by Matt Wallace
Evie can’t wriggle herself free, but she can snake a hand between their tightly clenched bodies. Despite a numbness spreading through her lower half, Evie forces her knee to bend, raising her right boot. Her trembling fingers close around a familiar handle there.
“You’re no general,” Laython whispers, hot spittle hitting her cheek. “You’re not even a Savage.”
“You’re half right,” Evie manages through painfully clenched teeth.
The blade of her push dagger, that first reluctant gift ever given to her by Sirach, pierces the flesh of his chin beneath the leather helm. It lances Laython’s soft palate and tongue before entering the roof of his mouth. For one terrible moment his body tenses against her, squeezing the breath out of Evie with even more intensity, then his grip on her begins to loosen. With his head tilted back by the force of the push dagger, Evie leans in and sinks her teeth into his neck, ignoring the alien sensation of that flesh filling her mouth as she clamps her jaws together, and ripping out a large chunk of his throat and painting her face with his blood.
Evie spits in disgust, feeling her feet touch the ground as Laython’s body begins slouching toward the earth. She yanks her push dagger free of his skull and thrusts her hip against the mace still pulled across her back, knocking it free of Laython’s hands, and allowing her to back away from him.
The fire in his eyes that burned as bright as volcanic tears just moments ago have turned to cold stone. Blood continues to bathe the finely oiled pieces of his leather armor, spilling down his torso until it begins falling in thick hot drops upon the grass. Finally, he slumps forward, remaining on his knees as his face hits the soft ground. It’s a wholly undignified death pose.
Evie couldn’t approve any more than she does.
Her breath comes in staccato gasps and her mouth is slathered with blood inside and out. The red spatter fills in the empty spaces between her blue runes, and the knot in the center of her forehead adds a purple hue to complete the frightening composition of Evie’s battle-torn face. She stands over the fallen taskmaster of the Savage Legion and feels the rush of elation and victory overwhelming the pain wracking her body.
Evie moves her gaze over the field. The fighting that was so fierce and heated and thick what seems like only moments ago has largely ceased. The ground between the dead Savage Legionnaires is now littered with more bodies, and most of them are wearing Skrain armor. Evie sees Sicclunans and B’ors warriors and Savages with faces both painted and unpainted tending to the wounded, either helping their injured compatriots from the field or dealing mercy to mortally wounded enemies.
She turns and peers into the distance, at what began this day as the Crachian battle line. It no longer exists. Evie sees Skrain soldiers and Savage Legionnaires fleeing the field, running for the safety of the garrison. They’re met by several scattered Skrain officers on horseback, their pages, and a few flag soldiers. Eventually all the remaining Skrain turn tail and flee.
Let them run back to the safety of the keep, Evie thinks to herself. She’s seen the inside of the garrison. She knows they hurled every soldier and Savage they had at her little rebellion. There will be virtually no one left behind to defend the keep. It will fall to them before the day is over.
Evie’s weary eyes search the battlefield, past B’ors warriors separating the few worthy fallen among their enemies for honorable burial; Yacatek is among them, leading the way, already etching in the blade of her stone story dagger. Evie’s gaze finally locates Lariat, punching a katar blade down into the chest of still-moving Skrain soldier. Not far from him, Mother Manai is pulling a dagger from between Bam’s shoulders. Evie’s self-appointed bodyguard is standing under his own power, and he barely seems to take notice of the blade leaving his back, so she has to believe he’ll live.
Evie begins to feel a creeping sensation along her battered spine. It’s not a physical malady plaguing her; it’s the cold tingle of fear. She can’t seem to spot Sirach among those still standing on the field, and she’s not a woman who is difficult to pick out of a crowd. Evie realizes she hadn’t considered an outcome in which she would live and Sirach would not. She also hadn’t considered how much that outcome might affect her.
“You know, you are quite simply a good planner.” The voice is familiar and as inappropriately delighted as always. “You do, in fact, plan good things.”
Evie drops her head, her broad smile concealed there until she’s forced the expression into something more restrained.
When she turns around, Sirach is grinning through a face that’s been pummeled and sliced down the cheek by a close encounter with a Skrain sword.
“You look just awful,” Sirach says.
Evie nods. “I think we both forgot to duck.”
“Oh, I didn’t forget. Ducking is just so… expected.”
“I promise you,” Evie says, a new warmth replacing the chill that was threatening her spine, “you are never expected.”
“That is quite a compliment, General. And don’t tell me not to call you that.”
“I’m wearing the vest, aren’t I?”
“And you won the day.”
“We won the day,” Evie corrects her.
Sirach bows to her, grandly. “Fair enough.”
They seem to run out of words then. They stare at each other across a dozen slain bodies, and yet the blood and shit and carrion birds circling overhead aren’t enough to reclaim this moment from them.
Sirach’s expression turns unusually dour. “General, I must now ask you a very serious question.”
Evie is taken aback by the sudden change in mood. “What’s that?” she asks, tentative.
The grin returns to Sirach’s swollen lips. “Do you feel like laying siege to a Crachian keep?”
Evie sighs, somehow relieved despite the very real weight of the question. She sheathes the push dagger still clenched between her knuckles, returning it to the inside of her boot.
Evie stands tall, staring back confidently at Sirach.
“I’ll need a new sword,” she says.
IN THE HOUSE OF THE IGNOBLE
IT’S A FINER PRISON CELL than Lexi would have expected, to be sure.
She wakes with a dull and occasionally throbbing pain in what feels like the very pulpy back of her head. The bed beneath her is feather-soft, and large enough for Lexi to spread her arms akimbo without touching its edges. Four ornately carved posts supporting a silken canopy rise to the ceiling above her, and the sheets and pillows are even softer than the canopy appears to be.
Lexi is wearing the same clothes in which Daian took her. She doesn’t appear to have been molested in any way, beyond the fact she was bludgeoned with a knife pommel and kidnapped.
She rises from the luxurious bed and takes in her surroundings. The walls and the floor of the bedroom are heavy stone blocks draped with tapestry and rugs to hide their drab and rustic appearance. There’s a porcelain basin and chamber pot. A towering archway leads to another room beyond. It looks like a room from a castle ruin, before modern stone masons began striving for the smooth, angular perfection of the Spectrum’s construction.
The drawing room outside the bedchamber is like an ancient woodblock rendering of a scene from a historic castle. The stone floors, walls, ceiling, and even the large hearth have the same antiquated construction as the bedchamber. A large oak wood slab serves as a table in the center of the room, a large vase of orchids and a silver bell arranged atop it.
Lexi begins to realize these rooms and this castle are from another time and another world, one far more primitive yet striving for an aesthetic sense of civility, even high culture. She hasn’t seen an interior like this fully intact in any building in the nation.
Two heavy doors are closed off to her right. Lexi moves to them quickly and pulls on the rungs, finding herself locked in.
Light is filling the space. It’s the afternoon sun pouring in through the panes of large picture window on the other side of the room. Lexi gathers her skirt
and jogs across the cold stone floor. Unlike the door, the windows are unlocked. She pulls them open and steps to the edge, peering several hundred feet down at an expansive and beautiful garden. Manicured hedges extend over a hundred yards to a wall separating the courtyard from the treeline beyond.
Lexi doesn’t see anyone moving among the foliage, and it’s far too great a distance to jump, even if she landed on the softest patch of the garden. There are no ledges of crags in the walls outside her window, either.
Her mind reels with rough drafts of plans that range from improbable to impractical to utterly absurd. They all seem to end in failure when played out inside her head.
The sound of footsteps on stone echoes loudly beyond the locked doors of her apartment cell. Lexi turns from the tall picture window and walks quickly across the drawing room. She pauses when she sees the shadowy outline of feet through the crack beneath the doors. Lexi hears the outside latch spring free, and watches as both halves fling open.
Daian enters the drawing room. He’s no longer wearing his Aegin’s uniform. He appears to have traded its green tunic and baldric for a pitch-black tunic and vest. His dagger is sheathed from his right hip, slung low so the handle rises just above the heel of his palm when his arm is at rest at his side. He winks at her silently as he moves inside the room.
“You’ve given up your costume, I see,” Lexi says to him, hoping she sounds unafraid and in control.
Daian wags a finger at her, a chastising gesture. “Hardly a costume. I was a very good Aegin. I served the common folk. I resisted the corruption of my fellows. Some of them even tried to kill me for it. I simply have a higher calling, that’s all.”
“You’re corrupt in a much deeper way, from what I’ve seen.”
“Was it corrupt to save your life?”
Lexi ignores that, not even wanting to entertain the possibility that there’s truth in those words.
Instead, she asks, “Why this masquerade, Daian?”
“We were both looking for the same thing, at least at first. We share a common enemy. The Protectorate Ministry. We both wanted leverage to use against them, to expose them. I suspected they sent Savages to kill you, but I couldn’t be sure. We don’t know much about the Savages, you see. Aegins simply round up candidates and pack them off to… wherever. Aegins aren’t privy to the Ministry’s machinations. We’re simply their occasional lapdogs. I hoped to be able to turn up some evidence, even if it was just a body, some solid proof of who the assassins were and who sent them. It would have helped us to help you shine a light on them in open session at the Spectrum, in front of all your new dreg friends. Not to mention if we could turn up Brio or his evidence that would have been an equal boon. Unfortunately I fear news of my poking around on the matter made it back to them. I’m certain they tasked the Aegins you met in the dojo with eliminating me.”
“Then I suppose I saved your life, too,” Lexi says, the irony dripping from every word.
“You sheltered and healed me, and I thank you.”
“And I’m sorry your investigation failed.”
Daian shrugs. “It’s moot now. We’re moving on.”
“Who is moving on? To what? Who are these mysterious benefactors of yours who seem to have such a deep-seated issue with the Crachian governance?”
A smaller figure emerges behind him, one draped in brightly shining colored robes of the purest silk. Its embellishments appear to Lexi to be real gold and silver. Such opulence almost stops her from immediately recognizing Councilwoman Burr. Even the woman’s mousey hair, usually brushed and bound straight back, has been made-up elaborately in multiple braids. Her face is painted in tones of bone white, night blue, and crimson red. Her styling is much like the room around them; it is from a time that no longer exists.
Burr smiles welcomingly at Lexi, seeming far warmer than she ever did at the top of those steps in the Gen Franchise Council chambers.
“Welcome to my ancestral home, Lady Xia of House Stalbraid.”
Even the form of greeting and the title she invokes is archaic, recalling a long-forgotten time of “lords” and “ladies” who presided over noble “houses.”
“I wish to apologize for the brutal circumstances under which you have come to be our guest here,” Burr continues. “I had hoped to speak with you in my own time about pressing matters of state, and apply the… appropriate context to the situation. And while the Ministry moving against you as they did accelerated our timeline, Daian here could have been more… discreet. I fear he has given you a false impression of us.”
Burr looks up at Daian briefly, a flash of genuine annoyance revealed in her gaze.
Or a perfectly accurate impression? Lexi wonders.
“What timeline?” she asks instead. “What are you talking about? Where are we? We cannot be in the Capitol.”
“Oh no, we’re quite a ways southeast, well-hidden in the lowlands. My family spent centuries cultivating the vegetation that conceals this keep from prying eyes. There are a few others like it, but not half as many as there should be.”
“If this is the land and keep that belonged to your family before the Renewal, when they were a noble house, it was to have been remitted to the nation for repurposing.”
“Oh yes,” Burr admits bitterly. “So the newly born nation of Crache could fill it with lowly rabble, or turn it into a fish hatchery or some such abomination. My family turned over their holdings, just not all of them. They knew a base of operations would be needed for the fight to come, regardless of how long it might take to rebuild ourselves in preparation for that fight.”
“That was hundreds of years ago,” Lexi marvels.
Burr smiles haughtily. “Nobility has a long memory, My Lady.”
“Obviously. What am I doing here?”
“Long ago, a great crime was committed, Lady Xia, and a great many lies were told to conceal that crime.”
“You are speaking of the Renewal.”
“I’m speaking of the truth behind the Renewal. You are here to help those of us descendants of noble houses finally, at long last, put things right. You’re here to help restore this nation to its rightful wards.”
Lexi stares at her as if the woman is speaking gibberish. “Nobility is an absurd and arcane notion,” she insists. “The idea you’re fit to rule simply because of your blood is insane.”
“Blood, the right blood, built empires. It dragged people from caves and rallied them to construct a society, taught them how to live their lives within that society.”
“Taught them to know their place, you mean.”
“I do. Have Gens done any better? Are they any less corrupt? They merely allowed peasants to connive and scheme and plot to amass wealth and power.”
Lexi’s eyes narrow. “That is not my Gen.”
“You are a rare exception, and I congratulate you. I’m afraid you’re in poor company.”
“What do you want?” Lexi demands.
Burr’s eyelids narrow and fire flashes beneath them. “I want what my ancestors relinquished. I want what I have been denied. It is the most tragic misfortune imaginable to be born in the wrong age, My Lady, as I was. I am meant for a time when the greatness and destiny of lineage was not only recognized, it was revered. I am meant to rule. Yet here I dwell, as a bureaucrat in drab robes navigating a paltry political arena, subject to having my every decision and action voted upon and submitted to half a dozen committees before being sent back amended and annotated and vomited over with every tiny civil servant’s opinions and demands. In my ancestor’s age, their will alone was law. So it will be again, for me. I cannot go back to a time that has past, but I can change the times in which I find myself.”
“I meant, what do you want from me?” Lexi clarifies, speaking slowly.
“What you know, what you are, and what you and your husband have uncovered, they are all weapons. They are leverage that can be used against the Planning Cadre and the Protectorate Ministry, not to topple them, but to gain an
advantage. Where you would have used that knowledge as a bludgeon to blindly hammer at Crache, we will use it as a blade, with precision and delicacy, to rouse the right people at the right time in the right way.”
Lexi looks up at Daian, who stares back at her serenely. He almost appears friendly, and it’s the inappropriateness of that demeanor in this situation that makes it so disturbing. She wonders if any piece of the man she came to know actually exists within him.
“And what of you, Daian?” she asks. “Why are you helping her? Do you share some secret bloodline with ancient nobility?”
He shakes his head. “I’m nothing but a country boy, Lexi.”
“Then what’s in this for you?”
“Daian is as dissatisfied as we both are with the current state of Crache,” Burr answers for him. “That is what unifies us, what should unify us all in this room. Crache lied to you your entire life, and took your husband away when he asked too many questions. When you tried to save him, Crache attempted to murder you. This nation is a disease that either infects your mind and alters your thinking, or destroys you.”
“People did the things you’re talking about,” Lexi fires back at her. “Crache is a place, and any place is nothing more than an idea. It’s left to people how that idea is executed. The idea of Crache has been corrupted by the self-interested and indifferent. They are the ones we must unseat. You want to split the foundation of our society in two. I will not raze fertile ground to kill a few weeds, especially to seed it with an antiquated notion like the purity and entitlement of blood.”
Lexi’s breathing is shallow and labored as she finishes speaking; such is the fire in her own blood. She stares back at Burr defiantly, even challenging the Ignoble with her gaze.
Daian bursts out laughing, shattering the tension of the moment. He begins applauding Lexi, loudly clapping his hands together.
Burr flashes eyes filled with reprimand at him and he quickly falls silent.
Daian clears his throat. “Sorry,” he placates her. “But it was a good speech!”