them are tattooed, and all of them appear to Daian to be high-ranking Gen members.

  “They’re not here,” Daian pronounces, equal parts confused and irritated.

  “If you’d tell me who you’re looking for, Aegin, I can have a look at my tally here.”

  The husker holds up an unfurled scroll lined with columns and hastily scribbled lists of names and other related information.

  “Is this all the recently departed in the Capitol?” Daian asks, ignoring the offer.

  The husker hesitates.

  “…no, ’course not.”

  “Why not? Where are the rest?”

  The husker sighs, relenting. “D’you know what Gen All’s-Breath is charging the Capitol for ice these days? I don’t have a block for every pauper who keels over in the Bottoms.”

  “I’m not here about paupers, I’m here about two assassins.”

  The word “assassins” quickly sobers the young man. “Oh. Them. Yeah, I heard about them.”

  “Good, you know who I’m talking about. Now, where are they?”

  “Follow me,” the husker bids him tentatively.

  Abandoning his rice bowl and chopsticks, the husker leads Daian away from the rows of the dead. He escorts the Aegin through an archway on the opposite end of the room from the entrance. What lies beyond is an antechamber where they clean and prepare the bodies before committing them to the surface of the ice for preservation. The slab upon which the newly dead are laid out is currently empty. The water bucket beside it is dry and the tools occupying a table adjacent to the slab are clean.

  There’s a small door on the other side of the room. The husker opens it, daylight illuminating the dust-speckled air of the confined space. The younger man motions Daian through.

  The small stone courtyard behind The Dry House smells far worse than any part of its interior. The garbage and other refuse piled there has yet to be claimed by Gen Tallman’s waste collectors.

  “Don’t tell me they’re in there?” Daian asks in shock, pointing at the garbage bins.

  “Of course not,” the husker assures him, trying and failing to sound genuinely offended.

  “What’re you gonna learn from ’em anyway?” he asks. “They’re dead.”

  “What do you learn from a trail after your quarry has already come and gone from it?”

  The husker only stares back at him, his face a blank canvas that will never see an artist’s brush.

  “Just show me the remains,” Daian orders him wearily.

  The young man nods, walking past the bins. In the far corner of the courtyard rests a stone box almost but not quite big enough to allow a full-grown adult entry. It has a door but no roof, only an iron grate with slender, charred-black bars.

  The husker opens the door, stepping aside to allow the Aegin full view and access.

  Daian immediately covers his mouth and nose with his right hand, eyes narrowing in disgust. The stone surfaces inside the box may have once been gray and white, but now every inch is black and thick with layers of soot and waxy, molten splotches that aren’t soot.

  The bottom of the box’s interior is piled high with scorched bones, mostly large femurs, skulls, and portions of rib cage; the rest has been burned to black ash.

  Daian turns to the young man, demanding, “What is this?”

  The husker meets his judging eyes with a hard, resolved expression.

  “Ice for those can afford it, fire for the rest,” he says.

  Daian has no answer for that. It’s simple enough to him. Instead of replying he puts his hand to his chest and unsheathes his dagger.

  The husker shuffles backward, eyes widening as if the blade is meant for him.

  Daian turns back to the box and crouches low before its open door. He extends his arm inside and begins prodding among the bones with his dagger. He hooks ribs and the inside of skulls with the tip of the blade and holds them up to examine them before slinging each burned-black remnant aside.

  Eventually there are only ashes left to explore. The edge of Daian’s blade scraping against stone sets the husker’s teeth on edge behind him, but Daian is determined to sift every inch of the space. In truth he expects to find nothing, especially since he has no idea what he’s even looking for to begin with. He’s mostly going through the motions to punish the husker.

  Then his blade touches metal, and Daian’s entire mood shifts.

  He taps the blade against the sudden obstruction, the report confirming there’s something metallic buried there. Scraping it free of the ashes and remains, Daian discovers a small circular object that looks to be a coin of some kind. He picks it up and smooths both blackened sides with his thumb, cleaning them the best he can. The coin is copper, but it’s no currency he’s ever s
een, from Crache or beyond.

  There’s a face hammered into one side. Not the visage of a historical figure or even any distinct person. It’s a vague face crudely rendered with a wild beard, shaggy hair, and hollows for eyes.

  It’s the face of a Savage.

  Daian finds another, identical coin while sifting among the rest of the black ash. He sheathes his dagger and stands, holding up both coins for the husker’s inspection.

  “What are these?”

  The young man shrugs. “One of ’em must have swallowed some coins. I dunno.”

  Daian nods. “Or they each had one of the same coin in their bellies. Just like they had the same marks on their skin.”

  “I suppose. What does it mean?”

  “Nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

  The husker is obviously baffled by the whole thing. “If you say so, Aegin.”

  Daian places the coins in his pocket and fixes the younger man with a hard stare. “Who told you to burn these bodies?”

  “Who says anyone told me—”

  “These men violated a private home in the Gen Circus and attempted to kill the mistress of that house and Gen!” Daian thunders at him in the voice he uses to interrogate witnesses and suspects. “It wasn’t your place to do anything but preserve them as needed for identification!”

  The husker doesn’t say anything, but he’s clearly holding whatever he’s not saying just below the surface now.

  Daian lowers his voice, his tone taking on a gentler mantle. “Listen here. Either this was your fault, or you were ordered to do it by the proper authorities and you are at no fault. Choose.”

  Those words seem to register with the husker. He nods, albeit reluctantly.

  “One of them Protectorate Ministry ghouls,” he confesses. “He came here. I’d never even seen one with my own eyes before. I’d only heard about ’em. He told me to burn the bodies right away. He said they were a… a ‘blight’ on the Capitol. On Crache itself.”