by Matt Wallace
Chew picks one up and holds it between two calloused fingers, examining it.
Daian watches the old forger’s face closely as Chew reacts to the image on the coin. What he sees written in the fine wrinkles and sharp eyes of the man’s face are uncertainty and something that might be alarm.
“This is not a coin I would take in trade,” he informs Daian. “It is not one I have seen before, either.”
“I’m not hearing you say you don’t know anything about it, Chew.”
“I may have heard some stories.”
“Stories of what?”
Chew hesitates, and whether it’s the nature of the knowledge or being forced to share it with Daian, it’s obvious he wishes to say no more.
Rather than press him further, Daian decides to simply wait.
In the end, Chew takes a deep labored breath and places the coin back in Daian’s hand.
“Blood coins,” he relents.
“What does that mean?” Daian asks, turning the small burned pieces of metal over and over in his palm.
“I am not certain. I have heard stories about coins as markers. Against the return of runaways.”
“Runaways? Like escaped prisoners?”
Chew shakes his head. “Military conscripts.”
Daian’s eyes refocus on the forger with a new intensity. “Soldiers?”
Chew shrugs. “Recruits for the Skrain are never compelled. This would be something… different.”
“The Bottoms’ pleader, Brio Alania, do you know if he ever came down here asking about anything like these coins, or military conscripts?”
Again, Chew shakes his head. “I never had dealings with the pleader. Our interests were usually contrary.”
“Do you know of anyone in the Bottoms he did speak with about such things? A confidant or a source of information? Anyone he trusted among the people?”
“No. I would make it my business to know about such a person, and steer clear of them.”
Daian searches Chew’s face for any glimmer of insincerity. He finds none.
“Good luck washing away the smell,” Daian says to the forger as a form of parting.
“I have learned to live with it.”
Daian grins. “I was talking to myself.”
He leaves the forger to the rotting façade of his fish stand and retraces his path back to the port archway. Daian turns over in his mind every word he extracted from Chew, examining them for any hidden truth or unintended information. It’s clear the assassins who went after Lexi were some of the “military conscripts” of whom Chew spoke. They could not, however, have been on the run. The attack on Lexi and Taru was not random, nor was it a simple robbery. They were sent.
Though he’d already suspected as much, this confirmed it.
None of that helps him locate Brio or whatever evidence Brio had collected. He needs to know whom Brio trusted outside of his Gen. His only thought is to return to the Spectrum. Records are kept of everyone pleaders call to testify before the Arbitration Council. Daian can cultivate a list of residents from the Bottoms who aided in Brio’s pleadings. If he can locate them, perhaps one of them will prove to be the person he’s seeking.
Daian puts the sea to his back and heads for the nearest sky carriage platform that will take him back to the Spectrum. He’s preparing to ascend the stairs when he sees the signaling fire lighting the sky above an alley several buildings from the corner on which he stands. The fire was created by powder, lit in a small mortar with a base the size and shape of a dinner plate designed to be placed on the ground.
Daian knows this because he wears a similar mortar and carries that powder in a pouch, both lashed to his belt.
It’s a signal from an Aegin in distress.
He breaks into a run, charging toward the source of the signal fire. He doesn’t spot any other Aegins answering the call; in fact, the area seems to be unusually bereft of green tunics. Daian ducks into the alley directly under the waning amber light of the signal fire, dagger upended in his knife hand.
He stops, chest heaving from the long sprint.
The alley is deserted.
Daian sees the mortar resting on the alley floor. Smoke is still spiraling in ghostly wisps from the tip of the barrel. He does not, however, see the Aegin who lit the powder.
“Your response was swift, Aegin,” Grath congratulates him.
Daian spins around to find his fellow acolyte instructor leaning casually in a back doorway, dagger sheathed in his baldric.
“Grath? What’s happening? Did you light the sky?”
Grath shakes his head.
“You did,” he informs Daian. “But I’m afraid we got here too late to save you.”
Daian stares back at him quizzically, opening his mouth to question Grath further. The words are literally choked from him as a strong arm appears around his neck, quickly cinching against his throat. At the same time, the blade of a dagger enters his back just above his right kidney. Daian arches his spine with his head thrown back and mouth agape in surprise. He raises his own dagger and the arm around his neck relents, a gloved hand taking hold of his wrist to restrain it.
Kamala’s Cyclops face appears in the corner of his eye, grinning in sadistic satisfaction.
“You chose the wrong friends,” she whispers in his ear. “And you ask too many questions. The Protectorate Ministry doesn’t like that.”
Kamala forces another half inch of steel into his back, and Daian groans through painfully clenched teeth. He tries to wrest his upended dagger free, but Kamala’s grip is too unyielding and the blade piercing his body seems to be draining all his strength. Trembling, Daian tilts his head forward and opens his mouth wide, biting down around the pommel of his dagger’s handle.
He doesn’t see Kamala’s expression change or her eyes slit in confusion. Daian jerks his head and the pommel snaps free of the rest of the dagger’s handle. The pommel is revealed to be a tiny dagger of its own, its short triangular blade concealed inside the handle of Daian’s larger knife. He clenches his jaw tight around the pommel, the blade attached to it extending from his lips like a steel tongue. Kamala’s hands remain occupied restraining him and keeping Daian’s knife hand at bay. He twists his neck and cranes his head back as far as their struggle will allow. Kamala’s eyes widen in realization a second before Daian drives his head forward and pushes the blade clenched between his teeth through her throat.
Her eyes stretch even wider as a single ribbon of blood escapes around the stubby blade. Daian unclenches his jaw, releasing the pommel. Kamala lets loose his restrained wrist without thinking and presses her gauntleted hand against her throat and around the small dagger embedded there. Blood begins to pour between her fingers in thick, deep crimson spurts.
Daian shrugs himself free of her. Kamala’s grip loosens around the handle of her dagger, its blade remaining in Daian’s back as he collapses forward onto his knees. She looks past him at Grath, whose perfectly shaped eyes are wide in abject shock. Kamala tries to speak as she staggers back several steps, but she loses consciousness before she can force out the words. She collapses onto her back, the blood continuing to drain from the deep gash through her neck and throat.
Daian, sweat pouring over his brow and his entire body either numb as stone or screaming in pain, forces himself to one knee. He reaches behind himself, every small movement causing him agony. He closes a shaking hand around the handle of Kamala’s knife and pulls the blade free from his back. There’s a brief, resplendent relief followed by an entirely new pain.
Grath leaps from the doorway, unsheathing his dagger and holding it at the ready. He charges forward toward Daian, but halts before he’s closed the gap between them even halfway.
Daian is now standing, both feet securely planted on the alley floor and spaced apart in a fighting stance. He’s brandishing both his and Kamala’s daggers in each hand, ready for what comes.
Grath hesitates, eyes flicking between the edges of those two blades and Daia
n’s face.
“If you think you’re going to wait until I bleed out,” Daian says in a trembling voice that’s nonetheless filled with menace, “I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.”
“I don’t know,” Grath says, carefully, forcing a version of that winning smile onto his handsome face. “I’d give myself fair odds.”
“Bad bet,” Daian insists, and takes a long stride toward him.
Grath drops his knife arm. He turns and runs down the alley.
Daian flips Kamala’s dagger in his hand, grasping it by the flat of the blade. He rears back and, screaming through the immense pain it causes him, hurls the weapon after Grath.
The dagger sails through the air with a perfect arc, the blade embedding itself between the man’s shoulder blades. The impact alone is enough to knock him off-balance and cause Grath to fall forward in midrun, his body skidding several yards over the alley floor before stopping.
He does not get up.
Daian tries to walk forward, but his legs feel as though they’ve disappeared. He careens to the left, stumbling and reaching for the alley wall to keep him from falling to the ground. He leans his body there, his torso impossibly warm while his legs feel cold and numb.
He looks down at the signaling mortar attached to his belt. Daian could light the sky, but he has no way of knowing who would answer the distress fire. There’s just as much chance they’ll finish what Grath and Kamala started as there is that they’ll help him. Even if the responding Aegins are among the uncorrupted, he also has no idea how to even begin explaining what’s happened here. Daian isn’t sure himself what just happened.
Instead of signaling for aid, he drags himself along the alley wall, streaks of blood trailing him in the polished stone of the building. Daian doesn’t know where he’s going. He only knows he can’t be here.
THE INTEREST PAID IN BLOOD
EVIE HAS TO LAUGH. SHE finds she can’t help herself. It bubbles up within her and comes spilling out like water over a broken dam. The sword she’s gripping in preparation for a battle to the death falls to her side. She laughs until her eyes well with tears and her breath is all but gone. Evie’s aching back slowly slides down the boulder that’s been partially supporting her. She stabs the blade of her short sword into the hard ground and holds on to the tsuka for support as she lowers herself to sit.
Sirach watches her all the while, silent, staring at Evie as if she’s a particularly amusing curio in a cabinet.
“You are the oddest duck, aren’t you?” the Sicclunan agent asks, though it is clear she’s already formed an opinion.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Evie muses, ignoring the non-question. “People you meet in your life, and then meet again? I mean… with all the people there are in this world, chance must have been so against you meeting any one person to begin with, let alone running across them again?”
“I imagine that’s so. Though we are in the same business, even if only as competitors.”
“I don’t even know whether that’s true or not anymore. I didn’t think so in that wine cellar. Now… I can’t honestly recall who I am anymore. I have a purpose, a mission, and that’s all. Everything else has become very… fuzzy around the edges.”
It is clear Sirach has no idea what Evie means. “I suppose I should thank you for sparing my life.”
“For all the good it did. You found another way to kill off all those Savages.”
“It was a much costlier way for my people, but yes.”
“Do you think it’ll make a difference?” Evie asks her, earnestly. “I mean, really. You surprised them, yes, but you know they’ve only fallen back to regroup. They’ll come again, with more Skrain and more Savages. As many as it takes.”
Sirach shrugs. “What else are we to do? The only other option is to give up.”
“There’s nothing else? Nothing to be negotiated? Or—”
It is Sirach’s turn to laugh. “You really have no idea who your people are or what Crache is, do you? None of you do. Though I suppose it’s not your fault. They go to great lengths to make it that way, raise all of you that way, at least the ones they need.”
“Battle is one thing,” Evie says. “Slaughter is another.”
“Say that to me when you’ve fought on my side and seen what I’ve seen.”
“Fair enough. Siccluna has been under siege for decades. I know you’ve been pushed to this.”
Sirach watches her with the oddest smile on her lips. “You really don’t know, do you? None of you do.”
“What don’t I know?”
Sirach leans forward. “What is Siccluna?”
Evie only blinks at her at first, the question finding no purchase among the peaks of her mind.
“It’s… your nation. This country we’re in now, what’s left of it.”
Sirach shakes her head. “Siccluna isn’t a place, my dear. It’s a word in a language scarcely spoken anymore, because those who spoke it scarcely exist anymore. The word ‘siccluna’ means ‘last home.’ ”
“I don’t understand.”
Sirach laughs. “I know you don’t. That’s the point. My dear… every city in Crache was once its own kingdom, its own realm, its own lands with its own people and language and customs. One by one, they all fell. It began with your Capitol.”
“The Renewal,” Evie whispers.
Sirach nods. “I don’t know how it began or who was usurped or how it happened. No one outside the Capitol does anymore, I imagine. But it started there. Then it spread. They consumed everything they conquered to build their well-fed, well-kept paradise of marvels and wonders. It was never enough, and it still isn’t. They just kept taking and taking and taking.”
Her words spark a recent memory for Evie, something Mother Manai said to her about the Sicclunan war not being a war at all. Mother Manai told Evie that Crache was expanding, something even more dangerous than war, and now, hearing what Sirach has said, Evie finally understands what that means. Crache isn’t growing, it’s eating, consuming everything it touches to grow fat. The fatter it grows, the more Crache must consume to sustain itself.
That’s what this entire bloody campaign is about. That’s what it has always been about.
“Why didn’t any of these kingdoms fight them?” Evie asks almost helplessly, although she suspects she already knows the answer.
Sirach shrugs. “They did, once the siege began, but before that they all thought they wouldn’t be next, that Crache would be satisfied. They made treaties, drew up new maps, new borders. Crache burned all of it. My people built what you call the Tenth City. They all had eyes like mine. Crache conquered them and worked them to death in the mines. I haven’t seen another person with these eyes since I was a little girl.”
Evie says nothing. Her head almost refuses to hold the truth in Sirach’s words.
“Siccluna is what we call the remnants of all those realms, those people. We banded together and retreated to wilds of the east. We have no cities, no castles, just villages of sticks lashed together in trees, mostly.”
“But… your armies… armored soldiers—”
“Every resource we’ve mustered is poured into the war effort. Every scrap of steel, every crop we grow, every scrawny piece of game we hunt, every arm experienced with a hammer. Siccluna is the army we field. We have nothing else. The people beyond the line to the east wear rags and sleep on mats. They eat rice with a swig of milk to keep their strength, twice on a good day. All we fight for is existence. Nothing more.”
Evie suddenly feels as weak as the people Sirach is describing. The strength seems to be flooding from her knees. Nothing Sirach is saying describes the world Evie knows.
“I… I can’t believe it.”
Sirach shrugs again. “I have no reason to deceive you. Especially since it seems I’ll have to kill you in a moment. But you’re not Crache, even if you’re Crachian-born. I can see that. I can at least offer you the truth.”
The greatest threat in Cr
ache’s history, nothing more than a rabble of desperate people hunted to the edge of extinction. The lies every good citizen of Crache has been told. Though Evie knows now the true breadth of Crache’s madness, and the goal of their war-waging, this knowledge, that their opposition isn’t another nation, it’s a collection of the sole survivors of entire peoples Crache has decimated and destroyed, is the most harrowing revelation of all. So many kingdoms, so much history lost, and so many innocent people having everything taken from them.
It’s monstrous.
It’s evil.
All of it.
Evie realizes there are tears in her eyes. She tries to blink them away, but like the knowledge Sirach has just shared, they won’t stop plaguing her.
She’s nearly breathless when she speaks again. “If it is as you say… you can’t possibly win.”
Sirach chuckles, wryly. “The only reason we’ve held this long is because of how wide and thin Crache has spread itself. If they had more Skrain and Savages to commit to this front, we’d have been annihilated long ago. But there’s unrest in their many cities, no matter what they tell you or how clean they keep their streets. For all I know, they’re fighting wars across the sea, too. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“I… I don’t know… I am truly sorry, Sirach,” Evie says. “I’m sorry for your people and all the others. My only cause was to protect those I hold close and dear.”
“I believe that. Did you find whatever or whoever it was you were looking for, by the way?” Sirach asks.
Evie nods. “For whatever’s that’s worth now.”
“I do apologize if I’ve had a hand in upsetting your mission.”
Evie swallows what feels like broken glass. “Likewise.”
“Well, then…”
Sirach doffs her wide-brimmed hat and twirls it down the narrow, rocky path. With several different aching groans in succession, she rises to her feet.
Evie follows suit, almost without thinking, again grasping the tsuka of her short sword and using it to pull herself up. Once she’s on her feet, she plucks the sword from the ground and shakes the dirt from the tip of the blade.